Brutal Killing and Cruel Lockout
- State in Manipur -

Amar Yumnam *

What has been happening in Manipur with increasing incidence and blatant lack of accountability over the years would leave anyone bewildered.

In fact, the latest happening when a pregnant woman is killed and another youth just shot dead in the heart of the administrative capital of the land, in the presence of a peak hour crowd, within one kilometre distance from the residences of both the head of the state and the head of the people, and within hundred metres or so from the legislature which was in session, speaks of the depth the situation has sunk. Time is now to finally decide on the nature of the state we aspire and the kind of society we wish to sustain.

Social Competence : One critical factor which has sustained Manipuri society over the centuries is the competence of the members of the society to live together, to feel together, and to fight together as and when the calls arose.

This aspect of social competence comes out glaringly in the recent reaction against the inhuman killing of a youth and a pregnant young woman in what is the height of irresponsiveness, irresponsibility and absence of accountability in the land. This action of doing away with lives speaks of the character of the state as we live with in our land, and by the very same fact, the implications are much larger than the deadly bravado of a few commando personnel.

It is a kind of situation which cannot be addressed and should not be sidelined by announcing that "No one will be spared." This announcement was made by the head of the people here in his press conference on 5 August implying that the blame can go to anyone excepting himself. But the Implications are, as said above, much larger and his own accountability cannot be spared.

Our lived experience during the last three decades, and particularly the last decade, shows that our social competences for adjustments in the family, school, work and other critical spheres of societal interaction are being put to test more often than not.

Since the frequency has intensified it smacks of a well thought-out design to erode our social competences and to establish an order of society convenient to the designers.

It is now our individual as well as collective responsibility to prove once again that such designs would not bear fruit in this land of historical civilisation. But this calls for a critical review of the kind of state we are living with and the one we wish to establish.

State in Manipur : The moment one starts rethinking the state in Manipur, one cannot but recall, given the contextual realities, the 1935 classic of Albert Jay Nock titled, "Our Enemy, The State"; for those who do not have print copies of this book, an electronic version is available at mises.org website.

Nock needs quoting:

"It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own. All the power it has is what society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another; there is no other source from which State power can be drawn. Therefore, every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure, leaves society with so much less power; there is never, nor can be, any strengthening of State power without a corresponding and roughly equivalent depletion of social power............Moreover, it follows that with any exercise of State power, not only the exercise of social power in the same direction, but the disposition to exercise it in that direction, tends to dwindle."

In a similar vein, we are increasingly observing a kind of state being forced into the political fabric of Manipur with a design to finish the society.

Such behaviour is getting reflected in every manifestation of social action of the government. We have a situation where the elected representatives suddenly become VIPs and stop at that. To give them good and appropriate company we have the bureaucracy neither belonging to the land and people in their manifest actions. We have an administration which locks out the population after brutally killing civilians. This is the only yardstick available for evaluation of our government.

While evaluating government in the process of rethinking of our state we are aware of what Randolph Bourne wrote in his classic essay The State at the beginning of twentieth century: "Government is synonymous with neither State nor Nation. It is the machinery by which the nation, organized as a State, carries out its State functions. Government is a framework of the administration of laws, and the carrying out of the public force.

Government is the idea of the State put into practical operation in the hands of definite, concrete, fallible men. It is the visible sign of the' invisible grace. It is the word made flesh. And it has necessarily the limitations inherent in all practicality. Government is the only form in which we can envisage the State, but it is by no means identical with it. That the State is a mystical conception is something that must never be forgotten.

Its glamour and its significance linger behind the framework of Government and direct its activities." But in the absence of an atmosphere where the state displays activism in development actions and the presence instead of a milieu where the state is waging a war against the people of own state, the brutal killings become the only available measures for state presence.

We are afraid if the current affairs are stage managed for continuation of chaos and sustenance of prevalent regime at any cost.

In the end, I can only share a quotation from the 1851 classic of Herbert Spencer, The Man versus The State:

"Be it or be it not true that Man is shapen in iniquity and conceived in sin, it is unquestionably true that Government is begotten of aggression and by aggression. In small undeveloped societies where for ages complete peace has continued, there exists nothing like what we call Government: no coercive agency, but mere honorary headship, if any headship at all. In these exceptional communities, unaggressive and from special causes unaggressed upon, there is so little deviation from the virtues of truthfulness, honesty, justice, and generosity, that nothing beyond an occasional expression of public opinion by informally-assembled elders is needful."

---

* Amar Yumnam writes regularly for The Sangai Express. The writer is the Director, Centre for Manipur Studies at Manipur University and a Professor at the Department of Economics, Manipur University. The writer can be contacted at yumnam1(at)yahoo(dot)co(dot)uk
This article was webcasted on August 21, 2009.

---