Govt would respond to any action against non-local Indian citizens : Ibobi State Govt sees eye to eye with JCLIPS on ILPS
IMPHAL, May 21: Stating that there is no difference of opinion between the State Government and the Joint Committee on ILPS (JCILPS) on enforcement of Inner Line Permit System in Manipur, Chief Minister O Ibobi has cautioned that the Government would rea.....
State lad tops Nagaland Class X Board exams
IMPHAL, May 21: Helaluddin Shah s/o Md Islauddin and Sanarembi of Borayangbi under Kumbi AC has topped the HSLCE 2013 conducted by the Nagaland Board of School Education, results of which was declared in the intervening night of May 20 and 21. Helaluddin.....
More eviction
IMPHAL, May 21 :The State Government has decided to evict encroachers for expansion of roads in Imphal and greater Imphal areas. The State Government has initiated necessary procedures to evict encroachers as it feels that many roads in Imphal and grea.....
KSO suspends strike, blockade
IMPHAL, May 21 : Respon-ding to the assurance of Chief Minister O Ibobi to carry forward the backlog of 474 ST posts in the ensuing recruitment of 2000 numbers of Manipur Police Constables, and also to take immediate action regarding the backlog of 28 dif.....
CM convenes meet
IMPHAL, May 21 :Chief Minister O Ibobi today convened a meeting of the delegates who would be visiting Myanmar along with him and discussed about their forthcoming foreign trip. The delegation which would be led by the Chief Minister would take part in.....
Rabies fear stalks Phumlou village
IMPHAL, May 21: Besides report about three persons succumbing to suspected cases of rabies after the victims were reportedly bitten by dogs, locals of Phumlou village under Imphal West district are gripped with fear. According to a reliable source, atl.....
Shirui Lily Fest Showcases Rich Culture Of Tangkhul Community Cultural extravaganza marks week long fest
UKHRUL, May 21: Cultural items, display of Tangkhul traditional cuisines and attires, flower show, painting competition and entertainment programmes marked the concluding day of the district level Shirui Lily Week-2013 today at Shirui village under Ukhrul.....
Pledge taken to protect human lives, values
IMPHAL, May 21: Like in other parts of the country, pledges were taken to protect human lives and values as Manipur too joined in the observance of 22nd national anti-terrorism day today. The observance is held to commemorate the death anniversary of f.....
NGOs say no to oil exploration
IMPHAL, May 21: Twenty-four NGOs including student organizations and human rights defenders today submitted a representation to Chief Minister O Ibobi Singh urging him to take steps to halt the ongoing oil exploration process and extraction works in the h.....
CSOs raid Hotel Centre Point
IMPHAL, May 21: Volunteers of different civil society organisations today raided Hotel Centre Point at MG Avenue and pulled up its manager. Volunteers of 16 civil society organisations including CLK, IPSA, KEL, ACOAM Lup, PANDM etc raided the hotel and.....
PM corrects age to 80 in RS poll papers
Guwahati, May 21: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the Congress Rajya Sabha candidate from Assam, has filed a fresh affidavit correcting his age to 80 prior to scrutiny of the nominations today. The Prime Minister submitted the fresh affidavit two days a.....
Oklahoma tornado Many children among 91 feared killed
MOORE, OKLAHOMA, May 20: At least 91 people, including 20 children, were feared killed when a 2 mile wide tornado tore through an Oklahoma City suburb, trapping victims beneath the rubble as one elementary school took a direct hit and another was destroye.....
MKS condoles
IMPHAL, May 21 :The Maram Students’ Union (MKS) has condoled the untimely demise of its former Education Secretary, R Graceson Rangnamei, a second semester student of MA at MU. A statement issued by the MKS said the union would cherish his associatio.....
‘Go Green Fortnight’
IMPHAL, May 21 :Aimed at promoting greenery, atleast in and around their deployment areas, and furthering its undeterred efforts of preserving the bounty of the nature, the Assam Rifles under a specific roadmap worked out by the IGAR (S) Maj Gen UK Gurung.....
ZU condemns
IMPHAL, May 21 : Condemning the abduction and killing of Poushingdai Gonmei, a cadre of NSCN-IM by the ZUF on May 18, the Zeliangrong Union, Bishnupur, Sadar Area Zone has appealed to all concerned armed groups operating in Zeliangrong areas not to resort.....
Painting competition
IMPHAL, May 20: A State level cooperative painting competition would be held on May 29 by the Department of Cooperation, Govt of Manipur at the premises of Registrar of Manipur Cooperative Societies, Lamphelpat on the theme Cooperative as a means of livel.....
BSNL network
IMPHAL, May 20: Telephone exchanges including GSM mobile, WLL and Broadband connections of BSNL would be disrupted at BSNL installations at Hiyangthang, Wangoi and Mayang Imphal Exchanges, due to sudden breakdown of OFC route near Pishumthong Ningom Leika.....
KRF denies
IMPHAL, May 21: The Kuki Revolutionary Front (KRF) has denied having any knowledge on the alleged abduction of Nepali youths from Gopibung, Mahavir and Shantolabari areas under Kangpokpi PS. Terming the allegation as baseless and false, a statement iss.....
Dispute resolved
IMPHAL, May 21: The dispute between Rangshong, Chief of Awang Longa Koireng and Rengsutsong Koireng was settled under the laws of Satang Area Chiefs' Association at the residence of H Gelmol village chief on May 20. A statement issued by the SACA said .....
New students' body floated
IMPHAL, May 21: Along with announcing formation of a new students' organisation christened Reformist Students' Front (RSF), its general secretary BCY Atiqur said that RSF was formed to take up issues related to rights of the student community. Affirmin.....
Diaspora Speak
By : Dr Irengbam Mohendra Singh
How to bargain from a position of power
Close to my funny bone, but unattached while mining dark seams of scatological humour and brutal deadpan, I declare myself a non-political and non-religious person. I am secular, and believe in a Manipur which is undivided where all the ethnic peoples live in harmony sharing everything equally (not wives of course).
After the emotional roller-coaster of the ongoing Naga peace talks for the past couple of weeks and now waiting with nail-biting apprehension, my bonhomie is drawn to this topic of negotiations that underlies a demand for involvement of four districts of Manipur.
While the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is informally reassuring Manipuris that the four districts of Manipur will not be seceded to Nagaland, the Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde is toying with the idea of including the four districts in the bargain basement with the quip - “what’s the harm in giving Alternative Arrangements to the Nagas”? He is a shallow thinker, who does not fully realise the impact of his statement. He just looks at the first order effect, not at the whole chain of impacts.
Shinde should first, be answering the question the Manipuris have long been asking – ‘what’s the harm in giving Manipur an Alternative Arrangement with our own Pakhangba flag flying?
It’s the uncertainty that obliges Manipur to equip with the tools needed for a consistent action in keeping its geographical integrity. We’ve to learn to be comfortable being uncomfortable.
It has thus become mandatory for Manipur to plan a course of action that will produce the best results. A possible plan open to us is to demand for the restoration of the age-old northern district of Manipur ie the district of Kohima, now in Nagaland, so that we can make tomorrow better than today by living in peaceful coexistence.
The time has come for Manipur to bargain from a position of strength by demanding the return of the district of Kohima while the GoI and Naga peace talks are going on. This is the need of our time.
We are not reaching out for something new, but for the homecoming of our ancestral land where emotion shouldn’t be a dirty word. There’s a risk that some people will be annoyed, but we’re all gamers at heart. “Thou shall love thy neighbour as thyself” should be the guiding motto for ‘Nagaland for Christ”.
This urgent need of our time may not be as big as compared to the demand for the restoration of the Kabaw Valley and the sovereignty of Manipur, but it is an emerging collective sense of grand purpose and also a vision belonging to our collective future. The speculative and the unpredictable nature of the GoI-Naga negotiations have forced us forward reaching back from our past for our survival and well being.
As Gen Eisenhower said, “The older I get, the more wisdom I find in the ancient rule of taking first things first”. Manipur as a whole should be concentrating on recovering the lost northern district of Manipur – Kohima (Thiboma in Meiteilon).
Kohima - a corruption of ‘Kew-hi ma’ meaning ‘the men of Kewhi’, a plant found growing on the hillside, has been a part of Manipur in ancient times.
History is witness to Chandrakriti Maharaja who was forced to give away Kohima to the British East India Company as Bodhchandra Maharaja was in handing over Manipur to the Indian Dominion.
It was on July 30 1847 that Chandrakriti left Imphal with an entourage of 5,000 people (3,000 Meitei and 1,000 Khongsai soldiers plus other attendants) walking in stages on Tongjei Maril (Old Cachar Road) for the “Jila Durbar” (District parley) with Lord Northbrook, the British Governor General, at Silchar.
The durbar was held in the following month of August 1847 in the Governor General’s boat moored in the Barrack River by the Malugram village, 250 km from the British town of Silchar in the Cachar district of Assam. Chandrakriti had one son as his personal guard while the whole retinue was left on the river bank.
Chandrakriti was quite vulnerable inside a British boat in the middle of the huge river. The nerve-racking negotiations ended with a few words of ‘generosity’ from the Maharaja and relinquishing the district of Kohima to the British. He did the right thing. Kohima was not worth his life. He came back home happy with one way expense being paid by the British.
That Kohima was the northern part of Manipur was recorded by a few British colonialists.
According to James Johnstone, “The system answered well for Manipur; many of the Nagas began to speak Manipuri, and several villages paid annual tribute.” (J Johnstone, Manipur and Naga Hills, reprint 1971, p23).
The best documentation was given by Henry Balfour in his “Diary of a Tour in Naga Hills”, September 14, 1922-23, Pitt-Rivers Museum Archive, Oxford. Balfour was a very respected and famous archaeologist.
He wrote: “After lunch I had a stroll to the native bazaar, past the Manipur Stone, a carved + inscribed upright stone slab with horizontal base slab having incut foot prints of the Maharaja of Manipur [Bhagyachandra], which marks the old boundary of Manipur State.”
I myself saw this stone monument in the centre of Kohima before the Naga students demolished it in the early ’50s. There also stood the WWII British stone memorial Epitaph: ‘when you go home, tell them of us and say, for their tomorrow we gave our today’.
Manipuris, apart from licking the wounds of the annexation of Manipur to India, are also eating their hearts out for making a present of the Kabaw valley, 18,000 sq km (Manipur 22,000 sq km) to Burma by the Dominion of India. But these two issues can wait their turn. Our needs are to be prioritised.
Briefly, the annexation of Manipur was unknown to the public as Bodhchandra was told to keep quiet, after being coerced by Prakasa, the Governor of Assam, to sign an agreement to merge Manipur with the Dominion of India on September 21 1949 in Shillong.
Bodhchandra was threatened that he would be replaced as a king by some other if he did not sign the agreement. Who can blame him? Manipur would have been integrated by force in any case and he would have lost his job. Manipur’s merger was formally declared on October 15 1949 by the Dewan Rawal Singh Amar at 12 noon at the inner Imphal pologround.
The other patriotic hype is for the ghost of the Kabaw valley. It was gifted by Nehru to U Nu on March 29 1953 at the Imphal polo ground, when he “agreed to settle Manipur’s boundary along the present line”. This followed Sardar Patel who brushed aside the plea of the first Chief Minister of Manipur, in 1949 in Delhi, saying – “We are at present having the best relations with Burma. We do not want to make an enemy of Burma.”
I was present on both occasions when Manipur stood in mute surrender. Manipur has ever since been wracked with cataclysms. Chief Minister Ibobi must have learnt from history that only those who do not know history’s mistakes are doomed to repeat.
Manipur needs a strong bargaining power over Nagaland/ NSCN-IM. Just hoping that ‘as sure as God has slit our mouth so will the milky cream fall into our mouth’ – Laina yatpa khayatni, soidana sangom mapan chagni (Meitei proverb) is a meaningless dreamy epiphenomenon. Hope is not a strategy for crossing the chasm.
Manipur’s bargaining power should be its ability to exert influence on the NSCN-IM. With the legal demand for returning the district of Kohima, both parties would be on equal footing in the bargaining chamber. Even our bargaining power is seemingly equal there are other underlying factors to be included in the bargaining.
The collective bargaining arrangements will include diplomatic negotiations and litigation settlement in the Supreme Court.
As it stands, Manipur has had no barraging power. The only bargaining power has been the prospective public uprising, depending on how AMCO or UCM could organise as they did for the Great June 18 uprising (2001), which however, is an unreliable way of bartering with the NSCN-IM.
Manipur needs to bargain from a position of strength. To cite a good example: President Reagan of US, bargained with Mikhail Gorbachev of USSR during the Geneva Summit in November 1985 from a position of strength. The US was unable to deal with Soviet violations of important treaties one after the other about nuclear arms control.
Frustrated, Reagan proposed Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI) popularly known as ‘Star Wars’ programme on March 23 1983. It was set up in 1984.
The SDI programme was to protect US from Soviet nuclear ballistic missiles before they reached US soil by vaporising them in space with laser guidance system. At that time the Soviet Union and its military was in an economic dilemma while attempting to stay in the race for pre-eminence, and their computing industry lagged far behind America. Reagan, because of his large bargaining power, forced Gorbachev to negotiate in favour of US.
As bargaining power is a key factor in negotiating outcome, there are ways to build bargaining power for the ongoing negotiations. We must remember we cannot survive on hope. Hope is not a self-filling spa that God keeps topping it up. Bande Matram, Jai Manipur
The writer is based in the UK
Email: imsingh@onetel.com
Website: www.drimsingh.co.uk
Thoihenba Angom
Dear Dr Irengbam Mohendra thanks for your valuable article concerning the history of Manipur. Instead of writing article like “The Baffling Mirror Puzzle” which is out of context in the present chaotic political situation of Manipur, you should be writing more of such historical facts which would not only bring awareness to the Manipuris but also strengthen our faith for our rights. You have rightly mentioned about the kohima. Concerning Kohima as a northern district of Manipur, it will be good if you could elaborate more on it or write an article with more historical evidences. Perhaps TSE also could find out the stone image which was demolished by the Naga students in Kohima & get printed it out for the public. We should now rightfully demand Kohima as a northern district of Manipur. There is nothing wrong in demanding our right.
Valley Meitei
This is an excellent historical fact about Kohima & Kabaw valley. Why are we (Meiteis) so dumb about our rightful things? Why cannot we BARGAIN for what is rightfully ours? Wakeup people! Thanks Dr Irengbam for your reminder!
Thoiba
The year in which Maharaja Chandrakirti went for "Jila Durbar" to Cachar is 1874 not 1847. Lord Northbrook was Governor General of India from 1872 to 1876. It must have been a typing mistake. Anyway the article is worth reading by everyone who wants to take the cause of Manipur forward. Too much politics have been playing out in our back, we can no longer ignore it. It is time we take it to them hard & strong.
Robert
I hate to burst your bubble but Kohima being a part of Manipur is wishful thinking. Just because we Meiteis invaded Kohima along with the Brits and force them to pay us taxes for a short period time,it does not mean that it os our land. If we use the same logic, Manipur would be a part of Burma becauase they occupied Manipur for 7 years. This would also justify all kinds of forced aneexation and colonialism. Dr. Irengbam definitely writes very well and his musings are very amusing, but I would request him not to be a mischief monger.There are enough gullible people to take his musings seriously and could make an unpleasant state even more unpleasant.
@Robert Naga
Well well Robert Naga your statement seems to be illogical and baseless. You said, “Just because we (you) Meiteis invaded Kohima along with the Brits and force them to pay us taxes for a short period time, it does not mean that it os (is) our (your) land.” If you defend your argument based on the above stated hypothesis then Demasha should now get back their land Dimapur. It was because of the greediness of Nagas that Dimapur was invaded and captured by Nagas from the Dimashas. If you say Meiteis don’t have right to claim back Kohima then don’t you realize that you should also return Dimapur back to its rightful owner?
Robert
Thank you for your reply to my comment @@ Robert Naga. I am glad we are having a fairly good discussion unlike some abusive ones that I see often on the comments section here. First of all, a small clarification. I am not Naga but a regualr Meitei. FYI, Dimapur was not invaded by Nagas, but was a part of the setllement between the GOI and the Nagas when Nagaland was created. The rights of the Dimasas to claim back Dimapur should be solely up to the Dimasas, the Nagas and any other parties who may have a stake in it and should not concern us. Putting aside hypothetical situations, how practical is the idea of claiming Kohima as a part of Manipur?As it is, we have enough trouble within our own state (with all these A/A , Zalengam demands and what have you), do you think it will make sense to bring up an incident, where we Meiteis were a part of the invading British force, to lay claim on the capital city of a neighboring state?Due to space and time constraints , I cannot write more here, but I will be very happy to go into details why Kohima is not a part of Manipur. Perhaps we will meet again here and we can discuss . Thank you and I look forward to the discussion.
@Robert Naga
Can Robert Naga be a Meitei? I don’t think so--so it is good to be candid. But if you are an indigenous citizen of Manipur then you are justified to say that you are a Manipuri—to that I would 100% agree with you as the term Manipuri is inclusive & it means people of Manipur. Your statement concerning Dimapur is incorrect. It was Sema (Sumi) people who defeated first the native Dimashas of Dimapur and captured it by forced. Have you seen the Old Dimasha palace in Dimapur? If not you should go yourself & watch it. Mr. Rio the communal CM of Nagaland tried to change the name Dimapur into a Naga name last year but the native Dimashas protested. This shows that native Dimashas are longing to get back their land. It is also one the demands for Dimasha underground movement. Indeed, they have been demanding to restore Dimapur since a long time. As of now they are weak but they will not remain weak forever. Sooner or later Nagas would surely compel to give back what was taken. Concerning the boundary dispute—it is there every where all over India. It is not right for the Meiteis to say that entire Manipur belongs to Meiteis. No! Never! Manipur belongs to all the rightful indigenous people. So also Nagaland! Do you think Nagaland belongs to Nagas alone? If so, what about other indigenous people (i.e., kukis, Goros, Dimashas, Kacharis, Nepalis etc.) who are in Nagaland. Have you ever thought of their sentiments? Do you think the name ‘Nagaland’ is an appropriate to the present state Nagaland? Is it not communal and exclusive in nature? Think also about the ruling government i.e., NPF. Can a true democratic political party be based on particular ethnic group? A true democratic political party should not be based on any ethnic group rather it should be inclusive one and open to all. NPF is in power because of the manipulation of IM. I don’t have to point this out for you know it very well. So what I have been trying to say to you & other Nagas is that we should learn to live with the people of other faiths & ethnic groups which is the only possible way as well as solution for us, if not tit for tat game will continue. By the way if you are not Robert Naga, you don’t have to reply to it for this message is for Nagas.
@robert naga
Well,robert kohima was known as thibomei then....wat was agreed in jila dorbar was dat The king wud construct road from thibomei to mao n then to koirengei,now a national highway...it is so well written in royal chronicles and u may see for urself in london library...perhaps it's undeniable dat the then meitei kingdom was larger than present manipur..SO IF MEITEIS START DEMANDING WAT RIGHTFULLY BELONGS TO THEM THEN WAT RIGHT DOES NSCN IM HAVE TO SAY??
Robert
@@Robert Naga. I know you did not solicit my reply and this comment has nothing to do with the main body. Please look into my original post. I never put my name as Robert Naga, but it was you who tagged Naga to my name. Please do not question my identity anymore. I AM LETTING YOU KNOW AGAIN. I AM A MEITEI.
Dr IM Singh
corrigendum: printing mistake in para 13 - year should be 1874 - not 1847
Lenny
jzt curiosity, why you meetei called the present kukis as 'khongsai.' Did they all called themselves Khongsai as well those year, during king Chandrakriti .Plz anyone.....
