Ethnicity And Ethnic Fragmentation

The primordialist explanation cannot explain the development of new identities out of the melting pot. Manipuri society is the collectivity where the primordial attachments of the ethnic groups had been melted down. In order to understand the ethnicity and ethnic fragmentation, we have to look for a new paradigm that will enable us to answer the question of ethnic formation, ethnic interests, ethnic fragmentation that took place during the colonial and post-colonial periods of the Third world.

Circumstantialist explanation

Fredrik Barth, a student of Edmund Leach, took ethnicity as a type of social process in which the notions of cultural differences are communicated. Barth was influenced by Edmund Leach’s Political System of Highland Burma (1954). According to Barth and other members of this school, the changing identities of ethnic actors are because of rational choice. The ecological, economic, political circumstances make it the instrument. So, ethnic group is rather self-ascription, subjective group.

A larger section of Bishnupriyas fled away from Manipur along with a good numbers of the Meiteis (including the Pangal) to Assam, Tripura and Bengal (specially the places, now in Bangladesh), at the wake of Burman occupation and atrocities in 1819. The Burmans installed puppet kings in Manipur and occupied the state for seven years. Out of fear of the tortures inflicted, many Manipuris fled westwards. The Burmans killed thousands of Manipuris and had decimated the population of the state to one-third. Those who fled away settled in various places in these foreign countries and had been living there for about one century. However, they had a strong sense of oneness with the Manipuri identity and had preserved the age-old traditions.