Matamgi Manipur

From  Hoi Polloi & Mundanity This article was published by the Sangai Express ( http://thesangaiexpress.com ) on November 27 2011 at http://thesangaiexpress.com/sangai-express-sunday-articles.php?categoryid=21  and on Hoi Polloi & Mundanity 's blog ( http://hoipolloiandmundanity.blogspot.com/  )  The news story broken by the Guwahati based Seven Sisters Post about the Government of India’s offer for a Supra State body to NSCN-IM for administering Naga people beyond the boundary of the present State of Nagaland in such areas as culture, custom and tradition has, as expected, generated mixed responses across the whole North East region. Hopes and apprehensions evoked by the news story are more discernible in Manipur than in Assam and Arunchal Pradesh, the other two States broadly encompassed by the proposed Supra State body. Much before the Government of India’s offer for Supra State body was made public by the Seven Sisters Post, Naga frontal organisat...

From Hoi Polloi & Mundanity   This article was published by the Sangai Express ( http://thesangaiexpress.com ) on December 11 2011 at  http://thesangaiexpress.com/sangai-express-sunday-articles.php?categoryid=21 The issue of “Alternative Arrangement” was raised in the Naga People’s Declaration held at Senapati on July 1, 2010. In the same declaration, a decision was taken to “severe ties with the Government of Mani-pur”. The Declaration further explained that the alternative arrangement was sought to fill the vacuum/gap created in recent times, without substantiating what exact was the vacuum/gap. The Declaration was initiated by the United Naga Council (UNC) which was observed as a “Naga People Mandate”.

This editorial was published by the Imphal Free Press ( http://ifp.co.in ) on December 6 2011 at http://ifp.co.in/imphal-free-press-full-story.php?newsid=3487&catid=5 Manipur's hope horizon seems to be ever fading. As it stands today, there aren’t many reasons to be optimistic about the place’s future. Something just did not click in the shift of our economy from the largely agrarian setup to urbanised world of professionals of today’s modern world. Perhaps it is because the shift was planted and not a result of inner pressures and needs, that the growth of our society, physical as well spiritual, has ceased to be organic. In fact, it has resulted in the death, or at least dwarfing, of the spirit of enterprise and adventure that have compulsively driven the engine of civilizations through human history. There seems to be an atrocious lack of compulsion in our society today to push the frontiers of knowledge and skill any further. This is true metaphorically as well as liter...

This editorial was published by the Imphal Free Press ( http://ifp.co.in ) on December 7 2011 at http://ifp.co.in/imphal-free-press-full-story.php?newsid=3487&catid=5     There is a tendency in Manipur for things to always return to square one. The avenue for a way out of this depressing stagnancy eludes the imagination of one and all, including our leaders, intellectuals and the numerous NGOs in the field of social works. The shared obsession seems to be to analyse, dissect, scrutinize and then either rubbish or glorify the past compulsively and then blame each other or else some external agency or the other for all the misery and misfortune that is everybody’s fate. Maybe there is some truth in this vision but it certainly cannot be the whole truth. To think this is so would be to reduce the social organism that we all are part of, to a simplistic mechanics of stimulus and responses only. And this we know cannot be, for the being and the soul of any society is far more...

This editorial was published by the Imphal Free Press ( http://ifp.co.in ) on December 8 2011 at  http://ifp.co.in/imphal-free-press-full-story.php?newsid=3348&catid=5      The current spurt in interest in Burma and the growing popularity of its other relatively more recent name Myanmar, has thrown up some interesting debates relevant to even Manipur. Even after the former military junta in the country decided to change the name of the country from Burma to Myanmar, much of the conscientious section of the international media, including the BBC and CNN among many others, had been insisting on referring to the country as Burma. Perhaps this was meant as a support for pro-democracy champion and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi, who too continued to refer to her country as Burma. But in the past month or so, when Burma is seen as opening up to the outside world, and in equal measures the world too have come to acknowledge and accept this sleeping South E...

This editorial was published by the Imphal Free Press ( http://ifp.co.in ) on December 16 2011 at  http://ifp.co.in/imphal-free-press-full-story.php?newsid=3487&catid=5   Periodic news report that the psychiatry wards in the hospitals in Manipur are showing a general upswing of cases should be enough to ring the alarm bells for everybody, in particular the government. Surely there is every reason to believe that this has greatly to do with the inevitable breakdown of institutions, traditional and modern, consequent upon the prolonged state of mindless violence and spiralling lawlessness the people are exposed to. We even suspect that the conditions for dementia everybody has come to be subjected to have taken a much wider toll. This may be a little beyond the scope of journalists, constrained constantly by the pressures of extremely short deadlines, and work volume in the case of the provincial media which are generally not staffed or moneyed enough to spare reporters or...

by Chabungbam Amuba Singh Former Vice Chancellor, Manipur University  This article was published by the E-pao ( http://e-pao.net  ) on  December 19 2011 at  http://e-pao.net/epSubPageExtractor.asp?src=manipur.Festival_of_Manipur.Cheiraoba_and_the_Cheitharol_Kumbaba The appearance of Cheiraoba on two different dates in the same year in the MANIPUR calendar issued by the DIPR is a display of intellectual bankruptcy of the Government of Manipur. While the people, in a secular democracy, should be free to observe the festival on a date of their choice, based on belief and custom, a Government who values its authority has only one choice to make and hence the Government's decision to have two one-day holidays on two different dates for the same occasion—the beginning of the new year—only reflects its inability to exercise its moral authority.