Vulnerable Manipur's Cultural Warming
- Need for deconstructing/reconstructing -
- Part 5 -

By Dr DS Sharma *

Need for deconstructing/reconstructing:

As in the occident, the orientalists have belatedly started phase-wise, area-wise and subarea-wise promotional and objectivity-focused micro-studies based on primary and secondary sources which sound quite erudite.

Like applied scientists, such applied historians would concentrate on specific but hitherto difficult topics. At a later stage the desired integration and synthesis would become possible. Inherent in such viewpoint-shifting is the necessary refocusing of analysis in tune to the time-angularity.

In the process some reconstructionist approach need be cited which lays stress on why the neutral record (logic) should suddenly declare to become interventionist (rhetoric). Besides, analytical tools get outdated as time-dimension is shifted backward or forward.

Whatever problems found relevant today and analyzed with such tools as enunciated and sharpened and hence found compatible in the present time may become irrelevant tomorrow when problems may assume a new metamorphosis.

Pretty well-known is the fact that empire-building analysis used to be relevant in colonial history, although in postcolonial period concepts like 'empire' have become obsolete and may not find even a place in the futurologist's tool.

Specific mention may herein be made of yet other analytical tools similarly found obsolete in Western history, like 'tribal' or 'village' as in a sharp rural-urban framework.

In other parts of the world where the urban-rural continuum intermingles, these two concepts do not merely find relevance but therein, even if traced out in extreme environs and sparsely inhabited islands, they would certainly survive with heavy subsidy and State support as living museums hardly posing much of a problem.

But in south Asia, southeast Asia or elsewhere the rural continuum is still characterized by feudalism, swidden cultivation etc. but studded by limited islands of urban complexity.

Continuum of tribe-village-complex society:

Much to the chagrin of planners and policy-makers during the last half-century or so, these tribal villages have proved to be the real stumbling block. Hopefully the tribe, if not village, may soon die out after another fifty years or so, if at all the tribal villages would adopt improved technology for greater productivity when they would enjoy average, if not higher standard of life as urbanites.

Like 'empire' and 'colony' becoming obsolete in western world, 'tribe', 'feudalism' among others, will then become obsolete from this part of the globe too. Already, dispersed tribes have come into being and one would hope to see much more of this emerging category.

It goes without saying that use of tribe as an analytical tool will be relevant only in modernity analysis of history in the south Asian or southeast Asian context.

Prima facie, some general traits of Manipur may be laid out.

First, it may be stated that past history has typified natives and indigenes to be generally harsh and revengeful upon enemies (whether relatives; or kings of Burma and Cachar; or even the powerful Englishman J.W.Quinton, the Chief Commissioner of Assam, at the peak of the British ascendancy i.e. when the Sun would not set in the British empire), rather than forgiving as generally seen in both occident and the orient.

This can be explained away in terms of the constraints and limitations placed on Manipur history by Manipur's geography (topography) and climate (monsoon and deep jungles).

For instance, any territorial expansionist move under a powerful king through either marriage, diplomacy or war had perforce to be across the ranges of mountains either eastward or westward.

Hardihood and tough attitude thus became the mainstay of Meitei nationalism, at least till 1891. In the lower order of constraints are of course, ethnic propinquity to southeast Asia and linguistic belongingness to Tibeto-Burman group, which of late seem to create problem for integration of Manipur into the national mainstream, particularly after the Partition of India (1947).

Concluded...