Agencies
IMPHAL, AUGUST 3
[dropcap]R[/dropcap]eacting to the UNC’s press statement published on August 2 in local papers, the International Meeteis Forum (IMF) has strongly condemned its unfounded distorted version on Manipur’s internationally recognized territorial boundary.
UNC’s statement said the so called Naga areas in the present State of Manipur are arbitrarily sliced off and annexed by the British in 1891 to Manipur and after India’s independence, Naga areas were arbitrarily transferred to the Maharaja of Manipur without the consent of the Nagas, through acts of subterfuge and deception, are all fabricated and tainted in order to serve a parochial ethnocentric communal politics.
It said UNC members shall not propagate further by over sighting the unique thousands of years-old written history of Manipur and its territorial boundaries hitherto fluctuated in its different phases. Only few out of the vast historical accounts of Manipur may be made cited with regard to her northern boundaries.
In the ‘Annexation of Burma’ written by Lahiri RM (page 110), it is written that the territorial possession of Manipur in the north extended far and wide.Even in 1832, the Government of Bengal inclined to make over the whole Sadiya regions to Gambhir Singh, the then Raja of Manipur.
Johnstone, James also wrote that in the same year (1832), Manipur Levy led by Gambhir Singh and accompanied by Lieutenant Gordon, the then Adjutant, reduced Angami Nagas to submission.
Records further showed the facts that in 1835 the forest between Doyang and Dhunsiri formed the boundary between Manipur and Assam (Political Consultations, 25th February, 1835, Nos.1-5, Meckenzle, Alexander, North East Frontier of Bengal), there was not a definite place or territory officially identified for the Nagas between Manipur and Nagaland.
It was only identified by the British in 1842, that too a kind of vague boundary between Manipur and the so-called Naga Hills, it was laid down by Lieutenant Bigge from the British side and Captain Gordon as the representative of the Government of Manipur.
It was in 1847 that Chandrakriti Maharaj, the then King of Manipur gave Manipur’s land ‘Thibommei’ (present Kohima) to the British.
It was not the British but the Manipur King who had given Manipur’s land to the present Nagaland.
It was also the Anglo-Manipuri War of 1891 which made a significant change in the territorial possession of Manipur and as a result, it was confined, for the administrative convenience of the British Government, to the Mao Thana.
With regard to the present boundary of Manipur, where the UNC claims to be belonging to the Nagas, it is only fictitious and concocted and right from the short lived first Assembly of Manipur (1948) till the infamous Merger of Manipur to India (1949), not a single Naga political leader claimed that Naga areas were forcibly annexed to Manipur or India without Naga consent.
UNC needs a real discourse on the trajectories of Manipur history if it happens not deliberately committing this historical account.
“However IMF believes that all the 30 plus odd communities of Manipur know the unique history of Manipur.
IMF again appeals not to adhere further to its misleading fake historical account as well as to stop building rifts and distrust amount different communities in the land”, it said in a press statement.
Formation of Nagaland on December 1, 1963 was a journey of only 20 years starting from the inception of Naga Hills Tribal Council in 1945 and this history shall never be compared with Manipur’s history and UNC shall not disturb the aged old peaceful coexistence of different communities of Manipur, it added.
