By – Amar Yumnam
Imphal, Feb 24:
Manipur has been going through a social dispute for two years. This dispute is being seen and treated as a drama to be allowed continuation of staging by the governance of the day – at both the union and the province levels. The governing authority and the political party behind the running of governance sees the solution to be thought over, brought into implementation and transformed into a solution by a Tom, Dick or Harry. The government exercising the governance at both the province and the federal levels – practically they are of the same political party in this democratic federalism India follows – as if the solution would to the dispute would emerge on its own. In a multi-ethnic democracy, it is fundamental that the government not only behaves in a neutral way but as well seen to be neutral across the parties in dispute. This is one thing which has been terribly missing in the current dispute Manipur has been subject to during the last two years.
I would not indulge into the debate as to whether the crisis of the last two years in Manipur is a dispute or a conflict. While social scientists may usually be indulgent with the term conflict, the legal experts may be familiar with the usage of disputes. These debates on the appropriateness of either term is of irrelevance at this point. What is paramount is that non-violence and avoidance of killings are the key norms of a democratic federalism. Hence I prefer dispute to a violent sounding term conflict. Further Manipur is a kingdom which was restored after the historic Seven Years’ Devastation. Thus resort to non-violent dispute resolution endeavours should form the core qualities of a land (Manipur) and her people with history. Manipur has been necessarily a South East Asian country with Myanmar as the Chin boundary and the Lushai boundary with Mizoram. The Merger with India and the first Prime Minister of India gifting away the Kabaw Valley to Myanmar are parts of recorded history and not pretensions of record. With the clear-cut records of Chin and Lushai boundaries, attempts by the government in power for dispute resolution should not be a difficult one like aiming for the sky. Further the modern approaches of Institutional Analysis and New Economic Geography are wonderful tools for updating understanding of socio-economic transformation processes and enhancing the development speed. But in the case of Manipur, we have seen how illiterate, unprepared and unwilling the powers that be at both federal and provincial levels to resolve disputes, and how their preference lies with watching the drama of new inter-ethnic tensions in the country. Further, we have been emphasising for the last few years the huge potential implications of the international political economic changes taking place in the neighbouring South east Asian country. The dimensions of the implications are now much deeper and wider with the recent law passed in the neighbouring country which enabled the security agencies of probably the most powerful country in the world today to get engaged in every socio-economic activity in the country, Myanmar.
The biggest tragedy of the social crisis of the last two years in Manipur has been the political economic manifestation of the absence of the most important uniting and functioning agency of a polity : The State. In a democracy, one of the most fundamental qualities needed for functional efficiency of a State is the Trust of the people on the government. Well we all understand that by Trust we mean that no damage or harm would be caused to the citizens while Distrust means the opposite.
One very important foundation for this Trust is the social prevalence of an atmosphere of formation of public opinion on the basis of rational exercise of preferences by the people. Something very unprecedented and unhealthy one happened in Manipur during the recent period of disturbance. The usual public opinion is a spontaneous one and collectively exercised. But what Manipur has seen recently is the manufacturing of public opinion. Anyone who had an opinion different from the manufactured one was just running a risk for his life. An atmosphere suddenly emerged at the societal level wherein people were scared to express any opinion. This is a very costly thing for the democracy to be functional and the sustain the trustworthiness of the State. This has the potential to lay the foundation for civil war.
I would like to conclude with what the great Lionel Robbins said in 1939: “The difficulties which arise from the existence of proximate and remote causes are difficulties which affect any kind of explanation, whether of natural events or of human conduct. There are further difficulties, however, which arise only where human conduct is involved. If we are explaining some event of a purely physical nature, say the release of an avalanche or the discharge of lightning, when we speak of a cause, we always refer to an antecedent event also physical in nature. The chain of explanation is homogeneous. But, if we are explaining events in which the conduct of human beings is involved, the word cause can be used in two different senses. We can say the cause of the American War of Independence was the desire of the Americans to be rid of an irksome regulation. Or we can say it was the landing of tea at Boston. In the one case we are referring to a motive, in the other case to an event in the outside world which (inter alia) gave rise to that motive. In the one case areas on is the cause, in the other case an external event. The two modes of explanation are not in the least incompatible. Indeed, on the assumption that human action is influenced by psychological factors, either conscious or unconscious, both are necessary. You cannot leave out one or the other without making nonsense of history. The naive behaviourists who believe that all’ human behaviour can be explained in terms of successive rearrangements of organic matter could not succeed in writing one page of history in such terms. In the last analysis, however, there is a sense in which the reason is logically prior to the occasion. For the occasion will have different results according to its interpretation and the system of motives which it evokes. If the Americans had not resented the commercial policy of the English, the landing of tea at Boston would have occasioned no international friction. Hence historical knowledge in its fullest development, while necessarily a chronicle of events, is essentially an explanation of reasons. Individual reasons may themselves prove to tend to be associated with particular social or material conditions. But the immediate preoccupation of historical explanation, as distinct from general sociology, is essentially the discovery of reasons. Every social event is due to the action of some individual or group of individuals. Every individual action is due to some motive, conscious or unconscious.”Where is the State in Manipur in dealing with these motives?
