Time to reflect not celebrate : Call from AMCO
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: December 05 2023 -

This is what God would want. This is what Lord Jesus Christ would want. A toned down Christmas.

The All Manipur Christian Organisation is bang on target in urging all Christians, Churches and others to tone down the Christmas celebration this year and instead extend a helping hand to those who have been directly affected by the ongoing conflict.

Many parents have lost their sons and daughters, many children have been orphaned, many still do not know where the lifeless bodies of their near and dear ones are lying at the moment and many have to call the relief centres opened by the Government their homes.

God would have surely wanted all his Sons and Daughters to emphatise with those who have been directly impacted by the violence and extend a helping hand to those who have been uprooted from the place they once called home.

Love, peace, forgiveness reconciliation is the edifice on which the teaching of Lord Jesus Christ rests and it is apt that AMCO should remind all Sons and Daughters of this noble teaching at this point of time when anyone can be killed or made to disappear just because they happen to be born into a community called the Meiteis or the Kukis.

Instead of community feasts to herald the birth of Lord Jesus Christ organise inter-ethnic community prayers is the line maintained by AMCO and let this be the guiding light for everyone on Christmas, the days before December 25 and the days that will follow.

The appeal from AMCO should be understood and appreciated and instead of spending money on organising on community feasts, hanging Stars atop Churches and houses, decorating one’s house with Christmas lights, donate the money for the people who are suffering.

Pool in the money that would have gone into putting up the lights, the decorations, cutting the Christmas cake, organising Christmas lunch or dinner and use the same to donate to the people who are spending their days at the relief camps, putting up with relatives and friends.

This will make observing the birth of Lord Jesus Christ all that more meaningful and this will be so much more Christianlike.

Sit back, reflect and recall all the hate and blood in the 210 days that have gone by since May 3 evening and there is nothing Christian about all the killings, the displacements, the people who have been made to disappear, the houses razed to the ground and the hate campaign carried out from either side of the clash divide.

If at all Christmas is have any meaning to the people then this is the time for all to sit back, reflect and acknowledge that everything that mankind stands for has been violated with impunity.

Christmas is the time not only for Christians but for all who believe in the value of humanity to reflect and see how corrective measures may be put into place.

December 25 is still some days away but the fact that AMCO has deemed it appropriate to come out with their message at this point of time is significant.

The significance of the message to all to do away with celebrations, as celebration is understood in the profane world, should not be lost on humanity and the very fact that such an appeal has come at this point of time should give Manipur some hope in the fact that there are still some people and organisations who think and act humanely.

Along with this it should also not be forgotten that it is nothing but blasphemy to give a religious tinge to the clash between the two communities.

The Churches that were vandalised were targeted not because they are houses of God but because they belonged to a particularly community.

The same thing may be read into the act of vandalising the ancestral places of worship of the Meiteis in the hills.

The only difference and a big difference it is, may be read and understood in the politics of transgressing and desecrating sacred sites such as Mount Thangjing and Mount Koubru.

The good sense in the appeal from AMCO should be understood and appreciated and apart from observing Christmas, keeping in mind the survivors who are sheltering at the numerous relief centres spread across the State, people should also be wary of the politics at play to give a religious tinge to the clash just to gain the sought after sympathy from the Western world.

Remember how the Manipur issue made its way to the European Parliament in the earlier days of the clash.