Santa Khurai grew up in Imphal being called a “homo”.

In the 80s and 90s in Manipuri society, it was common for a person whose “mannerisms were like a woman’s, or even men who were controlled by their wives” to be called so. That is how Santa, now identified as “Nupi Maanbi”, a Meitei word for transgender women, describes herself and her community in her book The Yellow Sparrow, a finely detailed, evocative and powerfully written story of her life.

The word “homo” hits one with all its force as Santa — a transgender activist and an outspoken critic of Right-wing politics — uses it with deliberate irony. “Homo” contains within it the same violence that scars Manipur today, which Santa speaks of on a telephone call from Imphal, as she talks about her life. These are not two different narratives. The current violence began a year ago, on May 3.

“This is the worst violence I have seen in Manipur,” says Santa, a vocal critic of the BJP governments in her state and the Centre. “The violence has affected everyone. There is no let-up. It has resumed after the elections.”

Manipur voted in the ongoing Lok Sabha polls on April 19 and April 26.

“But this conflict is different because women’s voices have been completely silenced. Everything is being controlled by men wielding guns,” said Santa.

According to her, women are now caught in a cycle. They have always taken the lead in protesting the violence in Manipur. Now the violence erupts, the women come out and protest, because the work of peace belongs to women, and then the violence erupts again.

“Manipur transgender activist Malem Thongam started a hunger strike in February demanding the Centre put an end to the violence, but this was hardly reported anywhere,” said Santa. This was not how Irom Sharmila’s fast, also to protest the violence in Manipur, was received.

And everyone is being armed.

“Transpeople are training to use guns. They were always a peaceful people. I didn’t see this hatred in them earlier. They were not inspired by any notion of ethnic nationalism, in Manipur and across the Northeast,” said Santa.

The youth of Manipur have been turned into “Khul Ngakpa”, protectors of the society. “But security is not their responsibility,” said Santa.

The country woke up to the violence a year ago with the video of two women, who had allegedly been subjected to sexual violence, being paraded naked by a mob in Churachandpur of Manipur.

According to Santa, the politics of violence is rooted in the deeply patriarchal nature of Manipur society. This is also the violence that she was exposed to since childhood.

She grew up in crushing poverty in a Meitei family in Imphal, treated harshly by her father for not behaving like a “boy”. The shy, sensitive “good student” Santa, who had been named Sarat Chandra by her family, only realised that she was not alone when as a teenager she met other “homos”. This realisation was liberating and thrilling.

She began to go out with her friends and be seen. But the streets were as full of danger as fun: Santa and her friends invited casual, random violence, all the time, most of all from the guardians of the law.

Manipur had been under the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) for a long, and the presence of “army personnel” and the “Manipur commandos” (the latter a Manipur state government force) cast a permanent shadow on Santa’s account. She was often picked up by the army men or the police, beaten up and left bleeding. At home, she did not face physical violence but continued to feel extremely alienated.

The Yellow Sparrow is a poem she has written. This sparrow is yellow, unlike the other little sparrows, and her mother knows what that can mean and that breaks her heart.

Santa’s defence against all this was clothes. They were not just clothes.

In a moving passage in the book, Santa speaks of the effect the film Pretty Woman and Julia Roberts, who acted in it, had on her. After watching the film in secret, because watching films was forbidden by her father, she invested everything she had in putting together a set: a white shirt and a pair of red shorts. She had often been called ugly — though she is stunning and impeccably dressed — but was appreciated for her lean “model-like” figure. The white shirt and red shorts announced her as who she was. It was self-fashioning. It was an act of triumph.

She learnt to speak up. Fear is the most effective tool in the suppression of freedom, she says. Perhaps what she has been able to achieve through the years is the loss of fear. She talks about her work with the NGO Saathii, where she learnt to think things through. She works as a consultant with Saathii now.

“The authorities have always tried to suppress my voice,” said Santa.

On the night of December 21, 2019, the police surrounded her home after a complaint from the chief minister because of a Facebook post she had made. After the chief minister had recommended to the Centre that the AFSPA be extended, she called him “son of slave”.

“If the chief minister wanted to stop the violence, it could be done swiftly and the Centre failed to perform its accountability,” Santa said.

She is used to receiving threats. “It is routine,” she laughed.

She received threats before the elections. A Meitei group, involved in the conflict, asked her to visit a location far from Imphal where they could ask her about her political affiliations. She did not go.

According to Santa, the conflict between Meiteis and Kukis has been entirely manipulated as have been notions about ethnic identity, such as that of the Meiteis, with the Right-wing claiming all of them are Hindus. Although Hindu influence is prominent in the Meitei community, Santa herself practises the Sanamahi faith.

The violence would have been engineered in any case, she felt. The two communities in conflict now are incidental.

So much has been lost already: so many lives and countless homes.

“The economy has collapsed. One day the violence erupts and everything collapses and the next morning again there is an attempt at normalcy,” said Santa.

People don’t read any more. Plays are not being staged. “Even our festivals are not being observed.” Sustained violence can erase a culture.

Perhaps more than anything, it can rob a person of a sense of home.

“The idea of home has been completely destroyed by the ongoing communal strife,” said Santa.

Many have left Manipur and many are living in relief camps. Several transgender people also are in the camps.

“A few of the transgender people who live at the relief camps expressed feelings of discomfort, loneliness and lack of privacy,” says Santa in her book, which has been included in the feminist studies curriculum at the University of California, Santa Barbara. The challenges of having to adapt to a new environment that is considered a safe place need to be looked at.

This is the outcome of displacement, for everyone — adjustments to new environments, not necessarily safe. But who is to do the looking? The Prime Minister has still not found time to visit Manipur.