Colonial encounter and the hill-valley dichotomy in Manipur: A critical analysis

Manipur was an ancient kingdom located on the India-Burma frontier which had enjoyed both the challenges and triumphs of her long and rich history. Cheitharol Kumbaba, the royal Chronicles of the Meitei Kings had recorded a rough account of the Kingdom from the reign of its first King, Pakhangba in 33 A.D. till the early 20th Century. Historically the Imphal Valley was the seat of the Meitei Kings with the surrounding Hills inhabited by Tribals who are broadly categorised as the Nagas settling predominantly in the North and Kukis, dominating the South. While it was the Monarchy in the Imphal Valley, the hills, on the other hand remained autonomous under the tribal traditional chiefs and chiefdoms and their relation was not always cordial. The British Colonial expansion and eventual intervention in Manipur in the 19th Century ruptured the pre-existing status quo between the hill tribes and the Meitei Kingdom whose effect persisted to the post-colonial Manipur State. While recent works on Manipur often attributed the Hill-Valley dichotomy to the colonial ‘divide and rule’ policy, this paper argues that the Hills and the Valley historically had always been different with their relation marked by persistent contestation and negotiations. It was only the Colonial state which brought them together under some semblance of administrative unity. This study employs various sources like archival records, books, research papers and newspaper articles to analyse the process of the triangular encounter between the Colonial state, Meitei Kingdom and the Hill tribes and its legacies in post-colonial Manipur.