Source: Hueiyen News Service
Imphal, December 29 2009:
The seven day long Archive Week, Record Exhibition and "Manipur Assembly Election 1948" of the Manipur State Achieve kicked off here in the new building of the Manipur State Library, Keishampat today.
The inauguration function was graced by former minister, Yumnam Yaima as chief guest, president of the Senior Citizens of Manipur, Ningthoujam Binoy as special guest of honour.
Commissioner of art and culture, P Bhorot presided over the function while director of art culture department, Ksh Sorojini as guest of honour.
Chief guest, Y Yaima speaking on the occasion stressed the need of preserving documents and materials which would be the hard evidence of the events taken place as these would make history.
Some people feel doubt of handing over historical materials and documents to the Archive.
This is due to lack of knowledge of what is archive, he observed adding that he had came across documents related with the Jawaharlal Nehru handing over of Kabow Valley to Burma in the archive of Parliament.
Giving his observation on the Manipur Assembly Election, 1948, he said that the event needs to be observed very carefully as the same is one of the reason for prevailing conflict situation in the state.
Special Guest of the function, Ningthoujam Binoy opined that it is to early to hand over the documents related with the Manipur Assembly Election 1948 to the Archive and it will be a right step if it is handed over to an University for in-depth research on the subject before handing over.
The election itself is not history for the time being.
Many questions are still yet to answer with regard to the election and its fall out.
It needs to establish whether people of Manipur get true taste of democracy after the election by the then King Budhachandra, whether Manipur got independent at that time, whether the king signed the merger agreement willingly or not etc.
When the election to the Assembly in 1948 was held no political party existed in the state.
Without political party, it cannot be said that true democracy exist.
When the king signed the merger agreement none of the 53 members of the Assembly opposed.
There had no knowledge of Budhachandra having his own children.
Then, where from the present titular king come from are yet to be answer, he went on to ask.
The inaugural function was followed by seminar.
Both the forenoon and afternoon sessions of the seminar was moderated by Prof N Joykumar of History department of MU.