The Field Site

The state of Manipur located in the north-east corner of India is home to the Meitei people. For many years it has been a contact point for diverse traditions. The Meitei are a linguistic group, all speaking the Meitei language as their mother tongue. There are several subgroups, and these can be divided into two categories: the Nongchup-haram from the western side of the Manipur Valley consists of the Meitei Brahmins and Meitei Muslims, while the Nongpok-haram are Meitei settlers from the east.

The Meitei community has had a complex religious history as the region has long been home to indigenous traditions as well as BuddhismFootnote ¹¹ and HinduismFootnote ¹² . In 1729, however, the Manipuri king Garib-Niwaz formally converted to the Hindu sect known as Vaishnavism and ordered the entire community to follow suit.Footnote ¹³ Myths and controversies abound concerning this disruptive moment in Manipuri history. It is said that the king assembled many of the puyas, or religious manuscripts, of the pre-Hindu religion and burnt them. The ancient script fell out of use in the community, and the people who refused to convert, referred to as loi, were exiled. The loi living on the outskirts of the valley still attest to this history today.

This new official religious tradition brought with it a radically new lifestyle that has had an immense impact on the sociopolitical history of the region. Hindu rites of passage and festivals were introduced. The Meitei clans were given names of Hindu clans or gotras. A rudimentary form of caste system was introduced, and some Brahmin men emigrated from Bengal and Orissa to Manipur. Even though many of them married into Manipuri society and adopted the Meitei language as their mother tongue, they still looked ethnically different from the Manipuri people and more closely resembled the majority of Indians. As the higher caste, Indian Brahmins (commonly referred to as Bamons or mayang Bamons) both then and now have religious and sociopolitical authority. Thus, Hinduism introduced ethnic disparity into Manipur society. Ironically, outside of Manipur, Meitei devotees of Hinduism often experience discrimination from Indian priests when they make pilgrimages to sacred cities around India.

Manipuri economy is based largely on agriculture and must, therefore, rely on trade with the rest of India for all other commodities – a trade run entirely by non-Manipuris that has grown increasingly more expensive in recent years. The sharp rise in prices has aroused scepticism among Manipuri people toward mayang businessmen. The relationship between Manipuri people and non-Manipuris is, in general, riddled with suspicion, the relationship existing only in designated areas of life; free intermingling between Meiteis and non-Meiteis has never occurred.

In the capital city of Imphal, most non-Manipuri businessmen live in a designated area called the bazaar. The geography of ethnic neighbourhoods associated with peoples from different regions of India is related to the history of migration of those peoples. During colonial times, a number of Bengali clerks and managers came with the British agent to assist in administration. The babupara, or the neighbourhood of the babus (Bengali clerks are normally referred to as babus), along with the Bengali High School (where Bengali was taught as a first language), attest to the large Bengali population that once lived in Manipur.

During the anti-British nationalist movement in India, Manipur remained isolated to a large extent. Oral accounts indicate that the king of Manipur forbade important Indian nationalist figures such as Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi to enter his country, as he feared that his subjects might be incited to rebel against him if exposed to the new political ideals.Footnote ¹⁴ The rising social consciousness of the middle class in post-war Manipur nonetheless led to the formation of several activist groups – the complex history of which is beyond the scope of this essay – as Manipuri society is not homogeneous and there were serious ideological divisions among social activists within the state. Elite Manipuris formed the Manipur State Congress. Meanwhile, Hijam Hirabot, a pioneer member of the Indian Communist Party from Manipur, rallied the uneducated masses against colonial policies implemented by the colonial agent and the king. The state congress fully supported the merger of Manipur with the Indian Union at the dawn of Indian independence, while the king wished to maintain the sovereign status of the state.Footnote ¹⁵ In a dramatic turn of events, however the king signed the merger agreement with the Indian Union on 19 September 1949.Footnote ¹⁶ Manipur was annexed in due course, under extremely controversial conditions.Footnote ¹⁷ In the 1940s when the anti-British nationalist movement was at its height in India, religious revival arose among the Meitei population in Cachar led by Naoriya Phullo. It was aimed at completely eliminating Hinduism from the Manipur Valley and re-establishing the pre-Hindu religion as the sole faith. This movement initially met with great resistance from the king and his advisors in Manipur but nevertheless gained immense popularity. Today, apart from a large number of formal converts, the philosophy and many components of the movement's agenda, such as the revival of the Manipuri script (mayek), have been embraced by the greater Manipuri society. Several scholarly works have provided extensive commentaries on the larger implications of this phenomenon. In introducing their study on the Meitei Lai-haraoba festival,Footnote ¹⁸ Parratt and Parratt have commented on how the indigenous aspects of Meitei religious life are enjoying renewed importance. On a similar note, Vijaylakshmi BraraFootnote ¹⁹ argues for a cultural concept of a state that follows the indigenous ritual beliefs surrounding the monarchical tradition of Manipur. Even today, the common people's faith in the independent monarchical state challenges the modern political order imposed on them. The contemporary anti-Indian political insurgency in Manipur draws its ideology from the indigenous revival movement Footnote ²⁰ but their goals remain separate.

In another area of Manipur, the Naga people who live in the hills and were converted to Christianity about a century ago are also experiencing a rediscovery of their roots and are involved in a revitalisation movement of their own. With recent political tension between the Nagas and Meiteis, there has been marked hostility from the Nagas towards aspects of the Meitei indigenous revival movement, such as the use of the Meitei mayek (Manipuri script).Footnote ²¹ With the rise of media, travel and more direct contact with mainstream India, many issues of marginalisation have come to the forefront.

Marginalisation in Everyday Life: Genealogy and Race in South Asia

In contemporary South Asian cultural studies, race is not yet a popular topic, but for political studies in northeast India, it has become a central issue that must be taken into consideration. In this section, I shall trace the development of race theory in the Western and the Indian spheres, contextualising its relevance in north-eastern India.

The word ‘race’ has a malevolent history in the West, and even its utterance in public brings forth histories that the Western World would rather forget. As Dominick LaCapra writes, “The very act of writing or speaking about race is fraught with difficulty even when one attempts to go about it in a critical and self-critical manner”.Footnote ²² In Race: The Origins of an Idea, 1760–1850, Hannah Augustein notes that race theory was, among many other things, a political justification for slavery.Footnote ²³ The fundamental impetus behind studying race has never been an innocuous quest for knowledge but always loaded with an agenda of exploitation. Race theory played a key role in colonial times, as European powers used it to justify colonial rule. In India, many generations of colonial scholars and administrators produced extensive commentaries on race,Footnote ²⁴ the most noteworthy being the imagined interrelationship between race and caste.

Race theory as developed in the Indian subcontinent had its own uniqueness in contrast to that in the West, though it was neither simple nor monolithic. In her erudite discussion of the study of race in colonial India, Susan Bayly concludes saying: “The language and assumptions of racial theorists is [sic] abhorrent to us today.”Footnote ²⁵ For Bayly's “us”, the postcolonial scholars of modern South Asia, race theory as postulated by European scholars during colonial times is abhorrent but nonetheless influential, as its shaped societal attitudes and administrative policies. Just as postcolonial scholars like Bayly have been vocal against European colonialism, the early 1990s saw the beginning of a “post-postcolonial” era among Indian academics as the word “race” reappeared in the academic literature in a new context. In this case it was not caste but the interrelationship between race and nationhood that came into question in the soon-to-be 50-year-old Indian nation. Scholars from north-eastern India brought back the words “race” and “racism” from the colonial past to accuse modern mainstream Indians of discriminating against peoples from north-eastern India on the basis of their “different” appearance. Examples of such scholarship now abound in north-east India. For example, in describing the genesis of the Meitei political insurgency, Naorem Sanajaoba, a distinguished Manipuri legal scholar writes: “The political, economic and cultural dominance over the MeeteisFootnote ²⁶ [Manipuris] had been legitimised by the law of the land, the apartheid morality of the racist regime and deeply rooted ethnocentrism. . .”. Footnote ²⁷

This political stance has become increasingly popular in discourses on north-east India. Noted political theorist Sanjib Baruah writes that race is a “visual regime” of labelling, where there are social constructions associated with those labels. Individuals living in north-east India internalise those labels as well as the abiding social constructions.Footnote ²⁸ In looking at the social history of the Meiteis, one finds division on the basis of racial features has been a part of north-eastern Indian society for a long time. After independence in 1947, its political climate began to change. One of the first social movements in the region in the early 1950s was known as the “Pan Mongoloid Movement”.Footnote ²⁹ This movement brought together different groups of people who possess “Mongoloid” physical features and was the first political effort based on racial grounds in north-east India. This movement did not gain momentum, however, because of the many internal differences within the population. To discuss the different issues associated with ethnicity in Manipur, I have divided the following section into four subsections: within state boundaries, realities outside the state, in cyberspace and the reconstruction of history in the light of ethnicity.

Folklore and the Quagmire of Realities

Folklore and cultural expressions have been used in building nationalistic ideologies in almost every modern nation.Footnote ³⁷ In the case of Manipur, the story of Chitrangada explains the invented genealogy of the Manipuri royal family. It became very popular during the time of conversion to Hinduism because it gave a political and cultural identity to people that was preferred at that time. It relates that the third Pandava Prince Arjuna travelled to Manipur and married the Manipuri Princess Chitrangada. Their son Babrubahana became the king of Manipur. The royal family of Manipur was thus given an Indic ancestry.Footnote ³⁸

After the revival movement spread to Manipur, this was one of the first stories that revivalist communities came to question. The founder of the Sanamahi movement, Naoriya Phullo, was the first person of his generation to challenge this story, as detailed in his book Eigi Wareng [My story].

Ng. Kangia, a philosophy professor and a priest of the revived Meitei religion, has argued in his book Adungeigi Kangleipak Manipur Natte [This kangleipak is not Manipur] that the present-day Manipur is not same Manipur described in the Mahabharata. He points out that in the Mahabharata, Manipur is described as close to the ocean.

As Kangia concludes:

Ng. Kangia's book immediately stirred controversy. The noted Bengali historian Ramesh Chandra Majumdar, however, supported the view. ^{Footnote 41,Footnote 42} The controversy was not restricted to academics, and the religious revival movement carried it much further. In 1979 and 1980, when the movement for the inclusion of the Meitei language in the Indian constitution was at its peak, Ibemu Devi observed a celebration of Puya Meithaba.Footnote ⁴³ She quotes from the pamphlet of the celebration committee:

The new nationalist consciousness led the Meitei community to rebel against the stories of Arjuna and Chitrangada. Books containing those stories were burned in public as an expression of rebellion.Footnote ⁴⁵ In May 1998, in the course of my own fieldwork, I witnessed a major debate surrounding this controversial folklore. An older Hindu storyteller had published a book in which he argued that the present Manipur is the same as that mentioned in the Mahabharata. A major revivalist organisation called a public meeting, collected copies of the book, set them on fire and fined the storyteller Rs. 2000 for writing such a misleading history. Although I was not present at the meeting, I heard several accounts of it later from members of the revivalist group as well as their opponents. It was rumoured that the storyteller had been beaten up. Many of the elite academics laughed at the incident, but some also observed that the revivalists had taken advantage of the fact that the storyteller did not have any education and had harassed him. The event is certainly indicative of the influence that this particular story wields in the day-to-day life of Manipur.

Ng. Kangia's Adungeigi Kangleipak Manipur Natte does not stand alone. Several history books, especially textbooks written in the community, either support or oppose the story. Taking a stand with regard to it also has social consequences for those living in Manipur. For example, a noted Manipuri historian told me in a personal interview that after his book supporting the revivalist view was published, he had been invited to a function and offered felicitations by several revivalist organisations. He did not want to be involved with them, however, and hence did not attend.

The Politics of Scholarly Production: “Folklore” or “History

The Meitei community has had a long tradition of writing religious manuscripts (puyas). Different histories of migration are documented in these, and there are debates about how old the puyas actually are, with some scholars claiming that they date back to the twelfth centuryFootnote ⁴⁶ . The long history of kingship in Manipur is also a history of the royal patronage of scholars.Footnote ⁴⁷ The pandit loishang, or scholar's residence, that adjoins the palace today attests to this connection. For generations, many scholars have been in residence in the loishang and have pursued research on a variety of topics including religion, ethics, botany, medicine and clan genealogies.Footnote ⁴⁸ If one looks at the history of Manipuri literature, it becomes obvious that religious conversion to Hinduism also marked a key point of change in the style of scholarly pursuits. Sanskrit and Bengali became the languages of erudition, and the royal patronage of scholarship emphasised the translation of sacred Hindu texts into Meitei. Manipuri scholars also wrote numerous texts in Bengali and Sanskrit. The most noteworthy of these early twentieth-century Meitei scholars was Panditraj Atombapu Sharma, whose vast scholarship on Sanskrit literature remains legendary in Manipur, even though his attempts at establishing the Indic origins of the Meitei society are deemed controversial.Footnote ⁴⁹

Varying but detailed accounts regarding how the manuscripts were burned at the time of the Hindu conversion can be elicited from local scholars in the community.Footnote ⁵⁰ One legend has it that the puyas were too sacred to be burned and actually flew away from the fire, while others note there were a number of scholars who had many copies of the same text, so even though some copies of the puyas were burned, others remained. Yet another interpretation of the legend is that the puyas were taken outside the Valley to save them from the king's wrath. I have also heard that the puyas were written in water-resistant ink on similarly protected paper and were hidden underwater. No matter what happened, the puyas in Meitei script are all found in Manipur today.Footnote ⁵¹ They are stored in private collections with local scholars and also in the state archives in Imphal.

The royal administration of Manipur was divided into eight departments or loishangs, the foremost being the pandit loishang, or house of scholars. The palace of Manipur still houses the adjoining royal Govindji temple. This temple along with the several royal departments includes the royal pandit loishang. Today there are three scholars in residence there. In the mid-twentieth century, however, there was a feud within the royal establishment. When the kingFootnote ⁵² of Manipur, Maharaja Okendrajit, converted to the revived pre-Hindu religion, Sanamahism, the royal temple separated from the palace and established a managing trust of its own. The royal departments, including the pandit loishang, or department of scholars, came under the jurisdiction of the temple board. The head of the pandit loishang at that time was the renowned scholar M. Chandra Singh. Parallel with this, the king established a separate maichou loishang that was led by a revivalist scholar, Nodiachand Amaiba. This dual system continues to the present. As the pandit loishang and the maichou loishang represent two schools of thought, their divergent religious views have given rise to acute differences in the interpretation of puyas.

As should be abundantly clear from the above account, scholarship under royal patronage has never existed independently of politics. The pursuits of the royal scholars have always centred on the king's sponsorship. Thus in many ways the king's patronage has influenced the production of books written by scholars at the court.Footnote ⁵³ At this point, we should consider how the politics of present-day Manipur influence contemporary interpretation of these writings and mythologies.

Ranajit Guha’sFootnote ⁵⁴ commentary on religious epics in India being classified as purana itihasa – purana and itihasa meaning epic and history, respectively – by a more conservative Indian contingent provides a valuable perspective. He points out that not all the segments of Indian society agreed to this claim – in fact a large portion of the intelligentsia took the opposite stance, i.e., collapsing the “happenings, deeds, events” into a “common source”, i.e. the state. With the colonial state emerging as the modernising agent, South Asian intellectuals found writing South Asian history an important tool in finding a place on the map of world history for the subcontinent. Guha however, points out the differences between the two forms as he pithily claims, “viewed from one side it is a shift from fantasy to reason. . .viewed from another side it is a shift from one form of story telling to another”. Footnote ⁵⁵

If mythology represented the narrative of the monarchical Manipuri state, “modern history” represents the narrative of the modern nation state. Which brings us to the next question: what is the “state” in north-east India today? The transition from monarchy to democracy was a very questionable one and hence the old narratives of the past that contributed to the agenda of the monarchical state have been declared defunct. The population is now looking for new meanings and realities to internalise the concept of modern statehood. As discussed earlier, the emergence of the modern state apparatus has brought forth consciousness of racial differences within India. Economic deprivation and political instability has led to an acute crisis in the everyday life of the people. Under these circumstances, the marginalised Meitei population regards its past in a light that suits everyday realities.Footnote ⁵⁶ The people of Manipur nonetheless want to claim a “modern history”. Having a place in the discourse of modernity is an important criterion for making themselves visible within the Indian nation state. Ashis NandyFootnote ⁵⁷ argues that history is a sign of being “modern”. Older civilisations in their quest for being accepted as “modern” societies in the contemporary globalised world often resort to finding their own histories. “Though millions of people continue to stay outside history, millions have, since the days of Marx, dutifully migrated to the empire of history to become its loyal subjects”Footnote ⁵⁸ .

The multiple dimensions of historiography in Manipur are beyond the scope of this article. Even if we were to agree that the people of Manipur are moving towards the “empire of history”, what significance does the Chitrangada story have in this process? “Becoming loyal subjects” of the “empire of history” also involves the complex and sometimes painful process of choosing the right history. It is this search for a past to suit current realities that brings us to the next section.

The Quest for an Alternative Allegiance

Sanjib Baruah's India Against Itself (1999) delineates the case of Assam, another state in north-eastern India, where an armed anti-Indian insurgency has been an important part of the local politics. He points out that the political insurgency goes hand in hand with rethinking the past and questioning allegiance to the Indian nation state. Manipur is clearly going through a similarly ironic transition in rethinking its past. Contemporary academia in Manipur remains engaged in attempts to reconstruct the genealogical roots of Meitei society.

The writings of British academics R.B. Pemberton and T.C. Hodson, and also of some contemporary scholars of Manipur, are illuminating in this context. PembertonFootnote ⁵⁹ rejected the popular theory of a Hindu origin of the Meiteis and concluded that they emigrated from the north-western border of China. HodsonFootnote ⁶⁰ in his pioneering ethnography of Manipur disagreed with Pemberton and postulated that the present Meitei population was descended from the surrounding hill tribes, although he agreed with Pemberton in rejecting the western Hindu origin. Curiously enough, local scholars of Manipur at the time did not take these accounts into consideration. Among recently published works, Hareswor Goshwami's History of the People of Manipur gives a detailed account of the Tai migration in the Manipur Valley. He describes the different groups of Tai people who left their ancestral lands because of political conflicts and entered the land Tribes by Meitei author K. C. Tensuba explicitly claims a connection with the population of “Mee” (the land of the Tibeto-Burmans) around 2200 BP.Footnote ⁶¹ The Genesis of Indian of modern Thailand as the book's subtitle is An Approach to the History of Meiteis and Thais.Footnote ⁶² In the book, an actual comparison of Meiteis and Thais occurs in very few places. The third chapter, “The origin of Mongolian people”, includes a comparative account of the history of the Chinese, Thais, and Meiteis. The nationalistic bent of the writing becomes apparent when the author claims the Meiteis invented the art of silk weaving before the Chinese but fails to provide any evidence in support of his thesis.

In the section on the Tang and Shang dynasties in his third chapter, Tensuba argues that the Shang dynasty (which he claims was the ancestor of the ShansFootnote ⁶³ ) had evolved from the Tang dynasty in China. He gives an account of the different Chinese dynasties and attempts to establish that some of them migrated to Thailand, Kachin and Manipur. He has also set up a comparative table of the Meitei, Shan, Brahmi, Bengali and Burmese scripts. He argues that Thai and Meitei have a common origin as they both were descended from the Shang/Shan.

In Manipuri mythology, the coming of the hero Poireiton is a seminal event, as among other things he is credited with introducing fire. The fire that Poireiton purportedly brought to the Meitei community is still kept burning in the village of Andro. There are several theories about the identity of Poireiton: M. Kirti Singh quotes Atombapu Sharma to posit the view that he was a Aryan priest,Footnote ⁶⁴ while Tensuba states that he came from China or Burma. In a review of Tensuba's book that appears at www.amazon.com, reviewer Lalit Pukhrambam points out that Tensuba's thesis is not well supported by historical evidence, but at the same time he asserts that Meiteiology is a field that still needs to be established and this work is a step in that direction. The reviewer's emphasis on placing Meiteiology on the academic map is noteworthy.

In October 1998 the History Department at Manipur University organised a national seminar on the “Ahom-Shan-Manipuri Diaspora in the Thirteenth Century”. A number of historians presented papers on the arrival of Prince Siu-Ka-Pha in north-eastern India. In her paper on the “Tai-Ahom diaspora in the thirteenth century”, I. S. Mumtaza argued that Siu-Ka-Pha, a Mong prince from the Pong kingdom had immigrated to Assam. Among the papers presented perhaps the most noteworthy was “A note on Soraren [god of heaven] Macha [son] Khunkumba [descending for settlement] –an ancient Manipuri manuscript relating to the Shans”. In the paper the author relates the story of how Samulang-pa, the younger brother of Prince Siu-Ka-Pha, came to Manipur and took over the kingdom, introducing many cultural practices as described in the manuscript.

In reviewing the seminar papers, I was first struck by the subtitle of the seminar itself, “In Commemoration of the 770th Anniversary of Chao-Lung Siu-Ka-Pha”. This anniversary is regarded as a major landmark in the history of Assam and Manipur, and the academics at Manipur University considered the event important enough to sponsor a national seminar to commemorate the coming of the prince from a South East Asian country. What is of further interest here is the unique relationship that modern historians draw between the Shans or Pongs and modern Thai or Chinese communities. The boundaries of the kingdom of Pong or Shan varied through time, but in the seminar papers that I read the Meitei and Assamese scholars seem to have been silent about where they should be drawn. In my reading of these papers, I observed scholars avoid discussion about Burma. However, when it came to Thailand, and sometimes China, no one ay the seminar hesitated to draw their roots from these countries. The scholars also agreed that the origin of Tai communities is China. Presumably, the centuries of war and a history of enmity with Burma made scholars avoid considering it as their possible point of origin. Thailand in contrast matched their romantic imagination of an ideal country for the Manipuri people. The phenotypical similarities, the lack of a colonial presence in its history, its current prosperity, coupled with unfamiliarity with Thailand itself, all nurtured the imaginations of the scholars and led them to locate their “ideal” roots there. Manipur's renowned philosopher and cultural commentator M. Kirti Singh's book Recent Researches in Oriental and Indological Studies has a chapter on the cultural ties between Thailand and Manipur. The chapter conclusion emphasises the cordial relationship between the Meiteis and Thai people, mentioning intermarriages and pointing out the possibility that there were Pong leaders (inhabitants of northern Burma, Thailand and Yunnan province in China) in Manipur before the reign of the first mythical ruler Nongdalairen Pakahngba, dated to the first century ad.Footnote ⁶⁵

The attempt to reconstruct ties between Manipur and South East Asia is noteworthy here, as well as the emphasis on marital relationships. The search for genealogical ties with the present Thai community is especially significant and exemplifies the Meitei quest to establish its place within the Thai Diaspora. Hyung Pai Footnote ⁶⁶ explores a similar story when writing about the construction of Korea as a nation. Several Japanese scholars had argued that Japanese and Koreans have a common racial origin, and Pai has demonstrated how archaeological and anthropological research has been guided by this assumption. In looking at the historical identity of Tai-Ahoms, Yasmin SaikiaFootnote ⁶⁷ writes that she encountered people at her field site wanting to establish Chinese ancestry. I observe a similar trend among Manipuri academics who now direct their research towards finding a South East Asian connection with Manipur.

Saikia's recent observations about the academic discourse on South East AsiaFootnote ⁶⁸ conversely reveals that South East Asian scholars are developing an interest in north-east India. Thai intellectuals have travelled to Tai-Ahom communities to meet and convince the people that they were indeed a part of “Greater Thailand”. Following the same trend, Thai scholars have now started coming to Manipur as well.Footnote ⁶⁹

Many of my questions concerning the desire of Meitei scholars to belong to Thailand were answered when I read Yasmin Saikia's earlier Fragmented Memories: Struggling to Be Tai-Ahom in India where she vividly describes the interactions that Thai scholars have had with the Tai-Ahoms in Assam, starting in the 1980s. In their quest for an “authentic” Tai past, Thai scholars travelled to Assam repeatedly, purchased old manuscripts from Tai-Ahom villagers and had them translated into Thai. Saikia observes that as more researchers have travelled to the villages, members of the Tai-Ahom community have become increasingly conscious of their value as research bases. The importance of the Ahoms to these scholars from Thailand has influenced the Ahom cultural revival movement and political insurgency.

Similarly, with the hostile political climate in Manipur and its increasingly negative relationship with the Indian government, Meitei scholars are once again seeking an alternative genealogy, this time in South East Asia. Just as the coming of Arjuna during the times of Mahabharata promoted a kinship between the Meitei community and the north Indian population, now the unspoken agenda of academia seems to emphasise the coming of Prince Siu-Ka-Pha, signifying closer ties with South East Asia. The Thai diaspora is thus the coveted space wherein the modern Meitei imagination finds its ideal sources.Footnote ⁷⁰ What is this politics of culture and spaceFootnote ⁷¹ that makes a community living in India imagine that their roots lie in another land? And how do they justify their claim? Manipuri historian Gangumen Kabui regrets that myths were given prominence in the history of Manipur, but at the same time takes pride in the fact that the Meitei community have a deep sense of history.Footnote ⁷² In reading papers from the conference, I find the same tendency on the part of Meitei scholars presently seeking to establish a “history”. This “history” derived from the mythology of the puyas is an attempt to construct an alternative past that suits present attitudes and feelings. The myths produced by Panditraj Atombapu Sharma were not previously called “history”. Now, however, contemporary academics have transformed precisely those myths into “history.” Ranajit Guha has conceptualised the nation state as a spiritual idea that is externalised in human will and freedom. He states that all historical changes are dependent upon the state and that the specific objective of “world history” is attaining the said freedom of the state.Footnote ⁷³ If we examine Guha's postulation with regard to Manipur, we can recognise that change in the structure and philosophy of the state of Manipur from a monarchical to a colonial, followed by a national, and subsequently to a military-authoritarian one has given rise to innumerable strands of historical thinking. The exclusion of Southeast Asian-looking people from the national imagination has created a large gap in the meaning and significance of a nation state for Manipuri people. The status of the Chitrangada story in contemporary Manipur signifies this exclusion.

During colonial rule Indian nationalists were compelled to produce a school of historiography that highlighted the glory of Indian civilisation. The Indian nation state and its apparatus are now inadvertently prompting several communities in north eastern India to repeat the same cycle. In a move recalling early Indian nationalists, modern Meiteis, including those in the diaspora, are looking at the puyas, a lengthy written tradition to attest to the antiquity of their own civilisation.