ABSTRACT
This chapter makes an indigenous reading of the Anglo-Kuki War and delineates that it was due to the clash between two opposing ideologies, namely colonialism represented by the British government in India and Burma on the one hand, and the life principle of the Kuki people known as khankho on the other hand. Colonialism is the ideology of subjugating people and occupying their land to serve the interest of the coloniser, whereas khankho is the norms by which a person abides and therefore ultimately ‘the principle on which the Kuki lifeworld is founded’. The intrusion of colonialism into the territory governed by Kuki chiefs inevitably resulted in the Anglo-Kuki War. The Kuki people and their chiefs might have been quite aware of the futility of bucking the British Empire but were compelled by khankho to stand up against all odds. The finding is arrived at with the application of the phenomenological epoch and eidetic vision where the participants’ (Kuki people) point of view on the matter is given utmost importance and applies an inductive interpretation of the peoples’ psyche and action.
