By Ranjona Banerji
It took a video released on social media to wake parts of India up and force the government to make a few statements.
Manipur has been burning, on the verge of civil war and anarchy, if it’s not already happened, for almost three months now.
The mainstream media has largely ignored it. The “double engine” governments in Manipur and at the Centre have also done as little as possible. The internet was shut down to ensure only minimal information leaked out. If we know anything at all about what happened in Manipur, it is thanks to a few digital platforms like Scroll, The Print and Wire, journalists like Sushant Singh have examined the violence and the role of the Armed Forces. Mainstream journals began covering the violence – as little as possible – eventually.
TV? Well, if you watch TV then you know what it’s about: Hindu-Muslim, Modi, Modi, Hindu-Muslim. Plus “important” things were going on. Elections in Karnataka, toppling Maharashtra politics, the Prime Minister’s foreign visits. No time for Manipur, a state in the North East of India, far away from Delhi. Did I mention that the state is a BJP state? Please factor that in.
So, the video. Unless you are some sort of sexual deviant psychopath, the video is extremely gruesome and painful. A mob of men strip women, molest them publicly and then drag them into the fields. You cannot unsee it, so it’s better if you don’t if you haven’t yet.
The incident happened on May 4. The video made its way out to the world on July 19. An FIR was filed in May itself. But nothing was done by the state administration and no comment made by the Central government until the outrage on Twitter.
The Centre’s first response was to get the video taken down and threaten anyone who shared it with legal action. Hide what you can. What leaks out, shoot the messenger.
After a few hours the Union minister for Women and Child Development Smriti Irani took a few moments away from attacking Rahul Gandhi – her main job – to tweet her pain and add that she had spoken to the Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh. He incidentally is the person who has been able to do precisely nothing for the past three months.
Finally, the Prime Minister himself shook off the joy of all his foreign travel spreading India’s glory to express his “anger and anguish” at the glorious incidents in Manipur.
So how did our mainstream media react?
For a while, they were a bit shocked and silent. But it took a day for TV people, BJP supporters and propagandists in the media, to brush off any possible compassion they may have felt for the women in the video and get down to their real work. You know, Hindu-Muslim, Modi Modi.
TV person Pallavi Ghosh tweeted that she felt a little sad, as if Manipur was in another country plagued by troubles.
Amish Devgan who works in TV, said there were double standards and implied people were only talking about Manipur because it is a BJP state. This is said straight-faced, as if Manipur has not been burning for three months and as if his channel News 18 has had back-to-back coverage of Manipur for the last three months.
ANI, known as the news agency closest to the BJP, put out a tweet that a Muslim man had been arrested. This later turned out to be connected to another case – not the rapes in the video – and the tweet was quietly deleted without any explanation.
However the BJP IT Cell and the pliable, pliant troll army of media people, celebrities and others, immediately picked up on the Muslim name and amplified it.
Thus actual human behaviour: a few hours.
Brainless propaganda: Most of the time, barring a few hours.
Any form of journalism: zero hours.
Now, a few links which are not part of the massive TV stranglehold over “news” in India.
This is a report from May:
https://thewire.in/rights/manipur-imphal-violence-daughters-killed
This is what happened when a team of women lawyers went to Manipur to find out what was happening there:
https://scroll.in/latest/1052454/booked-for-waging-war-against-state-after-manipur-visit-lawyer-gets-protection-from-arrest-from-sc
This is a report, before the video was released:
https://theprint.in/ground-reports/no-one-wants-to-talk-about-rapes-in-manipur-theres-a-silence-at-the-heart-of-the-violence/1665212/
Here are a few reports subsequent to the release of the video:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/7/20/outrage-in-india-over-video-of-manipur-women-paraded-naked-raped
https://indianexpress.com/article/india/manipur-video-rape-fir-gathered-dust-for-62-days-as-high-level-meetings-went-on-8851344/
https://scroll.in/article/1052938/video-shows-kuki-women-being-paraded-naked-by-a-mob-manipur-police-confirm-fir-filed
People get the government they deserve, goes an old aphorism.
I suppose I could add they also deserve the media they choose to follow.
Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She writes on MxMIndia on Tuesdays and Fridays. Her views here are personal.