THE timeline tells the story of craven cynicism at very high places. Two tribal women were paraded naked and filmed by a mob in Manipur on May 4. One of the two was allegedly gang-raped. Manipur, bordering Myanmar, has been in flames since May 3. The chief minister belongs to the mostly Hindu Meiti community whose armed members paraded the two women of the Kuki community of Christian tribals. Both groups had lived largely peacefully for decades, and intermarriage was not uncommon. Then mayhem broke out in May, which observers say appeared to be planned. Hundreds of churches were burnt, 150 people killed, thousands of families uprooted from their homes. A false rumour of a Meiti woman’s rape by Kuki men precipitated the violence, including the targeting of the two women. A similarly false and deliberately divisive rumour in Uttar Pradesh on the eve of the 2014 elections had helped range Hindu voters against Muslims. Narendra Modi swept the polls.

When the Manipur video surfaced on Wednesday on the internet an incensed supreme court urged the government to act swiftly or let the court take charge. That’s when Prime Minister Modi broke his silence, on Thursday — after all of 75 days of merciless ethnic violence. He called the assault a national shame and promised exemplary punishment for the culprits. Four men were taken into custody. But he said nothing about the unending one-sided anti-minority violence. In fact, between the videographed incident of May 4 and its public revelation this week, Mr Modi was being toasted in powerful Western capitals as the leader of a robust democracy, a strategic partner. Were the hosts unaware of the tragedy unfolding for Manipur’s women and elsewhere? One of the targeted women decided to tear through the façade of political correctness. She informed The Wire on Friday that the police were a mute spectator as the mob molested them. If the police witnessed the crime, it is unlikely the chief minister was oblivious of it. It is difficult then to accept that Mr Modi would have been kept in the dark by his own party and government about the horrors of Manipur. As the leaders of the free world ‘celebrate’ Indian democracy under Mr Modi’s watch, opposition parties and the people of India appear less primed to accept the fiction.

Published in Dawn, July 23rd, 2023