The stealth campaign by unknown persons of planting Improvised Explosive Devices, IED, at crowded places continues. In the latest attack at Khoyathong Thangmeiband, outside the ABC Godown, three people were killed and many more maimed early this morning. Obviously, the target was migrant labourers, and indeed most of the casualties belonged to this impoverished category of population on the move. But the casualty could also have been anybody else too, not that this did not happen this time made the crime any more excusable. Bombs are not only devastating, but also indiscriminate as well but few killers can be expected to have the scruples to care for the distinction. This madness must end. Even those behind this brutal and inhuman campaign, and who obviously have no concern about the moral dimension of such despicable violence, must still know their method can only backfire on them ultimately. All they will manage to do is, alienate themselves from the public and earn condemnation universally, as it is happening already.
Manipur has become such a land of contradictions where devastating tragedies are pitted against each other, leaving its inhabitants with no options but to despair. It is a situation in which you are no longer sure what a proactive response should be. In the present case for instance, what is the recommendation any sensible person is expected to give, apart from unreservedly condemning the criminals. Do we call for intensifying police presence, and as a longer term policy ask for more police forces? Do we call in the Army in the management of law and order? The state and its people know very well the consequences of these resorts too well to actually want them. Nobody would want a police state, and there are indeed many running campaigns against this trend already, and this would include the demand for the repeal of the draconian Armed Forces Special Powers Act, AFSPA, 1958. But if these draconian measures have become anachronistic and against the spirit of democracy, the question before everybody, in particular the intelligentsia of the state is, what can exactly be the democratic response to the kind of mindless carnages we are today witnessing in Manipur today?
Today`™s blast deserves to be condemned, and this everybody would do in profusion in the next few days, but the question is what thereafter? One simple way out is to simply blame the government without actually spelling out where it has failed or what it must now do. A lot will actually do this, especially those in the non-ruling political parties. This is the character of politics in the state today, loud and cantankerous but clueless. But beyond this mad din, something must be thought of to definitively put an end to the kind of atrocities witnessed today. This is a question which the state, the government, the opposition and the people, together must endeavour to answer, not merely pass the buck. This is also a time for the intelligentsia to break their much reviled and written about silence and come forward with new perspectives and prescriptions. The responsibility is everybody`™s.
There is no question about it that empathy of the public must rest with the casualties of these attacks, and that they must be protected. However, on a wider canvas, the issue of migration, its ramifications and consequences, must be studied under a more detached light, and not merely brushed aside because it sounds politically incorrect. One way of examining such sensitive issues without touching raw nerves is to study similar situations in more distant places and polities. Tibet is quiet an illustrative example. China invaded and took over Tibet (or liberated in the words of Chinese authorities) in 1950. Today, virtually all levers of power and economy have transferred to the hands of an ever increasing number of immigrating ordinary Han Chinese, who it is said are already outnumbering Tibetans. If we feel righteously outraged at this, why should not the concerns of the Northeast on the immigration issue not be given a more sympathetic ear and policy response? Here we are witnessing explosions of frustration, and in Tibet it is implosions. If it is bomb attacks here, in Tibet it is self immolations. But that is just the manifestation of difference in temperament, the inner angst is the same.
Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam