Imphal Review of Arts and Politics

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Artistically portrayed Chinese dragon

Though China is Quickly Getting Moneyed, Discarding Religion May Lead to its Humanism Coming Under Threat

China is a case of cultural and human quality decadence. Everything new looks good and grand for a while. So, China’s economy and money’s looking good as it’s new at the moment and looks all-encompassing with the elation it provides. But the picture could be altogether a shortsighted one because without religion there’s cultural decay in China. The reason is that there are many points that are left unanswered under the communist system and those who support this system of state rule. Like for instance take a common seed of any plant. We don’t know how to manufacture or procure this seed and are totally dependent on nature as a feature of the supranatural, or commonly, God, to get this seed. Since the communist state does not believe in god or the propagation of god or subsequently the accompanying factor of religion and living under a religiously devised system of living, preferring a state devised system instead, it can be taken logically that they do not believe in the nature given seed also, which is the human sustenance for life – meaning that the Chinese communist believe neither in this seed, nor the propagation of this seed which is the basic requirement for life. In India we have a whole rural system which is based on the celebration of this nature given seed and there are many harvest festivals, folk dances, singing, worshiping and offering of this seed every year to the Supreme. So, the whole system of life in India, especially the majority rural, is based on this celebration of life, and creation in the form of the seed, which is provided by nature or whichever supranatural being a religion may believe in. Since this is missing in China and lands akin to them, we can safely say they do not believe in the creative process, whether of a seed or of humans. So that’s the process of decadence that they convey through their system of state rule – it does not possess the power to create or rejuvenate like a seed, which attributing this seed to a higher supranatural power has. And the basic social fabric of their life is under threat due to godless life which does not believe in or celebrate nature. This is a significant difference between China and those who prefer China and the rest of the world where religion is the main focus.

Any remains of religious values may erode in China and see its last if religion does not get infused timely to give authenticity to human value. China’s seeming liberal business policy is not conducive with the human element as the core of its communist community that takes decisions on this business has come far from the richness of the nature-conforming human heart over the decades of Chinese communism sans the necessary truths of any benign religious practice which could have been able to ward off the severity of the communist mental hold over its people.

It’s important to be aware of these factors in a place like Manipur, closer here in the northeast of India, where there’s urgent need for a literary intervention to improve the prevailing social conditions which have for long remained undefined or clear to the common man. Past culture, life or ethos are now altogether or largely missing from today’s current world in Imphal, where many throatful but not clearly defined ideas tried to time and again describe its remote culture. Maybe it’s time to realize they are out of touch with a reality of the past that’s receded too far back, as also a reality which is evolving right now which may be without any good for the future, though the belief is that some vast change is taking place. Like in Imphal, the growth of the influence of money in China is perceived as an added advantage. Though we wouldn’t like to sound totally pessimistic but it needs to be mentioned that olden wisdom is current at any time, even today, and it says money is the cause for a further fall of the human condition. In that sense, China’s communism has an aesthetic and cultural absence in its core, due to the tempering of human emotions that are not born along with the communist man but are introduced and grown in them as a necessity of the circumstances of severe state control they live under.

The concepts or agents for man’s inherent progress and the primary concerns of human life in terms of a humanity that believes in itself, its evolving mind and reach to supranatural elements is curtailed in the system of communist life. And till the accumulated resources of human faith last in the collective of mortals, it is exploited like any other material by the communist state to stay in power, till a man may not remain a man but be solely a representative of the state – administration for the sake of administration, and not because of love of a fellow man and his condition. Such subtleties of human feelings are entirely missing in the communist system, of which the topmost flagbearer now is China.

In Imphal and as a comparison in China, people have lost access to themselves as well as to their community, in the absence of an accompanying well defined cultural deliberation. What is named as a mental evolution of the masses in both these places has been the forming of conditions that don’t let the mind grow due to the unavoidable unilateral rule of law imposed by rulers. Availability of liberty of thought has been, and is, still missing. In China it is still the communist state that is an impediment to the growth of the minds of its people, and in Imphal it was the erstwhile princely rulers and later the non-state local armed men and women, the latter’s mind considering the place more as a fief to be lorded over.

But at the same time in the case of China one can’t be too pessimistic either because it’s a closed state and we who are outside in the world do not really know what’s happening in there. People may be thinking better, at least better than what food for thought is given by the state there. There was the Tiananmen Square protest, now seemingly in the past and distant, and the cultural cauldron has been surely simmering with few crucial questions posed to the Chinese administration over human rights issues in areas like Tibet and the Muslim Xianjiang. How in the future these issues evolve in a more socially conscious manner is yet to be seen, but just a mention that things are not as hunky dory in China as it may seem. Manipur could learn certainly a thing or two from conditions in China which look brighter than it actually is.

Maybe many people in China are trusting the wrong system which doesn’t, as a logical or philosophical standpoint, believe in its countrymen in return. So, without a relation between the two, is not the impetus for a correlation between man and the system negated right at the beginning of a consideration on how we look at the human race. In Imphal too the hope is that a similar missing link is bridged by a better content of daily ruminations on the matter of the government, the irrelevance of non-state actors and the relevance of the common masses.

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