“LADY MACBETH:
Who dares receive it other,
As we shall make our griefs and clamour roar
Upon his death?
MACBETH:
I am settled, and bend up
Each corporal agent to this terrible feat.
Away, and mock the time with fairest show:
False face must hide what the false heart doth know.” [Macbeth, ACT 1, Scene VII]
Definitions of a hero has been articulated in so many ways. But fear of a poop must obviously be excluded from the list. Heroes are naturally embracers of peril rather than the one who furls the flag. Now, in the number game, there are self-style heroes, mutated out of the defiled populism. Achilles draws his sword risking everything. Perseus, and Hercules sets out for perilous quests. Their heroism is taken into account because their inclination lies more towards renunciation of power, pleasure, etc.
Plato once spoke of philosopher king meaning that a king or a leader must necessarily be a philosopher. The term philosopher implies a rational man, reasonable enough to be entitled as a just man/just leader. A rational man who grows himself to a just man is always equipped with cardinal virtues – wisdom, courage, and temperance. No sound decision is possible without the three virtues. This claim does not require exemplification because no reasonable man, across time, can doubt it either in personal or political domain.
Leaders of our time rising out of the number game is exceptionally trying to prove the validity of Plato’s claim. It is extraordinarily astonishing to witness their endeavor to interpret Plato in their kitchens, in their courtyards, in their living rooms, and in their bedrooms. These leaders made their political decision after a series of self-indulgence in the form of a dialogue happening in the above venues. While contemplating on a certain political issue, these locations have serious impact on their conclusions. I am not talking about a warm, cozy, and productive family discussion. In those corners they find peoples, pictures, and memories of their closest ones. Now their wisdom works to accumulate wealth for self and his extensions, muster up enough courage to put maximum effort in the process of accumulation, and grow enough temperance for those feelings that naturally reach out for fellow beings, sacrifice, generosity, etc. controlling the self from wasting their hard-earned wealth to the public at large. Any act that tends to divert from such course is deem to be irrational. This is just a metaphor, for in reality, it is worse.
Politics in our time is nothing more than mere populism in the best-case scenario. In the worst case, it is winning the hearts of blood thirsty vampires. The present crisis in Manipur is a product of pseudo politics reigning for the last five decades. There were times, especially in Manipur, when the answer to the questions, such as ‘What is Politics/Rajniti?’, stands similar to replying questions like ‘what is the taste of cyanide/poison?’. The answer lies not in any kind of description but in the very act of tasting itself. Now this interpretation of politics is making the underprivileged public to pay the price. Our mothers use to tipped us to stay away from politics. The rationale, for instance, goes, “For those who are involved in politics, are those who are the defiled one. It was just a drop of the idea of politics that was needed, to turn a saint into a savage”. No one knows the reality, until one dip his/her hand into it, but the song sang on and on.
Was it in our blood to manipulate the principle of politics and make it to something personal? Are we not that civilized enough to understand the distinction between ‘I’ and ‘we’? Are we to blame our predecessors for leaving us with such a befoul tradition of politics? Or is it the post-independence economic hurdles that dragged us to such calamity?
I believe there is always the confusion between the question of precedence, and calamities are the consequences of it. There is a local riddle which poses a question (which I believe was aimed to enlighten men on the subtleties of life and its nature) on the eldership between and a hen and an egg. Most believed it often leads to an infinite regress, or it is merely reductio ad absurdum, an impasse. [But I believe this can fork to two sublime possibilities. First, if one finds that the egg precedes the hen, one is also enlightened with the divine potential of a full-fledged life incapsulated within the small egg. Second, if one thinks otherwise, then one is also enlightened to the fact that this hen has the potential to multiply life, or, on the other hand, this mere chicken can provide the population with an American breakfast.] Now the same logic of precedence applies between the ultra-hedonistic property accumulation, and the ultimate sense of one’s duty for the sake of duty. We are also familiar with those popular performing arts whose scripts, while defying the deontological moral and aesthetic imperatives, entails the significance of bread over poems, gold over flowers, saving against sacrifice. The sense of priority on economic commands laid down the foundation for our aggravating political insecurities and crisis.
When that is the case, decisions made in political domain is somehow corrupted by the motives that dreamed of self-infatuated growth. This shall not lead to the play of chance and luck. If the decision favours the self-directed ingenuity, which most decisions ought to be with such force and inclination, then the fate of the people is entombed to be repeatedly poked by the emerging consequences. These decisions are vengeful, nepotistic, highly loyal to the kitchen and bedroom. These decisions denigrate anything that disenthralled from cost-benefit analysis. I pity poor Aristotle when said, “…state is a creation of nature, and that man is by nature a political animal. And he who by nature and not by mere accident is without a state, is either a bad man or above humanity; he is like the Tribeless, lawless, heartless one…”. In our context, the idea political animal interprets as ‘the arousing of animality in the domain of politics’.
Hence, time and again, they uttered here and there, that enrolling in politics, and trying to be a leader is a headache that broils them inside out. We believed them because they were uttering the truth. They are in constant turmoil and dilemma to choose between the one who offer Rs. 50/- per kilo of local rice against the other with Rs. 55/- per kilo of superman’s rice.
The writer is Assistant Professor, Imphal College
