Foundations of the Manipuri People for United Manipur and Coexistence of Ethnic Groups Should be Base on the Manipur Constitution Act, 1947

Before the merger of Manipur with the Dominion of India on October 15, 1949, the state experienced a democratic awakening unparalleled in much of Asia. Under the Manipur Constitution Act, 1947, Manipur held its first general election in 1948 on the basis of universal adult franchise, enfranchising all men and women who attained the age of 18 years regardless of ethnicity, religion, or region. This marked the emergence of an inclusive civic identity – the Manipuri people – transcending colonial and ethnographic divisions between tribal and non-tribal. Central to this transformation was the revolutionary leadership of Hijam Irabot, whose formation of the Nikhil Manipuri Mahasabha (NMM) and later mobilized peasants, workers, and ethnic communities toward people’s rule. This essay revisits the definitional debates around Indigenous, ethnic, and national identities in the context of pre-merger Manipur. It argues that Irabot’s movements, coupled with the 1947 Constitution and 1948 election, articulated a vision of civic indigeneity – a democratic community grounded in equality and shared belonging, rather than segmented tribal or non-tribal categories of Indian classification of people.

Introduction: Civic Indigeneity and the Making of the Manipuri People

Manipur’s transition from monarchy to democracy in the late 1940s was not simply an institutional change; it represented a redefinition of belonging. For the first time, all inhabitants – across hills and valleys, ethnic and religious lines – were recognised as equal participants in a shared polity. The Manipur Constitution Act, 1947 institutionalised adult franchise, granting all citizens the right to vote and stand for election.

This inclusive moment stands in contrast to today’s fragmentations, where the categories of “tribal” and “non-tribal”; “majority” and “minority”; and “Indigenous” and “non-indigenous” dominate political discourse. Yet these categories were absent in Manipur’s own constitutional imagination before 1949. The pre-merger independent Manipur’s vision conceived citizenship not through ethnographic classification but through civic participation – a vision rooted in the mobilisations of Hijam Irabot and his Nikhil Manipuri Mahasabha (NMM).

Irabot’s political philosophy – anchored in equality, unity, and mass participation – laid the intellectual and social groundwork for the Manipur Constitution. His movements connected the valley peasants, hill people, and working people in a collective struggle for people’s rule. In that sense, the 1948 election was not merely a procedural event; it was the culmination of decades of agitation for democratic inclusion and national unity.

Manipur before the Merger: Political Awakening and the Birth of Modern Citizenship

Manipur’s encounter with colonial modernity began after the Anglo-Manipuri War of 1891, which transformed the kingdom to British Protectorate State. Yet its internal administration retained continuity under the Manipur State Durbar, preserving indigenous structures of governance.

By the 1930s and 1940s, exposure to education, migration, and reformist ideas from Bengal and Assam inspired a generation of Manipuri intellectuals to seek constitutional governance. The Manipur State Constitution-Making Committee (1947), composed of representatives from both hills and valleys, drafted a Constitution that declared Manipur a “State of the People” – a political community transcending ethnic and religious difference.

This period also saw the emergence of social and political movements that demanded equality, access to land, and political voice. Among these, Hijam Irabot’s Nikhil Manipuri Mahasabha became the crucible of political modernisation and interethnic solidarity.

Hijam Irabot and the Nikhil Manipuri Mahasabha: The Rise of People’s Rule

The Formation of the Mahasabha

In 1934, Hijam Irabot Singh, a visionary social reformer and poet, founded the Nikhil Hindu Manipuri Mahasabha in Imphal, later renamed the Nikhil Manipuri Mahasabha (NMM) in 1938 to include all communities – religiously Hindu or Muslim or Christian or animist or traditional faiths, and geographically hill or valley people. The dropping of “Hindu” was not symbolic alone; it marked a profound shift from religious to civic nationalism (Kabui, 1991).

The Mahasabha championed the idea of Nikhil Manipur – “the United Manipur” – as a unified homeland of all ethnic groups. Its aims were socio-economic reform, eradication of caste discrimination, promotion of education, and political representation for all Manipuris. It sought to bridge the colonial rule’s hill–valley divide, mobilising peasants, labourers, and students across ethnic boundaries.

Under Irabot’s leadership, the Mahasabha organised peasant conferences and student movements that questioned feudal privilege and British interference. The NMM thus became both a proto-political party and a social reform movement, setting the stage for Manipur’s democratic awakening.

People’s Rule and Political Consciousness

Irabot’s vision of people’s rule drew inspiration from both socialist thought and indigenous traditions of communal decision-making. He argued that the true sovereignty of Manipur resided not in monarchy or colonial authority but in the masses – the peasants, workers, and ethnic communities who sustained the land.

By the late 1930s, the NMM had become a platform where all the ethnic groups – Meiteis, Kabuis, Tangkhuls, Khongjai, Paite, Pangals, and Pangal etc. participated as equals. Irabot emphasised that Manipur’s strength lay in its unity amidst diversity, warning that colonial and elitist divisions between hills and valleys served to weaken the people’s collective will.

Irabot’s subsequent involvement in the political activities further advanced the idea that democracy must transcend ethnicity. His socialist writings and grassroots activism popularised the notion of equality of all Manipuris, planting the ideological seeds for the Manipur Constitution Act, 1947.

The Manipur Constitution Act, 1947: Institutionalising Civic Equality

The Manipur Constitution Act, 1947 formalised the democratic aspirations cultivated by Irabot and other reformers. Drafted by the Constitution-Making Committee and promulgated under Maharaja Bodhchandra, it introduced a Constitutional Monarchy with an elected State Assembly consisting of 53 members from General, Hill and Mahamadan Constituencies in the ratios of 30:18:3 respectively with an additional two seats for the Representatives of educational and commercial interests.

Crucially, the Constitution defined the polity as one community: “The people of Manipur shall constitute the State.” It made no reference to tribal or non-tribal categories, only administrative divisions between hill and valley constituencies for balanced representation (Parratt & Parratt, 1992).

The Act guaranteed:

• Universal adult franchise for all citizens.
• Representation from all regions, including the hill districts.
• A Council of Ministers responsible to the elected Assembly.
• Equality before the law without ethnic distinction.

This framework reflected what scholars describe as a form of “civic indigeneity” – a system where all native communities are equal stakeholders in governance, unsegmented by imposed classifications (Eriksen, 2010).

The Constitution thus transformed the Nikhil Manipuri Mahasabha’s ideals into law – unity of hills and valleys, equality of ethnic groups, and political self-determination of the Manipuri people.

The 1948 Elections: The First Experiment in Inclusive Democracy

The 1948 Manipur State Assembly election was one of Asia’s earliest exercises in universal suffrage. Every adult, regardless of gender or ethnicity or religion, had the right to vote – a radical idea even before India’s first national election (1951–52).

Out of 53 seats, 30 were allotted to the valley and 18 to the hills, with representation for Pangals (Mahamadan). The participation of diverse groups – Meiteis, Kabuis, Tangkhuls, Khongjai, Paite, and Pangals etc. – demonstrated the operational success of the civic model envisioned by Irabot and others, and codified in the Constitution.

Political parties such as the Manipur State Congress, Praja Santi Sabha, and Krishak Sabha campaigned not on ethnic but socioeconomic issues – land reform, education, and self-governance. Hijam Irabot himself contested and won from the Utlou constituency, continuing his advocacy for land redistribution and workers’ rights inside the Assembly.

The election represented a fusion of civic and Indigenous consciousness – a people’s assertion of sovereignty grounded in shared history and equality, not tribal segmentation. It was a unique Asian experiment in participatory polity before postcolonial nationhood.

Ethnicity and Citizenship: From Pluralism to Division

The Civic Foundation of the Manipuri People

Before 1949, the term Manipuri people denoted a political community, not an ethnographic one. The Constitution and the NMM’s ideology treated all residents as citizens with equal rights. The hill-valley distinction was representational, not hierarchical.

This plural civic identity – ethnically diverse but politically unified – was the essence of short-lived democratic Manipur. It rejected colonial anthropology, which had categorized the hills as “tribal” and the valley as “non-tribal.” Instead, it affirmed the idea of one polity, many communities.

Post-Merger Fragmentation and the Invention of the Tribal–Non-Tribal Divide

The Merger Agreement of 1949, signed under duress between the Maharaja and the Dominion of India, Manipur became a Part C State, governed by a Chief Commissioner sent from Delhi.

Subsequently, the Indian Constitution’s Scheduled Tribes Order (1950) introduced formal classification of hill communities as Scheduled Tribes, institutionalizing the tribal–non-tribal binary in Manipur. What had been a civic federation of ethnic groups became a segmented polity defined by administrative categories.

While this framework aimed to protect “minority rights”, it also replaced Manipur’s earlier pluralism with bureaucratic compartmentalization. The civic unity envisioned by Irabot and others embodied in the 1948 election gave way to political fragmentation and competition over recognition, land, and autonomy.

Theoretical Perspectives: Indigeneity, Socialism, and Civic Belonging

Irabot’s movements can be interpreted through contemporary theories of Indigeneity and citizenship.

Indigeneity as Shared Belonging

According to Martínez Cobo (1986), Indigenous identity is rooted in historical continuity and self-identification. In Manipur, this applies to all communities each possessing ancestral ties to the land before the merger of Manipur with the Dominion of India. Irabot’s vision of unity recognized this shared indigeneity, rejecting the colonial hierarchy of “civilised” versus “tribal.”

Socialist Humanism and Civic Equality

Irabot fused Indigenous belonging with socialist humanism. His speeches and writings emphasized that equality must be economic as well as political. The Krishak Sabha and peasant struggles of the 1940s embodied his belief that freedom from feudal and colonial domination required class solidarity across ethnic lines.

His concept of “Lal Manipur” (a red Manipur) did not mean ideological extremism but social justice through people’s empowerment. In this sense, Irabot’s socialism complemented the civic ideals of the 1947 Constitution – both Irabot’s socialism and the Constitution sought equality, participation, and unity of all Manipuris.

Citizenship as Collective Agency

The Manipur Constitution Act, 1947 converted Irabot’s moral philosophy into institutional citizenship. It replaced subjects with citizens, giving every adult agency in the making of the state. This was multicultural citizenship avant la lettre (Kymlicka, 1995) – a civic order where multiple cultural identities coexisted under equal political rights.

The Decline of Civic Unity and the Persistence of Irabot’s Legacy

After the merger, Manipur’s democratic experiment was extinguished, and Irabot was branded an insurgent for his opposition to the forced integration. He went underground, forming the Manipur Communist Party and continuing to advocate for people’s sovereignty until his death in 1951.

Yet Irabot’s legacy endured. His emphasis on hill-valley unity, social justice, and people’s participation continues to inspire contemporary struggles for equality and recognition in Manipur. His life demonstrates that the foundations of the Manipuri people were civic and inclusive long before India’s constitutional frameworks attempted to define them.

Recovering this legacy means recognizing that Manipur’s earliest democracy – built through the NMM, people’s movement, the 1947 Constitution, and the 1948 elections – was not a derivative of India’s independence movement but an indigenous republicanism in its own right.

Reclaiming the 1948 Vision: Unity in Diversity

Revisiting the pre-merger era is essential not for nostalgia but for direction. The inclusive citizenship practiced in 1948 offers a template for reimagining Manipur’s fractured present. Contemporary conflicts – between communities labelled as “tribal” and “non-tribal” – can find resolution in the rediscovery of that civic foundation of Manipuri people.

The Nikhil Manipuri Mahasabha had already envisioned an inclusive nationalism grounded in equality, not hierarchy. The Manipur Constitution Act, 1947 institutionalized it. The 1948 elections enacted it. Together, they form the historical triad of Manipur’s democratic soul.

Reaffirming that heritage would mean reinterpreting indigeneity as shared stewardship of land and history, and citizenship as collective participation in the polity. It is a return to Irabot’s unfinished project – a united Manipur governed by and for its people.

Conclusion

Between 1934 and 1949, Manipur underwent a profound transformation – from a British Protectorate State to one of Asia’s earliest constitutional democracies. This transformation was propelled by the people’s movements led by Hijam Irabot and institutionalised by the Manipur Constitution Act, 1947.

Irabot’s Nikhil Manipuri Mahasabha redefined politics from elite privilege to mass participation, uniting valley and hill communities in a shared struggle for equality. The Constitution and the 1948 elections gave this unity constitutional and electoral form.

Before the merger, Manipur recognised NO tribal and non-tribal divide – only ethnic diversity within a civic polity. Citizenship was inclusive, participation universal, and belonging collective. The loss of this civic unity after 1949 was not inevitable; it was historical rupture.

To rebuild Manipur’s future, one must first reclaim its forgotten democracy – the civic indigeneity that once defined the Manipuri people – irrespective of ethnicity, are co-owners of a common destiny. The legacy of Irabot and the 1948 generation remains a guidepost – that people’s rule, once achieved can again be renewed.

And foundations of the Manipuri people for united Manipur and coexistence of ethnic groups should base on the Manipur Constitution Act, 1947 and People’s Rule before the 1949 Merger.