Fleeing hate back home, Manipur students in a Delhi school learn new lessons in love, friendships

According to Delhi’s Education Department, 138 children from Manipur have been admitted to schools in the Capital since the May 3 violence, and 290 applications are still being processed.

Chtistina, whose parents and two younger siblings are back home in Imphal, now lives with her elder brother in Delhi’s Munirka area. “I joined the school four days ago and I am surprised how welcoming everyone has been,” Christina smiles. But at the mention of her parents and siblings, Christina turns her face towards the wall and wipes her tears.

A student from Manipur wipes her tears as she speaks to her principal. (Express photo by Abhinav Saha)

“I miss them so much,” she says as her friend Them, 17, squeezes in beside her on the bench and holds her tight. By now, Them, too, is fighting back her tears. Her family, too, is back home in Imphal and she is staying with relatives in Delhi.

Christina says she talks to her parents on the phone every day; now that broadband internet services have resumed, they do the ocassional video calls too.

In Class 11-C, L Christopher Lalbiakmuan, 16, is waiting for the sports hour to start.“Back home, I loved playing football and was in my school team. My school was smaller than this one, but I had a lot of friends there. I like this school, but I’ll have to make new friends,” he says. Originally from Churachandpur, he now stays in Munirka with his elder brother, who is in the armed forces, and sister-in-law.

“When the violence started, my family and our neighbours were defenceless. A few men from the area banded together and started training the boys and the young men to defend ourselves. We had to patrol the neighbourhood. It was a very stressful time… But I am still stressed because my family is there and I am worried for them,” he says.

Christina, Them and Christopher say the new school has been good to them, though they have had a bit of trouble communicating with their new classmates and teachers.

Them says he finds it hard to express himself in the class since he doesn’t know Hindi and struggles with English. “Our classmates have been helping us out and the teachers also make sure we are included in discussions. We are learning, but it will take time. We are also teaching them a bit of Manipuri,” Them says.

To ensure the new students aren’t disadvantaged, the school has been giving them Hindi lessons every morning. (Express photo by Abhinav Saha)

Like most others run by the Delhi government, the R K Puram school, with 735 students from classes 6 to 12, has a separate English-medium section for each class. Though the children from Manipur have been assigned to this class, here too, teachers usually explain concepts to students in Hindi since that’s the language most students are comfortable in.

To ensure the new students aren’t disadvantaged, the school has been giving them Hindi lessons every morning. “They can identify Hindi letters but don’t know what the words mean. Our focus is more on conversational Hindi. It is a skill that will help them adjust better in the city,” says Kanika Manral, a teacher at the school.

The school also has a ‘buddy system’, as part of which two students are paired up and help each other with class work and co-curricular activities. This has now been extended to the students from Manipur.

Principal Runu Choudhary, who was earlier part of the team spearheading the Happiness Curriculum in Delhi schools, said, “We are trying to accommodate as many students (from Manipur) as we can. Even now, parents and guardians are trickling in, as they make their way out of Manipur, seeking admission. We have 12 students in the humanities section and the same number in the science section.”

Anita Singh Yadav, the teacher development coordinator who teaches English to the senior classes, says the school began preparing for its new students even before they arrived on campus. “We first held an orientation session with the existing students and explained to then why the students were joining. We gave them a short background on the violence in Manipur, and told them about differences in language and culture. The children have been very receptive. Once the children from Manipur joined us, we held a separate orientation for them,” she said.

Yadav says they have been pleasantly surprised to children mingling with each other. “One of the few problems they came with up was that they were struggling to pronounce each other’s names. One student suggested that we use nicknames instead. Students have been asking each other to pick a name they would like to be called,” smiles Yadav.

Last month, Education Minister Atishi had directed schools to admit students from Manipur, saying the state has seen extreme violence over the past month and a lot of families, including children, have had to flee and they need to be able to resume their education in Delhi.

Earlier this week, the Delhi government held a meeting with heads of schools to ensure that students from Manipur do not face trouble while seeking admission in state-run schools. Among the interventions it outlined were contacting students from Manipur who may have reached out in the past for admission, ensuring that children from the state are admitted into English-medium schools, and providing them provisional admission even if they are unable to furnish the required documents.

Friday was Anjali Runremmami’s first day in school. Originally from Manipur’s Churachandpur district, the 18 year-old is now staying in Munirka with her aunt.

“This doesn’t feel like my first day in a new school. My classmates even shared their notes,” she says.