Murders Most Foul

The savagery of the murder would appal anybody except pathological killers. Dr. Thingnam Kishan, SDO Kasom Khullen, his official driver Rajen Sharma and mondal Y Token Singh, were blind-folded, hands tied behind their back and their faces and heads bludgeoned into disfigurement.

Their dead bodies were discovered near Taphou village in the Senapati district, four days after their vehicle was commandeered by an assailant in Ukhrul district headquarters.

Our heartfelt condolences to his subordinate colleagues, but in Dr. Kishan’s death, the state government, and indeed the state as a whole, have lost a part of its own future.

In the late officer was combined the rare values of academic brilliance and a strong commitment to society and justice.

When he decided to join the Manipur Civil Service, having cleared the last long and torturous recruitment process, he was already a lecturer of English literature in the DM College of Arts, and also had an appointment letter to join the Manipur University English department as lecturer.

Earlier still, he was lecturer of English on ad hoc basis in Shyamlal College, University of Delhi.

His academic credentials are beyond question. He had also shown extraordinary commitment to social reform and justice exhibiting immense activist instinct in bringing out a quarterly journal “Alternative Perspective” which intellectually addressed the many unsettled issues faced by Manipur and the northeast.

He left all this behind to join the MCS. Sceptical Manipur whose faith in the bureaucracy or its intent is in one of the lowest ebb in these troubled times, thanks to the monolith of corruption which has come to be associated with the establishment that profession is the engine, would surely raise eyebrows.

The natural and cynical suspicion today is, anybody who enters these services do so lusting the spoils of office and power. But this attitude is wrong although understandable, and a new crop of bureaucrats like Dr. Kishan were out to prove this.

Sure, bureaucracy has a special lure and in its essence this has hardly to do with any corrupt sense of power or lucre, although this we must admit has become our reality at this moment.

On the other hand, it has a lot to do with a powerful sense of agency of change and reform, which the bureaucracy, together with the political establishment, is indeed.

This sense of the power to reform society and in a definite sense influence lives of people other than just the self, gives this profession a special significance and attraction, making it undoubtedly the most sought after career.

You can either enter it enamoured by the prospect of power and riches, or else with a sense of mission. Dr. Kishan who preferred it to a promising career as an academic, probably belonged to the latter category. It is unfortunate that someone whose mind was ignited by the fire of idealism should die even before the journey has begun.

There is nothing which can be done to reverse things but there are plenty of ways to minimise the chances of such crimes happening again.

In this a common pledge of the public to jointly fight such mindless and sinister violence together is most essential.

Happily this seems to be happening in the unreserved public outrage all over the state, overlapping and crossing known fault lines between communities, hills and valley etc.

A strong, united and unyielding disapproval of this kind of violence by the public at large, more than even tough policing, in the long run would prove the surest guarantee against a repeat of such tragedies.

This however does not mean the law enforcing mechanism has no part in ensuring security.

After witnessing the breakdown of law and order in the state, more than at any other time, the anxiety induced by the chaos of the extended English Civil War of the mid 17th Century which broke out in 1642 between the Royalists and Parliamentarians which made Thomas Hobbes presume that the State must have to be the repository of all powers for law and order to prevail, now seems compelling logic.

Max Weber in the 19th Century was to extend this argument further to define the State as an entity which claims monopoly to “legitimate use of violence.”

This is the time for the Manipur state law keeping mechanism to assert and re-establish its authority. It can begin by leaving no stone unturned in digging out the truth behind the triple murder, booking and fittingly punishing the culprits.