People, who have heard some twenty versions of the Manipur story, would like to have a simplified version. I feel too timid to attempt one.  But this possibility seems to be true: The warriors of the Hindu-rashtra were given a free run. “Teach them a lesson,” Modiji had reportedly said in Gujarat in 2002. “Have your own way with those ‘trouble makers’”… minorities. The police looked the other way. Mosques were burnt, houses pulled down, nearly 2000 people killed, and communities displaced and re-located. 

In Manipur, according to K.V. Madhusudhanan, an ex-CRPF chief, hundreds have died, though official reports put it around 100. Over 50,000 have been displaced, of whom 40,000 are in 349 relief camps.

Official Explanations

According to Biren Singh, the Chief Minister, his initiative was a war against “narco-terrorists”. In reality, it was a war on the hapless Kukis. It looked like Erdogan’s call in Turkey against the minority Kurds, whom he hastily labelled as terrorists. The weak always go to the wall.

The movement Meitei Leepun claims that they are fighting ‘foreign’ invaders, meaning the Kukis. 

According to Amit Shah, it was the haste with which the High Court asked the Manipur Assembly to press for the scheduling of the Meiteis as tribals that caused the mayhem. Put it against the demand of non-Christian tribals in Assam that Christian tribals be taken out of the tribal list. It was an RSS initiative.  It sent a trepidation through all tribal Christians. Tensions mounted.

The Painful Reality

According to Rahul Gandhi, it is the fruit of the ‘hate politics’ that the Ruling Party has been promoting in the country for the last 9 years.  The RSS has mastered the art of turning every local tension into a ‘communal tussle’. When bombs explode, there are a hundred explanations, and the elusive criminals remain undetected.  Ultimately people grow angry that the real wrong doers are not traced out. Kuki leaders have called for the outlawing of the group, Meitei Leepun, and probe against Arambai Tenggol for arousing communal passion.

For those with a humanitarian outlook, what happened in Manipur is a human tragedy beyond description, no matter who ignited the fire and who suffered more. We are reaping the fruit of the polarising exercises of the Sangh Parivar. Emotional Distances between communities have grown immensely under the BJP regime. 

Can those who prompt Indians to kill fellow Indians sing the Jana Gana Mana? Can Godse be glorified and set as a model?  That is what the Union Minister Giriraj Singh has done recently, publicly and unabashedly. Godse is a true son of Bharat Mata, he said. Those who work for inter-religious amity are not true sons of India. Thus, Nehru’s philosophy for the peaceful ‘integration’ of India is replaced by a strategy of disintegration. This is what is happening.

The Religious Dimension

Artist Heisnam Sabitri seeks to contend that Manipur crisis is not religious. But Christians grow loud when they speak of the sufferings that they have gone through. Is the burning of churches not a religious issue?  Reports collected give us a list of 300 churches destroyed; some take the lists beyond 500. Christian believers are shocked at the manner entire structures were brought to the ground and sacred objects and holy images broken down to tiny bits. The creativity of RSS radicals in turning an inter-community tension into inter-religious warfare is shocking!!  

We hear of Trump supporters developing the slogan of “Eye for an eye”. When battle begins, all fighters are trapped in this doctrine…in Manipur as well. When anger is high, no one seems accountable. Those with human sentiments shed tears seeing uncontrollable anger reaching new heights. Tears for those who are killed, tears for those who are imprisoned in their own anger! Hundreds may have died; no one seems capable of bringing a soothing touch to emotions. The Barak River runs over with our tears, the floods keep rising.

Hollowness of Claims

Amit Shah boasts of Modi having brought peace to the North-East.  But hostilities continue. And Manipur burns, despite the formation of Peace Teams and Enquiry Committees. Repeated calls for the removal of Biren Singh reach Delhi desks. But J.P. Nadda says he will stay on. Even if he does not serve the interests of Manipur, at least he is loyal to the ideals of Nagpur. RSS has the final say!

What stuns the world is the Prime Minister’s silence. It is a slap on the face of the Northeast. Moun-Modi refuses to speak. Mallikarjun Kharge says, the PM’s silence is applying salt to the sore wound. JNU professor A. Bimol Akoijam re-echoes the feeling. PM’s silence on Manipur deeply hurts, he says. The whole world stands by in a questioning posture. The Prime Minister who rushed to the North-East more than 50 times on popularity trips, for the distribution of land pattas and appointments, inauguration of institutions and bridges, lately Vande Bharat Express, is silent when the biggest tragedy in the North-East during his tenure of office is taking place. 

Experts in the study of Deep Psychology say, it is a frank admission of “Total Failure”. It is the exposure of the helplessness of a tall personality. Modiji is not capable of saying a word about the Chinese occupation of Indian soil under his guardianship, nor about the utter failure of his North-Eastern strategy of “divide and rule”. This rule cannot continue. All of us are victims of this leadership blunder. 

We see the result of speaking one thing and doing another: boasting of democracy and restricting freedom, glorifying diversity and building up emotional distances between communities.  

Echoes Reach Far

Emotional distances are growing in diverse directions. People from different regions/religions/traditions do not have a sense of co-belonging in India any more. Chief Minister of Goa, Pramod Sawant, accuses ‘outsiders’ for crime in his state. Activists in Manipur ask why Himanta Biswa Sarma needs to interfere in the ‘internal’ affairs of their state. 

North-Easterners are made to feel uncomfortable in many other parts of India. Bengal feels annoyed at the ‘alien’ political styles of the Hindi belt. Tamil Nadu and Kerala do the same. The South feels uncomfortable with the North’s obscurantism. Kashmir is made to feel ‘totally other’. Emotional distances are widening with the people of Punjab in a painful manner. We dread the days ahead. 

Emotions widen in the area of foreign affairs as well. Modi protested when a temple was damaged in Australia by Khalistani sympathizers, but he didn’t have a single word of sympathy when 300-500 churches were burnt down in Manipur. Take care, emotions count.
As the map of Akhand Bharat on the wall of the new Parliament building included Taxila in Pakistan and Kapilavastu and Lumbini in Nepal, there was a quick reaction.  Nepal produced a map of Nepal showing Nepali-inhabited areas of India, extending from Teesta to Sutlej as though they were occupied territories to be liberated. Pakistan has Kashmir in their map. Claims invite counter-claims, fiercer threats and stronger warnings. Then comes the disaster. 

Weakening Moral Codes

Fascist textbooks in Mussolini’s time taught mathematics to children showing the picture one gun with the number ‘1’, two guns with the number ‘2’ and so on. Thus the younger generations were familiarized with the images of weapons, and a spontaneous fondness for them was developed. In the same way, Russia today teaches the alphabet to children with the figure ‘A’ for Army, adding the exhortation “Love Your Army”. 

Our leadership is moving in the same direction, seeking to ‘re-educate’ the peace-loving Indian public through aggressive images: the lion on Ashoka pillar with nails drawn, gold-plated silver sceptre near the seat of the Speaker in the Parliament, popularising the figure of Rama the Warrior, Hanuman the Fighter. Senas and vahinis increase in the country, dharm yodhs multiply, vigilante moral imposition replaces the police. 

Morals collapse. Political leaders change sides like Mir Jafar. Gradually, we are returning to the social chaos and moral uncertainty that held the subcontinent in a grip in the late Mughal era. Sadhus sang songs, temples rose,  and courtiers kept flattering their kings, until the British took over India and imposed law and order. Finding themselves subdued, the upper castes were quick in becoming flatterers of the new rulers to get plum posts and rewarding appointments. They constitute the BJP today. If Indians should shed their “slave mentality”, as the PM insists, he should be the first to eliminate the culture of flattery around him. People must have freedom to speak up. 

Instead, political critics point out, India has morphed from being a parliamentary democracy to “executive democracy”. People are told to take orders.

Winning Power of Market

Manipur is forgotten.  Things are getting ready for the reception of Modi in the US. Flattering of the great invitee has started in real earnest. John Kirby describes India as a vibrant democracy. India’s Speaker, Om Birla, takes such words seriously.  India is leading the world in every field, he says. A senior US officer is quoted as saying, Biden thinks there is no better partner for the US than India.  

Most people are unable to read the ‘signs’.  What the business world is excited about is not India’s great culture nor its leader’s great stature, but the “purchasing power” of 1.4 billion people. This power of the middle class was built up over a long period of time, Manmohan Singh playing a big role. Modi is merely the beneficiary, despite the mess he made with demonetisation. 

Business loves the vast Indian Market. It is no Modi magic. If minorities are harassed in India, does the Market worry? Not a bit. They say, there is much exaggeration in the reports, much misinformation. After all, these are matters that can be talked over. When the purse opens, truth goes silent, righteousness stands aside. 

Russia wants to sell oil, France fighter jets, Germany submarines, US a whole range of things. India has the ‘purchasing power’. Modi meets Sam Altman, the Open AI CEO and ChatGPT creator. Ajit Doval seeks US collaboration on high-technology areas, like semiconductors, tele-communication defence, quantum computing.  Rajnath Singh seeks defence industrial cooperation with the US. He meets with German defence producers as well. 

It is not Modiji’s bear hug that business is looking for; it is not the Nehruvian moral authority that Modi enjoys. All that business giants are seeking are better terms for entry into the Indian Market. Manipur is clean forgotten amidst the hustle. Nevertheless, the Prime Minister will keep enough time for ‘Yoga for peace’ in the US, while killings continue in his homeland!

In this way, when his political skills (kshatriya art) run short, he has recourse to his trading skills (vaishya art), or can take refuge in his ‘withdrawal skills’ (sadhu art of silence, yoga, Kedarnath temple). And Manipur is confined to oblivion. 

Corrections Are Possible

It is unfair to put everything to the Top Leader. His mentors also must share the blame. The Sangh Parivar could step aside for a while, and stop prodding the Leader in the wrong direction and misguiding his Think Tank on North-Eastern matters. Vajpayee kept a distance from the Parivar. To that extent he preserved his moral stature. 

Modi has good messages, though they are seldom lived out or realized: Shudh Bharat, Beti Bachao, Sab ka Vishwas. He speaks of respecting diversity, but we do not see the precept in life situations. He speaks of unity, but what we see are further divisions and polarisations. Of late, he has been speaking of ‘inclusiveness’. But the message does not seem to go through. Charlie Kaufman says, “Constantly talking is not necessarily communicating”. The speaker’s convictions convince, not his moral postures. 

After the Congress takeover of Karnataka, Welfare Minister H.C. Mahadevappan proposed the regular reading of the preamble of the Constitution in all educational institutions in the state.  Let the younger generation be educated into the values the nation stands for.

India once had a message of peace. The other day, UN praised India’s peace-keeping contribution, with 6000 soldiers in several countries. We have no need of Dharm Yodhs (religious warriors) in our country, who widen emotional distances. But we urgently need peace-keepers, peace-makers, who bring hearts and minds together. May a greater number of peace-makers arise in Manipur in our days. 

It is encouraging to hear that Pope Francis received a 11-year-old environmentalist from Manipur just recently. May physical environment be protected in the state, may the social environment there grow peaceful!