By HH Mohrmen
It is funny how fast the world around us can change. In a matter of a week a pleasant life on a delightful week can turn upside down and everything can go haywire. Life is complicated and at the same time funny; it is unpredictable and sometimes there is very little one can do to stop the change from happening. In a week a volatile discussions about Menshohnoh has swiftly changed into the debate about the teachers’ agitation program. To the delight of the Minister of Education no matter how legitimate the teachers demands are, the debate about the teachers must give way for the (as of now) mother of all issues – the ILP. Now the menshohnoh and teachers’ issue will be consigned to the back burner and because public memory is very short, one wonders if this issue will ever surface again in the public domain. And all this can happen in a week in Meghalaya.
The last article on the issue of menshohnoh by Barnes Mawrie appeared in The Shillong Times last week. I respect Mawrie’s conclusion that the Khasi Pnar will only be able to do away with the belief in menshohnoh if they all convert to Christianity like the people in Europe did a long time ago, but I have my own take on the issue. The evil in any man is not because of the religion he follows; it is in the heart of an individual. The metaphor from a simple story in Native American tradition is what I found appropriate. A grand old man told his grandson that he had a dream and in his dream he saw a white wolf fighting against a black wolf in his grandson’s heart. And when the grandson asked which wolf won in the end the grandfather replied, ‘the one you feed son.’ The black wolf is jealousy, hatred and all that is evil and the white wolf symbolizes love, kindness and goodness in the human heart concluded the old man.
The killing of people in the name of menshohnoh is not because people follow one religion or the other but it is because of the evil that is present in the human heart irrespective of which religion one follows. People who kill another human being or for that matter any person who commits any crime does not have any religion. They are murderers, rapist, kidnappers and what not. They have lost their conscience and hence lost their religion otherwise they would not have committed any crime. Criminals can identify themselves as Hindu, Muslim etc., but the fact of the matter is that they are not religious anymore. Religion has become a mere tag that they pin on their chest. It does not matter if one is a Christian, a Hindu, a Buddhist, a Muslim or a follower of Niam Khasi, Niamtre, how one lives depends on the wolf one feeds in one’s life. If one feeds the evil wolf one becomes a bad Christian, a bad Hindu, a bad Muslim etc and if one feeds the good wolf in one’s heart then one becomes a good Muslim, a good Buddhist, a good Niam Khasi etc. Therefore menshohnoh has nothing to do with any religion, but it more to do with the kind of human heart that the individual has.
The teachers have been at it for a long time now. Dr R.C. Laloo would know better because he has been the minister of education many times now, but funnily no matter how many times he is in charge of the Department Laloo has miserably failed in his duty to solve this long pending problem. Why would Dr Laloo avoid meeting the teachers’ association if he has some solution to the problem? Why did he avoid meeting the teachers if he still believes that dialogue around the table is not only the right thing to do but negotiation is also the only means to solving problems and resolving conflicts. Laloo has obviously run out of ideas so there is no other option than to run away from the teachers. One would therefore not be surprised if Dr Mukul’s axe falls on Dr R C Laloo’s at the next cabinet reshuffle because Laloo has nothing else to prove to the people and the state. If education is a business enterprise then what this implies is a management which has failed its employees and hence is doomed to failure. The government has failed the teachers and the state and has failed in its sacred duty to provide quality education to the children of the state.
Last week ended with a dramatic march of the conglomerate of NGOs after their failed meeting with the government headed by Dr Mukul Sangma. What this means is that we are heading again to the days of hartals, bandhs and strikes and uncertainty again looms large over the state. Nobody knows what will happen after the 12 hour bandh on Monday. One only hopes and prays that no untoward incident happens and the bandh passed off peacefully. Nobody has any dispute with the NGOs right to protest but the moot question is whether bandhs, road blockades and burning of public property the only kind of protest that the NGOs can think of? This same tactic has been used by the NGOs since their inception and ultimately the people that have to bear the brunt are the daily labourers and the students who will not be able to regain the one full working day they have lost. If history is repeated then the future is bleak especially for the students because when long strikes are they disrupt the smooth functioning of their classes. Leaders of the NGOs may as well say that this is a small price to pay for a better future, but the question is why can’t NGOs leaders think of some creative form of protest which will have less impact on the general public but protest that can impinge hardest on the powers that be.
One’s worst fear is lest the forthcoming agitation programs of the NGOs turn out to be just another waste of time like what had happened in the past, since 1979. Ultimately it is the weaker section of the society that is going to suffer the most. And what about the MUA-2 Government? What does all this say about it? If the Government has a mechanism in place that has to be implemented at the earliest. The results have to be visible to reassure people that he is serious about this Government’s policy to come up with a comprehensive mechanism to control influx. The name by which the mechanism is called should not be the sticking point. The point is to make that influx control mechanism work. The ILP might not be an effective instrument to control cross-border illegal immigration.