Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi’s request to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to visit Manipur and listen to the victims of the year-old ethnic strife comes as a reminder to the country and its leadership that the sufferings of the people of the border state are a reality and that they need a closure.
The two ethnic communities, the Meiteis and the Kuki-Zo, started attacking each other on May 3, 2023, escalating the dispute over a high court order for the inclusion of the former in the list of Scheduled Tribes. The order was rescinded later, but the damage was done in a society that carried with it elements of strife over centuries. Protests against the HC order led to clashes in which more than 200 people were killed and thousands of institutions and homes were burnt. Reports suggest up to 60,000 people have been living in refugee camps for about a year now.
Today, these clashes have not ended and the rifts of the past continue to remain wide. The government still has no account of the arms and ammunition that were looted from police stations; they appear to have found their way into the hands of miscreants. This has created a situation where people are perforce organising themselves to defend their lives and properties, something a society based on the rule of law cannot stomach. But even more scary is the spread of violence to distant areas of the state. The violence in Jiribam district bordering Assam is the latest such instance in which people in their thousands left their homes and took refuge in the neighbouring state.
In short, Manipur has become a mess, lives of people there have become uncertain and the administration has become non-existent all due to the insensitivity of the state government and the neglect of the Union government. And the impact has started being felt in neighouring states, too.
It is in this background that the Union government must assess the appeal made by the Congress leader, who made it after visiting relief camps. That he also met the governor should not be lost sight of either, considering the need for a bipartisan approach for the troubled state. The political leadership in Delhi must realise, at least now, that they cannot wish away real issues by issuing an omerta; these have to be addressed in detail. And the more they allow them to persist, the more complicated they are going to become and the more difficult to solve.
It defies logic when Prime Minister Modi is seen as an interlocutor between the warring Israel and Palestine, and Russia and Ukraine, when he has little connect with the communities that are at each other’s throats for over a year back home. Mr Modi’s advisers who go to town celebrating the global stature of the Indian Prime Minister are doing a disservice to him by allowing him to ignore the strife in the border state which continues to worsen.
