Disaster in Manipur: An Imperial Episode
Fifty years before the great struggle with the Japanese on the frontiers of India, writes Antony Brett-James, Manipur in 1891 was the scene of a gallant Victorian action.
The north-west frontier—for generations the British had known and talked of it, and had no need to enquire which two countries it divided, for “the Frontier” spelt tribal territory from Quetta to the Khyber Pass and on northwards to Gilgit. The Indian Army served there, year in, year out, and many a British regiment too, as they guarded the mountain passes, manned the forts, and sparred with the fierce and wily tribesmen.
How different, and how unknown, was India’s north-east frontier! That, too, had its mountains, but they wore close-woven cloaks of jungle. That, too, had its tribesmen, but they were not always at war with the Government’s armed forces.
The province of Assam, made up of a warm, densely populated valley with rich tea gardens on the one hand, and, on the other, of the surrounding hill tracts and their varied peoples, lay remote and inaccessible beyond the unbridged Brahmaputra.
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