There is no place more thankless in India to be a journalist than Manipur. Over the last two decades, people in the profession have battled periodic militant threats, harassment by security forces such as the Assam Rifles and learnt to live with the invisibility that the rest of the country bestows upon them.
The state has been a perpetual conflict zone and, until recently, when the government and the ruling party became a bigger source of harassment, militants would tell editors what to publish. In the archive I created in 2018 on media in the 21st century, the section on Manipur goes back to 2002. That year, newspapers ceased publishing briefly in protest against militant threats. Editors and journalists of at least 50 English and vernacular publications decided to cease work following threats and counter-threats by two rival underground groups. This was over the publication of a news item on the kidnapping of a student leader.
In 2009, there was a mass surrender of accreditation cards by 100 journalists protesting attacks on them by the police and the political supporters of the chief minister. Militant groups in Manipur had been constantly pressurising newspapers to publish press releases that went against the guidelines of the Press Council of India. Ceasing publishing in protest is something that has happened periodically over the years, in 2011 and again in 2013. In 2013, a faction of an underground group targeted newspaper hawkers for the first time. The National Investigation Agency also issued summons to an editor who published news of the Raising Day parade of a banned group. In 2015, newspapers shut down over a bomb threat. In 2017, they left their editorial columns blank to protest the burning of a newspaper in front of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s office.
Until the latest flare up, militancy had, in recent years, ceased to be the biggest thorn in the side of the media in Manipur. State actors have replaced militants as the prime movers behind attacks on media outlets, journalists and social media users. The Manipur government used the sedition law, among others, to curb online criticism of its handling of Covid-19 in 2020. Thirteen cases were filed in just one month. Subsequently, in 2021, a journalist held for a Facebook post was released after a high court order. An editor in Manipur, speaking before the current turmoil, said that the BJP is more restrictive than the erstwhile Congress government had been, and is hypersensitive about criticism.
Apart from the repression, local media and citizens alike chafe at the relative invisibility they routinely suffer. Journalists writing from Manipur have complained about the non-coverage of their state by the media in the rest of the country. Over the years, they have compared the space given to Irom Sharmila’s fast versus Anna Hazare’s fast, the coverage of blasts in Manipur versus those in Mumbai, the negligible coverage of elections in Manipur compared to elections elsewhere. It doesn’t help when your state goes to the polls at the same time as Uttar Pradesh and sends two members to the Lok Sabha compared to 80 from UP.
When you compare the coverage of conflict-ridden states, it becomes clear that while violence normally makes news, it does not do so when it occurs in a state off the national media’s radar. That is distressingly evident today when, the daily horror notwithstanding, Manipur has stopped being a major news story. But it has also been true down the years when you compare Manipur with Kashmir.
That Kashmir is at the top of the mind no matter what the level of violence is at any given point is a no-brainer. But if documentation is needed, a 2009 research study provides it. It compared incidents of violence and their coverage in newspapers over the same eight-week period in May-July for Manipur and Kashmir. In what was a normal period in Manipur by the standards of the state, there were 37 encounters and 69 militants, 72 civilians, and 3 troopers were killed. Over this period, the Times of India found space for 2 stories with a Delhi dateline, the Hindu for 11, the Indian Express for 9 and the Telegraph for 3. And Kashmir? During the same period, 7 militants, 18 civilians — including the rape and murder victims in Shopian — and 4 troopers were killed. There were 48 stories in the Times of India, 60 in the Hindu, 64 in the Indian Express, and 11 in the Telegraph.
This difference is perhaps because political conflict, particularly one with a Pakistan angle, will get more coverage than ethnic conflict, the roots of which are baffling to the mainstream, be it readers or journalists or politicians.
This time around, when the violence and strife in Manipur have been unprecedented and the political crisis remains unresolved, journalists from the region have been voicing urgent distress on WhatsApp groups, circulating videos that keep the many horrific incidents at the top of the mind and pleading for fellow journalists to return coverage on Manipur to their front pages.
Meanwhile, the redoubtable Amit Malviya has created a BJP Manipur IT cell, which recently retweeted a dubious story published in India Today NE about a regional party leader, Naorem Mohen, of the Manipur Patriotic Party criticising Rahul Gandhi. Digging by Alt News’ Mohammed Zubair and others revealed that he was/is a BJP worker. And that the Manipur Patriotic Party, if it exists, hasn’t been heard of before.
Who knows, then, just how much fake news has been stirring the pot during the crisis now engulfing the state.
Sevanti Ninan is a media commentator and was the founder-editor of TheHoot.org
