Opinion: Why Manipur Has Hit Rock Bottom Of Distrust

The New York Times on May 8 carried a report on the Manipur violence, which has engulfed the state in an inferno not seen since the kingdom's merger with India in 1949. The report said Christian minorities in Manipur have been allegedly persecuted by the majority Hindu Meiteis.

It was appalling to see the speed and ferocity of social media campaigns that damaged the image of India as an emerging power and defamed the northeast region - the Ashta Lakshmi, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi called it in February 2022, referring to the eight forms of the goddess of wealth in the context of development in the long-neglected northeast.

Allegations and counter-allegations of all kinds went viral as the violence spread. 'Experts' who read up on Manipur for the first time made the crisis a "tribal vs non-tribal" issue on national TV. Some even went to the extent of calling it ethnic cleansing by a particular group. This, given the fact that the Christian denomination in Manipur, including Meitei Christians, is actually the majority in the state, since only a little over half of the approximately 16 lakh Meiteis follow Hinduism today, while the Christian population is likely to be over 11 lakh.

In the recent clashes, no tribe other than the Kukis were involved in any manner, effectively exposing the tribal vs non-tribal narrative as a lie.