By – Amar Yumnam
Imphal, Nov 18:
Maximum Cruelty and associating it with behaviour of supposedly people living on this planet is not something I have seen and thought of in my loving memory of the last half a century. But this record has been broken very brutally. When three women and three kids (one eight months old + one two and half years old + one eight years old) were taken as hostages by a group demanding something whatever, in a very natural way I felt that they would be freed safe and sooner; this feeling is the natural humanistic feeling. It is indeed a natural humanistic feeling that people and babies – who had not committed any crime and cannot commit any crime either – would not be killed just like that. The positive outcome felt by many, including myself, of being freed sooner without any injury has now been belied completely. Now all the six, including the eight months old baby, have been found killed and brutally at that.
When this information came out first, my immediate reaction was: “Putting them in captivity and killing them all including the eight months old child are no signs of strength and superiority, but are undoubtedly signs of cruel animals.” (Anyone wishing to know more about the six, their photograph in captivity can be seen in any social media platform). I still stand by my first reaction. Further, I now feel three points very strongly. First, since there is absolute absence of any sign of humanity, they are not humans. Second, since they do not possess core human quality, whatever group they have formed is not a human society but closer to the animal kingdom. Third, the first two points are founded on the core foundation of global history of human civilisation wherein people come together on mutual trust to form a society and sustaining the society on humanitarian principles. The great humanitarian scholar, Adam Smith, opened his 1759 book Theory of Moral Sentiments with this para: “How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it. Of this kind is pity or compassion, the emotion which we feel for the misery of others, when we either see it, or are made to conceive it in a very lively manner. That we often derive sorrow from the sorrow of others, is a matter of fact too obvious to require any instances to prove it; for this sentiment, like all the other original passions of human nature, is by no means confined to the virtuous and humane, though they perhaps may feel it with the most exquisite sensibility.
The greatest ruffian, the most hardened violator of the laws of society, is not altogether without it.” Now given this global history and the imperatives for humanitarian principles, we can say for sure that the killers of the six cannot be members of any society for such people cannot constitute and sustain a society.
Well, even more painful – qualitatively at that – than the tragedy of killing itself is the continuing character of application of mind and evolution of policies to address the problems of Manipur on the part of the prevailing government; the government has been busy without worrying about governance. To put it in plain words, the government of the day in Manipur has not been concerned at all with connecting with the society in Manipur; reminds of the questions Heidegger had raised in 1927 on Being and Time. A just published book, Accelerating India’s Development: A State-Led Roadmap for Effective Governance, raises the following questions: “as we enter our seventy-fifth year as a sovereign Republic, there is almost no other endeavour more important for our collective future than building a more effective Indian state. This will require us to understand: [a] Why does the Indian state do poor in delivering basic services? [b] What will it take to improve the effectiveness of the Indian state? [c] How can we use this understanding to create politically feasible and practically implementable reform roadmaps for key sectors to sharply improve outcomes? [d] How can each of us – individually and collectively – contribute towards building a more effective Indian state, and thereby help accelerate India’s development?” (Muralidharan, Kartik, 2024, p. 5). In this context, Joya Chatterji’s observation has meanings: “The purpose of nationalism is to unite. Just as often, it divides. My purpose here is not to decry the power of India’s imagined national unities; it is to explore why, despite their undoubted energy, India’s nationalisms have fragmented again and again. Why was nationalism in South Asia more often like a civil war than a serried rank of troops marching forward in unison?” (Shadows At Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Century, 2024).
Given these wider Indian imperatives, it goes without saying that the imperatives in the case of Manipur too are to be digested and explore ways to connect with the Indian purpose for a shared future. Let me reemphasise here what I have talked of applying mind and evolving social policies to address the contemporary problems of Manipur in many of my recent inputs in this column; the primary preoccupation should be with evolution of contextual social policies to link the government with the society and move ahead on the development path.
Quite contrary to these social needs, the Armed Forces Special Powers Act has now been imposed. Without mincing words, I must say that this is an insult to the Manipur Social. We know from recent history how the people have experienced unaccounted bitterness under the brutality of this Act, and accordingly have fought against it. Now the reimposition means that the government of the day does not mind insulting the people and society of Manipur. This implies that the government of the day does not possess the capacity to apply mind to governance and the people pay the price for it. Manipur needs a Government which knows what Governance is about; the present one must GO.
