Matamgi Manipur

By Laldinkima Sailo Northeast India’s inability to move from subsistence agriculture to a production and manufacturing economy can be solved by collaborating with Myanmar  Originally published by the Hindu on 14 Mar 2014 at  http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/northeasts-myanmar-connect/article5781544.ece Walking around the Bagyoke Aung San Market in Yangon gives one a personal sense of the cultural affinity between Myanmar and northeast India. Goods are stacked in a way peculiar to the northeast region and the similarity in the products on display is unmistakable. Every now and then one can hear people speaking in Mizo or some other common language. The traditional Burmese dress is worn just the way it is in the northeast and the street food and traditional food items of both the regions bear a close resemblance too. The saying that Southeast Asia begins in northeast India takes credence. The way the people of Myanmar have taken to the use of chopsticks seems...

This is a two-article series from the Hindu “MOST INDIANS THINK RACISM EXISTS ONLY IN THE WEST AND SEE THEMSELVES AS VICTIMS. IT’S TIME THEY EXAMINED THEIR OWN ATTITUDES TOWARDS PEOPLE FROM THE COUNTRY'S NORTH-EAST”

M.S. Prabhakara The Hindu, June 8, 2011 Every nation state, whether it formally came into being within living memory or has been a stable polity for centuries, views itself as a unique and inviolable territorial entity. The nation state and its territory are symbiotically bound together, inseparable and inviolable. The diminishment of one leads inescapably to the diminishment of the other. This, the classic (and idealised) view of what constitutes the nation state, has remained more or less unchanged since the middle of the 17th century, despite the constant internal and external challenges to the supposedly inviolable territoriality of many sovereign nations, the changes that have come about in ‘unalterable borders,' and the emergence of new nation states. As explained in political science textbooks, the series of treaties known as the Westphalia treaties, which ended the Thirty Years War (1618-48), are the basis of the modern nation states in Europe. This concept has, ove...

By Sevanti Ninan The Hindu June 5 2010 As Manipur and Nagaland get locked on a collision course, how much does the mainstream know of the issues involved to cover it sensitively and intelligently? Not much, going by the coverage… The action is in Manipur and on the border, the angst is in Nagaland. The stand-off between the NSCN (I-M) and the Manipur government which has led to a continuing blockade of goods going to Manipur is a challenge for the media on both sides. What stand does the media within a state take on a conflict with another state? Should it be objective or parochial? The media in Nagaland can hardly ignore the extraordinary human situation that has developed in the neighbouring state, and has written on it, but the newspapers here have learned to be careful when they deal with the demands of Naga groups. An editor spoke off the record of the gross human rights violation that the blockade constituted of the people of Manipur, but said writing about it in those term...

By M. S. Prabhakara The Hindu May 20 2010 The Mao Gate confrontation is just one instance of the bind which absolutist ideologies can lock themselves into. Pradip Phanjoubam, Editor of the English Daily Imphal Free Press, bicycles to his office and everywhere else in Imphal. Sananami Yambem, who recently took voluntary retirement from NABARD, walks. So do many others in Imphal and other places in Manipur who for long had used motorised transport. These choices have been forced on them. NH-39 is the principal highway from the rest of India into the State. NH-53 (the New Cachar Road) linking Cachar in Assam to Imphal is another lifeline, though it is longer and less preferred. There is yet another point of entry, going all the way into Mizoram and entering Churachandpur district. The uniqueness of the political geography of the State is that Manipur is at the end of a receiving chain of roads, and on the edge of the periphery of the Indian state. Most essential goods come into ...

By M Prabhakar The Hindu Jan 28 2010 Every time one travels to Manipur, one returns humbled. This has been the case since my first visit in the late 1960s, long before becoming a journalist. Active insurgency was not even on the horizon then though some resentment against ‘India’ was evident. Between 1983 when I joined this paper and mid-1994, I visited the State at least once every year — more than once during some years. In the last eight years I have returned four times. The feeling of inadequacy to confront and understand the complex situation in Manipur, the whys and wherefores of the insurgencies (the plural is advisedly used), the resilience of the ordinary people whose amazing creative energies thrive in the midst of all the pain and violence manifest in every walk of life, has only increased. Thirty-eight years ago, on January 21, 1972, Manipur became a full-fledged State of the Indian Union. The status was conferred belatedly and grudgingly, a most underwhelming gift. I...

M. S. Prabhakara March 26 2011 The Hindu Has the Naga insurgency come to terms with its unrealised and, indeed, unrealisable sovereignty aspirations? In the early 1980s (when this correspondent returned to Guwahati as working journalist after an eight-year absence), insurgency in the northeast was limited to Nagaland, parts of Manipur and what was then the Union Territory of Mizo Hills. In Nagaland, the Naga National Council (NNC), political face of the oldest of the insurgencies in the region, was led by Angami Zapu Phizo, then in exile in Britain. Despite the challenge posed by a faction of the NNC that had recently split after much rancour on both sides and formed itself into the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN), the NNC remained the dominant voice of Naga nationalistic assertion. In Manipur, Naga insurgency was active those days in the Naga-inhabited hill districts mainly in Tamenglong, while in the Imphal Valley, several outfits, some of them fig...