Taking The People Along, Firing The Imagination Of The People And Leading Social Change
Definitely not talking of Manipur

Amar Yumnam *

In a chapter in Academica, Marcus Tullius Cicero writes: 'You are wrong, Lucullus, in upholding your cause in spite of my arguments yesterday against the senses. You are thus acting like the Epicureans, who say that the inference only from the sensation can be false, not the sensation itself... I wish the god of whom you spoke would ask me whether I wanted anything more than sound senses. He would have a bad time with me. For even granting that our vision is correct how marvellously circumscribed it is! But say you, we desire no more. No I answer, you are like the mole who desires not the light because he is blind. Yet I would not so much reproach the god because my vision is narrow, as because it deceives me. If you want something greater than the bent oar, what can be greater than the sun? Still he seems to us a foot broad, and Epicurus thinks he may be a little broader or narrower than he seems.

With all his enormous speed, too, he appears to us to stand still. The whole question lies in a nutshell; of four propositions which prove my point only one is disputed viz. that every true sensation has side by side with it a false one indistinguishable from it (83). A man who has mistaken P. for Q. Geminus could have no infallible mode of recognising Cotta. You say that no such indistinguishable resemblances exist. Never mind, they seem to exist and that is enough.

One mistaken sensation will throw all the others into uncertainty. You say everything belongs to its own genus this I will not contest. I am not concerned to show that two sensations are absolutely similar, it is enough that human faculties cannot distinguish between them. How about the impressions of signet rings? (85) Can you find a ring merchant to rival your chicken rearer of Delos? But, you say, art aids the senses. So we cannot see or hear without art, which so few can have!

What an idea this gives us of the art with which nature has constructed the senses! (86) But about physics I will speak afterwards. I am going now to advance against the! senses arguments drawn from Chrysippus himself (87). You said that the sensations of dreamers, drunkards and madmen were feebler than those of the waking, the sober and the sane. The cases of Ennius and his Alcmaeon, of your own relative Tuditanus, of the Hercules of Euripides disprove your point In their case at least 'mind and eyes agreed. It is no good to talk about the saner moments of such people; the question is, what was the nature of their sensations at the time they were affected? '

I am quoting this from Cicero extensively for what is happening in Manipur today is devoid of senses, knowledge and imagination; it is not even democratic. The development history of the world tells us that development and acceptance by the rest of the world as models of social progress has never founded on vacuum. This has always been guided by individuals (for instance, Magna Carta of 1215 as an instance, Christianity, Manipur 's religions pre- as well as post-Vaishnavism, Kuan Lee in Singapore, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in India) who identified themselves with the commonest of common people, with the issues of the poorest of the poor and devoted their entire life for the uplift of the lower sections of the population.

While doing this they could always command the trust of the people and take them along. Now this takes me to my homeland Manipur. The question with which we are all seized today is: 'Do we wave a leadership in political, administrative and academic spheres who fire our imagination and make us confident that a better future is in the horizon. ' This is where I would like to recall one city and one individual.

The capital city of Austria, Vienna, has impacted upon the knowledge formation, idea creation, nurturing of innovative minds and history of world tremendously at least since the beginning of the nineteenth to the twentieth century. One person who has been very prominent in making Vienna the centre of global thinking and catalyst for changes is Dr. Karl Lueger (1844 - 1910). He was Mayor of Vienna from 1897 to 1910.

In the words of Andrei Znamenski, Dr. Lueger: 'Once upon a time, before Hitler, Stalin, FDR, Juan Peron, and even before Mussolini and Lenin came on the world scene, there lived a man named Dr. Karl Lueger (1844 - 1910), who was protector of the common man, a proponent of social justice, and the mayor of Vienna from 1897 to 1910. Not simply just a mayor, Lueger was a symbolic figure 'a prototype of the twentieth century populist politician who passionately fought for the 'little people ' and mastered the arts of making propaganda, courting nationalism, and promoting the public welfare. Before I came to Vienna in September 2011 'for a conference on European identity no less 'I knew nothing about this multifaceted character.

As a matter of fact, my introduction to the famous mayor happened merely by chance. Despite a busy conference schedule, I decided to take advantage of my stay in Vienna to visit the famous Cafe ´ Pruckel, the very same cafe ´ where Ludwig von Mises (1881 - 1973), one of a few avatars of economic liberty in the early 1900s, liked to meet his friends and associates to discuss, while drinking coffee, economics and politics 'brewing what later became known as the Austrian school of economics. As every knowledgeable traveler and coffee lover knows, Vienna is famous for its cafe ´s. In fact, it is said that through Vienna the tradition of coffee drinking at special parlours had penetrated Europe from the Ottoman Empire in the 1600s and later spread to the rest of Europe.

In particular, what pleasantly surprises one about these Vienna coffee places 'the blood veins of the cultural and political life of the city in the modern era 'is an abundance of newspapers available in various European languages for free perusal by customers. I wonder if this longtime tradition also originated from the Ottoman people. I knew that the cafe I was looking for was located somewhere on Dr. Karl Lueger Plaza. When I initially got off the Metro and spent about an hour cruising around the plaza and looking for the place, I did not think too much about the monument that dominates the area 'an impressive statue depicting Dr. Lueger surrounded by Viennese toilers and shopkeepers.

Finally, I found Pruckel on the corner of the plaza and Ringstrasse, Vienna 's famous historical boulevard. It turns out the cafe 'which is hidden in the shadow of the sculpture devoted to the great mayor 'was listed under a different address in my guidebook. I paid tribute to Mises and his circle by staying at the cafe for a while, sipping overpriced coffee and picturing how he and his colleagues gathered there to talk individual liberty and free enterprise, rare commodities at the beginning of the twentieth century 'the era of rising militant collectivism and the big state. It was getting dark, and soon I found myself outside the cafe , facing the statue of Dr. Lueger.

A young Japanese tourist was jumping here and there around the monument, taking pictures of the mayor from different angles. Finally, he had his smiling girlfriend step in front of the sculpture and took one more snapshot. After standing there for a moment watching this scene, in my heavy Slavic accent I asked him: 'Do you know who zis man is? ' The young visitor turned toward me, glanced up at the statue, shook his head, and answered, 'Me do not know dis man. '

Out of curiosity, I questioned him further, 'Why are you making pictures of it in zis case? ' The young tourist looked back up at the statue of Dr. Lueger and with absolute assurance replied, 'Because dis man look impressive. ' This is exactly where we need to be concerned with what we are missing today. We do not yet have the Keli Chana phenomenon of the 1960s and the 1970s which could make the whole people involved and shared experiences.

We do not have today any leader which could mobilise and lead the people forward to a brighter future. The biggest tragedy of Manipur today is the absolute disconnect between the people and the elected leaders, and the huge distrust by the people of the leaders they have themselves elected in a democratic process. Well the crises are real in Manipur. We are waiting for Manipur's own Dr. Lueger and connectivity between senses and knowledge as Cicero emphasised very long back.