According to the April 13 Sengai Express, some 20 persons stormed into the building, poured kerosene on the bookshelves, and locked employees into offices. Staffers were able to escape, however, and the only injuries reported were two patrons who suffered burns as they rushed out of the building.
“Manipur’s knowledge bank has gone up in smoke,” Chief Librarian H. Devendra Singh told the Indo-Asian News Service, “and with it we have lost our state heritage.” Attorney Koteswar Singh described the arson in the April 14 BBC News as a “Taliban-style act.”
The arsonists belong to the radical MEELAL group that wants to abolish the Bengali alphabet used for the past 300 years and replace it with Manipur’s ancient Meetei Mayek script. The group began an increasingly militant campaign in February, threatening to attack newspapers and publishing houses if they did not switch scripts.
In claiming responsibility for the arson, a MEELAL spokesman said, “The books in the library were all written in Bengali script and so we set the building on fire.”
Singh said in the April 14 Kolkata Telegraph that the state government would approach the National Library in Kolkata for additional copies of books on Manipur.
Posted April 15, 2005.