asianaffairs

A famine of peace and justice

Hunger-striker Irom Sharmila symbolises the struggle against the draconian Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which the Indian government seems unwilling to tackle,

By Kuldip Nayar

Long ago, when the Mughals ruled India, an old woman travelled all the way from the Northeast to voice a complaint before the emperor at Delhi. The emperor conceded that her grievance was justified but expressed his inability to redress it because the place was 'too far' from Delhi. In reply, she asked why, if he could not attend to problems arising in distant parts of his empire, he did not let those regions go. The emperor felt so humiliated that he sent a special force back with the old woman to address her complaint.

The current situation in India's Northeast region reminds me of that story. There is no governance worth the name in the area. However, it is part of India because the armed forces are there in full strength, often blurring the demarcation lines between the military and the civil. Not only that, the army has forced New Delhi to frame the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), which enables even an ordinary soldier to kill a person on suspicion. The soldier, meanwhile, is protected under the AFSPA. There has been uproar against this draconian measure throughout the country, yet still New Delhi remains unmoved.

Manipur is a tiny state in the Northeast where the people are sensitive about the AFSPA and have raised a standard of protest. One young woman, Irom Sharmila — a human rights activist and poet — has undertaken a fast. She has added ten years to her age but has not given up the fast. Not long ago, there was a call in Parliament to review the AFSPA Act over the sudden killing of Thangjam Manorama Chanu by personnel of the 17th Assam Rifles in July 2004. The Committee proposed repealing the act to incorporate some of its provisions in the unlawful activities (prevention) act, 1967. The proposal was rejected outright by the then Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee. It is an open secret that the armed forces have said they will decline to serve in the Northeast (the act is also applicable in Kashmir) if the AFSPA is repealed.

Irom Sharmila has taken the awakening in India that followed Anna Hazare's movement against corruption as an opportunity to voice her opposition to the AFSPA, and Hazare himself has given his blessing to peaceful protest against the AFSPA. An organization has been established at Srinagar in solidarity with Sharmila, and a march has already begun waved off by popular activist Medha Patkar — to cover the distance between Srinagar to Imphal, Manipur's capital, in support of her.

Sharmila has now become a symbol of peace and a well-known voice against the AFSPA, which is a 'draconian law', according to a statement by the 'Save Sharmila solidarity campaign'. Hence this journey from Srinagar, which is also one of the main areas affected by AFSPA activity. The organisers say: 'The main objective of the journey is to spread awareness among people about the AFSPA, and to elicit their support.'

Irom Sharmila Chanu, also known as 'the Iron Lady of Manipur' or 'Menghoubi' ('the fair one'), was born on March 14, 1972. Since 2 November 2000, she has been on hunger strike to demand that the Indian government repeal the AFSPA, which she thinks is responsible for violence in Manipur and other parts of India's Northeast region. Having refused nourishment for an unprecedented number of weeks (though she has been intermittently force-fed), she has been called 'the world's longest hunger striker'.

It is strange that there is countrywide sympathy and support for Sharmila, yet at the same time very little criticism of the army or its insistence in continuing the imposition of the AFSPA. In India and, for that matter, certain developing countries, the armed forces are a sacred cow. Even the media does not write against them, or even try to probe into their affairs. This is something which is just not done.

Unfortunately, the army is the last word in Pakistan and people say openly that they have nothing except the armed forces to use in their fight against the enemy, meaning New Delhi. India is lucky in that the civil authorities have the final say. Yet if this tradition is to remain, the wish of the armed forces to continue their application of the AFSPA has to be curtailed. After the Reddy Commission's verdict in 2004, there is no justification for the act to continue. It makes a mockery not only of the civil authorities but also of democracy itself, which is all about the will of the people.

Irom Sharmila has come to represent the fight against the AFSPA. The longer her fast continues, the less the credibility of the system, which does not intervene in a hunger strike that is already 10 years old — except to arrest Sharmila, charge her with 'an attempt to commit suicide' and force-feed her while she is in custody. The Manmohan Singh government, like the Mughal emperor, cannot ignore the sufferings of distant Manipur and the rest of the Northeast.

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