By Angomcha Bimol Akoijam
“Leinungda leiba sharu
Sharu mayamna lao-ee —
— Thawai shokna lao-ee
Laibak thibaa meenai-gee jaat
Laibak thibaa meenai-gee jaat”
— Hijam Irabot
I was reminded of these lines of Hijam Irabot last week once again due to a couple of developments during the week. The widespread, and perhaps unprecedented, commemoration of the Birth Anniversary of the man, including by the Red Shield Division of the Indian Army, is one obvious development. The other development was the charge-sheet that the National Investigation Agency (NIA) filed against R. K. Meghen and the others of the United National Liberation Front (UNLF). Some thoughts on these seemingly two unrelated developments came together in a flash to remind me of the above lines of Hijam Irabot through an editorial that appeared in the Imphal Free Press last week, ‘Spiral of Silence and Meitei Nongsha’.
The ‘Meitei Nongsha’ in the title of the editorial is not a serious concern for me, atleast not in this context, even if it reveals a vantage point that has critical bearing on the idea of Manipur. After all, if we are to take a metaphor from the animal kingdom to discuss the state of affairs in Manipur, I suppose, the cat (houdong) would be a more appropriate one. For, the issue of ‘silence’ that the editorial refers to is deeply related to the dilemma of ‘who shall bell the cat?’
Silence: On Denial and Acknowledgement
Taking off from Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann’s well known theory on the nature of ‘public opinion’, the editorial looks at the ‘silence’ of the ‘individuals’ in Manipur on issues of public importance. And it asserts that the ‘public suffers from the spiral of silence’ and ‘