A Tale Of Two Speeches: The Selectiveness Of Secularism

The recently-concluded no-confidence motion against the sitting government provided a number of insights into the nature and quality of opposition politics in our country, in general.

It revealed fresh layers underlying the ideology of secularism in particular, and allowed the public to gauge the levels of vitriol which may be expected in the run up to the general elections of 2024.

These are best fleshed out by contrasting two speeches made during the motion: one by the Union Home Minister, Amit Shah, and one by Sougata Roy of the Trinamool Congress (TMC).

Shah made three important points during his lengthy speech.

First, that since he had formally written to opposition parties, inviting them for a discussion on Manipur before the current monsoon session of parliament commenced, the opposition’s claims that they had disrupted house proceedings only to force a discussion on the subject were factually incorrect.

Second, he explained that the border between Manipur and Myanmar was an open one, and, that as per an old treaty between India and Myanmar, people living up to 40 kilometre on either side of this line did not need a passport to cross the border.

That is why it took time for the authorities to identify those Kukis who fled from Myanmar to Manipur in 2021, after a crackdown on them by a new Myanmarese government which seized power in a coup that year.

Third, Shah enumerated the many measures undertaken by the central government, with the cooperation of the Manipur government, to control outbreaks of violence, and to restore peace.

These included, he said, the radical measures of replacing both the Chief Secretary and the Director General of Police, fencing of some parts of the border, and the identification of Kuki illegal immigrants who sought to live permanently in the state (which is what lay at the root of the conflagration).

The speech ended with the unanimous passage of a motion appealing for peace in Manipur. This is basically a symbolic resolution, similar to the famous one passed in 1994 on Jammu and Kashmir, which seeks to raise the subject above the talons of petty politicking, and expresses a joint intent that it be resolved apolitically.

However, this declaration of common public intent varied starkly from Sougata Roy’s speech made the day before, in which the issue of Manipur was described in anything but apolitical terms.

As we shall see, not only was the situation recast by the speech in a severely-binary fashion, but it also took the blame game to a very, very, different level.

Roy began with a lugubrious condemnation of everything the present government has done, and everything it stands for. He ticked all the usual boxes, essentially calling the government callous, communal, and incompetent.

The eyes of the treasury benches glazed over with ennui, as the same, staid, list of accusations was once more trotted out. Even the mandatory references to Tagore, and a few Shakespearean interludes, failed to lift the languor.

The thrust of his pitch was that this government was polarising communities instead of solving problems. Then Roy got to the matter of Manipur.

First, he said the clashes in Manipur reminded him of the ‘riots in Rwanda between Hutus and Tutsis’. This was a reference to the terrible genocide of the Tutsi minority by the Hutu majority in 2004. Readers will understand the symbolism sought to be set by Roy through this reference.

Second, he referred to a video which came to light in July 2023, ‘showing two Kuki women being stripped, paraded naked on the streets, and sexually assaulted apparently by Meitei men’.

The operative phrase in this sentence is ‘apparently by Meitei men’, by which, the Meitei (who are the majority community in Manipur), are positioned as the aggressors, and the Kuki, as the victims.

Up to this point, Roy could, theoretically, remain shielded from accusations of bias, by invoking the defence of innocence, since he was only repeating what was reported in the press.

But then, third, he said: “The Government led by BJP Chief Minister, Shri N. Biren Singh, who is a Meitei, has failed to maintain law and order.”

What was the need to bring up Biren Singh’s ethnicity, to emphasise that the Chief Minister is a Meitei, if not to racially segregate perpetrators from victims? The question needs no answer, since Swarajya readers are wise enough to know what it is.

Saugata Roy can’t even dodge these points because, apart from the Sansad TV video of his speech which is available online, a transcript of it has also been dutifully posted by his party on their website.

The only saving grace, if the usual suspects can manage to conjure one, is that Roy was not as explicit as Ernakulam MP Hibi Eden of the Congress, who openly, and flagrantly, described the problem in Manipur solely as an anti-minority, anti-Christian assault. (See here for his even more controversial and inflammatory comments made two months ago in public, in Kochi, after a visit to Manipur).

Kottayam MP Thomas Chazhikadan of the Kerala Congress (Mani), formerly an ally of the Congress in Kerala, and currently allied with the Marxists, painted the situation in Manipur in more graphic, one-sided terms. He said that Churches were being burnt; that Christians are afraid.

This is secularism at work: the dangerous manufacturing of divisive narratives, with no care for the terrible violence it could instigate.

By it, an entire community, and only one, is cast as the sole culprit, to re-trigger legacy fault lines, to keep the turbulence going, and thereby show up the state and central governments as having acted in a biased manner.

Speaking during the no-confidence motion, Adhir Ranjan Choudhry of the Congress agitatedly added one more dimension, by saying that the problems in Manipur had reached global proportions. In the flurry, he probably missed the import of his words, since only a narrative can internationalise a domestic problem.

And all this, at a time when Prime Minister Narendra Modi sternly advised the house on 10 August that, the more we keep politics away from Manipur, the sooner we can enforce peace.

Jamui MP Chirag Paswan probably put it best in his speech against the motion, when he spoke of the opposition’s tendency for selective responsibility.

He is right: The violence in Manipur is a godsend to secularists who had grown both despondent and desperate, after having run out of issues to raise. Somehow, a ‘failure to recover land lost to the Chinese’, or rising vegetable prices, simply don’t resonate as much with their target audience as a meaty ethnic clash does.

It is this selectiveness of secularism, linking a tinder box to the ballot box, which makes its practice so sinister. And it has no place in our society.