Shame of Manipur

While the Prime Minister rightfully condemned the incident as having ‘shamed the country‘, a clearly rattled Chief Justice of the Supreme Court had to weigh in by bluntly stating, “If government doesn‘t act, we will“ and that, “in a constitutional democracy, it is unacceptable”. It was frankly too little, too late for the victims of the despicable incident, as indeed for the entirety of Manipuris, irrespective of their ethnic and partisan divide

- BHOPINDER SINGH

It took the rape of the already burnt-out soul of India, to reawaken some tokenism of forgotten conscience, as the news of the horrific rape in Manipur seeped out. Distant, disconnected and the essentially forgotten tragedy of Manipur that had eased its way out of the front pages, returned to shame the nation that had moved on, presuming ‘normalcy’ had returned, as it often presumed when such a narrative is manufactured.

The era of social media may have brought the reality of news to ‘real-time’ in one’s palms, but it has also inculcated a regrettable phenomenon of ‘narrative building’ and fickleness that debars more informed debate, discussion and appreciation of the ground situation.

Many from Manipur had been crying hoarse on the continuing tragedy and polarisation of society, with fears of deterioration ~ but the larger comity of the ‘rest of India’, had reduced the issue to the age-old binary of a ‘us versus them’ template.

At an oversimplistic level, the ‘them’ were the foreign elements and the ‘us’ was rooted in subliminal majoritarian spirit. Depending on partisan loyalties, the ensuing violence in Manipur was sadly viewed from the blackand-white prism of these templatized binaries.

The fact that such civil strife always entails layers of historic tensions, perceived inequities, and complexities of point-ofview was invariably forgotten, and instead of calling-out each and every act of provocation, instigation and partisanship, many took to taking sides.