In a Influx

We are no longer ourselves. Our identity is limited to a piece of land, materialism, fashion icons, education and relationships. There is no ‘I’ in our identity. It would be an obnoxious absurdity to assume that we will get our identity once we achieve ‘Gorkhaland’. It is we who must shape this achievement which is yet to come. We must give identity to Gorkhaland rather than get identity from it. Ours is a culture which is as ‘different’ as any other culture in the world. But it is also at the same time a culture which has for too long been ignored by the government, colonized by the state and sold/corrupted by our leaders. We have been polluted by the bureaucrats of pure reason, effectively functioning in our minds. We in the hills have been victims of limited distribution and hierarchical ranking. In the hills unemployment is at the highest (one of the reason that we are here in the plains), there is no proper higher education, no growth, no attention. What has created such a situation? Is it the Bengal government, our leaders or we?
Our society is based on a discourse of sovereign judgement, of stable subjectivity legislated by a ‘good sense’, of rocklike identity, ‘universal truth’ and arbitrary justice. We have all been accustomed to the spiritual and moral training of the state, which is achieved by deriving everything from truth, by relating everything to justice and by unifying this principle into a single idea – State. End result, a fully legitimate subject of knowledge and society, where each mind a mini-state morally unified in the super mind of the state. In other words state decides justice and justice are based on truth. Thus when the Bengal government kills a Maoist, ex-servicemen gets lathi charged or when the Supreme Court gives a death penalty to a criminal, its justified. No one questions the state. But when a Maoist kills a person it’s not. Funny world we live in where power flows through the tunnels of our perception. “They are all schemers, schemers trying to protect their little world. I want to show the schemers how pathetic their plans to control things really are”.
What does it matter who we are? We speak of identity as a very grave thing that has been denied to us. We have already sold ourselves to the economics of exchange and the reason that is prevalent around us. For instance, we all know that the current ruling party in the hills is a bunch of corrupt hypocrites, and of course we are concerned about it but we are too busy pre occupied with our future and our security that we do not want to get into this mess. At a time such as this, we should step forward and sacrifice ourselves not for any one else but for our identity. Not by any mean or military way but by rooting ourselves to just who we are at the moment, by manipulating the modern mechanism and using it to suit our needs, by re-defining our reason, our sense of good and by re constructing the very meaning of politics. We got to break this myth of mini-state within us, construct our identity and give it to the state. We have to fight for our identity. The only way to do this is by driving our guilt and fear away. Fuck them if they want us to change, fuck them if they want us to behave. We got to be who we are not ashamed if they don’t accept us for who we are then fuck them too. What are we anyways? Nothing.
Back in the hills politics has been reduced to a mere ‘chair game’, collections of cars, and building of buildings. In theory, politics is the biggest platform for social work. In practice, there is nothing social in their work. Strikes (audible not even till Siliguri) are harassment only to the public, probation of alcohol another harassment to the public (while we don’t get a drop of ‘booze’  they walk between Johnny Walker’s and Blenders’ Pride). They have placed the issue of land far greater than the public. In the name of “public purpose” contracts are taken out only to make the contractors and the party leaders rich. What is more saddening is the absence of healthy criticism. The opposition is so busy criticising and egging on his opponent that they have almost entirely ignored the issue of Gorkhaland. If both these parties could channelize their energy towards the main issue then it would have benefited us all. All there is a mere chair game. It is as a time such as this that we should take state philosophy as a kind of ‘ass-fuck’, which is only there to handicap us by training us according to the system. It is we who have to de-construct the current mode of politics and come up with a identity of our own.