I don't know who I am. No, honestly, I am not an amnesiac. Or even slightly mad. The editor can vouch for my mental status. And besides, Manipur is my home. I live in it. And although I have been appropriated the adjective of 'Manipuri', I cannot accurately claim it to be an exclusive title.
Other bonafide inhabitants of Manipur are also Manipuris, but they have adjectives more obviously their own. Our sense of ourselves is not captured by the mere fact of our political union, however important or unimportant that is.
Other states get their names and identity markers from the people who inhabit them. Manipur, on the other hand, has a peculiar anonymity. It is a name that doesn't even begin to pretend to tell us who lives here. It is particularly baffling to be a Manipuri.
Especially when the adjective provides no reliable information about the cultures of those it designates, or the kind of natural organic loyalty that is recognized as an assured feature of valid political and social units.
What then is Manipur? And more importantly, who really is a Manipuri? One can be a Manipuri without participating in the mutual responsibilities and welfarist
obligations of citizens sharing a common homeland. We can also refer to ourselves as an expanding periphery of passive members lost, as it were, in our chosen locations.
We choose our own locations, and a growing number of us are choosing to fade into the peripheral distances. Manipur is still a radically undefined and unfinished place, and for now, at least, it makes sense to say that this unfinishedness is one of our distinctive features.
We are, undoubtedly, native grown, but some awkward sense of distance keeps us from growing out of our respective native clubs. To be 'at home' in Manipur is a personal matter.
We have hometowns and homefolks and hometeams, and each of these is an endless interesting topic of conversation. But we don't have much to say about a common home other than in casual conversation and unreflective feeling.
A broad application of the term 'Manipur' would suggest that manyness must be left behind for the sake of oneness. It points to the citizenship, not the nativity or ethnicity of the men and women it, designates.
It is a political adjective, and its politics should have been liberal in the strictest sense - allowing for the enhancement and flourishing of manyness. But it actually denotes a mysterious and complex union of otherwise unrelated natives. And assimilates us to a state of somewhat smug anonymity.
But though we are no better Manipuris for having become synonymously anonymous, it is conceivable that we can become better Manipuri citizens. If the manyness of Manipur is cultural, its oneness should be both practical and political.
It may just be the case that men and women who are free from cultural consciousness will commit themselves more fully to a better system. It may just be possible that a uniform anonymity will allow us to encompass and protect our manyness. Those who value the many must disparage the one.
One thing more is required before we have fully understood our strange Manipur. It neither requires nor demands the kind of commitment that would put the legitimacy of ethnic or religious identities in doubt.
Manipur is inextricably pluralist in character. It can never aim to be completely coherent. It does, in fact, need a certain kind of incoherence. It is not inconceivable that Manipur will one day become a great place to live in; the many giving way to the one.
But that is not what it is right now. Nor is that its immediate flight path. Manipur has its destiny written in the hands of ordinary people living in it - people still capable of revival and rejuvenation in the face of mounting odds. To be a 'Manipuri' is to know that, and to be more or less content with it.
* Thathang Lunghang , a resident of Kangpokpi - Manipur, writes regularly to e-pao.net
He hopes "will answer, or at least attempt to answer, the vexing questions of identities and nationalities in a broader format"
This article was webcasted on 27th May 2005
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