Meira Paibi

Meira Paibi (মেইরা পাইবী, literally "women torch bearers") is a Meitei women's social and political movement based in the Indian state of Manipur. Founded in 1977 in what is now Kakching district, it derives its name from the open flaming torches carried by its members during night marches through city streets. The movement grew out of an earlier anti-drug group called the Nisha Bandis and expanded over several decades into a broad civil society force opposing the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA), military and paramilitary abuses, and drug addiction throughout Manipur's valley districts.^[1]

During the 2023 Manipur violence, the movement became the subject of grave and extensively sourced allegations. Multiple journalists, human rights organisations, academic researchers, and survivors reported that some Meira Paibi members participated in mob violence against Kuki-Zo civilians, obstructed security forces pursuing armed militants, and in several documented cases allegedly facilitated the handover of Kuki-Zo women to men who then committed sexual assaults.^[2][3] The International Crisis Group concluded in a 2025 report that the movement, which had maintained a largely positive public image for decades, interceded in the 2023 conflict in ways that aided Meitei militant and militia activity and seriously complicated efforts by security forces to restore order.^[4]

Women's collective political action in Manipur has a documented history stretching back to the early twentieth century, and the Meira Paibi movement is generally understood as a continuation of that tradition rather than an entirely new phenomenon. Scholars have traced the movement's intellectual and organisational roots through two earlier uprisings known collectively as Nupi lan (Women's War), and through the broader conditions of civil militarisation that shaped Manipuri society during the insurgency decades.^[5]

The first Nupi Lan took place in 1904, when women from the Imphal valley protested a directive by the colonial Assistant Superintendent requiring residents to cut teak from Kabaw Valley for the construction of his residence. British authorities brought in forces from outside Manipur to suppress the demonstration.^[1] A research paper published in the International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research and Technology noted that this 1904 protest specifically targeted lalupkaba (forced labour) imposed on Manipuri men, and that women succeeded in compelling the British to withdraw the practice in the same year.^[6]

The second Nupi Lan, in 1939, was a protest against the forced export of rice, which the colonial-era princely state was permitting at a time when rice shortages were causing starvation among the local population. Women constituting nearly all participants submitted a petition to the Durbar (colonial government authority), and the movement succeeded in shutting rice mills and eventually halting the exports entirely.^[1] Scholars have referred to this 1939 uprising as chaktangba (a response to rising food prices and economic exploitation), noting that its success established a powerful model of women's collective action as an effective tool for forcing policy reversals.^[6] The two Nupi Lan protests are considered to have laid the political and cultural foundation on which the Meira Paibi movement was later built. 12 December is observed annually by Meira Paibi as "Women's War Day" commemorating the 1939 uprising.^[7]

The direct precursor to Meira Paibi was the Nisha Bandis movement, which developed in the late 1970s as an organised response by Meitei women to a visible and worsening crisis of drug and alcohol addiction among men in the valley districts. The 1970s saw a significant rise in substance abuse, particularly among young men, leading to addiction, domestic violence, and the breakdown of family structures.^[8][6] Women began organising night marches through Imphal and other towns, carrying kerosene lanterns, confronting those found intoxicated, and burning down liquor shops and illicit breweries. Their campaigns contributed directly to the passage of prohibition legislation in Manipur.^[9]

The late 1970s was also a period of acute civil unrest. A substantial insurgency movement had taken root in Manipur, and the Armed Forces Special Powers (Assam and Manipur) Act 1958 conferred expansive powers on paramilitary and police forces in their counterinsurgency operations, resulting in the arrest, torture, and deaths of large numbers of civilians. AFSPA was extended to cover the entire state of Manipur on 8 September 1980. After this extension, Nisha Bandis groups began explicitly broadening their activities to encompass protests against army abuses, positioning themselves as early-warning networks against raids on civilian communities.^[1]

After members switched from carrying podons (large-wicked kerosene lamps)^[10] and laltain (Hindi: lanterns) to open flaming torches, the movement became known as Meira Paibi.^[11]

Meira Paibi was formally established in 1977 in Kakching, Kakching district, Manipur. The founding took place within a broader political context in which significant portions of Manipur's population were engaged in movements for self-determination and political autonomy from the Indian union.^[12][13]

The movement operates through a deliberately decentralised structure of neighbourhood and district-level women's groups spread across Manipur's valley districts. There is no single central command. Members, typically referred to as "imas" (mothers), organise night patrols and community interventions autonomously. The umbrella body Poirei Leimarol Meira Paibee Apunba Manipur (PLMPAM) represents member groups at a broader level, though individual groups retain significant independence in their activities.

Membership is not always voluntary. The International Crisis Group, drawing on field research conducted in Manipur in May 2024, documented that in some areas women who refused to join Meira Paibi groups were fined between 200 and 500 rupees by their local group. One Meitei journalist explained this practice to ICG researchers.^[4] Scroll journalist Tora Agarwala, writing on the basis of fieldwork conducted in July and August 2023, confirmed that reports of coerced membership had surfaced among accounts gathered from the ground during the conflict.^[2]

Academic scholarship has noted that while the movement is widely presented as a symbol of women's empowerment, its exercise of moral authority also reflects dimensions of conservative maternalistic control. A 2026 peer-reviewed article in the Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Studies found that the Meira Paibi's activism "blurs boundaries between public and private, and resistance and regulation", arguing that while the movement challenges militarised state power it simultaneously "reinforces maternalistic authority, moral conservatism, and community-level biopolitical regulation".^[14] The Imphal Review of Arts and Politics similarly acknowledged that "some community members and external observers have critiqued their methods of moral policing and conservative social practices" and that engaging openly with these critiques would be crucial for the movement's sustained relevance.^[15]

The movement's foundational work centred on combating drug and alcohol abuse in Meitei communities. Members conducted night patrols, confronted men found intoxicated, demolished illicit breweries, and in the movement's early years burned down liquor shops. These activities are credited with contributing to the passage of prohibition laws in Manipur.^[9] A. K. Janaki Leima, one of the movement's prominent leaders, has stated: "We've been fighting against drug abuse, crimes against women, and the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA). We will continue to fight these."^[9]

The movement has continued to carry out anti-drug drives in subsequent decades. Reports from as recently as March 2025 documented Meira Paibi groups conducting operations around Loktak Lake in which members seized and confiscated illegal alcohol hauls. While proponents view these as effective community self-regulation, critics have argued they foster a culture of intimidation and operate outside any formal legal framework or accountability mechanism.^[16]

From the early 1980s onwards, Meira Paibi became increasingly active in opposing the conduct of the Indian Army and paramilitary forces operating under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act in Manipur. Members stopped army vehicles, negotiated the transfer of civilians from military to civil police custody, and staged demonstrations against arbitrary detentions and extrajudicial killings.^[7] These women positioned themselves as what the Imphal Review described as "early-warning networks against army raids", framing AFSPA not merely as a security measure but as an instrument enabling disappearances, extrajudicial killings, and sexual violence by paramilitary units.^[15]

Their activism against AFSPA drew sustained national and international attention and is considered to have contributed to meaningful policy outcomes. The 2004 naked protest at Kangla Fort is credited with playing a direct role in the central government's decision to withdraw AFSPA from Imphal Municipal areas in August 2004.^[3]

The movement has also organised public meetings, roadblocks, bandhs (general shutdowns of essential services), hunger strikes, and mass rallies over subsequent years.^[17]

Beyond their political activism, Meira Paibi groups have exercised what commentators have described as moral policing over community behaviour. This includes enforcing norms around alcohol consumption, dress, and social conduct. The movement's own ideological framing treats these activities as "preserving Manipuri culture and traditions" and as a form of community self-regulation in the absence of reliable state institutions.^[15] Critics, however, have documented incidents in which Meira Paibi members used coercive and violent methods against individuals perceived to be violating social norms, including reported cases of women being verbally abused and physically assaulted at gatherings deemed improper.^[16] These incidents highlighted the difficulties of distinguishing community protection from community intimidation in the movement's practice, and fuelled broader debates about unaccountable vigilante power.

The movement's most internationally prominent act of protest came on 15 July 2004, following the rape and custodial killing of Thangjam Manorama by Assam Rifles personnel. Twelve elderly women, including five Meira Paibi leaders, Thokchom Ramani, Ak Janaki Leima, L Memchoubi Devi, Y Leirik Leima, and Purnimashi Leima, gathered outside Kangla Fort, where the Assam Rifles were then based, and staged a nude protest, holding a banner that read "Indian Army Rape Us".^[9][18] The protest attracted extensive national and international coverage. Many feminist scholars have analysed the naked protest as a significant act of embodied political resistance, though some have also debated what it meant to deploy the female body as a political weapon.^[8]

UNICEF cited the Meira Paibi's activism as an illustration of the principle that women's active participation in public affairs can produce better outcomes for children and communities.^[12]

The 2023 Manipur violence, which erupted on 3 May 2023 following ethnic clashes triggered by the Meitei community's demand for Scheduled Tribe status, profoundly damaged the Meira Paibi's public standing and generated some of the most serious and thoroughly documented allegations in the movement's history. Multiple journalists, human rights researchers, international organisations, and survivors reported conduct by some members that amounted to a fundamental break with the movement's stated identity as a defender of civil society against state violence.

The violence broke out when the predominantly Christian Kuki-Zo tribal communities, who inhabit Manipur's surrounding hill areas, held protest rallies against a Manipur High Court order that appeared to recommend Scheduled Tribe status for the majority Meitei community. The Meitei community organised counter-protests, which erupted into widespread inter-communal clashes. By government figures, as of late 2024, 258 people had been killed, over 60,000 displaced, 4,786 houses burned, and 386 religious structures vandalised.^[19] Human Rights Watch documented the outbreak of violence in detail and called on Indian authorities to immediately and impartially investigate killings by ethnic groups and security forces.^[20]

Analysts writing in The Diplomat identified a fundamental and documented change in the nature of Meira Paibi activism after May 2023. Where the movement had historically framed itself as defending a broad "Manipuri" cause that crossed ethnic lines, its activities during the violence were directed exclusively in favour of the Meitei community. Members stopped vehicles on major highways specifically to check for Kuki-Zo passengers and to inspect whether armed forces were transporting relief supplies to Kuki-Zo communities. Media reports at the time cited one Meira Paibi member who described herself as a "foot soldier" sent by God to fight "Kuki terrorists".^[3]

The International Crisis Group documented this sectarian turn in its February 2025 report, which drew on field research from Manipur in May 2024. The ICG found that on the Meitei side, the Meira Paibi "took a proactive part in the conflict by obstructing security personnel in pursuit of Meitei militants or militia members". It contrasted this explicitly with the role of Kuki-Zo women, who were described as being less directly involved in fighting and largely performing defensive roles such as staffing checkpoints to prevent alcohol and drugs entering their communities.^[4]

The ICG documented multiple instances in which Meira Paibi members physically shielded Meitei militia members or militants from arrest. Security forces were described as being "uneasy acting forcefully against women", a constraint that armed groups on the Meitei side deliberately exploited. The ICG found that insurgent groups were specifically "using various Meira Paibi groups to shield themselves", a pattern that echoed their role during earlier insurgency decades but had now shifted to protecting militia members attacking Kuki-Zo communities rather than protecting civilians from state violence.^[4]

On 24 June 2023, more than 1,200 Meira Paibi activists blocked an Indian Army convoy in Itham village, Imphal East district. The convoy was transporting twelve cadres of Kanglei Yawol Kanna Lup, a proscribed militant organisation, following their arrest with arms and ammunition. The Meira Paibi members forced the Army to release the detainees.^[21] The Indian Army publicly criticised the Meira Paibi for disrupting peace-making operations and, on separate occasions, for blocking highways and obstructing the delivery of food and essential supplies.^[2]

Scroll reporter Tora Agarwala, writing on the basis of direct field reporting from July 2023, described observing Meira Paibi groups stopping every passing vehicle on National Highway 2, the only road connecting the Meitei-dominated Imphal valley to Kuki-Zo Churachandpur. Members, including one woman who described her group as watching military vehicles with distrust and hostility, subjected civilian and military vehicles alike to searches. One member told the reporter: "We trust no one."^[2]

On 15 July 2023, a Naga woman named Lucy Marem was killed in Sawombung village in Imphal East district by members of Arambai Tenggol, a Meitei militant group active during the conflict. The United Naga Council alleged that Marem was first apprehended by Meira Paibi members, who then handed her over to Arambai Tenggol, who killed her after mistaking her for a Kuki-Zo woman. Imphal East police arrested nine people in connection with the killing, including five Meira Paibi members. The United Naga Council stated that it was "unimaginable for a women organisation like Meira Paibis who profess to be torch bearer of peace partaking in acts of killings".^[22][3]

Among the most serious and extensively documented allegations against the movement were those involving the facilitation of sexual violence against Kuki-Zo women.

Scroll correspondent Tora Agarwala met four Kuki-Zo women survivors in Manipur in July 2023, each of whom gave detailed personal accounts of assaults suffered at the hands of mobs. In two of these four cases, the women stated directly that Meitei women had been part of the mob and had actively encouraged the men to harm them.^[2]

In early May 2023, just twelve days into the outbreak of violence, a young Kuki-Zo woman was abducted near an ATM in Imphal. The assault came to light only when a video surfaced in July. According to accounts documented by Kuki organisations and reported by multiple outlets including Outlook and Sabrang India, she was first assaulted by Meira Paibi members in the Wangkhei Ayanpali area of Imphal and then handed over to black-shirted members of Arambai Tenggol. She was taken to a hilltop in Langol, where she was gang-raped repeatedly through the night before being abandoned in Bishnupur. In her First Information Report, the survivor explicitly stated that Meira Paibi members handed her over to the armed men who then raped her. Kuki organisations consistently cited her case as evidence of Meira Paibi's role in facilitating sexual violence. She died in early 2026 from injuries and trauma sustained during the assault, without seeing any perpetrator brought to justice.^[23][24]

Human Rights Watch noted in July 2023 that the Indian government had only responded to the sexual violence in Manipur after video of the assault on two Kuki-Zo women became public, having previously chosen "defiant denials over action".^[25]

In an interview with journalist Karan Thapar broadcast by The Wire, two separate Kuki-Zo survivors stated that Meira Paibi members had incited men to rape Kuki women.^[26] The Caravan magazine reported separately on the movement's alleged role in violence against Kuki-Zo women and situated it within a broader pattern of the state government enabling ethnic cleansing.^[27] The Quint published an investigation titled "From Guardians to Perpetrators of Violence" specifically examining the movement's role in instigating Meitei mobs to commit atrocities against Kuki-Zo people.^[28]

In September 2023, UN human rights experts issued a public statement raising alarm about reported serious violations in Manipur, including acts of sexual violence, extrajudicial killings, home destruction, forced displacement, and torture. The UN experts pointed to an "inadequate humanitarian response" and noted that by mid-August 2023, an estimated 160 persons had been killed, mostly from the Kuki-Zo community, and over 300 injured, with tens of thousands displaced and hundreds of churches destroyed.^[29] While the UN statement addressed the wider violence rather than the Meira Paibi specifically, it formed part of the international context in which the movement's conduct was being assessed.

Amnesty International, in a July 2024 report, documented over 400 days of continuing violence and impunity in Manipur and concluded that both the state and central governments had "utterly failed to end the violence and displacement and protect human rights in the state". Amnesty documented at least three instances of Kuki-Zo community members facing barriers when attempting to register complaints with police, and described the broader atmosphere as one in which Meitei vigilante groups including the Meira Paibi operated with effective impunity.^[19]

In a separate statement in February 2025, following the resignation of Chief Minister N. Biren Singh, Amnesty International called on authorities to pursue accountability for all those responsible for human rights violations, noting that the Central Bureau of Investigation had taken over the "emblematic" case of the gang-rape of two Kuki-Zo women but that many lesser-known cases, including those implicating Meira Paibi members, had received little attention.^[30]

In August 2023, a group of Meira Paibi clashed with security forces overseeing a proposed burial site for victims of the violence from the Kuki-Zo community. Scroll reported this as part of a wider pattern of the movement actively disrupting actions that could be seen as benefiting or legitimising Kuki-Zo communities.^[2]

Manorama Sharma, a former professor of history at North-Eastern Hill University, contextualised the movement's conduct within its longer tradition of vigilantism and noted that members had a prior history of taking the law into their own hands before involving formal authorities. Sharma wrote that "with this history behind them, it becomes quite possible to see that they could be violent in mob action when egged on by men".^[16]

The 2026 article in the Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Studies situated these developments within the movement's longer internal contradictions, arguing that the Meira Paibi's exercise of moral authority had always contained a regulatory, coercive dimension alongside its emancipatory one, and that the 2023 conflict had simply rendered these contradictions impossible to ignore.^[14]

The Diplomat analysis concluded that the violence had revealed a fundamental shift: the Meira Paibi had "taken a sectarian turn, favoring only the interests of the Meitei community", representing a departure from their historical self-presentation as defenders of a shared Manipuri identity and civil society.^[3]

Bidyalaxmi Salam, writing in the Indonesia Law Review, argued that any assessment of the movement's agency must grapple with its heterogeneity, noting that experiences and actions across different local Meira Paibi groups are highly varied and that reducing the movement to a single characterisation, whether heroic or culpable, misrepresents the complexity of a decentralised organisation operating in an extraordinarily violent context.^[31]

Alongside the conduct documented above, the Meira Paibi also engaged in substantial protest activity directed at central and state government inaction. On 19 June 2023, hundreds of members demonstrated at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi and submitted a memorandum to the Prime Minister of India, stating that the government had remained deaf to the crisis in Manipur.^[32]

On 7 August 2023, thousands of members staged protests in five districts against Assam Rifles, demanding the force's withdrawal from Manipur and alleging it had committed abuses against Meitei civilians.^[33]

On 9 August 2023, a second memorandum was submitted to the Prime Minister via Manipur Governor Anusuiya Uikey, alleging disproportionate use of force by central security forces and accusing them of being passive observers to the violence.^[34]

On 12 August 2023, thousands of members organised sit-in protests across five valley districts in response to an alleged gang rape of a 37-year-old woman in Churachandpur in early May 2023.^[35]

On 30 August 2023, members burned effigies of BJP leaders and condemned a Manipur assembly session that concluded in under thirty minutes, demanding the legislature reconvene.^[36]

On 2 September 2023, the movement launched a civil disobedience campaign against the state government.^[37]

On 12 September 2023, Meira Paibi leaders held a press conference in New Delhi at which they declared the buffer zones established between Kuki-Zo hill districts and Meitei valley areas to be unconstitutional and renewed their demand that Assam Rifles be replaced.^[38]

On 19 September 2023, the movement called a 48-hour bandh in Imphal, demanding the release of five individuals arrested for carrying firearms and wearing camouflage uniforms.^[39]

On 1 October 2023, members in Thoubal and Kakching districts staged protests following the circulation on social media of photographs of two Meitei students who had been killed.^[40]

Some Meira Paibi members offered alternative accounts of their conduct during the violence. Members from Nongpok Sekmai in Thoubal district claimed publicly that they had rescued the two Kuki-Zo women visible in the widely circulated video of the naked parade, along with three additional Kuki-Zo families.^[41] After the accused men in the naked parade incident were arrested, Meira Paibi members burned down their houses.^[42][43]

In an interview with The Wire on 14 September 2023, Meira Paibi leader Aheibam Chanthoisana Chanu stated that the movement had been misrepresented by the media and that members were working toward peace and reconciliation in Manipur.^[44][8][45]

The Times of India awarded its "TOI Social Impact Awards: Lifetime Contribution" to Meira Paibi and five of its leaders for their decades of activism in Manipur.^[9]

• Ima Market
• Nupi lan
• 2023 Manipur violence
• Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act
• Thangjam Manorama
• Arambai Tenggol
• Kanglei Yawol Kanna Lup
• Meitei people

• Chaisingkananont, Somrak; Saisin, Ananya (2026). "Grassroots Security: The Meira Paibi Movement and the Intersection of Gender, Ethnicity, and Conflict in Manipur". Journal of Ethnic and Cultural Studies. 13 (2): 98–116. doi:10.29333/ejecs/2656.
• Salam, Bidyalaxmi (2023). "The Meira Paibis of Manipur: Locating Agency". Indonesia Law Review. 13 (3): 1–10. doi:10.7454/ilrev.v13n3.5.
• International Crisis Group (14 February 2025). "Finding a Way Out of Festering Conflict in India's Manipur". International Crisis Group.

• Karna, Mahendra Narain (1998). Social Movements in North-East India. Indus Publishing. ISBN 978-81-7387-083-5.
• Parratt, John (2005). Wounded Land: Politics and Identity in Modern Manipur. Mittal Publications. ISBN 978-81-8324-053-6.
• Thomas, C. Joshua; Gopalakrishnan, Ramamoorthy; Singh, R. K. Ranjan (2001). Constraints In Development Of Manipur. Regency Publications. ISBN 978-81-87498-30-8.
• Thomas, Pradip Ninan (2011). Negotiating Communication Rights: Case Studies from India. SAGE Publications. ISBN 978-81-321-0778-1.