ABSTRACT
Thirty-eight years ago, on 21 January 1972, Manipur became a full-fledged state of the Indian union. While the historical imagination as evoked by the valley-based insurgencies sees Manipur as an independent state, with its present territory intact, and with the Kabaw valley at some point in the future incorporated into the motherland, the historical imagination and the territorial imperative of the Naga insurgency necessarily involves the disintegration of the present territory of Manipur. The totality of these perspectives, involving conflicting constructions of the historical imagination covering the last 60 years, animates the ideology and politics of the valley-based insurgencies in Manipur, that its people have been ‘at war with India’ since 1949. In reality, Manipur ceased to be an ‘independent kingdom’ in 1891 when, following the killing of some officials — who were part of the British official presence — with the connivance of the Manipur court, Britain took over the kingdom after a brief war.
