By Amar Yumnam
Korean television serials are very popular in a very robust way in Manipur. The strength and transformation of the South Korean economy were based on exports of manufactured goods. But now television serials as cultural goods are also a strong export item. This is what as should be in a context of expanding globalisation. The reduction in both space and time is the understandable impact of globalisation. This creates a convenient atmosphere for the trading of cultural goods like television serials. In other words, what we observe in the Korean case is absolute positive loop of globalisation processes. The country has experienced what Benedict Anderson calls the phenomenon of “long-distance nationalism” in which the identity of the people gets submerged with the global identity without in any way needing to forego the original local identity; the compression in space and time consequent upon the globalisation processes creates an opportunity to resolve the transitional identity crises in a much wider and inclusive way.
Compare this with the scenario prevailing in Manipur in so far as identity issues are concerned. We now experience rising inter-ethnic distances. The Indian approach to culture without any meaningful scope for compression of time and space in inter-ethnic interactions has only led to rising frequency of phenomena like unashamed indulgence in rape, the Kuki-Naga conflict, and the lock, stock and barrel political only articulations of inter-ethnic issues; the atmosphere for inter-ethnic relationships is just surcharged with negative voltages. Something like what Yuval-Davis describes as the price the price of multiculturalism has happened in its intense form in the North East and Manipur: “a basic problem with multiculturalism is the assumption that all members of a specific cultural collectivity are equally committed to that culture. It tends to construct the members of minority collectivities as basically homogeneous, speaking with a unified cultural voice. These cultural voices have to be as distinguishable as possible from the majority culture in order for them to be perceived as being “different”; thus the more traditional and distanced from the majority culture the voice of the “community representatives” is, the more “authentic” it will be seen to be within such a construction.” I must hasten here that I am not saying I despise multiculturalism as such. Multiculturalism, however, has to be followed only in accompaniment of social and economic policies for enhancing inter-ethnic interactions and facilitating evolution of cultures. In the absence of these social and economic policies, the capabilities of the individuals are neither created nor nurtured to flourish in a world of reducing time and space. In the Indian case, the approach to multiculturalism has been marked more by ridiculous appeasements for a few in a community and not by wide-based interventions. This has had the unwanted effect of compromising the capability of the community for the sake of a few closed to the powers that be; the powers that be are increasingly twin in Manipur and the North East as we move farther from the provincial capitals. This has further had two retarding effects. First, the state machineries have been conveniently allowed to be ineffectual. Second, the voices of the community and the individuals have been socially dampened and economically non-existent.
In a globalising world, the members of a developing society would also be increasingly globalised in space leading to its reduction. But they will not be necessarily going for compression of time in terms of culture. As evident from the Korean, the Japanese and the Chinese experiences during the last five decades or so, the original identity has also been experiencing spells of assertion from a globalised space and time. The original identity crisis of fear of losing it in a globalised context has now been transformed into a kind of strength in a world of reducing space and time. In the case of the other countries, this transformative experience has been more rather than less uniform across communities. This has not been the experience in the Indian case, and so also in the case of Manipur. The Indian policies since 1947 have been rather epitomes of exclusion and pretensions of cohesiveness. The same policies have been repeated at the provincial levels as well. This is how the issue of black money gets larger. This is also how the base of political support gets disunited among the Non Resident Indians. In the case of Manipur too, the Thabal Chongba being planned in Chicago by the Meeteis based in North America could also be allowed to transform into a cultural event for all the Manipuris.
This is exactly where the critical crisis of Manipur lies. The South East and East Asian development experience has been one where the local history has transformed itself into a globalised history in which the transitional identity crises of communities are allowed to evolve with the changing times. In the case of Manipur, the policy approaches of both the provincial and the country-level governments have been marked by subversively and covertly enhancing segregation of identities rather than evolution. This has been most recently visible in connection with the policy-bluffs around the so-called Look East Policy. This is where we need to look for a new personality and new commitment in the forthcoming parliamentary elections as getting unfolded in Manipur.