Towards a Manipuri Nationalist History
By Bhagat Oinam

Manipur Puwari is an engaged exercise, of an embedded praxis in constructing nationalist narrative. Through an alternate discourse on the history and politics of the North-East of India, it moves away from the standard Indian nationalist engagements to consolidate the nation state’s unification agenda. What has been attempted in the book is to show different trajectories in conceptualising the collective experiences of the people.

To highlight the narrative, two-fold methods are employed: first, to reject ‘merger’ thesis as propounded by the cohorts of the Indian state and the Manipur State Congress, and secondly, to enact an alternate thesis upholding the sovereignty of Manipur as an independent kingdom prior to the merger whereby establishing a politico-legal autonomy of Manipur. Such historical exercise not only denies the existing dominant discourse, but also traces a line completely different from the experiences of Indian nationalism and its proponents.

The methodological engagement employed in the book takes recourse to legal discourse to show invalidity of many of the treaties and arguments preserved as sacrosanct under the international law. The ‘Stand Still Agreement’ and ‘Instrument of Accession’ have been found wanting of basic minimum legal clauses on their structural framework. One such argument is that the treaties while primarily presume the status of equal autonomous political entities to come to an agreement; do not provide provisions where the constituting parties could quit the agreement. This is found to be flawed under jurisprudence.

By capturing the contemporary history of Manipur, the book points out the significance of peoples’ movement. The writer, for instance, sees many of the movements witnessed during the colonial and neo-colonial phases as spearheaded by the youths and women from lower strata of the society. On the other hand, the emerging middle class had been by and large engaged in enhancing and safeguarding its opportunistic interests. By tracing the history of the emergence of Manipur Congress, and subsequent split in the party, and finally few sections of the population representing one of these parties opting to get merged with India, the author opines, was one of the darkest phases in the history of Manipur.