your bridge home
True Valor
They have just hanged the man who founded her movement, and she is sixteen years old.
She was sixteen when they gave her a life sentence.
Gaidinliu was born on the 26th of October, 1915, at Nungkao, also called Longkao, in what is now Manipur.
She was born into a Rongmei Naga family, of the village's ruling clan.
At thirteen, in 1927, she joined the movement led by her cousin Haipou Jadonang.
Jadonang's Heraka movement was a reform of Naga religion.
And like the Tana Bhagats and the Birsaits, it joined a religious reordering to a political demand. It drew followers across the Zeliangrong peoples, Zeme, Liangmai, Rongmei, and it aimed at the removal of British authority from the hills.
Within it, Gaidinliu came to be regarded as an incarnation of the goddess Cherachamdinliu. She was a girl in her early teens who was, to the people around her, divine.
The rest of this story, read aloud, and a new one every day.