In the days to come...

318 days since his last trip, Amit Shah returned to ask for votes for 'the friend of Manipur, Narendra Modi'

This image, via Reddit, is of the 20 December 2023 mass burial of 87 victims of ongoing ethnic violence in Manipur

IF there was any doubt that the civil war in Manipur is majoritarian in nature, it was laid to rest on 28 March when the state government abruptly declared that Easter Sunday (March 31), a day sacred for Christians, would be a working day for all government offices, public sector undertakings and societies under the state government’s ambit.

The N Biren Singh government in its circular claimed that this was done “for the smooth functioning of offices in the last few days of the financial year (2023-24)”.

This sudden attack of efficiency led to inevitable outrage among the Christian Kuki-Zo community, which comprises a little over 44 percent of the population. A day later, the government backtracked and said Easter Sunday would be a holiday.

That abortive attempt at communal gaslighting kicked off a spate of activity with a view to the rapidly approaching polls (Manipur votes on April 19 and 26).

On 9 April, Biren Singh accused the Congress of making the video of two women who on 4 May 2024 were stripped, paraded naked, groped and subsequently gang-raped viral only to embarrass Prime Minister Modi. Whether the CM, PM, or anyone else in the “double-engine government”, was embarrassed shamed by the heinous act on their watch, Singh did not say.

Worse was to follow. In an 8 April interview to Assam Tribune Modi said:

Because of the timely intervention of the Government of India and efforts made by the Government of Manipur, there has been a marked improvement in the situation of the State.

Just days later, on 13 April, fresh violence broke out in the Thoubal district of Manipur. On 14 April, two Kuki-Zo village volunteers were killed in Imphal East, close to the border of Kangpokpi district; their bodies were mutilated, and graphic videos of the mutilation were shared on social media. Manipur police filed an FIR in the case.

On 12 March, a three-judge Supreme Court bench had directed the Manipur government, the CBI and the National Investigation Agency to submit, within two weeks, status reports on their investigations into the Manipur violence and on chargesheets they have filed. This order has not yet been complied with.

On 15 April, Home Minister Amit Shah went one up on the state CM. In course of an election rally in Manipur, Shah said, emphasis mine:

“This election is to elect PM Modi for the 3rd term. Every vote to BJP candidate is a vote for the friend of Manipur, Narendra Modi

With friends like these…

And just one day later, on 16 April, Shah outdid himself in blather. The upcoming Lok Sabha election, he said, would be fought between “those talking of dividing Manipur” and “those holding it together”.

Who these two opposing forces were, he did not specify. Who, if anyone, is holding that disturbed state together, he did not say.

“Manipur will witness peace in the days to come,” Shah said. “Over the past six years, Manipur had been peaceful. I assure you that the BJP will hold talks with those who have ignited the conflict and those who have endured it, and restore peace with [Manipur’s] integrity intact.”

In the days to come, he said, Modi’s priority will be to restore peace in Manipur.

350 days have passed since the conflict began. 318 days had passed since Amit Shah was last in Manipur on a mission of peace. Now he was back, on a mission to seek votes for Modi. As for peace, that can always be postponed to the “days to come…”

That is a feature of this government — good things will come, they always assure us. Not today or even tomorrow, but 25 years from now.

On 23 February 2022, Modi was in Imphal, campaigning for the BJP in the Manipur state assembly elections. As always, much of his speech was devoted to how badly the Congress had let the state down. And then came the clincher:

"This election will decide the future of Manipur for the next 25 years"

The Manipur electorate did itself proud. There was a 90.2% voter turnout. And the BJP went from 21 seats in the previous election to a majority of 32 seats in the 60-member assembly, while the Congress was decimated, losing losing 23 of the 28 seats it had won previously.

Never mind the next 25 years, it didn’t even take 25 months for the state to unravel, to plunge into a seemingly endless civil war.

Consider the various statements of Modi, Shah and their cohort, in context of the fact that they are talking of a state, under their watch, where hundreds have been killed and tens of thousands have been driven to live the life of refugees in their own country, subsisting on doles handed out sporadically by the government.

Then consider this: Each fresh atrocity — and there is at least one every other day — is reported in the print media (on television, not so much, but that is hardly a surprise). Back in January, I’d written a long post twinning the pran prathishta of the Ram temple in Ayodhya with events in Manipur.

Angana Chakrabarti of The Reporter’s Collective has just published, in Al Jazeera, a two-part investigation into the conflict in Manipur. Part one details an explosive report by Assam Rifles that lays out how CM N Biren Singh was responsible for fanning the flames in Manipur. Part two goes into the details of a dangerous cocktail of drugs, ethnic rivalry, and armed groups that has kept the state on a boil.

There has been no dearth of reporting on the conflict — so how, in the face of all this readily available information, does the BJP and its supreme leader lie with such brazen impunity?

Because they can. Because that is the nature of the Big Lie — a theory that originated not with Joseph Goebbels but with Adolf Hitler, who expounded on it in Mein Kampf:

“…in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.

It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation….”

In sum, since we cannot conceive that anyone would tell such gigantic, easily disproven falsehoods, we conclude that there might be some truth to it after all — and thus lie becomes fact.

Caveat: When Hitler wrote about this “unqualified capacity for falsehood”, he was referring to the Jews. Which is another page in the authoritarian playbook: To loudly, constantly, accuse the other of what you yourself are guilty of.

The Jewish Virtual Library contains a psychological profile of Hitler, written by Walter C Langer of the Office of Strategic Services. Here is a section about Hitler’s modus operandi:

His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.

Try that hat on the man who now stalks among us, asking for our trust, our votes, so that he can usher in ‘Viksit Bharat’, whatever that is, in 2047. See if it fits.

And meanwhile, believe him when he says peace is coming. So too is Santa Claus.