'Irom' Lady of Manipur…

Rani and I were discussing about the Quiz that we are conducting in Palakkad Kendriya Vidyalaya for Republic day. I tell her “We can have a question on Irom Sharmila.”. Unsurprisingly, pat came her question “Who?”

I explain “The Manipuri lady who has been fasting since 2000 for the repeal of a legislation that gives the army unlimited powers in the North East.

She wondered “How come a person is fasting for almost 10 years and I don’t know her. But a guy fasts for 10 days in Hyderabad and the whole world talks about it.”

True. How unfair. How cruel. To track this story we have to take a flash back to a 9/11.

The Indian Government passed the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) on September 11, 1958 to confer special powers on the Indian Army in “disturbed areas” namely Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Jammu & Kashmir, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tripura. The Act allows the army to use force, shoot, or arrest anyone without warrant, on the mere suspicion that someone has committed or was about to commit a cognisable offence. It gives Army officers legal immunity for their actions. There can be no prosecution, suit or any other legal proceeding against anyone acting under that law. Nor is the government's judgment on why an area is found to be "disturbed" subject to judicial review.

The Act has been under the cloud of suspicion from the time it has been implemented. If the Act itself was Draconian in spirit, the impact of the actual implementation has been much severe. Even official sources put the number of people who died during the last three decades of AFSPA at twenty thousand in the state of Manipur alone. While the objective was to curb insurgency, the Act has indeed only created more and more insurgent outfits in the Area.

It is into this turbulent state of Manipur, that Irom Chanu Sharmila was born in 1972 as the youngest of the nine daughters of an illiterate Grade IV worker in a veterinary hospital in Imphal. Since childhood she had an active interest in poetry and after doing her course in journalism she took an internship with an organisation Human Rights Alert, Imphal. She was an ordinary girl, hailing from a non-descript family with a dormant social concern. And that was till 04th November 2000.

The day after an insurgent group had bombed an army column, the Indian paramilitary force Assam Rifles, retaliated by gunning down ten innocent people waiting for a bus at Malom, a small town in Manipur. The incident later came to be known as the Malom Massacre and the causality included a 62 year old lady and a boy who was a National Child Bravery Award winner. There was wide spread agitation for inquiry into the killings which the Army rejected citing protection of the AFSPA.

The next day the then unknown Irom Sharmila started a fast until death at the site of the killings at Malom. The demand was for the immediate repeal of the AFSPA. No one had any clue about the resolve of this 28 year old girl and everyone shrugged this off as a minor incident in a state where there is no dearth for drama. Three days later she was arrested under the charge of attempting to commit suicide. Even under custody, she would not take food or water. To keep her alive, the police forcibly started nasogastic intubation (feeding liquids of minerals, vitamins & protein supplements through a plastic tube inserted through the nose, past the throat, and down into the stomach). This is how Irom Sharmila has been kept alive for more than 9 years in solitary confinement as a high security prisoner.

Sharmila is kept under arrest being charged under Section 309 of the Indian Penal code according to which “a person who attempt to commit suicide is punishable with simple imprisonment for a term which may extend to one year”. So at the end of every one year period she is being released as a ritual and then arrested again and kept in custody for another year.

In 2006 October, when she was released, her brother and a friend kept her away from media and security person for a day. The next day, she was literally smuggled out of the state and they landed in Delhi. In an attempt to draw national attention into the issue, she went to the Rajkhat to pay homage to Gandhiji whom she termed as her idol. She was arrested again and was taken to AIIMS.

She still lies in solitary confinement at AIIMS not having eaten anything, or drunk a single drop of water for more than nine years, being forcibly kept alive by the painful process of nasogastic intubation. Doctors have said that her bones have become brittle. Her body is wasted inside and her menstrual cycles have stopped. But if there is something that she has not lost, then it is her resolve and her determination. She has written repeated letters to the President, Prime Minister and Home Minister, but without getting any replies.

The Government of India appointed Jeevan Reddy Committee in 2004 to review the Act and the committee concluded that the “AFSPA should be repealed without losing sight of the desire of an overwhelming majority of the people in North East that the Army should remain, but the Act should go". But the Government did not implement the recommendations on the Committee. Instead, In December 2006, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh declared that the AFSPA would be amended to make it more humane.

United Nations Human Rights Committee, as early as in 1991 has questioned the validity of the AFSPA and termed it against the provisions of International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In March 2009, UN Commissioner for Human Rights Navnetham Pillay asked India to repeal the AFSPA which she described as "dated and colonial-era law that breach contemporary international human rights standards.” But AFSPA remains in its original form.

So, we come back to Rani’s question, which prompted this post. How come we don’t know Irom Sharmila? How come this “unparalleled feat in the history of political protest” has been missed by the hundreds of newspapers, by the plethora of news channels, and more importantly, by the conscience of India. The very country that produced Gandhiji.

Iranian Nobel Peace Laureate and Human Rights Activist Ms. Shirin Ibadi told this to media in 2006 "If Sharmila dies, Parliament is directly responsible. If she dies, courts and judiciary are responsible, the military is responsible… If she dies, the executive, the PM and President are responsible for doing nothing… If she dies, each one of you journalists is responsible because you did not do your duty”.

My blog was inactive for long. May be laziness, may be procrastination, may be lack of topics. But for someone who has lived for more than three years in North East and has (in my little ways) atleast tried to touch the soul of the region, I have failed in my duty for not having written this earlier.