Remembering Second World War: Memory, Politics and Deception
By Jangkhomang Guite
This paper concerns with the politics of remembering IIWW in Manipur. It will be observed that commemorating the IIWW in Manipur took at least three turns, all competing and contesting for dominance or recognition. First, the colonial state remembered its soldiers and officers in some War Cemeteries in the region silencing the role of local people. Second, after India’s independence these colonial monuments have been silenced and instead remembrance is now given to those soldiers and officers who fought the colonial armies such as the INA soldiers who immediately assumed status of patriots and freedom fighters of freed India. At the third level we can see that there was a contested conflict and marginality among different communities of Manipur who have competed to place and identify themselves, not as the colonial armies, but those of their opposite, the INA, the freedom fighters of the nation. It was within this contested marginality among these last groups this paper is particularly concerned with.