General Thu-Aya and Yangaya sat in the secret hideout, the air heavy with smoke and anticipation. They were waiting for Jitinga, their eyes and ears across the Mizo hills.
Jitinga arrived late. He looked worn, carrying the weight of the news he had gathered from the various sectors.
“You’re late,” Thu-Aya noted, though his voice lacked sting.
“Yes. But not too late, I hope,” Jitinga replied, sinking onto a makeshift seat. “Let me catch my breath.”
“Sit. Rest,” Thu-Aya said. “Do you want a bylo?”
“Please.”
Thu-Aya handed him the raw tobacco cheroot. They lit up in unison, the harsh smoke filling the small room. Jitinga took a deep drag, exhaling slowly before speaking.
“The news is not good.”
“Tell us,” Thu-Aya said.
“Rangchwanga and his unit have been captured.”
“Captured?”
“Alive and unharmed,” Jitinga confirmed grimly. “They were taken to the military camp. When torture failed to extract information, they were shipped out of the district as prisoners.”
Thu-Aya frowned. For an entire unit to be captured unharmed near Thingdawl meant a grave tactical error. It was a costly lesson, one the rest of the force would have to learn from. “You said the news was ’not particularly good.’ What else?”
“Trouble on the border,” Jitinga said. “In Cachar. The students in Bhagabazar and Kabuganj have gone on strike. Their grievance is that Mizos are crossing into the plains and killing civilians.”
“Killing civilians?” Yangaya interjected. “Is that true?”
“No,” Jitinga shook his head. “Here is the reality: Sema’s unit was fighting near Bairengti. Outnumbered, they retreated but lost contact with the main force. Running low on rations, they crossed the Rukni River into the Tulartal and Bagewala bastis, hoping to buy food. The villagers panicked and fled. Desperate, Sema’s men took a few cows from the fields.”
“So they stole cows to survive,” Yangaya said. “Hardly a massacre.”
“Propaganda doesn’t need truth,” Jitinga replied. “There is a rumor that at Dhalakhal, east of Natachhara, rebels tied a college student to a tree and shot him. Whether true or false, the story has spread. The students are striking in protest.”
Thu-Aya leaned back, his expression darkening. The capture of Rangchwanga was a military loss, but the situation in Cachar was a political disaster. The enemy was looking for any excuse to paint them as savages.
“The reactionaries will use this,” Thu-Aya said. “They will say, ‘Look at the jungle beasts attacking the plains.’ We need the support—or at least the neutrality—of the plains people. We are fighting for national identity, for freedom against a reactionary ruling class. If they believe we are merely bandits, we play right into the government’s hands.”
He paused, looking at his comrades. “The government is already terrified of our growth. They can’t stop us in the jungle, so they are copying the imperialist playbook. They are adopting the ‘Strategic Hamlet’ strategy.”
Jitinga nodded. “The Protected and Progressive Villages.”
“Concentration camps by another name,” Yangaya spat.
“Exactly,” Thu-Aya said. “Just as Hitler rounded up the Jews, just as the Americans are herding the Vietnamese into hamlets to isolate the Viet Cong, the Indian government is doing the same to us. They want to drain the water to catch the fish.”
The scale of the operation was staggering. The military had begun forcibly evicting Mizos from their ancestral punjees—homes they had occupied for generations—and herding them into these guarded settlements along the main roads.
“The numbers are clear,” Jitinga recited the data he had memorized. “Initially, eighteen PPVs were established. 60,000 Mizo men, women, and children were forced into them. They are guarded by the military. You need a pass to leave, a pass to farm, and you must return by curfew.”
He pulled a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. “A journalist wrote this about the eviction: ‘The relocation of Mizo villagers from their ancestral lands… has been met with considerable sorrow… the reality is that they long for their former abodes, which hold the memories of their ancestors.’”
“And the rations?” Yangaya asked.
“A farce,” Jitinga replied. “General Kumaramangalam, the Army Chief of Staff, visited recently. He praised the efficiency of the camps. And yet, days after he left, the rations for those 60,000 inmates were stopped completely.”
“Starve them into submission,” Thu-Aya muttered. “But it isn’t working. The newspapers admit that the rebels are still getting money and supplies from inside Aizawl town, right under the government’s nose. Even from inside the PPVs.”
“They are doubling down,” Jitinga warned. “New reports from Shillong say they plan to move another 40,000 villagers in the next two months. They claim 237,000 villagers have already been ‘regrouped.’ Out of a total population of 350,000, the vast majority of our nation is being imprisoned.”
Yangaya spoke up, his brow furrowed. “It is the classic ‘divide and rule.’ They will tell the people in the camps, ‘You are suffering because of the rebels. If they stopped fighting, you could go home.’ They want to turn our own people against us.”
“They will try,” Thu-Aya agreed. “But daily experience is a harsh teacher. Propaganda cannot hide the reality of a cage.”
Jitinga leaned forward, his voice taking on a harder edge. “It is not just about the camps. It is the economics of our slavery. Since the partition in 1947, we have been cut off from our traditional markets in East Pakistan. We have found no alternative. The average Mizo family is now indebted for 132 rupees a year. We are drowning in debt and oppression.”
He gestured with his bylo. “They are doing to us what the British did in Malaya, what the Americans are doing in Vietnam, what the Nehru government did in Telangana. They train soldiers in ‘anti-guerrilla warfare,’ but our boys are treating them like banana leaves—cutting through them with ease. We blew up the bridge on the Dimapur-Imphal highway. We punished informers in Kalaspur. We killed a Major in Nahlan. The government suppresses these stories of their defeat, fearing it will inspire others.”
“But the truth has a way of breaking through,” Thu-Aya said, his eyes reflecting the dim light of the hideout. “Look at Vietnam. The Americans don’t admit they are losing, but the strength of the Viet Cong’s struggle speaks for itself. The world knows.”
He stood up, signaling the end of the break.
“They paint us as savages. They say our demand for independence is unjust. But we will fight. We will fight with our own strength, in our own way. And in the end,” Thu-Aya said, crushing the remains of his bylo under his boot, “our victory will tell the true story.”