On the Shaky Foundations of Politics
When we start from a wrong premise to solve a public issue in Manipur, it creates more questions than answers; and yes, there are reasons galore to prove it
Our lives are but a house on a shaky ground. We also do stand like a house but it’s just a matter of one shitstorm per season that hurls our collective life into a whirlpool. Presently we are facing the shitstorm of the Inner Line Permit System. However, I’d like to begin with another issue. One Manipuri troglodyte, who is affiliated to an Indian mainland student’s organisation, wrote on some online platform that the incumbent ruling party at the centre, BJP, does not care about racism—just because she is the self-styled secretary (or whatever) of that organisation.
I have no idea where she was born in or where she grew up but it sounds like she was raised away from home. There’s an expression for describing her kind of folk: ‘people from a hinterland who grew up eating burgers’. Such an assertion would be absolutely normal if it was from a mainlander—because then we can understand clearly the speaker must be loyal to some political parties other than BJP—but from a ‘concerned’ chinky, regardless of being anti-or pro-BJP, it is hopeless and equally hilarious on so many levels.
In her slavish loyalty and her party’s great fight against the BJP, she has apparently overlooked the fact that racism is a chronic problem that people with epicanthic and other different physical features from the Northeast have been facing in mainland India. Some people called it the supremacy of cows. Or in other words, spreading racism is India’s hobby. For that matter, many of us hardly share the history or culture with this so-called country of diversity.
It does not matter whether the ruling party is the Congress or the BJP or their coalition partners. At the end of the day, it boils down to the fact that our ‘concerned’ chinky is a Bamon—a low-caste Brahmin of the Manipuri Hindu society who eat both beef and pork—and who could have carried on the great legacy of pakoura-ootee irrespective of her gender; but anyway, street politics is a great alternative to the bamon-khaabei-chegap.
When we are stooping down to this ridiculous kind of politics we might as well take a glance at a few other similar instances. Consider the case of the freeloaders who have been lobbying, though, unsuccessfully, to include the Meiteis in the scheduled tribe group. We know people in such a category enjoy extra privileges and benefits under provisions provided by the Constitution of India. So, why ignore it? On the same boat, there are also many Meiteis who have proselytised into Christianity—the heavenly conversion for earthly consumption!
So the freeloaders’ contention goes like the categorisation will offer a level playing field for the hegemonic Meiteis with the other 30-plus ethnic groups that inhabit the province and which are already grouped under the ST category. To cut it short, their political foundation is as strong as the riverbanks of the Imphal and the Nambul during a monsoon season. And that makes the two of them—the pro-Congress and the pro-ST—while their ‘argument’ reeks of a slavish mentality.
In a way, all of these monkey businesses are unsurprising if we take a look at the contemporary trends of politics in Manipur. For instance, I’m not sure how much pro-establishment were the members of groups like the Joint Committee for the Inner Line Permit System before their campaign; but after all these days, weeks and months of protests their conformism has never been so clear as of now. Even some frontal organisations of the armed organisations have started joining the save-the-indigenous-people campaigns that rely heavily on the consent of the establishment.
The protection of an ‘endangered’ ethnic group does not need a kind of ‘protection’ backed by a ‘destroyer’. Yes, exactly; the Government of India has a hard-on feeling for Manipur. The people are under an eternal emergency; and if you are not convinced see the number of black laws that have been imposed on the natives. And some people are so courageous to expect the regulations sponsored by that very government will protect the people. Again, unsurprisingly for such an imminent and genuine threat, bloody students are out on the street, some of them have been murdered—ignoring for now the other groups and types of people—and all we care about is a damned constitutional provision like the bloody permit system.
To summarise, we need a fresh premise to define our condemned lives and lay a foundation for posterity. Presently, it is based on anything but commendable or acceptable. The kind of our chinky student activist only shows what our problem is but never the solution. Still, we need to intervene because they are claiming, consciously or not, that they are representing us.
Personally, I would rather listen to the monkeys at Mongba Hanba, a religious site, where the incestuous ancestors of our chinky student activist who hate BJP had renamed it as the Mahabali temple/forest. Ironically, she is against the BJP: one of the supreme Hindu parties. It’s time to put stupidity-detector devices in their rears so that we can live sans any tension or misrepresentation of our lives by other ‘concerned’ troglodytes.
Our lives are but a house on a shaky ground. We also do stand like a house but it’s just a matter of one shitstorm per season that hurls our collective life into a whirlpool. Presently we are facing the shitstorm of the Inner Line Permit System. However, I’d like to begin with another issue. One Manipuri troglodyte, who is affiliated to an Indian mainland student’s organisation, wrote on some online platform that the incumbent ruling party at the centre, BJP, does not care about racism—just because she is the self-styled secretary (or whatever) of that organisation.
I have no idea where she was born in or where she grew up but it sounds like she was raised away from home. There’s an expression for describing her kind of folk: ‘people from a hinterland who grew up eating burgers’. Such an assertion would be absolutely normal if it was from a mainlander—because then we can understand clearly the speaker must be loyal to some political parties other than BJP—but from a ‘concerned’ chinky, regardless of being anti-or pro-BJP, it is hopeless and equally hilarious on so many levels.
In her slavish loyalty and her party’s great fight against the BJP, she has apparently overlooked the fact that racism is a chronic problem that people with epicanthic and other different physical features from the Northeast have been facing in mainland India. Some people called it the supremacy of cows. Or in other words, spreading racism is India’s hobby. For that matter, many of us hardly share the history or culture with this so-called country of diversity.
It does not matter whether the ruling party is the Congress or the BJP or their coalition partners. At the end of the day, it boils down to the fact that our ‘concerned’ chinky is a Bamon—a low-caste Brahmin of the Manipuri Hindu society who eat both beef and pork—and who could have carried on the great legacy of pakoura-ootee irrespective of her gender; but anyway, street politics is a great alternative to the bamon-khaabei-chegap.
When we are stooping down to this ridiculous kind of politics we might as well take a glance at a few other similar instances. Consider the case of the freeloaders who have been lobbying, though, unsuccessfully, to include the Meiteis in the scheduled tribe group. We know people in such a category enjoy extra privileges and benefits under provisions provided by the Constitution of India. So, why ignore it? On the same boat, there are also many Meiteis who have proselytised into Christianity—the heavenly conversion for earthly consumption!
So the freeloaders’ contention goes like the categorisation will offer a level playing field for the hegemonic Meiteis with the other 30-plus ethnic groups that inhabit the province and which are already grouped under the ST category. To cut it short, their political foundation is as strong as the riverbanks of the Imphal and the Nambul during a monsoon season. And that makes the two of them—the pro-Congress and the pro-ST—while their ‘argument’ reeks of a slavish mentality.
In a way, all of these monkey businesses are unsurprising if we take a look at the contemporary trends of politics in Manipur. For instance, I’m not sure how much pro-establishment were the members of groups like the Joint Committee for the Inner Line Permit System before their campaign; but after all these days, weeks and months of protests their conformism has never been so clear as of now. Even some frontal organisations of the armed organisations have started joining the save-the-indigenous-people campaigns that rely heavily on the consent of the establishment.
The protection of an ‘endangered’ ethnic group does not need a kind of ‘protection’ backed by a ‘destroyer’. Yes, exactly; the Government of India has a hard-on feeling for Manipur. The people are under an eternal emergency; and if you are not convinced see the number of black laws that have been imposed on the natives. And some people are so courageous to expect the regulations sponsored by that very government will protect the people. Again, unsurprisingly for such an imminent and genuine threat, bloody students are out on the street, some of them have been murdered—ignoring for now the other groups and types of people—and all we care about is a damned constitutional provision like the bloody permit system.
To summarise, we need a fresh premise to define our condemned lives and lay a foundation for posterity. Presently, it is based on anything but commendable or acceptable. The kind of our chinky student activist only shows what our problem is but never the solution. Still, we need to intervene because they are claiming, consciously or not, that they are representing us.
Personally, I would rather listen to the monkeys at Mongba Hanba, a religious site, where the incestuous ancestors of our chinky student activist who hate BJP had renamed it as the Mahabali temple/forest. Ironically, she is against the BJP: one of the supreme Hindu parties. It’s time to put stupidity-detector devices in their rears so that we can live sans any tension or misrepresentation of our lives by other ‘concerned’ troglodytes.
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