Thokchom Veewon’s cause belongs to all of us coming from areas far away from the heartland, physically and psychologically. The assault on Kashmiri students in Dehradun and Kashmiri employees in Jammu in a display of Hindutva nationalism is our cause too. It’s the cause of every person living in this nation state with a conflicted and an imposed sense of identity. The state apparatus is against our very existence and that is clear from the way the local court in Delhi easily granted the police remand to take him back to Manipur- a homeland that has seen so much violence over the past 70 years. Let’s not forget that Thockchom knew what was at stake when he decided to speak against the government policies having grown up in a place where the traffic control is done by army men carrying loaded rifles and AK47. He knew what the consequences could be, yet till the very end he stood firm on ground. On 12th February, two days before being arrested, he had posted on social media that the police had visited his house in Manipur and threatened his parents.