The first-time Congress MP from Inner Manipur, Angomcha Bimol Akoijam, made a promise on the floor of the Lok Sabha on Monday night as the clock was racing to strike the midnight hour. .

“I will keep quiet the moment the prime minister opens his mouth and the nationalist party says Manipur is part of India, and we care for the people of that state,” said Akoijam, the last speaker on the vote of thanks to the President’s address to the newly constituted 18th Lok Sabha.

The promise Akoijam made was to his people, victims of an ethnic strife for over a year which has all but disappeared from what is called the mainstream – be it politics or the media.

An associate professor at the JNU’s school of social sciences, Akoijam, a PhD in psychology, won his first election from the Inner Manipur Lok Sabha seat by a margin of 1,09,801 votes defeating the BJP’s Th. Basanta Kumar Singh.

Akoijam said his becoming a member of the temple of democracy beating a BJP cabinet minister was a reflection of the hurt, the anger that has catapulted a “nobody” like him onto the national political scene.

By the time Akoijam’s turn came to speak on the floor of the Lok Sabha – his debut speech – most of the members including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi had left.

Only a handful of members remained.

“I am drawing your attention to the absence of Manipur in the President’s address,” Akoijam said addressing the TDP MP Krishna Kumar Tenneti, who was in the chair.

“This is not a simple absence. It’s a reminder of a rashtra-chetana [national consciousness] which excludes people,” he said.

Manipur has witnessed ethnic violence between the Kuki and the Metei tribes since May 3 last year, on the question of the latter’s demand for Scheduled Tribe status.

Akoijam belongs to the majority Metei community.

Over 200 people belonging to both the communities have been killed in the last 14 months. Modi, who led the BJP’s campaign for a third term and visited every nook and corner of India to campaign, including multiple visits to some states, did not campaign in Manipur, where his party is in power.

Leader of Opposition,in his speech earlier on Monday, had criticised the PM for his silence on Manipur.

“You have immersed Manipur in a civil war… For the prime minister, there is no state of Manipur,” Rahul said amid pin drop silence from the Treasury benches.

Hours later, Akoijam, too, questioned the silence of the BJP and PM Modi on Manipur.

Pointing to the clock racing towards the midnight hour, the Opposition MP reminded the Indian government that Manipur was two hours ahead of the time in Delhi.in real terms

“You must realise more than 60,000 people are languishing in relief camps in wretched conditions for last one year. Sixty-thousand people homeless is not a joke, 200-plus people died and there has been a civil war-like situation where people are armed to the teeth and roaming around and fighting each other, defending their villages. And the Indian State is a mute spectator to this tragedy for one year,” said Akoijam.

Referring to his own research on Partition in which he and his team had interviewed 2,500 survivors from 1947, Akoijam said Manipur was witness to the same tragedy today.

“I must remind this house that each and every square cm of Manipur is covered by central armed forces. It is one of the most militarised areas of this country where you have more armed policemen than the civil police besides the armed forces of the Union. Despite this, how is that 60,000 people were rendered homeless and villages in thousands were destroyed and yet our prime minister remained mute – not even a word – and the presidential address did not even mention that?” Akoijam asked.

He accused the BJP government of continuing with a colonial mindset when it came to dealing with people from the northeast states, where the BJP has made steady inroads in the last decade.

“This silence is not normal. It is a reminder of the fact that several scholars have pointed out that there is a continuity between the colonial and the post-colonial today,” he said.

Quoting the psychologist Ashis Nandy, Akoijam said the BJP and Modi’s persistently ignoring the troubles in Manipur reflected that colonialism is a state of mind.

“Colonialism is a state of mind, it is a psychological phenomenon, it is an outlook. The way you look at the people, the way you look at the world and the fact that this continuity is shown by neglecting the tragedy of a state which is the 19th state of the Union,” he said.

“It is amazing to see that I get an opportunity as the midnight hour approaches to register this anguish, this hurt of the denial that this country has meted out to its own citizen in the state of Manipur. I must ask this question to the House. Is this silence communicating to the people of the northeast and Manipur in particular that you don’t matter in the Indian State’s scheme of things?”

Akoijam went on to roll out a list of names from the state who had laid down their lives on the battlefield and brought laurels to the country from the sporting arena.

“If you had even an iota of concern for the state there would not have been silence in this House nor in the presidential address,” he said, pointing out that the history of the northeast is kept out of the history text books.

“Today, the northeast remains outside the history textbooks of India,” he said. “That is why you treat them as the other. The silence on the Manipur tragedy is not unique. It is a reflection of the general continuity of the colonial in the post-colonial. A nationalist party like the BJP will feel comfortable with this silence on Manipur.”