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A protester holds a placard showing an image of burning PM Narendra Modi during a demonstration against the Manipur violence in Mumbai, India.
Getting Modi to talk about Manipur violence
India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been reluctant to speak publicly about a surge of ethnic violence in the country’s Manipur province. An explosive viral video of a mob of men stripping and abusing a pair of women forced him to respond last week, but his political rivals say he’s done little to quell the broader conflict, which has killed at least 130 people and driven tens of thousands from their homes.
Indians protest about the ongoing Manipur violence in New Delhi.
A horrific video pushes India’s Modi to speak out
After two months of gruesome ethnic violence in the northeastern state of Manipur, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi finally weighed in on Thursday, but only after a horrific video emerged, showing several women being stripped, assaulted, and marched off to be gang-raped.
For two months now, clashes in Manipur between the Meitei majority tribe and the Kiki tribe, to which the women belonged, have left more than 100 dead and displaced at least 60,000 people.
Modi pledged justice and said he was “filled with pain and anger.” Lawmakers called for a debate on the issue, and the supreme court demanded swift justice.
But Modi, and the authorities more broadly, have been criticized for ignoring the Manipur conflict until now. The events in the video occurred in May. And despite rape charges that were filed at the time, no arrests were made until Thursday, after the video emerged.
The episode is part of a broader trend of rising violence against women in the world’s most populous democracy, where crimes such as rape and kidnapping often go unpunished, and cultural norms stigmatize victims. In 2021, India saw the highest number of reported crimes against women in its history.