Health Minister Phungzathang Tonsing’s recent comments on hill-valley unity is a welcome change from earlier utterances by both hill and valley leaders. Nothing could be achieved by mouthing appeals or merely shouting from the rooftops on hill valley unity, if actions do not follow. How very true. Yet no one including the ministers has come up with ideas on the possible course of action to bridge the hill valley divide. In the last few years, hill valley relations have reached an all-time low while the divide is ever increasing. For lack of imagination among the political leadership and the absence of effective governance, the hills are drifting away further while political assertions are becoming louder and more vociferous. Looking back in history, the hill-valley divide was actually kick started by the British. The British took over Manipur administration on 27 April 1891. The British succeeded in developing a separate administrative set up for the hill areas of Manipur in line with the overall British policy towards administration of the Northeast, while leaving the valley to the whims of the one of the most orthodox Hindu kings of Manipur. It was during Maharaj Churachand’s reign that Hindu orthodoxy peaked with the now infamous ‘mangba-sengba’ in full flow. It was a more of a punitive device to ensure religiosity within the Hindu fold and many a dissenter was excommunicated by the king. The Hindu kings were so orthodox that they consider all foreigners as ‘impure.’ Any kind of connection with these foreigners was forbidden be it intermarriage, relationships, sitting, eating and drinking with them. In contrast, hill people were largely employed in the King’s service or admitted in the palace for ceremonial, religious or customary purposes. Although the Mera Haochongba festival is more of an occasion wherein the Khullakpas of the hill areas bring annual tributes to the king, the interplay of a close interaction is evident while disproving marginalization. In such a cultural background, the supposed spillover of ‘mangba-sengba’ on the hill people as highlighted by some groups should be examined. An incident of a member of the Hindu Mahasabha asking for payment when some hill people had come and volunteered for conversion has been cited repeatedly by groups to drive home the allegation of the valley people looking down on the hill people. Even if such an incident took place it should not be construed as the overall attitude of the valley people as a whole. The British divide and rule policy served as a permanent wedge between the peoples of the hills and the valley. It also resulted in a paradigm shift in the attitudes of the hill people towards ‘resisting full integration and remaining autonomous’ as opined by an economic historian. Leaving aside the controversy of whether the hill people were actually under the Manipuri kings or not, intellectual honesty is needed to retrace or identify the linkages between the valley and hills and the common bond which had been holding together the peoples of the hill and the valley down the history. However tenuous it has become in recent times, the bond still holds. So it appears that the task before us is to first identify the bond or linkages. Even today, there exists the “Ngai’ system between certain families of the hills and the valley in some parts. In such a system the head of a family from the hills has a Meitei Ngai or ‘relative’ in the plains. Whenever a Ngai visits the village of his ‘Ngai’ he will eat and stay there only. The kinship terminology between the other members of the Ngai family would be the same. This is an example of the social bond which has been existing in these parts. Yet, there are other bonds like economic bonds or linkages which need to identified and strengthened.
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