Manipur, India – Samim Sahni was sitting outside her brick house last week, hunched over a radio along with a dozen of her neighbours, listening to the 7:30 pm news broadcast when they heard a bullet whizzing by.
The 25-year-old mother of two – a seven-year-old son and a toddler daughter – rushed inside her home in the town of Kwakta in the Bishnupur district of Manipur state in northeast India.
Chaos ensued and others who had gathered to hear the news began to panic, even as the shooting continued.
“We hid behind the bed for a while. Then we got out between 10:30 pm and 11:00 pm and hid in the mosque. We didn’t get back until the morning,” she told Al Jazeera.
After returning to her home, Sahni and her husband noticed half a dozen bullet holes along the side of their home’s entrance.
“We didn’t want to come back, but we don’t really have a choice,” said Sahni.
Authorities say nearly 100 people have been killed, 310 injured and more than 40,000 displaced in Manipur since May 3 as the remote Indian state witnessed ethnic clashes between the predominantly Hindu Meitei community and the predominantly Christian Kukis.
The Meitis – who make up about half of Manipur’s 3.5 million population according to India’s latest census in 2011 – are largely settled in and around the capital Imphal.
The Kuki, along with another major tribe, the Nagas, make up about 40 percent of the state’s population and live mainly in the hills. They enjoy Scheduled Tribe status, a constitutional provision that protects the rights and livelihoods of some indigenous communities in India.
The violence was sparked by a Kukis-led protest against the Meiteis demanding to be designated as a Scheduled Tribe.
Caught between two sides
Sahni’s village was caught in the crossfire between the Meitei-dominated area of Kwakta and a nearby Kuki village.
According to the 2011 census, Sahni and her husband are among the approximately 8,000 Muslims living in Kwakta. According to local estimates, there could be as many as 20,000 members of the community known as Meitei Pangals in the area.
At about 8 percent, the Meitei Pangals are the fourth largest community in Manipur after the Meiteis, Nagas and Kukis. They live in and around Imphal.
The area under the Kwakta Municipal Council consists of nine administrative districts, close to the Kuki-dominated Churachandpur district, one of the 10 hill districts of Manipur.
“We [Meitei Pangals] live in the valley areas. We have a relationship with both the Kukis and the Meiteis… Since the incidents began, we have been under pressure from both sides,” said SM Jalal, chairman of the All Manipur Muslim Organizations Coordinating Committee (AMMOCOC), the top organization of the civil society of the Pangal community, Al Jazeera told.
Violence erupted in Manipur on May 3 following a peace rally in Churachandpur against a host of issues, including demands by Meitei groups to be included in the Scheduled Tribes list, which would allow the community access to scholarships and reservations at educational institutions and government. jobs.
“After the riots started from Torbung, Kangvai and other surrounding villages [located at the border of Churachandpur and Meitei-dominated Bishnupur district], hundreds of Meiteis came from Churachandpur. Several of them took shelter in Muslim homes in Kwakta,” Nasir Khan, president of the Bishnupur-based Meitei Pangal Intellectual Forum, told Al Jazeera.
Kwakta City Council helped set up camps for the Meiteis fleeing the violence in the neighboring district.
Pitrubi Bibi, 65, was one of those who provided shelter for about 100 people.
“My daughter-in-law is a Meitei, so many of those who came are her relatives. There were 20 children in this group, slowly many of them left for other areas,” said Bibi.
On June 1, Bibi’s 30-year-old son Mohammad Yashir, who works as a field officer in Manipur’s sericulture department, was reportedly beaten up by a Meitei mob in Imphal when he came to the city to help pick up a car from the family. from a Kuki senior in his department.
“About six to seven people surrounded my car and started beating me up. They started saying that Muslims are helping the Kukis… I tried to tell them that I had helped Meiteis flee Churachandpur at the beginning of the violence. It didn’t matter,” Yashir told Al Jazeera.
Neighbors at war
The Meitei Pangals who live in Ward 8 of Kwakta Municipal are literally caught in the crossfire between the Kukis and the Meiteis.
Between 50 and 60 Meitei Pangals live between Pholjang, a predominantly Kuki village at the foot of Thangjing Hill, and the Meitei-dominated Ward 9 in Churachandpur.
“Since May 3, three to four shots have been fired. We leave our homes every night and stay in nearby areas,” Mohammed Razauddin, a resident of the neighborhood, told Al Jazeera.
Md Karimuddin, an elected councilor of the district, Azad Khan, said a low-intensity bomb was found on Monday next to a Meitei Pangal house in Islamabad, Ward 8. When Al Jazeera visited the site on June 1, the alleged bomb was removed, although there was a large dent in the ground and the wall of the concrete yellow house was visibly hit by small debris from the explosion.
“Three days ago we received a call from someone we know from the Manipur police commandos. We were told to get out,” said Abdul Hussain, who lived in the yellow house.
“We have sought shelter elsewhere. When we came back in the morning, we found this bomb. The Muslims in the area are all scared.”
A police officer at the local Phougakchao Ikhai station, who declined to be named, could not confirm which warring faction planted the bomb.
“There was heavy shooting between Kuki militants and commandos,” he said.
‘I want peace’
Hussain’s neighbor Rafiuddin, who also fled the village that day, pointed in the direction of a house whose tin roof was barely visible among the trees. ‘That’s the Meitei bunker. That’s where the commandos and other Meitei volunteers are firing from in Ward 9,” he claimed.
Mabam Premjit Singh, a Meitei, told Al Jazeera over the phone that at least 12 Meitei houses had been burned down by the Kukis.
“Kuki bunkers are here too. I’m tired of this now. I want peace,” he said.
A few hundred meters away from the Islamabad area of Kwakta, 45-year-old John Haokip, along with half a dozen young men, stood with single barrel cannons as they manned the village.
“If we don’t stay here, they’ll burn the village down. The Muslims want peace here. They have said they will stay in the middle,” he said.
A resident of Kwakta, who asked for anonymity, said: “For quite some time, most have been [Pangal] people had been running shops in Churachandpur. Sometimes people from there would come to Kwakta market to buy fruits and vegetables while selling rice. We are now being accused by some Meiteis of lending a hand to the Kuki people.”
Meitei Pangal Council chairman Haji Arafat Khullakpam also said that several Meitei Pangals are now applying for gun permits due to concerns about their safety. “There are some Pangals from Lilong, Khetrigaon, Kwakta and others [Muslim-dominated] areas that have applied for a gun permit. They want it to defend themselves.”
Adding to the tensions in Manipur is the demand for Scheduled Tribe status by some of the Muslims. In February this year, the Meitei-Pangal Scheduled Tribe Demand Committee held a protest in New Delhi to demand the status.
“As the majority community [Meiteis] demanded ST status, why shouldn’t we get it? If Kuki and Naga tribes have ST status, why shouldn’t we get it?” asked Riyazuddin Khan, an advisor to the All Manipur Muslim Development Committee, a Meitei Pangal group campaigning for Scheduled Tribe status.
“We have the right to demand ST status. But it is up to the national government to decide to give this to us. What is happening now is undemocratic and unnecessary,” Khan added.
Last week, the AMMOCOC submitted a memorandum to Federal Home Minister Amit Shah during his visit to riot-plagued Manipur. The Muslim group demanded the “immediate attention and action of the central government to restore peace, harmony and normalcy to the region”.