By – Amar Yumnam
The last few days I have been terribly missing my parents and the elders. This feeling is not just a plain but a social one indeed. Of the many things I still remember, I would like to point out afresh four things particularly. First, when something seems like going wrong for the collective or an individual used to behave in a very untraditional way without bothering for none, the people used to share the statement that “It is like the King is not there.” Second, whenever any information or even a sound of something terribly going wrong, there was a competition of the people around to rush to the place to attend to the place with a shared feeling to attend to the wrongs and attend to the needed correctives. Third, whenever an elder utters or behaves very wrong, the shared expression was that the younger ones or the contemporaries should bear with him for the moment. The approach was to request a friend of the person committing a social mistake and request the former to make his friend understand what the wide feeling was. Fourth, the inherited behavioral norms and the traditional processes for performing a function were rationalized with an emphasis on honouring the tradition.
While we were kids, we did not understand the full meaning and implications of these. The norms are now named as Institutions of the Society in Economics. Before the robust emergence of Institutional Economics in the beginning of the present century, rationality was defined as to endeavour to have something more than what have been spent by an individual; this is what we had learnt as students. But in today’s Economics, the issues of Justice and Morality are also bought in. While only the concerned individual’s interests were taken into consideration, it is equally emphasized that Social Justice and Individual Morality principles should also be looked into as fulfilled or otherwise. In plain words, every individual should take into consideration the interests of the society he/she in while deciding on any action. All these are about the first thing I mentioned in the above para.
Now let us go to the second one. I still value the love I got from every section of the society of Manipur. I don’t know what would have been of me if I had not got the fortune of being breast-fed by any woman depending upon the opportunity at that moment; I learnt and understood after a little grown up that the maximum of it was done by the Kabui Imas (Kabui Mothers). Such was the social health and the accompanying social strength of Manipur. But what we are learning today is that school-going kids are easily run-over and killed even by the police vehicles. The police personnel would draw out the dead kid from under the vehicle as if pulling a dead dog or cow. Further this behaviour is now coupled by any person witnessing or seeing such events bypassing the place as if nothing happened. These are definitely not inherited characters of the Civilizational History of which Manipur is justifiably proud of.
Now respecting the elders in such a way that any disagreement with an elder (I am not talking of Seminars but of social display) would be made as open as possible and the harsher the abusive languages in the open would be taken as courageous and behaving for the social upliftment of the society. Now this behaviour is Rationalised by claiming as rational social worker.
What I feel very strongly that these societal behavioral changes have not occurred in a vacuum but founded on the characterless and non-social governance by the administration over a period of time such that the inherited strengths of Manipur society are destroyed to the core. Let me end with Kwame Anthony Appiah of New York University who has written in his recent piece on What Should I Do About the Bully in My Social Circle? In the New York Times of 6 December 2025: “If being candid about your experience with this charming, egocentric and vindictive person leads others to be supportive of you, a result could be to reaffirm the value of the friendship circle. If doing so strains the friendships, you’ll have learned something about their limits and have reason to think more about the kind of community you want to participate in. Friendships, like marriages, evolve or end, and even later on in life it’s possible to forge new ones. You deserve friendships that make room for your unabridged self.”