Kangleipak Historical and Cultural Research Centre

The aim of this website is to webcast the research findings of Kangleipak Historical and Cultural Research Center (KHCRC), Kangleipak. Kangleipak is the name of a place located in the eastern most part of the Indian subcontinent, and it shares an international border with Mayanmar (Burma). Kangleipak is currently known as Manipur. Very less is known about Kangleipak to the outside world, despite the fact that Kangleipak has indeed a long and interesting history. Broadly, Kangleipak's history can be divided into three parts namely

1) Pre-Hinduism (before 18th century),
2) Hinduism (since 18th century), and
3) Post-Merger with India (since 1947/1949) periods.

The second and third periods overlaps and are well documented as they are of recent times. So a natural academic question is what happened to the Pre-Hinduism period? To answer short, during the rule of a newly Hindu convert king called Pamheipa (later known as Garibaniwaz) destroyed and burnt down almost all of the Pre-Hinduism historical documents / scriptures in an unfortunate incident to Hindunise the population. Garibaniwaz was successful in his venture and converted most of his subjects into Hindu, through imposition of extreme fears and punishments to those who resisted. As a result, it is difficult to reconstruct the pre-hinduism history of Kangleipak, although not impossible. The approaches adopted by the KHCRC are deciphering rare pre-hinduism scriptures (locally known as PUYA), understanding the original (non-hindu) cultures, traditions, folklore, linguistic analyses etc. Although, an interesting archeological finding of pot-shreds belonging to 18,000-20,000 BC at Kangla, suggests of a very ancient human civilization in this part of the world, much work remains to be done on scientific archeological mappings of Kangleipak.

It would not be an understatement to say that venturing such a gigantic step to fill in historical and cultural research vacuum on Kangleipak is not an easy task, and it cannot be completed in a short time. Having felt the need to explore Kangleipak's history and culture academically, Wangkhemcha Chingtamlen founded the privately self funded Kangleipak Historical and Cultural Research Center at Sagolband Thangjam Leirak, Imphal, Kangleipak. Today, KHCRC is proud to say that it has published 24 research books and about 100 articles on Kangleipak. In addition it also has produced an audio recording of a Puya. It may be noted that to disseminate KHCRC's research findings, all the publications are available in this website for 'free'. Printed copies are available at KHCRC office at nominal cost.

KHCRC would be happy to get critical feedback on its publications.