TW: Mentions Rape, Violence
Have you ever heard of a writer’s limbo? Well, that’s what had grasped me, benumbing my neural senses, forbidding me to write about issues concerning political matters. The reason, if you’re interested to know, was complete disgust. Disgust toward the political establishment of our country. More ‘politically’ speaking: our ‘nation’ India. A disgust toward silence. Silence of the masses and more importantly, the silence of our political leaders. Trouble has been broiling in Manipur for decades now.
The much-talked-about video of two Kuki women being paraded naked became viral on July 19 and sparked a much-awaited response from our erstwhile Prime Minister Narendra Modi on July 20. However, the incident reportedly took place on May 4. It took the Prime Minister exactly 77 days to respond to an ethnic conflict that supposedly began on May 3. This is the kind of silence that results in repugnance, a bitter taste that no matter how much we write, scream, or protest, the apathy will continue.
I am not intrinsic to the culture of Manipur. Nor have I done an in-depth analysis of the ethnic conflict brewing in the state. Therefore, it would be unworthy and irresponsible for me to comment on the same. But what I do understand and I have been delving deep into is the use of sexual violence for political conflict—be it religious, ethnic, racial, or caste-based violence. What is astonishing is that the silence broke when two women were paraded naked by Meitei men, and allegedly gang-raped afterwards.
Why did it take an action like the public parading of naked women and the heinous act of rape to crack open the national consciousness about what’s going on in Manipur? The answer is quite simple. According to Nivedita Menon’s book Seeing Like A Feminist (2012), the patriarchal understanding of rape is a ‘fate worse than death’. She elaborates that feminists understand “rape as a serious crime. Its harm is seen to lie in the attack on a woman’s autonomy and bodily integrity. Feminists reject the idea that it’s a fate worse than death.”
Not to undermine the pain and suffering of the women who were gang-raped, shamed, and publicly paraded naked, but this is the phenomenon that has led to the sudden outcry against whatever has been going on in Manipur. Because we live in a patriarchal society, the spectacle of rape is much more visceral and provoking to patriarchal mindsets than the ongoing violence for almost three months between the majority Meitei community’s dominant position against the minority Kuki’s revolt against it. Menon says, “Feminist politics must emphasize the agency of a woman and, demystify sexual violence as merely one of the many risks faced by people.” But this is not the case. Although according to an article published in The Guardian, the fracas of the ethnic conflict has been burning and dividing the state of Manipur for over five months now, the entire nation only woke up to the violence when the rape was made to be a spectacle, even eliciting a much-awaited response from Narendra Modi. This is an instance of how rape is instilled to be the greatest fear and the greatest attack on humanity. But surely, feminists are not too keen on making it one since it restricts the freedom of movement by instilling the fear of rape as the greatest one in the psyche of the society, which in turn forbids freedom of movement for women all over the nation.
The Guardian article reports that:
“The violence was sparked by a court ruling in March that granted the majority Meitei “scheduled tribal status”, entitling them to the same economic benefits and quotas in government jobs and education as the minority Kuki.
It also allowed Meiteis to buy land in the hills, where the Kukis predominately live, further fueling fears that their lands, jobs, and opportunities would be taken away. This prompted protests, mostly by Kuki student groups, which were met with violence. By early May, it had escalated into all-out violence between Kuki and Meitei groups.”
But the surprising bit is the entire violence, the core of the ethnic issue, is overshadowed by the spectacle of the rape of the Kuki women. Only after such a gruesome spectacle surfaced did the Chief Minister of the majority Meitei community, N Biren Singh, resorted to legal action and announced the arrest of one accused, 32-year-old Heradas, from Thoubal district. Till the rape of women was absent from the narrative, the deafening silence was appalling, at least to the feminist sensibility. It must be noted that since the inception of the violence in Manipur, almost 140 people have been killed, and approximately 60,000 people displaced as their villages were burned—most of them from the minority Kuki community.
Additionally, this brutal act of Kuki women being paraded naked was also rhetoric embedded in the ‘rape for rape’ narrative that is quite patriarchal in nature. It was a response to misinformation being spread that Meitei women were raped by Kuki men. Later, all these allegations were proved to be false by various fact-checking reports.
Another important aspect that must be highlighted in this case is what Janet Halley calls ‘governance feminism‘. Halley talks about a new feminist universalist worldview where ‘women are not a particular group of humanity but a universe of their own’. Thus, the ethno-nationalist conflict in Manipur becomes a ‘war against women,’ without any heed to the fact that humanity and humanitarian issues were equally important and men too were tortured, displaced, and killed. The concept of governance feminism effaces the specificities of politics in different locations and assumes that all politics anywhere can be translated as a global war on women. This is an imperialist white feminist view that must be battled, especially by feminists of the so-called Third World.
In an article written by my friend, Aritry Das, on NewsClick, she asks two very important questions:
“1) What was the police doing for one and half months since a serious complaint was registered in an already conflict-ridden situation?
2) Why did it take the video to go viral for the police to finally make an arrest?”
The answer lies in my analysis: because our patriarchal society considers rape as a fate worse than death, a hundred killings, displacements, and suffering of humanity in the state of Manipur did not stir up the nation. Instead, governance feminism resulted in magnifying the gruesome image to finally extract a response and break the silence on the violence in Manipur.
What surprises me the most is that the women of the Meitei community, in July 2004, staged a naked protest in front of Kangla Fort, the headquarters of the Indian Army, with a banner that said “Indian Army Rape Us”. They were the imas (the mothers of Manipur). And today, the men of the same community are seen raping “the daughters” of the Kuki community in Manipur, according to Modi’s statement. I am left wondering whether a collective resistance against state violence was quelled by dividing ethnic communities. And if it did happen, how did it happen?
Nonetheless, the silence did break, and maybe people like me, who are far distanced from the state of Manipur would be educated on the issues that afflict the region. It is a long time since I opined on a political matter and was almost forced by my humanitarian senses to pen down a few issues. I am content, no matter what, that the writer’s limbo has broken for me! And I hope that more and more people feel the pain of regions far away from us, the realities that we don’t get to live but feel through the presence of media.