Monday morning, July 24, the Supreme Court heard the issue of the ASI survey of the disputed Gyanvapi mosque and CJI Chandrachud stayed the process till 5 pm July 26. The media headlined it "Big Win for Muslim Side". Within minutes, Chandrachud was the biased villain! Earlier in the morning, somebody had given CJI Chandrachud a clean chit with “Wasn’t he the one who wrote the Ram Mandir verdict?”

How fast does the cookie crumble? For almost the entire last one week, ever since the CJI threatened to take suo moto action on Manipur if the Modi government failed to do its duty, #CJIVsPM has been trending even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s refusal to visit Manipur took over from his silence on Manipur. “Why isn’t the Prime Minister visiting Imphal?” is the latest grouse against Modi.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is getting it from all sides. If he thought the single statement “Now I am angry” would absolve him, he was sadly mistaken. Getting trolled is not one way traffic. If anything, Modi is receiving as much flak as is his new bete noire and there is no beating around the bush. It is not to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s advantage that the perception battle appears to be slipping away from his hands.

Getting cornered by I.N.D.I.A was one thing, but to face the CJI's wrath is double the jeopardy. Modi’s image vis a vis CJI Chandrachud’s image and guess whose image gets more “likes” and whose gets “retweets”? Depends on a whole bunch of corollaries accompanying the question; top of which is, “What has Prime Minister Narendra Modi got to show for his government’s performance in Manipur?”

The “ethnic cleansing” in Manipur is confusing. Which community is getting “cleansed”? In fact, the word “cleansed” is carelessly thrown about in such situations. To this day, even after more than 30 years, people are debating whether there was genocide or ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Pandits in the Kashmir Valley? If nothing else, a new definition of ethnic cleansing is in order.

For tens of thousands of Kashmiri Pandits, essentially the ones still stuck in refugee camps, the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a complete failure. After nearly 10 years governing India, Modi’s word does not count. And “Manipur” is an extension of the Modi government’s Kashmir impotency.

Ever since May of 2014, the BJP never tired of claiming how Prime Minister Narendra Modi positively transformed the northeast into a hub of cohesiveness with the integration of the seven sisters with the rest of India. But today, the northeast is in a total disarray. And to think of the number of northeast colourful hats of all shapes Modi wore!

Prime Minister Narendra Modi can hypothetically solve the Russia-Ukraine standoff, but when told to intervene in Manipur, his 'mojo' goes for a toss. Is the Prime Minister saying that as long as women are paraded naked in West Bengal and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee does not raise a finger, Manipur’s naked shame can also be swept under the carpet? Like a leftwing troll said, Modi was in dire need of the “Chandrachud-treatment”.

A question the leftwing trolls asked, much to the discomfort of rightwing trolls, is shouldn’t Prime Minister Narendra Modi put in his papers after CJI Chandrachud’s no-holds barred attack on the Modi government’s failure to protect Manipur’s hapless women? The fabled invincibility of Prime Minister Narendra Modi lies in tatters. At least 140 people were killed.

The Modi government’s inaction has made the Meitei look guilty and cornered and their alleged culpability landing them in trouble even in neighbouring Mizoram. It is incidental that the Meitei are equated with “Hindus” while there are Meitei Christians and Meitei Muslims also. The fact remains that modern-day India isn’t Hindu-friendly and the Hindu is under the misplaced belief that he will forever rule “Bharat” with the votes of minority communities. Just like the Native American Indian, the Hindus can always look forward to pitching his teepee in forest reserves.

Bottom-line, contrived or real, the #ModiVsChandrachud has focused attention on the perception “government unki hai par system hamaari hai” The system is being equated with the higher judiciary. The Modi government’s Manipur failure deserves the warning, bordering on a threat, but the perception and belief that “government unki hai par system hamaari hai” is dangerous for all of us.(IPA Service)