Manipur's Obsession With Hills And Valleys: Part 1
Missing The Speck And The Log At The Frontiers

Laifungbam Debabrata Roy *

Hills and valleys in Manipur :: Pix by Bullu Raj

"We are all mountain people"
[Message of the International Year of Mountains 2002]

In the presently raging (and long on-going) highly emotional internal debates, protests, accusations, charges and counter-charges on land, the law and the indigenous communities in Manipur, many of the persons involved, all honourable and respectable, also very learned, educated in a variety of academic subjects such as the pure sciences, law, the social and life sciences, military science, politics, environment, human rights and so forth.

This is very encouraging, that such persons of scholarship obviously engaged regularly in rational thought and reflections, are involved. What is disappointing is that the content of this endless fracas is actually shallow, lacking in vision, very ill-informed and filled with outdated insular colonial notions. The sub-title of my article refers to one of the famous parables attributed to Jesus Christ, "Why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but pay no attention to the log in your own eye?"

The contentious inner debate has many inter-related elements, some of them with deep historical roots. It is the nature of roots that they are often fragile, easily lost and often ramifying into unexpected areas and layers. Many of the critical roots of the present problematique are shadowy tendrils mislaid in our distant past and freely interpretable.

Like the proverbial three blind men and the elephant, it is very clear that the problem faces enormous difficulties in identification today as we have become not only "blind" but also "illiterate". Is the essential nature of the problem political, social, cultural, anthropological, environmental, topographical, administrative, legislative, rights-based or historical? Is it a combination of all the above, a potent and volatile admixture with many ingredients in various and perhaps changing proportions depending on the perceiver? Or are we barking up the wrong tree all these years?

The expressions used to describe and come to grips with the problem are multifarious and based on many a questionable rubric. It is more confusing than clarifying. The more this dispute continues, the more confounding it has become. How green are our valleys, how beautiful our blue hills and how blessed our land with bountiful abundance in every respect. And yet, fools we have become, unable to spare one moment to humility and the giving of gratitude. We are all unanimous about one wish. We all want an alternative to what we have, a new dispensation or alternative arrangement; but not one of us is willing to give an inch for this!

Elevating thoughts

Talking about inches, let us look at our political geography more honestly and creatively than we have been. A hill is defined as a naturally raised area of land, not as high or craggy as a mountain. Hills often have a distinct summit, although in areas with scarp/dip topography a hill may refer to a particular section of flat terrain without a massive summit (e.g. Box Hill, Surrey or Capitol Hill, Washington DC).

The distinction between a hill and a mountain is unclear and largely subjective, but a hill is generally somewhat lower and less steep than a mountain. In the United Kingdom geographers historically regarded mountains as hills greater than 1,000 feet (300 m) above sea level. Some hills can be quite small; for example, an ant hill or a mole hill. Some hills are created by human beings. There is no universally accepted definition of a mountain. The distinction between a hill and mountain is also considered by a range of topographic values, and not therefore absolute.

The United Nations Environment Programme's Mountain Watch report uses a range of characteristics that are based on elevation as a descriptor. According to this report compiled during the International Year of the Mountains (2002), "[t]opographical data from the GTOPO30 global digital elevation model (USGS EROS Data Centre 1996) were used to generate slope and local elevation range on a 30 arc-second grid of the world. These parameters were combined with elevation to arrive at the empirically derived definitions of six mountain classes. To reduce projection distortion in the original dataset, analysis was based on continental subsets in equidistant conic projection.

Class

1. elevation > 4 500 m
2. elevation 3 500 – 4 500 m
3. elevation 2 500 – 3 500 m
4. elevation 1 500 – 2 500 m and slope ± 2°
5. elevation 1 000 – 1 500 m and slope ± 5° or local elevation range (7 km radius) > 300 m
6. elevation 300 – 1 000 m and local elevation range (7 km radius) > 300 m
7. isolated inner basins and plateaus less than 25 km2 in extent that are surrounded by mountains but do not themselves meet criteria 1-6

The global mountain area thus ranged is almost 40 million km2, or some 27 per cent of the Earth's surface. According to this classification, about 64 per cent of Asia is mountainous. Future parameters to be incorporated to better understand mountain environments are bioclimatic data into this formal topographic definition in order to model regional and latitudinal variations in the transition to mountain conditions. By this presently current system of classification, the entire area of Manipur may be called mountainous. UNEP's mapping of mountainous areas of the Asia region includes Manipur in its entirety. Hills and valleys, we are all mountainous!

The UN's approach to the report of mountain ecosystems is to generally assess the potential impacts of environmental change on mountain ecosystems and the services that they provide to people, and a key objective is to identify those mountain regions that are at particular risk of such impacts occurring in the future. It is oriented to sustainable development objectives, and not to administrative or political ones.

Physically, existing mountains have only slope and elevation in common, and the fact that all will ultimately be eroded into insignificance, while others will be created. They may be formed by uplift of extensive blocks of land around major faultlines, or by folding of rock strata, both of which result from continental movements, or by volcanic activity often associated with both faulting and folding. Any given segment of land may well have been affected by all three processes over the course of Earth history, and so, with the exception of volcanic cones, mountain ranges will often be composed of a variety of igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rock types.

The concept of a "hill" itself is highly subjective, even arbitrary. Lengpui airport in Mizoram is described as located at a 'high altitude', but its elevation is only 426 m above mean sea level. Imphal valley's average elevation at 786 metres (2578 feet) above mean sea level is almost double that of Lengpui. Depending on how you define the extent of the Imphal valley, a part of the Manipur River valley that is itself a part of the Manipur Plateau in the Eastern Himalaya, its altitude ranges from about 2530 feet above sea level to about 2610 feet. The Eastern Himalaya stretches between India and Myanmar. The Nága Hills and Manipur Plateau form the watershed between India and Myanmar (Burma).

Imphal city itself is at 2565 feet (782 m). The elevations of some places in the elongate high valley are Mayang Imphal at 2533 feet (772 m), Oinam at 2532 feet (772 m), Thoubal at 2544 feet (775 m) and Sagolmang at 2610 feet (796 m) above mean sea level. On the other hand, Churachandpur town which is known as a hill town is just over 900 m above mean sea level (ASL). Present Manipur's overall elevation ranges from about 40 m ASL to the south-west at a narrow strip of land called Jiribam Sub-Division of Imphal East District to 2994 m ASL to the north at Mt. Iso in Senapati District. Except for the narrow eastern and western slopes at the boundaries, the State is no doubt a mountainous one.

Cultural knowledge and understanding – can hills exist without valleys?

"It's a round trip. Getting to the summit is optional, getting down is mandatory." In the Meitei and other indigenous languages spoken in Manipur, we are familiar with local terms like "ching", "tampaak", "zo", "phai", etc. We have many such places locally named as "ching" or "tampaak" all over the State. One could say that these local cultural descriptions are topographically based. So, we have "Sajik tampaak" and "Imphal tampaak", for example. While we also have places such as "Cheiraoching", "Maibalokpaching", "Nongmaiching", "Langol ching", and so on, located and surrounded by tampaak. Just as the State of Manipur abounds in hills and mountains, this area is also fibrillated by high valleys and plateau-like topographical zones.

We also have, in Meitei, the concept of "ching-tam", so also in other languages, to emphasise the unity, co-existence and co-dependence of the two topographically described geographic entities. In our knowledge, there are no valleys on this earth that are not flanked or surrounded by hills; and hills do not exist if not for the valleys. (The only exception is perhaps a solitary volcanic mountain, which is extremely rare, e.g., Mount Elgon on the border of eastern Uganda and western Kenya.) One cannot exist without the other; it is an ecosystem shaped and unified by the Earth's tecto-climatic evolution. This is an old cultural wisdom, an indigenous knowledge that is now "discovered" and widely propounded through modern scientific understanding.

Invasive and colonised arguments

With the entry of the early Brahman proselytizers and settlers or "invaders" (the British census reports of 1881 and 1891 refer to the Brahmans in Manipur as invaders, another undecided argument perhaps), the British and other colonisers into the region known today as India's north-eastern region came a new vocabulary to describe ourselves and what have as our inheritance. A people became a tribe, as if we all wore ties. Our culture became uncultured, and our civilisation became uncivilised, wild and primitive. It did not matter who did accept and who did not accept this indulgence from the invaders; all were tarred by the same brush.

The British claimed that their occupation of the northeast region was required to protect the plains of Assam from the "tribal outrages and depredations and to maintain law and order in the sub-mountainous region." So they devised a multi-pronged policy. The invasion and colonisation of our minds and thinking were paramount priorities. The rest would be easy, once these were achieved with success. They quickly saw what Hindu Brahmanical proselytization had achieved in dividing peoples. And they did the same.

Exclusion was the watchword of both forms of mind-wash. All collectivisation trends and practices would be demolished, leaving us naked and open to exploitation. Apartheid and xenophobia were, after all, were well-worn practices before the dawn of the British Empire.

The General Report on the Census of India, 1891, London, Her Majesty's Stationery Office, (Jervoise Athelstane Baines, 1893), for the first time, includes information on the Kathé (Manipur), Nága, Kuki and Khyin (Chin) as all tribes. Baines mentioned that "the mass of the population of Manipur is Mongoloid, even in title, and Brahmanic proclivities are confined to the court and its entourage."

Interestingly, in the table given for Class III "Forest Tribes" under Agricultural and Pastoral castes and tribes (p.194), the tribes are categorised into 9 (nine) groups. The Nága, Mikir, and Ching-pau (Singpo) are in Group 8, and the Kúki, Kathé (Manipuri) and Khyîn (Chin) are in Group 9. The Census Report of 1893 is extremely sketchy, though authoritative, regarding our region, especially the Indo-Burma frontier region, which now includes the States of Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur, and Mizoram. In 1891, there were no non-tribes in Manipur; all were tribal people except perhaps the Brahman and other "invaders" (sic).

Linguistically, among the tonic dialects, the main groups enumerated in the 1891 census concerning present day Manipur are Nága-Kákhyîn (Kachin) and Kúki-Lushai groups. They are both classified as belonging to the Thibeto-Burman. The Kúki and Kathé (Manipuri) dialects was included in the latter group, while the languages of Angámi, Á-o, Lho-tá, Séma, Kezháma, etc., (seven in all) are included in the former group.

The insidious notion of segregated "hill" and "plain" or "valley" areas were introduced into our official colonial vernacular for the first time around 1891; and the usage was initially quite arbitrary. Manipur was not the only administrative unit in the region with such topographically variable terrain. The province of undivided Assam was large, and had many valleys and mountainous areas.

Even then, the British did not introduce such a language into legislative instruments, even though there were hill districts created with the gradual annexation of the kingdoms of the Jaintia and Khasi, and the Nága, Garo and Lushai Hills. The specific application of these seemingly topographically determined areas in Manipur had a totally different motive and was driven by a policy of division.

The purported reasons posited by the British administrative representatives were based on other quasi-anthropological and neo-ethnographic terminology. This queer and designed terminology exists today in modern India and has even entered the language of the Constitution of the secular, socialist republic of India. What is even more queer is that this terminology been religiously adopted by ourselves and a source of hostilities, jealousies and conflicts. The tragedy is that the adopted alien terminology and its destructive legislative heritage have made us forget how to live together with dignity and humility, using our creativity and genius.

To be continued....

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* Debabrata Roy Laifungbam contributes this article to e-pao.net
Debabrata Roy Laifungbam is the President/Convenor for Elders' Council, Centre for Organisation Research & Education (CORE). The writer can be contacted at laifungbam(at)coremanipur(dot)org
This article was posted on November 01, 2011.

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