Put a hundred red ants and a hundred black ants in a bottle with sufficient facilities and provisions to live their lives. Nothing untoward happens, they would live peacefully, with their usual interactions, cooperation and conflicts that any living together would cause. But if someone shakes the bottle, the ants would start killing one another. Red ants would begin to believe that black ants are their enemies; black ants would begin to believe that red ants are their enemies. But in truth, the real enemy is the one who shook the bottle. In real time no ant realises or understands it. By the time ants realise it, if they ever realise, they both would have lost the battle and the bottle. A close reading of history would make it evident that this is the kind of social experiment many rulers and establishments of the past had put into motion before they forced people of a certain race or religion to leave an area or country, or drove people - who hitherto had lived amicably - into armed conflict, or executed a systematic ethnic cleansing. It is cruel to fish in troubled waters; but it is cruel still to trouble the waters to catch fish.
Manipur is on the edge. Perhaps the tipping over is already on. Has it reached a point of no return? Issues here are deep seated: Kukis on the one side have been in constant mistrust of the Manipuri government, accusing it of being of the Meiteis, by the Meiteis, and for the Meiteis; and the government on the other side, has been quite suspicious and hostile to the activities and undertakings on the hills by Kuki people. The Kukis are heckled by the government and establishments as outsiders, often destroying their homes and worship places in the name of forest protection. Most legal and governmental facilities are politically and geographically far from the Kukis because they exist in the valleys dominated and controlled by the Meiteis. These and grueling poverty makes the Kukis vulnerable; and they get relegated to a second-rate social status. There have been illegal intrusions and settlements by the Kukis from neighbouring political entities to Manipur, which the Meiteis look at as a cause for a future demographical imbalance, by which the Meiteis might even lose their majority and majoritarian advantages and precedences. The state, for reason, in recent times have been tracking down drug plantation, processing, and trafficking, which is rampant in the hill areas near international borders. All sound reasonable till we hear the other person’s story.
Journalists, people who have visited Manipur, people on the either sides of the conflict say, though the Meiteis and the Kukis knew their difference and shades, had lived amicably in neighboring villages, even in same village at times. But now they are vying for one another’s blood. What immediate reasons did trigger this persistent conflict and bring Manipur to this state of affairs?
Disgusting Violence Erupts with Fake News
The directive of the Manipur High Court to the state government asking it to recommend to the Centre to give Scheduled Tribe status to the Meiteis made the Kukis, who were already fighting a battle against government’s evection drive to clear reserved forests off Kuki farmers and other tribal settlers, angry and fuming. The Kukis in solidarity with the Nagas called for a ‘Tribal Solidarity March’ against the order of the High Court. The march turned problematic and violent.
Things like these are common in these regions; but it does not go to the ugly extent of showcasing rapes and public violation of women, and of killing the other as an exhibition. How did matters reach there? We get a clue in the slogans shouted by the Meiteis as they gleefully paraded and groped naked women on the street, that this is revenge for the Churachandpur case. Kuki women began to be systematically targeted in revenge attacks. They were referring to the fake photograph which spread like wildfire on the third and fourth of May before the internet was suspended in Manipur, with a caption saying, this is the photo of a Meitei nursing student who is raped and killed in Churachandpur Medical College. This was fake news; that photograph is of a girl who was killed in Delhi in 2022. But the snowball had started rolling. And no one cared to educate the Meiteis for the longest of time that it was false information that is deliberately created and spread to deceive people. And even if some did make efforts to inform there may had been fewer takers for truth is less attractive, less profitable, and less virulent.
Agenda and Apathy of the Rulers
Even as the violence intensified and worsened, the response from the central BJP government was notably insignificant. The BJP state government—dominated by the Meitei community—is inactive and in hiding, allowing more violence to happen, and do it with impunity. Prime Minister Narendra Modi maintained an almost three- month long public silence on the conflict and has yet to visit Manipur since the violence broke out. It was only after the May-4 viral video caused outrage across the country that Modi made a brief comment on the issue. This is total apathy by the ruling class. Looking at the deep-rooted nature of the matter, the root causes of the conflict would need longer engagement in the region, with education, economic upliftment, and plenty of conversation; but the brutal violence and ugly attack on one another, which had severe causalities, could have been definitely contained. On the contrary, the police stood in silence, they refuse to help or file FIR, and at times even handed over victims to the angry mob.
The silence and apathy of the government gives room to think that there is a larger Hindutva agenda, which drives the Hindu nationalist Modi government to take no step to protect the Kukis, who are predominantly Christians, from the Meiteis, who are predominantly Hindus.
Non-inclusive Thinking and Reporting
The ‘Global Village’ prediction of Marshal McLuhan hasn’t come about. On the contrary there is more of distancing of lands and thickening of borderlines between peoples. People feel entitled and have a false sense of security to hold on to a single narrative and are not equipped to listen to other’s stories; and become emotionally attached to a particular narrative, and are reluctant to let go of it, even if there is evidence that it is not accurate. Thus people seek out information that confirms our existing beliefs and ignore information that contradicts them. This lack of empathy for the people who are telling different stories lead to intolerance and engage in violence to silence the other.
The media coverage of the Manipur violence has been criticised for being non-inclusive. Exempting a few, there is clear separation between the Meitei media and Kuki media locally and nationally. National mainstream media highlights the Meitei community, while giving less attention to the experiences of the Kuki community. Alternative media, especially by the minority communities like the Christians, bat for the Kukis and the Christians. This leads to further polarisation of the situation, and make it more difficult to find a lasting solution to the violence.
Stop Shaking the Bottle
Manipur is ethnically a very sensitive region. The need of the hour is to build trust and bridges between the conflicting sides. Ethnic and religious identities must be subordinate to human dignity and life of the very people in enfolds. We want to outdo the other in pretending to believe that our gods are the best, and to lay claim to the most splendid ethnic past. We easily accept and live with lies when delving into our own spiritual domains and ethnic concerns. In my guess, the reason for it is lack of free speech and democracy in religious or ethnic structures and institutions; even in the modern and educated societies people are expected to just obey and live. Thus the one who has the power to create narratives and change rules control the society. They scare people away from conversations and meeting points into amplified and exaggerated sensitivity and danger. They keep the bottle and shake the bottle at their will. Shaking the bottle is the weapon of the fascist. We have seen it in Germany in early 20th century. Someone has aptly differentiated between the versions of fascism that was in Germany and the fascism that is brewing in India.
In German fascism it was the military acting at the orders of the ruler. In Indian version the perpetrators are one’s very own neighbours, colleagues in workplace, and brother’s or sister’s friends. Among the mob that accompanied the woman who was raped and paraded naked in Manipur, there were neighbours and friends of the family. In the German version the leader stopped giving orders, and the fascism came to a grinding halt. In the Indian version it will keep continuing because it is rewiring the conscience of our nation. The Indian version is indeed dangerous.
Happy Independence Day
How Democracies Die is a 2018 comparative politics book by Harvard University political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt talking about how elected leaders can gradually subvert the democratic process to increase their power.
The book reminds us that in modern times, democracies don’t die bleeding on the street. There is no need for revolutions, or a military coup; instead clever rulers and establishments would lawfully use the institutions and instruments of a democracy to defunct it. It is like in a game, someone buys the referee, debars good players, and changes the rules of the game, thus predetermines the winners. In the name of religion, people, culture and ethnicity, divide people. If we treat people differently, they begin to think that they are different. Make each other look like a bundle of differences with the potency to destroy one another; and it is only matter of time that each will compete in wielding weapons to get rid of the other. Is our democracy, claimed as the mother of all democracies, dying?
Written as TOGETHER editorial.
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