In a highly ethnic-conscious state like Manipur, everything is viewed from an ethnic lens. The hill-valley conundrum with regard to reservations, uneven development and representation in the state are discourses driven by ethnicity. And in the ensuing carnage in Manipur, the ethnic divide has ushered in a state of post-truth wherein people’s opinions are shaped less by objective facts and more by unsubstantiated facts that suit people’s emotions and beliefs.
The post-truth phenomenon is a manifestation of the breakdown or rather the failure of the institutions of truth-telling. In Manipur, the emergence of post-truth can be located to the failure of the state government and news media. The failure of the government could be attributed to two reasons. One is the lack of trust of the minor group against a government led by the major community. Two, the deliberation made by the state authority figures to malign the minor community. And the failure of news media could be attributed to the fact there is no independent media group that has true statewide influence or at least reports on state news from a non-ethnic perspective. National media with the exception of a few have covered the conflict in fragments and without in-depth or nuanced analysis, thus engaging in willful amnesia, distancing the issue from New Delhi where the politicking takes place, and othering the Northeast and Manipur, particularly from the ‘Indian’ consciousness.
It appears at least to me that the partisan approaches used by the two institutions in the wake of the ethnic violence have stripped the state of its status as the emblem of truth and justice, and the media as the fourth pillar of democracy that speak truth to power to steer the consciousness of the nation. In other words, the two institutions of truth-telling have prioritized material values over human and moral values.
With the failure of the state and news media to tell the truth, we see the emergence of Web 2.0 as the means for news and information through which narratives are weaved and the truth is broken into small suitable facts to tell a desired story, thus entrenching confusion and fiction in the game of truth-telling. The one truth claim that refuses to settle down since the violence broke out is who are the ‘men in black’ that are rioting and transforming themselves into killing machines? The Meiteis have claimed that the men in black are Kuki militants and volunteers who are attacking and killing the former.
On the contrary, the Kukis claimed that the men in black are the
volunteers of Arambai Tenggol, a civil group whose focus is the nation and culture but has in recent times become a radicalized armed militia. The recent clash of claims happened in the second week of June 2023. The People’s Chronicle filed a news report wherein an image was shared in which a trail of men in black are seen marching. It was alleged that these men are Kukis and they are out to attack the Meiteis. The same image was used by Zogam Mosi, a Zomi-Kuki Twitter group, to claim that the radical Meitei militants are coming from the valley to attack Lamka, a place dominated by the former.
Post-truth also manifests in the form of incorrect or inaccurate reporting. Here we instances of rape news and killings in gun battles. When the violence first broke out, there was news that a medical student from the major community was raped and her eyes gouged out. Though the news was later corrected as false, it continues to have a life of its own.
Likewise, a video containing a brutal scene of killing a girl from a minority community was proven to be false. Although the narratives are corrected they have served the purpose which is to demonize a group of people.
The latest of such misinformation reporting was about the gun battle at Boljang village in Kangpoki distinct on 22 June where it was misreported that several militants were killed. Such news is disseminated with the intention to malign a community and also perpetuate violence. But this news was later reported to be incorrect by EastMojo, an independent media based in Assam.
What we see in these instances is that good reporting prevailed, but there are instances where conflicting claims are pitched in unresolved contradictions. One of them is who started the fire that has burned down villages and towns and continues to inflame insuppressible rage. There are many more claims and counter-claims and reporting and misreporting that would be manufactured in the days to come to suit a certain narrative. I am saying this with a certain degree of certainty because social media allows one to express without accountability. It is this lack of accountability that enables people to manufacture lies in the disguise of news and truth, and it is this practice that has made this conflict different and more durable than the previous outbursts of ethnic conflict in the state.
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Truth in Manipur, to use Michael Ondaatje’s words from Anil’s Ghost, is “hidden by fear.” Truth as banal as it may sound has a lot of potential as the characters of Ondaatje’s novel demonstrated. One, it has the potential to set aflame a sleeping lake of petrol and fuel new vengeance and slaughter. Two, the truth can set us free. It is towards the latter we should pin our hopes on and harp on it.
Post-truth is a dangerous phenomenon because the truth is deferred. And the truth is fundamental for the establishment of the rule of law wherein we have a normative state and people are governed legitimately, and where both the state and people are accountable to the law.
We need truth as Michel Foucault puts it to delegitimize or discipline the government, and also to reclaim our self-sovereignty and to co-govern. We live in strange times, where the Taliban have the audacity to charge ticket money for the Buddha structures they have destroyed. And we also live with heads of state like the Chief Minister of Assam who has condemned the use of fertilisers as jihad to malign a certain community. And we know all this because “the truth is not dead yet” as Faiz Ahmad Faiz puts it. We must bring back the poetic charm of truth-telling to overcome the spectacle of violence perpetuated by post-truth.
Views expressed are personal. Dr. Boniface Gaiguilung Kamei teaches English literature at Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University University.
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