Skip to main content

Manipur is a Portend

From India Today
Knights in Shining Armour

Narendra Modi visited the Northeast of his kingdom more than 60 times after he crowned himself as the emperor of India-to-be-renamed-as-Hindustan. Travel is one of his countless passions and hence the number 60 need not bother us. The only place left on the earth for him to visit is Timbuctoo. It is rumoured that he wanted to go to the moon on the latest edition of Chandrayan but the scientists were not quite sure of whether their thing would land in Pakistan mistaking it for the moon. The scientists who made that rocket went to the Tirupati temple to ask Venkateswara (Modi may not know that Hindu God yet!) to direct the rocket scientifically to the moon instead of Pakistan.

At that time Modi was in France preaching peace to the world. Om shanti. Let there be peace, said Modi to France. And Manipur burnt.

Manipur has to burn for the sake of world peace. Narendra Modi is the name of the last incarnation of God, according to the latest Hindu mythology. He has a solution for all problems because he is God. Manipur is his way of solving India’s problem of diversity.

Diversity is difficult to control. If everything is the same, life would be very easy. Just imagine all human beings being like Narendra Modi. Such lovely people. All Narendra Modis. One nation One beard.

One nation One religion is what Manipur portends, thanks to Modi ji.

Manipur has an interesting history. It was never a Hindu state. The people there were all tribals. One day, a king in one part of what became Manipur later decided to become Hindu for political reasons. Kings belong to a species called politicians. Their DNA is quite different from that of ordinary mortals and entirely different from that of intelligent human beings. They decide to become Hindu or whatever just like that. Like a snap of your finger.

I’m digressing. Let’s get back to the story.

This guy, a Meitei king, became a Hindu. He must have been forced to do so by the sheer politics of the time. Or maybe he was enlightened. Who knows? Let Modi’s historians make up a narrative. Anyway, as far as we know, this guy became a Hindu and forced all his tribe to become Hindus. Hardly anyone has the spine to stand up to say No to a king. So the Meiteis became Hindus. But the other tribes like Kukis and Nagas of the region retained their religions.

Now 53% of Manipur’s population are Meiteis. 40% are Kukis and Nagas. These Kukis and Nagas chose Christianity just as the Meiteis chose Hinduism. Convenience. Survival. Moving on.

How do you move on in a world of Ambanis and Adanis and Modis and Amit Shahs?

If they use god as a tool, you bring your god or any powerful god into the arena. What else? Prove whose god is more powerful.

300 plus churches of Christians were burnt down in Manipur. It means that the Christian god is impotent in front of Modi’s politics. That’s just what Modi wants to prove. He is the next god. The only god. The only saviour of the world. Viswaguru. Viswanath. Hats off to him, guys and gaals!

It’s good to have Modi as our god. He has no demands other than that we all should worship him. You can do whatever you like after that. Just donate some of your profits to Modiji’s funds. That’s all. Donations can be in the form of GST also. Once you do that, you can do whatever you want. Whatever! You can even kill.

India’s Home Minister Amit Shah spent three days in Manipur and the killings started after that. Kill. That’s the legacy of the ancient Indian civilisation. Have you read the last statement of Mahatma Gandhi’s killer? If you haven’t, don’t worry; it’s coming in the school syllabus next year. You can read it. But the rising prices of food items may mean that you won’t survive to the next year. Even tomatoes can kill!

People with vegetarian causes are the best killers.

They go around preaching peace to the world.

In the latest of his umpteen visits to America, Modi ji said that India is the Mother of Democracy. Manipur was burning then. In Australia, Modi ji demanded protection for Hindu temples. Christian churches were burning in Manipur at that time. He demanded peace from the world in Paris last week when his own country was killing and killing and killing.

Killing in Manipur.

Manipur is a portend.

They were tribal people with their own gods and rituals. One king became Hindu and his people became Hindus. The others became Christians later for similar reasons – survival, in simple terms. If you have the freedom to become a Hindu, why not give someone else the freedom to become whatever $*1t he or she wants to become?

Manipur is the answer to that question. You can’t become anything in today’s India other than what Modi ji and Amit Shaji want you to become. Become their puppets.  And nothing more.

Nothing more than puppets.

That’s what Manipur teaches us.

 

Labels:

Comments

  1. magiceyeJuly 16, 2023 at 7:16 PM

    Brilliant thought scary assessment of the situation. Well done!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 16, 2023 at 9:02 PM

      There's reason for optimism: the worst is yet to come.

      Delete
  2. Rajeev MoothedathJuly 19, 2023 at 11:52 AM

    This was quite informative for me. Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  3. जितेन्द्र माथुरJuly 21, 2023 at 9:27 AM

    Your satire has hit the nail right on its head. Modi has no demands other than that we all should worship him (other demands have already been met by his holding on to the political power in India which brings all the luxuries and mortal joys to him). The heart of every sensitive person bleeds for Manipur. Modi and his trusted lieutenant Shah are not among the sensitive ones. May God (if He exists) save Manipur and the innocents suffering there.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalJuly 21, 2023 at 11:11 AM

      Now when the situation has become irreparable, Modi has started making some noise like pointing out some violence happening in Congress-ruled states. His only solution : compare and contrast & justify himself.

      Delete
    2. जितेन्द्र माथुरJuly 22, 2023 at 4:52 PM

      Observing his record, nothing else could be expected from him. Expecting even an iota of sensitivity from the Pradhaan Sewak of India will be just like asking for the moon. That the supreme court has taken cognizance of the state of things in Manipur is the only positive emerged from an ocean of negativity. Let's hope, the apex court will compel the government machinery to do the right things lying pending for months.

      Delete
  4. CareenaAugust 3, 2023 at 12:57 PM

    Loved this piece. It was emphatic, as the hour needs it to be.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
44 comments
Read more

The Final Farewell

Book Review “ Death ends life, not a relationship ,” as Mitch Albom put it. That is why, we have so many rituals associated with death. Minakshi Dewan’s book, The Final Farewell [HarperCollins, 2023], is a well-researched book about those rituals. The book starts with an elaborate description of the Sikh rituals associated with death and cremation, before moving on to Islam, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and finally Hinduism. After that, it’s all about the various traditions and related details of Hindu final rites. A few chapters are dedicated to the problems of widows in India, gender discrimination in the last rites, and the problem of unclaimed dead bodies. There is a chapter titled ‘Grieving Widows in Hindi Cinema’ too. Death and its rituals form an unusual theme for a book. Frankly, I don’t find the topic stimulating in any way. Obviously, I didn’t buy this book. It came to me as quite many other books do – for reasons of their own. I read the book finally, having shelv
10 comments
Read more

Vultures and Religion

When vultures become extinct, why should a religion face a threat? “When the vultures died off, they stopped eating the bodies of Zoroastrians…” I was amused as I went on reading the book The Final Farewell by Minakshi Dewan. The book is about how the dead are dealt with by people of different religious persuasions. Dead people are quite useless, unless you love euphemism. Or, as they say, dead people tell no tales. In the end, we are all just stories made by people like the religious woman who wrote the epitaph for her atheist husband: “Here lies an atheist, all dressed up and no place to go.” Zoroastrianism is a religion which converts death into a sordid tale by throwing the corpses of its believers to vultures. Death makes one impure, according to that religion. Well, I always thought, and still do, that life makes one impure. I have the support of Lord Buddha on that. Life is dukkha , said the Enlightened. That is, suffering, dissatisfaction and unease. Death is liberation
4 comments
Read more

Cats and Love

No less a psychologist than Freud said that the “time spent with cats is never wasted.” I find time to spend with cats precisely for that reason. They are not easy to love, particularly if they are the country variety which are not quite tameable, and mine are those. What makes my love affair with my cats special is precisely their unwillingness to befriend me. They’d rather be in their own company. “In ancient time, cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this,” Terry Pratchett says. My cats haven’t, I’m sure. Pratchett knew what he was speaking about because he loved cats which appear frequently in his works. Pratchett’s cats love independence, very unlike dogs. Dogs come when you call them; cats take a message and get back to you as and when they please. I don’t have dogs. But my brother’s dogs visit us – Maggie and me – every evening. We give them something to eat and they love that. They spend time with us after eating. My cats just go away without even a look af
8 comments
Read more

Hate Politics

Illustration by Copilot Hatred is what dominates the social media in India. It has been going on for many years now. A lot of violence is perpetrated by the ruling party’s own men. One of the most recent instances of venom spewed out by none other than Mithun Chakraborty would shake any sensible person. But the right wing of India is celebrating it. Seventy-four-year-old Chakraborty threatened to chop the people of a particular minority community into pieces. The Home Minister Amit Shah was sitting on the stage with a smile when the threat was issued openly. A few days back, a video clip showing a right-winger denying food to a Muslim woman because she refused to chant ‘Jai Sri Ram’ dominated the social media. What kind of charity is it that is founded on hatred? If you go through the social media for a while, you will be astounded by the surfeit of hatred there. Why do a people who form the vast majority of a country hate a small minority so much? Hatred usually comes from some
8 comments
Read more