Narendra Modi has ignored religious violence for too long. Now he must face the music
It is a hot and furious week in India’s parliament. Narendra Modi, the prime minister, is accused of turning a blind eye to three months of bloodshed in some of the poorest villages of India, in the remote north-east state of Manipur. Barbaric details are surfacing: hundreds of villages destroyed, Christian churches and schools torched, and widespread sexual assault of women. About 50,000 people have fled their homes; at least 124 are dead.
This week, at last, Modi is being forced by a no-confidence motion to speak about the violence. The charge against him: a “brazen indifference” to the killing.
It was early May. A peaceful march was organised by Christian Kuki people, mostly students, who were protesting over an affirmative action plan. Armed mobs of the Meitei, a mostly Hindu ethnic group, attacked the march. Violence took hold as well-armed youths began to roam and burn settlements in the hills. Manipur went up in flames, in isolation: cut off from the internet almost immediately by the BJPrun
local government for almost three months.
Once the internet was restored, viral videos began to circulate, including one of two women, stripped naked, paraded and assaulted by a mob. One of the women is reported to have been gang raped. When Manipur’s chief minister blurted out that hundreds of such assaults were recorded, global outrage spurred the prime minister into condemnation. But then, with the region still on a knife-edge, he went to ground, silent about the wider violence.
The events in Manipur have galvanised India’s political opposition. A new alliance, formed by 26 opposition parties – the India National Inclusive Development Alliance – has declared a new front, forcing a no-confidence vote to be tabled in parliament. “Through this no-confidence motion, we want to break this vow of silence,” said opposition MP Gaurav Gogoi.
Modi will win this – a 350-seat majority assures him of that – but the landscape has changed. A new coalition ranges against him. He also faces a se
rious charge: that his pro-Hindu BJP government has unleashed a force that threatens national security.
The truth is that the seeds of violence have been sown over decades. While the world ogles us as an “economic powerhouse”, for years a divisive, religiously-driven agenda has been at work reshaping India. Hindutva, the religious-political nationalism firing up the BJP’s power base, openly asserts that India’s identity is inseparable from Hinduism. To be a religious minority, a Muslim, or a Christian, or another faith, is to face a volatile, polarised atmosphere.
What happened in Manipur is an example. Ethnic frictions have been sharpened deliberately by political forces that are against the acceptance of religious pluralism. The conflict provides a cover for those who want to eradicate every other religion.
This explains a mystery that has puzzled many. In Manipur, the ethnic majority Meitei people also have a Christian minority. When Hindu mobs attacked, Meitei churches as well as Kuki churches were incinerated. This suggests the conflict is not about ethnicity alone – it is also about denying a place for non-Hindu faiths.
And there is a second truth: hostility has been stoked by derogatory language targeting the Kuki people. Extremist rightwing voices have for years claimed the Kuki are not settled people at all but that their families were once “illegal refugees” and “foreigners” – and that the groups representing them today are not Indian but “foreignbased”. These claims are rubbing raw the differences between communities.
India matters. Our 1.3 billion people are on track to overtake China as the world’s most populous nation, and will leverage all the financial and strategic influence that position entails. India’s loss of tolerance is thus a global loss. Our country is a new superpower acting to destroy basic freedoms. Our government is defined by its authoritarian tendencies, paranoia and desperation for control.
On Thursday, hundreds of millions of us will be listening to Modi’s words. What will he say? Can we expect a guarantee of security for women? Will the government announce a public inquiry into how organised armed mobs received weapons and ammunition, and how they were allowed to move about unhindered by security forces? For many, only the replacement of Biren Singh, Manipur’s chief minister, will be enough to make people feel safe. A sincere response from Modi is urgently needed. Can he deliver one?
Back in May, as the Manipur night sky was lit up by flames, a saying was passed from house to house. In hurried phone calls and tearful exchanges, you heard it agreed often. “If the violence lasts more than 24 hours, the state is complicit.”
“It will last a couple of weeks, at most!” we told each other. Well, it lasted three months. And this is what the government must explain this week. As Modi gets to his feet, his every tone and gesture will be examined as India’s minorities ask themselves: do we have a future?
Priya Sharma is a young Christian women’s activist and human rights researcher. She is writing under a pseudonym
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