Silence at the heart of violence

Rape often means the end of the world for the victim, a woman. According to a report by the Women Action Development (WAD), even prior to the much talked about mob disrobing and raping incident of two Kuki tribal women which sparked international outrage, there were 191 cases of rape and abduction of women in Manipur in the year 2022.

This was an increase from the corresponding figures of 148 cases in the year 2021. The government’s state commission for Women (MSCW) figures were, however, much lower at 78 for 2022.

The WAD figures for 2018 are 246 cases, for 2019 it is 293 cases and for 2020 it is 190. According to the genocide convention international treaty, rape is used as an instrument of violence during ethnic or communal riots as a means of taking revenge, and globally too the same trend is observed.

Unfortunately for the two Kuki women who were subjected to this most inhuman ordeal on May 4th, they were victims of vengeance for a crime not committed.

For the uninitiated, the May 4th incident was triggered off due to fake news about a Meitei woman being raped and disrobed, allegedly by Kuki tormentors.

It was much later that the matter was clarified as false news, but by then the mob had done the unthinkable damage out of sheer rage and vengeance.

But then, the May incident was followed by another on May 6th, where a woman in her forties, and a mother of two children was disrobed, violated, and set ablaze by the ‘mob’, even during curfew.

And well, in the presence of the Assam Rifles, police, and about 40,000 paramilitary forces who are present in Manipur ostensibly to restore peace.

In another tragic incident, two tribal women were raped, tortured, and murdered in broad daylight by, once again the ‘mob’, sometimes referred to as the ‘men in black’ (a reference to the armed Meitei mob Arambai Tenggol), at a car wash in Imphal, where the two women were working. Their family members are yet to receive the bodies, still kept in a mortuary.

It is interesting to note that as many as ten Kuki-Zo tribal lawmakers from the hill districts of Manipur, including seven from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, in a joint statement said that to their knowledge, at least four other such extreme cases of heinous crimes against Manipuri women were committed in the state which is facing a civil war like situation.

While Manipur continues to burn under the watchful supervision of the state and the central government, the hesitancy to act and restore peace and normalcy in the state and to put an end to such brutal, inhuman assaults on women in the state, is perplexing to say the least.

Is there an ulterior motive behind this entire carnage? Was it pre-planned, with a sinister aim of achieving some nefarious objectives?

Otherwise, there seems to be little in terms of explanation for the chain of events right from the withdrawal of the suspension of operations agreement with the militant outfits, demolition of Christian religious institutions, crackdown on land under the guise of illegal Myanmar refugees and poppy cultivation, the order of the court for the ST status of Meiteis, to the eruption of ethnic violence on such a scale just after the tribal solidarity march.

In a society that is patriarchal and has deep ethnic fault lines etched since time immemorial, the voice of women against whom sexual violence is perpetrated is rarely heard. There is absolute silence in the very heart of this endless, senseless violence that has engulfed Manipur.

The abysmally few cases filed for rapes and trafficking by victims or their families in Manipur are a testimony to this silent suffering. Social stigma, taunting, and vulnerability of tribal women have become their weakness which is exploited by people in the crowd of ‘mobs’.