By Sushil Kutty
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is in No-Modi land’, not that it’s anybody’s fault. It’s Modi who shunned Manipur like a fault, avoided the state like it would soil his shoes. Year 2023 is way back and the events of 2023 split the state wide open. The violence was unpardonable. Prime Minister Modi kept his distance. The shortest possible indictment was “Modi should have trespassed”, why did he not, what stopped him?
No, he is in Manipur. Prime Minister Modi flew in from Mizoram. He is on a five- or four-state tour and Manipur happens to fall on the way. Anyway, the Prime Minister got a look at Manipur from up in the sky and landed for a closer look. Since then there have been photo-ops. Modi with “victims”; PM Modi with “children”; PM Modi here and PM Modi there!
Would it have made a difference if it wasn’t a Saturday? Somehow because it’s a weekend there is no punch in the long-pending visit. Common Manipuris aren’t reacting the way they should be. The streets are empty. Where were the Kuki, where were the Meitei? Where the outrage, where the rage? Were the Opposition INDIA bloc caught flat footed?
Modi’s two-day tour of the Northeast should have been top of the Opposition’s antenna on Saturday. Is Modi in conflict-hit Manipur for reconciliation? Why didn’t “first stop Churachandpur” not boil out in anger and outrage at the first sight of the absentee Prime Minister? Whose faux pas, whose missed opportunity?
Far as Indian citizens outside Manipur know, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is having an easy Manipur visit despite all the urging and outrage of three-plus years. The Opposition was forever crying foul why Modi was evading Manipur, In fact, Modi’s Manipur non-visits had become a global talking point. But on Saturday, in the Kuki stronghold, there wasn’t a meeow much less a roar.
Modi launched projects and Modi visited places. It was like there were no ethnic clashes, ever. Has Scheduled Tribe status been granted to the Meiteis? The High Court order sparked the violent opposition from the Kuki. The subsequent unrest killed over 260 people and displaced around 60,000.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi had nothing to say about the violence, the death toll nor on the displaced. The time it took for Chief Minister N Biren Singh to resign was itself a disgrace. The Prime Minister’s continued silence on this and other Manipur happenings was a feature of Saturday, There was no Opposition at hand to remind him.
PM Modi laid the foundation stones of multiple development projects worth over Rs 7,300 crore at Churachandpur. Job done he will fly back, chapter closed. Manipur settled as far as the Modi government is concerned. The next ethnic clash and all politicians of all shades will start the shouting all over again. Is Churachandpur satisfied with multiple development projects worth over Rs 7,300 crore?
At least Purnea MP Pappu Yadav reacted: “When everything has been ruined, he remembers Manipur…The entire community in Manipur has been devastated, the constitutional values of India have been violated, and the social environment has been destroyed. Now PM Modi is visiting Manipur, what a spectacle! But when the daughters of Manipur were suffering, he did not remember them.”
Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge also caught the snippet of the Prime Minister’s Saturday visit to Manipur. “This hush-hush PIT STOP isn’t repentance. It’s not even guilt,” Kharge slammed PM Modi’s Manipur visit. “Your 3-hour PIT STOP in Manipur is not compassion — it’s farce, tokenism, and a grave insult to a wounded people. Your so-called ROADSHOW in Imphal and Churachandpur today, is nothing but a cowardly escape from hearing the cries of people in relief camps!
“864 days of violence: ~300 lives lost, 67,000 displaced, 1,500+ injured. You made 46 foreign trips since, but not a single visit to share two words of sympathy with your own citizens. Your last visit to Manipur? January 2022 — for elections!” he said. “Your ‘Double Engine’ has bulldozed the innocent lives of Manipur. You and HM Amit Shah’s gross incompetence and complicity in betraying all communities was shielded from scrutiny, by imposing President’s Rule…”
That at the end of the day was Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s weekend pick-nick to Manipur. (IPA Service)
