Do Do you know what or where Ke Songzang is? How about Quocta? Can you recognize Dolathabi? Do you know meitei from cookie and what differentiates them?
To tell you the truth, I only knew the answer to the last question before a tidal wave of violence and government indifference swept the news headlines over the others.
The northeastern state Manipur has been Witness Ethnic conflict between Meitei and Kuki since 3 May. By 25 June, 131 people had died and over 400 were injured in the violence. Around 50,000 people have been forced to live in temporary relief camps, with a large contingent of local and central forces attempting to maintain peace.
The magnitude of the conflict took everyone including the media by surprise. ThePrint and other organizations almost had journalists on the ground Immediately, No one expected that this fire would flare up so much that the state would be burnt to ashes.
The primary difficulty facing editors and reporters was simple in its complexity – ignorance. How do you explain the complexities of a historic enmity that suddenly turned violent – and assumed the shape of a potential civil war – when few people even knew where Manipur was on the Indian map?
Journalists and readers are familiar with communal politics in India – we instinctively recognize the deep bloody waters between Hindus and Muslims. However, the Meitei-Kuki divide based on issues of majoritarianism, religion, land, migration and identity is a complete mystery to most of us.
ThePrint set out to unravel the mystery shrouded in fear for its readers – though not completely, but to a large extent. And its correspondents answered all the questions I asked you at the beginning of this reader editor column.
Read also: Manipur is the gateway to the east of India. But Kashmir doesn’t even get half the political focus.
right answer
kuki, maiteis and naga are three Important Ethnic groups in Manipur They differ by geography – the Kukis live in large expanses of the hills, while the Meiteis live in the Imphal Valley – ethnicity and religion.
Songzang, a once Kuki-dominated village in Churachandpur district, was razed by the N Biren Singh government in February on the basis of alleged allegations. Encroachment on protected forest land.
Meitei women in Kwakta, Bishnupur district Make A human blockade to express their outrage against the central security forces.
On the evening of 3 May, 140 houses in Dolaithabi village, mostly inhabited by Meitei people, were destroyed. burn Down in ethnic strife.
conflict discovery
In May and early June, ThePrint’s Moushumi Das Gupta and Sonal Matharu from Delhi, along with Karishma Hasnat, based in Guwahati, traveled through the conflict-torn state – from the hill homes of Kuki to the plains of Imphal, where the Meitei people live.
“At the time, we had no idea what was happening,” says ThePrint’s national security editor Praveen Swamy. “And we had no idea why.”
Racial violence and subsequent triggers events – Government response, deployment of troops, displacement of thousands, fresh clashes, and Destruction The lives were well captured in the report. you get one touchable Real and genuine feeling of two communities attacking each other almost without thought.
“The current round of tension is centered on the Meitei people’s demand for Scheduled Tribe (ST) status, which they say, bid to secure Constitutional safeguards for the community,” Das Gupta wrote on May 10.
but could it be explain Such extreme polarization between the two communities? “In this case, breaking news has to be made relevant. Otherwise, it doesn’t work,” says Nishith Upadhyay, editor (operations), ThePrint. “It was important to present the big picture because you can’t understand the events unfolding without it.”
‘overwhelmed’
In the reporting of any conflict, incidents of violence and their human costs compete for attention as deep, causal narratives, if not more so. Study impression The stories – there were more than 30 from Manipur in May – make you aware of this constant back-and-forth between cause and effect.
Hasnat informed of on April 28 over sporadic violence, which would turn into a nightmare for the state within a week.
In March, he had informed of On the problems in Myanmar which may affect the situation in Manipur.
And then came the reports that exposed deeper and more worrying mistakes. Das Gupta wrote About the bureaucracy divided on caste lines.
He said, “In all my years of reporting, I’ve never seen anything like this.” Said, “We brought to the fore the reality of the ground situation and the divide between the two sides. Maybe we didn’t do enough on majoritarianism and targeting tribals or politics.”
Matharu explains why. “We were overwhelmed with news and information pouring in from all sides – it wasn’t always easy to step back and see the big picture. There was a lot of publicity too, which you had to verify.”
For example, it was impossible to confirm allegations made by Meiteis that the Kuki population has grown disproportionately due to illegal migration from Myanmar – there has been no census since 2011. “The data was an issue,” says Matharu.
Hasnat was in Imphal when the violence broke out on 3 May. She went to Churachandpur, the epicenter of the clash. “Land was one of the main reasons for this crisis and I tried to bring that out in the report,” she says.
The one missing link I noticed was political. While there are some BJP voices in the stories and quotes from the protesting MLAs who came to Delhi with their grievances, it does not go beyond that. You would expect the opposition – in this case, Congress – to be articulate and a good source of information. Hasnat says, “Opposition political parties did not come forward and put forth their point.”
“The security aspect, the violence, was a bit excessive,” admits Upadhyay.
So, has ThePrint been successful in uncovering the ground reality and what lies beneath? Yes and no
Swamy reminded me that the nature of conflict reporting involves focusing on day-to-day developments first. “It’s hard to have long conversations about other things when there’s always something else happening around you,” he says.
Read also: ThePrint’s ground report goes beyond breaking news, uncovers stories that are being buried
dictation, text messaging, contacts
Not just politicians, ThePrint journalists also found officials and police reluctant to talk in the ‘developing situation’. However, according to Das Gupta, Cookie and Metis “were very happy to talk”. “People in some villages were unbelieving,” says Matharu. “I had to win their trust and convince them that I was not a plant.”
By the time Hasnat and Das Gupta traveled to Manipur, the internet was under lockdown. This is another dimension of reporting that is often missed when we look at published reports. Social media has made us impatient – we want news as it is being made.
But when you’re traveling, especially in remote areas where internet connection is always poor, how do you send back reports and long analytical pieces for publication at the required speed? “Timing is of the essence in violent situations,” says Das Gupta.
Journalists and editors have to be inventive. Das Gupta used contacts in the state secretariat to send his works, however limited; Hasnat knew the local journalists. He also sent sentence-by-sentence stories in messages. In Delhi, editors used to take dictation over the phone.
In such circumstances, it is difficult to write stories with large pictures on the phone and transcribe them while someone is speaking.
The problem became even more acute when it came to sending pictures or limited access to the Internet on the phone. Those photographs by journalists and senior photographer Suraj Singh Bisht showed us how dire the situation was on the ground.
There can be graphics and maps to help readers understand the situation even better – for example, a heat map of violent places.
Of course, it is much easier to become wise later. I read all the reports together – and at the end of it, I can honestly say that although I am no expert, I do have a working understanding of what is at stake in Manipur.
It has made me want to know more…
Shailaja Bajpai is Reader’s Editor at ThePrint. Please write your views, complaints readers.editor@theprint.in
(Edited by Humra Laeek)