It has been realized for quite a while now that Manipur is a most violent place to be in. What gives violence its hold as a way of doing business, what has naturalized it as the de facto standard of human relations, is the way it has been articulated into our ideologies and social structures.

An exact and complete explanation of the cyclic triads of violence and its pervasion into our deepest realms is an encylopaedic task. Each form of violence helps create the others, and is as mindless and pointless as the ones before or after it.

It is more than the shooting and bombing and burning and beating and torturing and maiming and killing and wounding and crippling and widowing and orphaning. It is more than the husband raising his fist at his wife, or the brother shooting his brother, or the son attacking his father, or the armies of men who have been commanded to view each other as less than human, and to view civilians as something even less. It is more than the physical or verbal attack on another man, because of his political orientation or religion or tribe or color. It is more violence on a limitless playing field.

It is the structural institutionalization of violence in our day to day lives, in the design of our reactions, in the rigid dysfunctions of education, work, politics, and in the handicaps conferred by accidents of history, politics, and geography. It is, perhaps metaphorically, perhaps not, our relationship to our natural and unnatural environments. But it is still violence nevertheless. It is violence in its most myriad and multitudinous of forms.

The ways that Manipur has gone about its violence is a source of enormous fear, isolation, and pain for itself. If violence is constructed as a capacity to dominate and control, if the capacity to act in powerful ways requires the construction of a personal suit of armor and a fearful distance from others, if the very applications of power and violence removes us from the world of compassion and humanity, then we are constructing a place whose own experience of power is fraught with crippling problems.

This may well be a timeless problem, but it seems particularly true in an era and culture where rigid boundaries have been drawn between internal expectations and realistic external results. Whether it is political, financial, linguistic, or ethnic expectations, or the suppression of a range of human rights and needs, the imperatives of the Manipur method seem to require a constant and violent loss of life.

Within such a body politic, violence becomes a compensatory mechanism. It is a way of re-establishing equilibrium, of asserting to oneself and others its credentials, and is therefore unceasing. What makes this a compensatory mechanism has been the wide-spread acceptance of violence as a means of solving differences, and of asserting power and control. What makes it possible are the power and privileges that the gun has enjoyed - things that have become firmly encoded in its rapid fire applications.

The Manipur violence is therefore the result both of a need to hold and harness unlimited power, the sense of entitlement to that power, and of the fear of not having it. It is the result of a design that is based on emotional distance from others, and even from within itself. It has resulted in the creation of a place where those having many areas of disagreement can progressively eliminate each other, and fatally injure itself in the process.

Recognizing this doesn't mean we are anywhere close to having less violence. Much violence is still committed without so much as an afterthought. But I think we ignore the rise of violence at our peril. For one thing it means that we have consistently failed to address fundamental issues as they now affect us. The other thing, particularly relevant, is that various policy gurus and pundits don't perceive us as telling the truth if we ignore or play down violence and harassment committed by our very own.

How we constitute a non violent environment and advance the good within it, however, is not a simple question, nor is it ever finally settled. Individuals and groups are constantly negotiating and constructing social and community realities for themselves. The determination of who becomes privileged and powerful, for example, and who is included or excluded from collective benefits is one of those dividers within us.

The questions that need to be asked are relatively timeless. To whom are we or should we be responsible and accountable and why? Are we our brother's and sister's keepers and who do we want to include in these categories? What does this mean in terms of ethics and behaviour?

How do we ensure that our core political, economic and social institutions generate real security for citizens rather than security for some and insecurity for many? In other words how are we connected to each other and how can we ensure that we work in ways which satisfy rather than frustrate basic human needs and which utilises diversity for the benefit of all?

There is no topic more important for modern societies than understanding the sources of violent conflict and identifying ways in which such violence might be prevented, managed, resolved or transformed. If we do not face up to it and develop some creative answers to this question it will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to establish and maintain civilised communities within which citizens can live, move and develop their full human potential in a relatively untroubled environment.

We know that most of us in Manipur are not violent. But we also know that the vast majority of us are compelled to remain silent. Through our silence, we allow the violence to continue. We close down our highways of progress and choose a road less traveled. It may not be too soon before we come to a dead end. And the end of the road does make a rather bold statement - Return if possible.