Selective Grief, Strategic Silence

The incumbent BJP Manipur State President, A Sharda Devi, is a woman who knows exactly when to speak and when to stay quiet. The tragedy is that the people of Manipur are no longer in doubt about her criteria.

When a bomb exploded in Delhi, her statement appeared within hours: heartfelt, unambiguous, widely shared. When drones rained explosives on Meitei villages in Imphal West in broad daylight, killing civilians and torching homes, no statement came. Not the next day, not the next week.

Violence, it seems, only becomes intolerable when it happens outside Manipur.The moment news of Zubeen Garg’s demise broke, her social media pages flooded with prayers, condolences, and emotional messages.

When husbands in the relief camps, unable to feed their families or see a future, began hanging themselves (one widow after another left to raise children born in exile), the State President offered no visits, no messages, no acknowledgement that these deaths too were tragedies.

Grief, in her timeline, is a privilege reserved for the famous.When Meitei women, trying to walk back to their villages, were met with tear-gas shells and lathi-charges that left them bleeding on the road, not one BJP woman leader (least of all the party’s highest-ranking woman in the state) went to the hospital wards.

Yet when an IGP allegedly forced his way through the gate of Rajya Sabha MP Maharaja Leishemba Sanajaoba’s palace, the entire party leadership reached the spot before the dust settled.

This pattern of silence extends to the gravest tragedies. The Jiribam massacre in November 2024, where six members of a Meitei family—including women and eight months infants—were brutally killed by suspected Kuki militants, shook the state to its core. Protests erupted, with demands for justice and probes into the violence that also claimed a protester’s life in clashes with security forces.

Where was Sharda Devi’s voice? A search for her public condolences or statements on this horror yields nothing—no tweets, no press releases, no rallying cries for accountability. Similarly, the heart-wrenching cases of missing persons like Hijam Linthoingambi and Phijam Hemjit—two Meitei teenagers abducted and killed in 2023, their bodies undiscovered still.

This sparks widespread outrage— yet elicited no notable response from her. And the disappearance of Laishram Kamal Babu from an Army camp in Leimakhong in November 2024 has sparked massive protests, with his wife leading sit-ins demanding his safe return.

All these 30 months, Sharda Devi remains mute, offering no solace to grieving families or calls for swift action.Her silence is particularly glaring on internal party matters that threaten Manipur’s unity. When Kuki-Zo MLAs from her own BJP—seven out of ten in the assembly—aligned with demands for a separate Union Territory or boycotted government formation, openly challenging the state’s territorial integrity, Sharda Devi offered no rebuke or response.

Instead, her engagements appear limited to ceremonial photo opportunities—attending “Ipan Thaba” naming rituals for newborns in the camps or celebrating festivals like Ningol Chakouba with mothers there. Smiling beside mothers who have learnt to pose because refusal is not an option.

While these gestures might warm a few hearts momentarily, they ring hollow. By participating in birth ceremonies for the 200th or 201st child born in displacement, she cannot credibly claim that the BJP is the sole party attuned to IDP needs. Such optics do little to mask the party’s broader failures in restoring normalcy.

These images are then broadcast as proof that the BJP “cares”. The displaced know the truth: a photo-op is not rehabilitation, and a cake is not a home.

The Internally Displaced Persons, huddled in relief camps like Khuman Lampak, yearn for comfort and advocacy. These are families uprooted from their homes amid the ethnic clashes between Meitei and Kuki communities, living in limbo for over two years.

When they seek reassurance from those in power, A Sharda Devi’s response? Crickets. She has not publicly addressed their core demands for safe resettlement, rehabilitation, or justice. Instead, her engagements appear limited to ceremonial photo opportunities—attending “Ipan Thaba” naming rituals for newborns in the camps or celebrating festivals like Ningol Chakouba with mothers there.

Ask any IDP what they truly want from BJP President Sharda Devi and her party, and the answers are stark: security to return home, accountability for the violence, and an end to the limbo that has defined their existence since the clashes erupted. Yet, her track record suggests a deliberate avoidance of these tough conversations.

When thousands boycotted the Manipur Sangai Festival and begged that the celebration be postponed until they could return to their villages, a single intervention from the BJP State President with the Governor could have changed the narrative. No intervention came. The band played on.

Leadership is measured not by the tears you shed for tragedies that trend nationally, but by the voice you raise for the suffering that happens under your own roof.

The BJP, under her stewardship in Manipur, has hemorrhaged public trust since the violence began in May 2023. Attempts to leverage IDP events for image rehabilitation feel cynical at best. Posing for pictures at camp celebrations does not equate to meaningful support; it risks exploiting vulnerability for political gain.

The people of Manipur deserve leaders who speak up when it matters—advocating for peace talks, resettlement plans, and justice for victims. President A Sharda Devi’s consistent absence from these discourses suggests she has little to contribute.

By that yardstick, A Sharda Devi has chosen silence as her most consistent policy.If the pain of Manipur’s displaced, the territorial integrity of the state, and the quiet suicides of broken men do not move the president of the ruling party to speak, then let her not speak at all.

At this point, any sudden outburst of concern would feel less like leadership and more like damage control ordered from Delhi.The people of Manipur have grown accustomed to the sound of her silence. It is, at least, honest!

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