Written by Dr. Syed Ahmed
\n(Associate Professor, Department of History,Dhanamanjuri University,Imphal)<\/p>\n
Today, I bought few books at the Imphal Book Fair. One of the books is Jarnail Singh’s Manipur University: Restoring Normality.
\nMy father was a close friend of Jarnail Singh. I still remember he, sometime in late 2000, visited Jarnail Singh’s residence, along with me, at New Delhi. He was then staying at an officers’ colony near Chanakyapuri. By the time, he had left Manipur. Jarnail Singh welcomed us warmly. He had ferociously looking dogs of foreign breed. My father had a long conversation about the situation in Manipur with him over cup of tea and biscuits. He seemed to be very curious to know about Manipur. He showed concerns about the politics and development of our state. Later, my father introduced me to Jarnial Singh. I had by then completed Ph.D from JNU, Delhi. He inquired about my PhD topic and had a short discussion about my academic interest and future plans.
\nJarnail Singh, as everybody knows is one of the finest IAS officers who served in Manipur. He was an officer known for his integrity, girt and humility.
\nAfter coming back from the Book Fair, I quickly glanced through Jarnail Singh’s book, I came across an exciting chapter, entitled Origin of Manipur University. In the chapter, introducing the first PG Institute in the state, JNU Centre at Cachipur, he writes, “In 1972, a Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) Centre was established in Canchipur about 7 km from Imphal. Canchipur happens to be the old palace of the kingdom of Manipur, established by Gambhir Singh (1825-1834). This JNU Centre was not an affiliated university but functioned as a postgraduate study centre under the administrative control of JNU, New Delhi. Even though the people of Manipur at that time needed a central or a state university which could be affiliate colleges in Manipur, the Government of India established only this non-affiliating JNU Centre.”
\nJarnail Singh recollects the commemoration of the foundation of JNU and paying of homage to Md. Alimuddin, the former Chief Minister of Manipur who laid the foundation of the JNU Centre, by politicians, political parties and community leaders. He remembers, “In was 19 November 2018, MU students and some members of the public wanted to pay homage to the late Md. Alimuddin, former Chief Minister of Manipur who had laid the foundation stone of the JNU centre on 19 November 1972 near the Department of Life Sciences in MU. The students and people wanted to remember their former Chief Minister for his contribution to the development of education. Mr O. Joy, a former Minister and a senior politician who belongs to this area, was also there near the foundation stone site. Generally such floral tribute ceremonies are solemn affairs and are done with dignity.It was around 11 am and I was sitting in my office. After some time, I heard a commotion near the foundation stone site which about 75 meters away from my office. I was in the process of getting information from my personal staff when MUSU president M. Dayaman Singh came and informed me that a group of persons with flags of the Manipur Peoples Party (MPP) had gathered near the foundation stone site and had been planning to hoist the MPP flags near the foundation stone site. I rushed to the site. On reaching there I found that about 40 persons had gatheed near the site and about half a dozen of them were carrying MPP flags. They were also carrying baskets full of fruits and flowers to offer during the prayers at the site. All the things were acceptable except the MPP flags. Md. Alimuddin had laid the foundation stone of the JNU Centre as Chief Minister of Manipur even though he belonged to the MPP.Seeing the party flags some students and well-wishers of the late Md. Alimuddin started arguing with the MPP office-bearers. I advised the MPP office-bearers to remove their party flags. After initial arguments and refusal, they removed the party flags, and the people present paid homage to the late Md. Alimuddin.”<\/p>\n
Notably, Pangal Political Forum started observing the foundation day of JNU Centre every year on November 14 in association with the family of Md. Alimuddin. Since then, the family of the former Chief Minister has been observing the day. Veteran politicians O. Joy Singh, Dr. Nara Singh among others had attended the function. O. Joy regards Md. Alimuddin as his political guru.<\/p>\n
The author further narrates the history of the establishment of JNU Centre based on O. Joy’s speech. According to the author, the credit for establishing the Centre goes to Md. Alimuddin. There were sharp differences of opinions among the ruling political leaders regarding the selection of the location of the university. <\/p>\n
Jarnail Singh notes, “After the floral tributes, O. Joy Singh explained the background behind establishment of the JNU Centre in Canchipur in the 1970s there was a serious agitation in Assam against foreigners and its impact on education was bad. In 1972 when Manipur attained statehood, there was no affiliating university in the state; all the colleges in Manipur were affiliated to Gauhati University. Because of the anti-foreigners agitation in Assam, Gauhati University could not hold its annual examinations on time. Keeping in view the serious effect of the Assam agitation on students in Manipur, Md. Alimuddin, the then Chief Minister of Manipur along with his colleagues met the then Prime Minister Smt. Indira Gandhi and requested her to open a new university I Manipur. After listening to the delegation, the prime Minister advised the Chief Minister to meet the Union Education Minister. The Minister informed them that there was no law or regulation under which a new university could be opened in Manipur. However, he suggested that a Centre of the JNU could be opened in Manipur. Since Manipur was a political lightweight state, the proposal for opening of a JNU Centre was accepted. In 1972 there were three heavyweight politicians in the ruling MPP. They were Md. Alimuddin, Sekmai Chaoba Singh and Yumnam Yaima Singh from Oinam. While Yumnam Yaima Singh wanted the JNU Centre to be located near Nambol on the Tiddim Road, Sekmai Chaoba Singh wanted the JNU Centre to be established at Sekmai. It seems that the influence of the then Chief Minister Md. Alimuddin and the willingness of the local people to part with their agriculture lands were the two factors responsible for establishing the JNU centre at Canchipur. Therefore, the credit for establishing JNU Centre at Canchipur goes to Md. Alimuddin.”<\/p>\n
It may be mentioned that JNU Centre gave way to Manipur University. The latter was established on June 5, 1980 under the Manipur University Act, 1980 as a teaching cum-affiliating university within a campus of 1.2 square km (300 acres). It was converted into a Central University under the Manipur University Act, 2005 and officially from October 13, 2005. As per the data (2021), there are 819 Under-Graduates, 3462 Post-Graduates, and 984 Doctoral students. The university has 370 academic staff. The President of India is the visitor of the University, while the Governor of Manipur is the Chief Rector.
\nJarnail Singh cleared IAS in 1974 and allotted Manipur-Tripura cadre. He is a B.Sc Engineering in Electrical Engineering from Punjab University, and Masters in Public Administration in Public Policy and Management from John F Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University, USA.
\nJarnail Singh held several positions as an IAS officer. He was Joint Secretary to the Prime Minister (1996-2004), Chief Secretary, Government fo Manipur (2004-2008), and Secretary to Government of India.
\nJarnial Singh also worked as Advisor to the Chief Minister of Manipur in Infrastructure and Power (2012-2017). As per an order of the High Court of Manipur, he worked as Administrator of MU from October 2018 to November 2020.
\nHe was conferred the PMs Award for Excellencce in Public Adminstration for the Year 2007-08.
\nJarnail Singh is also the author of My Tryst with Manipur and With Four Prime Ministers: My PMO Journey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Written by Dr. Syed Ahmed (Associate Professor, Department of History,Dhanamanjuri University,Imphal) Today, I bought few books at the Imphal Book Fair. One of the books is Jarnail Singh’s Manipur University: … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1320,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_joinchat":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-story","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ichelnewsnetwork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ichelnewsnetwork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ichelnewsnetwork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ichelnewsnetwork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ichelnewsnetwork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ichelnewsnetwork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ichelnewsnetwork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ichelnewsnetwork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ichelnewsnetwork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ichelnewsnetwork.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}