Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty 
New Delhi: In a much-anticipated press meeting on August 25, Manipur chief minister N. Biren Singh – in the eye of the storm following The Wire‘s ‘Manipur Tapes’ reports – addressed neither the violence in the state, nor the apparent implications of the tapes, but instead focused on Jammu and Kashmir.
Audio tapes put out in the public domain by The Wire after they were submitted to the Commission of Inquiry for Manipur Violence set up by the Union home ministry appear to implicate Biren and his administration directly in the year-and-half-long ethnic conflict in the border state. The violence has led to the loss of hundreds of lives and thousands of people are still displaced.
The state’s political observers, Manipur violence watchers, and members of Biren’s own party – Bharatiya Janata Party – had been calling for the chief minister to address the reports. So far, the Manipur administration has released unsigned press releases, claiming, without citing how, that the tapes were “doctored”. Deponent/s to the Commission of Inquiry have claimed that the tapes are authentic and are backed up by crucial details.
The issue of the audio tapes needed Biren’s direct response as they call into question his role as the chief minister – a constitutional position – in the violence that affected both the Meitei and the Kuki communities of the state. The state is virtually divided into two on ethnic lines as a direct result of the conflict. State armouries were looted in the valley districts with thousands of arms and ammunition yet to be recovered from non-state actors in the militancy-ridden border state. Since the violence broke out more than a year ago, the state assembly has been in session under unprecedented circumstances, without the participation of any Kuki members. The total of 10 Kuki MLAs across parties are unable to attend as there is a fear that they could be attacked in Imphal by non-state actors.
Biren spoke particularly on the National Conference (NC) and Congress’ alliance for the coming elections in the Union Territory (UT). Biren asked, “Does Rahul Gandhi and Congress support NC’s decision to restore Article 370 and Article 35A in J&K and thereby push Jammu and Kashmir into an era of unrest and terrorism?”
“Does the Congress support promoting separatism again (in Kashmir) by dialogue with Pakistan?”
Gandhi, the Leader of Opposition at the Lok Sabha, had visited Manipur a couple of times while the Prime Minister Narendra Modi has remained conspicuously absent. This is understood to have contributed to the BJP’s failure to retain even the Inner Manipur Lok Sabha seat in the recent general elections although the party is in power in the state assembly.
Biren, who first tasted state power as a Congress leader in Manipur and has spent more years as a Congress politician than in the BJP, accused the Congress at Sunday’s press meet of having “repeatedly compromised on the unity and national security of the country” thanks to its “greed to power”.
Curiously, unlike most of the chief minister’s press meets, Biren’s Sunday address to local media was in English. His social media team took no time to circulate it on all platforms where the chief minister has an account.
Chief ministers of the northeastern states, including those from the BJP, typically hold press meets only on state/local issues, and usually touch upon national issues only if they directly affect the state or region. On some rare occasions, chief ministers have addressed press meets on the advice of the party’s central leadership. So why was Biren speaking about Kashmir and Article 370 while the news space is filled nationally with what allegedly happened in Manipur under his watch?
Three factors could go some way in reflecting a direct connection between Manipur and Kashmir.
The Wire’s three-part series can be read here, here and here.
No breakthrough with Delhi yet
From the time the audio tapes were put in the public domain by The Wire, the call for Biren to address the issue has only got louder. The news has been picked up by media outlets and leaders of opposition parties have demanded an investigation into it
Kuki leadership and a considerable section of Meitei MLAs and leaders, too, have called for Biren to be replaced as chief minister over the last year.
Since last week, a few names have begun circulating both in Imphal and New Delhi as next possible chief ministerial candidates.
According to reliable state BJP sources, Biren had sent a few emissaries to Delhi this week to make his case directly before the party’s central leadership. Sources in Imphal told The Wire that this was done to thwart moves by Delhi to ask him to resign.
“[In addition] some state ministers and party leaders close to the chief minister were deployed to push the sympathy narrative among the Meiteis – that Biren Singh is the only strong leader of the community to lead it. Some civil society outfits were alerted,” a source in Manipur BJP told The Wire.
The Wire has also reported that Biren Singh’s brother, Rajendro Nongthongbam, and the BJP Rajya Sabha member and founder-chairman of the controversial Arambai Tenggol, Leishemba Sanajaoba, have issued veiled threats on social media to the “Meitei” and “traitors” who “leaked” the tapes to “the enemy”. Notably, these messages have come even though the state administration has officially called the audio tapes “doctored”.
Singh’s emissaries are, however, learnt to have returned home without getting a firm assurance from the central leadership of the BJP. Given his tenuous position, Biren could be on the lookout for a fresh lifeline.
Ram Madhav’s return to the equation
In the past week, something else has made the Northeast chief ministers and BJP leaders of the region sit up straight – the return of the senior Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh functionary Ram Madhav to the BJP after over four years of political exile, as the party’s in-charge of the Jammu and Kashmir
Till he fell out with Union home minister Amit Shah followed by his expulsion from the party’s organizational role, Ram Madhav was the party’s in-charge for the northeastern states. Thus he had had a direct role in the party’s decisions – not just when it came to choosing candidates for state and general elections, but also when it came to the fate of state ministers and chief ministers. In the last four years though, that national position has been enjoyed mainly by Shah as far as the Northeast is concerned.
Now, with Madhav’s return to the party as the in-charge of Jammu and Kashmir in the run-up to the elections at the behest of the RSS, the buzz within the BJP is that it is only a matter of time before the RSS insists on his return to the Northeast too. RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, by asking the party’s leadership to look into the Manipur issue on priority just after the general election results were out, has left no doubt that the outfit is unhappy with what has been unfolding under Biren.
Biren’s move to bring up elections in the union territory far away from Manipur appear, therefore, as him trying to clutch on to a fresh lifeline, one that goes beyond Shah claiming on the floor of the Parliament that he “is cooperating” with the Centre on tackling the violence.
Notably, the voice in the tapes – identified by the Commission’s deponent/s as that of Biren – is heard going well beyond the directions given by Shah on the use of “bombs” on civilians.
Book praising Modi’s decision to remove Article 370
Aside from the ensuing J&K elections, the murmur within the BJP in Delhi is also about a book set to hit the market this August. Titled 370: Undoing the Unjust, A New Future for J&K, the book, put together by BlueKraft Foundation, a pro-Modi outfit, will have a foreword by the Prime Minister. Its publisher, Penguin Random House, has placed the book to readers as “the inside story of how Prime Minister Narendra Modi turned the seemingly impossible into a reality” and “an eye-opening read on the damage Article 370 inflicted on Jammu and Kashmir”. It is set to release this August 30.
No doubt the book has been timed with the elections in the now-UT, and Modi and his party would treat it through its army of pro-government media houses as no less than ammunition for propaganda before the polls, particularly aimed at the constituencies in Jammu.
Biren, battling with a state in turmoil and sharply divided, for over a year without a sign of peace, must have felt it necessary to address Jammu and Kashmir and the Article 370, anticipating that the atmosphere was primed for such a discussion to be led by none other than the Prime Minister himself.
In the last parliament session, Modi’s speech was marred by the opposition’s slogan of “Justice for Manipur” . The state leadership’s inability to usher in peace between the two communities at loggerhead has certainly affected Brand Modi like no other BJP-ruled state in recent times.
Sources within the state BJP indicate that Modi, after his return from his trip to Maharashtra on August 26, will hold “a meeting on Manipur”. Party sources told this correspondent, “It is most likely set for today (August 27). Some decision on Manipur is likely. We have been told by our party colleagues in Delhi that Biren Singh’s replacement issue will likely come up before the prime minister too, especially because the RSS leadership has been extremely unhappy with the chief minister for his inability to bring peace to the state. They feel he is becoming a liability for the PM and the party’s image in the region. Also, BJP and its ally, the Naga People’s Front, have lost both the Lok Sabha seats to the Congress because of the ethnic conflict even though our party was in power.”
Sources wonder if Biren’s press meet at Imphal on Jammu and Kashmir and the reading down of Article 370 – held by the chief minister on a holiday – will be able to rescue the Manipur chief minister’s fortunes.