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.

Column

Ageing

Character

Comment

Politics

3 July 2024

5 min read

What the Joe Biden story tells us about growing older

Rather than mimicking the young, the elderly witness to a life well lived.

Graham Tomlin

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

Joe Biden holds a fist to his chest as he stands and speaks.

Biden at the CNN presidential debate.

President Biden has had a few bad days at the office recently. Time and again, he seems to freeze in public, stumbles over his words, as his voice falters and his sentences tail off. At his first public debate with Donald Trump, he looked just like a man in his eighties, struggling to remember facts, his mind not as alert as it once was. Which, come to think of it, is exactly what many people in their eighties are. And Trump is no spring chicken either. Questions around age dominate the American Presidential election like never before. This is a story of not of two elderly gents in a bar arguing over their fading memories of the past, but between candidates wanting to be the most powerful man, in charge of the most forbidding military and economic powers on the planet.

Old age creeps up on us slowly. To tell when it starts is hard to say. Yet we all know how it ends. Old age is a kind of preparation for death, a slowing down of faculties, a loss of control, a gradual diminishing of powers, preparing us for a new kind of life beyond this one. As a result, in our achievement-oriented age that doesn't believe in a life beyond death, we are tempted to ignore the elderly, shutting them away in residential homes, out of sight and out of mind.

Yet they were valued for what they were – signs of where we are all heading, their stories as object lessons for the young in how to live well (or badly).

Old age, however, is not a slide into passivity. Even as powers diminish, elderly people still have significant agency – keeping the mind active through reading, walking to the shop to buy bread, keeping in touch with relatives, even getting out of a chair as the end draws near can take as much resolve and determination as the more complex tasks of our youth, and are every bit as heroic and human as the more impressive achievements of our sprightlier years.

Former cultures respected the elderly for the experience gained, as members of the community to be looked up to, respected and valued. Teenagers were not considered as the moral arbiters of the future but as immature human beings who still have a lot to learn. The old were given pride of place as those who had gained the wisdom of years. Not that that wisdom was always apparent - the elderly can become cantankerous, repetitive and self-focused as powers diminish. Yet they were valued for what they were – signs of where we are all heading, their stories as object lessons for the young in how to live well (or badly).

The one time when we do place elderly people front and centre, is when they are able to do the things that young people can. Adverts regularly depict old people jumping out of planes, playing rugby, strumming electric guitars - doing the things that young people typically do. Old people who can pretend that they are young are praised to the hilt. Elderly people who lose their memory, their train of thought, stumble and repeat themselves are looked on with pity, not respect. When they do both it confuses us – which is why everyone is worried about Joe.

Part of the wisdom of old age is to recognise when it has come upon us, and what its distinct calling is. In a strange echo of our culture's attitude to the elderly, Joe Biden seems desperate to tell himself and others that he's perfectly capable of doing the job of President, a job that would come much more naturally to someone 20 years younger than him. Surely the wiser and more sensible course would have been to recognise the signs of time, and halfway through his presidency, to have announced that he was not standing again, triggering a leadership race among the Democratic Party so that a new candidate could be ready for the Presidential election without all the doubts about age and capacity in mind.

So, caught between ignoring old age and yearning for lost youth, how then, are we to value the ageing process? After all, one day, it will come on all of us who manage to avoid a premature death.

The main task as the years pass and the shadows lengthen, is to be there for the young,

If we remain active throughout our lives, that activity changes over time. As someone well into my sixties, approaching old age (or perhaps already in it – it is hard to tell?) I recognise my body creaks and does not adapt as it once did. I can't do all that I could in my 30s or 40s. Over time, callings change, and recognising that is part of the wisdom of life. The Christian ethicist Oliver O'Donovan suggests that the calling of old age is to "stand by the side of youth." Elderly people have the task "to show to the young how their generation, the only earlier generation to which the young have direct access, has conceived its tasks and tackled them. If the young are to form their world effectively, they will need models to inherit and to build on."

The prime task of old age is not to withdraw into some retirement village, playing golf every day, going on endless holidays, living the life we wanted to live in our 40s but couldn't because we had to work. It is not to enjoy retirement as a kind of secular heaven, a reward for a lifetime of hard work, with pleasures abounding. There may be time for some of that, but the main task as the years pass and the shadows lengthen, is to be there for the young, not to tell them what to do but to be a witness of a life well lived - or sometimes an object lesson of a life lived badly – often both at the same time. It is to be a sign of how another generation managed to navigate the complications and complexities of life and how for those who have a faith, as a witness to how God has proved faithful over time, space and the shifting sands of culture. And that involves focus from both sides. The younger need to value, respect and prize the elderly for what they offer as a model of life lived and complexity negotiated, and the old need to recognise their changing role as it creeps upon them with the passing of years.

The calling of the elderly is just as important as that of the young or even the middle-aged. Yet it is different. We need to value our older people, not because they can do the things younger people can, but because they are object lessons in how to navigate life, and how to prepare for the next one.

Getting it muddled up helps no one.