The prevailing chaos in Manipur today, especially in what can be now considered an election year, would make anybody rethink the notion of individual liberty upon which the very concept of democracy is based. The term of the current Assembly is due to expire less than a year from now, in February 2017. In times like this, it would be good to remind ourselves that democracy’s ultimate sovereigns are the individual voters, and the aggregate of the will of the individuals in a given society is what is sought to be determined in any democratic election. So when this freedom is put under shackles, as is overtly happening in Manipur, such as through the deception and coercion power of money, democracy no longer can have any meaning. Furthermore, what has also become urgently essential is to take a re-look at the notion of the State and its relation to individual freedom. This would also imply a re-examination of the very understanding of “freedom” itself. Is it a standalone value, or must be come predicated to the “State”. In this connection, an episode from the 1970s Hollywood classic, “The Ten Commandments”, re-screened periodically on 24-hour movie channels like the HBO is interesting. After his encounter with the “Burning Bush” on Mt Sinai, a metaphor of God’s intangible being, Moses (played by the late Charlton Heston) returns with the inscribed “Ten Commandments” stone tablets to his people camped at the base of the mountain, recently freed from slavery in Egypt, and finds them revelling, idol worshiping and indulging in other gross hedonistic pursuits. When Moses tells them of the “Ten Commandments”, there were near riots. One among the crowd shouts back at him objecting to the new edicts of the Ten Commandments: “We want freedom”. Moses’ answer to the man is remarkable: “There can be no freedom without the law” he shouts back amidst the din.
This single sentence could arguably be the most profound defence, validation and vindication of the State. Without the State institution, and the “order” that its “laws” establish, including notions of individual liberty and rights would predictably acquire a different meaning, if not cease to have meaning altogether. So in the event of the authority of the State withering away, the result is not freedom as many presume, but lawlessness and anarchy. Those of us in Manipur probably would not find this difficult to understand. We live in a condition in which the State has withdrawn its authority, and everybody has virtually become the law. This is indeed an argument for the indispensability of the State in these times of anarchy, when so many are given to talking of the State as dispensable or else whose power they can freely assume as their individual fiefs. Clearly, we cannot allow the State to wither away just as yet, if at all. The State and its instruments are still vital, although with good moderations, for it can get overbearingly authoritarian, as any unchecked power can, and hence one of the chief functions of the democratic polity is to check this tendency of a centralized power structure from becoming corrupt and authoritarian. This is done by making the authority of the State subject to periodic renewal of the mandate of democracy’s ultimate sovereigns – the individual voters. Many of our ongoing debates on issues that impact our lives, including that of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, AFSPA, must be places in this discursive space, so as not to lose perspective.
This renewal process of State authority is what is coming under attack in Manipur’s election processes. During the election campaigns, this affront can be very raw and direct, and can come in the shape of vote buying or else intimidations and booth capturing by unlawful organisations. But even months away, the skewed nature of democratic vision of our elected representatives is already beginning to be visible in the manner dissidents within the ruling party are reportedly campaigning to undermine the government under their own party banner. Nothing is spelled out so it can only be assumed all that the dissidents want is for them to be included in the inner circle of State power. This obviously can hardly be the people’s will as they so freely claim. It is with dismay we note the State in Manipur is withering away, not in the Marxist sense where its authority is ultimately and totally transferred to the people (dictatorship of the proletariat) but in the sense of a collapse of its moral hold over the people.