Spectres of Sanamahi Revivalism

On 24 January 2024, thirty-seven members of the Manipur Legislative Assembly and the two Lok Sabha members of the parliament adopted five resolutions at the lawn of the Kangla Uttra inside the Kangla Fort in Imphal. The Fort has been pivotal in the state’s socio-religious and political history. The members were summoned by Arambai Tenggol, a socio-religious organisation under the patronage of Manipur’s titular Monarch. The day is now regarded as historic for Meitei unity. Meanwhile, the resolution received endorsement from various Meitei frontal organisations, which deemed it legitimate and aligned with protecting India against external security threats.

Source: https://www.e-ir.info/2016/01/13/review-marxs-concept-of-the-alternative-to-capitalism/ (image by Shubert Ciencia)

Adopting the resolution signifies the consolidation of Meitei ethnoreligious assertations intertwined with a political dimension influenced by Hindutva politics. Since then, the Meiteis Sanamahi revivalist movement has become contagious across ethnicities, and its spectre haunts the everyday politics of the state. In this background, this essay proposes a Marxist explanation of religion’s role in the present violence in Manipur related to Meitei ethnoreligious mobilisation. It claims that the violence has drawn the Meiteis into Friedrich Engels’ term of ‘false consciousness.’ To overcome consciousness, the Sanamahi revivalist movement must be contextualised in light of the state’s shifting sociopolitical complexities influenced by Hindutva politics. 

The Meiteis ethnoreligious assertions can be traced back to the Sanamahi revivalist movements, which began in the 1930s against the dominance of the Brahma Sabha of the Manipur monarch. Since then, it has evolved into a sociopolitical movement that has restored Meitei’s dominance as the core ethnic group while also influencing other ethnicities, particularly the Nagas and other intermediate tribes within the movement. As a result, the people of the state live in an ethnoreligious political atmosphere. Interestingly, the emergence of the movement appears to have enhanced Karl Marx’s viewpoint on religion:

“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”

The above phrase first appeared in the journal Deutsch- Französische Jahrbücher under “A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right”, published in 1843.

During the peak of the violence, the Sanamahi revivalist movement thrived as a tool for sociopolitical control of the state via religious institutions now possessed by the ruling elite to enforce ‘political obedience’ among the general public. Yet, the movement is overly politicised to disguise the alienation of ordinary people in a democratic society. The movement has normalised violence and the essence of the state as conflict-ridden, with unprecedented records of human rights violations and martial law, which exemplify legal impunity for armed forces operating in the state notwithstanding their misconduct. Thus, the movement is being reinterpreted as a mobilising apparatus to integrate the state into the Indic civilisation under Vinayak Damodar Savarkar’s concept of ‘Hinduness’ while ignoring the harsh realities of the state.

This results in a state of ‘false consciousness’ in which Meiteis, in particular, ethically fails to perceive its concerns with the systematic amalgamation of the state and the uprooting of its glorious sovereign order. This has legitimised the violence with little resistance from urban elites, poor people, and Meitei insurgent groups formed to reclaim the state’s lost sovereignty. In another sense, the movement now gives a soothing illusion to Meiteis, who are powerless to resist the state’s geo-ethnic assimilation and exploitation of Sanamahi. As a result, disassociation from the cause and the need for a state-wide independent socioreligious order.

This assertion has indirectly hindered Meitei ethnonationalism movements and the execution of constitutional measures to prevent violence, although it remains concealed from the general public. As a result, the movement is being institutionalised to alter the state’s existing sociopolitical order and suppress potential counter-revolutionary actions by Meiteis seeking to restore their lost sovereignty and homogenise the state’s different ethnicities. In this context, the Sanamahi revivalist movement must be contextualised in light of the state’s shifting sociopolitical complexities. To do this, Meitei revivalists have to resist the ‘dominant ideology’ and defend Sanamahi against Hindutva’s cultural hegemony.