A makeshift helipad occupies the space where the Baptist Church stood on a plateaued mound in Somdal, the most discussed village in Manipur’s Ukhrul district bordering Myanmar. The church was dismantled in September for two reasons: at about 100 years, it was too old to be safe for prayer services; and it could yield the most strategic spot for a helicopter carrying a Naga leader — only slightly younger than the church itself — to land on October 22.

Thuingaleng Muivah, the 91-year-old general secretary of the extremist National Socialist Council of Nagalim (NSCN) and a devout Christian, probably missed the church when he alighted from the chopper that carried him from adjoining Nagaland’s Dimapur via district headquarters Ukhrul, 25 kilometres from Somdal terrestrially. To most of the vi

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