Oct 18, 1948 : More than a date : Turn it from history to Historic
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: October 20, 2012 -
October 18, 1948.
Manipur scripted a sort of a history by holding the first sitting of the Manipur State Assembly on this date, this year, more than 60 years back.
The first such democratic exercise in South Asia, as some scholars have put it. History. Not Historic, if the present reality is any indication and by extension this may mean trashing this date to the junk yard of history.
The calendar in Manipur is literally and figuratively littered with ceremonial dates, with some festivals even stretching for full five days as in Yaoshang or Holi and yet a day that should be of immense importance to the people, especially the younger generation, has been reduced to something less significant than a footnote.
Myopia induced by ignorance or a wilful political decision to keep the importance of this date under wraps ?
Either way it sucks. More than six generations kept in the dark about the significance of this date, while on the other hand these same set of generations were religiously taught the History of Great Britain and what Magna Carta is all about and the skewed understanding of education that defines the Manipur of today should not come as too big a surprise.
It is only the pursuit of some interested scholars that has kept the embers of the importance of this date smouldering and our gratitude should go to them.
A democratic exercise, read an election spread all over the place, naturally predates the first sitting of an Assembly and this is nothing less than a statement that Manipur had joined the comity of democratic Nations well before the October 15, 1949 Merger Agreement with the Union of India. Says something very, very significant.
The tragedy however is the complete indifference of the policy framers of the land to the importance of such a date. It is not only a date which should be taught in the History text books of the school students here.
It is something about how Manipur took the first step from a monarchy towards democracy and the significance and essence of democracy need not be repeated here.
This inevitably should have significant resonance on other aspects of life in the present day Manipur. That the contrary is the truth can be seen in the claims and counter claims that have been lugged around by different interest parties, which have all proved counter-productive to Manipur and her people.
As Bimol Akoijam, an Associate Professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi argued in an article in The Sangai Express, perhaps giving an official stamp on this date and commemorating it every year at the official level, may help serve as a significant premise to change the terms of the debates that pertain to the very existence of Manipur as a geo-political entity today.
Food for thought, indeed. More than sixty years and it defies logic that such a date has not been accorded any significant official stamp by the State Government, other than the cognizance given in the official website of the Manipur Legislative Assembly.
For that matter how many of the present 60 MLAs really understand the significance of this date, is a poser worth raising.
Let the State Government make amends and start giving it the due recognition it deserves, come 2013.
October 18, 1948 is now history, but it is up to the lot of the State Government to make it Historic.
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