Manipur was Never Annexed by the British so When was its Freedom

India celebrated its 80^th Independence Day today. In 1947, India’s tryst with destiny, as the country’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru put it, began at the stroke of midnight that opened into August 15. It was also at the stroke of this same midnight that India and Pakistan came to be formally partitioned. Pakistan treats the stroke of August 14-15 midnight as August 14 therefore celebrates its Independence Day on this day. India treats the same midnight stroke as the start of August 15 and celebrates its Independence Day on August 15. The fact is, the two were partitioned at the same stroke of midnight and gained independence too at this same stroke of midnight. It is just a matter of arbitrary choice to interpreted this midnight as the end of August 14 or beginning of August 15, as the two have done.

The stroke of that midnight also marked the start of a very uncertain era for both the countries. Not only was their partition extremely bitter and bloody, but the territories the British handed over to them were just those that the British directly annexed into its colonial empire and ruled, and not the nearly 565 Princely States which were not direct British territories, but exercising only suzerainty, not sovereignty, over them. This generally meant the Princely States were given the freedom to rule as they would in matters of internal affairs, but their external affairs were to be handled by the British colonial government.

Lord Curzon, in his Romanes Lecture of 1907, argues that because the British colonial empire was extensive and extremely varied, it also had to developed varied engagements strategies with different regions and principalities. He credits the British colonial rule for actually coining the understanding of “suzerainty” as opposed to “sovereignty” to address the problem, and this especially during the Great Game (Cold War) over Tibet that it had with the fast expanding Russian Tsarist Empire at the time. Suzerainty hence was used in relations to those principalities the British strongly felt were in its sphere of interest, but did not want to directly rule. Many of these, the British felt were better as buffers between them and their European rivals, than as their own territory.

At the time of British departure from India, the Princely States were left up to themselves to decide whether they wanted to remain independent or join either India or Pakistan. Most ended up joining India, and according to Perry Anderson in his book The Indian Ideology, this was helped by the last Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, who was allegedly biased in favour of India. Even then, it is everybody’s knowledge how the fate of many Princely States remained uncertain for both the countries. The cases of Kashmir, Junagadh, Travancore, Hyderabad, Tripura and indeed Manipur, are just come cases.

Manipur was never annexed by the British, unlike say Assam. After helping end the Burmese occupation of Assam and Manipur, the Treaty of Yandaboo 1826 was signed. By this treaty, while Assam was annexed and made a part of British Bengal, Manipur was left only as a Protectorate Princely State. Again, after the British defeated Manipur in the Khongjom war in 1891, it was still not annexed, but left again as the same Protectorate Princely State, although after ousting the ruling Kartar dynasty which went against the British and installing another king from the Narasing dynasty. The case of Burma too is interesting. In 1885, after the British invaded and defeated Burma to punish King Thibaw’s government for trying to impose a tax on the Bombay Burma Trading Company which was in teak logging business operating from Kendat. Burma was defeated and annexed into British India as a minor province under the charge of a chief commissioner.

Quite interestingly, the British sought Manipur’s help in the 3^rd Anglo-Burmese war that it waged, and in response, Maharaja Chandrakriti sent a contingent to Kendat to rescue European employees of the Bombay Burma Trading Company in an expedition led by Ayapoorel General Balaram Sougaijamba.

After King Thibaw’s defeat, his kingdom’s fate was left to the discretion of Lord Dufferin, the then Viceroy of India, to either leave it as a Princely State or else annexed into British India. The country at the time was in chaos, and Dufferin could not find a suitable successor to Thibaw from amongst the many claimants to the throne therefore decided to abolish the kingdom to be annexed into India. The other consideration was, Burma was next door to the French sphere of control in Indochina, therefore not safe to leave under any weak ruler. After this conquest, Dufferin was given the title, Lord Dufferin of Ava, which he apparently was not too happy with, as he preferred the Quebec title, a place he had also helped bring under British administration, according the historian Thant Myint-U in his book The River of Lost Footsteps: A Personal History of Burma.

The moot point with reference to Manipur is, it was never under the British in the real sense of the words, and was instead under suzerainty not sovereignty of the British. All throughout, it never lost its sovereignty though it functioned under the over vision of the British. There was a British Political Agent in the state, not a ruler per se. In 1947, even as the British decided to give India freedom, the British Political Agent in Manipur, who was by then known as the President Manipur State Darbar, simply left. A suzerainty relationship ended, but this was not about granting freedom to Manipur, for Manipur was always free and never a part of British territory.

Technically then, the new trend among a section claiming Manipur gained freedom from the British on August 14, may not be entirely correct. It was always free during the British period and remained so till October 15, 1949, as also was the case of Tripura. Manipur signed the Merger Agreement earlier on September 21 the same year (under controversial circumstances) and this came into force on October 15. Manipur’s real tryst with destiny hence was not August 14 or 15. It was at the stroke of midnight of October 15, 1949.

The important question is, what now? In human terms Manipur is now in its middle age as a state of India. It has had a rough innings no doubt but should it now not be about time for it to be ready to do some honest soul searching to come to terms with reality? If a consideration of the reality it is faced with makes it necessary, should it not be ready to strike the refresh button? Or even reboot and reinvent itself if this is the way to resolve all its incapacitating uncertainties?

Manipur must get over the scourge of its protest culture and get on with living life normally and healthily. This will not be easy, but it is now almost a survival need for it to accomplish. What it is going through would fall into what trauma writers such as Saul Friedlander and Dominick LaCapra, have pointed out is a condition called ‘fidelity to trauma’. This makes the victim remain literally faithful to the memories of traumatic events of the past, in the belief that the present is solely a by-product of the past. The victim therefore begins to perpetuate his/her victimhood, harming himself and his prospects for the future. These trauma scholars have a suggestion which Manipur can learn from. The victim must “work through” this condition, and without betraying the past, dissociate it from the present and therefore the future. The dead past must not be allowed to trap its living present in benumbing ‘melancholia’ perpetually. There must come a time to say farewell to the dead so the living can live on. Moreover, the present is not just a legacy of the past, but also an autonomous creative entity forging its own future. The State must work toward a spirit of reconciliation with the goal to ensure the ultimate triumph of life and life-sustaining forces it has in abundance.

PRADIP PHANJOUBAM

Editor, Imphal Review of Arts and Politics and author