The Prime Minister Narendra Modi's silence on Manipur was astounding, even by his own standards. In the state, a civil war has been raging for almost 80 days. There have been over 150 fatalities, and thousands of people remain homeless. Modi, the skilled orator, avoided mentioning it until Thursday morning, let alone traveling to the state.
The Manipur episode that has surfaced is disgusting for any civilized society, he remarked, speaking to TV cameras outside of Parliament.
He was alluding to an incident that happened on May 4, the day following fighting between the Meitei and Kuki groups. A mob stopped a group of Kuki people from entering the woodland where they were seeking protection.
FINALLY MODI SPEAKS OUT
The attempt to mask Prime Minister Narendra Modi's failure as a systematic failure of states that needed to handle law-and-order concerns more effectively resulted in his speech on Manipur on Thursday being branded as more reprehensible than his silence.
The Prime Minister showed cunning to portray the breakdown of constitutional order in Manipur as a routine criminal incident by comparing it to events in Congress-ruled states like Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh and ordering the chief ministers to exercise more caution rather than expressing regret for the barbarism of parading two women without clothes in Manipur.
Given that these disturbing accounts of assault are documented in police files and have even been mentioned in media publications, it is difficult to think the Manipur administration was unaware of them. The prime minister may have learned about the scope and intensity of the violence if he had cared to look into the claims that his party colleague, Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh, has been acting more like a Meitei strongman than a constitutional leader.
However, the chief minister and prime minister did not dare to comment until after a video went viral and exposed the women's humiliation to the world.
Congress is in charge in the states of Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh. They continue to produce horrifying cases of bad assault against women and girls, as does the rest of the nation, which is a recurring sign of India's ingrained and misogyny. However, neither of them is presently on fire the way Manipur is.
The civil conflict earlier this week nearly reached another neighborhood when a mentally ill Naga lady was killed, purportedly due to her tribe affiliation.
To compare the atrocities in other states to those in Manipur is nothing more than a diversion.
Even when speaking, Modi did it as the head of the Bharatiya Janata Party and not as the leader of India.
Dhananjaya Chandrachud, India's top justice, appeared to criticize the administration for failing to control the situation in Manipur.
The incident was denounced by additional Modi administration ministers. The minister for women, Smriti Irani, referred to it as "downright inhuman" and promised that those responsible will face punishment.
"It is shameful that it takes a searing video of two Kuki women being paraded without clothes and raped to shake the world's conscience and make people believe what we have been saying for the past 70 days," Golan Nulak said.
You must be logged in to post a comment.