Ramification | When Manipuri women taught Victorian West real feminism

Across the world, on March 8, it has become mandatory to celebrate women’s contribution to the world and their fight for equal rights. A few female icons that students of history and Indian civilisation have been kind enough to refer to in the context of India’s natural predilection towards gender equality are highlighted on this day every year. Stories of Jhansi ki Rani, the warrior queen who took on the mighty British with her child prince strapped on her back, or Gargi Vachaknavi, the philosopher-sage, are all, and rightly so, held as examples of emancipated women in India’s history long before the Western world thought it prudent to begin a discussion on gender equality.

However, as noble a cause as it is, in an India that is slowly reclaiming its pride in its history, we must ask ourselves if our parameters for “emancipated women” are the same as they are for the west. On one hand, we argue that Indian women have always held a place of pride having been given equal status in our civilisation, but on the other hand, there is a constant effort to “match up” and persistently be on the defensive in an effort to articulate how liberal Indian society has been vis-à-vis the west.

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These comparisons make for great material if one wants to compete on alien turf that has very little to do with Indian women or join the bandwagon of yet another token celebration pushed by social media algorithms. But contextually, this sort of comparison between the civilisational experience of Indian women and the values of the West becomes problematic.

In the effort to prove to the West that we had women in our history who were “allowed” to go to war, debate alongside men, or lead rituals, we fail ourselves entirely by choosing to only see the role of women in our history as piecemeal. We are answering questions and entering debates that have no resonance with the experience of a woman born into Indian civilisation.

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India has never needed a Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), whose women members were called suffragettes and fought for the right to vote in the early 20th century in the United Kingdom. The women-only movement was founded in 1903 by Emmeline Pankhurst and engaged in direct action and civil disobedience. The movement is arguably considered one of the defining moments for women’s rights in the West, but not for India.

In India, there were women’s movements that unfortunately have been forgotten by Indians themselves, let alone these movements becoming examples for the West. In 1904, a year after the suffragettes launched their own movement, thousands of miles from the United Kingdom, in one of the last bastions on the far northeastern frontier of India in the state of Manipur, women launched their own movement, Nupi Lan, against the colonial British government. Led by women similarly to the WSPU, but unlike other women’s movements in its agenda, it was perhaps the greatest collective act by women.

The key difference between women’s movements across the world and Nupi Lan movements was that the women of Manipur did not fight for their own upliftment in society, like many other movements across the world, but they, as ever, selflessly took on the mighty British empire to uplift the economic conditions of the state; they fought for the welfare of the entire state. This unique story has been lost in the annals of history simply because Indians never made themselves the parameter to follow; instead, we followed the world.

There were two Nupi Lan movements, one of which broke out in 1904 and the other in 1939. The first Nupi Lan essentially began after the proposed resuscitation of the Lallup, a system of slavery or bonded labour that was practiced by the British government. This act had been abolished, but there had been an attempt to resuscitate this system after the bungalows of British officials Captain Nuttall and Dunlop were burned down. Colonel Maxwell, political agent and superintendent of the state, clearly underestimating the will of Manipuri women, thought it would be a good idea to resuscitate the Lallup system that had been abolished in 1892 and ordered the Manipuri men to give ten days of their month free of charge to go to the Kabaw valley to collect timber to rebuild the bungalows.

Unfortunately, for Colonel Maxwell, he is primarily remembered by the outcome of his hasty actions that resulted in thousands of women coming together to protest, insisting on the reversal of the draconian order, which finally, much to the British government’s humiliation, had to be rescinded.

The second Nupi Lan in December 1939 was a result of the economic policies of the British Government.

With the unregulated export of rice leaving Manipur in famine-like conditions and an enormous increase in the price of rice, it was the women that took centre stage once again. The government tried to control this agitation aggressively, leaving many women protesters dead.

Sir Robert Reid, the Governor of Assam (1937–1942), had noted Manipuri women as being extremely independent and “remarkably industrious”. But what is even more endearing in the great story of Nupi Lan is that Manipuri men supported their women through these agitations, resulting in not just economic reforms but constitutional reforms.

It was only last year, when I went to Manipur amidst the conflict, that the spirit of the women, irrespective of what they had endured, was still intact. I saw women in the cold of the night sleeping outside their homes to protect their families; I saw women take charge in refugee camps; and I saw women still persist for a better future with dignity. I couldn’t help but think, this is the land of Chitrangada, the beautiful warrior princess that Arjuna of the Mahabharat fell in love with and married.

The story of Nupi Lan is one of nation and society above self. That is why Vande Mataram was heard for the first time in Manipur during this agitation. Our history is replete with great men and women working side by side for greater good, and that is the framework that is indigenous to us.

Victorian morals and ideals borrowed from the West that glorified demureness and propagated a certain virtue in vacuousness amongst women needed resistance in the West. Whereas Indian values of duty, righteousness, and fearlessness stand equal before those of Indian men and women. We don’t need resistance; what we perhaps need is to understand and respect our own contexts and allow the world to learn from us.

The writer is an author, anthropologist, and scholar of the northeast region of India. The views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.