Dissident political leaders from the Indian state of Manipur on Tuesday said they were unilaterally declaring independence from\u00a0 India \u00a0and forming a government-in-exile in Britain.<\/p>\n
The former\u00a0princely state became part of India in 1949, two years after the country won independence from Britain, but has since seen decades-long violent separatist campaigns.<\/p>\n
Narengbam Samarjit, external\u00a0 affairs minister in the self-declared Manipur State Council, said the exiled government would push for recognition at the United Nations.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will run the de jure exiled government here\u2026 from today onwards,\u201d he told reporters in London, after a declaration of independence first announced in Manipur in 2012 was read aloud.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will seek recognition from different nations\u2026 to become a (UN) member. We hope many of the countries will recognise our independence,” he added .<\/p>\n
Manipur, one of India’s smallest states with a population of about just 2.8 million people, is one of the so-called “Seven Sisters” – a group of restive northeastern states.<\/p>\n
The region, encircled by five other countries and connected to the rest of India by a sliver of land arching over Bagladesh, has been wracked by armed conflict and instability.<\/p>\n
It has spawned more than 100 fighter groups over the decades whose demands range from autonomy to secession.<\/p>\n
Violence has been part of daily life for decades in Manipur, which borders Myanmar, with a strong presence of the Indian military.<\/p>\n
The state has a strong ethnic mix, and its Meitei, Naga, Kuki and Pangal communities are all deeply committed to preserving their own cultural autonomy.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dissident political leaders from the Indian state of Manipur on Tuesday said they were unilaterally declaring independence from\u00a0 India \u00a0and forming a government-in-exile in Britain. The former\u00a0princely state became part of India in 1949, two years after the country won independence from Britain, but has since seen decades-long violent separatist campaigns. Narengbam Samarjit, external\u00a0 affairs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":11296,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-india","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11294"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11297,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11294\/revisions\/11297"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vosa.tv\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}