We hope the trouble in Manipur subsides soon, though even wishing this comes with a measure of inexplicable guilt, now that there have been so many deaths and injuries caused to young men and women. All the same we wish it. We wish too there are no more casualties, although at this moment, it is difficult to think how this wish will ever come about. The issues over which the trouble broke out are still not put to rest and the divide this has brought about has hardly been bridged. If the safety valves of the Manipur pressure cooker did not save the situation this time, the fear is, there are more explosions ahead and the safety valves are no longer reliable. Or maybe the safety valves have become dysfunctional and incapable of keeping pace with the rate steam is generated in this pressure cooker. What despairing thoughts indeed. What a sense of devastation, physical as well as moral. But the place has no other alternative than to pick itself up and walk again sometime or the other.
The wounds are deep, but once the immediate crises subsides a little, maybe it would be good to take our minds away from the immediate for some time, and walk a dispassionate distance and look back. Closeness to any action, physically or psychological, may give the advantage of seeing more details, but what often is sacrificed in such manoeuvres is the panorama. The micro and the macro pictures are both vital in mastering a full grasp of any situation. Our tendencies have sadly been heavily tilted towards the micro vision and the invariable expense of the macro. Of the current fire, we will not say more for the time being, but all the same hope and pray the tragedy does not mount any further. Sometimes one does wish one can believe in miracles.
Miracles if they do happen we believe are conditional. It is a reward for hard work, sincerity and enterprise. This hard work and enterprise in the current situation can most appropriately begin with introspection and soul searching, and not a game of one-up-manship and finger pointing. One of the most valuable gifts that mankind has received most abundantly, it is often said, is the quality of empathy. In fact, as Jeremy Rifkin so convincingly argues in `The Empathic Civilisation`, civilisation itself would not have been possible if not for empathy. This is the quality to enter into another person, even if he or she is a total stranger, and see and feel as he or she does. This is the ability to share the pains and sufferings as much as the joys and jubilations of others, again even of total strangers. It is empathy which made the picture of the drowned Syrian child on a beach in Turkey yesterday which captivated the world and warmed Europe`™s attitude to its current refugee crisis. This is the quality that made the picture of the Napalm Girl in 1972 during America`™s Tet Offensive in Vietnam, begin the process of America winding down its war in Vietnam.
Rifkin says it is not just a cultivated emotion. Humans are soft wired to be empathic, except of course the pathologically ill killers and sadists. Somebody bites into a heitup (the sour wild apple we know so well in Manipur) in front of you, and there will be no way your mouth will not water. Somebody cuts her hand badly with a sharp knife and you grimace without even intending to. You are not the one whose taste buds are assaulted by the sourness of the wild apple, and you are not the one whose hand is cut, yet you can feel as the other person does. Not many other creatures have this quality. Let us then, in the days ahead, step back a little from where we are standing, and explore the empathic traits in us, and try to see from the vantage of the others in these sordid equations unfolding before us. That would be a good beginning in the effort for all to reap a rich harvest of peace together.
Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam