Representing Local Participation in INA–Japanese Imphal Campaign

Abstract

In the history of World War II in eastern India the participation of local people is the least attended subject due to the belief that the whole tribal belt was with the Allied forces. This is untrue. Those groups who had directly come into contact with the invading forces were supporting them in various ways. This is especially true to the people of Manipur. This article makes the point that Kukis had contacted the Indo-Japanese forces even before the invasion and later helped them, during the War, not only in terms of materials, labour, intelligence services and campaigns but also in term of men of war. This assistance was, however, located as a separate resistance movement embedded within the larger war. The Kukis joined the War largely to shake off their bondage under the Raj in a desperate ‘way out’. They did it against the constituted colonial authority on their own understanding of the situation in which they found themselves in an unacceptable situation. It was a political action base on a conscious, pre-mediated, and deliberate decision directed towards a specific local objective and having to do with local grievances.