Breaking down the cosmopolitan

Imlisanen Jamir

 

The Durga Puja and Dussehra festivities underway in Dimapur couldn’t paint a more ironic picture of the peculiar situation which this ramshackle border town exists in, and the struggle currently underway to redefine the town’s essence.  


As the lights and colours act as a reflection of the cosmopolitan nature this town has always had, creeping fast from all around are waves of myopic views on identity and coexistence. 


Those of us who are leading increasingly securitised lives know that we are being seen, documented and possibly controlled by technologies and powers over which we have little control. 


The ecology of fear has been enhanced by the multiplication of unnamed factors. If we earlier feared the occasional pickpocket and harasser of women, we are now enjoined, by disembodied and jarring interruptions to our shopping pleasures, fond farewells at railway stations, and in public places, to be wary of strangers, unidentified objects and suspicious movements. 


It is patriotic now to be vigilantly suspicious and even more so to report suspicious activity, not just of strangers but of neighbours and tenants alike.


These changes are sweeping over urban life, to which Dimapur is not immune.

                
All this does not bode well for even the loosest definitions of cosmopolitanism. A city by definition is a space, as innumerable historians and sociologists have already told us, which ideally privileges and nurtures the unexpected encounter, and calls on its citizens to be able to respond humanely even to those who are not linked to us in familial, ethnic, nationalist or tribe affiliations.

 
And festivities such as the ones currently underway, to be closely followed by more revelries celebrating the traditions of other communities, are the embodiments of the cosmopolitan.  Developing respect for each such occasion and joining in, with respect of course, on these carousing jaunts form the social fabric of a place like Dimapur. 


These are qualities to be prized as cosmopolitanism is threatened by combats over indigeneity, language, nationalism, communal antagonism and fierce battles over identity. 


We need not place on ourselves the unbearable burden of loving each other in order to nurture true cosmopolitanism. But neither can we rely on the ineffable essence of suspicion, fear and envy as our principal public feelings.

 

Comments can be sent to imlisanenjamir@gmail.com