After months of ethnic violence that has left over 130 people dead and 60,000 displaced in Manipur, members of Montreal’s Indian diaspora gathered last Monday (July 24) night to hold a vigil and demand the Indian government step up to stem the bloodshed, CBC News reported
Since May, mobs have rampaged through villages in Manipur, murdering people and torching houses. Last week, despite the internet being largely blocked and journalists being locked out in the remote state, a video surfaced online showing two women paraded naked in a field and sexually assaulted by scores of young men, said a report in CBC News.
“I’m absolutely livid,” CBC News quoted Birapka Sharone as saying. She hails from the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, but she took to the streets of Parc-Extension to voice her outrage.
“We’re here as Indians, as expatriates, as the Indian diaspora. We’re here because we’re all horrified by what’s happening in India,” said Sharone, an organizer with South Asian Diaspora Action Collective, which is calling for the dismissal of the Manipur’s leaders. “I’m watching the country I was born and grew up in descend into chaos,” she said. “Democracy is being thrown out the window and women are paying the price, as we see in Manipur.”
The ethnic violence was, in part, sparked by an affirmative action controversy that saw Christian Kukis protest a demand from the mostly Hindu Meiteis for a special status that would let them buy land in the hills populated by Kukis and other tribal groups and get a share of government jobs.
Sharone said minorities in India faced an increasing threat of violence while attackers are able to act with impunity.
Rabia Bains, who hails from the Indian state of Punjab in the country’s north, also wanted to voice her anger. “It’s not just the violence, but the apathy of the government, of the people who knew about it,” said Baines. “It boils our blood.”
The Montreal protesters are not alone in saying the Indian government has failed to act to stem the violence. Sanjib Baruah, political science professor at Bard College in New York, studies borderlands like Manipur, which is straddles India and Myanmar.
Baruah says he is surprised by the recent levels of “extraordinary” violence, which falls more along ethnic than religious lines. Conflict has been brewing in the region for years but has now been brought to a head by the demand for special status, he said. “The lack of political will on the part of the government — not capacity — is the most disturbing thing for me,” Baruah said.
He said India’s constitution allows for Prime Minister Modi to dismiss local Manipur officials — something the central government has done in the past in previous regions of the country to restore order. Baruah says the Kuki people see the government as siding with the Meteis as the Manipur’s chief minister, Biren Singh, is Meitei and a member of the BJP.
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