Though Maharaja Bodhchandra Singh had already signed in the so called ‘standstill Agreement of the interim Instrument of Accession’ on 11.8.1947 (11th August 1947) paving the way for merger of Manipur ultimately with the Dominion of India it actually became ‘null and void automatically i.e. its validity ceased or lapsed immediately after the State became a democratically ruled state under an elected popular people’s ministry from 1948 onwards, or to say in other words the “interim treaty” signed in the Instrument of Accession on 11.8.1947 between the Maharaja and the interim Governor General of the interim Dominion of India, Lord Louis Mountbatten should be deemed to have automatically been terminated and Manipur automatically retained her rightful sovereignty and independence which her people had the ‘primogeniture right” to freely exercise as were established since ages at the cost of the lives of so many of their heroic, godly and spartan forefathers.

The case of the Manipuris is not for asking something ‘anew’ unlike the very hypothetical case of the Nagas as was superficially hypothesised by late Phiizo - their case definitely stands quite weak as they did not exist unlike the Manipuris, as a group of people or a unified Nation under an independent political set up of a sovereign independent Government duly recognised widely as such at that relevant time or prior to it as required under the provisions elucidated at the outset.

Truly, Manipur’s case cannot be taken as a case of ‘cessation’ from India, but purely a case of “de-colonisation” for which the United Nations who, under their well laid down Charter, have the ‘unshirking obligation’ to seriously look into the matter and sort it out according to the legal parameters framed by them at par with the cases of other number of colonies for whom they had favourably settled, latest being the case of east timor of Indonesia whose case cannot be actually compared with the case of Manipur in all respect.

It had been in the light of facts elucidated above that all the legal experts and learned members of the public had unanimously said and resolved in the Convention held from October 28 and 29 in 1993 at Imphal that the merger or annexation of Manipur done with the Dominion of India with effect from ‘15 October 1949’ is highly unconstitutional, illegal and “null and void” - “ab initio (from the beginning)” and “highly impugnable (refutable)”.

It is the “unconstitutional factor” that makes Manipur’s case quite different and distinct than the cases of the annexations or mergers of all other native States including even that of the two giant States, Hyderabad and Kashmir whose Governments were then not the true “people’s Governments formed democratically” as had been in the case of Manipur.

The golden chapter of thousands years old independent sovereignty and separate identity of Manipur as an independent country for the sake of “keeping up of which” so many of her heroic forefathers laid down their lives ended abruptly from 15 October 1949 onwards due to her ‘spineless and very narrow sighted’ political leaders.

It is really lamentable that in the process of merger that had been carried out so hurriedly and forcibly the State of Manipur, an erstwhile independent Kingdom had been reduced merely to the status of a part ‘C’ State (third class status), under the Indian Union while a mere district of Naga Hills was all of a sudden upgraded to a full-fledged state with quite a good gain in its territorial area annexed from Assam (Dimapur area) and Arunachal (Tuensang area of the erstwhile NEFA), and most probably to gain much more in the “near future” by annexing forcibly, this time, from Manipur, Assam and Arunachal.

If such a highly hypothetical “move” happens to come to reality, then it will be the greatest “blunder” occurred in the history of Manipur for which the earlier political leaders had sowed the seeds only for achieving their narrow sighted and selfish gains.

Truly, if such unimaginable and unpragmatic event happens to take place, then it will be an event thousand times worse than that of the event of the ‘enforced loss’ taken place in regard to a very large and most precious chunk of area of her land (some 7000 square miles), the Kabow valley due to the most flagrant appeasing policies of the British earlier and later on of the Prime Minister of India, late Jawaharlal Nehru.

— Concluded