Heard from New Delhi that not a single death has taken place in Manipur since June 13.
The statement was made at an all-party meet convened by Union Home Minister himself. He must have been briefed by top officials of the Union Home ministry on it.
However, it was on June 13 itself that nine village volunteers were massacred in Khamenlok area, including seven inside a church by heavily armed lungi clad Myanmarese illegals.
It was the single largest number of casualties since violence broke out in Manipur. It was as if the level of violence and status of peace and normalcy is measured in terms of deaths.
He also informed the gathering of political leaders that the Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been constantly monitoring the Manipur situation since Day One and guiding ‘them’ with full sensitivity to find a solution to the problem.
How lucky we are that he is monitoring the Manipur situation despite his unexplained silence. We had earlier questioned, how many more lives it would take to break his silence.
We somehow felt that perhaps he was not properly briefed about the situation on the ground in Manipur by his top advisors or that he has not made up his mind on what to say given the complexity of the problem here.
There was no mention of the Manipur crisis in his monthly thoughts. Everyone is still asking the same question as to why he is not speaking or maintaining his silence on the Manipur question.
His language of silence is so powerful and pervasive that sometimes we are made to feel guilty as to why we are questioning his silence.
Now, we somehow seems to understand. If the kind of intelligence that Union Home Minister is receiving from top officials is to be believed, the Prime Minister’s silence has been grossly misunderstood.
If violence is to be perceived in terms of deaths only what has happened to daily incidents of attacks and encounter in the peripheral villages of the valley and injuries sustained by villagers on both sides of the divide, and arson targeted on both CSO leaders of the hills and elected MLAs and MPs. Add to that, daily incidents of confrontations between central forces and Meira Paibis of which trust deficit is of main concern.
The valley people simply do not trust the central forces and it is for them to take confidence building measures.
We sometimes think, it is a matter of differences in matters of perception. While there has been several complaints from among the valley people and Meira Paibis of the central forces siding with the Kuki militants, the central forces on the other hand do not want the status-quo to be disturbed in any way.
It has taken years of track-two meets and negotiations to bring the NSCN-IM to the table and again painstaking efforts to contain the Kuki militants under Suspension of Operations (SoO) agreement, while the valley based insurgents are flushed out from Manipur territory.
Whatever be violations of the ground rules of ceasefire or SoO, security forces or the defence lobby do not want the status-quo to be disturbed at any cost. The defence lobby is also wary of the spill-over effects of the present crisis vis-à-vis the relevancy of valley based insurgency coming back again.
