With the coming of September month we the people of Manipur once more remember our pioneer leader Hijam Irabot.
Once again the people of the state will be observing the birth anniversary, the day he went underground and his death anniversary as all happened in the month of September. Hijam Irabot is the only leader of Modern Manipur, who had renounced all the worldly pleasure and spent the later part of his life fighting for justice of the common and the downtrodden people. It was with the sheer unstinting effort of this leader that the thin bondage between the Hill people and the plain people was strengthened. The virtue of patriotism among each Manipuri was first embedded by this leader.
Years have gone and some among the people still continue to follow the path once paved by this leader but majority of the people had forgotten what Hijam Irabot really wanted to see in the Manipur of today. The kind of tribute being paid to the pioneer leader today on the occasion of his birth anniversary is worth every effort, but seemed to have lost the essence of keeping his dreams and ideologies alive to each one of us. Just recalling his work, and praising him with cultured language by standing at the manmade podium is not really what is actually needed to remember Hijam Irabot, but to fulfil his dream should be the essence of remembering him.
Now Manipur is on fire. The bondage once tied by this leader is on fire and is on the verge of snapping off even while the blame game continues and nobody really cares to look back and reflect on what went wrong in the last few decades.
Is it the price of the merger of this erstwhile kingdom to the Union of India? Or is it the selfishness of the self proclaimed leaders who ruled the state after the merger of the erstwhile kingdom to the Indian Union?
A civil society organisation is blaming the merger of the erstwhile kingdom to the Indian Union as the root of all the things that is happening today. They now campaign the public to mobilise a movement to restore the pre merger status of Manipur, and this very well may turn out to be the right demand. But will this extinguished the fire raging today?
Sixty plus years of democracy and till today there is no proper road connectivity with almost all the important places of the state. It takes the whole day on a good day, and longer most of the times, if someone from the capital town of Manipur tried to reach Singhat or Tamei or Jessami. There are still many tribal people who never know that there is a place called Imphal which is the capital town of the state they are residing in. Many in the interior parts of the state had to spend the whole day fetching a bucket of water to drink or collecting firewood to cook for their family. These people really have no time to think about the future of this ‘once upon a time’ nation state while struggling to survive each dawning day.
The Government of India introduced a lot of beneficiary programme to improve the life of the common people living in the interior and inaccessible parts of the state particularly the tribal people. The absence of proper connectivity with these interior villages has built a communication gap. And not to be surprised, these befits provided by the government for these disadvantaged people are being pocketed by few vested interested people. They hold the stomach of the poor people and played with any games they desire for their own narrow interests.
When there was enough time to check the missing link the rulers were busy building their houses and amassing wealth for themselves and their descendants. And now things seem to be going out of hand.
For Hijam Irabot who renounced worldly pleasures for the cause of the poor and down trodden, he certainly would have been crying in heaven or tossing in his grave, as the case may be, if only he can see the present state of affairs of the state we have come to be identified as Manipur.
