Seminar on 'Knowing Manipur' held
Source: The Sangai Express
Imphal, October 20 2014:
A national seminar on knowing Manipur from the endogenous perspective organised jointly by Centre for Manipur Studies, MU and Indian Council of Social Science Research was inaugurated today at the Ground Floor of Social Block, MU.
Prof HNK Sarma, Vice Chancellor, Manipur University, Prof E Bijoykumar, Dean, School of Social Sciences and Prof N Joykumar Singh, Director, Centre for Manipur Studies, Manipur University attended the felicitation function cum presentation of plenary paper as the chief guest, guest of honour, and president, respectively.
The programme started with the release of the books Knowing Manipur from the Endogenous Perspective, Vol 1 & 2 .
Speaking at the occasion Prof E Bijoykumar said that Western ways of looking at our society is inadequate to unravel many of the issues faced by the people of the State.
Therefore, the knowledge informed by tradition and culture is the best approach to study the society.
He emphasized that every known model of development and growth in the North East region seems to have yielded no result.
Prof HNK Sarma stressed on the need to devise ways to streamline knowledge in teachable (learnable) academic curriculum.
He was of the opinion that so far efforts to know about Manipur have been in two contradictory ways: one marked by pursuits, which delve into learning about the knowledge through oral literature, folklore and puyas.
In this venture, only so called traditional scholars are the torch bearers and thus, this is completely divorced from modern ways of gathering knowledge.
The other pursuit, he said, is marked by total devotion to scientific knowledge and reliance on modern western approaches without giving any weightage to traditional sources of knowledge.
These two work in divergence.
But both suffer from limitations as we have come to know today.
Therefore, there must be convergence of the two.
In this manner only, better justice can be done to our society, he said.
Prof N Joykumar Singh, President of the function remarked that the seminar is an alternative way of looking at events, processes and knowledge that has led to the emergence of a politico-legal entity called Manipur.
As much as one relies on modern approaches and sources of knowledge, as a historian one must also be aware of the significance of delving into traditional knowledge and sources of history.
In the post lunch technical session, 9 (nine) resource persons presented their papers.
The session was chaired by Prof S Mangi Singh, Prof & Head, Department of Political Science, Manipur University.