The BJP never fails on its promises and it promises to root out corruption from high places in Meghalaya. Perhaps a few people, or at least my friends on WhatsApp and other social media platforms, will remember that I made my first plunge into politics (October 2022) desirous of nothing, because I had nothing that I wanted from politics except one – it should eradicate this senseless corruption that has overtaken the State and its people, especially in high places, and that if my calculations were with some error and some exaggerations, in any case I should begin with some hope in my heart that an evil was what I was against. In the pessimism that we the people have developed on corruption, I recognise, who knows by what personal experiences I have gone through, the symptom of a better Meghalaya, a Meghalaya with triumphant plenitudes of life than had hitherto been manifested in the past ten years.
The scale of corruption, tragic as it is at present, is the most ignoble, most disgraceful, most dishonourable prodigality of life, but nevertheless, in view of its overflowing scale it has turned out to be a justifiable teacher in my case, and I daresay in the case of all my friends as well – it is something that we can be thankful for because it has given us something to do, it has given us an opportunity to assess the worthiness of the party we want should run the State in the years to come.
In witnessing the corruption that was going on, of which I have written in no small quantities in the past few months, I interpreted it as an expression of power, an expression of the right to control others and the right to establish dominance over the lives of the people of the State so that the people take what is given and do not aspire for more. In it I thought I felt an earthquake in my soul that was constrained for many years but which was at last seeking to burst out of its bonds, indifferent to how much disruption of that which I called as my peaceful culture and which I was prepared to sacrifice with the aim of protecting us all from total ruin present and future. I do not know if I have misinterpreted myself by believing that we were headed into the greatest calamity but I was not willing to take the risk of not doing anything about it.
Any government that comes may be regarded either as a cure or as a stimulant to lift us out of the declining way of life we have fallen into because we are at the lowest rungs on the Niti Aayog index of development for 2022. The principal playing force in our society is undoubtedly the politicians we elect to power. And we are about to vote to power the politicians that we believe will change our sick ratings, and we know they make empty promises. They promise one thing but do just the opposite. In 2013 we were promised “Good Governance” and in 2018, “the winds of Change” and we are where we are today.
In Assam on the other hand the only promise was “Development” free from the sugary madness of this and that promise, and that was a promise well kept; clear for all to see, and corruption lower than has ever been known and the government was headed by the BJP. The BJP kept its promise in Assam; it will do the same here, and its promise here is to root out corruption. It is clear that the government in the BJP ruled states do not think it desirable that the kingdom of righteousness and peace and prosperity should be established only in the afterlife because for all practical purposes mediocrity or excellence can only be experienced here and now, and sadly we’re experiencing mediocrity in Meghalaya.
It is in the here and now that we can rejoice in all men who like ourselves love progress and prosperity and who do not make compromises nor let themselves be captured, conciliated and stunted, who count themselves among the upright, who ponder over the need of a new order of things especially a new government for everything that strengthens and everything that elevates a community involves a new meaning, and for too long we have allowed ourselves and our people to be manipulated. This latter claim is not without reason.
The political parties in power from 2013 to 2018 and from 2018 till date were reportedly more concerned with funding elections in other states than looking to the welfare of the people of Meghalaya, despite the knowledge that the State was faced with a crisis being a financially deficient State, a State that depends for its financial resources from the Centre because its own resources would not even tide over the salaries of its employees.
This event that political parties in Meghalaya were prejudiced against the people of the State and preferred funding election campaigns in other states over schemes and programmes for its own people presupposes a position that others matter more to them than do the people of their own State. And all that one can decipher from such indulgences is that one wants to get outside or aloft of where one is at present, which is perhaps some sort of madness, because the actors are still very much here and have perhaps realised that their dreams of a heaven elsewhere was peculiar and unreasonable. Their benefactors, those who benefitted from their generosity have forgotten them, have turned their backs to them and so they’re left with nowhere to go but back to their own people.
And to think that our people are not aware of this hypocrisy of funding elections in other states in preference to our own requirements, and not demanding answers from the candidates who were engaged in this generosity indicates that we are still far below the average standards worthy of political recognition as compared to the high standards displayed by other people of their politicians elsewhere in the country, even the people in the North East.
That this issue has not been taken to the people and by the people is because we take political matters, apart from the election, too lightly and not even the BJP in Meghalaya has questioned it, but now that the BJP has writers and truth talkers among its members in Meghalaya, we question – “is the funding of elections in other states by any political party in Meghalaya patriotic?” Definitely not, and definitely it’s not too late to learn these truths because even now we can still retrieve the situation with the help of the BJP in the coming years, and for that we need the people to vote for the BJP so that the BJP heads the Government in Meghalaya, and from the look of things that may just happen this time round. The BJP will not change our way of life, it will actually restore it. We have tolerated enough tom-foolery.
The tribal community that we are supposed to be has become too diverse and mixed in race and descent and consequently we are always tempted to reminisce on what we once were. We are as a people, generous and rich in spirit, and normally do not hinder anyone from sharing what we possess, but it’s sad to have to admit that we do not know how to defend ourselves when we should like to do so, we have no means against making ourselves corrupt and wicked, we have no means to prevent the modern day lifestyles from casting its evil and morbid ways upon us.
Whatever trash that other communities possess and desire to inculcate into our lifestyle we seem to be unable to defend ourselves from it. But in all this gloom and darkness, there is still something left in us because we have not forgotten our past so easily and hopefully we will someday clear ourselves of this outer shell of foolishness and become ourselves once again.
In the meantime we are however still liable to the rumour mongering and the clandestine lies in Party Politics against our culture and our God. We need to curb these lies with personal research and we have done just that. We have had enough, we can’t bear it any longer, this fabrication of the truth that the BJP is a religious denomination stinks of lies and being the accepting kind we believed it.
Those who deal in such wickedness are nothing less than the misanthropes of the tribals of Meghalaya. There was no reason for them to lie to the people; their hatred emerged from their love of hatred itself, and for that reason alone we must renounce them as we renounce contempt. This is the big lie that’s been spreading for the past many years and it has taken time to rid ourselves of these wrong notions but we’ve gotten there now, thanks to the many Christians who have seen through these political gimmicks that have misguided us.
This falsified jargon was then made into a racial issue and it struck many of us as doubly false and unbecoming of ourselves even in politics, because what was more required of us was, in a word – and it should be our word of honour – to be “Good Tribals:” the pledged heirs of our proud ancestors who sacrificed blood and body against the invaders for the sake of their belief and who were uncompromising in their tribal integrity.
And now we ask ourselves, should we deny our ancestors? For what – for the lies we are told? No, we all know better than that my friends, because the stakes are too high and the tribal hidden in us is sick of the ways that our people have fallen into what we see as distinctly unreal and the cost we have had to pay has gone beyond bounds. We tribals have come of age, we love intellect and intellect loves us and now it needs us more than ever before because what we have gone through is somewhat of a horror to us; that with all our gentleness, patience, humanity and courteousness we have forgiven too many politicians who didn’t live up to their promises for too long, now we must elect politicians from the BJP because the BJP never fails on its promises.
(The writer is a spokesperson of the BJP in Meghalaya)
