Rangchwanga and his men were isolated in a guarded cell within the Aizawl military cantonment. Their arrest was different from the others; they had been taken directly from the field of operation, fresh from the fight. The security forces knew these men held the keys to the rebellion—locations, supply lines, leadership. They had to be cracked.
As they were dragged away, Rangchwanga knew the capture was only the beginning. The real test lay ahead. The enemy would try to extract information by any means necessary. They would break bodies and minds. But for men who had already made peace with death, who carried the mantra of “fear not” in their hearts, what was there left to fear?
Inside a small, stark interrogation room, three military officers waited. Rangchwanga was brought in, flanked by armed guards. The questioning began—a relentless barrage. As soon as one officer finished, another began, their voices overlapping, demanding to know the location of the hideouts, the sources of their weapons, the names of their leaders.
Rangchwanga remained immovable. He looked at them and saw only the instruments of oppression. Their duty was to crush his motherland; his duty was to liberate it. There was no common ground. As long as a drop of blood remained in his veins, he would not betray the cause.
When words failed, the officers moved to the second stage.
They used heavy rollers on his joints, crushing the cartilage. They drove needles under his fingernails. They left him alone in the dark, only to drag him back for more when he regained consciousness. They placed glasses of water in front of him when his throat was parched, only to snatch them away the moment he reached out.
Yet, silence was his fortress. In the end, it was the officers who lost their patience, defeated by his refusal to break.
Having failed to extract a single useful sentence, the military authorities transferred Rangchwanga and his men to Silchar Jail.
Entering the prison felt like entering another world. It was a holding pen for the rebellion; every two or three days, a fresh batch of Mizo prisoners arrived. The overcrowding was inhumane. In a ward designed for fifteen, the authorities stuffed a hundred and fifty men. At night, when the heavy doors clanged shut, the ward became a suffocating box of limbs and sweat. It was a mystery how anyone survived the night, crushed together like inanimate objects in a sack, waiting for the sun to rise.
Morning brought the only relief. When the warders unlocked the doors, the prisoners spilled out into the yard like chicks released from a cage, finally able to stretch their aching bodies and breathe fresh air.
One morning, sitting in the yard, Rangchwanga noticed a young boy beside him. He looked too young to be a soldier.
“What is your name?” Rangchwanga asked.
“Zairema.”
“Where are you from?”
“A punjee near Nahthial.”
“Did they arrest you there?”
“Yes,” the boy said softly. “One morning, the sepoys surrounded the village. They took us all. They didn’t beat me much, but… they beat the others badly.”
“They feel powerful when they catch us,” Rangchwanga said with a dark smile. “But in the jungle? One blank shot and they wet their pants.”
Zairema giggled, the sound bright and unexpected in the grim yard.
“Did you study?” Rangchwanga asked.
“Class seven.”
“Who is at home?”
“My mother… and two younger brothers.”
The mention of home drained the smile from Zairema’s face. The memory washed over him: the soldiers ransacking their hut, his mother screaming, trying to shield him with her frail body. He is my support, he has done no wrong! But the sepoy had shoved her into the dirt and dragged Zairema away. He remembered looking back, seeing his brothers screaming in terror, tears rolling down his mother’s face.
“Whenever I think of them, I want to cry,” Zairema whispered, his voice trembling. “At first, I couldn’t stop. But I look around… everyone here has the same sorrow. Some miss parents, some miss wives. I suppose… I am getting used to the pain.”
Rangchwanga nodded slowly. “It is natural to grieve. But we must harden our hearts. The enemy wants to break us with this sorrow. If we rot here lamenting our fate, we lose. We must endure the hardship to achieve the purpose we took an oath for.”
Zairema looked at Rangchwanga, his eyes shining with a newfound resolve. He leaned in closer, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.
“Come, brother. I want to show you something.”
Checking that the warders were distracted, Zairema led him to a cell on the south side of the ward.
“Our Pu Laldenga used to stay in this cell,” the boy whispered reverently.
“Is that so?”
“Yes. A warder told me. He said Laldenga read books all the time. Always reading.”
“Have you ever seen him?”
“No. But I have heard so much. He is the leader of the Front. The warder said they moved him to Shillong to talk to the ministers. After that… no news.”
Rangchwanga noticed the guards eyeing them suspiciously. “We should move. No point provoking the bastards.”
Days turned into weeks. The routine of prison life—the blustering warders, the bad food, the waiting—settled in.
Rangchwanga met Thanglura, a teacher from a punjee near Bankan. Thanglura was a civilian, a man with a dying father and a young child, dragged from his home before dawn on suspicion of being a volunteer.
“Do they think we are animals?” Thanglura asked one day, looking around the crowded yard.
“It is difficult to say what they think,” Rangchwanga replied. “But they certainly treat us like animals.”
“They can cage us, they can chop off our heads,” Thanglura said, his voice quiet but firm. “But they cannot suppress a nation determined to be free. Temporary failure is possible, yes. But we will struggle, fail, and struggle again until victory. Future generations will judge us, correct our mistakes, and carry the torch.”
As they spoke, other prisoners gathered around. Many didn’t understand the intricacies of politics, but they understood the pain of separation. Every evening, they held prayer meetings.
“O Lord,” they would pray, “they have snatched us from our roots. They torture us because we are Mizos. Keep our children and mothers safe.”
Rangchwanga watched them with mixed feelings. In a face-to-face fight between oppressor and oppressed, what could an invisible Jesus do? The struggle demanded action, not surrender to the divine. Yet, seeing the peace it brought his fellow prisoners, he remained silent.
One afternoon, the monotony was shattered by the frantic ringing of the alarm bell. Whistles blew. Warders began to run.
“Look!” a prisoner shouted from the window. “The Assistant Jailer is running for his life!”
Below, the fat jailer was sprinting across the yard, chased by a young prisoner wielding a dao.
“Is he crazy?”
“No,” another prisoner replied. “That’s the boy from Ward Six. He’s a tough bastard.”
More warders swarmed in, tackling the young man and dragging him away. The jailer collapsed, gasping for air, terror written on his face.
Later, the truth came out. The jailer had been systematically stealing rations—skimming from the meager allotment of rice and lentils meant for the prisoners. The “cruel” young man had simply decided he wouldn’t tolerate a thief in a uniform. It was a moment of grim irony: the “criminals” were starving because the “law keeper” was a thief.
The authorities, of course, didn’t see the irony. They beat the young man mercilessly and threw him into solitary confinement.
One afternoon, the order came. Rangchwanga and twenty others were told to be ready before dawn. No destination was given.
That night, sleep was impossible. The uncertainty hung heavy in the air.
In the dark hours of the morning, sentries cordoned off the yard. The prisoners were tied together in a line, loaded into a van, and driven in silence to the railway station. There, under heavy guard, they were pushed into a train compartment.
Zairema, who had never left the hills, sat next to Rangchwanga. He had never seen a train before, and the massive, hissing machine terrified him.
“Brother,” he whispered, “where are they taking us?”
“I don’t know. Far away, it seems.”
“I am scared.”
“Don’t be scared,” Rangchwanga said gently. “Fear only makes you suffer twice. Gather your courage.”
The train lurched forward with a loud jhik-jhik, gathering speed. It wound its way through the North Cachar hills, passing stations like Mailongdisa, Harangajao, and Jatinga. Through the window, Rangchwanga watched the platforms drift by—people staring at the shackled men, wondering if they were bandits or murderers.
As the train pierced the silence of the mountains, its whistle shrieking against the canyon walls, Rangchwanga looked out at the deep forests. He thought of the other hill tribes living in these shadows. They, too, were oppressed. One day, perhaps, they too would break their shackles.
The train moved on, a steel serpent winding through the hills, carrying them away from their home, toward an unknown fate.