I have always found it curious how quickly the Sangai enters the conversation whenever tourism in Manipur is discussed. Mention tourism at a government meeting, a public forum, or even among friends, and before long the deer appears. It emerges in brochures, in advertisements, in speeches, in festivals, and in almost every attempt to explain Manipur to the outside world.
There is, of course, a good reason for this.
The Sangai is not merely another animal. It is unique to Manipur, found nowhere else on earth. Its survival is itself an extraordinary story, one that speaks of conservation, resilience, and the fragile relationship between people and nature. Few places possess a symbol so distinctive or so deeply intertwined with their identity.
Yet the older I grow, the more I wonder whether the greatest burden we have placed upon the Sangai is not ecological but symbolic. Somewhere along the way, we seem to have decided that a single deer could carry the responsibility of introducing an entire state to the world.
Perhaps that decision reveals something larger about how we think.
Complex places are difficult to describe. They contain too many stories, too many contradictions, too many histories layered upon one another. A place like Manipur cannot be reduced to a single image any more than a person can be reduced to a single photograph. Yet human beings have always preferred simplicity. We look for symbols because symbols make complexity manageable. They give us something we can print on posters, place on billboards, and repeat often enough that everyone begins to recognise it.
The danger, however, is that over time we begin mistaking the symbol for the story itself.
This is not unique to Manipur. Every destination has its symbols. Paris has the Eiffel Tower. Agra has the Taj Mahal. New York has the Statue of Liberty. But these places understand something important. The symbol is an invitation, not the destination. It catches the eye, but it is the city, the culture, and the experience that persuade visitors to stay.
I sometimes wonder whether we have allowed the invitation to become the entire conversation.
For decades, much of Manipur’s tourism narrative has revolved around a familiar collection of images. The Sangai. Loktak Lake. The Sangai Festival. Occasionally a monument, a dance form, or a landscape joins the list. None of these are unworthy. In fact, each deserves recognition.
The question is whether they represent the full extent of our imagination.
If a visitor were to spend a week in Manipur, what would remain with them after they left?
Would it really be a photograph of a deer glimpsed in a brochure months earlier?
Or would it be the memory of an evening spent wandering through Ima Keithel, watching thousands of women conduct the business of an entire marketplace? Would it be the fisherman on Loktak Lake who paused long enough to tell a story? The meal whose flavours could not be found anywhere else? The football match unfolding on a dusty ground in a village where sport feels less like recreation and more like a way of life?
Most people do not fall in love with places because of attractions alone.
They fall in love with encounters.
The places we remember most vividly are often those that surprised us. A conversation with a stranger. A tradition we did not expect to find. A story that revealed something about a place that no guidebook ever could. Long after landmarks fade from memory, these are the moments that remain.
Which is why the Sangai has always struck me as a curious centrepiece for Manipur’s tourism ambitions.
Not because it lacks significance, but because it asks so little of our imagination.
The paradox is that Manipur has never lacked material for a tourism story. If anything, it has possessed an abundance of it. Landscapes, history, sport, cuisine, craftsmanship, biodiversity, and a remarkable diversity of communities all coexist within a relatively small corner of the country. Many destinations spend years searching for a distinctive identity. Manipur already has several.
Yet rather than embracing that complexity, we have often searched for a single image capable of representing everything.
Perhaps that is understandable. Complexity is difficult to market. A symbol is easier. It fits neatly onto posters, slogans, and campaigns. It offers a simple answer to a complicated question.
But places are rarely understood through their symbols alone.
The more I think about it, the more it seems that the challenge facing tourism in Manipur has never been a shortage of stories. It has been our reluctance to tell more than one at a time.
Of course, tourism cannot be sustained by stories alone. Roads matter. Connectivity matters. Safety matters. Hospitality matters. Visitors experience a destination through its infrastructure long before they experience its attractions. A beautiful landscape loses some of its charm if reaching it is unnecessarily difficult. A memorable destination is often the product of countless practical decisions that visitors never notice precisely because they work well.
Yet even these practical considerations point towards a deeper question that we rarely discuss.
What kind of tourism does Manipur actually want?
The question sounds simple, but it is not.
Does it want to attract large numbers of visitors, or smaller numbers seeking more meaningful experiences? Does it see its future in eco-tourism, cultural tourism, sports tourism, heritage tourism, or community-based tourism? What kind of visitor is it trying to attract, and what kind of experience does it hope they will carry home?
These are not merely marketing questions. They are questions about identity.
Without answering them, tourism becomes an aspiration rather than a strategy.
Perhaps that is why the conversation keeps returning to the Sangai.
Symbols are easier.
A deer is easier to market than a culture. A festival is easier to advertise than an identity. A photograph is easier to package than a lived experience.
The Sangai became our answer because it offered simplicity in a place that resists simple explanations.
But simplicity and understanding are not the same thing.
The Sangai remains one of Manipur’s greatest treasures. It deserves every effort at protection and every measure of pride that accompanies it. Yet no tourism economy can be sustained by a single symbol, no matter how iconic.
Its role was never to carry Manipur on its back.
Its role is simply to open the door.
Beyond that door lies a far larger story: a story of landscapes and communities, of memory and tradition, of food, sport, music, resilience, and everyday life. A story far too rich to be contained within any brochure or represented by any single image.
For years, we have asked how to bring more tourists to Manipur.
Perhaps the more important question is whether we have fully understood what we want them to discover once they arrive.
Because if the answer to Manipur’s tourism ambitions begins and ends with a single deer, then the problem was never the Sangai.
Perhaps we didn’t know better.
Or perhaps we did, and chose the easier story anyway.
Sam Khumanthem writes about home, identity, and the quiet complexities of life in Manipur. His work reflects a deep connection to place, shaped by both love and uncertainty.
