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Anonymous, A Conversation with a Christian Woman from Manipur, India                                                             162 

 

A Conversation with a Christian Woman from 

Manipur, India 
 

Anonymous 

Interview conducted and edited by Karie Riddle 
 

 
 

How do ordinary Christians respond when their neighbors are under attack? In this interview, a 

Christian woman from Manipur, India, shares stories of friends and family who have housed conflict 

refugees, prayed with them, cooked for them, and generally maintained community despite the 

constant threat of violence. These stories illustrate the important difference that ordinary people can 

make in an armed conflict, and they reveal the importance of maintaining belief in Christ as the Prince 

of Peace. When resources are scarce and patience wears thin, Christ can inspire us to a renewed 

commitment to love and care for even our enemies.   

 

The interviewee in this conversation wishes to 
remain anonymous due to potential danger that might 
come to herself and her family, if certain groups identify 
her as speaking out. While she herself does not 
currently live in Manipur, she is sharing the experiences 
of close relatives who have lived there throughout the 
recent violence that sparked in May of 2023. The 
interviewee also has decades of experience working as 

a peacebuilder in the long-simmering, low-intensity 
armed conflict that has troubled the state since the late 
1950s, including violence among different ethnic 
groups and between the state of India and some of the 
people of Manipur. Her remarks are therefore 
grounded in both the contemporary conflict and her 
lifetime of trying to pursue peace as a follower of Christ.  

The violence that currently troubles the state began 
on May 3, 2023, when Kuki and Naga people (two tribal 
groups, both minorities) held a peaceful rally against the 

Meitei majority group’s recent demand to receive 
official Scheduled Tribe (ST) status under the Indian 
Constitution. ST status entails new access to land and 
special reserved seats in government, jobs, schools, and 
more. While the Meiteis are indeed a marginalized 
indigenous group when compared to mainland Indians, 
they are the majority group that drives and therefore 
benefits the most from the mainstream economy, the 
political institutions, and the culture of the small state of 

Manipur. Tribal groups like the Kukis and Nagas thus 
argue that ST status for Meiteis would benefit a majority 
group which is already dominant in the state, 
undermining its original goal of lifting up marginalized 

tribal groups (Hussain 2023; Piang 2023). Violence has 
sparked primarily between Kukis and Meiteis, with 
human rights abuses occurring at the hands of militant 
groups on both sides. Tribal groups and Meiteis alike 
have called for more intervention from both the state 
and national levels of government, to little avail 
(Viswanath 2023; Rajkumar 2024). Human rights actors 
and peacebuilders have been attacked by militant 

groups, and there appears to be no relief in sight for 
over 70,000 displaced people (Nepram, Taha, and 
Inman 2023; “Manipur Violence….” 2023). 

In this context, we hear our interviewee reflecting 
on what has worked for her in the past and what seems 
to be effective right now. She particularly emphasizes 
the importance of face-to-face relationships and trust-
building work; the dependence that peacebuilders have 
on Jesus as the Prince of Peace; and the place for radical 
generosity in the face of need. She speaks primarily 

about the kind of informal work that ordinary 
Christians can do in the midst of conflict, although she 
also mentions the role of some non-profit 
organizations.   

 

What are some of the things that you are 

aware of that religious, and particularly 

Christian, people are doing to help protect 

one another when they are surrounded by 

violence?  
The moment the news [of the violence of May 3] 

spread in several areas, when Kukis whose houses had 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 6(3), Spring 2025  

 

Anonymous, A Conversation with a Christian Woman from Manipur, India                                                             163 

been burned came to Naga places, in the initial stage, 

they cannot just go to Kangpokpi, or Lamka, or even to 

Moreh [all cities or regions in Manipur]; they had to 

find immediate neighboring places, meaning they have 

to go to Naga villages to take shelter. Many of the 

different Naga and Kuki villages are close together, so 

that’s how they go to take shelter.  

They would shelter in churches, in schools, in 

homes; lots of people open up their homes. One Naga 

village I heard about, the next day, they took a truckload 

of people donating bags of rice or clothes or utensils, 

anything they have, to go down and help. That’s not just 

one village, but all the neighboring villages were able to 

do that and host people. The Kukis cannot run to the 

group that’s attacking them [the Meiteis], so they have 

to find other tribal groups that are not in the conflict to 

take shelter. 

[Both Kukis and Nagas are Christians]; they are 

believers, so they know they are brothers and they are 

the ones to help. Despite whatever the condition there, 

helping the ones who are escaping from the burning 

villages or attacks, they put those in priority. One lady 

in my village says she was ordinarily never having any 

visitors, but she was able to host three to four families. 

She says it is like a celebration, because when you have 

Christmas or New Year or Easter, people celebrate in 

community. We know it is a conflict situation, but 

having that fellowship with these different families that 

come from different villages, it was like a kind of 

fellowship celebration.  

My [relative] in the beginning, she was hosting five 

families with my [other relative]. Daily they would cook, 

and after a month they also asked the families, okay, 

now you guys take turns and cook. It was like cooking 

for a feast, you are cooking for fifty people, for some 

they cook for 100 people! Whatever you have, you have 

to share, whatever you need, you go and ask your 

neighbors, because they know we are there to help. 

I think my relatives did this because they have gone 

through a similar conflict [many years before], where 

our whole village burned down and we became 

homeless in a second, and the next day all the houses 

are just in cinders. In your heart you still see your house 

and the things you have, but in the physical sense you 

don’t have anything—these people are in the same 

situation. You don’t have any second thought, “oh no I 

should save this [for myself].” No, you feel that they 

need it the most. You have to serve them, and you have 

to share what you have. 

 

That willingness to host conflict refugees is 

really amazing! How long would people stay; 

what did that look like? 
Some stayed for four or five months; some villages 

still have them. They are also giving shelter to the ones 

whose villages are not burned, but they have to escape 

because the places where they live, they are just in the 

buffer zone where you can be attacked any night, or any 

day, so those people have to escape. Not all places are 

secure; where armies are stationed the armies would 

protect people, but that protection is not everywhere so 

for their own safety they have to leave and take shelter. 

In my relatives’ house there are four rooms. They 

cooked in the open with firewood. You cannot cook on 

small gas for twenty to thirty people. They sleep in four 

beds, the king or the queen size, just crammed together 

five or six people in one bed and that way they sleep. 

Some, they are putting a mattress on the floor, so in all 

the four rooms they sleep. They have just one toilet at 

that house, so all of them had to go to my other 

relative’s house, where they have at least three toilets 

there. They just had to make use of every facility so that 

everyone gets to do stuff, whether to bathe or to use the 

restroom, that’s how they had to share. In the school 

setting, if it’s a wooden floor, people just give them a 

mat. They may have a duvet-type blanket, or some 

other blankets they may spread out and sleep on. So if 

you are in the hill village, when you have a wooden 

house that is good, you can lie down on the wooden 

floors. 

 

Those are really difficult conditions! I 

remember reading a lot of news articles about 

how it was hard to get supplies in, to get food 

and medicine in. But the way you described it 

earlier, the mood was almost more like a 

holiday. So how did that feeling arise despite 

these difficult conditions? How did they 

maintain this good cheer, especially for four 

or five months of hosting people in these 

cramped conditions? 
My relative said, they always prayed with them, 

they’d pray together, every night, sometimes even 

daytime while doing stuff they still pray. Prayer is 

something that also really comforts them, not only 

them, even my people, because my sister said every 

night there would be more than ten drones flying above 

our house in our area, there would be a vehicle that 

comes at 1:00 or 2:00 am and she would pray because 

we don’t know whose vehicle that is, or if it is someone 

that has come to attack them. She would pray most of 

the night. There would be some of the ladies, the 

mothers of those who were there, who would join them 

to pray. The kids, they would cry, they would laugh, you 

cannot control the kids because they want to play. They 

would sometimes nag their parents and cry. Sometimes 

when the children cry at night she would be so scared; 

“if people hear us and if people come, because people 

know that in my neighborhood we are just a few of us, 

but now when the drone is watching they might even see 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 6(3), Spring 2025  

 

Anonymous, A Conversation with a Christian Woman from Manipur, India                                                             164 

us, what is going on,” so she used to be very afraid and 

she would keep praying all the time. 

 

Were there close pre-existing relationships 

between the hosts and the refugees? 
Of course, they know each other. After the 1990s 

conflict, there were many new people who had moved 

in, but we know them, unless there are very new ones 

who come in, but people who had been there, any of 

the tribes, they know us, and we also know them. 

 

This is all really amazing to hear, because that 

1990s conflict that you’re referencing, known 

as the famous “Naga-Kuki clash,” caused a lot 

of deaths. But now you are describing these 

two tribal groups helping each other and 

fellowshipping together as Christians. Was 

there no lingering animosity there, from that 

older conflict?  
I think people just felt the need to help. If they 

were still like, “I don’t even want to talk to you, I can’t 

be with you,” if that sense ever arose, then people might 

not even help to the extent that they helped. I know 

there are people who write still today [about] hatred, 

trying to spread hate and lies, but then, for those people 

I feel that they haven’t really forgiven one another or 

that they still bear grudges. 

To me even back then [in the 1990s] I would say, 

whatever they have done it is done, but me or my family 

or other people, what we need to do is offer forgiveness, 

because when God asks us to forgive seventy times 

seven, even if you are in anger, you shouldn’t let the 

anger continue beyond sunset. So when we say we are 

a follower of Christ, if we still have grudges and do not 

forgive the other, how can we say we are a believer? As 

a believer in Christ if you have that heart to forgive, that 

is where you are able to go beyond your tribe, your 

affinities, because as the children of God, every nation, 

every tribe, every tongue, for God we will be all one and 

that is his plan that we will be all together. So you are 

brothers and sisters in Christ. That should be the most 

important thing that we need to take on. And unless you 

forgive, you cannot move on. I think because of genuine 

love people have come out to extend help as a family, 

to your family.   

And in those days in the 1990s I said we need to 

learn to live together, because we cannot say “you go 

away and I will live on my own.” My people, they even 

gave the land and that’s how the village got established 

[for the other group], so we have to live together. Some 

people in my tribal group think I’m speaking for the 

other group. But to me I said, “I know my house was 

burned, my village was burned, and we lost everything, 

but I must learn to forgive, I must learn what Christ has 

taught us, how he forgives the sinner, how he asks that 

we should also be able to forgive.” So many people 

would say you are siding with the other group, but me, 

I feel that is what needed to be done. 

 

Do you think that these kinds of Christian 

values that you’re describing—the need to 

forgive seventy times seven, the need to look 

beyond your affinities because of the ideal of 

heaven—does that extend to non-Christians? 

Does that extend to Hindus in Manipur? 
Very much! God said love your enemies. In such a 

violent conflict now, you are being told that others are 

already your enemy. But then my family, we have 

pastors that we knew from even the Meitei families, so 

we called them, we tried to send them whatever help we 

could, so it was not just to the tribal groups but to the 

Meitei families that we knew who were affected, whose 

church was burned down. So love shouldn’t be only to 

your own people or the believers as such, but to those 

who didn’t believe. 

 

I’ll ask you now to take a step back and reflect 

a little bit on some potential lessons for our 

journal’s audience. As you are thinking about 

people working in development all over the 

world, primarily through Christian non-

governmental organizations (NGOs), do you 

have any advice based on your many years of 

Christian peacebuilding work? What are 

some things that have worked for you, some 

sources of inspiration that keep you going, or 

some things that you think are really 

important?  
1. I think, the first thing is, as a believer, when you see 

Jesus’ command to love our enemies, to love your 

enemies as yourself, that’s difficult, but he already 

also forewarned us that we will have all these 

hardships in life. So I think we know that only Jesus 

himself can give us true peace. We may do things 

[in our churches or in our organizations] to say, 

“this is peacebuilding, this thing may even work.” 

But I see true dependence on Christ; I believe that 

he’s the true prince of peace. He only can give us 

peace. I need to have that peace myself, and unless 

I’m having that peace within me, it’s going to be 

difficult to work for peace, especially in this 

situation where you know you have one group as a 

believer and then you have the other who are not 

believers in Christ. You cannot just give things, the 

material things, and that suffices as peacebuilding, 

but that building trust, I think trust is very 



Christian Relief, Development, and Advocacy 6(3), Spring 2025  

 

Anonymous, A Conversation with a Christian Woman from Manipur, India                                                             165 

important here. How can I build trust? Well, who 

sees me as his enemy? Building that relationship is 

very important and it cannot be done in one 

meeting, one day, one month, it is going to be a 

long-term process and I think there will be failures. 

Right after the peace deal there will be some 

killings that happen. You may say, oh this doesn’t 

work; if you give up, then there won’t be a chance 

to move ahead. Despite whatever attacks we may 

face, we have to have that faith that this will work 

for our betterment. 

2. I think acceptance of others is also something that 

has to be put as a priority because we know we are 

different. I cannot make Meitei to be like a tribal 

or the tribal to be like a Meitei or the Christian to 

be like a Hindu. So we may have our cultural 

differences, we may have all other differences, but 

to the believers I would say, when you put Christ 

first as your example then we will have that faith in 

us, whatever the challenges may be in building the 

trust to gain acceptance. In all the circumstances 

I'm facing I still won’t give up because people have 

to truly see that I genuinely love them, I genuinely 

mean for their good or our collective good. 

Because if they see me as working for my own 

good, for my own benefit, they will never accept it. 

3. Aid is also important, but in our part of the world we 

never talk about trauma counseling, all the traumas 

we face from living under a militarized regime. 

Trauma counseling is very much needed. Even 

myself, how I got healed, it was just learning and 

exposing myself to different people who are also 

going through similar conflicts. My exposure to the 

truth and reconciliation work in South Africa, that 

trip where we visited people, the victims’ families, 

talking to parties, meeting the NGOs that work 

there, meeting the government officials, hearing 

their stories, how they worked. That was something 

that helped me because we never go through any 

trauma counseling. Here I also want to focus on 

how biblical trauma counseling can be 

incorporated for the region, if the organizations 

can support sponsoring people who can be trained 

or people who can be sent to work in that area, that 

can be helpful apart from the aid. We don’t need 

just developmental aid, but the psychological part, 

the counseling part would be very important, that 

can really benefit people to overcome.  

4. There is an organization that is doing really good 

development work in Manipur, the Rural Women 

Upliftment Society (https://rwus.org/), if people 

want to support what they are doing to help the 

refugees. Having a connection with people on the 

ground is needed and helpful; only then can you 

know who is the neediest, who can get help from 

what we are doing.   

References 
 

Hussain, Afrida. 2023 (May 4). “How Manipur 

Violence Unfolded: A Timeline of Events.” India 
Today. 

https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/manipur-

violence-tribals-protest-meiteis-kukis-clash-timeline-

of-events-2368651-2023-05-04   

Piang, L. Lam Khan. 2023 (May 26). “Meiteis Have 

Not Been ‘Denied’ ST Status. Exclusion Was 

Their Own Choice.” The Wire. 

https://thewire.in/caste/meitei-st-status-exclusion-

choice  
Viswanath, Sunita. 2023 (July 13). “The Indian State 

of Manipur Is on the Verge of a Civil War. Modi 

Hasn’t Said a Word About It.” Time Magazine. 

https://time.com/6293988/modi-silence-manipur-

india/ 

Rajkumar, Bobichand. 2024 (November 30). “Failure 

of Manipur Government to Protect Lives and 

Properties Has Put Coexistence of Different 

Ethnic Groups in Jeopardy.” Imphal Review of 
Arts and Politics. https://imphalreviews.in/failure-

of-manipur-govt-to-protect-lives-and-properties-has-

put-coexistence-of-different-ethnic-groups-in-

jeopardy/ 

Nepram, Binalakshmi, Manal Taha, and Kris Inman. 

2023 (October 12). “In Northeast India, Manipur’s 

Violence Echoes Sudan’s Darfur.” United States 

Institute of Peace.  

https://www.usip.org/publications/2023/10/northea

st-india-manipurs-violence-echoes-sudans-darfur  

“Manipur Violence: Death Toll Touches 175 Mark, 

Few Stolen Weapons Recovered, Says Police.” 

2023 (September 15). Hindustan Times. 
https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-

news/manipur-toll-175-few-stolen-weapons-

recovered-police-101694716778763.html 

 

 

https://rwus.org/

