Rahul Gandhi in Manipur is the right image for party but why yatra’s big picture is still fuzzy

A picture, it is said, is worth a million words. The picture of children in Manipur flanking a smiling Rahul Gandhi at the outset of his Yatra-2 conveyed what his words could not.

In February 1983 when I had gone to cover the brutal, communal killings in Nellie, a town in Central Assam, a senior bureaucrat in Guwahati had told me, “Write your piece through the eyes of the children of Nellie.” I did.

I knew that those children in Nellie who had seen gruesome killings of parents and loved ones – and experienced the fear of impending death – would never forget what had happened, and it would scar their lives.

As I looked at Rahul’s pictures in Manipur, I realised that those children who surrounded him may not forget that “somebody important” had come from Delhi and held their hands when they were not sure what would happen to them or their families the next day.

Rahul’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra’s launch from Manipur was obviously propelled by the politics of the state. The Congress has criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi for not visiting Manipur even once since a near civil war situation broke out there eight months ago – and wanted to hammer home this message. (Home Minister Amit Shah did visit the state once, but that is not the same.)

That the Northeast is important is to state the obvious. The importance of Manipur and indeed of Nagaland, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh – where the ripple effects of Manipur were most felt – which act like sentinels on India’s border in these parts, goes beyond the handful of Lok Sabha seats these states represent.

When a Naga elder says that “We fear the Northeast becoming a Hindu-dominant area, to the disadvantage of Christians”, his words express the apprehension about the polarisation in