STMT™: Urgent and open appeal to de-notify and withdraw Chibu Stone Inscription and stop constructing Chandrakirti Memorial Park at Chivu at the Indo-Myanmar border

Photo of Chivu Lake near the controversial Chadrakirti Memorial Park, Indo-Myanmar Border.

17 May 2020

From: Tribal Intellectual Forum, Manipur

To:

Shri N. Biren Singh

Chief Minister of Manipur

Imphal, Manipur 795001

Subject: Urgent and open appeal to de-notify and withdraw Chibu Stone Inscription and stop constructing Chandrakirti Memorial Park at Chivu at the Indo-Myanmar border

Dear Hon’ble Biren Singhji:

Warmest greetings! Hope this letter find you in the best of your health.

We, the undersigned under the rubric of Tribal Intellectual Forum, Manipur, are deeply concerned and disturbed over the unusual enthusiasm shown by you and your government in the midst of Covid19 outbreak to edify and use the site of Chibu Stone Inscription as a proxy to construct a Memorial Park after the name of the controversial king, Chandrakirti Singh at Chivu, near Behiang in the Indo-Myanmar border. While we appreciate and welcome your effort to promote tourism and development through Behiang in the Indo-Myanmar border as a part of India’s Act East Policy, your calculated move to use Chandrakirti Memorial Park as a mascot to promote tourism and development not only contradicts your professed avowal on Chingmi-tammi amatani (hill-valley people are one) but may also endanger inter-communal peace, harmony, and the promotion of tourism and development at large in Manipur. In our considered opinion, which is duly supported by dense colonial historical records, your pet project to promote Chandrakirti Memorial Park around the pivotal site of Chibu Stone Inscription, which is protected under the Manipur Ancient and Historical Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1976, stems from a willful distortion and manipulation of history. Unless you are really keen and determined to perpetuate this manipulated and distorted history as a proxy to snatch away tribal land, open up a deep historical wound and willfully insult the dignity, self-respect and pride of the tribal people, we request you to immediately abandon this project, de-notify and withdraw the Chibu Stone Inscription under the 1976 Act mentioned above. Please allow us to elaborate.

As you might be aware, the Chibu Stone Inscription is founded on a blatant lie at best and a manipulated and distorted history at worst precisely because it falsely attributes the British’s military victory over the Lushai chiefs during the Lushai Expedition, 1871-72 as if it was the victory of Chandrakirti Singh, whose participation was only as a ‘contingent force’ in the Expedition. The official signboard in Chivu falsely claims that the stone inscription erected in 1872 during the reign of Chandrakirti Singh commemorates his ‘victory over 112 rebel Lushai chiefs’. In fact, Government of Manipur (GoM) used this spurious historical version to prevail upon the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) to recognize this and record the blatant lie that the Chibu Stone Inscription ‘records the victory of king Chandrakirti over the rebel chiefs of Lushai in AD 1872’. ASI further registers that ‘it refers to the subjugation of 112 villages and capturing of 4 Lushai chiefs in the course of an expedition led by Souwaijamcha Balaram Singh Major and Kangabam Cha Thangal Major assisted by one British officer’. This blatant lie and manipulated historical version is recorded in pp.120-21 of the book, Indian Archaeology 1987-89: A Review authored by M.C. Joshi, the then Director General of ASI and published by ASI in 1993.

To be sure, the British’s military expedition, famously known as the Lushai Expedition, 1871-72 is very well documented in the colonial writings of Alexander Mackenzie, The North East Frontier, R.G. Woodthorpe, The Lushai Expedition, and Carey and Tuck, The Chin Hills, vol.1. There are also solid archival sources on this historical event which showed that the Manipur contingent, drafted by the then officiating Political Agent of Manipur, Major General W.F. Nuthall under instruction from and command of Brigadier General G. Bourchier, the commanding officer of the Cachar column, had never directly participated nor entered into the Lushai Hills during the Lushai Expedition. Major General W.F. Nuthall had, in his report on the Lushai Expedition to C.U. Aitchison, the then Secretary to the Government of India, Foreign Department dated 12 April 1872, underscored Bourchier’s instruction that the main task of the Manipur contingent was merely to ‘watch’ and ‘restrain’ the “eastern Kamhow’s tribes” from joining the ‘Lushai chiefs’. Although this contingent was instructed by Brigadier General Bourchier to headquarter themselves at Moirang and not to move beyond Tsek-la-pi (near Moirang), the headquarters of the southern frontier posts of Manipur, in breach of this instruction they marched far beyond this to encamp themselves at Chivu located in what has now become the Indo-Myanmar border. When the British completed their military expedition in early March 1872, the Manipur contingent was asked to return to their base in Imphal. On March 7, 1872 when the Manipur contingent was about to return, one of the important chiefs of the tribal people, Goukhothang, and his men happened to pass through this camp whence upon Balaram and Thangal, the two majors commanding the Manipur contingent, ‘treacherously seized’—to borrow Bourchier’s words—Goukhothang and his men. Goukhothang subsequently died in jail in 1873.

The construction of Chandrakirti Memorial Park at the site of Chibu Stone Inscription therefore evokes this wounded historical past as the tribal people continue to see blood in the hand/name of Chandrakirti Singh.

Instead of being sensitive to this wounded historical past, and the fact that the Chibu Stone Inscription was based on willful manipulation and distortion of history, GoM had invoked ‘public interest’ to acquire 607.50 sq. metres of land in Chivu way back in 1989 and protected this site by invoking the Manipur Ancient and Historical Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1976 in 1993. Acquisition of tribal land through deceit, willful manipulation and distorted history is patently illegal and must be revoked immediately. Needless to say, the land acquired by GoM on the above grounds must be restored to the rightful owner immediately and your government should immediately abandon Chandrakirti Memorial Park and initiate legal process for the denotification of Chibu Stone Inscription.

We have observed with deep concern and anguish your unusual haste to complete and inaugurate the Chandrakirti Memorial Park in the peak of the Covid19 outbreak and national lockdown declared by our Prime Minister Narendra Modi by sending three high ranking state officials including two local officers from Churachandpur district on 19 April 2020 to inspect the construction site at Chivu. We understand that Manipur needs to promote tourism and development by taking full advantage of the opportunities being offered by India’s Act East Policy. However, you and your government should not, and must not, do this on the foundation of willful manipulation and distortion of history and unless you deliberately want to hurt the sentiments, self-respect and dignity of the local tribal people. Any misadventure to insistently promote Chandrakirti Memorial Park around the centerpiece of Chibu Stone Inscription would be seen as an open and willful attempt to affront the self-respect, dignity and pride of the local tribal people in the Indo-Myanmar borderland.

We fervently hope and pray that you reaffirm and walk the talk of your avowed commitment to chingmi-tammi amatani by immediately abandoning the Chandrakirti Memorial Park, de-notify and withdraw the Chibu Stone Inscription. As insights from historical experiences unambiguously present before us, durable development and progress in deeply divided societies like Manipur or elsewhere in the world can only be built upon the foundation of inter-communal peace, harmony, and mutual trust and respect. We hope that you will weigh your choices very carefully so that posterity may remember you favorably as one of the constructive agents who not only bridges hills-valley divide in Manipur but also fosters development and progress.

(Prof. Jangkhongam Doungel)

Mizoram University

Convenor