The experts have summarised that ethnocentric (attitude of one's own group is superior) has been proven to be inseparable from human psychology. I would agree with the experts views based on my limited experience of 27/28 years with life.

Further, I also seem to understand the pros and cons as discussed briefly on the phenomenon. However, my confusion is, if there is any link between ethnocentrism and xenophobia.

I am a novice, and don't have enough credentials to talk loud on academically related terms, but my poor knowledge seems to say acute ethnocentrism with irrational cultural beliefs may create xenophobia.

My understanding about culture with the pretext of being a non-sociology scholar Meitei would talk more about the respect and formalities that you follow dealing with elders, intellectual and morale behaviour passed on to us by our forefathers, beliefs, acceptability and unacceptability of action based on beliefs, social norms, social control etc.

Further, the subculture that I follow would probably reflect more of my age with a base of rationality and logical thought. For instance, I wouldn't take bath in a winter morning to get into the kitchen. The same logical execution would have to be superseded by beliefs if I have to cook for my parents.

Now my subculture says "I don't take bath to get into kitchen in a winter morning unless I have to cook for my parents". This may sound strange and senseless to some Mayang, but I would assume it wouldn't to a meitei (meitei who knows such a culture exist).

I considered my subculture as half rooted to the original meitei culture and saves the half with a logical reason pertaining to convenience. I would never change even if someone shows a superior culture in the same regards.

The logic behind this is to do as per my wish but not to compromise on something, which is translated into respect for your parents. Logically it's about cleanliness, but the belief seems to drag it more towards respect.

Similarly, there are too many micro and macro cultural obligations, which may or may not have a good reason to back up logically based on the current scenarios.

The beauty lies in following it as a culture unless it yields negative result with the evolution of social norms. Culture is not a rule set, yet to be part of the group, there are basic acceptability criteria's, which safeguards the integrity of the group. Generally the basic acceptability criteria are social standards and we Manipuri seems to have trouble with the basics.

The core binding force of a cultural society is the people and the relationship among the group. Each individual is accountable and responsible for his/her contribution and maintenance of certain ethics laid down by the group for maintaining a cohesive society.

It is important to safeguard the society and the culture from external threat but what threatens the most is intra threat within the society. I strongly feel that we have more challenges in curbing our own behaviour before we search for a ready-made solution.

We have a mix of behaviours and based on the behaviours there are different perception of dealing a problem differently and when the problem multiplies the perception multiples by squares. However large no of perceptions remains as perceptions, few manage to come out at a friends circle level as ideas, this few ideas may be grounded to a base called a committee or blah blah and then this idea may turn out to be an objective for a group of people.

I think this phenomenon is very normal, but what is abnormal is the objective behind the objective and the ideas behind the ideas. One thing for sure, we have understood the reality, and accepted it. We have been talking for quite sometime and we have been seeing it for a long time.

We know what is causing this and we also seem to have a lot of theoretical solutions for the problems. But my question is, has the remedial actions been carried out by the right person? I am not smart enough to analyse this to get neither an answer nor understand how a leader should be.

I can only look at myself and make sure that I don't do anything wrong that affects the sentiments and well-being of a society. It doesn't make much sense to raise slogans without proper logical and witty approach but the height of insensibility would be to make sarcastic comments going up to an extent of saying it to be "typically Manipuri".

It is unlucky for us to go through such a phase where, even academically qualified Manipuri's are making such a comments (we may want to give them the benefit of frustration as being human). It wouldn't be wrong to say that, those who know more tends to see more of reality and those who sees more reality would obviously see a lot of loopholes.

The reality is we have loopholes and dents in our society, I am not saying this as an expert but as a simple individual, and I can imagine what our learned brothers must have seen.

The same amount of vision is expected from a leader, (whether he is appointed by the people or self elected leader) and seeing the turn of event, it is obvious for some of us to get irritated with how our leaders have guided the people. The outcome is such comments "I am very ashamed I can never imagine myself being such a typical Manipuri!!! Probably, I am not a Manipuri. Or am I anti-Manipuri?".

I was immensely surprised to find myself getting a little annoyed going through the Article "We Need AFSPA plus a Manipuri KPS Gill" written by Tamo Dr. Robbinson Moirangcha for the first time.

However, some part of me suggests I should read once again to understand the intention.

It was quite interesting, and following paragraph is something which caught my eyes (I think the emotions created by the title of the article was leaking towards the beginning paragraph, so… I suppose I missed it in the first reading)

Another clarification is that this is going to be the last extensive effort from our part since we have become busier with our professional engagements. Even though we may not be able to oblige everyone with extensive answers (for want of time), we would definitely love to clarify single questions.

We have definitely no time for responding to personal attacks. Let's criticise the ideas, not the persons. This is civilisation and sensibility.

This indeed sounds last, and would like to put a sincere request to continue writing that opens area for discussion. I personally feel, there would be a lot of people who find his article not too nice to read; at the same time there would be lot of people who finds his views exactly theirs.

I happen to be among a lot who is in the middle and thus found this as an opportunity to understand what I don't seem to understand. I assume, a lot of effort and homework has been done by Tamo Moirangcha to come up with a conclusive article dealing with multiple reasons.

The article seems to touch reasonable amount of areas, which a reader (a Manipuri) can relate to. Even though the views are slightly against the general opinion, it bears sensible linkages up to some extent.

It talks a lot of bitter reality, which sweeps your clothes off. Someone might say there are better ways of writing the same thing; maybe this best suits the theme. Possibly, it is targeted to those who usually don't hear.

It is very clear that some of us are incorrigibly bad, some of us are as bad as bad and some of us are unknowingly bad. The later should be easy to handle, what about the first two? As good as we are in identification of the problem and as excellent as we are in finding the cause we should also be good enough to identify an executable solution for each of the sub problem.

I hope that's where our learned brothers knowledge are going to come into use. We have seen many scholars and learned individual succumb to their own identified problems, but the rule of the game is not to loose heart.

We already have too many problems with us and we are in the process of creating more. The need of the hour is a theoretical developed guy with specialisation in implementation of solutions.

We don't seem to have good amount of sensible people (who are willing to lead) to influence the community, which are wrongly driven by unguided emotions and sentiments. We tend to talk more of mistakes and less of achievement (yes we talk a lot about past achievement where there was no contribution of ours) and puts extra weight in throwing the blame to someone.

We are in a society, a group of people; it is very much normal to have different sets of people within a nomenclature of acceptable social thoughts and beliefs. However, we seem to miss the sets of people who talks as well as leads the people to get to the right direction.

"The history", gone, past, very sensitive and you can't change it. The question of flipping up pages of history for changes is relevant if we are sure about the benefits of the changes. We have been merged to India (whether it was the King wishes or the Queen or the people), and it is not very important to create another reason for a debate when we already have more than required.

What is more important at this hour is to reason out if the "merger" is the sole reason for the current state of Manipur. And the best is to give reasonable amount of knowledge and base for the people to think, by our academician and the educated lot of Manipuri society.

It is also very important to leave it to the people to ask themselves. Helping hand from the people who has boarder views and exposure would always be a good idea than giving a reality dose in an ugly way. "Words" have been very important but not as important as the "expression of words".

Why do we need AFSPA We need AFSPA to go through what we are going through right now.

It only exposes the failure of the community's thinking apparatus that has utterly failed to understand the root cause of the problems, and hence inability to manage them properly. Once militancy is rooted out, AFSPA will be repealed without any need for us to make unnecessary hues and cries about its misuse. Yes, the Act has been misused. But, that is a part of the package. Everything in the universe has both positive and negative sides.

It sounds more like a verdict very similar to that of AFSPA. We need to accept that we have failed to understand the root cause for the problems (at least, for now). We have been paying for our failures however hues and cries about the misuse of AFSPA may not be termed as "unnecessary".

"Everything in the universe has both positive and a negative side" doesn't really seem to explain killings of innocent people. Probably, perceptions are different for someone who hasn't lost someone dear to him. We are humans and we need a bit of humanity in all the rule sets. What does the Reddy's commission concluded?

The need of the moment is an awakening among the common people, and a courageous movement born out of genuine concern and dedication for the community. We need a strong will of the community as a whole.

How long are we going to keep our mouth shut? How long are we going to keep suffering? I strongly, full heartedly agree with Tamo and believe that everyone is in the same opinion, what is confusing the general public is how do we do that?

The answer points towards small things of our day today life activities and that's where we have a lot of conflicting objective. I have a friend who has gone through the worst phase of his life; he recently left his ideal good principles to get out of his financial crunch and support his ailing mother and he is ok now.

I sometimes wonder, if life has its own trap to complicate the all ready complicated survival games.