When Imphal Rebels
When issues do not matter but our collective life and future
It is always painful to see the chaos in the streets at home when you are staying far away from there. Sentimentality has no place here but when you belong to a highly disorganised yet lovely place vulnerable to unrest and violence, emotion could complete the wreckage. It could have been easier if there were solutions but this is the problem to begin with. A vicious cycle of protests and resistance lose their essence entirely at the cost of dignity and often, human lives, when the same shit recurs year in and year out on different issues with the same results.
And it has reached one of its shittiest climaxes yet again this year. The sole consolation is that people know there is always something wrong with our society in June-July as if this expectation brings any respite.
In a normal world, a so-called vice-chancellor of a university is supposed to step down when he is incompetent, or for that matter, when not only the student and teacher community but also the public are openly expressing their grievances against him. It does not even matter whether the prime minister of a nation elects him or not. Yet, the issue has spiralled out of control, with special thanks to the Government of Manipur that has a knack for kissing Delhi’s asses, and now the issue has brought the state to its knees.
If we excuse the lame State Government for a while, we can continue that an unabated border issue had preceded the university fiasco. The problem is still pending—and nobody knows how the Burmese military, which has encroached upon the ever-revered Manipuri territory by three kilometres in its latest trespass, is responding to the protest.
Before we proceed, for the sake of some context, multiple narratives envelop each issue. Sample this. The incumbent VC is a stooge of the same party that also rules in New Delhi and to complicate it further, the university is a den for local contractors who swear by the name of social revolution. In-between the State Government keeps making statements, which in their own admission, is a show of their collective involvement but which in reality is merely showing how they are buying time to cling to power and prepare and march to the tune, which is again set by New Delhi.
When we talk about border, Manipur has a bloody grudge against India and its ‘statespersons’ for gifting its fertile and sizeable Kabo Valley to Burma in 1953, just four years after it was forcibly annexed to a nation (read India) that was created by the British. Then, besides the chronic issues of encroachment and territorial pissing, a couple of months ago it was found that the Burmese had erected a border pillar deep inside Manipur’s territory.
Sometimes I wish India had some shared relationship with Burma, if not with its own territory Manipur that it has nothing to do with historically, geographically or culturally, so that it cares about these border issues, but apparently, wishes can be a source of creating that fuck-India attitude.
To cut it short, narratives and counter-narratives would make a nice magazine story but people are suffering at the end of the day. Politicians will come and go, the Nation can go suck its own ass and each issue will unfold its nitty-gritty of nothingness, and the sheep in us will lead us to flow with the current—fight, resist, be resilient, follow or whatever it takes to keep up with all the unnecessary hardships.
However, the point is that that is not life. That is not living either. It does not matter what the name of the university is—how could it be, when the name of the nation does not even matter? It also does not matter how a national misguided sense of diplomacy is putting a toll on people’s lives. As conformists, to go on, we can go on dissect each issue, weigh its merits and demerits, analyse its significance and continue surviving in the dreadful and monotonous shithole. The university chaos and the border craps are an example today.
The ILP issue, the feeble processes of breaking up resistance movements through negotiation talks with Naga groups, the onslaught of people and their politics from mainland India, the never-ending cases of fake encounters, to take a few more example, have already made us the people of nowhere. For the sake of convenience, we are excluding today the myriad local issues of a backward territory that have become a part of our existence as if a people’s future is pre-destined. To spoil the joke, a few days ago, a newspaper headline screamed that the ‘Centre and [S]tate [G]ovt have concurrent powers to promulgate AFSPA’ (Imphal Free Press, 24 July 2018) while we have been blaming New Delhi all along and showing how we have always been a hollow people with no political stand.
The only solution is to fight against the hegemony. Small players like the State Government should take the backseat; after all, it is used to that kind of condition with its chronic exposure to New Delhi. Politicians are parasites that survive on a society’s weaknesses and they can be left to eat the shits. Parasites eat anything. On the other hand, until we become Conscious, we can either get used to the shithole or start having some sense of the existing reality. Emotion has no place in here but the idea of a true collective life.
--
PS:
It is always painful to see the chaos in the streets at home when you are staying far away from there. Sentimentality has no place here but when you belong to a highly disorganised yet lovely place vulnerable to unrest and violence, emotion could complete the wreckage. It could have been easier if there were solutions but this is the problem to begin with. A vicious cycle of protests and resistance lose their essence entirely at the cost of dignity and often, human lives, when the same shit recurs year in and year out on different issues with the same results.
And it has reached one of its shittiest climaxes yet again this year. The sole consolation is that people know there is always something wrong with our society in June-July as if this expectation brings any respite.
In a normal world, a so-called vice-chancellor of a university is supposed to step down when he is incompetent, or for that matter, when not only the student and teacher community but also the public are openly expressing their grievances against him. It does not even matter whether the prime minister of a nation elects him or not. Yet, the issue has spiralled out of control, with special thanks to the Government of Manipur that has a knack for kissing Delhi’s asses, and now the issue has brought the state to its knees.
If we excuse the lame State Government for a while, we can continue that an unabated border issue had preceded the university fiasco. The problem is still pending—and nobody knows how the Burmese military, which has encroached upon the ever-revered Manipuri territory by three kilometres in its latest trespass, is responding to the protest.
Before we proceed, for the sake of some context, multiple narratives envelop each issue. Sample this. The incumbent VC is a stooge of the same party that also rules in New Delhi and to complicate it further, the university is a den for local contractors who swear by the name of social revolution. In-between the State Government keeps making statements, which in their own admission, is a show of their collective involvement but which in reality is merely showing how they are buying time to cling to power and prepare and march to the tune, which is again set by New Delhi.
When we talk about border, Manipur has a bloody grudge against India and its ‘statespersons’ for gifting its fertile and sizeable Kabo Valley to Burma in 1953, just four years after it was forcibly annexed to a nation (read India) that was created by the British. Then, besides the chronic issues of encroachment and territorial pissing, a couple of months ago it was found that the Burmese had erected a border pillar deep inside Manipur’s territory.
Sometimes I wish India had some shared relationship with Burma, if not with its own territory Manipur that it has nothing to do with historically, geographically or culturally, so that it cares about these border issues, but apparently, wishes can be a source of creating that fuck-India attitude.
To cut it short, narratives and counter-narratives would make a nice magazine story but people are suffering at the end of the day. Politicians will come and go, the Nation can go suck its own ass and each issue will unfold its nitty-gritty of nothingness, and the sheep in us will lead us to flow with the current—fight, resist, be resilient, follow or whatever it takes to keep up with all the unnecessary hardships.
However, the point is that that is not life. That is not living either. It does not matter what the name of the university is—how could it be, when the name of the nation does not even matter? It also does not matter how a national misguided sense of diplomacy is putting a toll on people’s lives. As conformists, to go on, we can go on dissect each issue, weigh its merits and demerits, analyse its significance and continue surviving in the dreadful and monotonous shithole. The university chaos and the border craps are an example today.
The ILP issue, the feeble processes of breaking up resistance movements through negotiation talks with Naga groups, the onslaught of people and their politics from mainland India, the never-ending cases of fake encounters, to take a few more example, have already made us the people of nowhere. For the sake of convenience, we are excluding today the myriad local issues of a backward territory that have become a part of our existence as if a people’s future is pre-destined. To spoil the joke, a few days ago, a newspaper headline screamed that the ‘Centre and [S]tate [G]ovt have concurrent powers to promulgate AFSPA’ (Imphal Free Press, 24 July 2018) while we have been blaming New Delhi all along and showing how we have always been a hollow people with no political stand.
The only solution is to fight against the hegemony. Small players like the State Government should take the backseat; after all, it is used to that kind of condition with its chronic exposure to New Delhi. Politicians are parasites that survive on a society’s weaknesses and they can be left to eat the shits. Parasites eat anything. On the other hand, until we become Conscious, we can either get used to the shithole or start having some sense of the existing reality. Emotion has no place in here but the idea of a true collective life.
--
PS:
Prohibitory order imposed in Manipur district for two months
Source: PTI
Imphal, July 28: Prohibitory order under Section 144 CrPC was on Thursday clamped in Imphal West district for two months, a statement issued by the district magistrate said. The move followed the unrest over demand for removal of Manipur University Vice-Chancellor Prof AP Pandey. The capital city of Imphal is located both in Imphal East and Imphal West districts. The Raj Bhavan, the Manipur University, the state secretariat and other prominent buildings are located in the high security zone of Imphal West district.
hi rem me?
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