According to his social media accounts, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is launching high-speed trains and shaking hands with international leaders as a global powerhouse and the face of a resurgent India.

But his carefully manufactured image, followed by millions, contrasts sharply with his quiet on what has amounted to a civil war in India’s northeastern state of Manipur.

For three months, the strongman leader has been missing in the midst of what is possibly the worst ethnic violence ever witnessed in the distant state where Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party is in power.