Imphal, May 29 2009: The Manipur Students' Association, Delhi (MSAD) has stated that the killing of Prof Islamudin on May 25 last at the campus of Manipur University represents a severe lack of the spirit of engagement when it comes to the question of disagreement and contestation while also condoling the death.

A statement issued by the president of MSAD, O Sandhyarani Chanu stated that the condition of free speech and fair dialogue on any issue involved in contestation are shattered adding, the killing should not have happened if this condition were protected and promoted.

This lacking is symptomatic of our society in many ways.

Asserting that terror is a profitable value for the 'powerful' now, the statement circumspectly observed that there is no option to engage with dictates from the 'powerful' but to succumb to the outcomes of being unpalatable to the powerful dictates.

While saying that the killing of Prof Islamuddin is condemnable for two reasons, the MSAD statement argues that one of the reasons is the devastation of the spirit to listen and to opine that is anticipated from a university � considered as a symbol and site of serious engagement with every ideas, thoughts, and imagination no matter the intensity of the disagreement and contestation.

The statement further observed that it kills rather the sustaining capacity to win rationally over the reason of the opponent and thus favouring the complicity of being self defeated in the face of the 'unspeakability' of the opponent whose audible reason is thus reduced to total silence, unheard and un-critiqued, than the professor of his corporeal presence.

The second reason which the MSAD statement stated is, what accounts for the 'fatal' mistakes of the Professor, whatever may it be, cannot be undone or permanently rigged out of the messy and intricate system of the university and its working through his being physically eliminated.

Though the killing might have pleased the corrective sentiments of his killers, it was seriously flawed and ill conceived, Sandhyarani Chanu observes.

What went seriously wrong in the making of the whole drama of cruelty was the specific targeting of the person, his ideas, his stubbornness or whatever, it stated.

The target was wrongly conceived and the conscience was fatally flawed in its execution and therefore the killing remains only to be blamed for many such reasons like a few that have been pointed out, the MSAD statement stated.

It also appealed all concerned not to commit such act in the future.

Comment