Is history always a progression of events in chronological time? This is an intriguing question defying easy answer. There probably is no single and definite answer to it and in all likelihood, history is a progress in some ways but not always. British philosopher of the 20th Century, Sir Isaiah Berlin ponders on this question and points out in his essay In Search of an Ideal occurring in his collection of essays Crooked Timber of Humanity, that quite surprisingly not a single one of the myriad perceptive social thinkers of the 19th Century – undoubtedly one of the most creative periods of human history – ever predicted the ethnic identity predicament of the 20th Century. None of them also foresaw the politics of religious fundamentalism or any preoccupation with the issue of terrorism either. Marx, Hegel, Luxembourg et al… who predicted, and quite accurately too, devastating wars and bloody revolutions, for some mysterious reason, seemed never to have had a hint of these scourges of today.
Berlin’s canvas is larger, but I will be confining myself to the question of ethnic identity upheavals, a phenomenon not anybody in the Northeast would be unfamiliar with, and one of extreme relevance to the region’s sense of peace and justice. How was this distinctive characteristic of social unrests in the late 20th Century, which has spilled over into the 21st Century, so well screened out from the vision of social scientists of the preceding era?
The indication, to borrow from Berlin again, is that many events in history are not exactly a continuity, and therefore history cannot always be seen as a linear progression. Many of them simply pop up within specific historical time frames so that they would be virtually invisible from outside of those time frames. The ethnic question certainly seems to be just one of these. The optimistic inference that follows is, just as these problems popped up into existence suddenly, in all likelihood, once on the other edge of the time frame that circumscribe them, they may age out and fade away. Much like the comet hit that threw the earth into a cataclysmic period 60 million years ago, resulting in the ultimate extinction of many species, including the dinosaurs after their nearly 4 million years of dominating, indeed domineering, over all other life forms on earth.
To a great extent, this theory would support the debunking of history as just a matter of “one damned thing after another”. That the popular method of historiography of logically sequencing major events and epochs in chronological time into a single coherent narrative may not always be justified and hence fall short of explaining every historical experience satisfactorily, much less predict the future.
Isaiah Berlin seems to take the middle path, so that while most events in history are seen as dovetailing each other, others follow unpredictable trajectories, independent of any such tangible historical streams or patterns. If at all these explosive events are predictable, it would only be within the time frame of their existence. Take the case of the ethnic strife in Manipur. Who would have predicted things would come to such a pass as it is today, even as late at the earlier half of the 20th Century? Communities that have been together for aeons have suddenly begun to see themselves as irreconcilably different, having always lived in “unique”, non-overlapping histories.
Is this our share of a disease inherited from the 20th Century which saw some of the most devastating ethnic wars, with the former Yugoslavia splitting up on ethnic lines, giving the world a glimpse of the extent of violence this can lead to? This question is interesting for it cannot be by coincidence that the explosion of ethnic identity strife here seems to be following the law of physics that predicts “sympathetic oscillation of pendulums in close proximity”.
The ethnic problem in Manipur is not in any way an isolated phenomenon, for almost simultaneously, similar problems exploded with equal, if not greater ferocity in so many different parts of the world. We have seen how conflict situations on account of this tore apart or threatened to do so, many nations in Sub-Saharan Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia etc. Many of these were so viciously xenophobic and genocidal. Very much the same thing can be said of “terrorism” and religious fundamentalism.
So what, one may ask. What great difference does it make if our present misery is part of an inherited sin or is a singular cataclysmic historical turbulence? For one thing, if our actions are not merely reactions but are driven by independent urges and aspirations, the different communities can stop shifting blame on each other and instead live up to the challenge of the time and evolve a consensual solution.
The second implication is, as in the case of “sympathetic oscillation” when the oscillation of one pendulum halts, the others oscillating bodies may die their own natural deaths. At the turn of another epoch then, ethnic problems, including our own, may see their own obituaries written. In such an event, we will be amongst the first to wish this monster RIP.
Editor, Imphal Review of Arts and Politics and author
