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YENNING
Let us begin with a plate.
On Sunday, 22 March 2020, at 5 pm, people across India stepped onto balconies and doorsteps. They clapped, rang bells, blew conches and banged steel plates with spoons. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had called for this during the first Janata Curfew to thank health workers and other essential staff.
Street humour offered another reading. The “Go Corona Go” chant was already doing the rounds. Many joked that the country was trying to scare off the virus with cutlery. Nobody believed the virus was listening. Six years on, Manipur heard a similar clatter, with a different purpose.
At around 7 pm on Friday, 23 October 2026, the Imphal Valley stopped being quiet. The Federation of Haomee (FoH) had called for noise between 7.30 pm and 8 pm. The sound began earlier and spread beyond homes. People banged utensils, struck electric poles and beat drums. Horns sounded from motorcycles and cars, congesting the capital’s main roads. Near Kangla’s Western Gate, security forces had erected heavy barricades. As the crowd grew police fired tear gas shells and smoke bombs. Reports differed on how close protesters got to the fort. Lights were also reported to have gone off across the city for nearly ten minutes around 7.50 pm.
The sound was not only of the kitchen. A large drum stood on a wooden frame by the roadside. Its face bore the words “The Sawombung Namdai” and “Drum constructed on Sunday the 23rd April 1922”. Sawombung Namdai is a Kabui village in Sawombung, Imphal East. Namdai, also called Khunjao, means a huge (ancient) village. The inscription dates the drum to 1922. Among the Kabuis, drums are central to ritual, dance, festivals and community life. The drum’s sound carries memory and brings people together across generations.
Bringing this old cultural object into a contemporary political demonstration also recalled the valley’s distinct communities and histories.
Another scene circulating on social media showed a young woman swaying in a trance-like state before an image of Goddess Panthoibi. Music played as the crowd chanted “Yaiphare”, understood here as a blessing. To dismiss the scene as spectacle or explain it solely in terms of possession would miss its setting. Ritual and politics occupied the same public space. One protester told reporters, “We are making these sounds to make the leaders hear our pain.”
The FoH’s demands include the abrogation of the Suspension of Operations pact with Kuki armed groups, an update of the National Register of Citizens in Manipur, and an end to what the organisation calls the Centre’s “divide and rule” policy. These demands are contested, and readers will hold their own views. This column does not adjudicate them. It asks a plainer question. Why do people reach for noise in times of suffering? Is it a sign of backwardness or enlightenment ?
Banging pots to protest has a name. In Latin America, it is called a cacerolazo, from the Spanish word for “cooking pot”.
The best-known early case is Chile. In December 1971, women opposed to President Salvador Allende marched in Santiago with empty pots to protest food shortages and rising prices. The demonstration became a prominent expression of opposition to his Government.
Under General Augusto Pinochet, the pots returned as a means of protesting the dictatorship.
From 1983, Chileans used the same form against an authoritarian regime. The instrument had not changed, but its political setting had. The lesson is not that noise has no ideology, but that no protest form carries a fixed political meaning. The pot belongs to whoever bangs it; its meaning depends on who is banging it, against whom and why.
In December 2001, Argentina faced a severe economic and political crisis. Banks froze withdrawals, and people took to the streets with pots and pans. President Fernando de la Rúa resigned within days. In Quebec in 2012, students opposed higher tuition fees. After emergency legislation restricted larger protests, neighbours joined in from balconies and streets. The Government lost the election that September. In Serbia in 2020, protesters used the slogan “Noise Against Dictatorship”. The cases differed, but each made dissent audible.
Noise often arises when usual routes fail, when assembly is dangerous, when petitions go unanswered, or when officials seem not to listen. So people get louder.
It costs little. A pot, a spoon and a horn are enough.
It can lower the threshold for participation. A person making noise from a courtyard may join collective action without entering a street demonstration. This may offer some anonymity, but it does not remove every risk.
It is simultaneous. A fixed half-hour turns private acts into a public event and shows households that they are not alone.
It turns the home into a public space. The kitchen and courtyard become political spaces for those without a podium but with a pot.
Above all, noise is hard to ignore. A memorandum can be filed away and a delegation forgotten. A neighbour- hood that shakes with sound is harder to wave off.
Is noise a sound way to be heard ? The pun is hard to resist, but the question deserves a serious answer.
Critics may call it primitive. Banging plates at a virus, or pots at a Government, can look like superstition. Yet across cultures, people have made noise to ward off spirits, mark eclipses or shame those who broke community norms. In old Europe, the latter practice was called “rough music”.
People in pain cry out. Crying out is not backwardness. It is human.
A better test is to ask whom the noise addresses and what it can achieve. Noise aimed at the unseen cannot receive a political answer, though it may create solidarity. Noise aimed at fellow citizens, such as plates sounded for health workers, expresses gratitude. Noise aimed at political power, as in Santiago and Buenos Aires, demands a response. These purposes can overlap. Making pain audible, representing a wider public and securing political change are different tasks.
Friday’s demonstration in Manipur blended these registers. The ritual scene addressed the sacred, the drum spoke to community memory, and the horns and slogans addressed political power. Yet participants need not have understood the event in the same way.
The form is neither backward nor enlightened in itself. Its meaning depends on its purpose.
Noise matters when tied to a demand someone can answer. It is hollow when it replaces the thing it stands for. A plate cannot replace a ventilator, and a pot cannot replace a peace process.
Noise has weaknesses, and a fair account must name them.
First, its intensity is brief. The challenge is to sustain the mobilisation after the half-hour ends.
Second, it burdens bystanders. Friday’s horns caused severe traffic congestion. This is part of why noise gets noticed. It is also part of why it can lose sympathy.
Third, it carries volume, not a complete political programme. A sound protest says “listen”, but does not explain what should be done. Participation does not imply agreement with every demand. People may share anger for different reasons, and a crowd’s size cannot indicate how closely their political preferences align.
Fourth, it has limits as a claim to representation. The protest took place across the five valley districts, but its visibility cannot establish a common political position across Manipur. The hills have their own grievances: headless bodies, lives lost, burned-down houses. One constituency’s anger is not automatically the voice of the state. Wider legitimacy requires engagement across these differences.
Finally, the response matters. Crowd control is a duty, but tear gas can turn half an hour of noise into a story about force.
Manipur does not need to import the idea of protest that refuses to be quiet. On 15 July 2004, twelve women protested in front of Kangla, then the headquarters of the Assam Rifles. They acted after the murder of Thangjam Manorama, who had been picked up by Assam Rifles personnel. Their protest became a defining moment in opposition to the security forces’ presence and conduct. It used the body and the voice. Friday’s protesters used pots, drums and horns. Both addressed authorities that protesters believed had stopped answering through usual channels.
Friday’s crowds also headed for Kangla, once the seat of Manipur’s kings. The site gave the demonstration a historical setting, even as its demands concerned present disputes.
Does noise work ? The record is mixed. In Argentina, pot-banging became part of a wider mobilisation amid economic and political crisis. In Quebec, nightly demonstrations formed part of a student movement with electoral consequences. In Chile, pot-banging contributed to a longer struggle against dictatorship, culminating in the 1988 plebiscite, when voters rejected Pinochet’s continued rule. Noise did not produce these outcomes alone. It made dissent visible, while change depended on wider movements, organisation and political circumstances.
This is the real question for Manipur. Friday’s sound has faded. Will it lead to talks, a clear programme and engagement across communities? Or will it remain half an hour of anger? A reasoned response, even a refusal, is better than silence. It must address the grievances, not merely acknowledge the volume of the protest.
Noise is the language of people who have been told to wait. They have waited long enough to become loud. The question for those inside the walls is not whether the sound reached them. It surely did. The question is whether anyone there is willing to listen and to answer.