Speaking at a public event in Moirang, Manipur, in January, the Union home minister, Amit Shah, drew a distinction between pre­vious Congress governm­ents and the Bharatiya Janata Party, which rules both in New Delhi and Imphal. The Congress, he said, had coined the slogan, ‘Look East’, for India’s Northeast, while the BJP under Prime Minister Narendra Modi had changed it to ‘Act East’. “We do what we promise,” said Shah. If Shah still believes that the BJP is delivering on its promise to Manipur, then it’s a commitment Manipur — and India — can do without.

Six months after Shah’s comments, the northeastern state is aflame. While it’s easy to describe the horrific violence that has engulfed Manipur since early May as ‘inter-ethnic clashes’, it is cynical politics that has brought India to this moment. The fire also threatens to burn, irreparably, India’s quarter-century-old ambitions of turning its Northeast into a bridge of connectivity with Southeast Asia and East Asia. More than 140 people have died in the violence and tens of thousands have been forced to flee their homes for refugee camps. A British legacy of restricting the Meitei people of Manipur to the Imphal valley and the Kuki and Naga communities to the hills has become the Modi government’s endowment to the future: a deep partition that will be hard to reverse.

All of this has drawn global attention, especially after a video went viral in which a mob of men is seen parading naked women, groping them. At least one of the women was also gang-raped. On Sunday, a state department spokesperson in the United States of America said Washington was deeply concerned by the situation in Manipur. The US ambassador to India, Eric Garcetti, has previously spoken of how Washington was willing to help India bring peace back to Manipur if New Delhi asked for assistance. The European Parliament has condemned the Indian government’s inaction and provocative statements from BJP leaders that legislators in Brussels have blamed for fuelling the fire.

In terms of India’s foreign policy, New Delhi’s Act East approach is the pillar of diplomacy that is likely to suffer the most grievous long-term consequences.

Bordering Myanmar, Man­ipur has long been the gateway to Southeast Asia that Indian strategic thinkers wanted to exploit to enhance economic cooperation with that region. A trinational highway connecting India, Myanmar and Thailand is the marquee project of the Act East policy. In early July, the Union transport mi­nis­ter, Nitin Gadkari, anno­un­ced that around 70% of the highway was ready. But the highway enters India in Manipur, at the border crossing of Moreh. With the state so deeply divided, and with stolen arms and weapons spread across Manipur, will traders, transporters and travellers trust this route to bring business and potential tourism from Southeast Asia to India? Manipur has also been trying to attract investments from Japan. But will Tokyo — and Japanese businesses — feel comfortable investing money and aid in the state anymore? What will also worry India’s Act East partners abroad — both governments and potential investors — is that other parts of the Northeast are also on the boil.

In Assam, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma is des­perate to demonstrate cre­d­entials of bigotry on a dai­ly ba­sis. In the past, he thre­ate­ned to shut down madra­sas and blocked the cre­ation of a museum for the Miya Muslim community. His lat­est gem? Blaming Miya Mus­lims for rising vegetable prices. Implicit — and often explicit — in the diatribes is the claim that Miya Mus­lims are illegal Bangladeshi immigrants, whereas the community has resided in Assam since before Independence. Assam is the Northeast’s most populous state and largest economy. An Assam cleaved along religious lines by politicians in power can only undermine the Act East policy.

Modi has not said a word about Sarma’s divisive words and actions. It took 78 days and the viral video of the naked women for the prime minister to speak up on Manipur. Once India’s Act East bridge turns into charred embers, it will be too late: neither looking nor acting will help.

Charu Sudan Kasturi is a senior journalist who writes on foreign policy and international relations