When the People’s Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL) released its Independent People’s Tribunal report on Manipur’s ongoing ethnic conflict in Delhi on August 20, 2025, one point stood out with uncomfortable clarity: the media had not merely “covered” the conflict, it had shaped it. The report noted that the print press in particular was partisan, repeating a single valley-centric narrative while abandoning the responsibility of investigative rigor. Meanwhile, digital cable channels and social media outlets became fertile grounds for unverified and inflammatory content. For those of us living within the conflict, this conclusion is not a revelation but a recognition, an articulation of what has been painfully visible all along.
To speak of media in Manipur today is to enter a landscape where debate has collapsed into monologue. What comes across our screens, whether through the few established cable channels or the mushrooming of YouTube outlets, is not conversation but chorus. And the same holds true for print: once trusted to slow down, to investigate, to contextualize, the printed press has largely surrendered to partisanship. Its columns and editorials echo the valley’s anxieties, resentments, and certainties, leaving little room for difference and none for dissent.
What makes Manipur’s media unique is that it is not the corporate behemoth we see in mainland India. Ownership patterns, advertising pressures, and corporate control hardly define it. Instead, it is fragmented, proliferating almost overnight. These cable or YouTube “channels” emerge sometimes around elections, and they find ways to persist. This mushrooming, whether digital or printed, is less about journalistic integrity than about trends and survival, about having a platform, about being seen, about capturing attention. But this very proliferation, instead of producing plural voices, has produced uniformity. Whether in print, on cable, or online, the tune remains the same: the valley is under siege, the hills and minorities are suspect, dissenters are traitors.
At the same time, it is evident that India’s media landscape itself is polarized, with national outlets often functioning as propagandists aligned with one of the two dominant political poles shaping the state. This polarization is not incidental; it is integral to the functioning of Indian democracy as it is currently aligned. During the onset of the conflict in Manipur, this divide became especially visible. Segments of Delhi’s press took an overtly aggressive line, some aligning with the BJP-led government, others adopting a posture of outrage that at times bordered on the objectionable. In either case, what was missing was genuine space for disagreement or dialogue; what dominated was spectacle. Manipur’s print press, meanwhile, reproduced this pattern locally: editorials demanded loyalty, features avoided uncomfortable questions, and news reports blurred into narrative-building.
A study of national media reporting of the conflict, despite full awareness of how the Indian media functions, was undertaken by a professor who is today a parliamentarian. Yet, beyond this and similar critical exercises, what we witnessed was the entire local media fraternity closing ranks in opposition to the report prepared by the Editors Guild of India (EGI). Their objections and criticisms were, of course, part of their rights and duties as journalists. But what cannot be denied is that beneath their outrage lay an uncomfortable fact: the local media itself, including the print press, which had the space and tradition for deeper inquiry, was complicit in burying truths that required self-reflection. To point fingers outward at the EGI was easier than turning the mirror inward.
In such a climate, dissent itself becomes dangerous. From the very beginning of the present conflict, many incidents demonstrated how costly it could be to differ. Homes and properties of those who dared to question the majority narrative were attacked, vandalized, and dismantled. Individuals who expressed even mild disagreement found themselves harassed, threatened, or silenced. The punishment for dissent was not limited to social media trolling, it spilled into the streets, into neighborhoods, into everyday life. Fear became routine, silence the safer choice.
What followed was predictable: criticism was cast not as difference but as treason. This is how media in the valley has worked, it does not debate dissent, it eliminates it. The method is not persuasion but erasure. Television panels, often staged like evening rituals, bring together discussants with no time to prepare or reflect, ensuring that discussion never rises above sloganeering. And print newspapers, with their morning headlines, certify these same narratives in the language of authority. The audiences, already primed by the repetition of a single narrative, applaud what confirms what they already know. Debate as a practice, slow, careful, open to contradiction, has all but vanished.
Gayatri Spivak once asked, “Can the subaltern speak?” In Manipur’s context, the question is urgent: can those outside the valley narrative, especially people from the hills, be heard? In practice, they are given only token space. A hill leader may occasionally be invited onto a panel or quoted in an article, but the views selected are often those that echo the valley’s own narrative. Representatives from the hills, whose perspectives truly differ, are either ignored, made invisible, or selectively engaged in ways that neutralize their position, whether from their own hesitation or from being denied the space to speak. Thus, the subaltern appears in print or on screen, but only in a form acceptable to the valley. They speak, but not on their own terms; they are represented, but never allowed to represent themselves.
The escalation of local media has also blurred the line between news and propaganda. Each evening, programs parade self-proclaimed intellectuals, many of them affiliated with institutions, who package prejudice in the language of analysis. They spit venom, but in doing so they gain social media followings, likes, and applause. They become celebrities, symbols of authenticity for a society that wants its anger validated. Real intellectual labor, the work of examining complexity, questioning power, imagining alternatives, is dismissed as betrayal.
This is where Manipur diverges from the mainland. In India’s national media, what critics call Godi media, propaganda is manufactured through corporate consolidation, advertising dependence, and direct state pressure. In Manipur, it feels different. The RSS model of narrative-building in the valley has developed almost organically. It does not require massive propaganda machinery; it is woven into everyday discourse. It spreads not by force but by familiarity. When valley newspapers or channels praise RSS-affiliated figures during the conflict, it feels natural, almost inevitable, as if part of the cultural air. That naturalness makes it harder to resist.
The consequence of this organic propaganda is a society where even mild criticism feels impossible. The threats are not always state-driven, although the then BJP government was quick to harass or intimidate journalists and activists. Often the silencing is carried out by proxies: shadowy non-state actors who threaten, troll, or openly attack. The effect is the same. Whether the knock comes from the police station, or from a mob, dissenters learn quickly that their words carry risks. Families worry, homes are vandalized, reputations are destroyed. Fear circulates, and silence becomes the safest option.
This has broader implications for Manipur’s fragile democracy. Media should serve as a mediator in times of crisis, a platform where conflict can be unpacked, examined, and understood. Instead, it has chosen to intensify division. When every broadcast insists on the valley’s victimhood, when every newspaper column repeats the same hostility, and when every difference is cast as betrayal, the public is trained to think only in binaries. The possibility of pluralism collapses.
The story of Manipur’s media today is therefore not one of diversity but of manufactured silence. What has mushroomed is not democracy but its distortion: dozens of channels but one voice, endless printed pages but one narrative, countless discussions but no debate. Dissent is punished with violence, critical voices are smeared as traitors, intellectual mediocrity is elevated to fame, and propaganda passes for news.
For those of us who live within the valley, this is a painful recognition. We cannot pretend that the voices of the hills are distant, they are part of our shared polity, our shared belonging. And yet, to acknowledge them openly is to risk standing apart from the tide. The contradiction is unavoidable: we belong here, but belonging now demands conformity. To dissent is to risk not just alienation but danger.
The tragedy is that Manipur’s media could have been otherwise. The explosion of platforms and the established strength of print, if harnessed differently, might have deepened democracy, given space to the hills, and enabled dialogue between fractured communities. Instead, they have chosen the easier path: amplifying the majority, erasing dissent, celebrating anger, and normalizing silence.
The subaltern still speaks in Manipur. But the valley is not listening.
The writer is an independent researcher holding a Ph.D. from the CSLG at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi. His research focuses on questions of constitutionality, governance, and indigeneity in India’s Northeast, as well as issues related to insurgency and counterinsurgency.
