Manipur Horror a Glimpse of Modi's Hindu Rashtra
Why BJP government in Delhi will stand by the raging violence
It took a viral video of gory sexual violence circulating 2 months after the incident for India’s PM Narendra Modi to speak about the horrific ethnic violence in the North-Eastern state of Manipur. Even when he spoke, he chose to highlight the ‘shame’ brought upon the country by the video and not the strife and brutal violence itself which has already killed more than 140 people and displaced tens of thousands.
People have many explanations—and hypotheses—as to why Modi is so adamant at saving face of his partyman Chief Minister Biren Singh who is overseeing the violence in Manipur as the patron of one of the warring sides. Here is a detailed and reasonable assessment from an analyst at The Print podcast:
As I explain in this 27-minute clip from our daily Clubhouse show NewsGuff (in Nepali), however, Modi’s and Indian ruling party’s attitude towards the Manipur horror has been so blatantly callous for an entirely different—and far more nefarious—reason.
For non-Nepali speakers among you, here is the summary: while it is possible that Modi is clueless as to how to end the violence in Manipur, he may not be entirely sad or aghast at the brutality and lethality of the violence there.
After all, he tolerated and tacitly welcomed the calls from the rabid Hindu nationalists for genocide against the country’s Muslim minorities last year. And it was through a similar violence unleashed against the Muslim minority with his government’s complicity in Gujarat that he started his rise in Indian politics in the early 2000s.
If anything, the entire RSS-BJP machinary in India today seems geared to the proclamation of some form of Hindu Rashtra in India after the elections next year. From India’s bloody history of partition, they know that violence is going to be the integral part of any such effort.
Modi’s need to project the aura of a democratic statesman has somehow forced him to veil himself with the slogans of inclusion and justice so far. Lately he has been branding himself as ‘vishwaguru’ or the world’s teacher with an eye at the 2024 elections when his personal image and charisma will have to make up for the incompetence, cronyism and economic mismanagement of his government.
When the push comes to shove though, as has been the case with Manipur violence, he has no compunction at throwing away that veil and coming out with a cold calculation: so long as one contributes to his party’s electoral fortune, no amount of communalism and bloodshed will disqualify a person like Biren Singh from the post of Chief Minister.
As things evolve, the BJP seems to be working in a two-track pathway to Hindu Rashtra now.
First is the Assam way in which the entire brute force of the state is brought upon a minority community—read the Muslims—to marginalize, terrorize, disenfranchise and ultimately incarcerate or deport its large section through costly and bogus exercises like NRC (National Registry of Citizens). Here the violence is so pernicious yet so systematized and incremental that there are hardly any headline-grabbing stories about it.
This has always been the preferred modus operandi for the current Indian establishment. But now Manipur has shown that, if the end result demands not even a veneer of justice, accountability and rule of law, a violent confrontation between different communities will do just as well.
If Modi’s party tacitly agrees with the extremists calling for violent annihilation of a minority community, that is not entirely by accident. One of the pioneers of Hindu nationalism, V.D. Savarkar, once wrote that India should model its approach to its “Muslim problem” on that used by the Nazis to deal with their “Jewish problem.”
Now, if Nazi-like annihilation of a community is an acceptable option for a party—it apparently is, because Narendra Modi has called the same Savarkar the true patriot—why would it be perturbed or even disturbed by a violent conflict between two communities in the country?
In the final part of the talk, I elaborate on how such an attitude from India’s ruling establishment risks totally tearing apart the already strained pluralist fabric of Indian society. And I pointedly criticize the Nepali demagogues calling for Hindu Nepal in tandem with their brethren in India.
Here are some representative headlines from the few surviving independent media outlets in India about the Manipur horror:
How a seven-year-old boy and two women were burnt alive in an ambulance in Manipur
Manipur is burning due to BJP’s divisive politics, allege over 500 civil society members and groups
FIR against members of fact-finding panel that said violence in Manipur was ‘state sponsored
And here is a brilliant and comprehensive video illuminating the attitude of the Modi regime and its lapdog media to the horror:
ICYMT, here are few earlier THG posts related to India:
