The game of Polo symbolizes facets of India's mission to bridge east and west - Part 1 -

L Memo Singh *

Pana Kangjei Exhibition Match at the world Oldest Polo Ground, Mapal Kangjeibung on November 28 2013 :: Pix - Jinendra Maibam

It is true that Manipur gave the world the game of Polo but the contribution given by Manipur Horse Riding & Polo Association, RIMS Ring Road, Lamphel to the promotion of Manipur Polo at the international level is also so invaluable. Before the inception of international idea, Polo known as Sagol Kangjei in Manipur remained so long absolutely localized in one district or one country.

The Manipuri Professional Polo player lived all the time without general international tension. But the effort of Manipur Horse Riding & Polo Association to organize the game of Polo at the international level has certainly given opportunities to the Manipuri professional Polo players to compete their match polo players cutting across the world with the exhibition of their indigenous skills and techniques.

Manipuries were usually warriors because the fundamental tranquility of the kingdom was very rare in its historical course of preserving and protecting its boundaries. They took war as an inevitable instrument of policy.

The Manipuri armies were both voluntary and professional. The kingdom did not call its armies 'defense forces' nor did it employ them simply for defense. It used its armies to advance their interests as well as to defend itself. The success and achievements of the Manipuri armies were, no doubt, brought with the help of the "Ponies".

The Manipuri royal cavalries were the most astoundingly courageous and adventurous armies. Ponies were so inseparable and important in their duties to protect and ascertain the original boundaries of the ancient Manipur. Every Manipuri still remembers the extension of the then kingdom far and wide.

McCullock in his account of the valley of Manipur said, "To the north, east and south the boundary is not well defined, and would much depend upon the extent to which the Manipur Government might spread its directions." In his 'My experience in Manipur", Johnstone said, "The Territories of Manipur varied according to the mettle of its Rulers. Sometimes they held a considerable Territory east of the Chindwin river in subjection, at other times only the Kabo valley,…….."

As for the north "In 1835 indeed the forest between the Doyang and Dhunsiri was declared to be boundary between Manipur and Assam." The treaties with Burmah and Manipur recognize the Patkoi and Burrail ranges of hills running in a continuous line from the sources of the Dehing in the extreme east of Assam to those of the Dhunsiri in North Cachar as the boundary between those countries and British India.

"…………….. from the termination of the line of 1842, at a point called the Telizo peak, Eastward the watershed of the main line of hills which divide the affluents of the Brahmaputra from those of the Irrawady as fas as Patkoi Pass was declared to be the limit of Manipur on its northern frontier." The Manipuri cavalries as big forces were carrying out their task of defending the boundaries of the kingdom from any sortof invasion as well as their duty of ensuring communications of the country.

Equally important with its task of making and keeping invasion impossible was the Navy of the British empire. The British Navy was one of the great conserving forces of the nineteenth century.

A map of the communications of the British Empire, such as was often shown in geography text-books or on classroomwalls, had scores of lines crossing from every quarter of the globe, all concentrated on the spot called England. None of the lines ran anywhere overland.

They came from America, Australia and New Zealand, the Far East, India, Africa and from all coasts of Continental Europe. They came over the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean, and the North Sea. The British Empire was practically all insular, and was spread about the world in spots and patches with almost exclusively sea communications; the British Empire was a water empire.

There was only one land link in this World –Wide system of inter-empire communications- the place of land between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, between Port Said and Suez. This was in Egypt, under the sovereignty of Turkey. In the eighteen-fifties the peninsular and Oriental Steamship Company was conducting a steamship service between London and Port Said, and another from Suez to Bombay, with an overland donkey service along the hundred miles of sandy plain between Port Said and Suez.

It was by this through route that Lord Roberts, as an ensign in the East India Company's army first went out to India. Previously the regular route between England and India was not through the Mediterranean, but over the Atlantic by way of St. Helena and the Cape of Good Hope into the Indian Ocean. The route continued to be a commonly used alternative to the Mediterranean until the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869.

The British Isles between 1845 and 1875 became the Chief workshop of the world. With population rapidly increasing, the home-grown grain and other home-produced foods became steadily less sufficient. Ships were full both ways, inward and outward. The outward ships carried manufactured goods and coal, they brought back raw materials and food.

Not only did British ships use British coal – there was practically no other available – but the ships of other nations used British coal too. Vast stocks of the fuel were maintained at various points all over or about the oceans, in practically every port, British firms at Lisbon, Cadiz, Marseilles, Port Said, Suez, Bombay, all around India, through the Straits Settlement, in all the Chinese treaty Ports, in the islands of the Pacific in the ports of South America and Canada, earned good money continuously selling coal to all the ships of the world, while the British mercantile marine earned equally good money by carrying it.

Yet coal - bulky, heavy, profitable – was just one item in the vast carrying trade of the British. The advent of oil had altered the situation. Today British shippers do not export coal even for themselves; they buy oil abroad and have to carry it home.

Thus Ponies for the kingdom of Manipur and the ships for the British Empire were inevitable forces in carrying on their political or military adventures with the belief in progress as the foundation of the civilization of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in their respective countries. Now Manipur has achieved worldwide recognition due to Ponies.

There are several songs and stories describing their deeds, importance helpful and romantic; and British could build up its empire throughout the world due to ships. Writers like W.H.G. Kingston and Joseph Conrad wrote stories on "navalism." Those stories are still sagas.

To be continued..