The Right to Choose

JC Sanasam *

Manipur burning - a Wallpaper develop by Mahesh Konsam

Our friend Ibochouba said once, 'I wish we had an organisation with a name like ''The Manipur Idlers' Association'' or "Manipur Kattan Chuba Lup". If there is any of such kind I would love to be the President or the Secretary of that organisation.'

When asked why, he said, 'Manipur now has a spill-over of individuals and groups who are too restless and hyperactive; and their nonstop noises and activities have drained out all our energy and enthusiasm. To be hyperactive may be good in certain situations, but to be persistently hyperactive in negative and destructive thoughts, speeches and actions brings only chaos, hatred, conflicts, agitations and disharmony.

If the people become a little less active, and become idler and spend their time languishing with good cuisines and gourmets with the members of their family at home there will be peace all day long everywhere. It seems people of Manipur love the right to hate more than the right to choose. The right to hate is transuded through political hatred, religious hatred, ethnical hatred, cynic and psychic hatred, so and so forth. Wouldn't I have a chance to choose an association without hatred?'

Among us there are people, like our friend Ibochouba, who have more tendencies to incline towards autism, their utterances odd enough, but are right in their own ways. In the face of it again we are dwelling in a place where electricity and hygienic water have become more like endangered species in this twenty first century of human civilization; and everyday there are odd news in our area, seldom heard or not ever heard in other parts of the world, ranging from the one like: the school has forty teachers but the number of the students was found to be only five; and others like rapping pre-teen-age girls, kidnapping young children for recruitment in militancy etc.

On the other hand, the matter of the deaths of Richard at Bengaluru and of Okram Laaba at Chennai, very much murder like, is right under our nose. Then how can we remain idle and silent? Perhaps, these are the areas or situations when we got to be active and noisy which our friend Ibochouba also admitted with.

Moses appealed to the people with his ten commandments; he did not impose them on. He and his followers did not punish any of the non-believers with physical torture, defamation or death sentences. Manipur has innumerable individuals and groups, each with an impersonated Moses within him and within his group, each of which pronounce their five or ten or twenty commandments with terror proclamation of penalties and executions that may be in the nature of physical, mental, social or financial embarrassments, harassments and deaths; if their commandments are not followed.

The word, the right to choose, is very simple, it's meaning very subtle. It sounds very plain but the meaning at the bottom depth is quite extensive. It is the hidden insignia of democracy and human rights of post modernism, now called again post-post modernism, deconstruction, so and so forth. The notion makes everybody want his or her specific identity known.

Doesn't democracy have its irony? Our scriptures say it is the bad many and the good few. The Indian epic the Mahabharata is said to be a depiction of this concept. The good five Pandavas represent the good few and the hundred Kouravas the bad many. Ironically, democracy is represented by the majority, the bad many. Then how can the products of the bad many or the majority be good? Logically, it has to be bad. However, we are to live with the decision of democracy, the representatives of the bad many. Could there be a better system? Perhaps the answer is 'No.'

However, in the Republic of China the decision is made by those in the helm of affairs. If they have made a decision to start a project of power generation through hydro-electric works by means of a river dam, they do it. Nobody can dare to raise an objection against it. The project gets on and the work completed in no time without hazards.

The Manipuris still have not forgotten their inborn traits, 'Oh! Let's go to Taibungo at the Royal Palace with a huge Shareng fish and talk him out. He will go, talk to the king and everything will be in our favour.' This is in our blood.

Perhaps, the Mongoloid people in our land do not vibrate with the wavelength of democracy; rather it seems they vibrate better in the wavelength of a dictator or a king. That is why perhaps each of the leaders of the so many ten-commandments-public-proclaimers thinks, speaks and acts like a king or a dictator. And so are their antagonists, the state actors. In Manipur try as much as you opt for a low-key life, your surrounding will have time to inspect you through their microscopes. And you have to follow their dictum. If we are in the democratic norms can't one individual differ a little bit from others and have his or her own privacy?

In Manipur where is it we, poor civilians, stand? Do we have the liberty of having some privacy? Do we have a chance to choose? Do we have the right to choose at all? Sic.