For any government, Manipur would have become an embarrassment long ago. Now that the festering wound has re-surfaced, it should be a matter of national concern, shame and outrage. Any Union government would have become shaky in its democratic pretence and moral foundation. Nothing of the sort seems to be happening. A government that was gloating over its “third term” stands exposed by what is happening in Manipur. However, this does not seem to matter for the government and the main ruling party. This insensitivity of the public, political parties and government alike, might be understood through three factors — the eclipse of governance, the distortion of state-ness and the failure of Hindu nationalism.
For over a year, the situation in Manipur has been practically out of control with ethnic clashes and defiance of police and armed forces. The Union government has done almost nothing even by way of formal efforts to restore law and order and broker peace. But this majestic neglect is not surprising. The government has followed a template of non-response and non-governance in the wake of almost every challenge or crisis.
In the pre-Covid phase, there were stirrings on the CAA-NRC issue. Subsequently, the farmers’ protests became a major challenge. There have also been scandals such as the one surrounding the SEBI chairperson. Many gaps in routine administration have surfaced through infrastructure tragedies, paper leaks, water leaks, train accidents. In each of these cases, the government’s response has been marked by inaction, repression and a perception offensive.
In fact, the governance model sits on this tripod: Don’t do anything, victimise the citizens if they complain and engage in perception warfare. Very helpfully for the government, the media has rarely followed up on these and other instances of (non) governance systematically and, instead, often colluded with it in its misinformation drive and/or perception offensive. Why should Manipur be an exception?
Similarly, the idea of state and state power has been distorted in response to such crises. One would imagine that a party and government that claim to be concerned with questions of national security, sovereignty and strength of the Indian state would have been alert in their response to developments in Manipur. Instead, Manipur has come to represent the failure of the Indian state. Even otherwise, the idea of a (strong) state has only meant optical and verbal illusions. Flexing metaphorical muscles is all that state-ness seems to involve, and there is a cynical exploitation of such challenges for partisan mileage. Both these traits were evident when protestors in the anti-CAA agitation were branded as anti-national, agitating farmers labelled as Khalistanis and the Ladakh protests were simply ignored.
The current regime has strange ways of using the idea of state. It uses it as drapery in its presentation of India’s international image — as Vishwaguru. This is done mainly for domestic audiences. Secondly, state is invoked as a weapon against citizens. Here, too, the state and its might are directed against and experienced by an internal audience. And third, state constitutes the outer justification of the regime’s nationalist fancies as was the case in Jammu & Kashmir with regard to Article 370.
Neither do citizens experience the benevolent prowess of the state nor does its might address core issues of internal order or external respect. In fact, through its lacklustre governance and flawed idea of “Hindu” nationalism, the current regime has only weakened the Indian state while simultaneously making it less democratic and more irresponsible.
So a state may be burning for more than a year, yet it does not qualify to be a concern in this discourse of a weak state pretending to be a strong one. The fact that two communities are unable to co-exist does not put pressure on the perception-centred state thinking. A border state being in turmoil does not worry the regime about security. Failure to quell violence does not disfigure the idea of a strong state.
But above all, the current regime’s idea of the Indian nation is at the heart of its unwillingness to bring Manipur to the centre of national policy. Hindutva ideology conflates religion and nation. This intellectual position simultaneously makes the state weak and the idea of nation hollow — because, the nationalist imagination it upholds does not have a fair space for non-Hindus. Hindutva believes in the existence of a conspiracy to convert Hindus to other religions — in the case of many states of the “Northeast”, to Christianity. Once this conspiracy theory is adopted, an automatic schism emerges between Hindus and non-Hindus. Ideologues of Hindu nationalism tend to expect that a truly “nationalist” government should protect Hindus and restrain non-Hindus. Such a formulation of the nation as constituting Hindus and being threatened by non-Hindus brings Hindutva and its idea of Hindu nation in conflict with the co-existence of diverse religious communities.
In the case of the North-east, in addition to the Hindu-Christian dichotomy, Hindutva also faces the challenge of making sense of the diversity of ethnic communities, be it in Assam, Tripura, Meghalaya or Manipur. The claim that all indigenous communities are historically Hindus becomes a hindrance in fair governmental practices in treating different communities. Hindutva organisations have been working to Hinduise the inhabitants of various states of the region. This exercise brings forward two different kinds of tensions. In the first place, a “Hindu vs non-Hindu” angle overshadows the local competition among communities, and secondly, a sense of loss of identity and tradition marks the cultural existence of different communities. Both factors exacerbate the already complicated and competitive social sphere that is concerned with access to material resources and belongingness vis-à-vis tradition and culture.
Votaries of Hindutva might not agree, but such tensions, whether in the North-east or any other part of India, starkly represent the failure of their idea of nation and nationalism. When suspicion of an imagined other and fear of the majority mark social relations, the state becomes the handmaiden of the majority community. This larger ideological architecture forms the context that vitiates governance and statehood. The ruling party’s identification with not just one community but also with a particular idea of the Indian nation has become a hurdle in evolving minimum trust among communities. Manipur is a cruel reminder of this.
When the entire country is being turned into a laboratory of community-based nationalism, it is only natural that Manipur does not remain an exception and that its continuing crisis ceases to matter.
The writer, based at Pune, taught political science
