Radicals resist disposal of the dead in Northeast

The dead can be divisive, a burial denied and a cremation amid opposition have revealed in the Northeast.

Last week, police in Meghalaya’s East Khasi Hills district had to intervene when people in a Christian-majority village objected to the cremation of an adherent of Niam Khasi, an indigenous faith. The incident happened four days after a Baptist village in Manipur’s Ukhrul district disallowed the burial of a member of a family that had been excommunicated allegedly for becoming Catholics.

The police in Meghalaya said trouble started brewing in Mylliem, about 15 km from Shillong, when the relatives of village elder Kulam Nongrum sought to cremate him in accordance with Niam Khasi faith. “The Christian residents tried to prevent the cremation, but we sorted things out and let the body be cremated,” Davis Marak, the district’s superintendent of police, told HT.

Thma U Rangli-Juki (TUR), a progressive people’s body, said the cremation could be done only after the Seng Khasi, a traditional body of Niam Khasi adherents, provide space. “The intolerance shown by the Christian-majority village is not an aberration. This has been happening for 20 years. This climate of intolerance has meant that most adherents of Niam Khasi in this area have no choice but to bury their dead against their deeply held religious belief of cremation,” a TUR spokesperson said. The NGO said Niam Khasis had been targeted earlier for violence besides being slapped with legal suits.

In Manipur, the body of 42-year-old Rita Haorei was not allowed to be buried in Leingangching village on the ground that her family had been banished seven years ago for “violating the village norms” repeatedly. Rita died August 7 midnight, but her body has been lying on the compound of a Catholic church in Litan, a village in Ukhrul district about 40 km north of Imphal. Yangmi Haorei, her husband, has refused to bury her anywhere else other than his native village Leingangching.