We are on the eve of another New Year already. While it is perfectly justified for all to look forward a new year, the old year that we leave behind in the process, should also be a matter of nostalgia. For Manipur however, the latter can hardly be true. The last nearly two years have little in terms of fond memory to recall and miss, and instead have been all about incessant darkness and gloom, punctuated by spectres of innocent blood and gore spilled. Of course, for those who have lost loved ones, or else their homes and hearths, their bitterest memories will also be ones of burning sweet nostalgia and soul wrenching grief. May they be given the strength to overcome their sorrows, and the courage to move on in life. Even if the state government remains clueless or the Union government remains disinterested in resolving the crisis, may fortune turn to bring back peace and normalcy in everybody’s life, especially so to those who are displaced, so they can return home, reclaim their properties and rebuild their lives, bringing up their children as they would have, had this tragedy not struck the state. For the moment though, return to normalcy seems still a little remote. This does not mean we must give up hope that it will, and continue to contribute our mite to make this happen.
Let us also remember, all of us are a year older by having left behind a year. Let this then be also an occasion for many of us stuck to the past to grow up a little, at least as much as a year gone by warrants. Things change and as the saying goes, time and tide wait for no man. Not changing with this tide of time has two very obvious consequences. For those in positions of power, they will most likely be destined to be always insecure and lonely, always petrified of losing power and facing those they bullied while in power. Others away from levers of power, who are averse to change, will be destined to ultimately become pathetically redundant.
It cannot be a coincidence that those who led prolonged revolutions, and refuse to learn or change with time, they too have always in the end turn into caricatures of authoritarian power wielders. As history has been witness, they too will drift away from the public on whose behalf they claim they were fighting, and ultimately into oblivion. This thought should be of importance to violence torn Manipur, the land of a thousand mutinies. If for instance a revolution is waged against an oppressive condition, it would be justified so long as the oppressive condition lasts. Chances are, with the passage of time, the oppressive condition can become a thing of the past. If the situation does take such a turn, the struggle against the oppressive condition that once was continues, when the same oppressive condition no longer remains, their struggles too will be destined to become absolutely anachronistic.
This explanation is often given of the Hippie cult of the 1960s. When the nature of the adversary they were fighting altered and its character did not any longer have the object of their protest, their protest either had to end or change its nature too. This is quite in keeping with the profound statement of Ernst Renan, that a nation is a daily plebiscite. Those who listen to the voice and verdict of this daily plebiscite will never become irrelevant. In the Indian context, this would apply to the larger nation as well as those putting up a struggle against the nation.
If the nation has its ears close to the ground and listens closely to the pulse of its people, including the dissenting voices, and accommodates necessary changes, that would be the beginning of many solutions to all its problems of insurrections. The struggles can then be absorbed into the larger whole to be sublimated into an internal democratic mechanism for addressing differences. If on the other hand it does not, and sticks to its old oppressive national credos, the struggles against it will have a reason to continue with justification. The same hopes and dangers hold for those behind the many mutinies too. They too must have their ears close to the ground, and be willing to change with time, and the changing moods and aspirations of the people. Otherwise, they too will soon morph into tyrants, with a continually shirking ground for them to stand on.
The times are changing indeed. Even in a lifetime, those of us who have long left behind the adrenaline mad youthful days have seen these changes. To be what we were in our youth, or even read the situation as we did then, would be total fallacy now, not at all because we were immature then, but because the conditions have changed, changed utterly with time, that it cannot ever be what it was. We were probably right then in our assessments, and we are probably right still in our assessments now, even though what we saw then and what we see now are completely different.
Bertrand Russell has a word on this in one of the numerous essays on his thoughts he left behind. The ability to change is not always fickleness of mind. It is a sign of an individual’s capacity to grow intellectually. To remained unchanged in mindset, without assessing and preparing for the new challenges time brings, is not a sign of courage at all, as is often preached to be, but of stubbornness, and often foolhardiness. Recall the poem from school, “The Boy Stood on the Burning Deck” by Felicia Dorothea Hemans, in which a brave boy, stood steadfast to his command and stood on the burning deck of his ship until he was consumed. Many read this as a mark of supreme courage. Yes, it was, but it was also foolhardiness. Many of us, we are sure, would have wished the boy saw sense and jumped to save himself from such a senseless death.
Editor, Imphal Review of Arts and Politics and author
