Renewing the idea of community life for a sustainable Manipur

Joyson Khumukcham
We often talk about our patriotic spirit of being a Manipuri, a son or daughter of this land. And by this land, Manipur as a concrete territorial space with a specific boundary inhabited by different groups of people having diverse cultures comes up in our mind. We say that we love our motherland but we also question the same on many things on the ground. But what exactly is the motherland and the love that we have for if not the people, the places, the resources, and the lives that flourish together within this unique corner of the world ? And where, where does one’s love for their motherland begin and end ? Does it begin from the State capital and end at the State border ?
The answer is not enough with poetic verses, cultural legacies, or tales of heroic sacrifices alone, but should fundamentally lie in the community life we share every day. In fact, we might have failed to see that there is an unacknowledged relationship between one’s sense of patriotism and the community life to which one belongs. In this article, I attempt to bridge the overlooked gap between community belongingness and patriotic spirit while suggesting a renewed sense of community responsibility and accountability for a sustainable Manipur.
The Changing Community Life
The advent of capitalist driven lifestyle and intense consumerism in the last one or two decades owing to globalization, technologies, and the internet have altogether transformed the community life in Manipur for good and for bad. People have to adjust their habits and activities accordingly to the changing circumstances. This sometimes conflicts with the deeply rooted and priorly held values, rituals, institutions, and even the environmental equilibrium.
A leikai, for instance, seems complete as a unit of community when there is a club, a playground, a community hall, and a pond amongst many things, some of which is becoming very hard to find in the Greater Imphal area nowadays. A leikai seems lively when there are locality members sitting around the club discussing community welfare activities, children playing around in the playground, older citizens meeting up in a hotel, or people taking a walk in the lanes. We still see such things in some leikais, but many are struggling to have a community space and therefore community interactions within their own leikais.
Today, many of us have become somewhat individualistic in our social engagement, if not narcissistic, prioritizing our own families and personal works first, taking them for granted. This leads to a disregard or less interest in community-oriented activities and therefore less participation. We are so busy and caught up with our personal works and problems that community participation becomes secondary unless there is a situation of emergency/crisis. This is not to blame upon the individuals and their attitudes entirely. It is, to a large extent, an outcome of our system and institutions of education, production, consumption, and management being shaped by bigger forces, personal desires, and incompetency.
Empty Community, Hollow Patriotism
By constantly excusing oneself from community engagements out of various reasons, our affection and belongingness towards the community become reduced. And gradually, our love for motherland, although uttered or expressed in the most beautiful and emotive ways, lacks substance. As such, we often witness troubling incidents in our society and question one another. That is why we also see a rise in spectator political culture, one in which many people stay nonchalant about what is happening around them, do not participate in common initiatives, and leave the larger political fate, including theirs, to others. That is why our collective spirit remains numb in usual times but suddenly outburst in the form of sacrificial spirit in times of distress.
Not to imply that such acts of patriotism is problematic, but there is a gap in the way we are raised within our community and the greater values we are made to uphold as we grow. By glorifying the idea of worshipping motherland or one’s birthplace as an inherent patriotic act, we have kept the community units that make up the very motherland aside. While we honor our patriots who died for a worthy cause, we often kill fellows of our own for personal reasons. We appreciate the beauty of different places but keep our own surroundings filthy. We pray about peace and harmony yet harbor animosity amongst ourselves. This very act of insincerity within ourselves and hypocrisy between what we wish for and what we do is the reason why our patriotic feelings, although strong in spirit, remain hollow inside in substance.
The only reason for this phenomenon of hollow patriotism can be explained by a lack of community belongingness first. While we may claim to belong to a community, a State, or a country, we never understand in concrete terms what it means to belong. To belong means to be a part of, to take care of, and to be taken care of. And that belongingness should start from instilling a sense of community responsibility from the smallest units, such as a family, a locality, and gradually to society.
Challenges in Community Engagements
In our society, it is not surprising to find families having an anti-relationship or an enemy-like-situation with another family in every locality or neighborhood, by which they constantly keep a jealousy-check upon each other. Such negative relationships hinder the development of healthy community engagements. Ill-intentioned gossip, rumors, and negative demeanors significantly discourage participation in community activities.
At an individual level, factors such as intolerance toward differing opinions, lack of listening skills, and an inability to express oneself due to insufficient democratic and social skills, as well as busy work schedules and poor health, can all contribute to a reluctance to engage with the community. Resentments arising from interventions or non-interventions in personal matters can also deter individuals from engaging with their communities.
Contrarily, mobilizing community members is a dedicated effort, and in today’s fast-paced world, it is increasingly difficult for people to volunteer for community welfare activities. Instances of disruptive behavior during community events often result in the cancellation of future programs. Volunteers face various forms of backlash for even slight mistakes, making the organization of community events challenging. Moreover, exposure to modern experiences and values often leads many people to find reasons to distance themselves from their immediate surroundings. Some individuals seek peace and self- sufficiency, preferring solitude over the chaos of community life. As such, they prioritize their personal affairs over participation in community activities. Our community participation, in such sense, appears to be based upon personal convenience or perceived benefits, rather than a genuine obligation as part of a community.
Renewing the Community Life
Bringing sustainable changes and development in a society is not the task of the Government alone. After all, it is the people who should regularly monitor what is happening around them for any positive or negative changes or any activity. Sustainable development and lifestyle should come from taking responsibility and holding accountability.
In Manipur, renewing our idea of community life at the leikai level (locality/neighborhood) can help our society live sustainably. Instilling a sense of community responsibility and mutual respect for fellow members, the environment, and all public entities must be encouraged. Local clubs should be active community spaces in every locality, organizing monthly meetings, weekend activities, and other productive programs that foster a sense of community and collective spirit among common people.
The Government should also step in to recognize and award sustainable localities and villages for cleanliness and organizing community-oriented programs throughout the state, on a constituencyor district-wise manner. Similarly, people should hold the government and its officials accountable for public welfare activities. It will renew our culture of sustainability and mutual accountability throughout the state. Awareness campaigns, health check-up camps, and physical activities such as yoga and aerobics should be conducted by local clubs in collaboration with state agencies from time to time to bring people together and strengthen community bonds.
Local clubs should take the initiative to invite their elected representatives–be it MLA, MP, Pradhan, Councillor, Mayor, etc., and hold regular public meetings with them to discuss development agenda, welfare activities, or grievances, while keeping personal enmity and political ideologies aside. Beyond road-mending politics, locality members should discuss public facilities such as health, jobs, water, welfare schemes, and other matters which they have always wanted the government/community to look into. Local clubs, in such manners, should become lively democratic spaces for community life.
By encouraging democratic participation at the community level, people of Manipur, in both the hills and valley, can help build sustainable community life and come out of the evil politics and contestations over identity, land, autonomy, and power.


The writer is a research scholar in the Department of Political Science, Manipur University and can be reached through [email protected]