Manipur kept burning because of the miserable failure of the famed double-engine sarkar, a veteran Left leader said on Monday.
“Both the state government and the Centre are responsible. Law and order is a state subject. The Manipur government failed to respond to the situation. The Centre also did not show the alertness expected of it,” said Manoj Bhattacharya, RSP leader and former Rajya Sabha MP.
“The much-touted double-engine sarkar model has utterly failed in handling Manipur,” he added.
The need for a double-engine sarkar is stressed by the BJP in every state poll campaign.
The Manipur clashes that erupted on May 3 have left over 175 dead and displaced over 67,000. The warring Meitei and Kuki-Zo communities in Manipur have accused each other of fomenting the trouble.
There was no exception on Monday.
Bhattacharya was invited to a news conference called by an association called Manipuri in Kolkata (MIK) comprising mostly Meiteis.
The aim of the interaction, organisers said, was to “counter a narrative” that Meiteis, the majority community, were the oppressors and the Kukis, the minorities, were the victims.
For most of the time, until Bhattacharya spoke, the organisers kept listing the alleged atrocities of Kukis unleashed on Meiteis.
“It is a false narrative that the Manipur crisis is a Hindu-versus-Christian fight. Kuki Christians are attacking Metei Christians,” said Rohan Philem, a resident of Manipur known for his bicycle and motorbike expeditions across the country for social causes.
Around 250 Metei churches and some 390 temples have been vandalised by “Kuki Christians”, said Philem, a Meitei Christian himself.
Ground reports by independent agencies have suggested that Kukis have borne the biggest brunt of the violence.
On Monday, the organisers accused the Kukis of playing the victim card and attributed the strife to “the opium business” that they said was dominated by Kukis. They also blamed “infiltrators from Myanmar” for the violence.
It was against this background that Bhattacharya showed where the buck needed stopping.
“All this is one version of why Manipur is burning. But what they cannot say is that the state government is directly responsible for this. The Centre can also not absolve itself.
“I have been to Manipur many times. I have seen many protests there. But nothing like this. What is happening now is a civil war,” said Bhattacharya.
“The governments should have taken steps to tackle ethnic cleansing. They did not,” he added.
Bhattacharya left early and could not see that Philem was on the same page as him on at least one issue.
Asked about Narendra Modi’s role in resolving the crisis, Philem said: “The Prime Minister has just tweeted on the lives lost in the earthquake in Morocco. He has consoled the people of Morocco. But he spoke for the first time about Manipur after the video of two women being paraded went viral.”
On July 20, Modi said that his heart was “full of pain, full of anger” at the “shameful” incident in Manipur. It was a one-way address outside the Parliament and he did not take questions. But he clubbed the complete anarchy in Manipur with crimes in
states ruled by Opposition parties.
On August 10, Modi spoke on Manipur again, while replying to the Opposition’s no-confidence motion in Parliament. But he mentioned Manipur an hour and 33 minutes into his speech and returned to it towards the end.
Philem appealed to Modi on Monday: “I am not saying this as a Metei or a Kuki but as a Manipuri. We urgently need your intervention.”