Manipur is witnessing a Partition-like situation, warned JNU professor-turned-Inner Manipur MP Angomcha Bimol Akoijam in Lok Sabha on Monday night in an impassioned maiden speech that sought to move Prime Minister Narendra Modi to break his silence on the situation in the state.

Repeatedly drawing the attention of the House to the silence of the President’s address to Parliament on Manipur, Akoijam said: “More than 60,000 people are languishing in relief camps in wretched conditions for the last one year. If anybody has read Partition of the sub-continent, you are witnessing the same thing.

“People are living in wretched conditions that I cannot even mention here. 60,000 people homeless is not a joke. 200-plus people died and there have been civil war-like situations where people are armed to their 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,” he said.

According to the first-time MP, it is the hurt and anger over the attempt by the government to silence the tragedy of Manipur that has “thrown a nobody like me to be part of this temple of democracy”, beating the BJP cabinet minister in the state, Thounaojam Basanta Kumar Singh, by over a lakh votes.

Stating that Manipur is one of the most militarised areas in the country, Akoijam said that every square centimetre of the state was covered by central armed forces.

“It is one of the most militarised areas in this country where you have more armed policemen than civil police besides the armed forces of the Union. Despite this, how is it 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 said.

Reeling out names of Manipuris who have won gallantry awards and brought laurels for the country in sports, Akoijam said India was dishonouring them with this silence which is being interpreted in the Northeast as a sign of the nation not caring about what is happening in the state.

Not one to be brow-beaten by the BJP benches which began heckling him, Akoijam said: “If you had an iota of concern for this state, there would not have been a silence in this House, nor in the presidential address.”

He signed off close to midnight with a promise to stop this line of attack on one condition: “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.”

Modi has spoken thrice but briefly on Manipur — once outside Parliament after a video emerged of two women being paraded naked in Kangpokpi district two months after the violence began in May 2023, and second, in the Lok Sabha while replying to the no-confidence motion against his government in August 2023. He also mentioned the state in his Independence Day address last year.

Akoijam is an associate professor with JNU’s Centre for the Study of Social Systems at the School of Social Sciences. He has been elected from the Inner Manipur seat as the Congress candidate. The party won both seats in the state in what is being projected by the Congress as a rejection of the BJP brand of politics
in Manipur.