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Why do trees weep leaves without warning?
Why do the old choose to die in their mountain hamlets?
Why did his people turn to terror?
In Robin Ngangom's verse, Poet, part of his collection of poetry, My Invented Land (Speaking Tiger, 2023), the questions are both real and surreal. The bilingual poet, who writes in English and Manipuri, retired from North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong, in January this year. He had planned to return to his hometown of Imphal but with the roads blockaded for months, he has not been able to make that journey just yet. Meanwhile, his poetry often acts as a witness to ethnic conflict and the tension between state and non-state actors, which has tormented the people of Manipur for decades.
While Poet was written much before the present conflict between the Meitei and the Kuki-Zo communities that has been raging in the state for 18 months, it does reflect the sombre nature of the moment. The tensions have not ebbed with time— earlier this month, the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) was reimposed in Manipur's six police station areas, including Sekmai, Lamsang, Lamlai and Jiribam.
For visual artists, theatre practitioners, poets and writers, these everyday realities of Manipur are finding expression in their work. Some are creating portraits of memories, a few are offering art as a means of healing. And some, like Ngangom, stand as chroniclers.
ARTIST AS WITNESS
Having lived in the hills of Shillong for most of his professional life while also witnessing growing ethnic aggressiveness, marginalisation, and displacement in Manipur, Ngangom’s poetry features a vivid lyricism combined with a sense of social immediacy.
The 65-year-old recalls the lines from the poem In Memory Of W. B. Yeats by W. H. Auden, “Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry/ Now Ireland has her madness and weather still...”, in which the latter reflects on the impact that “the Troubles” (a decades-long insurgency movement) in Ireland had on Yeats and how such pain continued to inspire poets over time. “The word ‘hurt’ that Auden used is important. It is the violence and suffering in Manipur that often hurt me into poetry. There is a universal and local context in these themes of vengeful violence, tragedy, and grief,” says Ngangom.
Manipur has a painful history of living with blockades, protests against AFSPA, and more. What happens when one grows up with a pervading sense of unease? Does it inure one to violence? Theatre practitioner Joy Maisnam, who hails from the village of Pungdongbam and currently lives in Delhi, believes a certain gravitas enters the subconscious. “If you see plays that emerge from Manipur, they are always serious. You will hardly find comedies. Theatre practitioners such as Ratan Thiyam responded to the environment, and a lot of us followed suit. As I grew up watching these works, I became socially and politically more aware,” he says.
So he enrolled at the National School of Drama, graduating in 2008. He recalls his initial days at the theatre institution in Delhi, when someone started bursting crackers at Mandi House. “I started running, thinking those were gun shots. People had to assure me that they were crackers. I have never been able to do a comedy in my life. Zindagi mein hasna samajh nahi paaya (I haven’t understood how to laugh),” says Maisnam, who has moved to Delhi to ensure a better education for his young daughter.
The creative community has been processing these events at a subconscious level for decades, and expressing it through art. Thiyam’s 1976 play Karnabharam, for instance, cast Karna and Duryodhana as heroes instead of antagonists. “When seen in the backdrop of Manipur, where security forces have been engaged with insurgent groups…the plays become a powerful comment on rethinking our notions of heroes and villains,” wrote Dipannita Nath in her 2020 piece for Indian Express.
Heisnam Kanhailal and Heisnam Sabitri Devi, veteran stage artists from the state, staged Draupadi in 2000, based on a novel by Mahasweta Devi, but placed it in context of the women of Manipur. The play created a furore when Sabitri Devi revealed her naked body at the end in an act of defiance. Four years later, happenings on the stage were reflected in real life as women of the Meitei community staged a nude protest against the custodial killing of Thangjam Manorama.
Today, the symbol of Draupadi has been taken up by Maisnam, 48. His AgniSuta Draupadi, which was performed as part of the Mahindra Excellence in Theatre Awards this year, looks at women’s rights through the lens of a female character wrongly blamed for the bloody Kurukshetra war. The play is likely to be staged at National School of Drama’s upcoming Bharat Rang Mahotsav.
For Maisnam, the Mahabharat has become a conduit to connect people with contemporary realities. “Violence results in nothing but loss. No one wins or loses— everyone suffers,” says Maisnam, who staged Andha Yug, based on Dharamvir Bharti’s text on the mythological 18-day war, in 2017-18. His new play, Endless Nights, is about women who keep vigil in villages at night, and how they are the worst sufferers in this conflict.
For performing artists such as Thoudam Victor, the body has become a site to store information and pain as well as articulate it. He uses the body to represent the struggles of displaced and indigenous people and chronicle changes in Manipur, including massive deforestation in catchment areas and the repercussions of six mega hydro projects on the local ecology and people.
His plays, The Departed Dawn and The Aboriginal Cry, are non-verbal, and have been described as “physical poetry”. When we speak, he is in the midst of rehearsing for his latest play, The Aboriginal Cry, which will be staged in Itanagar soon. Thoudam calls it one of the toughest things he has done so far. For one, rehearsals can only take place in early hours to adhere to the curfew timings. “Second, every time we start rehearsing, disturbing pieces of news come in. The mind is not at ease. But as an artist, I want to take stories of Manipur to other people, and so we carry on,” says Thoudam.
I ask him if his plays are evolving as the conditions in the state change. Thoudam says he needs time to understand and process all that has been happening in the past 18 months. “People who were impacted by World War II would not have been able to articulate their feelings about it immediately after. The body and the mind take time to understand these things,” he says.
Just like Thoudam, visual artist Thamshangpha “Merci” Maku is still processing all that has been happening in the state. Hailing from the Naga tribe in Chandel, Manipur, he is currently based in Vadodara, where he completed master’s of visual arts in 2022.
Maku, who grew up in the hills of Manipur, feels his relationship with his home is complicated. He left Manipur in 2016 and since then has not gone back to stay for a long period. “Though we are a close-knit family, in a way we are also a little apart. We have all been out of home for some reason or another, and this time when we meet in January it will be a reunion of sorts after a decade,” he adds.
However, Maku’s works are not direct expressions about the unrest in the state. They are based on information that he gleans from news and phone conversations, lives and struggles of friends and family back at home, notions of identity, and of memories and connections. “I have not had a direct brush with violence, and I don’t want to appropriate that pain,” says the 25-year-old artist.
“He faced a tough time this year when he had to head home to get his passport to travel for a show. He was not able to return for sometime,” says Saloni Doshi of Space 118, which offers residencies to emerging art practitioners in Mumbai. She showed his work at the residency’s annual showcase last year, in which he had stitched Naga motifs on to the canvas of a landscape of his hometown. “His work, spanning painting, sculpture and performance, is all about memories of home and his childhood,” she says.
ART FOR HEALING
Ronid Chingangbam, musician and founder of the folk-rock band Imphal Talkies, who goes by the name Akhu, uses art as a means of healing. His work, over time, has been informed by the disconnect between the mainland and the North-East. Through grants by not-forprofits such as Bengaluru-based India Foundation for the Arts, he has travelled extensively to collect oral histories, literature and stories to consider the idea of Manipur beyond its geographical boundaries.
“This has always been part of my music. Ethnic tension in Manipur has been a reality but never on this scale. Such drastic demographic changes have taken place in the last 18 months that I feel the state might never be the same again. As an artist, as a musician, I am trying to make music to express what we feel,” he says.
In 2015, Akhu started a music project A Native Tongue Called Peace, as part of which he worked with children from different ethnic backgrounds at a shelter home in Imphal. The project seems even pertinent today as it continues to highlight shared histories and connections. “We are using music to find hope, to heal ourselves in difficult times,” says Akhu.
Earlier this year, he met 20-25 children at relief camps in Imphal, and together they put out a song on 3 May to commemorate one year of the conflict in Manipur. “Let them express their voice,” he adds.
During difficult times such as these, it is voices such as these—of grief, solidarity and succour—that can act as balms over the fractures and frisson that seem to be running through the state today.