Manipur provides critical sub-text in Naga struggle: Meitei scholar

Staff Reporter
DIMAPUR, NOVEMBER 7

Dr Lokendra Arambam from Manipur University delivered a fascinating insight into how Manipur provides a “very critical subtext” to the Naga political struggle. (See page 7 for full text).
“As a neighbour Manipur provides a very critical sub-text in the Naga Independence struggle,” he said while adding, “Because Manipur as a historically established entity, the issue of ethnic relations had become mired with issues of the modern state’s inability to design a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural and multi-linguistic polity and community which is demanded by the very nature of its geography and polity nursed since its ancient history and their emergence into the globalized world of today.”
“Nowadays its history is contested, opposed and denied by the very idea of Naga independence struggle,” Dr Arambam stated. As per the Naga National Council’s manifesto and the constitution of the Federal Government of Nagaland, the sovereignty and independence of the Naga Nation demands a territorial association of Naga integration of all Naga inhabited areas under one administrative roof, he added.
According to the Meitei scholar, the political demands of the NSCN (IM) who had inherited the legacy of Phizo, incorporates this concept as a vital factor to the Naga political solution. “This had created a crisis in the recent past when eighteen lives were martyred in the agitation against the Bangkok agreement of 2004. “Since then, it has become a serious issue not addressed as a subject of conflict between two incompatible points of view, of what Assam’s intellectual Sanjib Baruah described as ‘the emerging inclusivity of Naga identity with geography coming into clash with the territorially embodied identities of states like Manipur and Assam,” he added.
Dr Lokendra Arambam said, “The idea of a Pan-Naga consciousness, if I venture to note, however, as an unavoidable factor in the development of Naga nationhood as experienced in Manipur is another bind where history as a discipline of understanding is tested to its sternest credentials.”
Dr Arambam stated that the nation had the right to be imagined in current political movements, and at the same time the relationship of events with time and circumstances, the motives of the players and leaders of movements at these times including their actions could also be ‘appropriated’ to suit the current urge towards this ideal of nationhood.