EACH time a pressure group or militant outfit decides to call a bandh it is actually testing our collective psyche. Are we paranoid, nervous, tentative about coming out? What’s the casualty if we do venture out? The more we conform to the diktat of these subversive forces the bolder they become. The correct thing to do is to stand up and be counted as those that will not bow before insolent might. That a bandh is called at this juncture is a test whether we have nerves of steel or whether we will bend and break. The Hynniewtrep National Liberation Council (HNLC) is perhaps the only banned outfit that speaks only via email and always via its publicity secretary, Sainkupar Nongtraw who runs a very interactive Facebook page riddled with venom. The question we have never asked is, where is the Chairman and Secretary? After Julius Dorphang surrendered and joined politics the HNLC has never announced a new Chairman. The Secretary Cherister Thangkhiew is in Bangladesh, probably doing business out of the money extorted over the years. Bobby Marwein the self-styled military strategist of the outfit at whose behest many have been killed is also on foreign soil. So who is Sainkupar Nongtraw? Is the name an alias? Does the NSCN or ULFA ever speak only through the publicity secretary?
It is bewildering that the Meghalaya police have not been able to crack this Sainkupar Nongtraw algorithm. Is he real? Is he a phantom? Where is he operating from? Why is not possible to track him vide the internet protocol he is using? It’s no big deal. A whiz-kid would do it in a jiffy. And why are people dancing to the tune of this single person whose identity is a mystery? Aren’t we all a bunch of cowards if we succumb to these threats? The excuse of vehicle owners is that it is unsafe to venture out since ‘miscreants’ could pelt stones and break a glass or two. Is that a good enough reason to cower in fear? How do we teach courage to our young ones? How do we explain to them that a person we have never seen and don’t know exists, a virtual phantom is running our lives? Can we look our children in the eye and tell them that we are so afraid of this phantom that we prefer to remain indoors? What are we communicating to our young ones each time we stay at home when there is an office picketing or a bandh? When courage is missing, human life itself becomes just a drab existence. Is this the reason why we don’t feature anywhere near the development indicators that others states have achieved? How can a people living in persistent fear ever do anything great? Fear indeed is the Achilles heel of the people of Meghalaya. And all despotic forces know this. They have got us where they want us unless we decide to face our fears and take our enemies head on. How many will walk the road less travelled and turn it into a thoroughfare?
