People Solidarity Day : Why 18th of October is Important

Angomcha Bimol Akoijam *

Commemoration function of first sitting of Manipur State Assembly on october 18 1948 on Oct 18 2011

Discovering, inventing and commemorating days and figures from the past are facts of human existence. States and organizations have their shares of such commemorations. Even traditional communities do have similar 'commemorations' in the form of totemic rituals and celebrations. And such exercises are often the reflections of some needs of the collective in the contemporary. Nationalists in many parts of the world do invent and deploy such public commemorations to serve their political agenda.

Incidentally, anthropologists like A. R. Radcliffe-Brown reminds us that 'National Day' commemoration of the modern state serves a similar function of consolidating the group solidarity as 'totemism' does for the 'tribal communities'. And Manipur does have such public commemorations that serve certain kind of politics and needs of the contemporary.

To name a few, 13th August as 'Patriots Day' and 23rd April as 'Khongjom Day' have been some of those, to borrow the phrase from the well-known historian Eric Hobsbawm, 'invented traditions' that we have in the state. And responding to the challenges of the contemporary Manipur, many more public commemorations have come up in the recent times as well.

It is in this regard, seven years back, there was a controversy when the then Government of Manipur had declared '18th June' as a holiday to commemorate day in memory of the protest of June, 2001 and those who lost their lives in that protest. And I had argued in an article published in English daily in Imphal in September of the same year (5/8/2005 to be precise) that if politics was about acumen and timing, the Chief Minster and his advisors have got it all wrong. And that if he actually thought that we needed a day to energize the people of the state to work beyond the narrow interests based on religion, communities, place of birth/residence, sex, language etc, he should have declared '18th October' as the 'Integrity Day'.

Today is 18th October and it is likely pass by as another ordinary day. In fact, one shall not be surprised if many were to wonder still as to what is this 18th October in the life of Manipur and her people.

18th October: A Reminder

It was on 18th October, 1948 the then Maharajah of Manipur inaugurated the first ever Legislative Assembly in the entire South Asia which was constituted through a democratic election based on the principle of universal adult franchise. It was the day when the representatives of the people of Manipur, irrespective of communities, language, religion, sex or place of residence etc, came together to mark their transformation from being mere subjects of a sovereign to that of becoming democratic citizens who shared the sovereign power with the king. In other words, that day marked a moment wherein from being a subject without civil and political rights, the individual members that came under the expression, 'the people of Manipur' became right bearing citizens who as 'individuals' are equal in the eyes of the law of the land.

To think of it, it is not only the transformation of the individuals but the collective as well as it was also the beginning and recognition of the assertion of 'popular sovereignty' in Manipur. Truly, it was a moment for Manipur as state to consolidate the transition from being, to borrow from the French thinker Michel Foucault, a 'territorial state' to being a 'population state'. Indeed, in this sense, it was truly an epoch making historical moment of imagining a new collectivity in modern-terms.

It is day that captures the trajectory of the different forms of consciousness of collectivities and relationships that have presumably accompanied the transformation of a space dotted by small human settlements, villages and principalities to a kingdom, and then to a monarchic state to becoming a modern state which gets its legitimacy from the idea of "we, the people of Manipur'.

In other words, The consciousness and cosmologies of the people under the social order of kinship groups, insulated (and often fortified) villages under the chiefs, and the suzerainty of a sovereign monarch are bound to be different from that of the social order and secularized political space inhabited by enfranchised people in a modern state. Manipur as an integrated whole marked by a hierarchy of loyalty with the King at the top with his officials, the village chiefs and sagei aahals (family patriarchs) below cannot be the same under a democratic and republican order inhabited by equal, at least in principle, individual citizens.

Significance of Commemorating 18th October

Given the transforming nature of 'individuals' as well as the 'people' as a collective which was marked by the day when the State Assembly was inaugurated in 1948, commemorating the day has significance for the fractured nature of our society and polity. It can be a moment to reaffirm the effort to weave together the fragments of our divided polity and society in terms of equality and modern ethos. Besides, it shall also serve as a way to restore our beyond the sense of the up-rootedness born out of the denials of selfhood.

Indeed, there is value in the pride with which the Maharajah of Manipur declared on this day in 1948 that just as the Sun rises in the east, Manipur had taken the initiative in India in inaugurating a life that did not discriminate people on the basis of religion, race, sex, language or place. Besides, it is also a day that can reminds us of the struggle for statehood in the 1960s and 1970s as those movements were informed by an awareness of the existence of that Assembly of 1948 (during the struggle, it was often expressed in terms of the 'restoration' of the democratic and responsible government in Manipur).

In fact, the movement for 'statehood' had also brought the people and their leaders from both the valley and hills together in Manipur. In that, 18th October is day of coming together of people, of hope and aspiration, and beyond the cocoon of myopic visions, it is a historically significant day that secures Manipur a place of pride in the entire South Asia.

An official declaration of 18th October as a day to be remembered could even mean, perhaps, a re-assertion of the supremacy of the Assembly. After all, the present Assembly takes pride in tracing its historical lineage to that epoch making development in 1948 (as so succinctly reminded by the official website of Manipur Legislative Assembly). It has the potential to bring back the legacies of stalwarts like Md. Allimudin who later became the first Chief Minister of Manipur as a full-fledged state under the Indian Constitution or R. Suisa (who became MP from Manipur in 1957) who were members of the 1948 Assembly. For the fractured polity, such a move would remind us of a different story to tell.

In short, commemorating such a day would serve as a significant premise to change the terms the debates that pertain to the very existence of Manipur as a geo-political entity today as well as crafting a new Manipur. In that, why not we officially commemorate the day as "Manipur People's Solidarity Day' in the state?