Unanswered questions

1. If you are indigenous tribes of Manipur, why aren’t you speaking out about illegal immigrants who are not Indians?

2. If you are not involved in the narcotics trade, why aren’t you speaking out about large-scale illegal opium-poppy plantations in the hills?

3. If you have verifiable proof of Indian heritage, why are you against implementation of the National Register of Citizens (NRC)?

4. If majority of the followers of Christianity or Hinduism were not even involved, why did you announce a religious conflict the world over?

5. If separatists’ demands are fulfilled, then what?

6. If few people are doing something illegal, why drag their entire race into the mud, calling them ethnic cleansers, illegal immigrants, or narco-terrorists?

7. Why attack the vulnerable?

Every nation must protect their boundaries, while allowing legal immigration and humanitarian refugee protection. However, turning a blind eye to unfettered illegal immigration, which then begins to destroy the very fabric of your society through narco-terrorism should not be ignored.

If this happened to your community or nation, what would you do?

As to the unanswered questions, unfortunately, we do not have the answers either. All we get is either noise or violence from all sides.

All we can do now is trust our Judicial System, and hold on to our belief that eventually the Truth will be uncovered, and justice served.

Acta, non verba.

Actions, not words.

What we do know is that there are over 70,000 souls currently without a home, displaced and surviving in make-shift relief camps that rely heavily on other people’s charity; and over 100 lives lost, with family and loved ones left in abject tragedy.

We shudder to imagine the tragedy of losing our loved ones, taken from us so inhumanely, or watching our houses and places of worship being burnt down and bulldozed to the ground, without a hint of mercy or empathy.

We look down in shame for all the barbaric and unimaginable violations of privacy and dignity that we have committed against one another—violations that no human must ever suffer.

Why did we all stoop so low to unleash our primitive instincts?

The end never justifies the means. And if it does, then we have already lost.

If Twitter battles decide what the Truth is, if lying is no longer considered a shameful vice, if social-media virulence dictates significance and priority, if pointing fingers is the prevailing social norm, then we have already lost our collective morality.

Tit for tat and we all lose. Not just what we are fighting for, but our basic humanity; something that would drive friends to become mortal enemies.

Our only hope now is that saner heads will prevail, or, that insanity gets tired of ruining lives.

If the violence started because of a petition concerning ethnic status—a petition which is a legal right afforded and protected by our Constitution—as responsible citizens we should have argued the case peacefully in a Court of Law.

Because without trust in our Judicial System, are we still the largest democracy we have all been celebrating since our independence, which is 76 years today?

Why this web-site?

The way few people are turning this humanitarian crisis into a social-media circus is deeply disappointing: where anything goes—truth be damned!

It feels like washing dirty laundry in public, but at an international level where the reputation of India is sold bit-by-bit to gain religious sympathies to drive a long held separatist agenda.

We even doubt that this dirty propaganda is a reflection of mass consent among the perpetrators. It feels more like a manufactured unity forced upon the helpless innocents by a violent and unscrupulous few.

Once, in one of the umpteenth Twitter Spaces live discussions, one participant asked why the Government of India does not legalise Heroin, like medicinal Marijuana is legalised is certain countries, so that people in the hills could continue with their opium-poppy plantations! How naive, disillusioned or morally corrupt do you have to be to not understand civic or social responsibility.

Miscreants rattling the cage from their lavish second homes in metropolitan cities away from the suffering, with those abroad being some of the loudest. We, those of us who aren’t affected immediately, had the chance to negotiate a reconciliation, but that opportunity was wasted due to tribalism: the us versus them mentality. Now these same folks are busy shouting through their lungs about their selective solidarity.

What shocked us the most was solidarity demonstrations deciding to remove victims from the other side, in case it diminishes the victimhood of their fellow brethren. How disappointing.

And those on the other side, who are being made scapegoats of this ruse, consistently fail to respond gracefully to any form of intimidation, instead reacting impulsively in an undignified manner, furthering the cause of the separatist while harming their own.

This constant barrage of self-sabotage is simply mind boggling!

We completely understand and share the fear, the anger, and the feeling of uncertainty this crisis has wrought upon us. However, we completely disagree and condemn any form of violent expression to innocent civilians. Even war must have ethics.

The responsibility for protection lies solely with the government, to provide assurances so that no citizen needs to bear arms.

Honestly, we are now tired of all this nonsense and the lies, and wish to return to a normal life where folks go to work to make an honest living, where children enjoy their innocent school days—as children should—and where old folks spend time together reminiscing about the India they knew, and the global power that it has become.

There were no unhinged mob violence before 3 May 2023, and the petition for reclassification of an ethnic status was submitted as a legal petition to a Court of Law. It should have been argued peacefully based on the merits of the case. Instead, the crisis has destroyed the lives of several innocents, and continues to do so, while also inflicting irreparable damage to the reputation of India.

Why?

Because few people decided to exploit it to push their separatist agenda. And many who could have done something decided to do nothing.

With all the propaganda flying around, we are already struggling to separate fact from fiction. This is when we are our weakest, when we need to be our most alert.

If we start giving in to whims and fancies of a few, at the cost of losing the integrity of the whole, when will it ever stop?

If you doubt us in what we are saying, because we seem biased, please at least ask yourself why all of this is happening right now and why it escalated so quickly, and why it continues to drag on with no end in sight?

Why can’t there be any room for a peaceful reconciliation?

And who is preventing it from happening?

If these concern you, as we hope every Indian would be, please spend some time listening to both sides, and examine the deeds and actions of both—not just those that managed to catch the ephemeral tide of social-media virality, but also those who are suffering in absolute silence.

Because, in the end, it may be you, those who are not directly involved, who could help save the peace and integrity of Manipur, and by extension the peace and integrity of India.

If not, the current hopelessness would stifle the people of Manipur to their very own extinction.

We don’t know how to run a government for over 1.4 billion citizens; so, we won’t pretend that we do. However, lives are at risk on a daily basis. We hope the current inaction is not a sign of reluctance to act, or worse, apathy!

We pray that our trust in our government will not be squandered.

Jai Hind.

Long live India.