The violent confrontation over the issue of land acquisition for expansion of the temple complex of a popular local Godman, Panthou, at Wangkhei Hijam Leirak today was unfortunate. It also tells of many failures of the administration. While the causes of the confrontation or the rightness or the wrongness of it is a matter the law should intervene and arbitrate, we are more concern with the larger implications of a steady and certain descent into lawlessness Manipur is going through marked most prominently by an increasing recourse of the public to mob justice, as was indeed the case here too. Today’s ugly violence, apart from leaving so much valuable immovable assets razed to the ground, and scores of cars damaged beyond easy repairs, also would have scarred the confidence of many irrecoverably. Even if a rapprochement is reached between the conflicting parties, namely the devotees of Panthou and the local community at Wangkhei, the unseen human bondages that snapped today are unlikely to be ever repaired again. Nothing happens in a vacuum, and there would have been strains in this relationship with an explanatory history behind it, but that is for the two parties to sort out. What we are concerned with, as we have said before, is the absence of good public administration which could have prevented the confrontation.
First and foremost, let the administration be reminded that at this moment, there are also two other explosive situations over the unexplained and unnatural deaths of two young men. Here too, it is violent street politics which are at the forefront, and the state has seen two crippling bandhs on their accounts. Again, just a few weeks earlier, the mob lynching at Lilong and Mayang Imphal put the state on the edge of a dangerous precipice. Today’s mob frenzy then, whatever the provocation, should leave no doubt in anybody’s mind anymore that mob justice is becoming an established pattern rather than an occasional exception. This is a tragedy which is being allowed to unfold unchecked by this administration. Here one is reminded of what German philosopher Karl Popper once wrote that a democracy in which individual freedom is not restrained by established constitutional law is no democracy, but a mobocracy. Indeed, it does seem today that Manipur has been reduced to a mobocracy.
The administration needs to remind itself that these kinds of conflicts, resulting out of religious congregations and establishments forming in residential areas, are not new. This has happened on so many occasions in the past in many different social environments in the hills as well as in the valley. The fights between new Christian converts and adherents to old established faiths within the Meiteis as well as amongst the Rongmeis are just some examples. Many of these sudden shows of extreme hostilities had little to do with faith, but with disruptions and obstructions to community lifestyles. Frequent prayer gatherings, singings, midnight masses, festive congregations, etc, common to all religious establishments, can and have broken the rhythm of community life where these establishments come up. Frequent traffic congestions in village lanes, noisy celebrations etc., result in daily irritants, and the daily residues from these irritants can accumulate to a point of explosion. Today’s flare up at Wangkhei is just the latest indicator of the dangers of allowing the establishment of public places of worship at crowded residential areas.
There can be no harm in private corners or structures within an individual’s residence, dedicated to the individual’s faith, where he or she conducts his or her ritualistic worships, but when these come to be converted to public spaces for religious congregation, trouble can brew, and from Manipur’s experience, has brewed. Let the administration then take note to ensure that public places of worship can only be established only with permission of the establishment and only at places designated by the establishment. This is especially so because Manipur is a much more complex society now than it ever was, with multiple faiths and beliefs, ranging all shades of theism and atheism, even within a single community. In the meantime, let the establishment take hold of the law and order agenda firmly. The state must establish itself as the sole authority in this regard. It must remind itself of what another German philosopher, Max Weber, said in no uncertain terms that the state must without fail exercise monopoly over “legitimate violence”. Manipur should not have any difficulty understanding why without this, democracy can degenerate into mobocracy.