MANIPUR UNREST ANALYSED

Chronology of Major Events

Role of Pakistan in escalating ethnic tensions

Owing to the ethnic tensions, internet was banned in Manipur on April 28, 2023 for five days. Foreign elements became active in this duration and used several new accounts which were created to impersonate local people. Most of these account (Approx. 99%) were created during April and first week of May. These newly created accounts were used to spread misinformation and fake news to ignite social unrest.

The above charts show peaks on days on which most accounts were created and the tweets posted using them. The bars in red colors show the number of tweets on respective days (May 1-4). The Line Charts show the accounts creation timeline. We observe that the highest number of tweets were done on the 3rd and 4th of May, consequently, we see that the accounts active on the 3rd and 4th of May were the ones that were newly created.

• Out of the newly-created 112 accounts on April 10, 62 accounts were found actively posting on Manipur on May 4.

• Out of the newly created 115 accounts created on April 28-29 respectively, 93 accounts were found to be actively posting on the Manipur crisis on May 4.

• We observed that May 3 and 4 had the maximum number of new accounts created. On May 3, 315 accounts out of the newly-created 375 accounts were found to be indulged in posting about Manipur.

• Lastly, on May 4, a total of 618 accounts were created, out of which the most, 402 accounts were found tweeting on the day the news of violence broke on social media i.e., May 4.

The following are the most retweeted accounts related to Manipur violence. Among these very few are genuine accounts, most of these accounts were Pakistani, some even Khalistaniaccounts. Most of these accounts are now either withheld in India or suspended for violating X (Twitter) policies.

Shift from Ethnic conflict to communal conflict

​Word Cloud 27 April - 4 May	Word Cloud 5 May – 15 May

From the first word cloud, we can observe that ‘Tribal’ is the most used keyword among all hashtags. Nowhere did we see any mention of either Hindus or Christians in the word cloud. With communal agenda seeded by foreign handles and further propelled by the Indian Right Wing network, there was a clear shift in the narrative on social media i.e., from ‘Tribal conflict’ to ‘Communal conflict’.

We observed that this time a very important keyword i.e., ‘Tribals’ was much less significant in the word cloud for tweets between May 5-15. And two new words ‘Hindu’ and ‘Christian’ became more prominent in these 10 days. A global seeding of communal conflict had successfully seeped into Indian cyberspace which further gave impetus to a larger narrative shifting, which was later picked up by a segment of global media portals to plaster the communal angle to the conflict.

How this narrative shift happened

From the early hours of May 4 onwards, several accounts claiming to be from Turkey, Greece, Armenia, and even some news portals had started tweeting about the Manipur violence using a common language and in a coordinated manner. The following collage illustrates the tweets used by the accounts based outside India resorting to a similar language including sharing the same video.

From the above tweets, we also see how these accounts played a key role in seeding the communal angle to the ethnic violence happening in Manipur. These tweets giving communal flavor to the violence was augmenting enough that it would spread like wildfire on social media. And as one would expect, this global communal propaganda seeding was very well picked by a section of Indian social media i.e., the Right-Wing accounts.

The Indian Right-Wing ‘keyword warriors’ were among the early accounts to pick the global propaganda on the ongoing Manipur conflict on May 4. Various prominent Extreme Right Wing (ERW) influencer accounts picked this communal propaganda, responding to them with a communal rebuttal. Now, these right accounts have huge followers with as much traction and engagement on seemingly all their posts.

Manipur, being the hot topic during that time, some of the prominent right-wing accounts such as Ritu Rathaur (@RituRathaur), Amitabh Choudhry (@Mithilawaala), and Anshul (@anshul_aliganj) started repeating the same Hindu vs Christian narrative, thereby helping build the seeded narrative. Other key accounts which were sharing tweets and videos about the Manipur violence with communal flavor were @WldHinduCouncil, @indianclasses4, @Hinduwa57409984.

User @RituRathaur, has over 135K followers on Twitter and her posts have a reach ranging from 20K to even 350K views. Some of her videos about the Manipur and Hindu vs Christian discourse even have views over 325K. While Amitabh Chaudhary (@Mithilawaala) with over 6.5K followers also had views in thousands whenever he shared any video or picture in the context of Manipur. As per his main account @Main_Amitabh, he is the founding member and spokesperson of @HinduUrjaa. This account was suspended for violating X rules and regulations.

Role of Global Media Outlets

The first of many news portals that gave the Manipur ethnic violence the communal touch was a UK-based Apex News World. On May 4, 2023, at 1:56 IST, Apex News World posted a video tweet inferring the violence was a conflict between Christian tribals and Hindutva groups. This news portal was formed in May 2020 by a Zimbabwe-British Pastor, Uebert Snr. Angel. Uebert Angel is a televangelist, and the founder and the leader of Spirit Embassy International (Goodnews church), a Pentecostal megachurch within the United Kingdom and branches in several countries. Angel has been involved in several controversies over the years and has been exposed multiple times.

One of the first prominent Pakistani media portals to present the Manipur tribal conflict with a communal spin was Concept TV News. On May 4, when the violence in the state had just started peaking up, Concept TV News posted the news of the unrest on social media, accusing the Indian government of initiating the mass violence. Several prominent Pakistani media portals including Dawn, Bol News, ARY News, and AAJ TV News, too facilitated and propelled the propaganda launched by the Turkish, Middle-East, and Pakistani cyberspace.

Some Christian media platforms have utilized the opportunity to reinforce the narrative of fascism in India and portray Christians as the sole victims of the violence. The platforms including UCA News, Christianity Today, Open Doors, and Christians Headlines among others had been relentlessly sharing misleading and inflammatory content that seek to portray Hindus as perpetrators of violence against Christians, using headlines highlighting the numbers of Christian civilians killed and churches destroyed by mobs.