| Sumario: | This article examines the 2023 internet shutdown in Manipur, India, as a case of repressive connectivity – where digital infrastructures are weaponised to suppress dissent and erase subaltern narratives. Drawing from critical theory, postcolonial media studies, and digital rights scholarship, it reframes shutdowns not as isolated technical events but as acts of epistemic violence and infrastructural control. In conflict-prone contexts like Manipur, internet shutdowns fragment solidarity, mute resistance and reinforce state power. Yet paradoxically, they also provoke adaptive forms of digital and analogue resistance, from encrypted messaging and cultural expression to legal mobilisation and counterpublic formation. By analysing testimonies, case studies and platform dynamics, the article situates shutdowns within broader structures of algorithmic governance and surveillance capitalism. It argues that such acts of repression generate new modes of political agency and epistemic struggle. Ultimately, the study calls for a rethinking of connectivity, sovereignty and rights in postcolonial digital regimes.
|
|---|