Northeastern Indian state of Manipur has Imphal as its capital. The Indian states of Mizoram to the south, Assam to the west, and Nagaland to the north, form its borders. Additionally, it shares boundaries with two areas of Myanmar: Chin State to the south and Sagaing Region to the east. There are 22,327 square kilometers in this state (8,621 sq mi). The official language of the state, Meitei (also known as Manipuri), is the most extensively spoken tongue. It is used by the Meiteis themselves as well as by other communities that speak a range of Sino-Tibetan languages, such as the Nagas, Kukis, and Zomis. For more than 2,500 years, Manipur has served as a hub for commercial and cultural interchange throughout Asia. It enables migration of people, cultures, and religions by linking the Indian subcontinent and Central Asia to Southeast Asia, East Asia, Siberia, territories in the Arctic, Micronesia, and Polynesia. The Kingdom of Manipur was one of the princely nations back when the British Indian Empire was still in existence. Some Manipur residents pushed the princely rulers for democracy between 1917 and 1939. The princely state of Manipur began negotiating with the British government in the late 1930s over its desire to remain a part of the Indian Empire rather than Burma, which was being split off from India. The advent of World War II in 1939 ended these negotiations. Maharaja Budhachandra joined India by signing an Instrument of Accession on August 11, 1947. Later, on September 21, 1949, he executed a Merger Agreement that combined the kingdom with India and made it a Part C State. Groups in Manipur later opposed this union, claiming it was forced through and finished without consent. A 50-year insurgency in the state seeking independence from India as well as recurrent incidents of violence between ethnic groups in the state are the results of the dispute and divergent future visions. Over 1000 people were violently killed by the fighting between 2009 and 2018.
