Article

Comment

Freedom of Belief

2 June 2023

6 min read

The month of May(hem) in Manipur

On the 27th May, Archbishop Justin Welby tweeted about the violence unfolding in Manipur. Belle Tindall re-winds the clock to May 3rd and tracks the events that led to his tweet.

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen and co-host of its Re-enchanting podcast.

A church interior glowing red as parts of its furniture burn. A man walks down the aisel

A video still of a church interior on fire, during violent clashes in Manipur, India.

Open Doors.

A note to our readers: this article includes reports that some readers may find particularly distressing.

On 27th May, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, tweeted about his concern at what has been, and still is, unfolding in Manipur in India. He wrote,

‘I’ve been distressed to hear about the attacks on the indigenous tribal Christians of Manipur, India, and of the churches that have been destroyed in recent weeks.

Kailean Khongsai is training for ordination to the priesthood in the Church of England, and is from Manipur. I join him in praying regional authorities would protect all minority groups, including Christians and their places of worship, and that justice and peace would prevail.’

In doing so, Archbishop Justin pointed the world in the direction of those who are facing extreme pressure, discrimination, and violence in their home of Manipur. Therefore, allow me to paint a fuller picture of what has been happening (largely unnoticed) for weeks now – let’s rewind to May 3rd.

May 3rd

On the streets of Manipur, a state in the northeast of India, indigenous communities protested the (apparent) impending accreditation of Scheduled Tribe status to the Meiti community. Let me provide some context as to why this would be a development to protest about.

Manipur is a self-governed state. A state that is home to the Meiti community, who make up around 53 per cent of the population, and other indigenous communities – the largest of which are the Kuki community, to the south, and the Naga community to the north. There is, and has long been, friction between these neighbouring people groups. The Kuki and Naga communities, being minority groups, have Scheduled Tribal status, thus ensuring that they have a right to protection (particularly regarding the reservations they call home) and representation. The Meiti people, being the state’s majority demographic, do not have such a status… yet.

Despite their legal protection, the Kuki people, in particular, have already faced ongoing evictions from their homes in the hill regions that they have inhabited for hundreds of years. Their expectation is that this is only the beginning. The fear is that, if the Meiti people were to be granted a similar Tribe status, it would result in the Kuki people further losing the right to keep and protect their spaces in both the hills and the forests. It would also pave the way for the Meiti people to assert more societal dominance, as they would be entitled to increased governmental representation; the imbalance would no longer be countered.

And so, on May 3rd, people from both the Kuki and Naga communities took to the streets and marched for ‘tribal solidarity’.

Within a matter of hours, a peaceful protest was transformed into riotous violence as the people marching were met with a wall of resistance. Since that Wednesday afternoon, whole villages have been burnt down, around 15,000 people have been made homeless, hundreds have been injured, the price of essentials has risen to unprecedented levels, schools and public facilities have been closed, internet has been suspended, and although numbers are proving a challenge to confirm, it is thought that anywhere between thirty to seventy people have been killed. Some media outlets are perceiving this violence as the rumblings of an impending civil war; while the Kuki and Naga communities are placing the entirety of the blame upon the Meiti people, The Meiti community are directing all blame toward the tribal communities. And the violence continues to rage on.

May 4th

Recent footage has emerged of a particularly heinous incident taking place on 4th May, one that has re-caught the world's attention and thus prompted Prime Minister Narendra Modi to break his silence, declaring that the attack has 'shamed India'.

Two women, both of whom belonging to the Kuki community, were taken from a police van, stripped, publicly paraded and sexually assaulted in broad daylight. Two men, the younger woman's brother and father, were killed while trying to protect them. It is now being reported that this attack was carried out by armed Meiti men, none of which were arrested until astonishingly recently, more than two months after the attack took place.

Manipur is imploding, and the violent ramifications are devastating.

But there is just one more piece of context that undergirds the Archbishop’s tweet, one more thing to note about the societal dynamics at play in Manipur: while the Meiti community are a majority Hindu people group, the various indigenous groups are almost entirely Christian. As such, Open Doors have reported that the women who were subjected to to the afore-mentioned attack were Christian women.

A complex ethno-religious conflict

The goings-on in Manipur are anything but simple; and so, it is not my intention to reduce the geographic, political, and historic complexities of this conflict, nor to wholly define it as a war between religions. Following Archbishop Justin’s lead, it is with particular caution that I speak of violence being inflicted particularly on Christians in Manipur, acknowledging that it is not the only identity marker that is proving to be targetable.

Nevertheless, it is being widely reported that Christians are being singled out; their Christianity used as a target to aim at, their identity wielded as a weapon against them. Whether it be as the means or the end, as the goal or merely the tactic: it is happening.

According to further Open Doors’ reports, derived from their partners in Manipur, around three hundred churches have been burnt down thus far, one of which still had people in it when it was set alight. A further one hundred public Christian buildings have been destroyed, while one thousand homes which were owned/inhabited by Christian people were ruined, while neighbouring properties remained untouched.

And it isn’t only the Kuki Christians who are facing such discrimination, the (very few) Meiti Christians are also facing particular difficulties as a result of their unusual ethno-religious identity. Noticing this, one Indian news publication is reporting that from the perspective of the Meiti Hindus, Meiti Christians are somewhat of an oxymoron, personified. It is believed that to be Christian is to have converted to a tribal way of living (assimilating the Kuki and Naga people), and therefore comes with assumptions of deep betrayal. And yet, the publication also observes that ‘if their [Christian] faith is making them feel insecure in the valley, it has not come to their rescue in the hills either. The Kukis have made no distinction between them and other Meiteis’. They are, subsequently, a community that are ‘sandwiched’ in conflict.

While the conflict is undoubtedly spilling over ethnic and religious lines, Manipur has just become one of the most dangerous places on earth to be a Christian. In yet another part of the world, it is now a hazardous faith.

And so, back to Archbishop Justin’s tweet.

The need to be seen

One only needs to spend thirty or so seconds tracking the comments generated by this particular tweet to get a sense of how powerful it is to be seen. To be noticed when in distress, to be acknowledged when in chaos, to be advocated for when in danger.

In many ways, social media is a genie that we wish we were able to squeeze back into the bottle. And as justified as such feelings often are, in this case, as in many others in our recent history, it has proved to be a way in which our eyes are opened to what is happening in the most remote corners of our world. Archbishop Justin has publically called for protection, justice, and peace, and in doing so, has made it difficult for the conflict to continue to rumble on unnoticed.

It is now on all of us to refuse to look away. The people of Manipur, Christian and otherwise, need us to continue to look in their direction.

Article

Comment

Leading

Psychology

Theatre

21 October 2025

6 min read

Are you a narcissist?

We all have a little bit of narcissism in us – the question is whether we’re a Moses or an Iago

Henna Cundill

Henna is a researcher with the Centre for Autism and Theology at the University of Aberdeen.

An Elizabethan man holds a dagger up while grinning.

Kenneth Brannagh's Iago in the 1995 film of Othello.

Sony Pictures.

Is everyone a narcissist these days? It sometimes feels so. Google Trends data shows an eleven-fold increase in searches for “narcissism” between 2010 and 2023, and the term has become a social media buzzword. Online quizzes asking, “Am I a narcissist?” are everywhere, offering dubious self-diagnosis at the click of a button. Genuine Narcissistic Personality Disorder, however, is complex and painful – especially for those in close relationships with someone who cannot acknowledge the harm that they are able to cause or feel any sense of remorse. Narcissus, in Greek mythology, was a handsome young man who was cursed to fall in love with his own reflection, but it was not until the early 20th century that the term “narcissism” was then picked up by the emerging field of psychoanalysis. Initially, Sigmund Freud adopted it in a non-pejorative way to describe the stage in child development when an infant is aware only of their own need for love and attention. Eventually, as that infant grows into a child it begins to experiment with showing others love and attention, and if surrounded by the right relationships, the child learns that love can be reciprocal – a back-and-forth pattern of give and take. Freud wrote:

“Loving, then, contributes to the lowering of self‑regard. Having one’s love returned, however, restores one’s self‑regard and replenishes one’s narcissism.”

In its healthiest form, narcissism reflects a positive sense of self – a recognition of one’s own needs and a reasonable desire for them to be met, whilst also knowing that we must give of ourselves, again within reason, to meet the needs of others. In this sense, yes, we are all a little bit of a narcissist. It is only occasionally, most commonly when the early bond between a child and their caregivers is inconsistent or unstable, that this self-focus can become problematically distorted, sometimes leading to a personality disorder. For such a person, a constant hunger for attention and affirmation, often combined with a lack of empathy or a tendency to use empathy as a means to manipulate others, leads to a life of take-take-take; one which can cause significant harm to others and ultimately to themselves.

Estimates for Narcissistic Personality Disorder are that it affects about one to two per cent of the population, a number which is intriguingly high. The unfortunate news is that true Narcissistic Personality Disorder is notoriously difficult to treat, precisely because key tenets of the condition include a lack of self-awareness and an overinflated sense of self belief. The classic response of the one with Narcissistic Personality Disorder is, of course, “How dare my therapist say that I am a narcissist? They must be the problem!”

However, much more prevalent are what might be called “sub-clinical narcissists” – people who act selfishly, arrogantly, or manipulatively, influencing others to conform to their desires. We all know one or more of those – sometimes we meet one when we look in the mirror. Whilst this may make us feel pretty rotten, whether we are the giver or the receiver of such treatment, it does not always warrant a clinical intervention. Even so, it can still be extremely difficult to process how and why human narcissistic tendencies are able to cause others so much pain. If, as Freud proposes, a certain degree of narcissism is hardwired into human nature, what can we do about its tendency to evil?

In Shakespeare’s tragedy Othello, the character of Iago is a master manipulator who displays all the cold-hearted indifference of a true narcissist. Early in Act 1 he expresses his indignation that he has been passed over for promotion. Firmly convinced of his own superiority, he slyly boasts that he will play a false self to Othello, feigning loyalty for his own ends and stating: “I am not what I am.”

These words are a clever and rather chilling inversion of a famous phrase from the Bible. In the story of the Exodus, God meets with Moses in the form of a burning bush, and when Moses asks for the name of God a voice replies: “I am what I am.” As Moses stands before God, barefoot and awestruck, he hears that enigmatic statement and is forced to confront the question of who he truly is – an ashamed murderer, a fugitive, a short-tempered man of slow speech but hasty acts. Moses acknowledges all these awkward truths about himself and declares himself wholly unfit to be called by God as a leader. Yet God uses Moses anyway, and at the end of his life, Moses dies a celebrated hero – a deliverer who is mourned by all his people.

Not so Iago. As the tale of Othello draws to its tragic close, Iago is wounded, arrested and escorted from the stage. The audience knows that he has been condemned to execution, but unlike pretty much every other character in that fateful final scene, Iago’s death does not take place onstage. He is simply removed, dismissed from everybody’s notice – a narcissist’s worst nightmare.

One can see the crucial difference between Moses and Iago – whilst Moses is concerned that his own flawed nature makes him unfit to be become a great leader, Iago is driven to grasp at leadership by a belief in his own grandiosity and acts vengefully when passed over. Right to the end, Iago expresses not one word of self-doubt or regret for his actions. Indeed, he refuses to account for himself at all. “Demand me nothing,” he says at the close; “What you know, you know.”

Seemingly, the problem of narcissism’s tendency towards evil lies not in actions, but in methods of self-evaluation. While we all make regrettable mistakes, and sometimes it can be hard to judge the difference between unreasonable selfishness and reasonable self-preservation, the true narcissist is afraid to explain themselves, unwilling to bear the judgement of outside scrutiny. The narcissist will look only in the mirror.

But whereas a mirror only reflects light, a burning bush produces it. In the end, the resources of the Christian tradition do not simply diagnose our narcissism, they offer us a way through it. They offer an outside perspective from which we can truly evaluate our own actions – a light that shines through the mirror.

If you have ever clicked the link for the online quiz, or been tempted to, then that is an encouraging sign of willingness to be open to outside scrutiny. But of all things, would we really want to trust only human voices, especially the unknown and unknowable voices of the internet, as an authoritative arbiter? If narcissism is so inherent to human nature, it logically takes something higher and brighter than our fellow human beings to really bring it into the light. But in any case, you can save yourself the time of completing that dubious online diagnostic quiz since the whole enterprise can be summed up in just one question:

Have you ever wondered if you have Narcissistic Personality Disorder? If the answer is yes, you probably do not. So demand yourself nothing, what you know you know.

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