Fear Biter
Chief Minister Pawan Kumar Chamling prompts Panchayats to oppress homosexuals.
The Chief Minister is ill at ease. Too numerous are the obvious blunders of his regime as well as those of his footmen, too frequent the instances of his administration's wrongdoings being not only suspected but proven. Determined to remain at the helm, he's getting hyperactive, touring the state as a hawker of promises, distributing subsidies fairly due posed as personal favours. Needless to say that, in turn, personal gratitude is expected as if such patronage were funded from his private assets.
Since they were applied for almost 20 years, these well-proven tactics are a bit worn out. The Chief Minister rightly fears that they won't suffice, this time. More smoke-balls are required to obscure the electorate's view on the facts. That all the other - potentially oppositional - parties are his foes and, according to his logic, those of Sikkim as a whole, is a Mantra repeated for decades and internalized by many Sikkimese, meanwhile. So, he sets out to create yet another bogeyman image. Lately, he declares gays and lesbians enemies of the Sikkimese society not to be tolerated. Naming our pink neighbours, friends and family members in the same breath with drug peddlers and potentially criminal addicts, he decrees hunting homosexuals as a matter of reason of state and as a question of the society's survival. After all, moral policing always provides an opportunity to demonstrate one's own pretended morality.
Sure, he can't rant against the bureaucracy, against corruption, against lawlessness and loss of civil liberties, against a horrifying sucide rate or conditions permitting an accident victim to be sent back and forth until fading away. He can't, as touching such burning issues were a backfire at himself. There's virtually no way out, except for diversionary tactics.
Seemingly, the Chief Minister considers gays and lesbians an ideal target for such manoeuvres, because he does not expect them to have a lobby. Looks like he was wrong in this point too. The concern within the reading population is state-wide and some newsmen are so uncomfortable with this latest lapse that they prefer to keep quiet about it.
History taught us that a government attempting to infringe privacy of the people - including assessment of sexual preferences - is on the verge of becoming authoritarian or even totalitarian. This is communalism in the disguise of morality. I don't know wether the voting public will being taken in by such clumsy games. In the past, we were.
True morality ought to be driven by compassion. I'm not the one to question the wisdom of the Dalai Lama. But ever since the consecration of Tathagata Tsal, I wonder what His Holiness meant with his comparison.
Was Ashoka really such a weird chap?
Chopel Serkhangpa, 25th April 2013