Well missing home is a natural thing to any Manipuri away from home. So anything related to home has a natural attraction to someone far away from home. Staying in Los Angeles one’s thoughts are always preoccupied with what is happening back home, what would be the future of home State and what not. This is true irrespective of whether one is reading, relaxing, calculating, evaluating and again what not.

Do Not Miss:
Given this mental frame I, for one, would not like to miss any event involving our people and happening anywhere in North America. I have never seen any product of Ratan Thiyam in Manipur, though of course I have quite naturally heard a lot about him and his plays. The timing and the preoccupation were such that the right moment did not occur. But when his team was going to perform in the United States, well I told myself that I could not afford to miss it. So I witnessed Ratan Thiyam’s play for the first time recently in Berkeley where I went by air from Los Angeles.

Now what is important is not this history. What really impressed and amazed me was the response of the crowds at Berkeley on both the shows for two consecutive days. The biggest theatre at the University of California there was nearly packed on both the days. The audience gave such an appreciation and applause which really left me dumbfounded. The language was not a restriction to the viewers to appreciate the efforts of the director and the inner meaning implied in the product. This is something we can never think of in our place back home. Even after the shows were over a large chunk of the audience were just not leaving the hall looking forward to an audience with the director directly. Well this speaks volumes about the quality of the people of America. Among the organizers we came across American ladies using the term “nungsibi” – woh! one gets really floored by that.

Another aspect of American university campuses is the non-stop activity, seminar, lecture, drama, art exhibition, and all sort of activities which characterize any campus from the morning till midnight. Besides each university espouses and actively projects a character of its own in whatever it does and possesses right from the buildings, trees and to the things sold in the campus.

Still another aspect is the diversity of a campus in the sense of representation of any aspect of any corner of the world. At any moment American universities must be having a collection of authorities who can authoritatively analyze any issue of any part of the globe right from anthropology to zoological specialities.

Now the Curricula:
Now these qualities of the American people and campuses take me to the next development getting unfolded relating to Manipur and in so far as the curricula are concerned. There are already quite a few American scholars in different fields who have developed eagerness for greater appreciation of Manipur and her problems. Well eagerness by an American is very different from eagerness by another human being. She has the commitment and capability to pursue the curiosity. Besides, as I said, the eagerness now extends beyond culture to other academic areas like law, economics and politics. In fact, in about a decade from now, I really see signs of Manipur creeping into the textbooks of different humanities and social science disciplines.

It is exactly at this point that I start worrying about what are going to be the areas and issues for which Manipur would be carving a place for herself in international curricula. As I had mentioned in one of my earlier features in this column, democracy is now a subject being studied with much greater intensity and from different disciplines other than political science. In this process, the nature of Indian democracy and its manifestation in her North Eastern corner is slowly but surely being appreciated. It is also being appreciated increasingly that the North East part of the country has a population stock different from a larger part of the country. This is where I am worried that the negative aspect of Indian democracy in the form of the 1958 legislation would get increasing international focus. Mind you this is not going to serve any positive purpose for India.

This development is getting further reinforced by the increasing multi-disciplinary approaches to analysis of civilization. Being a region least known to the rest of the world is itself an attraction to the global scholars. I am sure they are going to find many a hole in the Indian policy to the region. Well when we speak truth and reality, it is easy to brand us anti-Indian, but it is an option unavailable when an international scholar starts looking at the region.

Our Responsibility:
This is also the time now for our people to reassess our own social milieu. The time has now come for us to vigorously protect our rich heritage of social harmony and peaceful co-existence. We just cannot allow Lungnila Elizabeth phenomenon to get repeated in the State nor can we afford the kidnapping phenomenon to continue. We have so many things to show to the world and so many points to prove. Mind you, the world is now watching and watching us from different angles. The external principals in Delhi might fail, but we the internal agents cannot afford to.