Dr Asangba Tzudir
At the base of the paramount issues and problems confronting the society lie the many layers of corruption. It has become a point where the greatest enemy crippling our society seems to be corruption. However, there is a larger enemy more devastating than corruption – the enemy is fear and this fear has not allowed truth to surface. This fear comes with insecurities associated with life and living and has unknowingly often unconsciously produced undesirable effects even leading to hate, conflicts, and violence.
This fear has made truth obsolete, and thereby the truth is never allowed to surface. This fear has curtailed our freedom to speak the truth openly. There is also an inherent psycho-social and philosophical problem that makes truth become a stranger in the face of fear. Ironically, up to a large extent, speaking the truth is becoming meaningless and is slowly losing its substance and relevance. There is a process of normalisation wherein, there is dissociation from speaking the truth because our society is conditioned in such a way that telling the truth is suppressed by fear and therefore an uncomfortable subject.
Elections are also a classic example of fear of the concealed truth wherein ‘elements of fear’ is manufactured at the cost of truth. Likewise, truth finds hidden in many spheres of human activity within different domains of society.
Our society is not opened to a culture of ‘truth dialogue’ where criticisms can be openly shared across. It is such that telling the truth becomes more hurtful or inconvenient or one that may invite unnecessary attention. This has also happened because of the usual hand-in-glove linkages. Corruption is likened to a disease but the fear psychosis does not allow the bare and ugly truths to surface.
Media is also greatly discouraged to speak the ‘truth’ being constrained by defamation and other ‘restraining guidelines.’ Such curtailment creates different forms of fear which often gets reflected in the depth of content as well as in the depth of reporting, and thereby strips truth of the news from the news itself. Even in social media platforms, besides the flow of information, often the truth that is shared finds concealed within a veil of fear because sanctions are imposed from various spheres of authority which makes one cautious with fear.
The church is one integral space that needs to be ruffled to make way for truth to grow. There are many compelling issues on which the church needs to take an affirmative stand rather than withholding the ‘truth’ for fear of possible criticisms. On another level, dialogue between the ‘church’ and its members is largely hampered due to a kind of fear that comes along with religiosity and its associated activities within the interplay of power and control and thereby ‘truth dialogue’ becomes a casualty. It is also the manufactured fear wherein ‘preaching the truth’ and ‘the act’ gets divorced. These are some of the uncomfortable truths that cannot be openly communicated because of a kind of fear that has so naturalised and it becomes better not to speak.
For the progress of a society, the imprisoned truth needs to be set free and nurtured by unsettling the fear that would change its course into the ‘zone of truth.’ On the larger whole, the various forms of fear today act as a hunchback to growth and development of our society beginning with human development. In the build up to a collectivity, our society needs to realise that there is something more important than fear, that our society can no longer afford to be strangulated by fear at a time when the many ‘uncomfortable truths’ that are crippling our society needs to surface. Sadly, in every arena of human activity, men seems to have truly become a political animal of fear rather than a political champion of truth.
(Dr Asangba Tzudir contributes a weekly guest editorial to the Morung Express. Comments can be emailed to asangtz@gmail.com)
