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| National Questions: Trajectories & Predicaments |
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Multiple Nationalisms in Manipur: A Historical Time and its Reproduction
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| REPRODUCTION OF A HISTORICAL TIME: An undeniable character of historical dialectics is its ability to reproduce itself at any given point of time in its dissenting form. Here, the historical time is treated as a companion of modernity that insulates socio-economic, cultural and political identities and which holds that the political end and the national unit should be congruent (2) and founded on the basis of a communion. For instance, the form of ‘National Manipur’ is posed through its historical investments made towards a territoriality and a kingdom (state) and a nation. This investment towards a modern Manipuri Self is spaced as an associate precondition of becoming an independent (nation) State. Manipuri narrative is reasoned against certain historical experiences of denial and coercion that trickled down from the hegemonic spacing created by the Indian nationalist project. It is this experience of denial and coercion that marked a historical time of contestation in Manipur resulting into a reproduction of a dissenting nationalism. A constant reproduction of this historical time added by the contemporary experiences of under-representation, under-development and fragmentations has led to the emergence of conflicting historical identities within. These conflicting relationships are not inherent manifestations but more of a byproduct of the encounter with the dominant. The ‘National’ of Manipur renders the modernist project of a nation-state into what Partha Chatterjee calls a ‘derivative discourse’, whereby the nationalisms in the non-Western (Third World) societies operate more as a copy of European post-Enlightenment discourse(3) searching for its most modern sense of a collective political self. This newly contrived European nation-ness immediately acquired a ‘modular’ character which, later on, successfully transplanted itself to a variety of desperate terrains. Thus, the cumulative historical congregation towards a ‘nation’ proved an invention impossible to patent(4) which resulted in the ‘nationalist standardization’ of the ‘idea of India’. Further, this nationalism of the ‘centre and the right’ indispensably forms an objective part of the contentious project of ‘creating national ceremonies, language of official communication and symbols,’(5) etc. The monologue of the post-colonial Indian State discourse of elevating the differences of identities to a common subjecthood within a hegemonic space is a source of dissent, resistance and protest from the margins.(6) Such a monologue resulted in the production of dominant national suspicion which is best exemplified by the letter written by Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, India’s first Home Minister, to Jawaharlal Nehru in 1950 during the incorporation of northeast region, which reads as: Our northern or northeastern approaches consist of Nepal, Bhutan, Sikkim, Darjeeling and Tribal areas of Assam. From the point of view of communication they are weak spots…The contact of these areas with us is by no means close and intimate. The people inhabiting these portions have no established loyalty or devotion to India. Even Darjeeling and Kalimpong areas are not free from pro mongoloid prejudices.(7) Thus, the production of India in the Northeast amplifies a historical absence of India in the region whose ‘official nationalism’ inherits its form and content from the fallen regime (British rule) like any other colonial power whose presence was marked by a continuous absence of legitimacy. |
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| ABSENCE, DENIAL & NATIONHOOD: Manipur represents a theatre of a ‘national’ dialectics that was played out immediately along with the departure of the British colonialism in the form of combination of binary relations. For example, the resistance of the Prince(s) to the idea of joining Indian dominion coexisting with the demand for a responsible government. Another binary relation is the emergence of a political class favouring the idea of a United India challenged by a contesting mobilization for independence or autonomy or restoration of pre-British India status. These companion leanings were detrimental to the various historical complexities. For instance, the desires of Princely states to remain as independent/ autonomous died in its most embryonic form for three reasons; one, the Indian response disallowed any prolongation of Princely State resistance and representation. To cite an example, responding to a letter written by the Maharaja of Manipur on 14th May 1947 asking for separate representation for Manipur in the Constituent Assembly on the basis of ‘peculiar geographical and topographical’ considerations,(8) Jawaharlal Nehru replied: I think your suggestion…has some force…, unfortunately we have to function within the limits of certain rules laid down for us. These rules are based chiefly on population….the Negotiating Committee had not done so….’ (to include Manipur in the Constituent Assembly).(9) This response of Jawaharlal Nehru signified the limited choices and representation that the Indian state had allowed to its supposedly constitutive parts at the very outset of its national imagining. In contrast, the Maharaja of Manipur was ceding ground to the democratic stirrings of an increasingly assertive political class by convening an Interim Council consisting of four officials, one representative of the Maharaja and five non-official representatives of the hills and the valley. The council drafted the Manipur State Constitution Act of 1947.(10) In 1948, Manipur became an independent Constitutional Monarchy with a legislative Assembly consisting of 53 members, including 18 from the hills. The question of Manipur’s integration with India was one main issue in this election. The Manipur State Congress Unit formed in 1946 as an extension of the Indian National Congress (INC) which had advocated integration could manage to win only thirteen out of fifty-three seats in the 1948 election.(11) The following months marked much sharper positions on the integration as well as a larger political consolidation (hill-valley) of Manipur. To cite a case, on 18th September 1948, a large public meeting was held in which all the leaders of both hills and plain strongly opposed the proposal of State congress party.(12) The representatives of Tangkhul Long, Kuki National Assembly, Kabui Association, Khul Union, Mizo Union and Praja Sabha Samiti, Manipur Krishak Sabha, Meitei Marup and Nongpok Apunba Marup had a joint meeting at MDU hall, Imphal, in November 1947 and formed a United Front of Manipur under the leadership of H. Irabot Singh. The United Front fought for a responsible government and non-merger of Manipur.(13) This assertive Manipuri current surfaced in opposition to significant moments that evolved in the immediate aftermath of 1947, when Manipur became the first State to hold an independent election based on adult franchise (1948).(14) This celebration of democracy proved to be short-lived. For, in 1949, V.P. Menon, a senior representative of the Government of India, invited the King of Manipur to a meeting in Shillong on the pretext of discussing the deteriorating law and order situation in Manipur. Consequently, the King was allegedly made to sign the Merger Agreement ‘under duress’(15) on 21st September 1949 at Shillong. The letters written by the Maharaja while he was under house arrest in Shillong reflects what actually happened in the making of India. One of these letters dated 18th September 1949 reads, ‘now that the sovereignty of the State has been vested in the people, it would be in the fitness of things to hear the people’s voice and learn their sentiments so that the line of action may not in any case be unconstitutional’.(16) The Maharaja further wrote ‘...I consider that I have a guardian in the person of your Excellency who guides and helps me in my endeavour towards ameliorating the welfare of my people (Manipur). The only thing is that this being a great change it should be done constitutionally and democratically with an eye to the will of the people whose co-operation I confidently hope we will secure.’(17) It was in response to this discomfort of the Raja that the Government of India asked the then Governor of Assam, Sri Prakasa, ‘whether he (the Governor) did not have a Brigadier in Shillong.’(18) The non-consented consensus authored in Shillong marked the entry point of independent India into Manipur; but the dubious processes employed left a question mark on the legitimacy of the very presence. Thus the Indian nationalists’ authoring of its dominant self in Manipur was pursued as if invented artifacts are an acceptable process of the making of a ‘Nation’. In the words of Sanjib Baruah, the process of Indian ‘integration’ began with an ‘authoritarian accent’(19) thereby producing a ‘historical time’. |
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| EXPANSIONISM AND ALTERATIONS: Soon after it suffered the negation of its constitutional status in 1949, Manipur yet again became a victim to the emerging expansionist race among many Asiatic powers. For example, India and Burma haggled over Kabaw valley, India and East Pakistan over Chittagong Hill Tracts, and India and China over the North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA), present day Arunachal Pradesh. The competing expansionism produced wider political implications for Manipur and its territoriality. As a result, Kabaw Valley was handed over to Burma. Further humiliation was in store for Manipur. On January 26, 1950, with the enactment of the Constitution of India, Manipur was downgraded to a Part ‘C’ state. Subsequently, the Part ‘C’ States (Laws) Act was replaced by the Union Territories Act in 1956 and Manipur became a Union Territory much against the popular wish. The strongest opposition came from the movement led by a communist leader, Hijam Irabot, post-1949. Along with Hijam Irabot’s nationalist peasant mobilizations, the demand for a responsible government and full statehood came from many fronts. Irabot had ‘launched a revolutionary movement in the north-eastern part of Manipur in the aim of establishing an ‘Independent Peasant Republic’ in 1948.(10) This ideological mooring of communism in Manipur as a response to the question of ‘merger’ widely opened the debates on the political status of Manipur which, in turn, paved the way for stronger nationalist formation and armed struggle, subsequently. Nevertheless, the history of armed resistance in Manipur dates back to the initial years of the Indian independence in 194821, but its foundations were laid in the early 1930’s with the formation of Nikhil Manipuri Mahasabha under the leadership of Hijam Irabot who brought a new socio-political awakening in Manipur. It was under this political platform that an identarian search for a consolidated Manipuri Self began with the 1936 session of the Nikhil Manipuri Mahasabha that resolved to trace the Meetei diaspora since invasions of Burmese kings in 19th Century. |
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| EXPANSIONISM AND ALTERATIONS: Soon after it suffered the negation of its constitutional status in 1949, Manipur yet again became a victim to the emerging expansionist race among many Asiatic powers. For example, India and Burma haggled over Kabaw valley, India and East Pakistan over Chittagong Hill Tracts, and India and China over the North-East Frontier Agency (NEFA), present day Arunachal Pradesh. The competing expansionism produced wider political implications for Manipur and its territoriality. As a result, Kabaw Valley was handed over to Burma. Further humiliation was in store for Manipur. On January 26, 1950, with the enactment of the Constitution of India, Manipur was downgraded to a Part ‘C’ state. Subsequently, the Part ‘C’ States (Laws) Act was replaced by the Union Territories Act in 1956 and Manipur became a Union Territory much against the popular wish. The strongest opposition came from the movement led by a communist leader, Hijam Irabot, post-1949. Along with Hijam Irabot’s nationalist peasant mobilizations, the demand for a responsible government and full statehood came from many fronts. Irabot had ‘launched a revolutionary movement in the north-eastern part of Manipur in the aim of establishing an ‘Independent Peasant Republic’ in 1948.20 This ideological mooring of communism in Manipur as a response to the question of ‘merger’ widely opened the debates on the political status of Manipur which, in turn, paved the way for stronger nationalist formation and armed struggle, subsequently. Nevertheless, the history of armed resistance in Manipur dates back to the initial years of the Indian independence in 194821, but its foundations were laid in the early 1930’s with the formation of Nikhil Manipuri Mahasabha under the leadership of Hijam Irabot who brought a new socio-political awakening in Manipur. It was under this political platform that an identarian search for a consolidated Manipuri Self began with the 1936 session of the Nikhil Manipuri Mahasabha that resolved to trace the Meetei diaspora since invasions of Burmese kings in 19th Century. |
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| THE CONTINUITY: The communist movement in Manipur was a strategic companion of a national liberation project in South-Asia (also in Myanmar) that was shaped during the anti-colonial struggle of the 20th century. Hijam Irabot’s armed resistance bore intense correspondence to insurgency movements in Myanmar for secession like that of the Shan, Karen, Kachin, etc. In the footprints of this communist legacy, parties like All Manipur National Union led by Youngmasho Shaiza and Sogolsem Indramani agitated the issue of ‘merger’ in the late 1950s and early 1960s, instantly reposing historical significance. A speedy renewal of a new phase of armed resistance began in Manipur with the objective of ‘liberating’ Manipur from India with the advent of the United Liberation Front of Manipur (UNLF) in November, 1964.22 The UNLF in the first phase of its mobilization manifested itself in unarmed mass campaign for ‘liberation’. On one hand, there were other activists like Oinam Sudhir Kumar and Nameirakpam Bisheshwor who believed in the immediate launch of an armed mobilization.23 This led to irreconciliable differences within the organization and shift in the ‘liberation’ movement in Manipur. As a result, the Sudhir Kumar faction formed the Consolidation Committee of Manipur (CONSOCOM)24 in 1968 which subsequently led to the formation of Revolutionary Government of Manipur (RGM). On the other hand, the Pan Manipur Youth League joined the Manipuri nationalistic political mobilizations on 28th December 1968 and started its campaign through its journals called Lamyanba and Resistance. The main focus of the Pan Manipur was to generate mass consciousness and awakening on corruption, territorial integrity and freedom of Manipur.25 The foregoing details are an attempt to map out the ideological moorings and the objective conditions of armed trajectories as dissenting nationalisms and to locate the competitive dynamics within the dissenting nationalisms. I propose to situate the shift in the nature of dissenting nationalisms whereby the struggling communities become non-intersecting bodies of polity. |
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| STATEHOOD, REBOUNDS & TRAJECTORIES WITHIN: Two different sub-strands of conxciousness entered into the politics of the 1960’s with the historic Chaklam Khongchat (Hunger Marchers’ Day)26 in 1965, on one hand, and the continuing demand for statehood, on the other hand. In 1972 Manipur attained statehood which was followed by the declaration of amnesty for the armed rebels. The delayed statehood to Manipur gave rise to a popular perception that it was violence and ‘secessionist’ politics that brought statehood to Manipur. The amnesty led to the surrendering of many insurgents which was perceived by the State as a crucial way to end the armed dissent. Ironically, statehood to Manipur failed to wean away dissenting nationalist formations in Manipur from the armed path. Throughout 1970s, armed organizations mushroomed with objectives to restore ‘pre-merger’ independent status of Manipur. The post-statehood period saw an intensified phase of armed dissent and splits within. Nameirakpam Bisheswor, who founded the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in 1976 with nineteen other associates, brought a new ideological leavening to the armed dissent. The main ideology, in its wider connotations, stressed on democratic centralism and liberating India, especially the working classes, who are allies in the final analysis.(27) The communist ideological leanings of PLA focused on the exploitation of Manipur and the Northeast as a ‘captive market’ of mainland India and framed the movement as antithetical to the capitalist mode of production. The communist ideological mooring of PLA can be seen in the context of the traditions left by revolutionary Hijam Irabot. The Manipuri nationalists’ formation grew more vocal along with the formation of new revolutionary organizations. The People’s Revolutionary Party of Kangleipak (PREPAK) was formed on 9th October 1977 and the erstwhile Meitei State Committee (formed in 1967) was transformed into the Kangleipak Communist Party (KCP) on August 20, 1979, raising similar trajectories of political mobilization for independence.28 Much later, another organization called Kanglei Yayol Kanba Lup (KYKL) was formed in mid-1994. This mushrooming mobilization, though confined to the valley area, is premised on the image of organic ‘wholeness’. |
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| TRAJECTORIES BECOMING COMPETING IDENTITIES: Over the past decades, the historicity of the dissenting Manipuri Self has found strange bedfellows in opposing trajectories and competing identities. The strong emergence of ‘competing identities’29 within the very space of Manipuri nationalists worldview is an emerging contradiction that requires a constant engagement for the nationalists. This emergence of identities in Manipur seeks to supplant the non-exclusive spaces inherent in a collective political imagination. The case for this argument is best seen in the inter-community positioning which has veered towards erecting ‘hardened boundaries’ reinforced by playing upon suspicion and perceived grudges. Both the erection of these ‘hardened boundaries’ and the mushrooming of armed formations and fragmentation of social movements in Manipur are a recent phenomena which is inimical towards the fusion of a Manipuri Self. The causal aspects of increasing fragmentation on the identarian trajectories are founded on varying grounds. In the context of Manipur, some have emerged due to inter-ethnic conflicts as protective community forces demanding ‘safer’ homelands. Some validate itself on a transcendent projection of enmity against a community, some on a hegemonic pursuit of nationhood over the others on grounds of culture and historicity, and both display an arrogant immunity to the ‘wholesome’ nationalist project. The first equation has been seen in the case of Zomi Revolutionary Organization (ZRO) that emerged in the wake of escalating ethnic violence between the Kukis and Paites in the Churachandpur district of Manipur. The second equation is a recent tendency among the struggling peoples once consolidated under the roof of a common historical experience. Today, much transcendence has occurred resulting in the shift of the very language of authoring the dissenting ‘Nationals’. The case of National Socialist Council of Nagaland-Issac-Muivah (NSCN-IM) and its project of ‘Greater Nagaland’ that crosses the territoriality of many neighbouring states exemplify this shift because of the consequent transcendence in the projection of a community and its relationships. This shift has become a critical equation in Manipur as it appears to have constructed closed meanings of historicity and thereby failing to identify a common historical antagonist. The equations for imagining a self is played out often in absurd pantomime as the communities/identities seek to arrogate a ‘national self’, producing the wildest dreams of a ‘nation’ on exclusive terms. The Northeast has seen enough of these exclusivities sliding into blind alleys of ‘quit notices’, ethnic cleansing, contradictions over state holidays and symbols, and pitting states against each other over issues belonging to the state lists. This complex imagining of a ‘national self’ on exclusive terms in Manipur is the site of a failed collectivized relationship among historical communities of our times. In the light of such a complex web, it is a challenge on the part of Manipuri dissenting self whether it is potentially capable of locating itself beyond such perennial infection of exclusivity, which is the very pre-condition for a common ideological mooring. A further explication of the above proposition can be best seen in the context of present-day Manipuri dissenting nationalists’ search for its selfhood where each ethnic community invests more of its political capital on constructing hard boundaries that disowns the very nationalist worldview of the Manipuri Self. Historically, the armed nationalists’ formation in the Northeast region began along a common trajectory. But, in the late 80s, sharp fissures were noticed with the growing factionalism and regrouping of armed organizations which, at the Northeast level, did not have representation of all the groups. For instance, the regrouping of armed dissents like Indo-Burma Revolutionary Front (IBRF) in May 1990 consisting of UNLF, ULFA and NSCN was followed by a parallel ‘Himalayan’ front floated by NSCN (I-M) post its split. |
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| THE FUTURE AHEAD!: |
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NOTES & REFERENCES: 4. B. Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, (London: Verso), 1991, p. 67. 5. Yael Tamir, ‘Minority Culture and the Nation-State,’ Gurpreet Mahajan (ed.), Democracy, Difference and Social Justice, (New Delhi: OUP), 1998, p. 102. 6. Nirmal Kumar Swain, ‘The Post-colonial Indian State’ M.M. Agrawal (ed), Ethnicity, Culture and Nationalism in North-East India, (New Delhi: Indus), 1996, p. 83. 7. T.B Subba, ‘Ethnicity, Culture and Nationalism in North-East: A Conspectus,’ M. M. Agrawal (ed), op. cit., p. 97. 8. Jawaharlal Nehru, Selected Works, Second Series, Volume Two, (New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund), p. 256. 9. Ibid. 10. V.I.K. Sarin, India’s North East in Flames , (New Delhi: Vikas), 1998, p. 112. 11. Singh, N. Joykumar, ‘The Merger of Manipur into India and the Manipur State Congress’, Annexation of Manipur: 1949, (Imphal: People’s Democratic Movement), 1995, p. 108. 12. Ibid. 13. Lal Dena, Annexation of Manipur 1949, (Imphal: PDM), 1995, p. 113. 14. N.S. Narahari, Security Threats to North East India: The Socio-ethnic tensions, (New Delhi: Manas), 2002, p. 153. 15. Sajal Nag, Contesting Marginality; Ethnicity, Insurgency and Subnationalism in North-East India , (New Delhi: Manohar), 2002, p. 204. 16. Resistance , 25 September 1975, Imphal 17. Sajal Nag, op.cit., p. 110. 18. Nari Rustomji, The Enchanted Frontiers, (Oxford University Press), 1973, p. 109. 19. Sanjib Baruah, ‘General as the Parallel Political System’,HIMAL, 14/6, June 2001, p. 12. 20. Th. Boro, ‘Manipurda Communist Party Amasungg Kutlai Paiba Lalhou’ in Neengshing Chephong (85th Anniversary of Irabot Commemorative Publications), (in Manipuri), (Imphal: Irabot Bhawan), 1981, p. 15. Cited in Kshetri Rajendra Singh, Social Movements in Manipur: A study of two Movements among the Meitheis, (Ph.D Thesis unpublished), p. 41. 21. Naorem Sanajaoba, ‘The Genesis of Insurgency’, Sanajoaba, Naorem (ed), Manipur: Past and Present , Vol. I, (New Delhi: Mittal Publications), 1988, p. 246. 22. Paonam Labango Mangang, Kangleipakta Revolution, (in Manipuri), 1997, (Imphal), p. 53. 23. Ibid., p. 53. 24. Phanjaobam Tarapot, Insurgency Movement in the North Eastern India, (New Delhi: Vikas Publsihing House), 1996, p. 59. 25. R. Constantine, Manipur: Maid of Mountains, (New Delhi: Mittal Publications), 1981, pp. 89–90. 26. In 1965 students were in arms against the government in Manipur. There was a repeat of the 1939–40 artificial shortages of food grains in Manipur. Thus, students led a demonstration in Manipur demanding ‘we are starving, give us rice’. In turn four students were killed on 27. August 1965 in police firing. The All Manipur Students’ Union (AMSU) has remembered these incidents as ‘Chaklam Khongchat’ (Hunger Marcher’s Day) every year on the above date. 28. R. Gopalakrishnan, Insurgent North Eastern Region of India, (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House), 1995, p. 82. 29. A Report on Special Convention of Kangleipak Communist Party, 13th August 1994. |
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