It took the rape of the already burnt-out soul of India, to reawaken some tokenism of forgotten conscience, as the news of the horrific rape in Manipur seeped out. Distant, disconnected and the essentially forgotten tragedy of Manipur that had eased its way out of the front pages, returned to shame the nation that had moved on, presuming ‘normalcy’ had returned, as it often presumed when such a narrative is manufactured.
The era of social media may have brought the reality of news to ‘real-time’ in one’s palms, but it has also inculcated a regrettable phenomenon of ‘narrative building’ and fickleness that debars more informed debate, discussion and appreciation of the ground situation. Many from Manipur had been crying hoarse on the continuing tragedy and polarisation of society, with fears of deterioration ~ but the larger comity of the ‘rest of India’, had reduced the issue to the age-old binary of a ‘us versus them’ template. At an oversimplistic level, the ‘them’ were the foreign elements and the ‘us’ was rooted in subliminal majoritarian spirit.
Depending on partisan loyalties, the ensuing violence in Manipur was sadly viewed from the blackand-white prism of these templatized binaries. The fact that such civil strife always entails layers of historic tensions, perceived inequities, and complexities of point-ofview was invariably forgotten, and instead of calling-out each and every act of provocation, instigation and partisanship, many took to taking sides.
While the Prime Minister rightfully condemned the incident as having ‘shamed the country’, a clearly rattled Chief Justice of the Supreme Court had to weigh in by bluntly stating, “If government doesn’t act, we will” and that, “in a constitutional democracy, it is unacceptable”. It was frankly too little, too late for the victims of the despicable incident, as indeed for the entirety of Manipuris, irrespective of their ethnic and partisan divide.
This was not just the rape of two women of any specific ethnicity but was a matter for the collective consciousness of all Manipuris, and by extension, to India as a whole. The perpetrators of this heinous act have also besmirched the case of those who they ostensibly seek to represent. Without the intent of taking sides in the deeply polarised cauldron of Manipur, one may even add that the inherent barbarism of the act is often about individual complicities (and onto all others involved in the partaking, standingby, and shocking recording of the act).
Many sociologists have challenged the ‘rape as a weapon of war’ supposition as it often tends to ignore rapes perpetrated by ordinary citizens/mobs that are not necessarily attributable to armed militias ~ either way, abominable to say the least. At the same time, this incident is an important reminder to all those in the ‘rest of India’ who had reduced the issue to ‘us versus them’ ~ as the earlier incident where the mob had forced the Indian Army to release the held militants and all those involved in this specific rape case did not belong to the so-called ‘them’ category.
Therefore, while there are genuine grievances on both sides of the situational ‘divide’, it is best avoidable to generalize and pick sides without understanding the complete lay of the land. Incidents like this are instructive to wholeheartedly slam the same, without bothering to identify if they were part of ‘them’ or ‘us’, as no one really is so, in situations like Manipur. Rape as a weapon in any ethnic conflict has larger sociological and psychological intent.
That the situation in Manipur has regressed to a level where some feel emboldened enough to accost and snatch away the ‘others’ from police protection, is telling. Even worse was the animalistic extent to which a particular side felt justified to rape one from the other as a means of settling scores (apparently owing to fake videos of supposed rape from their own community) is reflective of the pernicious effect of ‘fakes’ that circulate to sew a narrative.
It also personified the degraded notions of revenge at play. Importantly, the affixation of the term ‘rapist’ ought not to only be attributed to those who physically violated the women, but to all those who stood by, cheered and even took videos. Ironically, all this inhumanity took place in the name of a cause or purported inequity!
Attempting to establish supremacy in a conflict through rape is rooted in patriarchal, ageold and patronising notions of women as ‘gatekeepers of honour’ of any community. Therefore, by the act of rape the rapist believes that he/she manages to defile the ‘other’ community and reassert the power equation between them – a lamentable reality of the sociocultural fixation that hasn’t evolved enough. What exactly did the perpetrators achieve? Which part of their perceived grievance were they able to impactfully posit?
Who exactly did they manage to defile by their wantonness is something for all us to introspect over and hang our heads in shame. Manipur needs a clean break from partisan politics and binary discussions.
The powersthat-be need to recognise that there are legitimate grievances on both sides, and they should not be seen to be taking sides. What happens in terms of governing Manipur should not necessarily be valourised, galvanised and pedestalized in the ‘rest of the country’ to bolster any electoral agenda. Sadly, the handling of insurgencies is invariably milked for their ‘muscularity’, and at least Manipur should be spared that glare.
In such times when it is only the Indian Army that has emerged as an apolitical and unbiased force to protect the vulnerable (irrespective of their ethnic denomination), the rationale of its necessity for the only credible force capable of instilling peace e.g., AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Protection Act), must be mulled. Many in Manipur who had once opposed it tooth-and-nail even if it did not tantamount to one rupee extra in terms of emoluments to the Indian soldier, save affording protection in operations, now look at the same soldier to restore peace and order.
Manipur is indeed a personification of ‘mini-India’ with its countless diversities of ethnicities, religions and complicated wounds of history that begs inclusivity, secularity and affirmation/protection of the vulnerable. Much needs to be learnt from the shame of the incident in terms of society, social media culture of narrative building and unhinged politics ~ and importantly, the alluded ‘shame’ is singularly reserved for rapists, in their expanded form.
(The writer is Lt Gen PVSM, AVSM (Retd), and former Lt Governor of Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry)