The 71-year-old farmer nobody marched for: Manipur's quiet killings

Hemjang Haokip was 71 years old. He went to his paddy field in Kangpokpi district, as he had done for decades, and armed men took him away at around 3 p.m. on a Saturday. His field hut was burned. The next day, security forces found his body in a field, hands tied, stab wounds on his body. That is the whole story, and it should be enough. It will not be enough. Manipur has been burning, in fits and starts, since May 2023. Hundreds are dead. Tens of thousands are displaced. And the country has learned a terrible arithmetic: a killing in the Northeast is a statistic, a killing in the capital is a scandal. The search operation will end. The CoBRA commandos will move on. The allegations, NSCN-IM, ZUF-Kamson, unverified, unconfirmed, will dissolve into the fog that always settles over Manipur's dead. Notice what the state does. It arrives after the fact, with commandos and search operations, and calls it a response. It does not arrive before, with the protection that would have let a 71-year-old farmer work his field without fear of being dragged away. The farmer's field had become a contested frontier, Kuki groups say Naga residents were blocking Kuki villagers from their own land, and the state, which claims a monopoly on force, somehow never manages to be present where the force is used against the powerless. Periyar taught that rationalism is not an abstract philosophy but a way of asking who benefits. Who benefits from a Manipur where farmers are afraid to farm, where every killing is claimed by acronyms and verified by nobody? Not the Kuki farmer. Not the Naga villager. The beneficiaries are the ones for whom an unresolved conflict is more useful than a resolved one: the armed groups that recruit from fear, the politicians who campaign on it, the distant capital that finds it cheaper to manage Manipur's pain than to end it. Haokip's hands were tied. That detail will not leave me. A 71-year-old man, bound, stabbed, dumped in a field, and the national conversation will move on by Tuesday. The Justice refuses to move on. A farmer went to his field and did not come home. Until that is treated as the emergency it is, everything else is commentary.