If politics in Manipur were to be described in one word, the word would be fickle. Indeed the number of politicians who have not switched loyalty for even the most trivial of reasons during a career, can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and in all likelihood there would be some fingers left uncounted. There are of course few who have remained steady and loyal to their ideology but there can be no doubt they are in a hopeless minority. This being the case, the overwhelming image of fickleness associated with politics in the state has stream-rolled whatever little integrity and value in politics these few have salvaged. Elections after elections, generation of politicians after generation, they are always the same, their one objective of grabbing power by any means have remained constant always. Dissidents are therefore commonplace in any political party in position of power. Everywhere else, political power is normally the preserve of the party which has won the most number of legislators in an election, but in a surrogate state like Manipur there is an additional source of power. It is not always the ruling party which can claim a stake to power, but even parties without popular mandate, having failed to win a single seat at the elections, can also become parallel powers, provided their party is at the helm at the Centre. The case of the BJP is just this at this moment. It is not a coincidence then that the BJP which drew a blank at the last elections, is today the sparring partner for state power with the ruling Congress, and by the standard of Manipur politics, are both also badly riven by dissidents within, vying to grab the levers of power their parties hold. The Anti-Defection Law has made these dissidents somewhat toothless, but they continue to fume and fret, parroting `tales told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing`™. It is good in a way, for the dissidents always make sure the skeletons in their party`™s cupboards do not remain hidden from the public. Poetic justice? Interestingly, the dissidents, which practically all Manipur politicians have been at least once in their careers, justify their anti party activities as a longing for change for the party`™s and people`™s good.
Well, it is unlikely they do not know that between change and fickleness for there is a world of difference. Bertrand Russell once said intellectual flexibility and readiness to accommodate changes is not at all a sign of weakness but of intellectual growth. This must not however be confused with fickleness. If change is about introspection and self correction, fickleness is about selfishness and an inability to hold a belief. As a thumb rule, those who step into electoral politics and have had a taste of the intoxicating influence of political power, have the tendency of shedding past convictions and discipline and adopt the fickle norms of defection and party hopping. There cannot be a more grave degeneration than this.
Fickleness also has an opposite number. These are the unconventional, `non-maintream` politicians. The firebrand establishment bashers, who take pride in their obduracy and self righteousness, whose temperamental development became arrested at the stage of college politics, who like the students are fearless of the law or physical harm, who think they are invincible intellectually and physically and are convinced even God is on their side, romantic warriors with the sense of mission that they were ordained at birth to carry the world upon their shoulders, who are so fixated with only their private visions of things that they cannot actually see anything else beyond. They too are `full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.` Sometimes, in contemplating them it is difficult to arrest a yawn. Intellectual obduracy and fickleness make the same variety of noises. Both swear by a self-proclamation longing for change. But theirs is far from the idea of change. For change is about courage and grit.
Leader Writer: Pradip Phanjoubam