One of the seven clans
The Meitei polity was formed by the unification of several clan principalities, of which Moirang, on the western shore of Loktak lake, was among the most important and the last to be absorbed. Its tutelary deity Thangjing is still worshipped at the Moirang temple, and the Lai Haraoba festival there preserves the pre-Vaiṣṇava Meitei ritual in its fullest surviving form.
The Moirang Kangleirol, the cycle of stories associated with the principality, includes the tale of Khamba and Thoibi — the poor orphan and the princess — which is the great romance of Meitei literature and the basis of a dance-drama still performed.
1944
On 14 April 1944 the flag of the Indian National Army was raised at Moirang by Colonel Shaukat Ali Malik, the first Indian soil on which it flew. The INA advance with the Japanese was halted a few weeks later at Imphal and Kohima.
The INA memorial and museum at Moirang commemorate the episode, which gives a small lakeside town in Manipur a place in the national narrative of independence that the rest of the valley's long history has never received.
Further reading
- Kulke, Hermann. A History of India. Routledge, 2004
- Hawley, John Stratton. A Storm of Songs: India and the Idea of the Bhakti Movement. Harvard University Press, 2015
- Nugteren, Albertina. Belief, Bounty, and Beauty: Rituals Around Sacred Trees in India. Brill, 2005
- Talbot, Cynthia. Precolonial India in Practice. Oxford University Press, 2001
- Basham, A. L. The Wonder That Was India. Sidgwick & Jackson, 1954
See also
This entry was last revised on 1 August 2026.