Conservation Of Manipur Essay

RECLAIMING THE GODS AND REVIVING THE OLD TRADITION OF THE MEITEIS OF MANIPUR:

REVIVING THE OLD TRADITION:

Manipur is situated on the northeastern border of India with Myanmar and comprises 8500 square miles. Its population is around 1.8 million. It is surrounded on all four sides with nine ranges of mountains, and the heartland of this state is the fertile valley, which is the homeland of the Meiteis. The Meiteis have a highly developed culture with an extensive written literature in the ancient Meitei script dating back a thousand years or more.

The bulk of studies on non-western new religious protest movements have been concerned with the interface between traditional religions and Christianity, and this has broadly informed a good deal of

The first was at root a popular protest against the abuses feudalism. The religio-cultural protest itself had two aspects. On the one hand, there was a reaction from the Meitei Hindus, unused during two centuries of Hinduism in Manipur to such oppressive use of religious power. Thus begins the ‘mangba- sengba’ (unclean/untouchable or clean/touchable) controversy of the 193 On the other hand there arose also a conscious movement to cast off Hinduism altogether and revive the old Meitei tradition. This neo-traditionalist movement became as the Sanamahi movement or sanamahism, after the name of the traditional Meitei household deity “Ibudhou Sanamahi”. Its origins may be traced to Naorem Phullo (Laininghal Naoria), a Meitei born in Cachar in 1888. Phullo had a varied career as police officer and teacher, and he travelled widely in Manipur. Tradition has it that while still at school in Cachar he was taunted that the Meitei had no culture and no written script, and that it was this that first decided him to study Meitei culture in depth. Around 1930 Phullo resigned from the government service and founded the Apokpa Marup in Cachar. By 1934, it had spread to the Manipur valley. Initial plans were made, under the leadership of Takhellambam Bokul (Sanamahi Bokul), to begin a branch of the movement in Imphal, though the formal establishment of this way delayed by the Japanese invasions on India. Phullo was strongly anti- Brahmin and involved in sharp controversy with Hindu leaders in Manipur. In 1936, he confronted the king and the palace pundit, Atombapu Sharma, and was excommunicated. He died in 1941, but his work continued to prosper. Four years after his death a branch of the Apokpa Marup was formed in Imphal, under the name of the Manipur state Meitei Marup, initially with eighteen members, with Bokul as its president. Its resolutions included decisions to revive Meitei culture, to