Limhachan Kikon
Duncan Basti, Dimapur
“For now we see through a glass, darkly...” — First Epistle to the Corinthians 13:12
Every age has its master narrative.
There was a time when history was explained almost entirely through race. Another generation interpreted society through class. Others saw religion, empire, or economics as the principal force shaping human affairs. Each framework illuminated an important truth. Each also cast a shadow. For every framework reveals something, it also conceals something.
Our own age increasingly explains human relationships through the language of gender and power. This has undoubtedly exposed injustices that demanded recognition. Yet every explanatory framework carries within it a subtle danger: success can become supremacy. What begins as a valuable lens may gradually become the only lens through which reality is permitted to be seen.
This is where inquiry begins to contract.
When every disagreement is interpreted through predetermined categories, conclusions often precede evidence. The question quietly shifts from “What explains this?” to “How does this fit what we already know?” The search for truth gives way to the confirmation of a narrative.
This is framework monopoly.
A framework monopoly is not false because it contains error. It is dangerous because it contains truth elevated beyond its proper domain. Every explanatory framework has a domain of competence beyond which it begins to manufacture certainty rather than discover truth. What was once a method of inquiry becomes an instrument of intellectual exclusion.
From here emerges epistemic monopoly. Knowledge itself becomes curated. Some questions are welcomed because they reinforce the prevailing explanation; others become unwelcome because they introduce inconvenient variables that challenge the narrative.
Complexity is not defeated by evidence. It is displaced by certainty. Certainty, when insulated from scrutiny, can itself become a barrier to truth.
The abuse of power illustrates this danger with remarkable clarity. To explain abuse primarily through gender is to confuse one important expression of power with power itself. Gender is one modality of power. It is not its entirety.
Power is multidimensional. It may arise from physical strength, economic dependence, institutional authority, political office, celebrity, wealth, education, age, parenthood, emotional manipulation, moral reputation, or privileged access to information. Wherever one person acquires the capacity to dominate another without accountability, the possibility of abuse emerges.
Consider the child growing up under a narcissistic parent. The psychological injuries sustained are no less profound because the parent is the mother rather than the father. Likewise, an abusive father, an exploitative employer, a predatory teacher, boarding schools, a manipulative religious leader, Catholic institutions, a corrupt politician, or a coercive partner all reveal the same underlying architecture. The mechanism is not masculinity or femininity. It is power exercised without accountability.
Power also operates through reputation. In “The Missionary Position”, Christopher Hitchens argued that moral authority itself can become a form of power, shielding institutions and public figures from scrutiny. Reflecting on the aftermath of the Bill Clinton–Monica Lewinsky scandal, Hitchens interpreted Mother Teresa's public support for Clinton as illustrating how moral prestige and political influence could intersect, with the optics of virtue serving, in his view, as a form of reputational repair. Whether one agrees with his interpretation is secondary. His larger methodological point remains compelling: no individual, institution, or ideology should enjoy immunity from critical inquiry simply because it commands moral esteem.
The criminal enterprise of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell demonstrates the same principle in another form. Their crimes depended not upon gender alone but upon wealth, access, influence, prestige, secrecy, and networks of protection. Abuse flourished because multiple forms of power converged to shield it. Any explanation confined to gender alone leaves much of that ecosystem unexplained.
Economic realities reveal similar complexity. Families often seek domestic help because modern life demands assistance. Those who accept such work frequently do so from economic necessity but also in pursuit of education, opportunity, and upward mobility. Some arrangements become exploitative and deserve the full force of the law. Others create genuine opportunities for advancement.
Good public policy should distinguish between the two through evidence, effective safeguards, and accountability rather than ideological presumption. The DGP's circular encouraging the registration of domestic help is a welcome step towards greater accountability.
A mature society therefore resists both denial and reductionism. It neither dismisses genuine injustice nor imprisons itself within a single explanatory framework. It understands that power has many faces and that accountability must follow power wherever it appears.
Perhaps this is the enduring wisdom behind the Apostle Paul's words: “For now we see through a glass, darkly.” Every observer sees only in part. Every framework reveals something while concealing something else. Intellectual maturity begins when we acknowledge those limits and allow competing explanations to refine, challenge, and correct one another.
The question before us is not whether gender matters. It plainly does. Nor is it whether abuses of power exist. They plainly do. The deeper question is whether any single framework should possess a monopoly over explanation.
Every framework reveals something. Every framework conceals something. Wisdom lies not in defending one lens against all others, but in recognising that we still see “through a glass, darkly.”
