Items of clothing in the leirum or luirim motif have sparked off traditional ownership claims in Manipur Thongkholal Haokip The Statesman, 27 July 2020 On 14 April 2020, Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his tele- vised address to the nation regarding the second phase of the lockdown wore a traditional scarf as a facemask. The political circle in Imphal was […]
» Read moreIn the hills of the North-east, lockdown and quarantine measures primarily stem from the time-honoured cultural understanding of communicable diseases and epidemics By Thongkholal Haokip The Statesman, 1 June 2020. In these times of the Covid-19 pandemic, hill areas of the North-eastern region were the first to voluntarily enforce a lockdown and people had taken steps quite early on to […]
» Read moreThongkholal Haokip The Statesman, 27 April 2020 Perpetrators of the arson last month in Manipur’s Chassad village seem to have gone unpunished Chassad village in Manipur was in the news for more than a week for the arson committed by its neighbouring villages last month. Located at the district headquarters of the newly formed Kamjong district in the North-eastern hills […]
» Read moreProtests against the Citizenship Amendment Act in Meghalaya are more about demanding the implementation of the Inner Line Permit system in the state Thongkholal Haokip The Statesman, 16 March 2020. On 28 February this year, a clash between protesters and supporters of the Citizenship Amendment Act broke out in Ichamati village near the Meghalaya- Bangladesh border. One of the protesters […]
» Read moreAs the country simmers in protest against the amended Citizenship Act, tribal areas in the North-east have been uncannily calm. Thongkholal Haokip The Statesman, 20 January 2020. The Parliament of India passed the controversial Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2019 on 11 December, and it received the assent of the President of India, Ram Nath Kovind, on 12 December turning the bill […]
» Read moreGiven the fragile ethnic relations among groups with conflicting experiences, history must be written carefully By Thongkholal Haokip The Statesman, 25 November 2019 On 16 October 2019, the Government of Manipur declared 17 October as a “restricted holiday” for Kukis in the state to commemorate the valour and sacrifice of their forefathers, who fought a resistance war against a colonial empire […]
» Read moreBy Thongkholal Haokip The Statesman, October 14, 2019 Although the Manipur uprising of 1891 has been widely commemorated in the state, the Kuki uprising from 1917-1919 still has no place in public memory Two political occurrences were considered to be the “most significant” during the British rule in Manipur — the Manipur uprising of 1891 and the Kuki uprising from […]
» Read moreThongkholal Haokip The Statesman, (New Delhi), 12 August 2019, p. 14. The presence of faculty as executive members of students’ unions in colleges in India, particularly in the North-east, goes against the rationale with which the unions should be set up On 22 June this year, I got a chance to visit Churachandpur Government College for the first time. The […]
» Read moreThe severe liquidity crunch in the state primarily stems, not from a lack of funds, but from failure of governance. Thongkholal Haokip | June 24, 2019 On 12 June, the Government of Manipur put on hold all recruitment processes in its various departments and undertakings. This notice came after the Reserve Bank of India instructed the State Bank of India […]
» Read moreVoting patterns in the Outer Manipur Parliamentary constituency exhibited the deep ethnic divide between groups, which were in conflict in the past and continue to simmer By Thongkholal Haokip The Statesman, 10 June 2019. The hills of Manipur, a hotbed of ethnic conflicts in the 1990s, went to polls on 11 April. The Outer Manipur Parliamentary seat is reserved for […]
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