Manipur - The exact origin of Modern Polo-II How Sagol Kangjei Became Polo ?

Manipur – “The jewel of India” (Pundit Nehru at Imphal Polo Ground, 1953); was “a remote and inaccessible state on the north-east frontier of India” (Lt Gen. Geoffrey Evans, Imphal, 1962).

When I was about 7/8 years old, just before World War II came to the sleepy town of Imphal, it was a great treat for the alpha males of Imphal town to amble to Mapal Kangjei Bung (Outer Polo Ground) to watch polo matches on slightly chilly Sunday afternoons, while their hard-working wives are bartering with their wares of vegetables, fish, rice and other household commodities at the Sana Keithel (Golden market), or Khwairamband Bazaar.

The bazaar reeked of evil-smelling baskets of dried and live fish with to and fro chatter of high-pitched voices of women who always had a keen sense of humour with laughter. At dusk, the large bazaar square will be crowded with men and women coming from all over Imphal to buy their merchandise. Soon, scores of tiny lamps would come alight one by one and gleam on the long rows of women seated behind their goods.

The old Johnstone High English School was separated from the bazaar on the western side by a tall Brick wall. I went to this school in class V, just after the war. There was a stone statute – a bust of Johnstone Sahib on a tall pedestal, set on a square plinth, in the middle of the courtyard. Every morning all the pupils would stand in two rows, one behind the other, one for the east block and the other for the west block. Head Master Konjengbam Gouro - a very impressive figure would stand in the middle of the veranda of the central Hall and the teachers on each side. On a command from him - Sa-lute, we will salute Mr Johnstone and then file past him to our respective class rooms.

On the bazaar side of the School wall, sat on the ground, money changers, petition drafters with a small sloping table in front, and odd umbrella repairers and other peddlers. In the west, across a tarmac street that led to Sadar Bazaar (Awang Dukan) and facing the School Wall, there were parallel rows of built-up stalls (allocated), running from north to south on elevated platforms and roofed with semicircular corrugated iron sheets. My mother had a stall in the front row, selling ‘phanek mapalnaiba’ – Manipuri women’s formal dress.

In the inner part of this market, called Nupi Keithel (Women’s Market), bounded in the west by the Nambul River, there were stalls for Meitei Pangal women selling chicken, ducks and eggs.

On the east side of the Johnstone School was the old District Hospital where I worked for a couple of years. It was demolished in 2004 by the State Government.

On the northern side, between the Sadar Bazaar and the Major Khun, there was an open “Hao Keithael” (Hao Bazaar) at week-ends, where local pi-dogs were sold to Nagas who came down from the hill.

On the southern side, between the tarmac road connecting the unpaved Uripok road by Maharani Bridge and the stalls, there were big stone statues of deities called “Keithel Lairembi” (Market Deities).

From the bazaar-end of Maharani Bridge, on the northern road side of the tarmac Road and up to the street that led to Sadar bazaar, there was a row of small wooden stalls where young Meitei men were selling odds and ends such as a few nails, needles, threads etc.

These men had no business skills but a lot of impatience. If a customer asked him to show some other items than the ones he was displaying, he will tolerate the second request. On the third request he would lose his temper and become aggressive. He would retort: “karino, nangna leidi leiroidabada” - meaning, what is this, you have no intention of buying it at all. That attitude invariably put the customer off.

In front of these stalls, rows of women would sit by the roadside in the hot sun, selling whatever they had to earn a few pennies. My cousin Irengbam Bijoy who is enjoying his quiet retirement after his stint as the Legal Advisor to the Manipur Legislative Assembly, and I would often walk to the bazaar, after the end of our Primary school classes, to buy raspberries on a ‘Khongnang mana’ (peepul tree leaf) or an unripe guava for half a penny.

On the other side of the road, a few Meitei women sold “Kwa matabs” (paan in Hindi) in the evenings. Side by side a few Meitei Brahminn women sold a variety of ‘bora’ (pakora in Hindi). On the bank of Nambul River on this side there was a small mosque.

On the south of the tarmac road and opposite the gate of Johnstone School, the paved street of Maxwell Bazaar (Makha Dukan) ran south to Keisampat. Further up east from this the street and along the tarmac road there were three rows of tin-roofed wooden stalls, known as Nupa Keithel (Men’s market) where a variety of clothes and readymade shirts, vests, shoes etc were sold.

Coming to watch the polo matches was a pastime well spent because of the closeness of the Sana Keithel, which has been in existence for over 300 years. There was always an excitement to cruise around, mingling with all sorts of people, among the masses of vegetables, fish, fruits, toys and other eatables. The bazaar was no less a social gathering than a market.

Like many other children I was a regular spectator of the polo matches. I lived within a quarter of a mile of the Polo Ground at Uripok. So was my father, except that he watched the matches sitting in the pavilion among the Sahibs. At one such a game, from the side of the pavilion I saw my father sitting among the Sahibs and Mem-sahibs with some children of my age. That day, I very much resented my father for not taking me there with him.

The open rectangular Polo Ground was at a lower level (2 ft down) on three sides - north, west and south. On the eastern side there was a patch of grassland bounded in the north by the tarmac road coming from the bazaar, which went east through Kangla Fort (Palton) and came out through its south gate, connecting with the road to the Palace.

This grassland was limited in the east by another tarmac road that came from Dimapur in Assam, crossed the road to Kangla Fort and led to Yaiskul and beyond, and later during the War, to the Burmese border at Morey.

Inside the ramparts of Kangla Fort in the British Reserve, on the south side and at the same level with the tarmac road was the Inner Polo Ground (Mannung Kangjei Bung). The 4th Assam Rifles Battalion of 600 Gurkhas with a leavening of Naga, Kuki and Lushai hill men (no Meiteis) was stationed inside Kangla, commanded by a British officer known as Palton Sahib.

By the Mapal Kangjeibung road side, 2/3 Kabui Naga cobblers sat everyday, busy repairing shoes. After the War they were joined by 1/2 Meitei Mayek people displaying the Meitei Alphabet, and 2/3 Sikhs refugees from Burma, selling cotton yarns.

On the opposite side of the road, there were 2/3 immigrant Bihari barbers with a wooden box on which the clients sat for a sicci (1/4 rupee) a haircut. Until then, the Meiteis had to rely for a haircut on someone in the community, who did the job as a favour. The area north of the road was a grassy field with a State mortuary, and ultimately closed in by the PWD offices at Thangmeiband.

In1947 by this roadside, the Rupmahal Theatre, originally from Thangamapan, was built. Soon, Johnstone High school was demolished and moved to the present site. There were two well-known modern tailors, one on each side of Rupmahal.

One year after Manipur was integrated to India the “Inner Line Permit system” was removed in 1950 by the Government of India, something which disgusted Pundit Nehru when he was refused entry to Manipur just before Indian Independence.

Indianisation brought more Bihari barbers, dhobis and cobblers to Imphal, who established themselves first in the town centre and then all over Imphal.

Some of the Marwaris, who fled to Calcutta during the War, were refused re-entry to Imphal.

Meiteis, who amassed a lot of inflated paper money during the War by taking contracts to hurriedly build the all-weather Indo-Burma Road from Dimapur to Morey, began to rebuild the bombed out buildings after buying the plots from the Government.

The three cinema Halls at the Makha Dukan namely, Friend’s Talkies, Victory Cinema Hall MNB Talkies replaced the Marwari-owned Kasturi Cinema at the Maxwell Bazaar and Ramkumari cinema in the Sadar Bazaar.

On the southern side of the Outer Polo ground was the northern boundary of the Residency of the Political Agent representing the Viceroy of India, known as Bara Sahib. He was one grey-haired Cambridge-educated Christopher Gimson at that time.

The residency ground was separated by a very narrow grassy dirt road running all along, connecting the slip road in the west, behind the Pavilion built for the Maharaja and his family members, and the tarmac road in the east by the side of the Treasury building, which was guarded by a lone Gurkha sentry day and night.

The Political Agent’s compound on the north side was fenced off by a tall wire mess and through which we could see a large pond with a central island and filled with lotus plants. There were tennis courts shielded north to south with tall blue screens.

CORRIGENDUM: In paragraph 18, Part 1 of ‘Manipur - The exact Origin of Modern Polo’, the year 1910 was a typing mistake. It should have been 1898-99. “Curzon had ridden from Assam to Burma and stopped in Manipur on the way, 10 years after Grimwood was appointed Political Agent to Manipur in 1889” (Belinda Morse, From Manipur to Hurling Ham, The Story of Early Polo, 2008, p7). Curzon was Viceroy from January 6 1899 to November 18 1905.

The writer is based in the UK

Email: imsingh@onetel.com

Website: www.drimsingh.co.uk

19-Aug-2012 / 02:50 AM / Dr Irengbam Mohendra Singh / 0 Comments