Over a year has passed and Manipur is bleeding. Since May 2023, when ethnic violence broke out, more than 200 people were killed, more than 60,000 displaced, and thousands of homes burnt to the ground. But the man, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is campaigning tirelessly on the slogan of a strong, united India has never paid a single visit to the state. Manipur is bleeding, and New Delhi’s silence has been criminal negligence. Miracles have not been required by the people of Manipur. .Instead, they got bullets, tear gas, and the whole system of state repression turned against its own people.
Protests Met With Guns, Not Dialogue
When bereaved communities went out into the streets with mothers holding pictures of their stolen children, fathers insisting on the accountability of two young lives lost all too early the reaction of central forces used by the Modi government was anything but sympathetic. Manipur was bleeding and people dispatched to defend the people of the country turned against them instead. On-the-ground reports mentioned the usage of tear gas canisters being shot right at the crowds, rubber bullets being launched at unarmed demonstrators, and the detention of masses of civilians whose crime was to insist on justice. The human rights organisations, such as Amnesty International India have continuously raised concerns about the disproportionate application of force in conflict areas a trend that has been further fueled and worsened during the current regime.
Two Children Dead — And a Government That Did Not Flinch
The loss of two children in the midst of this crisis is perhaps the most telling of the disastrous failure of the government. When these young lives were the casualties of real-time failures on the soil of India, Manipur was already bleeing, not of a far-off war, but of the political failure. And, instead of causing an immediate response at the office of the Prime Minister, these deaths were assimilated to that same sense of bureaucratic indifference, with which New Delhi has treated the crisis as a whole. No emergency session. No speech of the prime minister. No accountability. The Manipuri children had to pay the final cost of a dispute which the people in authority did not and still do not take seriously.
The Ukhrul Ambush: Peace as Performance
What has just been exposed to Ukhrul is that conditions on the ground are very fragile and dangerous. Civilians were ambushed by gunmen in a busy road, with at least two people killed and others injured of the Naga community. The attack happened hours after Chief Minister N. Biren Singh had been to the district for what was billed as a peace outreach program, but was really just a way to show how cynical he was. Manipur is bleeding and the notion of peace by the government that a photo call should be followed by an armed ambush is eloquent in its own right regarding the fact that the so-called reconciliation process is a sham. As The Wire’s ongoing coverage of the Manipur crisis the frequency at which such tragedies have occurred has been disturbingly frequent, revealing the total breakdown of state institutions to enforce the most minimal security measures to ordinary citizens.
Darkness by Design: Internet Shutdowns and Media Blackouts
The government of Modi has followed a well-established, very authoritarian script: inundate the area with central security agents, cut off the internet, and violently stop information leaking to the outside world. Under some of the longest internet blackouts witnessed in a working democracy, Manipar was bleeding. Journalists were pressurized when they tried to report on the ground. Opposition politicians were denied entry in the airport when they wanted to visit the humanitarian situation. This is not managing a crisis it’s hiding it. The gloom was cast over the agonized people that the mighty can rest without disturbance.
Fault Lines Exploited, Not Healed
The racial tensions between the Meitei and the Kuki-Zo groups did not manifest themselves in one day and no person of good faith will deny it. But we are bleeding Manipur in large because the people in authority decided to capitalize on these tensions instead of seeking ways of reconciling. Chief Minister Biren Singh is an ally of Modi who has been accused by several community leaders and civil society organizations of promoting divisions by engaging in partisan and inflammatory administration. His administration has been recorded on a sickening level in its alleged support of violence against minority communities through various independent investigations. And yet he is still in office, and is covered by New Delhi, despite persistent calls for his removal from civil society and opposition parties.
A Constitutional Crisis the Government Refuses to Name
What is going on in Manipur is not just a breakdown of law and order it is a breakdown of the constitution of the first order. Manipur is bleeding even though a government has lost its basic duty of taking care of all the citizens without considering the ethnicity, religion, or political party. The right to life which is found in Article 21 of Indian Constitution has been made meaningless to tens of thousands of Manipuri’s who are forced to live in fear daily. It is not
