Witoubou Newmai
What is not normal is to do wrong things and admit it. And what is normal is to commit wrong things and rationalize it. This is not a new trend, however, one that is intensifying at a great pace.
Various reasons can contribute to this intensifying trend. One of the reasons can be the diminishing space of the culture of valuing moral values complimented by the enlargement of space for interpretation of things. The enlargement of space for interpretation is informed by the germinations of different worldviews or by the tsunami of paradigmatic changes of situations.
There are boons and banes with the increasing space for interpretation.
Most of the problems, mostly of political issues, crop up due to the liberty of interpretation. We have seen this scenario in the ‘Naga situation’ too.
Today, we witness the loud interpretations of the prevailing Myanmar situation.
While the supporters of Aung San Suu Kyi and National League for Democracy (NLD) say they are protesting to save democracy, “the Leader of Tatmadaw, the Military, Min Aung Hlaing, announced that elections in November last year had been fraudulent and in an ‘effort to save democracy’ the military would now rule the nation for at least one year, until new elections could be organized,” Jan Lundius, a scholar mentions in an article.
Amidst volleys of comments that India’s democracy is placed in peril today, Prime Minister Narendra Modi while speaking at the 16th Pravasi Bharatiya Divas convention last month, had stated, “Doubts were once expressed about democracy working in India, but today the country is the most vibrant democracy in the world.”
On the judiciary, Outlook magazine in its latest edition has presented several articles on ‘How political is our judiciary?’ In one of the articles, Ritwika Sharma, a senior resident fellow at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, says, “Being political is inevitable for the Supreme Court as it is tasked with interpreting the Constitution.”
According to Ruben Banerjee, editor-in-chief of Outlook, this special edition on the topic is “an attempt to dive deep into what many of us have often wondered but refrained from asking aloud: is our judiciary politicized?”
The way Outlook has presented the prevailing judiciary situation is also one way of trying to minimize the space of interpretation and politicisation.
Any other issue also demands the way the magazine did.
As for the Naga issue, the space to interpret can be minimized for objectivity only when the Government of India’s understanding of the ‘Naga situation’ refrains to stem only from the understanding of the former’s guidepost that encapsulates 'ideas' and policies.
The whole point is about the concern that the growing space to interpret and rationalize 'mistakes' is smothering the line between black and white; evil and good; right and wrong. So it is time to magnify the line between the contrasts. Failure to do so has resulted for many of us to see the violators of human rights as champions and saviours. As such, it is time to see the distinction between commitment and preaching.
This concern calls for the moral code, which the society today considers it as the ‘insipid’ that no longer strikes the chord, to prevail.
