Echel Sanaleibak: A Women Led Centre for Meitei Revival in Leitanpokpi, Manipur

Author:Umapati Tonjam
Site Location: Leitanpokpi, Manipur
Institute:Piloo Mody College of Architecture
Advisor: Ar. Maitreyee Mishra

Description

In May 2023, ethnic conflict tore through Manipur, displacing over 60,000 people and destroying more than 11,000 homes — along with the courtyards, markets, and festival grounds that once held the Meitei community’s memory together.

Amidst this, Meitei women have emerged as the strongest anchors of resilience — preserving culture through craft, sustaining livelihoods, and quietly leading efforts toward healing and revival.

Echel Sanaleibak is a 5.3-acre women-led center in Leitanpokpi, Imphal East, conceived as a village rather than an institution. Inspired by the traditional Yumjao house, it unfolds as a cluster of structures in bamboo, timber, mud, and brick, engineered for Seismic Zone V. A handloom and bamboo-craft workshop, a Thang-Ta martial arts hall, a community hall for Lai Haraouba, a local market, and a prayer hall gather around a central pond, anchoring daily life the way a village tank once did. Community-based and visitor-based movement stay deliberately separate, so healing doesn’t have to happen under watch.

Where conflict broke trust, this ground offers a shared one — held, again, by the women who never stopped holding it.