In the popular imagination of mainland India the north-east holds a multi-dimentional

imagery. It is at once savage and sublime, a place of conflict and peace. This Janus faced
perception has been a creation of multiple discourses created via the media and information
gathered from those who have lived there for some time. It can be argued that with the neo-
liberal turn the economy took in the early 2000s and the shock migration that it induced from
the north-eastern states, this perception has changed a bit in the last decade in the
metropolitan cities, but this change is marginal at best and has accomplished nothing better
than creating a new underclass of migrant workers for the service economy.
The main picture of the north-east is that of great natural wealth, great diversity of ethnicities
and world-views and also violent conflict and economic backwardness.
There are many ways that a perceptual image is constructed, and one of the main methods of
this is by stressing on the poverty and violence that afflict the region. In current paradigms of
developmental logic, the north-eastern states embody this Janus position again; by, on the one
hand a backward region of India that needs urgent economic and infrastructural development
and on the other hand consistently scoring some of the highest points in terms of longevity,
child mortality, literacy and gender equality.
If there is one statement that can sum up the north-eastern condition, it will be one of a
rhizome ala Deleuze and Guattari. But, perhaps even the conceptual tool of a rhizome is
unable to grasp the life-logic of such an incongruent boxed category, the north-east.
The main constructions of understanding the people and society of this geography has been to
look at it in terms of monopictoral ethnicities, the ethnicities themselves being occified
through colonial constructions and increasingly through the governmentality of the Indian
nation-state. So, scholars are habituated in looking through the categories of, lets say the
Nagas, the Ahoms, the Bodos, the Khasis...
What this has resulted in is that other forms of social stratification that bears on the
socialscape of the region has been marginalised as the humans embodying those identities
themselves have been cleansed into neat categorical terms, so we have the general category
(for example the Meitei Brahmans, the Assamese Brahmans etc), the Scheduled Castes, the
Scheduled Tribes and now, the Other Backward Classes. This enumerical logic has merged
into the dominant discourses of the region and interacts with another exertion of identity, viz.
Ethnic identity.
What my paper will posit is another imagery of looking and comprehending the rhizome of
the north-east by looking at religion as a categorical tool in the state of Manipur. And for this
exercise, I have taken the Manipuri Muslims as a basis. This is against the backdrop of social
marginalization effected on people professing the Islam faith throughout the eastern side of
India. For example, we have the case of the Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar where the
dominant Burmese Buddhist population has come to a conflict and resulted in the killing,
looting and rejection of the citizenship rights of the Muslims in that country. On another
level, we find the conflict arising in the states bordering Bangladesh due to the influx of
Muslims from those states into the Indian side, resulting in periodic violent responses to the
migrants.
However, within these on the face positions, there is also a community of Muslims in
Manipur that have lived there for hundreds of years now and that merges this monocultural
and singlefaced categorizations, being at the same time both a Manipuri and a Muslim
without being an outsider. We need to consider the many implication this has for the study of
society in Manipur specifically and north-east on a larger scale because it ruptures the way
scholarship is going on about the north-east. But more importantly, what we need to look at is
the marginalization and second class citizenship that even these people live by, embodying
the larger discrimination and exclusion that the Muslim minorities face all over India. So, the
aim of this paper is to construct a picture of understanding discrimination and marginalization
in the north-east by taking the example of Manipuri Muslims and entering the debate through
the construct of religion instead of ethnicity. I understand that sometimes, both of these
categories merge or interact, but that is kept aside.
History of the Manipuri Muslims
The Muslims in Manipur are termed as Meitei Pangals and have been said to first come in as
prisoners of war in 1606 A.D. in the reign of King Khagemba. They were of mainly Bengali
origin and came from Sylhet in present-day Bangladesh and Cachar in present-day Assam as
part of mercenary soldiers hired by the Kachari King in waging the war with Manipur. After
being captured, 1000 soldiers were provided land and settled by the King in a place called
Moirankhom Yaishul in the Imphal Valley. They were allowed to inter-marry with the local
women and specific localities came up wherein they settled under royal approval. As a result,
many socio-cultural practises were assimilated into their lifestyles and they also started
forming specific clans as per Meitei social stratification. Presently, Pangals are mainly
concentrated in Thoubal and Imphal East Districts and less widely found in Bishnupur,
Chandel and Churachandpur. As far as habitation is concerned, Irene (2001, 40) writes
R.K. Sanahal states that Lilong (A Muslim dominated inhabitation today) and
Mayangkhang (in Chandel district) were the first places allotted for Muslim settlement.
Although the habitation pattern could not be traced in complete detail; information on
some important Muslim settlements (villages) is available. The main occupation of the
Muslims was agriculture. A village could be inhabited by both Meiteis and Muslims,
but generally, the latter established themselves in seperate localities of the same valley.
The majority of the Muslims settled on River embankments because of the fertility of the
soil, the possibility of additional income from rivers (Fish). Road transport was not
developed and rivers afforded and easy means of communication.
Socio-Economic Conditions of Manipuri Muslims
As per a state government survey done in 2004 Manipur has more than more than 20 lakh
Muslims, thereby accounting around 9% of the total population. Muslims lag behind other
communities in all the socio-economic indicators.
Compared to that of other communities in the state, the educational standard of the Muslims
is very low. Just 58.6% Muslims (male 75.0% and female 41.6%) are literate. Total literacy
rate of the State is 70.5% (male 80.3% and female 60.5%). Enrolment rate of Muslim
children is still very low, while drop-out rate is high. Enrolment of Muslim students in
colleges and universities is exceedingly low. Poverty can be cited as the main cause for the
low educational attainment of the Muslims in the state.
But there are other factors which also keep the Muslims educationally backward. They are
lack of good quality schools in Muslim localities, social custom of early marriage of girls,
lack of governments attention, etc. The poor quality of teaching, absentee teachers, poor
school infrastructures of the government schools deter Muslim parents from sending their
children for education. And they could not afford the costly private schools. Besides the low
representation of Muslims in government employment sector and the perception of
discrimination in securing jobs make them attach less importance to education.
Only 6.2% of the total Meetei-Pangal households are staying in Pucca houses and only 9%
of them are using tap water as the source of drinking as against 24.8% of Manipur. Only
6.6% of the household belonging to the community have only septic tank latrine.
However, in the last few years under the PMs 15-Point Programme the state government
through the Department of MOBC has started scholarship and coaching schemes for Muslim
students. Schemes for infrastructural development of schools like construction of school
building, hostels, toilets, etc. has also been taken up.
The work participation rate of the Muslims is 36.8% (male 43.7% and female 29.6%). The
states average is 43.6% (male 48.1% and female 39%). More than 50% of the Muslims are
engaged in agricultural activities, while just 7.6% Muslims take up household industrial
activities for livelihood. Large percentage of Muslims are engaged in various categories of
unorganised economic activities like shop and hotel-keeping, business, slaughtering and
selling of red meat, assembling and repairing of cycles, tricycles and motor vehicles,
rickshaw-pulling, carpentry, motor-transport, leather-tanning, etc.
Muslim women, like the womenfolk of other communities, are a big economic asset. They
engage in various agricultural activities, including commercial cultivation of vegetables.
Muslim women are also seen in large numbers in the markets selling vegetables, fish and
other merchandise.
Most of the Muslim households fall in the low income group. About 41.23% Muslim
households are in the monthly income group of Rs. 2000 and below, while a mere 3.06%
have monthly income of 10,000 and above. The average monthly household saving is only
Rs. 845.
There are just two Muslim representatives in the state assembly. Manipur has a Haj
Committee, a Wakf Board and a Minority Commission. (source: Dr. Syed Ahmed,
Radianceweekly.com)
i
ii
Status of Pangal Women
It has been established through countless empirical studies that women bear the brunt of any
kind of discrimination, be they economic, social or cultural. In this general trend, we can also
further surmise that generally the condition of Muslim women is worse off than women from
other religions. What is also true is that women bear the majority of the load when it comes to
providing for the family and maintaining a household while being severely handicapped in
getting access to resources than act as enablers for their well being.
According to Socio-Economic Survey of Meetei-Pangals-2004 (SESMP-2004) conducted by
Directorate of Economics & Statistics and Directorate of MOBC Manipur, 71.71% of the
total population of community is out of the labour force while as many as 90.12% of the
female population are excluded from labour force.


From the above table, its clearly indicate that the percentage of Meetei-Pangal female
workers is much lower from its counterparts. Moreover, almost half of female population of
the community i.e 41.40% engaged in household activities followed by 35.31% of unpaid
helpers in household enterprises. While, a meager percent of 6.39% of the total female
population of the community are working as regular salaried/wage employed as against
21.65% of their male counterparts.
The 1999 World Survey on the Role of Women in Development: Globalization, Gender and
Work published by the UN stresses the seminal role of emancipation and empowering
women in the larger developmental agenda because it has been established through wide
ranging empirical studies that a percentage increase in the well being of one female in the
household translates to multiple benefits to others and for social upliftment.
Meitei Pangal women face severe difficulties in terms of human development parameters for
which no detailed empirical study has been carried out till date but the larger markers of
development like access to education, healthcare, employment opportunities and political
participation can be considered to be central to gaining insight into this highly discriminated
category. If development is muti-dimentional so is poverty and thus concerted effort is
needed to identify critical policy issues that need to be addressed for women specifically.

A group of Muslim vendors putting their stalls at a street corneriii

Conclusion
The Sachar Committe Report 2006 identified broad markers wherein Muslims in India are
way below the average, they being: literacy rates, population growth, sex distribution,
education, government employment, access to bank credit, access to social and physical
infrastructure, consumption and standard of living. All across this spectrum, it can be argued
that the Muslim population of Manipur also identifies and shares the problems highlighted by
the report. But to get a finger on the pulse we need a more detailed in-depth report which is
presently not available.
Further on, there are problems which are specific to the north-east and to Manipur in
particular like drug abuse and violent conflict. We all know that the bottom portion of society
always pays a proportionately higher price for social ills and hence, the condition of Muslims
in Manipur can be gauged further by larger issues of radical Islam and counter responses to it
by the other communities living in the north-east and nearby which further stigmatises them.
Larger political agendas have also the potential to create fissures in Manipuri society.
Finally, I would like to argue that the Pangals are not only Muslims but Manipuri Muslims
and hence the whole experience of being an integral part of the culture of the society with
their own distinctiveness should be allowed to exist without interference from outside or
within, what this means is that the cultural heritage of the community should find a space in
the milieu as part of emancipation and assertion without always having to feel like a
subsumed community living in ghettoised neighbourhoods and lagging behind in basic living
standards.
References:
Ahmed, Syed. Development Packages for Muslims in Manipur. Radiance Viewsweekly,
February 28, 2010. Accessed November 17, 2013.
http://radianceweekly.in/portal/issue/bjp-strategically-distances-itself-from-
hindutva/article/development-packages-for-muslims-in-manipur/
Irene, Salam. The Muslims of Manipur. New Delhi: Gyan Publishing House, 2010.
kanglaonline.com. A Case Study on Economic status of Meetei-Pangal (women) in
Manipur. Accessed November 17, 2013. http://kanglaonline.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/12/Meetei_Pangal_Women_Case_Study1.pdf
prsindia.org. Summary of Sachar Committee Report. Accessed November 17, 2013.
http://www.prsindia.org/parliamenttrack/report-summaries/sachar-committee-
report-high-level-committee-to-examine-the-socio-economic-and-educational-
status-of-the-muslim-community-in-india-660/
United Nations. 1999 world survey on the role of women in development: globalization,
gender and work. United Nations, 1999.





i
Source: http://islam.ru/en/node/85
ii
Source :
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.mmofmanipur.org/2013/07/village-
iftar-organised-in-manipur/&safe=active
iii
Source:
http://twocircles.net/2011jun13/national_seminar_opportunities_and_challenges_manipuri_muslim_women.
html