That space has always existed. And it looks like that is the political voice PRJA is aiming to be, when its convener Erendro Leichombam says, “Did Modi pledge that he will repeal AFSPA, initiate ILP, or bestow ST status for the Meiteis? Did he say Manipur tribals should have the right to manage their own affairs? Did Sonia Gandhi say so at any point? Never. So don't believe when your local gunda leaders shout their lungs out and make petty promises in your leikais and khuns. They are all corrupt thikadars happy to barter their souls for cash. While these national leaders strengthen their own power over the States, not empower them. Manipuris need to resolve their own internal issues, and problems. We compound the problem when we let outsiders to broker our issues. It's time the Praja of Manipur cut out the middlemen, sit together and figure things out by themselves.”

I took a flight from Kolkata to Imphal on October 15 to give a set of lectures at the Manipur University. It is always hard to leave your home on days such these for an auspicious celebration like the Kojagori Lakshmi Pujo, celebrated in millions of homes all across Bengal – both East and West, is taking place. That pujo is more special for me as I have named my daughter Kojagori. The Kojagori Lakshmi Pujo day, based on the Bengali calendar tithi, falls on different Gregorian calendar days in different years. This auspicious day, in Hindu Bengali socio-political memory, also is the day of the anti-Bengali Hindu massacre in Noakhali in 1946, in the run up to the communal partition of Bengal in 1947. But that memory is fading. That day is an annual renewal of hope – of prosperity and fortune, through the worshipping of the goddess.

The flight was uneventful, apart from the customary Indian national disrespect and indignity all non-Hindi people face in such flights. In that plane filled mostly with Bengalis and Manipuris, flying between West Bengal and Manipur, no safety instruction was given in the language of either Bengalis or Meiteis or other Manipuris, but in Hindi and English, thus displaying the lack of concern about the safety of non-Hindi people in flights. Even something as important as passenger safety takes a backseat because the Indian Union government is intent on using every opportunity to show the non-Hindi peoples under their administration that who is the boss.

Be that as it may, right after I reached Imphal, when I was on the road to reach my guesthouse, it struck me that the roads were almost completely empty. Almost all shops were closed. This was in the middle of the day, in early afternoon. On inquiry, I was told that today was October 15. “So?”, I asked. As if waking up to the fact that I was an outsider, my informant told me that October 15 was the National Black Day. Hence, the shutdown – part protest and part custom. Now my Manipur political history nodes in my brain got active. Right, it was October 15 after all.

What is October 15 or National Black Day in Manipur? On October 15, 1949, Manipur was merged into the Indian Union under extremely dubious circumstances. Many in Manipur maintain that the merger was outright illegal. We don’t hear about such things because it perturbs the glorified version stories of the Indian Union being a voluntary union of sorts. The other reason is the purported 'insignificance' of Manipur in the 'Indian national' scene. This 'national scene' effectively came into being in the Indian Union after it was proclaimed as a Republic in 1950. Even before the Indian Union was a Republic, it dismissed the democratically elected Praja Shanti party led government of Manipur. Supporting annexation with the Indian Union, the Congress had fought the elections of Manipur and lost. Independent Manipur, with a constitution and a government elected under that constitution and at that point not a part of India, was annexed by the Union of India, which was still didn’t have a constitution and wasn’t a Republic.

Indian Union government (in which there were no Manipuri representatives) brought ‘democracy’ to Manipur by house-arresting the unelected King of Manipur when he was in Shillong and making him sign a merger document under extreme coercion and display of force. Manipur’s elected representative government vehemently opposed this annexation. When an elected government exists, sovereignty does not reside in the body of the constitutional monarch but in the elected assembly. For example, if the Queen Elizabeth II is kidnapped and forced to sign away the independence of the UK to Russia, it won’t be legal since sovereignty and the rights to sign that off resides in the British parliament.

Original sins often create particularly bad ulcers. Excision is not an option for an entity that has creation-myths going back to the age of flying chariots and even further past. Hence 'insignificant' ulcers bleed on as the rest of the body is on sugar-pills, reading history and civics dutifully from official textbooks. That Manipur has maintained its own discourse on these issues was evident in the fact that there were detailed discussion on the disputed annexation issue in the primetime slot in ISTV, one of Manipur’s main TV channels.

After Manipur’s “National Black Day”, the Coalition for Indigenous Rights Campaign (CIRCA) observed October 18 as Manipur National Day, commemorating the first sitting of the democratically elected Manipur assembly on that day in 1948. Surviving family members of the participants of that assembly were honoured. It is not accidental that PRJA chose that same date for its press conference in which it officially announced its formation and participation in the upcoming 2017 assembly elections of Manipur. PRJA convener invoked precisely that moment, when he said on October 18, “Exactly 68 years ago today in 1948, Democracy was inaugurated in Manipur. Historians consider this the first of its kind; clearly even before India had its own constitution in 1950. To underscore the spirit of Democracy, today, October 18 2016, we launched our regional party 'Peoples Resurgence & Justice Alliance' (PRJA). Why 'Peoples Resurgence'? For a long time, we have been denied the right to understand our own history, we have been denied the privilege to feel proud of our glorious History, the current crop of sheepish leadership forces us, the peoples, to forget our past and has created an environment where we must resign ourselves to apathy and frustration. But it is only when we know we are glorious that we can strive for greater glories. We must revive our identity. Without understanding who we are as a people, we wouldn't know where we should be heading. Our identity is our self-confidence. Our identity is our dignity. Our identity is our freedom. Manipur need to 'wake up' and rediscover that it is a society of honor, integrity, and pride”.

In the crowded and cynical electoral political space of Manipur, whether the PRJA with Irom Sharmila Chanu as its mascot will make any dent whatsoever, only time will tell. Few expect them to do the kind of spectacular debut that Asom Gana Parishad or Telugu Desam Party did in their first electoral fight. For starters, PRJA is not the culmination of any broad-based political movement that the others were. But the sentiment it wants to ride upon is palpable in the Imphal valley. While a “superpower” searches its heritage and pride in pre-historic aeroplanes, it seems that some in Manipur are acutely aware of Milan Kundera’s immortal words - the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting. (IPA Service)