Too much blood is being spilt in Manipur today. Increasingly for reasons unknown. And increasingly again, that of the innocents who are absolutely neutral to the savage war in our land. Those behind these killings have also stopped explaining their acts, or even owning up, as it had been the practice when despite its violent ways, insurgency considered itself as accountable, responsible and answerable to the people. Today, that visage of insurgency seems to have vanished, and even if it is still there, it has been drowned in the bloodthirsty madness all around. In the name of insurgency or else by hiding behind it, blue murders and daylight robberies have become the order of the day. The people’s voice, will, insecurities, desires, longings…. do not make a difference anymore. A different kind of oppression is upon them. More than at any other time, they are terrified. They want to scream, but they have no voice left. Once upon a time it was possible to say a particular killing was the latest outage. Not anymore. The interval between one atrocious killing and another can be as short as a single day or less. From the nearly daily reports of bodies of unknown persons found shot and abandoned, to those known to be fine officers and gentlemen have been reduced to mere statistics to be announced at the end of the year as indices of the law and order situation deserving tough government recourses. We don’t know what to say to express our sorrow, but that our hearts weep with all the bereaved families. We can quite well imagine the void left in their lives by his sudden and violent deaths. We pray that they are able to draw courage from the faith that God’s sword of vengeance is swift, and those who have inflicted them the pain they are going through now, will suffer the same pains sooner than later.
Massacres, murders, robberies, assassinations… all these have become our staple. When will all these ever end? Or are we doomed to live with them forever? We have no illusion that the civilian population can remain totally aloof and untouched by the ongoing turmoil in our land. But we had always believed that civilian casualties can only be out of being caught in the crossfire. This, to our horror, seems no longer the case. Increasingly, the guns of all those who wield the gun, are without any scruples being trained on the civilian population. Looking back at the events in just the past week will prove our point. The news of all the violent deaths everywhere would sooner than later fade out of public consciousness, unsung and unknown. We have always and we still do now, condemn this trend without any reservation. It is time for the people to come out and without fear say enough is enough. If this madness is allowed to continue unchallenged, a critical point would soon be reached from where it would be difficult for Manipur to recover? Everybody must leave aside their private insecurities and do something now, not for anybody else but for themselves and their own children. How long can anybody hide from himself, and to what purpose?
Various explanations and justifications of insurgency have been forwarded in the years that have gone by. It has been defined as politics of the extreme kind or else a state of mind and cannot be erased physically. It causes are rooted in history, culture, ethnicity, geography, economy and so many other social factors. We agree totally and that is why we have always been for a more intellectual approach to the problem. Rather than extermination, it has to be a process of healing past wounds and injured spirits. It has to be a social discourse that seeks out the truth and with the objective of establishing justice for all in keeping with the reality before us. Only when this begins to happen, can we be certain something good awaits us in the distance. Quite contrary to this, our hope horizon has receded beyond sight. What we are witnessing today is not insurgency. The politics that governs our lives is not politics either.