5 days ago
- Politics
- New Indian Express
Manipur's moral imagination takes off after a crash
Twenty-five months after a violent ethnic conflict broke out between Meiteis and KukiZo tribes, and four months into president's rule, the guns have more or less fallen silent in Manipur. There are sighs of relief everywhere, yet none is fooled into believing that this is peace. It is, at best, the proverbial peace of the graveyard.
There is little to be surprised about this. The inferno that raged in the state for two years was unprecedented and bloody, claiming over 260 lives and displacing an estimated 60,000 people. There has also been a matching scale of losses of properties to arson attacks, and worse still, the two sides have mutually cleansed each other from their traditional home-grounds. The Meiteis are primarily in the Imphal valley and the Kukis-Zo in the foothills adjoining the valley. In the higher reaches are the Nagas.
Probably fatigue and a realisation of the senselessness of continued hostility are ensuring this semblance of calm. But for this 'negative peace', as Johan Galtung called it, to transform into 'positive peace', a reconciliatory process is vital. There can be no gainsaying that horrific atrocities have happened, but in paving a path to reconciliation, both warring sides must first overcome their victimhood syndrome and have the courage to acknowledge they have been both the victims as well as the perpetrators, depending on the locations of riots. Casualty figures bear testimony to this.
From day one of the conflict, social media has played a key role in igniting and fueling inflammatory passions. If not for it, in all likelihood, the trouble could have been arrested at Torbung area itself where arson rampages first broke out on the afternoon of May 3, 2023. Terabytes after terabytes of misinformation and disinformation have flooded social media space ever since, making the overall atmosphere corrosive and toxic.
Then suddenly, an event of 'terrible beauty' happened to temporarily cleanse Manipur's social media spaces of this toxicity. In a devastating tragedy, on June 12, the London-bound Air India flight crashed soon after take-off from Ahmedabad. Among the cabin crew were two flight attendants from Manipur—one a Kuki, Lamnunthem Singson, 26, and the other a Meitei, Kongbrailatpam Nganthoi Sharma, 20.
