Many of us have scant knowledge about Manipur: that it is a far Maway place in the North-East of India, that there is something called the Manipuri dance, that there are tribals there and lately there have been tensions and violence between ethnic and religious groups... Here comes Manoshi Sinha, who, along with Dr. Ankita Dutta and Vladimir Adityanath, co-authored a remarkable book, titled The Manipur Conundrum: History Exodus. Conversion, to enlighten and inform us.
Manoshi Sinha is a noted researcher of Indian history and ancient temples and an author of several books including the best-selling Saffron Swords series. Dr. Ankita has a PhD on the Bhakti Movement in North-East India in the backdrop of the Islamic invasions and she has been associated with various research projects in the region since then. Vladimir Adityanath is an engineer by profession and an observer of the North-East. He has been actively working in the region by collecting eye-witness accounts and preparing ground reports of violence and atrocities committed upon Hindus in Manipur and Meghalaya.
A common civilizational bond connects the people of Bharatvarsha.
The 12 Jyotirlingas and the 51 Shaktipeethas spread across Bharat from the tip of the Southern Peninsula to the Himalayan heights are an apt testimony of this cultural unity. In this regard, this book firstly sets the background: Manipuris are a very ancient people and they possess a Hindu ancestry, having been associated with Arjun and Chitrangada from the Mahabharata period, dating back to at least 5,200 years!
There are two sects of the Manipuris Meitei Manipuris and Bishnupriya Manipuris. Both these sects, even though they have some clearly Hindus. Indeed, even if a majority of linguistic differences, are them are Vaishnavites, almost all of them worship Hindu Devis and Desatas. I never knew that the Manipuri Hindus have been persecuted since times immemorial, first by repeated invasions from neighbouring Burma, which goes on even today in the form of illegal immigration.
We also learn that the Leftist historians, as usual, hid cleverly this region's Hindu past: firstly they came up with fake, narratives such as the famous Raja Meidingu Pamheiba introducing Hinduism as the state religion, changing his name to Gharib Nawaz and conquering most of Burma. Secondly, they made it appear as if the Moghols had conquered the whole of India, and as well as the North-East, whereas this was never the case.
Another great upheaval in Manipuri history has been the conversion activities of the Christian missionaries after British colonization. This has radically changed the demographic landscape of Manipur and its neighbouring states, besides introducing a social, spiritual, and cultural imbalance in the society. This phenomenon is not only visible in today's Manipur between Christians and Hindus, but also in the neighbouring states such as Tripura, Arunachal Pradesh, and Meghalaya.
According to the famous book Naga Hills and Manipur: Socio-Economic History by BC Allen, published in 1905, there were only eight Christians in Manipur in 1901 and today, according to the Census of 2011, they are more than two million of them! As this book rightly says "The summer of 2023 saw the genocide of the indigenous Manipuri and Gorkha communities of Manipur". The authors explain that some of the root causes of this problem were evident as early as the 1950s itself.
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