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To be or not to be....

By Suroshree Sinha, New Delhi

To a lot of Bishnupriya Manipuri, the fight of being called a "Manipuri" or being denied the same is not uncommon.

Everyone remembers the court cases, the fights, the disliking...but very few people know that there was a time when people were ordered to burn down whatever available information and proof that a community named " Bishnupriya Manipuri" ever existed. They demolished our Mandirs and killed our people.

It was a fight for existance, a fight to make the world sit up and take notice.

In this time of darkness came a person with a ray of hope, Sri Dasharath Deb ( Barman) the first and probably the last Tribal Chief Minister of Tripura, who once said that he has two friends, one a Metei, and another a Bishnupriya Manipuri. The Metei's never called themselves Manipuri at that time. They called themselves " Metei", It was the Bishnupriya Manipuri that proudly called themselves " Manipuri". I cannot deny the existance of the Bishnupriya Manipuries" or else my bossom friend would not exist at all.

This acted as the first milestone that a tribe called the Bishnupriya Manipuri existed came to limelight and people noticed of it. Otherwise there were people who said the Bishnupriya Manipuri language was a detoriated dilect of Bengali.
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Comments

  1. Kungo Thang16 November 2007 at 16:23

    I like to thank suroshree a lot for her concern on our identity issue... yes the minister was right in his point (can u pls cite reference?),
    the "bishnupriya" tag came after late 30's to distinguise ourselves from meiteis,otherwise we were just "manipuri"s, our people identified themselves and their language as "manipuri" in the past. still now we introduce us as manipuris when we meet others.

    ReplyDelete
  2. b n sinha17 November 2007 at 00:55

    yes it is genuinly an agenda of conflict between Meiteis and Bishnupriyas in other part of the country also...

    ReplyDelete
  3. Unknown19 November 2007 at 04:55

    very nice piece, very much historical. can u put more posts regualarly. you articles are definitely given a new insight and background knowledge. anyway love to know about ur grear grand father, and his contribuation to the upliftment of the society. we all must pay respect to his contribution.

    do post.

    ReplyDelete

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