By – Amar Yumnam
In my previous input in this column, I wrote: “No society is an overnight product. Every society is a product of long historical processes of evolution. In this evolutionary process, the individuals, the families, the localities, the groups, the ethnicity/ethnicities, the geography, the polity, the economy and the dynamics of all these and their interplays have to play their constructive roles to evolve into a community. A community constituting a society can be singular or diverse in the core characteristics of larger interactions.”
I would continue this discussion on the formation of ethnicity and society. As argued earlier, the history of any society or any ethnicity is a record of the evolutionary experiences the community (or communities in a diverse composition context) has gone through until it reaches the stage of a society possessing the core properties for further evolution, sustenance, development and joining the global race for social advancement. As argued earlier, this evolutionary process is not something which can be compressed and enforced into a short-term phenomenon. It is indeed a millennial process and spontaneity of interactions across groups and sections to come to a shared institutional frame is a very long run course. Further this long run evolutionary process of any ethnicity or society is never a linear one; there would be many ups and downs – setbacks and progression. The institutional foundations are born and established this way.
Here one very important point needs to be emphasised. Any phenomenon should have a location for the interplay of the endogenous factors. In other words, any society or ethnicity should have a geography where the dynamics of evolution are played out. This is what we call the Geographic Context. Without the geographic context, a full-fledged evolution of any society or ethnicity cannot be thought of. Here again, the evolutionary principle applies here as well. The geographic space should also be a part and parcel of the historically recorded evolutionary process. Like in the case of evolution of institutions, the geographic space cannot be claimed, created and established within a short-term frame – the geographic space should necessarily be an evolutionary one accompanying the society/ ethnicity all along; it can never be a product of an application of force for the purpose and within a short-term frame.
The geographic space has exogeneous dimensions besides the endogenous ones. While the endogenous dimensions are fundamentally the intra-playing characteristics of the ethnicity concerned, the exogenous one necessarily brings into considerations the responses, institutional characteristics and geographic spaces of the adjoining ethnicities. For purposes of continuation of the peaceful evolutionary processes of transformation, the sense of geographic space should also be based on relative evolutionary processes over history and definitely not based on short-term attempts of enforcement. Global history tells us that geography is the foundation of livelihood, sustenance and progression, and thus necessarily is not something to be brought for alteration under short-run fabricated alteration.
Besides the endogenous and the exogenous factors playing over geography for long term evolution of any society, there is also another very important factor to be conscious of. Any society or ethnicity should have a functioning polity of its own. This ethnic polity, like in the case of other factors, is not something which can be created within a short-term period and enforced upon. The polity is the result of an evolutionary process for long-terms interactions across groups and ultimate creation of an institutional framework which governs the interactions in a stable and long-term way. This internal polity naturally would be the result of play-out of the dynamics over the geographic space and accepted across the space over long periods. This endogenous polity should also be stable and robust enough to interact with the exogenous polity of other ethnicities and societies. These interactions should be based on established principles of sustainable interactions, and definitely not on short-term execution of exclusionary firm actions.
What has been the most unfortunate thing in contemporary Manipur is the attempt to bypass the inevitable evolutionary foundations of history for social emergence, geographic space and ethnic polity by dynamisms founded on exogeneity and short-cuts to the desired objectives. Since this is not the natural process of evolution, Manipur has been forced into an atmosphere of violence. The time is already too late for the government to prove that she can exercise governance. Meaningful and successful exercise of governance by the state is paramount to stop the compromises emerging in societal development. The development suffering today is not something Manipur can afford both endogenously and exogenously.
