A prisoner society, caged people and process of dehumanization
- Part 3 -

Kh Ibomcha *

Our first historical vocation, therefore, is to recover our lost humanity or making us more human by educating ourselves know the structure of dehumanization pushed forward in the post-merger kanglei socio-political life.

While trying to rediscover our lost humanity and in the endeavor to pull ourselves out of the quagmire in which we have been trapped, there is a need to anchor ourselves to our own cultural roots rather than attaching to the value system that took shape based on Vedic ideals.

The necessity of going back to where we come from is to enable ourselves to fight back those who are dehumanizing us using soft power like culture and political values besides hard power like economic means and military power spewing out fears, injustices and violence upon us.

"Manipur bu India na namphuda lousinkhibani" we often hear them (Kangleichas including Kanglei parents) say. Yes, Manipur was forcibly annexed into India.

The National Convention on 'Manipur Merger Agreement' held in 1993 at GM Hall under the aegis of a conglomerate of civil society organizations attended by prominent figures of Manipur had also declared the agreement as void and null.

However we still hear Kanglei parents warning their sons or daughter not to mix up with those who are resisting Indian rules or rather Indian colonialism (as claimed by Kanglei nationalists)—why?

This parental warning to their offspring should not be taken as lightly as it seems outwardly; it is the fear of 'the state' or being rot in jails or the fear of army boots that twists their arm to say their son/daughter 'ichasa leibak ning yapotte' which can best be described as 'fear of freedom'.

This fear is what ruins us all. Those who dominate us take advantage of our fear and frighten us still more to maintain their dominance. As long as we are afraid, we will rot like the birches in the marsh. We must grow bold and rediscover our lost humanity.

Only as we cast off this fear—the fear of freedom—can we break through the wall of prison society (Kanglei society) where we are locked up like caged people. As long as we live with dual personality where half of you love to be Indian while the other half of you love to live to be a free man, we will become less and less human each day.

Relooking at the political economy of Post-merger Manipur, we can see that we have so long been left to live on the economic doles or false charity of Delhi. This is one of the many ways, may be the most significant, how we have been dehumanized making our hands extending more and more in supplication so that less and less our hands become human hands.

In such economy where the means of production has fallen off our hands, we see neither entrepreneurs nor efforts but it only encourages corruption and indiscretion thus breeding inhuman behavioral patterns within our core—the self.

Consequent upon it you can see the crumbling effect of society where there will be no trust amongst the people thus creating enemies within themselves as we see in present day Kanglei society.

Thus, Kangleichas being separated from what we call creativity—the basic element constituting human being, the post-merger political economy reduces Kanleichas into a mere beggars who always extend their trembling begging hands, for example the government of Manipur.

Now we seem to have used to begging, fears and injustices with which we have been living since long and the structure of our thought has also been deeply conditioned by the existential situation thus shaped which is essentially characterized by suppression and violence. Sometimes, in certain stages our perception about ourselves as oppressed and caged people seems to have been impaired and distorted that we begin to identify ourselves as an Indian completely forgetting who were.

In other words, we have culturally been so divorced from our own root that our idea of being a man began to define in terms of 'Mayang culture'. 'Mayang' becomes their model of humanity. The attitude of adhesion to 'mayang lichat' manifested in more than one way in Kanglei way of life can be seen as a product of their prolonged existential experience as oppressed or rather as 'Meenai'(a word used by Kanglei nationalists in Meiteilon).

Kangleicha, having internalized the brutality and inhumanness meted out on them by Indian army, are fearful of freedom. Attaining freedom or re-humanization would require them to eject this image and replace it with Kanglei sense and sensibility including 'leibabak ningba' and having allegiance to his or her nation.

In order to surmount the situation of oppression the people of Kangleipak must be equipped with capability of critically recognizing how and why they have been oppressed and the consequences of the oppression which they piggyback, so that they can free themselves from their own mental-cage of "fearing freedom" that always makes it impossible in their pursuit of fuller humanity.

'Fear of greater repression' is one of the many reasons why there has been Fear of freedom or 'Leibak Ningba kiba' in the minds of our people who prefer the security of conformity with their state of un-freedom to being beaten or tortured which will give them what they really need i.e., becoming more human.

From the above observations what we unmistakably perceive is the fact that as long as there is 'fear of being nationalistic or rather the fear of freedom seated inside our bones, hoping for the emergence of a new man—more human and less degraded—from within ourselves would be something next to impossible.

So, our struggle should begin with the recognition that we have been destroyed and have been made a group of people who fears being human. As Paulo Freire said the only instrument is the humanizing pedagogy where people are taught the reality with which they are living and becoming less and less human as time goes by, like us, the people of Kangeipak.

Now what we all need is not a leader who sells the too old familiar ideas like "eikhoi Meenai oire" but the one who will not only unveil the realities of Kanglei life but also engage himself in the task of re-creating a new knowledge by letting himself free from "meenai manam" or rather the one who knows the truth—the truth that freedom makes man a man.

Once they attain the knowledge of reality surrounding them, via not spoon-feeding them but through their own reflection and action, no power can stop them in discovering themselves. For this we only need to equip them with understanding the reality surrounding them or rather knowing oneself: why we are so much fearful of being free or why we are becoming less and less human each day within the system to which they have been firmly moored to.

Lastly, it is important to note that we have to go beyond pathological tests and diagnose the overall disease we are suffering from and this task would call for a form of pedagogy that will produce conscientization of the people, for the people by the people.

Concluded...