The people of Manipur are right to be proud of the Constitution of 1947. It was not an accident of history. It was a deliberate act of statecraft, signed and led by late Suisa Rungsung, representing the Manipur Hill Area Administration, at a time when India itself had not yet framed its own Constitution.
The foundation and the pride
That document was magnificent precisely because it was early. It was precise because it attempted to bind valley and hills, Meitei and Naga and Kuki and all communities, under law rather than under patronage. It was significant because it spoke of a political imagination where human value, human right, justice, freedom and dignity were not gifts from a distant center, but commitments made by a people to themselves.
Retrospectively, the Constitution of 1947 stands as evidence that Manipur knew how to govern itself. It knew that a society cannot move forward without law. It knew that without law, power becomes private.
The present betrayal: Government as private company
Today, that pride is met with pain.
The present Manipur state government is being run like a private company. Decisions are made for the few. Resources are distributed by proximity to power, not by right. What should be public trust has become illegal cohabitation between office and interest.
Introspectively and critically, this is what happens when a constitution is shelved. When the supreme law is ignored, everything becomes negotiable. Contracts replace covenant. Appointments replace merit. Narrative replaces accountability.
And yet, elected MLAs and right organizations are silent.
This silence is not neutrality. It is complicity.
Lawfully and morally, elected representatives are not owners of the state. They are trustees of the Constitution. When they watch the Constitution violated and say nothing, they become accessories to the dismantling of the very house they were sent to protect.
The universal truth: Without Constitution there is no progress
Logically, factually, and historically, no government, no society, and no organization can progress or sustain without compliance to its constitution.
Without it:
1. Human Value erodes — because people become subjects, not citizens.
2. Human Rights collapse— because rights become favors, not guarantees.
3. Justice dies — because the powerful write the rules after the fact.
4. Freedom withers — because fear replaces law.
5. Dignity is auctioned — because only those close to power are heard.
What remains is a system for a few selected people, at the cost of common people being made victims. That is not governance. That is extraction.
Biblically, this is the pattern of every fallen kingdom. When kings forgot the law, the prophets rose. When leaders chased idols, the people were scattered. Proverbs warns: “When the righteous thrive, the people rejoice; when the wicked rule, the people groan.”
The political and social consequence
Politically, a government without constitutional compliance becomes self-destructive politics. It manufactures crisis to hide corruption. It manufactures enemies to hide failure. It manufactures narrative to hide lawlessness.
Socially, the cost is devastating. The hill and valley divide deepens not because people hate each other, but because the state stops being a common referee and becomes a partisan player. Trust collapses. Institutions are hollowed. The youth inherit cynicism instead of citizenship.
Empathetically, we must say this: the common people are not asking for miracles. They are asking for what 1947 already promised them — law, representation, and dignity.
The historical warning
History often repeats itself in human civilization making.
Nations do not fall because of external invasion first. They fall because internal covenant breaks first. Rome did not collapse in a day. It collapsed when law became a tool of the emperor instead of a limit on the emperor.
Manipur stands at that same junction. Will we remember 1947, or will we bury it? Will we restore constitutional government, or will we normalize rule by deal?
The final warning
Therefore let this be stated powerfully, assertively, and imploringly:
1. Manipur has a constitutional legacy. The Constitution of 1947, led by leaders like late Suisa Rungsung, is our inheritance. It must be studied, honored, and operationalized.
2. No government can claim legitimacy while violating the very law that gives it authority.
3. Elected MLAs and civil society organizations must break their silence. Silence in the face of constitutional violation is betrayal.
4. Governance must return to law, not to loyalty. To policy, not to patronage. To the people, not to a private circle.
Wisely and prudently, we must demand: publish the accounts, restore institutions, protect rights, and place the Constitution above every office.
Inspiringly, Manipur once showed India how to have a constitution before India had one.
It can show India again how to return to one.
For without the Constitution, we have no future. With it, we have everything to rebuild — human value, human right, justice, freedom, and dignity for all, not for a few.
The covenant of 1947 is not dead. It is waiting. And the people are watching.
Michael Meiphami Shaiza is Co-incharge of BJP Manipur State Political Programmes and Meetings and President of Ukhrul-based NGO Ecological Rehabilitators’ Association (ERA).
(Views expressed are writers’ own and do not, in whatsoever manner, reflect that of Ukhrul Now)
