Manipur violence took everything we had: India footballer Chinglensana Singh

It was a usual sultry May evening in Kerala’s Kozhikode, and Chinglensana Singh was representing Hyderabad FC in an AFC Cup match against Mohun Bagan. Everything seemed calm and normal when the India footballer strolled along the ground to enter the dressing room, and nothing could have prepared him for what he was about to know.

The trail of text messages and the barrage of missed calls on his phone told him that something was seriously wrong. Worried, Singh promptly tried to return the calls, but the lines were down. However, it did not take the centre-back long to find out that he had lost almost everything in the devastation that had broken out back home in Manipur.

The date was May 3, when ethnic violence broke out in the northeastern state. “It has taken away everything from us, everything we earned, everything we had,” the player, hailing from Khumujama Leikai in Manipur’s Churachandpur district, told PTI.

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Singh’s village was one of the epicentres of the violence. When the 27-year-old finally managed to get in touch with his mother, she was wailing at the other end. He could clearly hear the gunshots over the phone and got to know how the clashes had by then destroyed his house and ravaged his village. Only his family had survived.

“I heard the news of our house being torched and the football turf that I built in Churachandpur being burnt. It was really heartbreaking. I had the big dream of providing a platform to youngsters, but it was taken away. Fortunately, my family escaped the violence and was shifted to a relief centre,” he added.

Plan to start afresh

Singh decided to go back to his parents immediately. Relieved at having them around, he is now thinking of ways to overcome the profoundly disturbing experience and start afresh. “I always had a big dream of providing a platform to the youngsters in Churachandpur who are talented but couldn’t afford to enrol in a football school,” he said.

“My aim was to provide them with a platform, to help them become professional players and then go on and play for the national team… become great players for the country. Then this incident happened; so, everything is being robbed. But we will try to start again,” Singh added haltingly.

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The violence was sparked by a court ruling in March that granted the majority Meiteis Scheduled Caste status, entitling them to the same economic benefits and quotas in government jobs and education as the minority Kukis.

It also allowed Meiteis to buy land in the hills, where the Kukis predominately live, further fuelling fears that their lands, jobs, and opportunities would be taken away.

Since then, some 150 people have been killed in the violence-torn state, women raped, hundreds injured, many houses burnt, and some 60,000 people internally displaced.

(With agency inputs)