Indo-Meetei conflict: A civilizational perspective
- Part I -

Rajendra Kshetri *

Two Civilizations as Prelude to the Conflict Bharat, that is India, is an ancient civilization and (along with China) have the oldest continuous cultural traditions in the world. The Indian civilization has given much to the world, particularly the Far East and the South East Asia.

In fact, primary impetus to civilizations in many of the South East Asian countries came from India. 'Rice', 'spices', 'domestic fowl', 'cotton', 'sugarcane', 'chess' 'the decimal system of numerical notation' are some of the important practical blessings India has conferred on the world.

The modern/post-independent democratic Indian State came into existence on the twenty sixth day of November, 1949 when "We, the People of India", making a solemn resolve to constitute India into a "Sovereign Democratic Republic" securing for all its citizens Justice, Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, assuring the dignity of the individual and the unity of the Nation, adopted/enacted the Constitution.

If there ever was/is another civilization in the Indian sub-continent which flourished independently of the ancient Indian civilization, it was/is definitely the Mongoloid civilization of Manipur.

With its more than two thousand years of civilizational history (recorded history dates it back to 33 AD), the Manipur civilization was, in the words of Sir CJ Lyall "this singular oasis of comparative civilization and organized society" and was cited by Lord Avebury in his book "The Origin of Civilization and the Primitive Condition of Man".

Like the ancient Indian and Chinese Civilizations, but independently of them, the Manipur civilization has maintained, down to the present day, a continuity of its cultural traditions. This Mongoloid civilization of Manipur was/is the one which has gifted to the world the game of Polo, enriched the world of classical dance through its "Raas Leela" (a unique fusion of the Mongoloid and Aryan cultures, Rabindranath Tagore was perhaps the first and the last great Indian to have ever appreciated, respected and acknowledged the Mongoloid civilization of Manipur), indigenously developed the game of "Yubi-Lakpi" (a modern version being Rugby).

A princely State during the British suzerainty (1891–1947), Manipur, after the lapse of British paramountcy, in August 1947, have had its Legislative Assembly with elected members on the basis of adult suffrage under the Manipur State Constitution Act, 1947. Manipur became a part of Independent India's administration from 15 October, 1949 through 'Manipur Merger Agreement' Page 2 of 21 September, 1949. The history of Manipur vis-à-vis India since then has been a history of protests, movements, conflicts and clash.

India, Gandhi and Racial sense

The racial sense, in the words of Naipaul, is alien to Indians. Race is something that they detect about others, not among themselves. They know only the sub-caste or caste, the clan, the gens, the language group. They do not see themselves as belonging to an Indian race. The words have no meaning. It was in South Africa that Gandhi developed a racial sense and understood that without a racial consciousness a disadvantaged or persecuted minority can be utterly destroyed.

It was as a racial leader that Gandhi returned to India in 1915 at the age of 45–an oddity among the established politicians to whom "Indian" was only a word, each man with his own regional or caste power. But once in India Gandhi knew that the racial politics of the kind that he saw/witnessed in South Africa would not have been understood.

A practical man that he was, Gandhi knew that the racial sense that he developed in South Africa could not be the basis of his politics. For one thing, Indians were not a minority in India and therefore any attempt to develop a racial sense would serve no political purpose.

Secondly, Gandhi was a "Hindu by conviction" (his own admission while in London as a law student) and to him India is "the sacred soil", "the refuge of the afflicted" and the "Hindu Holy Land".

Thirdly, "the racial message", to quote Naipaul, "always merged into the religious one", and it involved Gandhi in what looked like contradictions–against untouchability, but not against the caste system; a passionate Hindu, but preaching unity with the Muslims (Naipaul 1977:155).

Gandhi therefore left his racial sense unsaid, unexpressed and unpracticed (Indeed the racial theme was never acknowledged as such in his Autobiography) lest it may develop into a belief, practice and action. In other words, racism.

Post Independent India and Racism

Gandhi's fear was proved right, not by the rightist leaders of Jan Sangha (now Bharatiya Janata Party), but ironically enough, by his own followers in Independent India. Contrary to what was enshrined in the Preamble to the Constitution, the (un)democratic minded political leaders of Independent India, not excepting Nehru and Patel, soon developed the feeling of belonging to one race as an ideology, a belief, action and practice.

So, India, in their mind, was perceived into racial lines: the Dravidian speaking people of the south; the Hindi speaking people of the North; the Marathi/Gujarati/Konkani speaking people of the West; the Bengali/Assamese speaking people of the East; and the Tibeto Burma language speaking people of the North East. Thus, was born the Indian racism of the post-independence kind.

The feeling of superiority (by the Hindi speaking people, read mainland India) over other race/people was first manifested, in what could be termed as the second instance, the first being Manipur's merger into Indian Union under dubious circumstances (read duress) which I shall address later, of Indian racism when the Indian State under the leadership of Harrow/Cambridge educated Nehru declared Hindi (read imposed on the non-Hindi speaking people) as the official language of India in the early fifties.

That it sparked off a massive anti-Hindi (read Aryan) Dravidian movement (in Madras, now Tamil Nadu) and Nehru had to replace it by the "three languages formula" is another matter and beside the point here.

Another instance was the brutal Army operations in the Mizo and the Naga hills in the late fifties. Independent India used Air Force for the first time in its operation to suppress the Mizo movement, something the Indian state have not done against the Nizam of Hyderabad even after the latter's declaration of its own independence a few days after India's independence.

And how could we forget the Indian State's response/attitude/treatment to the North-East during the 1962 Sino-India war/conflict? The whole of the North East was left unprotected (read abandoned) against the Chinese onslaught. Nehru's "My heart bleeds for the Assamese" is nothing short of a racial message (from a superior race) that the people of the North East (read the Mongoloid race) belong to an inferior race and therefore expendable.

These instances are not isolated and unrelated cases of India's subtle (read camouflaged) racism in its emergence as a Nation State but institutionalized continuation/extension of a larger (read hidden) policy framework.

Manipur and India

If there ever was a separate distinct entity with civilizational history which was in no way connected with the great Indus (read Indian) civilization of Indian sub-continent, it was, as mentioned earlier, Manipur. Manipur existed (read flourished) as a civilization since time immemorial (recorded history dates it back to 33 AD).

While the ancient Indian civilization was acknowledged worldwide, the Mongoloid civilization of Manipur was not for a variety of reasons (principle among them could be the near-total geographical isolation from the rest of the world). But the very fact that Manipur flourished as a civilization was not lost of in the minds of great ambassadors of Indian civilization when they came into contact, for the first time, with this tiny sovereign kingdom in the 17th century.

Rather than appreciating and respecting the values of another civilization, the Indian cultural ambassadors (read Hindu missionaries) perceived it as something of a threat to the great ancient Indian civilization. That there existed a non- Aryan civilization in a far remote corner was something that could not be swallowed, let alone digested, by the cultural ambassadors of ancient Indian civilization.

What followed then, as is well known now, was a tremendous process of "Sanskritization" in the Manipur valley under the full patronage of the king. This was the beginning of a conflict between Hindu India and Mongoloid Meeteis of Manipur. Some may term it as a social/religious/political conflict, and rightly so, but I would prefer to call it as "clash of civilization" (not necessarily in the Huntingtonian sense).

Therefore, I would like to contend that the Sanskritization process that took place in Manipur in the 18th century have more to do with the Aryan assimilation (read annihilation) of the Mongoloid culture than with the spread of Vaishanavite tenets.

How else would one explain the burning down of "Puyas" – the sacred ancient scriptures of the Meeteis - by the Hindu missionaries if it was not meant to destroy the civilization?