It had to happen on a Wednesday. But it could well have occurred on a Sunday. In any event, it had to come to such an unhappy pass.
Uniform, as one wore it as an eleven year old cadet in the Rashtriya Indian Military College, Dehradun, probably knows only God and Country. It has only saluted a national flag under which a solemn oath was taken.
Perhaps that is the reason I understand the plight and the predicament of the man in uniform.
Today, in the state of Manipur a noble force which the world knows as the Assam Rifles, is being pilloried because it has been acting for the last ten months in a non-partisan and the most nationalistic of ways.
A pen trembled in anger when news of injustice against the Cachar Levy which would complete 200 glorious years in 2035 reached one’s mind.
As a continuing student of India’s national security and history that pertains to it, I have read about Mangal Pandey and the Sepoy Mutiny.
Theorists have written and re-written the reasons for what has been hailed as the First War of Independence against British rule.
However, what happened on 28 February 2024 in Imphal would also have to be scripted and interpreted in the weighty pages of a nation’s history.
Manipur Police Commandos, in stark defiance of superior calls of non-intervention in a case that was anti-national, “mutinies” for the sake of God and Country.
One had to pause to even react! The symbolic act was carried out by the Manipur Police Commandos because it had defied their human and sacred conscience to their oath and uniform.
The Commandos laid down their arms in “symbolic protest”. It is not important to fathom the reason why. To the nationalist in I, it was enough reason to lament that they did what did!
Independent India has seldom witnessed such a show of remonstration.
The nation goes to polls in two months. It does not behove well for a country to have one of its extremities (especially as it is so geo-strategically positioned!) to be so inflamed.
Raisina Hill must understand that the fires from Imphal, Churachandpur and Ukhrul can soon spread to neighbouring states of Mizoram and Nagaland. Indeed, it might engulf the entire enchanted frontiers.
Sage imploration, therefore, expects clear, precise and decisive intervention from New Delhi. Modi is today hailed as the “Great Helsman” of Bharat.
The Indian North Easterner is no less a Bharatiya. Her leader is Narendra Damodar Das Modi.
She gazes with imploring eyes at their revered leader to mete out proper, inclusive and correct justice.
