The law and order situation in Manipur is going from bad to worse each passing days. With the number of killings reported in the papers each day it becomes a real fact that Manipur really becomes another killing field.

On the 15th, it was reported that a woman officer was killed in her office chamber in Moirang. On the 17th, a man succumbed to the injuries of bomb blast in Videocon House located in Paona Bazar. Along with this there are other killings reported in the first column of every paper each day.

In such a situation, it is natural for the common people to look upon the action taken up by the Government at this critical juncture, particularly the role of the elected representatives and more particularly the doings of the Council of Ministers.

But we have now been witnessing the ruling party as a divided house. There are camps in State Capital and National Capital for congress MLAs, claims and counter claims of the rival parties within the CLP, counting the numbers of congress MLAs for the showdown to oust the present Chief Minister.

One camp claims the break down of the Law and order situation of the State is the result of the inefficiency of the present Govt, while the other claims the situation is very much improved as compared with the past. It may be a sincere statement but still the fear psychosis that grips the mind of the people hangs on and gets firmer and firmer with each passing day.

The whole of our society is on trial today. What we have found in the novel, dramas and films which are the products of the poet’s or script writer’s imagination are now happening before our very eyes today. The people of our State are going through absolute agony during these days.

It is just the fear of unspeakable suffering, the dread of losing one’s nearest dearest, of seeing ones courtyard filled with cries and sobs. Such heart-broken scenes have caused everyone of us to detest these killings whether the victims deserved capital punishment or not.

Who am I? Why should I write it? I am, as a writer humble enough to recognize my limitation. It seems to me that the days of pen are over. Pen may be mightier than a sword. But before a gun a pen can do nothing.

A wild extravagant thought comes to my mind with this word ‘Gun’. I believe guns are made first to protect one from robbers. With its fire power man use this weapon en mass for the soldiers to protect an independent kingdom from outside invasion. The soldiers are the keeper of peace and they use forces against miscreants in order to protect the society.

This is in a real sense the use of the guns and bullets for a peaceful and non-violent society. It is just like the knife of the surgeon who use it for treating a patient who needs an operation . But the inventors of the gun if they had known earlier about its destructive role in the twentyfirst century Manipur, they would not have made it.

Where there is a society there will be crime. So every society has got its own convention to control crime and to punish the criminals. Every country has got its own laws, law courts and judges.

But lets us imagine for a society where every Jack and Jill becomes a saviour of the society by declaring himself a Judge of the misdeeds of others. Will it be a paradise of judges ? Or will it be a hell of criminals?

Who is to judge? God alone is the judge. But certain actions done by man to follow man tends us to forget that it is god who is to judge. On the contrary man began to believe sometimes that god permits violence.

There is a story from the scriptures. In the Kailash Parvat, Shiva and Parvati were in the midst of conversation. Suddenly Shiva disappeared for some moments and appeared again.

On being asked where he had been, he said he had gone to the rescue of a “Bhakta” who had been attacked, but he had come back on finding that the bhakta had helped himself by striking his assailant with stone.

The message conveyed by this episode reminds us that even god allow each and every one of us to attack others to defend ourselves. But we, human beings often overlook our own failings and think others as wrong. Then it is very difficult to pass judgement for others.

No man can be hundred per cent free of any fault or guilt or sin or corrupt practice in his life. In geometry Euclid has given the definition of a straight line as the shortest distance between two given points.

But it exist only in our conception. We can not draw an exact straight line but we have always to postulate it. We have always strive to draw a true straight line corresponding to Euclid’s imaginary line.

No mason, however skilful he may be, can put layers of bricks perfectly perpendicular while making a wall of a building. Mathematically, this is not possible.

But will the student or the mason be given capital punishment for not able to draw an exact straight line or for not having put the wall in ninety degree with the base foundation? No, it should not be.

The sinner must be stoned to death. But the first stone will be from the hands of man who never committed a sin in his life. This is an adage found in Holy books.

Then forgiveness will be the best forms of punishment. History is witness to many vile forms of crime and violence inflicted on fellow human beings.

But the human race survived because there is nobility in the core of human heart and this is the most important.