In Manipur, Kukis mine their past to arm themselves using colonial-era ‘knowledge’ to make weapons

With his shotgun pointed towards the Meitei-dominated Bishnupur, 21-year-old Albert sits confidently inside a tin-roofed ‘bunker’, walled by sandbags and boulders at Moivam village in Manipur’s Kuki-dominated Churachandpur district. Although the single-shot shotgun seems inconsequential against the automatic weapons allegedly used by the ‘Meitei miscreants’, the confidence of the Kuki ‘village volunteer’ comes from a pumpi, a handmade mortar installed just behind the barricade.

“The pumpis have been very useful in driving away the Meiteis,” says Albert, a class 12 passed Kuki youth, who took up arms to safeguard his village soon after the Meitei-Kuki conflict flared up in May last year. “Some of the pumpis can travel up to three kilometers and can cause huge destruction,” he says.

Moivam is less than two kilometers away from the ‘buffer zone’ that separates the Kukis from the Meitei-dominated Bishnupur district.

Pumpis are made with crude materials such as iron pipes loaded with gunpowder and explosives.

“The range and performance of a pumpi depends on the amount and quality of the gunpowder used,” Janghaolun Haokip, publicity secretary of Kuki Inpi, Manipur, the apex body of the Kukis, told DH, recently.

“We have different kinds of pumpis, the traditional one could only be fired once. Now we have improvised them to fire repeatedly. These are often being called rockets by the Meiteis,” Haokip says, refuting allegations that Kukis have been using drones and rockets against the Meiteis.

Pumpis have become an integral part of most of the ‘bunkers’ manned by ‘village volunteers’ stationed along the ‘buffer zone’. Both Kukis and Meiteis use the term village volunteers to refer to the armed persons deployed to defend their villages against possible attacks. Not just pumpis, Kukis are also making hand-made pistols, rifles, grenades and many more as there seems to be no end to the ongoing conflict in Manipur. Operations carried out by both Manipur police and the central security forces have recovered a large number of pumpis and other country-made weapons.

“Kukis are very good at mechanic work and many make such weapons as business. Even they used to supply such weapons to the Meitei insurgents based in the valley until the conflict started last year. Now they are making more and more such weapons to use against the Meiteis,” an officer of Assam Rifles, posted in Tengnoupal, another Kuki-dominated district, says.

“But not just the country-made weapons, many automatic weapons have also been seized from the Kukis,” says the officer. “The conflict has increased the use of such hand-made weapons.”

But who supplies such weapons? Haokip says many villagers now know how to make such weapons.

“The knowledge came mainly from our elders and forefathers who had fought in the Anglo-Kuki War between 1917 and 1919 and they learnt how to make such weapons,” the Kuki Inpi leader claims.

Lelen Haokip, a leader of the Indigenous Tribal Leaders’ Forum (ITLF), a forum of Kuki-Zo organisations in Churachandpur, attributes the knowledge to World War-II and the Indian National Army (INA) led by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.

“Many Kukis were part of the INA and fought valiantly against the Allied forces, when Netaji came to Manipur via Burma. They learnt how to make such weapons and passed on the knowledge,” he says. There is an INA Memorial at Moirang of Bishnupur district that shares a boundary with Churachandpur.

“There are records that Pumpis were used first during the Anglo-Kuki War. The knowledge is believed to be much older although the exact time cannot be

ascertained. The Meiteis looted weapons from armouries and are using them against us. But we are banking on the hand-made weapons as a defence,” Kuki Inpi leader Haokip says.