What is going on in Manipur? For those who may remember this state in the Northeast of India, almost a year ago there was a massive eruption of violence. It reached a point where the violence seemed like civil war. Both the state and the Union Governments – part of the BJP’s boast platform of a “double engine” government – did almost nothing. Deaths and rapes continued. Police and military arsenals were looted.
The national media found itself torn between its everyday job – news coverage – and its special assignment – bowing to the BJP and Narendra Modi, and made the easy choice, the same one it has made for the last 10 years: ignored Manipur. Although episodes of violence, largely between the Kuki tribes and the Hindu-dominant Meiteis have reduced in the past 11 and a half months since the first week of May 2023, violence has not stopped.
Into this arena, have stepped the Prime Minister of India and the Union Home Minister, with their electoral campaigning. The Prime Minister claimed that his “timely intervention” had prevented further violence in Manipur. The Union Home Minister declaimed that he “won’t allow Manipur to be torn apart”.
The mainstream media has seen fit to report these two claims without question and context.
Why Manipur is being torn apart and by whom is left largely unanswered by the media, which took almost two months after the violence began in 2023 to even cursorily report on the state of anarchy in the state. It is therefore completely unsurprising that both Narendra Modi and Amit Shah can claim anything they want about Manipur. The Election Commission is like one of those wise monkeys.
And ignorance is bliss as the wise person once said and the media is in a permanent state of blissful, adoring ignorance.
Or maybe, it’s “what I don’t know can’t hurt me?”
Something like that.
This two part report by the Reporters’ Collective includes an analysis of the violence by the Assam Rifles, the Central paramilitary force responsible for border security and law and order in the Northeast. The official inquiry found that part of the problem lay with the political ambitions of Manipur chief minister N Biren Singh of the BJP. Some may remember how Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil had to resign after the Mumbai terror attacks of 2008, after massive media outrage that he changed his clothes three times in one day. Not so much for the failures around the attack itself. But Biren Singh was applauded by his party for the violence and thus the media too had to leave him alone.
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2024/4/15/manipur-bjp-cm-inflamed-conflict-assam-rifles-report-on-india-violence?traffic_source=KeepReading
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2024/4/16/behind-indias-manipur-conflict-a-tale-of-drugs-armed-groups-and-politics
Drugs, power, money, tribal demands, majoritarian oppression, political ambition and Hindutva have all played their role to keep Manipur on the simmer for the past year. The mainstream media cannot and will not see it. Especially now, as we are on the edge of one of the most important elections either.
As with the cowardly Indian media, so with the western media when it comes to Israel, Gaza, Palestine and now Iran. It is clearly almost impossible for the western media to go against the official lines in democratic nations like the USA, the UK, Germany and so on when it comes to Israel’s constant bombardment of Gaza. The deaths of over 41,000 Palestinians are easily overlooked, masked in language which does not blame Israel and the intent is clearly to make Israel look like a victim which is forced to be aggressive and kill thousands. Positions taken by other European nations like Spain or Ireland and presented almost as traitorous to the “cause” of Israel and the non-white world is largely ignored.
This note supposedly from senior editors of the venerable New York Times to staff on how to report on Palestine, published by theintercept.com, suggests how deep the bias lies and how low the most looked up to publication in the world has fallen:
Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator based in Dehradun. She writes on MxMIndia on Tuesdays and Fridays. Her views here are personal.