(A cerebral blogger, a heavy metal freak, a self confessed book worm and one of the youngest serving Bishnupriya Manipuri bureaucrats - Readers, we take great pleasure to bring on board Mr. Udayan Sinha on www.bishnupriyamanipuri.org as another important addition to our list of  discerning writers, a claim we assume you would gladly endorse once your eyes travel through his maiden article on this site:  Bishnupriya Manipuris: An Endogamous Community. 
So close those extra windows on your computer, get some coffee and get ready for some serious mind massage!)

I have a friend and a childhood playmate who is a computer engineer based at San Francisco in the US. What is different about him from the scores of other engineers is that he does not work for any of the big Corporations out there but has a software company of his own. He is the Vice President and an equal partner with an associate. He drives a BMW and has a beautiful house in the bay area. This guy has his life made. Wow, what a credit to our community, don’t you think? But, here comes the sad part. He does not belong to the Bishnupriya Manipuri community any more because he has a Bengali wife. The wife is a post grad herself and teaches in a school somewhere there. She was my friend too. We were all located in the same colony in those days. What a shame that we cannot possibly include these two talented people into our severely limited community talent pool. You know, they could have contributed something. This is simply one of the many sad instants that are recurring rather frequently across the Bishnupriya Manipuri landscape. With increased ethnic diversity and changing social attitudes among many people, younger people are entering into such marriages more often, also because they have more opportunity at college and work to meet people of different ethnic backgrounds but similar class and occupational connections.

The Bishnupriya Manipuri community is an endogamous community. Endogamy is the term applied to the custom prevailing in certain societies whereby a member of a community, clan, or other social unit marries within the group. In some groups (like ours), members are forbidden from marrying a member of a different social unit. We practice endogamy very strictly as an inherent part of our moral values, traditions or religious beliefs. It can be said that we practice this for the purpose of preserving racial purity. Endogamy encourages group affiliation and bonding. Endogamy is a common practice among displaced cultures such as ours attempting to make roots in new locations as it encourages group solidarity and ensures greater control over group resources (which may be important to preserve where a group is attempting to establish itself within an alien culture). It helps minorities survive over a long time in societies with other practices and beliefs. Such practices help to highlight community identity, uniqueness, and status in opposition to neighboring groups with whom marriages are discouraged. Endogamy is often applied on a society-wide level and assists in defining group boundaries. The Bishnupriya Manipuri community is however exogamous in the sense that marriage within clans, gotras and blood relations is prohibited. Exogamy serves the principal function of preventing the ill effects of inbreeding. Exogamy more generally refers to the mating of individuals who are relatively less related genetically. This benefits the offspring by avoiding the chance of the offspring inheriting two copies of a defective gene, and also by increasing the genetic diversity of the offspring, improving the chances that more of the offspring will have the required adaptations to survive. Authorities differ as to the advantages and disadvantages of endogamy as a device for the preservation of racial purity. Some assert that inbreeding is likely to cause a degeneration of the genetic stock; others contend that hereditary defects introduced through marriage outside the group are more likely to cause deterioration. But the more prevalent opinion is that the isolationist practices of endogamy may lead to a group's extinction rather than its survival. For instance, while long serving to preserve their religion, the Samaritans' practice of endogamy now threatens its very existence.

The Samaritans are an ethno religious group of the Levant (Western Asia). Ancestrally, they claim descent from a group of Israelite inhabitants who have connections to ancient Samaria. Religiously, they are the adherents to Samaritanism, a branch of Judaism separate from the historically mainstream form of Judaism. As of November 1, 2007, there were 712 Samaritans according to their tally, living almost exclusively on Mount Gerizim near the city of Nablus in Samaria (now a part of the West Bank) and in the city of Holon in Israel. Refusal to intermarry, in conjunction with their non-acceptance of converts (pl. note the similarity with the BM practice), has led the population of this ethnic group to decrease to fewer than one thousand. Such a small gene pool has contributed to genetic disease within the community.

Another argument advanced by many scientists against endogamy, especially where it is practiced for the purpose of preserving racial purity, states that intermarriage among races has often produced types that combine the best elements of the two parent races and are intrinsically superior to both. Claude Levi-Strauss, a prominent sociologist, introduced the "Alliance Theory" of exogamy, that is, that small groups must force their members to marry outside so as to build alliances with other groups. According to this theory, groups that engaged in exogamy would flourish, while those that didn't would die out, either literally or because they lacked ties for cultural and economic exchange, leaving them at a disadvantage. There have been such rapid changes in business and technology that new fields open up where people of achievement can create new hierarchies through marital alliances across diverse groups. These links also serve as a uniting force between groups and affect their social mobility in a positive way. Assets of one group become accessible to the other. I have made a modest attempt to present an impartial and unbiased view of the marital system in our community. On one hand we stand to gain in genetic, cultural and economic diversity by opening up while on the other hand we risk diluting our cherished and unique ethnicity by gradually allowing ourselves to be assimilated into the mainstream. Readers are free to form their own opinions or draw conclusions. Names and places have been intentionally omitted to preserve anonymity.

Comments are welcome.