Community, Conspiracy and Geopolitics: Manipur Direction

By – Amar Yumnam
Right from the days we could walk and start understanding words, we have been lovingly hearing coupled by our own pride and love the more than two thousand years of civilisation of Manipur. Today the time has come for all of us to rethink at what juncture the civilisation stands and does it not face new challenges unthought of earlier.
A small society of diverse communities could sustain a civilisation rich in culture, charming capabilities in diverse occupations, wealth of shared social engagements and with an approach to loving the nature far ahead of contemporary realisation. Now this achievement and sustenance of it can never be without a core character enabling the society to get back to the prosperous path with ease despite some setbacks and disturbances at some time or the other. We need to reidentify and explore the status of it today. Stakeholder Approach is only being explored now by the rest of the would as a principle for social functioning and governance activities. But Manipur has it as an inherent principle of participation in community performance since BC, and it is exactly this quality enabling the civilisation to sustain. Stakeholder community implies the members being honest, equal participation in social activities, proper care of the weak and sharing in the resultant well-being. When it comes to crimes and other anti-social activities, there will be a collaborative approach to address and eliminate such activities. The society functioned like a soccer team with each realising his or her role in shared livelihood. This means the Individualistic thinking and engagement in activities by leaving the others out and thus try to outwit the others as a principle of social performance was very low if any at all in the process and sustaining of civilisation.
The former kingdom has been continuously proving the richness with healthy properties in the areas of culture, education, sports, and traditional handicraft products even after the merger with the South Asian country, India, in 1949. This has certainly been the envy of others and more so because over time the strength of these have overtaken many others on pure bases of merit. While there were attitudes of appreciation and support (though at low scale) earlier, the recent political practice has been of a kind different from the earlier ones. Persons with weak social qualities but longing for a high political position would look for persons with weak social capabilities and desperate individuals looking for some opportunity or the other as they are easy to bring together and put under command. The objective of these political actors would be to command governance and suppress any other uncomplying groups. This is what is happening today. They find conspiracy as the best weapon to utilise along with their followers to suppress any other individual or groups with a variance in ideological beliefs.
It is exactly at this timing that Geopolitics has also regained the meanest attitude and functioning a country can have; bring Geography into Politics: “Geopolitics is defined as the study of the relationship between a state’s physical environment and its politics, with a particular focus on the impact of geography on international relations and global power dynamics. The scope of geopolitics encompasses a broad range of topics, including: (a) The role of geography in shaping state behaviour and international relations; (b) The impact of natural resources on global politics and economies; (c) The influence of geopolitics on conflict and cooperation among states; (d) The evolution of geopolitical thought and its relevance to contemporary global issues.” The recent ban on a show of Manipuri dance is just not Cultural but an extreme example of Geopolitics.
While Geopolitics is considered to be a game among countries, Manipur is now experiencing a within country geopolitics. While the earlier approaches to suppress the civilisational properties have failed, the new game has been brought in. The interesting part is that Manipur has displayed the presence of desperate and opportunist people who do not hesitate to take a role in the Conspiracy Game. In this, many so-called intellectuals are now participant players and sucking individualised benefits. This is something which injures the core quality of the civilisation. But Manipur cannot be easily killed. The active participation by the population in the demand for meaningful action by the government and sooner release of the persons taken as hostages as a more urgent action than the demand for early allowing of movement by the loaded vehicles stranded on the Highways manifest that people are considered more important than the commodities. The civilisational qualities are still alive; economy is subservient to the interests of the people.