Prof. Kamal Aron Mitra Chenoy
- A Teacher Whose Heart Stayed in the Northeast -
(3 December 1950-10 October 2026)

Homen Thangjam *

At around 1.30 am, while browsing social media, I learnt of his demise. Some news you do not so much read as absorb slowly, in a night that suddenly feels very long. Kamal Sir was gone.

Prof. Kamal Aron Mitra Chenoy was a Marxist, a human rights defender, a feminist and a political activist, but above all a teacher whose heart stayed in the Northeast and who had a special love affair with Manipur. He said it himself, better than I ever could, when he spoke to a gathering of Manipuris in Delhi in 2002:

"Anyone who has been to the Northeast ... knows that if you go to the Northeast once, you fall in love with it and never forget it the rest of your life. And in fact, there's a popular saying in the Northeast, that if you cross the Brahmaputra once, to permanently come back, you have to cross it seven times. So since I've only crossed it six times, I think my heart is still in the Northeast."

Kamal Mitra Chenoy, "Ethnocentrism and Politics of Identity in Manipur", Parting Social-cum-Election of SSPP (Siamsinpawlpi or the Paite Students' Welfare Association), Delhi Branch, 23 February 2002;
https://youtu.be/o1uPiV_I0Xs?t=3060 .

The whole region held him. Manipur, I like to think, held him closest.

I joined Jawaharlal Nehru University as a master's student of politics in 1996. I was fascinated by the campus's frugality and its island-like universe, where birthdays of famous personalities dotted the walls, slogans such as "Struggle and Study" were scrawled in calligraphic simplicity, and, above all, students and teachers could debate. Admonishments from teachers were another lesson in knowledge and humility.

When we marched against teachers whose ideology differed from ours, holding torches and shouting "Down Down Fascist Teachers", they confronted us defiantly, raising their voices above the hissing slogans:

"Travel anywhere in the world, visit any library, you'll find our works there. Read them first, understand them, and then come back and bray at us like wild asses. Why would you wake up others by your unmindfulness. Feudal fools."

Kamal Sir was one such teacher.

I was not his formal student. I was a scholar of his better half, Prof. Anuradha M. Chenoy, from my M.Phil. days through the doctoral stage, and I continue to be so today. Whenever I visited her, he received me warmly and asked about Manipur, where he had spent a few years of his life. Those visits were never only about the thesis; they were also, quietly, about Manipur.

The last time I had a lengthy conversation with him was in mid-2012, when the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) was taking shape as a political party. I had begun teaching at Maharaja Bodhchandra College and had come to New Delhi for a conference. I visited my supervisor's quarters on the JNU campus. Irom Sharmila was then in the twelfth year of her fast, demanding the repeal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) in Manipur. He welcomed our visits and, as always, asked about Manipur. Then he asked me:

"Homen, would you ask Sharmila to stand for elections, of course, the Manipur Assembly elections? As you know, the Indian State does not tolerate defiance or resistance; it will find a way to dilute her struggle and soften her goals. If she is interested, we can always find the right party, perhaps the AAP."

I was naive then. I could not even imagine taking such an electoral proposal to the Iron Lady.

His concern was no passing thought. He had no illusions about the law she was fasting against. In his own writing, he had called AFSPA what it was:

"This Act, therefore, provides legal cover for the militarization of the Northeast and the consequent terrorisation of the civilian population."

Kamal Mitra Chenoy, "Nationalist Ideology, Militarization and Human Rights in Northeast", Eastern Quarterly, April-June 2005.

After sixteen years of fasting, Sharmila contested the 2017 Manipur Assembly elections as the candidate of her newly formed People's Resurgence and Justice Alliance (PRJA). Her decision marked a turn towards electoral politics after years of protest against AFSPA. She lost to O. Ibobi Singh in the Thoubal constituency, securing 90 votes. Kamal Sir's question, asked five years earlier in a JNU quarter, had anticipated the difficult question of how a prolonged moral protest might translate into political change.

The last time Kamal Sir visited Manipur was in March 2012, when he came with my supervisor as a resource person at the International Seminar on Human Security in the Northeast Region, which we organised at Manipur University. He said he loved visiting the place where he had once taught at the JNU Manipur Centre. He fondly remembered one of his students, R.K. Tulachandra, alias Loyataba, who had gone underground and died in 1985. A teacher never forgets his students, and Kamal Sir never forgot his.

I recall one incident in particular. It was towards the end of my PhD programme in 2005. One of our friends had gone missing and could not be traced. She had left a letter blaming her lover for her troubles and warning us not to trace her footsteps. I feared she might harm herself. Whenever I had a problem, I sought my supervisor's counsel; such was the trust I placed in her. But this time she asked me to seek Sir's advice. He led us to Vasant Vihar Police Station, not to file an FIR against the boy, but to ask the police to find out where our friend was. He told me:

"Homen, it is human to blame others when things do not go one's way, especially when a person is in a state of grief. We need to be patient. We must protect everyone. That is justice. When you grow older, you'll understand."

I am older now, Sir. I think I understand.

The Manipur Research Forum Delhi (MRFD), now the Manipur Research Forum, was established in 2001 amid the civil unrest in Manipur. Its bulletin sought, from a distance, to offer an alternative understanding of prevailing accounts. When regular publication became difficult because of limited material and human resources, a group of like-minded members decided to revive the Forum, shift from a reactive to a proactive approach, and relaunch the bulletin as the Eastern Quarterly.

At the relaunch ceremony on 10 March 2005 at Manipur Bhavan, Sardar Patel Marg, we invited Kamal Sir and Ma'am as special guests. They graciously accepted. Kamal Sir also contributed to the first edition of the Eastern Quarterly (Volume 3, Issue 1, April-June 2005). A few excerpts from his article reveal his deep concern for Manipur.

He wrote of a state that suspects its own minorities: "Movements for self-determination are seen as foreign inspired, anti-national, terrorist and disruptive." Yet he never wrote about Manipur in abstractions.

He named those who had disappeared. He recorded that in April 1984 the Supreme Court ordered compensation for the widows of a pastor, C. Paul, and a schoolteacher, C. Daniel, who had been picked up from their villages in Ukhrul district in March 1982 and never seen again. In August 1991, the Court ordered compensation for the mothers of two youths from the valley who had been picked up by the army in October 1980 and had remained missing. A pastor and a teacher from the hills; two sons from the valley. In his ledger of grief, hill and valley stood side by side.

His concern did not stop at Manipur's borders. The same article also examined the Naga Hills, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh and Assam. In Assam, he recounted the case of Dr Rudra Gogoi, an assistant professor of radiology at Assam Medical College, Dibrugarh, whom soldiers asked, "Why are you so popular, why does everyone address you as Da?" They did not know that Da is an honorific for an elder brother. Dr Gogoi was tortured for three days. It was a small, terrible illustration of what Chenoy meant by forces operating in "a culturally alien terrain".

Closer home, he wrote with the same even-handed sorrow about the clashes between Kukis and Nagas in Manipur, noting that "hundreds, both Kuki and Naga, had been killed, and thousands rendered homeless, especially in the hill districts of Manipur". He warned where such violence could lead:

"Militarist measures accentuate the alienation of affected peoples. This alienation is taken to justify even harsher punitive action resulting in greater mass alienation threatening national unity and stability."

Kamal Mitra Chenoy, "Nationalist Ideology, Militarization and Human Rights in Northeast", Eastern Quarterly, April-June 2005.

The crisis followed the Bangkok Declaration of 13-14 June 2001, through which the Government of India and the NSCN (IM) extended their ceasefire agreement for a year, until 31 July 2002, with the controversial provision that it would apply "without territorial limits". Widely perceived in Manipur as a threat to the state's territorial integrity, the provision triggered mass protests and the June Uprising in Imphal on 18 June. The Government of India later withdrew the clause amid the intense public opposition.

"Just look at my name. People are at a loss. Kamal Aron is my given name and I carry two surnames, Mitra and Chenoy. Homen, we can have multiple identities. But identity politics is harmful. I am sorry to hear about Manipur."

His father's surname was Mitra, while Chenoy was the surname he inherited from his mother's Parsi background. He carried both names without treating them as mutually exclusive identities. The episode offers a glimpse of how he understood the possibility of living with multiple affiliations. When he addressed Manipuris in Delhi the following year, he did not dismiss their sense of who they were:

"Your people, your lives, your families' lives, the inputs of your ancestors into that land and what you hope for future generations, all those are strongly intertwined and embedded with identity."

Kamal Mitra Chenoy, "Ethnocentrism and Politics of Identity in Manipur", Parting Social-cum-Election of SSPP (Siamsinpawlpi or the Paite Students' Welfare Association) Delhi Branch, 23 February 2002.
https://youtu.be/o1uPiV_I0Xs?t=3060.

Nor did he let anyone off easily. He told that audience that the pain of the time did not spring from identity itself: "This is because of maldevelopment." He warned that "this combination of corruption and alienation is a lethal combination". Then, with the tenderness of a man who loved the place, he made a request:

"You must struggle for your identities, but you must also try to link through, as through organizations like this, into larger identities. ... Nothing is as beautiful as the Manipur hills, but the valley also has its own charms. ... So each area has its charms, and you must, I beg of you, try and work to bridge this gap between the valley and the hills."

Kamal Mitra Chenoy, "Ethnocentrism and Politics of Identity in Manipur", Parting Social-cum-Election of SSPP (Siamsinpawlpi or the Paite Students' Welfare Association) Delhi Branch, 23 February 2002.
https://youtu.be/o1uPiV_I0Xs?t=3060.

This morning (13 October), I called Ma'am Chenoy. She said, "Homen, I have been receiving thousands of messages from his students. You know, Kamal said he wanted to visit Manipur with whatever is happening there, as a part of a fact-finding team or otherwise. He always asked about Manipur. But you know, he was weak."

He once said he had crossed the Brahmaputra only six times, and so his heart never left the Northeast. I think Manipur never left his. In that same speech in 2002, he ended by naming the Manipur he hoped for, one dreamed of by a Maharaja and by Hijam Irabot Singh alike:

"A Manipur that will be democratic, will be secular, will be multicultural, which will be egalitarian, and in the hearts, not in the boundaries, but in the hearts of the people."

Kamal Mitra Chenoy, "Ethnocentrism and Politics of Identity in Manipur", Parting Social-cum-Election of SSPP (Siamsinpawlpi or the Paite Students' Welfare Association) Delhi Branch, 23 February 2002.
https://youtu.be/o1uPiV_I0Xs?t=3060. Surely he must have asked, perhaps even longed, to visit Manipur one more time.

Rest in peace, Kamal Sir. Your students carry you, and the Northeast, Manipur most of all, which you loved from afar and from near, will carry you too.