I feel pity for myself and for my folks. General election is round the corner, scheduled to be held early 2012. This is one of the major votings we have, among the several smaller ones that we have, in the name of democracy. Many of us are drunk with the free drinks, many of us playing caroms as if life is a game, and many of us are participating in chalking out the plans and strategies for tomorrow. As a part of the election campaign. But...
For more than sixty years, we have been living under the cloak of democracy. Let's not go back to the beginning of time when Manipur was forcibly inserted into the union of India in 1949. Let's know something about neo-colonialism. The textbook defines the term in several ways. But back on the ground reality, it is a totally new thing what the term neo-colonialism implies. It can manifest in a single country, regardless of its long winding explanation of the developed-undeveloped-countries' phenomenon in 1,000-page academic books. As a metaphor, the issue is as boring as a textbook. But the issue is eating into fabrics of our society that we cannot simply ignore.
We have an adopted religion, Hinduism, which we have followed reluctantly after it was forcibly imposed on us during the 19th century. We have came a long way from those times. Now the gods are dead. And now, in a new incarnation, in political and economical matters, we are surviving on borrowed ideals of election and democracy. We don't have any revenue but the freebies from New Delhi, the national capital. This is a reality, howsoever we try to lose ourselves in a fantasy for a better tomorrow, even inside this election camp.
But we are not wise. It is simple as that. The only thing we are waiting for is to bitch about our representatives, who will disappear from the public eyes as soon as the election results are declared. We can find them in whorehouses and gambling places but we are too naive to visit them in those places. More bitching when we return back after they refused to listen to our grievances.
But the question is why we are not wise. I want to burn down this camp. But I'm too tipsy. And I will not ever resort to violence to meet the ends. I would cry for collective, common consciousness. I want to persuade the people about the truth. We are living in a frontier area, which in military jargon, means a region that needs to be guarded with guns and bombs and barb wires. How do you define this kind of democracy in the 1,000-page textbook? When are we going to wake up from this nightmare?
This election is just a side-show. How long are we going to tolerate this intolerable injustice towards humanity? I doubt I will ever find the answer inside this camp.
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