by Nilanjana Biswas (nilanjanabis@gmail.com )

"Nothing is impossible or unreachable
In that place where truth is lucid and pure
No excuse exists for untruth
Human wrongs are punished
Not excused or ignored
- Irom Sharmila Chanu

On the 2nd of November this year, in the north eastern state of Manipur, the young poet, Irom Sharmila Chanu, will enter her tenth year of unbroken hunger fast. To make sure that not even accidentally does a drop of water break the solemn vow she undertook nearly a decade ago, she uses dry cotton to clean her teeth. The fast is not a punishment, she says in a documentary interview: “I think it is my bounden duty at my best level”. Her eyes are closed. Each word is uttered slowly and carefully, as if fired in gold in the crucible of her enduring body.

Irom Sharmila’s vow to eat nothing, drink nothing, give up footwear and leave her hair unoiled and uncombed until the draconian Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 (AFSPA) is lifted from her home state is a simple and audacious act of protest. It was the Malom massacre of Nov 1, 2000, where ten innocent persons were gunned down by security forces in Malom village, Manipur, which convinced the young poet that she must act. The next day she announced her fast. While Irom Sharmila has staunchly stuck to her resolve, the State’s response has been unbelievably apathetic: ordering forcible feeding through a nose tube as well as periodic arrests for attempted suicide together with  a complete disregard of her demand for the repeal of the AFSPA.

It seems that the Indian State has chosen to deal with the ‘Irom Sharmila problem’ in quite the same way as it has dealt with the ‘northeast problem’ all these years. In terms of development opportunities and the wellbeing of the people of the northeast, the State has provided no more than a ‘nasal feed’ to the region. Whenever the people, alienated and bitter, have demanded the right to self-determination, the State through tyrannical laws has ordered their cold-blooded killing. Just as, in response to her demand for peace and justice, Irom Sharmila has been repeatedly arrested. A strange paradox indeed that an individual is refused the right to die and a people the right to live.

The word ‘democracy’ is itself a paradox in the northeast. The region is among the most highly militarized in the world with one armed personnel for every ten citizens. Its main languages, which belong to the Tibeto-Chinese family, were not recognized as Indian languages until the recent Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution.

The northeast region shares 4500 km of common border with neighbouring countries and only 37 km with India, at what is known as the ‘chicken’s neck’ at Siliguri. It is yet another paradox that Indian trade with these neighbouring countries is conducted not through natural land routes based in the northeast but through ports at Kolkata, Vizag, Chennai etc. Years of the systematic ‘development of underdevelopment’ have led to a situation where the northeast imports all its products from mainland India.

In Deepti Mehrotra’s recent book about Irom Sharmila, the tireless satyagrahi is quoted as saying: “There is no development… There is no industry. Everything is imported. Earlier we had rice in plenty, but now we do not grow enough for our needs. There are no jobs, for any job a huge bribe has to be paid. My campaign is for the right kind of development. The politicians are not thinking of development.” What she says is true not only of Manipur but of the entire region.

What does it mean for a region to be importing each and everything it needs? For a start it means skyrocketing prices. It is estimated that by the time a bag of cement is moved from Kolkata to the northeast, 60 percent is added to the original cost. The region’s own produce is siphoned away for a pittance. For example, Assam produces one-fourth of India’s petroleum but receives no revenues since processing is done outside the state.

Living under the constant shadow of the gun, the people of the northeast are bitter and angry. It is hardly surprising that many tribes of the northeast have expressed a desire for self-determination. From colonial times to the present day, the region and its people have only been starved, bled and plundered.

To protect its colonial interests, the British in the 19th century deliberately broke up the northeast’s extensive trade links with its neighbours – Bhutan, Burma, Tibet and Indo-China; constructed the area into a strategic ‘frontier province’; and built railways and roads to haul out resources like tea, timber, oil and coal from the northeast. Cut off from its natural
markets, the region slowly began to starve.

With Independence, little changed. Colonial policies were left untouched. The Indian nationalist looked upon the tribes of the northeast with the same eyes as those with which the white man had once regarded him. Beyond the Hindu-dominated areas of Assam, he saw nothing but bands of ‘savages’, ‘head hunters’, ‘dog eaters’: stereotypes based on deep ignorance and contempt that many mainland Indians carry even today.

As early as in 1929, the Nagas petitioned the Simon Commission asking to be treated differently from the rest of British India. They were not the sole tribes asking for independence. The Manipuris, whose political identity was consolidated through years of anti-Burmese and anti-British agitations, expressed a similar wish. So also the Mizos.

Self-determination was promised, first by the British during the Partition years and later by independent India. What was given instead was martial law to counter the secessionist threat. Draconian measures - tactics that the British had used to crush the Quit India movement - were adopted to suppress the Nagas. After a 1951 plebiscite conducted among Naga tribes revealed a near hundred percent desire for a sovereign Naga state, Pandit Nehru ordered large-scale troop movement into the northeast. Laws were speedily enacted to grant greater powers to the armed forces. A bloodbath in Naga areas followed: large-scale killings, rape, loot and arson; the destruction of entire villages. The promulgation in 1958 of the highly-repressive AFSPA, whose repeal is Irom Sharmila’s sole demand, is rooted in this blood-soaked history.

Often described as an evil and unlawful law, the AFSPA is imposed in areas that the Central government, in consultation with the Governor, declares to be “disturbed”. What constitutes a “disturbed area” is however not specified. Once an area is declared “disturbed”, any armed forces personnel can shoot to kill on the assumption that to do so is necessary to “maintain the public order”. He can arrest without warrant any person against “reasonable suspicion” who he feels “has committed or is about to commit” an offence; and he may enter and search any premises to make this arrest. Most dangerously, the law gives armed forces personnel immunity, that is, legal protection against prosecution.

Like other repressive laws, AFSPA introduces a state of siege. It makes the gun the sole symbol of governance. Indian democracy is beaten into people’s heads with rifle butts; kicked into their rears with boots; hammered into the soles of their feet and administered to their private parts with electric shocks. A sleeping man may be pulled out of his bed and interrogated with a gun at his forehead. A woman returning from the fields may be picked up, raped, shot and dumped in a ditch. Through the AFSPA, extrajudicial killings enjoy parliamentary sanction; in other words, cold-blooded murder becomes standard procedure, established by law.

If the ‘encounter killing’ on July 23, 2009 of the unarmed 27-year-old Chongkham Sanjit, shot dead by Manipur’s Rapid Action Police Force in a busy marketplace in Imphal, had not been captured by a photographer and splashed across the pages of a national daily, the official register might have recorded nothing more than just one more counter-insurgency operation.

Draconian laws like the AFSPA routinely lead to what are euphemistically called ‘excesses’ – unacceptable violations that are duly covered up through the immunity clause.

State repression breeds rebellion. Counter-insurgency strengthens it. For every self-determination movement that is suppressed militarily rather than engaged with politically, dozens spring up.This has been the experience of not only the northeast but also other places like Jammu and Kashmir wherever the desire of self-determination has strong cultural, political and economic roots.

States like Manipur, which have experienced a record number of ‘encounter killings’ in recent times are on the boil. Youtube is a good starting place for anyone who wishes to get a sense of the popular  Manipuri sentiment towards the Indian state. The language doesn’t matter. The searing images and the faces of protestors speak for themselves. You realise suddenly that as a citizen of India you are part of the problem.

The State has dealt with the ‘northeast problem’ not just militarily but in many other deeply problematic ways. One of them has been to pour money into the region. According to Mehrotra: “Parties in power in Delhi have flooded Manipur with funds, but in so doing deliberately created a coterie of contractors who take 95 per cent of the funds back to Delhi."

Jairam Ramesh estimates that the total expenditure on the northeast is almost Rs 30,000 crore a year for a population of roughly 32 million. This comes to approximately Rs10,000 rupees per person per year. The money that’s being poured in, Ramesh points out, is funding “politicians, expatriate contractors, extortionists, anybody but people working to deliver benefits to the people for whom these expenditures are intended…”

This money has created thriving black markets, fuelled cross-border trafficking in drugs and small weapons. As a result, the region’s youth are wasted by HIV-AIDS, alcoholism and drug addiction. Added to this is immigration from Bangladesh and Burma into the states of Assam, Tripura and others which has impacted the demographics of these states. Across the region, there are many active insurgencies today with the policies of the State aiding ethnic fragmentation. The State, says a student leader, is constantly dividing the people, setting one tribe against another, and then throwing bones between fighting dogs. Multiple problems thus besiege the region today.

Connecting the multiple problems and taking them to the streets in democratic protest are women’s networks throughout the northeast. When 32-year old Thangjam Manorama’s bullet-riddled, raped and mauled body was found in July 2004, a day after the Assam Rifles picked her up from her home, Manipuri Imas(mothers) stripped naked in front of the Assam Rifles base in Imphal, screaming: “Indian Army Rape Us!” and “We are all Manorama’s mothers!” The searing protest was an expression of immense anger. Anger borne out of years of having to pick up the brutalized bodies of dead sons and daughters, with no hope of justice.

Rape and sexual violence are regularly used as political weapons by the State to shame communities and break the will of the people. However, the darkest moments of rape and murder by security forces in the northeast have given birth to groups of women rising in protest to become active guardians of the community. The Meira Paibis of Manipur, the Naga Mothers Association, the Kuki Women’s Association, Bodo Women’s Justice Forum, the Karbi Nimso Chingthur Asong, and Assam Mahila Sachetan Mancha. These are among the strongest voices for peace in the region. They are also among the strongest voices for justice.

Peace and justice cannot be separated. The first step towards justice would be to return a semblance of normalcy to people’s lives. This, first and foremost, would mean removing legislation like the AFSPA that creates a war-like atmosphere. According to Babloo Loitongbam of Human Rights Alert, whose consistent work has helped uncover the extent of human rights abuse in Manipur: “First of all, the AFSPA must go. Then, let there be an open debate on the question of self-determination. Create structures where people feel their wellbeing is at last being honored.”

The threat of insurgency is the State’s routine excuse for prolonging the enforcement of the AFSPA. It deliberately shuts its ears to the voices of millions, led by women, crying out for a political solution to their problems. Millions want the violence to end. They want peace, starting with the withdrawal of the AFSPA from the region. This legacy of democratic protest by women’s collectives is Irom Sharmila’s legacy. Without it, she might have just as easily been drawn to a more violent course.

The struggles of the women of the northeast has found resonance in far-off Kerala where, in 2007, Theeradesa Mahila Vedi, the women’s wing of the Kerala Swatantra Matsya Thozhilali Federation(KSMTF), gave a call for the repeal of the AFSPA in support of Irom Sharmila – a call that was supported by nearly 1000 women’s groups across the country. Their call letter said:

“As a women’s group we strongly campaign for a life of dignity and for freedom from sexual and other forms of violence not just in Kerala but everywhere…Towards this end, we extend our strongest support to Irom Sharmila Chanu, the Manipuri activist poet, who has been on indefinite hunger fast since November 2000, demanding the withdrawal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958, as an essential prerequisite to bringing peace."

In May this year, the rape and murder of two women in Shopian in Jammu and Kashmir, another state where the AFSPA is in force, was a shocking indication of the scale of impunity that security personnel enjoy under this draconian law. Under pressure, the Home Minister, Mr P Chidambaram, was forced to state in July in Parliament that the government would consider reviewing the AFSPA. He qualified however that this would be done at an appropriate moment.

Again the failure to hear the people’s demand! Repeal the AFSPA, the people have been saying for so long now, there is no question of review!  Even if, for the sake of argument, one grants that it is possible for killers to judge themselves and review the laws that grant them impunity, what would constitute, one wonders, an appropriate moment to do so? How many more rapes, how many more killings, how much more suffering would it take? And more importantly, how much more patience are the people of the northeast expected to have? “I must be patient”, says Irom Sharmila , “For the time being, I must endure.” Already in her tenth year of fast, she displays the endurance and patience of a true yogi. In her poems she writes in an almost mystical vein of a “place with no birth and death"; a “place where truth is lucid and pure.”

Engaging an immoral State in moral battle, Irom Sharmila has today become a symbol of hope not only for the people of Manipur but for people everywhere suffering State tyranny. This brave daughter of Manipur is indeed a worthy custodian of truth, lucid and pure.

(To mark the tenth year of Irom Sharmila’s historic hunger fast, hundreds of organizations and individuals are coming together during the period Nov 2 to 6, 2009, to organize film screenings, protests, solidarity marches, seminars, photo-exhibitions related to her struggle. Visit http://manipurfreedom.org for more details.)

(Malayalam Translation of this article is published in Madhyamam Weekily, You can download it from here)