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The Hindu
5 days ago
- General
- The Hindu
In strife-torn Moreh, Myanmar children bring a sliver of hope
MOREH (Manipur) A border town in ethnic conflict-scarred Manipur is seeing a faint revival of activity, aided by a few education-seeking children from civil war-affected Myanmar. A couple of pre-primary schools in Moreh, a town located on the India-Myanmar border, about 110 km southeast of Manipur's capital Imphal, began enrolling children from Myanmar in January. These schools, which offer free education, are run by the Border Trade & Chamber of Commerce and the Tamil Sangam. The Tamil Sangam is an association largely comprising descendants of Tamils who fled a crackdown on non-natives following the 1962 military coup in Burma, now Myanmar. In line with Moreh's multi-ethnic character, the two organisations established three free educational centres named The All Community Welfare School in 1997. At present, two of these schools are operational. The third school, in Shantinagar area, was shut down due to a lack of students. Most of its students were Meiteis who left the area with their families after conflict between the Meitei and Kuki-Zo communities broke out on May 3, 2023. 'We did enrol 10 Myanmar students in 2024, but their attendance was erratic due to the situation on either side of the border. The 15 Myanmar students we admitted in January this year have been regular,' Hempao Haokip, headmaster of the school in Ward No. 6, told The Hindu. The school and the Tamil Sangam office are situated about 300 metres from the India-Myanmar border. Trading while waiting The regular attendance of these children, and a few others at the second school in Ward No. 3, is attributed to their mothers, who accompany them to school at 8 a.m. and wait until classes end at 1 p.m. 'A few days after they started accompanying their wards to school, these women sought permission to bring rice, vegetables, and other farm products and utility items to sell while they waited for their children. We relented on humanitarian grounds, particularly as people on either side of the border have suffered because of the collapse of business,' said an officer of the paramilitary Assam Rifles, which guards the India-Myanmar border. The officer spoke on condition of anonymity. Following these women, other traders from Myanmar - some of Nepalese origin - began entering Moreh to sell goods, operating within a four-hour window. 'We wind up by noon to be back home well before sundown,' said one of the traders, who declined to be named. These traders formerly operated from Namphalong, an abandoned market complex in Myanmar about 100 metres from the Indo-Myanmar Friendship Gate, once the main point of entry and exit for citizens of both countries. Security personnel posted at the border said cross-border movement became more restricted after the Centre announced in February 2024 that the Free Movement Regime (FMR) between India and Myanmar would be scrapped. The FMR had permitted border residents to travel up to 16 km into each other's countries without documentation. The restrictions were eased after the Centre decided in December 2024 to allow cross-border movement for residents up to 10 km from the international boundary. It was also announced that the Assam Rifles would issue 'border passes' at 43 designated points to regulate such movement. A series of blows Moreh, a key node in the Act East Policy launched in 2014 to deepen India's economic and strategic ties with Southeast Asia and the Indo-Pacific, was once a thriving commercial town. However, its fortunes declined first with the COVID-19 lockdown in March 2020, and then further after the February 2021 military coup in Myanmar and the outbreak of ethnic conflict in Manipur in 2023. 'A series of setbacks beyond our control has broken the backbone of trade in this once-bustling town. Whatever little trade is happening today is a struggle for survival for people on both sides of the border,' Surinder Singh Patheja, secretary of the Border Trade & Chamber of Commerce said. Traders in Moreh believe that the Kuki-dominated town can regain its commercial vibrancy only if all stakeholders, including the Meiteis, resume business activity. The Meiteis of Imphal Valley, who once made up 70% of the buyer base, have largely avoided travelling to Moreh since the conflict erupted.
Hindustan Times
20-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Word on the street: A delightful collection of poems celebrates Indian cities across 2,000 years
It began with a bout of homesickness. While studying for a degree in economics at Yale in late-2020, Bilal Moin began to feel a yearning for Mumbai. He sought refuge in poems about the city, initially turning to classics by Arun Kolatkar, Adil Jussawalla and Dom Moraes. After a while, he cast his net wider. Entering keywords into the university library archive, he discovered poets he had never heard of, their verses on Bombay preserved in journals and magazines long-since defunct. In 2023, he mentioned his 'Word document of homesick scribbles' to Shawkat Toorawa, a professor of comparative literature at Yale. 'He pointed out that, pretty much by accident, I had put together an anthology,' says Moin, speaking from Oxford, where he is now pursuing a Master's degree. Last month, that collection was released as a 1,072-page hardcover anthology: The Penguin Book of Poems on the Indian City. It holds 375 poems by 264 poets, translated from 20 languages. Readers can explore the very different Mumbais of the Jewish playwright and art critic Nissim Ezekiel and the Dalit activist Namdeo Dhasal. They can lament the loss of Shahjahanabad with the last Mughal emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar. Revisit the colonial-era Delhi of Sarojini Naidu, the Haridwar of Manjul Bajaj, or discover a tiny microcosm of India in Thangjam Ibopishak's Imphal. 'My hope is that as you travel through these poems,' writes Moin in the introduction, 'you will discover that within the magic, malice and masala of urban India, every city-dweller becomes, in their own way, a poet.' Centuries of verse 'on a scrap of dried out / soil under a dried up tree / a deer stands in the very centre of New Delhi…' the Polish poet Katarzyna Zechenter writes, in A Nilgai Deer in the City of Delhi. As his homesick search took him all over, picking what to include in the book, and deciding where to stop, was a huge challenge, Moin says. 'Penguin,' he adds, laughing, 'neglected to give me an upper limit for the number of poems I could include, and I took advantage of that and trawled as far and wide — geographically, linguistically and temporally — as possible.' The oldest poem in the collection is Pataliputra, an ode to that ancient Mauryan capital (and ancestor to modern-day Patna), written by Tamil Sangam poet Mosi Keeranar, sometime between the 1st and 3rd centuries CE. 'May all of Pataliputra, swimming in gold, / where white-tusked elephants splash about / in the Sona River, be yours…' he writes. One of the most recent is Imphal as a Pond, by the 22-year-old queer activist Mesak Takhelmayum: 'My family is like the archipelago at Loktak, / if not the chains of islands in the great ocean far beyond these mountains, / in our separation, we yearn for one another / we yearn for water to connect us.' Jungle of people... Once he had a longlist ready, Moin spent weeks sending out hundreds of emails to poets and publishers, trying to work out how to get permission to feature each piece. 'I've featured writers who maybe had one or two poems published 15 years ago, and then seemingly never published again,' he says. 'So I had to send a lot of Facebook messages to people with similar names, saying 'Hi you don't know me, but are you this poet?'' He was determined that each poem be presented at its best, so he dug through multiple translations, and consulted with linguists, scholars or simply friends and acquaintances, to identify the best or most accurate recreations in English. There was a lot of debate over which translation of Tagore's two poems, Song of the City and The Flute, to choose. For the former, he chose the translation by William Radice: 'O city, city, jungle of people, / Road after road, buildings innumerable, / Everything buyable, everything saleable, / Uproar, hubbub, noise.' In loving memory As he read his way through centuries of verse, Moin says, he noticed something that thrilled him: over and over, certain cities inspired the same sentiment. Whether this was an effect of culture, literary mirroring or an idea that took root and spread, tracing these threads through time felt extraordinary, he says. Kolkata's poets tend to look at the city as a harsh mistress, their unrequited love for her both romantic and torturous. Mumbai poets struggle to come to terms with their city's glaring inequalities, and write of the difficulties of surviving in this maximal metropolis. As for Delhi, 'it doesn't matter if you're reading poetry from the 14th century or the 21st,' Moin says. 'The theme is always that this was once a great city, but it no longer is. And that one loves Delhi for its past.' 'A lot of fantastic gay poets, such as Hoshang Merchant and R Raj Rao, are featured in this collection,' Moin adds. 'It's interesting to see, through their eyes, how the city enables the marginalised to express themselves, while on the other hand still stifling them.' There are poets in these pages who are also activists and fighters, soldiers and sages, memory-keepers looking to record a city's present, its culture and its people, its quirks and flaws, before it is all erased and redrawn. But most poets in the anthology, Moin points out, are none of these things. They are simply the 'loafers' of Arvind Krishna Mehrotra's imagination, drifting carefree through gardens, temples and lanes, finding ways to turn the minutiae of the everyday into art. As Nirupama Dutt puts it, in Laughing Sorrow: 'I will go to the poet of the city, / looking for life without restraint. / He will have half a bottle of rum / in one pocket and a freshly / written poem in the other.' Get 360° coverage—from daily headlines to 100 year archives.
Time of India
11-06-2025
- Politics
- Time of India
DMK ally in talks to join NDA: Nagenthran
Tirunelveli: BJP state president Nainar Nagenthran said on Wednesday that a key alliance partner of DMK is in talks to join the BJP-led NDA . "Discussions are underway, but we cannot reveal the details now," he said at a news conference in Tirunelveli. His response came when asked about Union minister L Murugan 's recent statement hinting at a possible switch by a DMK ally. Nagenthran also said he would personally review the Keeladi excavation report and submit his recommendations on its credibility to the central govt. "I will study the report in detail and send my feedback," he said, on ongoing criticism by opposition parties that the BJP undermines Tamil heritage. Reiterating BJP's support for Tamil culture, Nagenthran pointed to several initiatives by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, including translating Thirukkural into 63 languages and organising Tamil Sangam events in Kashi and Gujarat. "The BJP has always upheld Tamil identity and culture," he said. He said if the AIADMK-BJP alliance comes to power in Tamil Nadu , it will be led by Edappadi K Palaniswami. "It will be an alliance partners' rule, and EPS will be the leader," he said. "Everyone born in India is a Hindu in terms of cultural identity," he said in response to a question. Nagenthran said the BJP-led central govt allocated ₹10 lakh crore to Tamil Nadu over the past 11 years without any financial backlog. "This is the highest level of central support the state received," he added.
New Indian Express
23-05-2025
- Politics
- New Indian Express
After two years, ASI ask archaeologist Amarnath to rework Keezhadi Excavation report
Condemning the development, CPM MP from Madurai Parliamentary constituency and well-known Tamil writer Su Venkatesan, in a statement, said "BJP remains an adversary to Tamil Nadu's antiquity and the truth of Keezhadi." He said when the issue about delay in the release of Ramakrishna's report was raised in the parliament, it was assured that the report would be released. "As the next meeting of the Assurances Committee of Parliament is scheduled for May 27, the ASI has returned the report to Ramakrishna seeking certain corrections (as a delaying tactic)." An archaeologist in Chennai, well-versed in Keezhadi excavations, on anonymity told TNIE that the development was unfortunate. "The report submitted by Ramakrishna is an excavator's account with all observations based on facts. Before sending it to the press, only typos can be corrected. Unfortunately, it has been vetted by two others who were not connected with the excavations at all," he said . R Balakrishnan, Director, International Institute of Tamil Studies, who authored the book - Journey of a Civilisation: Indus to Vaigai - said, 'We are distressed by the fact that the report of an excavation done 10 years back is still facing roadblocks,' he said. He pointed out that what is found in Keezhadi, Sivagalai, and Adichanallur had been predicted way back in 1935 by KN Dikshit, the then Director General of the ASI. 'Hence, it (the findings) should not shock or surprise anyone. We have to be aware that we are already 90 years late. History is not just 'useful'; it is essential, inevitable and inescapable,' Balakrishnan added. Balakrishnan recalled that the Keezhadi archaeological site was identified by the ASI team led by Amaranth Ramakrishna after surveying 292 sites on both banks of the Vaigai River. Pointing out that the ancient Tamil Sangam corpus is the urban literature par excellence of the ancient Indian subcontinent, Balakrishnan said, 'Hence, unearthing of archaeological evidence for an ancient 'urban settlement' near Madurai should not unsettle or bewilder anyone.' History Professor V Marappan of Presidency College, who is also well-versed in Keezhadi excavations and findings, also expressed disappointment. He contended that the history experts, archaeologists and politicians from northern India have been stubbornly refusing to acknowledge the antiquity of Tamils for long. 'Just like the Indus Valley civilisation was there in the North, and the Mesopotamian civilisation originated from the region between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, etc. Ramakrishna's excavations and the report established that there existed a very ancient civilisation in Tamil Nadu. The present history book speaks only about the Indus Valley Civilisation as far as India is concerned. But in reality, the starting point of India's history is Tamil Nadu,' Marappan said. Ramakrishna, who is presently Director, National Mission on Monuments and Antiquities, declined to comment.
