India’s Independence Day: How colonial divides live on under Modi's rule

15 August marked the 76th anniversary of India’s independence from British rule - but for many, today’s India is far from a free country. The recent violence against the Kuki people - including sexual violence against women - in the Northeastern state of Manipur is emblematic not only of deep-seated patriarchy, but also of current attacks on citizenship and attempts at ethnic cleansing which have emerged under Narendra Modi’s fascistic Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) central government. 

Manipur has a long history of conflict between two ethnic groups, the Meiteis and the Kukis - which, as Mukul Kesavan notes, is an imbalanced conflict “shaped by the majoritarianism that defines Indian politics today”. The current conflict began in May 2023 and made international headlines on 21 July, after a video showing two Kuki women being sexually assaulted and paraded naked by an armed Meitei mob went viral, leading to women’s protests across the country.

Over 160 people have been killed in the violence since May; Meitei mobs have been attacking Kuki homes and burning their villages to the ground. The BJP-ruled Manipur state government has played a central role, with chief minister N. Biren Singh adopting an actively hostile position towards the Kukis and casting them as illegal migrants encroaching on Meitei land.

''Indian Independence Day is widely understood to be centred on anti-colonial nationalism and the collective freedom of the Indian people. Yet the dynamics playing out 76 years on from British rule - both at a national level and within certain Indian states and territories - indicate the ongoing reproduction of colonial divides and the need to resist Hindutva fascism in order to truly attain freedom for all.''

Whilst Meiteis have a history of resistance to the Indian state and fighting for recognition as a community, they are undoubtedly the oppressors within this longstanding conflict, as demonstrated by the unequivocal state support for Meitei violence - including Meitei mobs being allowed to loot police armouries with complete impunity.

A history of violence

Gender-based violence has long been central to communal conflicts in India, including state-sponsored conflicts such as the 2002 Gujarat pogrom (overseen by Modi as then Gujarat Chief Minister), which involved horrific rapes of Muslim women as well as murders of women, men and children.

The attacks on Kuki women are ultimately a vehicle for the Meiteis to assert their dominance over the land and cast the Kukis as encroaching foreigners. Disturbingly, Meitei women have been integral to this violence, actively encouraging men from their community to assault and rape Kuki women - demonstrating starkly the deeply embedded understanding of women’s bodies as sites of communal dominance and violence in an Indian patriarchal context.

Whilst Modi has now appealed for peace in Manipur after being forced to speak out by a no-confidence vote, following the circulation of the viral video, the central government has taken no steps to address the conflict and the persecution of Kuki women - which comes as no surprise given that this is sponsored by a BJP state government and is being used to further the Hindutva agenda.

Manipur is not the only Indian state currently ridden with communal violence and attacks on marginalised people. In early August, the BJP state government of Haryana began a drive to demolish large numbers of Muslim-owned properties, claiming that the residents were all illegal immigrants from Bangladesh encroaching illegally on the land. In fact, the houses belonged to Indian migrants from West Bengal. The demolition was framed as a response to a spate of unrest deliberately provoked by the government, through an aggressive and heavily armed procession of Hindu supremacists known as a ‘shobha yatra’.

In both Manipur and Haryana, a pattern can be traced of Hindu supremacy in the guise of xenophobia - the persecution of marginalised communities being framed in terms of land rights for dominant groups. A similar framing can also be seen at a national level in the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), introduced by Modi’s government in 2019. In tandem with the National Population Register and National Register of Citizens, the CAA promised to disenfranchise anyone unable to prove their status as Indian citizens, excluding Muslims from the ability granted to other religious groups, to claim refugee status in this situation.

When considered in this context, both the current violence in Manipur and the CAA can be described as steps towards ethnic cleansing, through targeting and attempting to ultimately eliminate specific communities.

Weaponising the past

India’s real colonial past, meanwhile, has long been used to shape the false historical narratives peddled by the Hindu right, with the country’s independence struggle being rewritten as a specifically Hindu victory and criticism of Hindutva from progressive forces being readily dismissed as colonial, racist or even ‘Hinduphobic’. In the context of Independence Day, it is thus especially crucial to separate anti-colonial history from the current, Hindutva-sponsored persecution of already oppressed minority communities across India.

Ironically, Hindutva nationalism is also bound up with British colonial divide-and-rule tactics; anti-colonial resistance during the colonial period often involved Hindu and Muslim communities fighting side-by-side, notably during the 1857 uprisings against the rule of the British East India Company, a landmark moment in the long fight for independence. Hindutva narratives around India’s independence erase the central role of Muslims in this history, feeding into the false casting of Muslim communities as outsiders with no claims to Indian land or citizenship today.

Just as the British played a fundamental role in dividing Hindu and Muslim communities, they also engaged in classifications of various tribes and enhanced the divide between tribal and non-tribal people in the hill regions of Northeast India such as Manipur. These divisions have shaped the current fight for self-determination among certain tribal groups, including the Kuki people, and their conflict with the dominant Meiteis.

Indian Independence Day is widely understood to be centred on anti-colonial nationalism and the collective freedom of the Indian people. Yet the dynamics playing out 76 years on from British rule - both at a national level and within certain Indian states and territories - indicate the ongoing reproduction of colonial divides and the need to resist Hindutva fascism in order to truly attain freedom for all.

This Independence Day, the conflicts in Manipur and Haryana are stark reminders of how this fascism works in practice: the systematic exclusion and persecution of minority communities across India. It is vital to remember that independence has been far from fully won, and to stand in solidarity with all marginalised people - particularly marginalised women - facing horrific violence in the name of post-colonial nationalism.

Ananya Wilson-Bhattacharya is a writer, activist and co-editor of Red Pepper magazine, interested in arts and culture and social movements.

Follow her on Twitter: @AnanyaWilson

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