01Jadonang and the young Gaidinliu
Tamenglong is the country of the Rongmei, Liangmai and Zeme, together called Zeliangrong. In the 1920s Haipou Jadonang of this country began the Heraka movement, calling his people back to their own worship of Tingkao Ragwang, the supreme god, and away from both missionary conversion and British tax and forced labour. Gaidinliu, born at Nungkao, joined him at thirteen. The British hanged Jadonang at Imphal on 29 August 1931. She took up the leadership at sixteen and kept up the fight from the hills of Manipur, Nagaland and Assam.
02Rani of the hills
She was captured on 17 October 1932 at Pulomi and sentenced to life. Jawaharlal Nehru met her in Shillong jail in 1937 and called her Rani, the queen of the Nagas. She was freed only in 1947. She went on working for the Heraka faith and the Zeliangrong people until her death on 17 February 1993, and was given the Padma Bhushan in 1982. Tamenglong today is a district headquarters of forested ridges above the Barak river, and her birthplace at Nungkao is kept as a place of memory.
The life of this place
- 26 January 1915Rani Gaidinliu was born at Nungkao in the Tamenglong hills.
- 29 August 1931Haipou Jadonang was hanged by the British at Imphal.
- 17 October 1932Gaidinliu was captured at Pulomi.
