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Manipur : And now the Script Agitation |
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The violent agitation by the MEELAL (Meiteis Erol Eyek Loinshillon Apunba Lup, or the United Forum for Safeguarding Manipuri Script and Language) in the valley districts of Manipur exposed among other things, the law and order vacuum in the state.
The burning of the Manipur State Central Library which destroyed more than 1,45,000 books on 13 April, 2005, is eloquent testimony to this. In the run up to this atrocious event, MEELAL activists have also been snatching Manipuri textbooks in Bengali script and making bonfires of them.
All the while, the Okram Ibobi Singh-led Congress government has been merely ‘waiting and watching’ in the hope that the storm would eventually spend itself. But it has refused to subside. MEELAL wants the ‘immediate’ replacement of the Bengali script by the indigenous Meitei Mayek and all school textbooks in the latter script from the current academic session.
Disregarding appeals, MEELAL intensified its campaign and added an economic blockade over and above its textbook burning spree. A dozen or so freight trucks that entered Imphal against the blockade call ended up in ashes, in the heart of the capital, in full public view and under the very nose of the government.
At one stage, MEELAL issued a diktat that all vernacular dailies should begin using Meitei Mayek by 1 March. The newspapers initially refused, provoking MEELAL activists to raid newspaper distribution centres and intimidate hawkers.
In protest, newspapers in the state stopped publication for three days until a settlement was negotiated under which MEELAL was to allow the distribution of newspapers if the vernacular newspapers reserved some space on the front page for news written in Meitei Mayek. The government continued its watching game.
The Manipur Legislative Assembly, on 21 February, shot down by a voice vote majority a private member’s resolution for the immediate switch of scripts, although the government gave a commitment for a phased changeover.
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