Border disorder

Manipur on edge and Indian security on alert following the killing of two Indian Tamils in Myanmar

- RABI BANERJEE

A BIRTHDAY PARTY invitation ended on a tragic note for M. Aiyanar, 28, and his close friend P. Mohan, 25.

Residents of Moreh in Manipur, Aiyanar and Mohan belonged to Tamil families that had fled Myanmar. The duo were allegedly shot dead in Myanmar’s Tamu, some 20km from Moreh, on July 5.

Both their wives were unhappy about their Tamu visit. Aiyanar’s wife, Gurmeet Singh, had dissuaded him from travelling to Tamu, considering the volatile situation there following the military coup in February 2021. Theirs was a love marriage; they courted for three years and were married for another three. They have an eight-month-old son. Gurmeet, a Sikh, too, has her roots in Myanmar.

“In Tamil Nadu, it is rare for a Tamil Brahmin to marry someone from another caste or religion,” said M. Mohan, Aiyanar’s neighbour. “But in Moreh, it is possible as we are all from refugee families, having been uprooted 60 years ago.”

P. Mohan’s was an arranged marriage, unlike Aiyanar’s. He married Meenakshi this June. With Covid-19 on the rise, the couple had postponed their honeymoon by a few months.

But neither Mohan nor Aiyanar—both of whom had shops in the Moreh market—had any qualms crossing the border to attend a friend’s birthday party. The Indo-Myanmar border is an open border with free movement regime that allows residents on both sides to travel 16km into either country without visa. Covid-19 had halted this movement since March 2020. Border security was further tightened following the coup. “But my son was desperate to go to Tamu,” said an inconsolable M. Devi, Mohan’s mother.