On the morning of 15 July 2004, a small group of women in their sixties and seventies walked towards Kangla Fort in Imphal. They wore their phaneks and shawls as they would on any ordinary day, except that they had left their undergarments at home. They carried two lengths of cloth, painted in secret by a local artist who had promised to keep quiet. At the gates of the Assam Rifles headquarters, the women stripped, held up the cloth and shouted the words painted on it: “Indian Army Rape Us”.
\n\nTwelve women took part, all of them mothers and grandmothers, known across Manipur as imas. Photographs of that morning travelled across India within days, and they still stand among the starkest images of protest the country has produced. More than a decade later, journalist Teresa Rehman gave the women their own book, 'The Mothers of Manipur' (Zubaan, 2017), a slim volume of under 200 pages.
\n\nOn the night of 10 July 2004, Assam Rifles personnel took Thangjam Manorama from her home. She was 32, a weaver, and the soldiers suspected her of links to an insurgent group. By the next morning, her body lay near a paddy field, with gunshot…
Original source: https://www.timesnownews.com/lifestyle
