BJP’s concern over the alleged seditious statement of TRS MP K Kavitha has reawakened a forgotten issue of Manipur that had haunted the state for quite long. There were times when the state government had put civil activists including journalists behind bars for revealing historical facts on how the erstwhile kingdom Manipur was merged to the Indian Union. The sense of alienation among the people of the region was one reason which compelled the people to turn up the pages of history in quest of their origin. In 1993, during a peoples’ convention held at GM Hall, the gathering there had unanimously resolved that the merger of Manipur to the Indian Union in 1949 was illegal and constitutionally invalid. Speakers during the occasion had revealed the historical accounts on how the erstwhile kingdom was merged to the union of India. Accordingly, it was rather annexation than merger. Now the matter is history, but it is about the black laws and the various form of human rights violations that are becoming hot issues. These hot issues sometime appear as the root of peoples’ revisiting the sequence of events that took place during the merger of the region. But is it seditious to reveal the truth? As far as the issue is raised for getting the attention of the government authority which simultaneously is to strengthening the bond of unity among the various states of the nation, revealing of the truth can never be seditious.When the young MP from Telengana state, K Kavitha said that Telangana and Jamu and Kashmir were forcibly annexed to the Indian Union after Independence, she might have reason to draw attention of the Union government as well as the people in the mainland. It is known to every Indian that Telengana has the maximum number of farmer suicidal case due to poverty. After the bifurcation, the newly form state is perhaps the poorest in the country. And while revealing on how the Telangana region and the Jammu and Kashmir were merged to the Indian union, the Telangana MP does not seem to be committing sedition. After all everyone knows that Union of India at present is the gift of British Empire.
