IT News
Imphal, Dec 5,
Soso Saiza, the first woman from Manipur to become a member of the National commission for Woman was felicitated by the United All Communities’ Social Up-Lifters, Kangleipak (UNACSU) yesterday.
The felicitation function was attended by a crowd of about 50-60 people, half of whom came all the way from Ukhrul and half of them were meetei/meiteis who knew her importance more than her Tangkhul belongingness and warmly held her reception as a harbinger of justice and equality for woman.
There was a dinner event organized in the evening, where she was again welcomed and thanked. No more shall women suffer and no more shall women cry was the resolution agreed by those attended.
It showed that when we produce outstanding achievers we bring down the hard walls that we produce in our heads based on community and politics of division. The most important part of the event has to be the fact that the dinner program entailed interactions between those present there, together for many of the Tangkhuls and meeteis/meities dinning on a single plate. This has to be an achievement against 300 years of Hindu occupation since King Pamheiba that prevented us from having any sort of “wine and dine” to foster the relatedness and shared belongingness that we can never overlook.
In a time when this occupation has a second coming through institutions of governmental control just like it happened 300 years ago, it has to be true what the greatest revolutionary thinker in history, Karl max had said “History repeats itself, first as a tragedy, second as a farce” in ridicule to another Giant thinker Hegel who believes history has always a second coming. And just like Marx believed that history never truly repeats itself and always had different outcomes under different circumstances, the event yesterday showed history will not be repeated; circumstances will be fought for.
When absolute monarchy ruled Manipur with an iron hand, the people were never in control of their circumstances and history making. The trajectories of their lives were swept away by the direction of the ruling ideologies of the time that kept the monarch absolute and maintained his divine rights to decide the future of his subjects i.e. the people. Hence along the conversion of the king as a Hindu king, the kingdom of Manipur became a Hindu kingdom. The political and economic mechanisms and institutions of control that were under the king hence became the mechanisms of converting the non-Hindu population into a Hindu one; rewarding those who embraced it and prescribing severe punishments entailing even death for those who resisted. The concept of purity that lies at the core of Hindu ideology became the absolute ruling ideologies that the population at reach to the monarch had to adhere to.
A drunken man from Ukhrul told the most heart touching lines over the bonfire at the event. While in his drunken state of mind, he seemed to the one sanest while we have numbed our thoughts over the last 300 years. He said “Ng eiti ee ki mari ni, blood test tousi hairasu dna ta mari leinapani, ee ki mari pu kari ki mangpra. Same blood bu kariki mangpra. Awa na lan ngampaga Awa na palle, British na lan ngampaga British na palle, Mayang lanmi mayam amuk thachalak aka akhoi pu amuk palle, ato akhoi mayang natte, Awa natte, British natte Vap tamminase; Eina American Baptist chatle noina Hindtu chatpasu yaore, meetai ki hanna ki chatpasu yaore, ato ei American natte, noisu hindtu chatlenasu mayang ti natteba, circumstances na yatabaki akhoi dharma dharma matung inkhrepa ato akhoi kana no kaokumse.”
The search for purity that Hinduism has sown in our society has robbed us of our belongingness and our dignity, it has even robbed us of our robbed us of a strong nation that we could have been. Nawadeep and Bengal became the ideological fountainhead in search of this purity and thus the greatest colonial occupation that has come from the west of us remains in power with an artificial and enforced cultural affinity we identify ourselves with the occupier. It is different hence to be a Hindu in a free nation and a Hindu in an occupied land where there ruling ideologies of the occupiers are also the same. To be a Hindu in the USA for example would not mean changing their social fabric and enforcing the practice of purity but a spiritual affiliation. There is no attack intended here on individual spiritual affiliation but the outright attack on the structurally enforced mechanisms of control and governance that had robbed the freedom of a nation; making the population celebrate its own un-freedom.
But the dinner and the interaction event has showed that it may take hundreds of years but the artificially enforced concrete walls of identity we have in our minds will break down and we are no longer accepting circumstances as given to us, we will no longer be subjects but free people who will control the destiny in our hands. No power can robbed us of our destiny as free people, no more can the king spread its tentacles and no more can the guns pointed at our temples make us sing tunes of servitude. Nagas and meeteis will hold the destiny in hands together as brothers in arms, for meetei is naga and naga is meetei, blood to blood, gene to gene.
