Liberation movement inevitable: RPF chief-I
Source: The Sangai Express

Imphal, February 24 2019: While conveying best wishes to all the people on the 40th foundation day of the Revolutionary People's Front (RPF), the outfit's president Irengbam Chaoren has categorically asserted that the liberation movement of Manipur is legitimate and inevitable.

The rebel leader also offered revolutionary salute to all the 'freedom fighters' who had laid their lives for the cause of the revolutionary movement.

According to a statement issued by the rebel leader, although people of the land do not fully understand the strategic and advantageous location of Manipur, many countries see the location of Manipur as highly strategic.

After complete domination of mainland India in 1858 by British colonial rulers, and since British India and Manipur established friendly diplomatic relations, British India was able to set up a formidable defensive line against possible invasion by Myanmar.

During the 2nd World War, Allied forces and Japanese, forces fought the most ferocious battles at Imphal and it serves as an incontrovertible testimony of how strategic the location of Manipur is, Chaoren said.

Again, Lord Mountbatten in connivance with Congress leaders annexed Manipur into the Indian Union and thus Manipur became a roadblock to the armed Communist movement then raging in South East Asia from spreading to South Asia.

After the India-China war of 1962, Manipur is being developed as a defensive fortress to protect mainland India from any possible invasion by China.

This can be attributed to the strategic location of Manipur, read the statement.

In the name of promoting trade and commerce between India and South East Asia under its Act East Policy, India is poised to transform Manipur as a transit route and a frontier military zone, added Chaoren.

All these advantages offered by the strategic location of Manipur are being reaped by other countries since 100 years back but the people of Manipur have gained nothing out of it rather they are suffering on account of the State's strategic location.

"As a result, Manipur has seen little change notwithstanding the rapid changes seen across the world, and we are following policies and programmes formulated by foreign countries particularly India, unable to expand our outlook and thinking.

We are still unable to change the perception that we cannot survive without depending on India in the face of Manipur's position as a landlocked country and frequent hostile or inimical actions by neighbouring countries", Chaoren remarked.

"Political leaders of Manipur who have adopted Indian politics as their own politics of the land with a belief that Manipur cannot develop without India's blessing have been obdurately working to keep Manipur as a subordinate Nation of India.

As a result, we are living a subservient life with outsiders dictating the pace of development of Manipur and the way we live.

Thus we are projected as an underdeveloped Nation which cannot even determine its own position", continued the rebel leader.

Nevertheless, the birth of many revolutionaries has revived the hopes of freedom and independence.

With the rise of the all pervasive revolutionary movement, people now feel and talk openly that the forcible merger of Manipur into the Indian Union has no validity and the alleged annexation by India is the fundamental cause for Manipur's downfall, added the RPF president.

People also feel that Manipur would have been a peaceful and progressive Nation had it existed as an independent country in total contradiction to the chaotic and the degenerated situation witnessed today.

People of Manipur who have been reeling under the Indian colonial rule for the past 70 years have started re-asserting that Manipur existed as an independent country for over 2000 years.

And this fact has made it crystal clear that the liberation movement of Manipur is legitimate and inevitable, asserted the RPF president.

While asserting that it is this collective aspiration of the people which has been driving the armed revolutionary movement for the past many years, Chaoren pointed out that India has no intention to leave Manipur rather they are deploying more lethal forces to suppress the liberation movement and sustain their alleged colonial rule.

It implies that India wants to ignite a bloody and destructive war in Manipur to let the people suffer extreme misery and ultimately suppress the liberation movement, the statement continued.

Had India respected the rights of Manipuri people and the history of Manipur, it would have left Manipur like Singapore was separated from Malaysia Federation soon after explosion of just 42 bombs.

Though people of Manipur and India have been suffering a lot because of the liberation movement, Indian leaders see Manipur as its eastern fortress which can never be separated from India.

Given this disposition of Indian leaders, India must follow the path of US and Indonesia which withdrew from Vietnam and East Timor respectively under heavy pressure and sharp criticisms from their own citizens and the international community, Chaoren asserted.

"It was for this reason that we vowed to fight India and its military until and unless the stubborn Indian leaders change their mind regarding Manipur and its freedom movement", said the rebel leader.

Well known Indian politician George Fernandes once described his own country as a country which has been sailing against the tide of time and he even wished to be born in Vietnam if there is a second life.

As such, looking to or imitating India as a model of development is utterly misplaced.

"Our disposition, at one point of time, to live together with Indian people who are quite different from us in all aspects in place of the people of South East Asian countries who are quite similar to us on several aspects is one primary factor for the downfall of Manipur.

King Kullachandra knew that our outlook and thinking would not be in harmony with those of India and the western colonial rulers who taught their craftiness to Indian leaders", read the statement.

The king also knew that Manipuri people and Indian people cannot live together with mutual respect.

After the Anglo-Manipuri War of 1891, king Kullachandra planned to go to China with around 200 people.

But British colonial rulers exiled Kullachandra and around 14 others to Andaman with a warning to all future Manipuri generations that they should not look to the East.

The same warning was inherently perceptible when Yubaraj Tikendrajit and General Thangal were hung to death in public.

Had king Kullachandra and his followers reached China, Manipur would have been definitely an independent, progressive and egalitarian country in South East Asia, claimed the rebel leader.

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