Terms of Trade | Two realpolitik questions on the Manipur tragedy

One: Why is Biren Singh still CM? Two: Why has the gender violence in Manipur not seen nationwide protests?

What has been happening in Manipur is a human tragedy of epic proportions. The only thing more tragic than the past events is that the social fissures that this conflict has created will take years if not decades to subside. Almost three months into the conflict now, one can say without any ambiguity that the state was found completely lacking, first in preventing violence and then in acting against the perpetrators and leading efforts for reconciliation.

Manipur has been witnessing ethnic violence since first week of May (File Photo)

While the origins and political economy of the conflict in Manipur are best left to experts on the region, this week’s column wishes to posit two realpolitik questions vis-à-vis the ongoing crisis in Manipur. These questions are rooted in the Manipur crisis but also relevant to politics at large in the country.

Why has the BJP not sacked Biren Singh from the chief minister’s post?

 

Manipur, at the moment, has become an active conflict zone from being a passive one. Biren Singh comes from the majority Meitei community. The political demographics in Manipur are such that Meitei dominated Imphal valley is enough to ensure a legislative majority in the state. As of now, and this could change later, there is nothing to suggest that there is widespread (in numerical terms) Meitei anger against Biren Singh for having allowed the ethnic conflict to go out of hand. On the contrary, there is enough evidence to suggest that his ouster will lead to anger among the sections within the community which have been leading the demand for more constitutional rights for the Meiteis, and those who have perpetrated/abetted the recent violence.

Barring a very strong moral compass; this is always a scarce if not completely absent commodity in realpolitik, there is no reason why the ruling party will risk alienating Meiteis after having given up on the Kuki side of the population. This stinks of moral turpitude, but there is no other way to describe it. To be sure, Manipur is not the first state which is witnessing majoritarian consolidation after ethnic violence with impunity in India.

Is there a larger challenge for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from the Manipur fiasco? A case can be made for it. The BJP’s tryst with power in the northeast is a post-2014 phenomenon. While it is impressive, it is hardly surprising, as high levels of fiscal dependence on the Centre create a very strong incentive for political actors in the northeast to align with the party ruling the Centre. What about the non-economic aspect of politics though?

There are four northeastern states where the BJP has chief ministers of its own: Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura and Manipur. Arunachal Pradesh has always been among the most peaceful states in the northeast. In Assam, the BJP has turned the social fault line into a Hindu-Muslim binary, which is in sync with its political tactics outside the northeast. In Tripura, the BJP captured power in 2018 by allying with a local party, the Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT), and with Scheduled Tribes (ST) as its major support base. The state has had a historical Bengali versus ST fault line in politics and the BJP’s success in defeating the Communist Party of India (Marxist) was primarily a result of its alliance with the Indigenous People's Front of Tripura (IPFT). This synergy did not last till 2023 and the IPFT walked out of the alliance. While the BJP managed to retain power with very high support among Bengalis and outside support from the TIPRA Motha in Tripura, the latent Bengali-Tribal conflict remains. Manipur has gone the Tripura way in terms of a majority Meitei versus minority Kuki conflict, except it has taken an uglier turn.

It needs to be underlined that the BJP’s political tactics of having a dominant community leader as a chief minister in the north-east (Bengali in Tripura, Meitei in Manipur, Ahom in Assam) are very different from its tactics of nominating non-dominant caste leaders as chief ministers/deputy chief ministers in most states where it has captured power after 2014.

The reason the mainland (for lack of a better word) strategy has not been implemented in the north-east is that local fault lines have still not been subsumed in the larger narrative of a civilizational state-building project which the BJP claims to be leading at the all-India level. A failure to handle the multiple contradictions in the northeast and succumbing to majoritarian instincts, like in the case of Manipur, can have disastrous consequences on social and national security despite electoral success.

The second question

 

Why has gender-based violence in Manipur not led to a nationwide protest like what happened after the 2012 gangrape in Delhi?

On July 25, the official Twitter handle of the Congress party posted two pictures of Raisina Hill, the visual symbol of the seat of power of the Indian state. Titled “Then and Now”, one of the pictures is of protestors occupying the place during the 2012 anti-gangrape movement in Delhi, while the other is a recent picture of the same place, barricaded and empty.

On the face of it, one can have a less charitable and a charitable explanation of the photos from the Congress’s perspective. The former is that unlike the BJP, which was in Opposition in 2012 and used the 2012 gangrape to the hilt to discredit Congress governments in the Centre and Delhi, the Congress has not been able to build a protest in the aftermath of the video of sexual assault in Manipur. The charitable explanation can be that the Congress government was more tolerant of democratic protests than the present dispensation. While a case can definitely be made that the current regime has put far more restrictions on protesting in the national Capital, it has not been able to prevent mass mobilizations with organic traction. The farmers’ protest and anti-CAA protests are good examples here.

Beyond these explanations, one can ask a deeper question on why the horrific video which came out of Manipur has not triggered large-scale protests (not in the parliament or media) like the 2012 gangrape in Delhi.

The first reason, and this is not confined to Manipur, is that the magnitude of outrage particularly among the proverbial middle class against gender crimes is often muted if the victims are far from urban areas and belong to marginalised communities. The 2012 Delhi gangrape was the exact opposite of this, although this is not to take away from the horrific nature of the crime or the genuine outrage that the movement against it stood for.

The second, and this is a more ideological reason, is that the struggle against gender injustice, sexual violence in particular, can be divided into two streams in India. The first, which can be described as a more progressive approach, recognise these crimes as rooted in the entrenched structures of patriarchy where violence against women can only be combated and controlled by pushing the agenda of gender sensitisation of the people and the criminal justice system at large. The second, and this definitely has more traction in India, is the reactionary approach which sees the provision of harsh punishments (such as capital punishment for rapes) as the silver bullet against such crimes. As is to be expected, the latter tendency is more in sync with Right-Wing sensibilities in India and a large part of this constituency lacks the political motivation to protest against the ruling dispensation in both Manipur and the Centre.

What made the 2012 protests unique was that they found big traction from both the progressive and the reactionary streams of the spectrum against sexual violence. The former was reflected in the comprehensive recommendations of the Justice Verma Committee report, while the latter made its mark in building pressure for demands such as death sentences for rape crimes.

Another issue to tackle is the cynical handling of the fight against gender crimes based on political convenience. This tendency can be seen in the ranks of both the government and the Opposition. The lackadaisical approach of the National Commission for Women vis-à-vis the Manipur case is in sharp contrast to how the body reacts to incidents which take place in states where non-BJP parties are in power. Similarly, the Aam Admi Party (AAP), which is waxing eloquent against the need to act against gender crimes in the Manipur case, was completely silent on the remission of prison sentence of convicts in the Bilkis Bano gang rape case during the 2022 Gujarat election campaign (this was in keeping with its other soft-Hindutva theatrics). When political parties resort to such contradictory practices on the question of gender, it is bound to generate a deep sense of cynicism among common people vis-à-vis their sincerity to the cause at large.

Is there a larger takeaway from these points? Just this: Social movements, even if they are fighting for worthy causes, have to wage battle despite and not because of how realpolitik operates.

 

Every Friday, HT’s data and political economy editor, Roshan Kishore, combines his commitment to data and passion for qualitative analysis in a column for HT Premium, Terms of Trade. With a focus on one big number and one big issue, he will go behind the headlines to ask a question and address political economy issues and social puzzles facing contemporary India.

The views expressed are personal