GUWAHATI: The Pangals – Muslims of Manipur – are miffed over the alleged “provocative” profiling of their community.
Recently, some civil society groups in Manipur had organised a seminar on the settlement and identity of the Pangals but they allegedly did not invite scholars or leaders of the community.
The Delhi Association of Manipur Muslim Students (DAMMS) appreciated the initiative of the organisers in trying to understand the Pangal society better. However, it said when the subject of discussion was the identity of the Pangals, there should have been maximum participation from the Pangal community.
“Since the topic of the seminar was on the identity of the Pangals and their relationships to other communities, proper invitations should have been given out to all important stakeholders in time,” the DAMMS said in a statement.
It considered the manner in which the seminar was organised as fishy as “no proper procedure was followed for an open call for paper and none of the major Pangal civil society organisations and proper resource persons were duly invited”.
The organisation suspected that a conspiracy was at work as the “stakeholders included in the seminar are politically aligned to different groups and ideologies”.
To counter the “controversial” narrative, it asserted that the Pangals are not “settlers” but have been in existence in Manipur from before 1606 AD.
“We would request the organisers to engage with all stakeholders regarding the Pangal community in the future. There is a constant effort to fabricate the history of the Pangals,” the DAAMS said.