India: two women forced to parade naked in the streets of Manipur

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Thursday that the country should be “ashamed” after the broadcast of a video showing a crowd parading two naked women in Manipur, a state in the northeast of the country where ethnic violence has left at least 120 dead.

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Speaking for the first time about the violence that erupted in May, President Modi said his “heart is filled with pain and anger”.

A video, supposedly filmed in early May and which went viral on social networks on Wednesday, illustrates this violence and shows two women walking naked in a street, mocked and harassed by a crowd in the state of Manipur, where authorities blocked the Internet.

“The Manipur incident is a disgrace to any civilized society,” Modi told reporters. “It puts the whole nation to shame.”

A resurgence of violence erupted in early May in Manipur, after the local justice issued a decision recommending a more favorable status for the Meiteis, notably guaranteeing quotas for public jobs and university admissions for members of this majority and mainly Hindu community.

This assumption revived old fears of the Kukis (mainly Christians) that the Meiteis would also be allowed to acquire land in areas currently reserved for them.

Homes and churches have been burned in the violence, and tens of thousands of people have fled to government-run camps.

The Kuki women in the video told The Wire news site that police were present but did not help them.

The Manipur state government, led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), said it was investigating the incident, and a man was arrested on Thursday.

The opposition in New Delhi had criticized Narendra Modi for his silence after the events in Manipur.

For the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of India, DY Chandrachud, the violence inflicted on the two women is “simply unacceptable”. “If the government does not act, we will,” he promised, according to comments reported by the legal information site Bar and Bench.

The European Parliament last week called on Indian authorities to “quickly end ethnic and religious violence” in Manipur state, saying the violence has left at least 120 dead, displaced 50,000 people and destroyed more than 1,700 homes.