On July 23, 2023, Vardhelli Murali, the Editor of popular Telugu daily Sakshi, wrote a poignant editorial with the title ‘Is my country a naked body?’ He says that Prime Minister Modi keeps talking about a double engine government in states where the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is in power, with the support of the Centre, a second engine. Murali says actually there are three engines at work in Manipur. Writing about the horrendous incident in which Kuki Christian women were paraded naked and one of them gangraped in Manipur, he said in whichever state the BJP is in power, the governments are run with ‘Triple Engine’ power. The third engine is the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).
The third engine systematically divides people into majority and minority at the ground level in every state. This engine is the most critical engine which works out ways and means to divide people on religious lines. Earlier they used to divide for ideological purposes. From the formation of the BJP/RSS-led Union government in 1999, they started using the mechanism for electoral purposes. More particularly, from the 2014 elections a massive anti-minority campaign was taken up all over the country. Muslims and Christians are mainly targeted. Very well organised Hindutva forces keep using all kinds of attack strategies. They use methods of isolation, generate fear among them, and finally use violence as a last resort to create a superior notion of control among the supporting majority. There were rumours that in the North-Eastern states dividing ethnic groups based on whether they were Christian or non-Christian had been going on for quite a long time. After the 2014 elections, the RSS/BJP acquired control over the local state apparatus and the faultlines deepened.
In Manipur, as per available data, around 53 percent population are Meiteis and the remaining consists of Kukis and Nagas, who are similar in numbers. While around 95 percent of Kukis and Nagas are Christian, among the Meiteis only 2-3 percent are so. The Hindutva forces seem to think that the Christian influence was growing even among Meitetis, therefore, they wanted to checkmate the religious transformation. They seem to have started first by organising Meiteis into a strong Hindu force. At the same time, the Kukis and Nagas of the state remained either loyal Christians or did Ghar Vapsi. Yet another major idea was to recognise the Hindu Meiteis as STs so that they get land rights and Government jobs. This is a Hindutva package to de-Christianise the North East. It is a long term project. The Manipur Chief Minister Biren Singh, it appears, is given the task of allowing the organised Hindu Meiteis to do the job.
Murali says this method was first used in Gujarat during the first phase of the second engine in control of Delhi. The Opposition, particularly, is wrong when they say only Narendra Modi is responsible for what is happening during his Prime Ministership, while leaving the most powerful ‘Third Engine' out of the political discourse. Modi is handling the second engine with a bigger power than Vajpayee is a fact. But without the ‘Third Engine' getting involved both the Union and the State governments cannot make use of the Hindutva apparatus like the one which is at work in Manipur. It is the ‘Third Engine' that tells the Chief Ministers what to do and what not to do. One of the key directions is in the charter of ‘What Not to Do’ . In the states, the machinery should standby following the theory of ‘What to Do’. They should not stop the Hindutva forces from its ideological actions under the theory of ‘What Not to Do’. After Gujarat we have seen Karnataka. Now Manipur has the same theories operating.
The behaviour of the men who made the Kuki Christian women walk naked needed training to be merciless. One of them was brutally raped. The PM condemned the incident once the videos of that scene shook the world. But the RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat did not speak a word against that brutality. The organisation earlier issued a general statement that normalcy should be restored in Manipur. However, in the background of the video of the brutal incident, he made a statement:
"Many times negative discussions are heard. But when we go around the country and see, then we come to know that there is 40 times more discussion about the good things that are happening.”
Without even condemning the anti-women nature of the incident, the Sarchanlak talks about ‘40 times more good things’. Since the three engines worked in synergy in Manipur, shall the Hindutva forces that were involved in that act want those women to do Ghar Vapasi? Should our cultural nation praise the forces that paraded indigenous Christian women naked and raped one to teach them a lesson for being born into a ‘foreign’ religion?
The Manipur CM announced that his government will see to it that the victims will get capital punishment. But later they could be released like the 11 convicts in the Bilikis Bano rape case, who were treated as great nationalists in Gujarat.
Many of us fought Indira Gandhi’s Emergency with the fear that dictatorship was imminent. At that time in my state---Andhra Pradesh—it was a double engine Government. Jalagam Vengal Rao was a fully oiled state level conductor of that engine. Killing any serious opponent, particularly young boys or girls, labelling them as dangerous Naxals, was the norm. No police protected them but every officer competed to kill more to get a medal. Double Engine governments were not new. Till 1967 in all states there were Double Engine Congress governments.
But we have never seen a woman being paraded in that brutal state of Emergency. Maybe because a woman was heading the Delhi engine, such an operation was not allowed. Luckily the nation overcame those nightmare days, maybe because there was no ‘Third Engine’ at that time in that political structure.
But now there is no such openly declared emergency in Manipur or in the country. There people are not just getting killed in individual encounters, but getting burnt alive in their own houses and outside.
According to Sarsanchalak Mohan Bhagwat, he is heading an army that can reach any part of India much quicker than the regular army of India. For what purpose should that army be used from power is a critical issue in a multi-religious and multi-caste country like India? Manipur has shown yet another level of brutal violence which we have never witnessed earlier.
The final act of cultivated violent culture is as Murali said: “My country is made of naked bodies of crying women’. They were not only paraded in the streets, not in night but in day light, and were taken to the fields to be raped. What should the world make of this culture of violence and barbarity?
Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd is a political theorist, social activist and author. His latest book The Shudras: Vision For a New Path, co-edited with Karthik Raja Kuruppusamy, has put forth a powerful argument that without the cooperation of Shudras with Dalits and Adivasis, caste inequality and oppression cannot be changed. Views expressed are the author's own.