It was my Privilege.....
In these cynical times when Mahatma Gandhi is remembered more because the political establishment thinks that it cannot afford to forget him and hence the leaders make a bee-line to the Bapu’s Samadhi in New Delhi or to one of his statues in the State capitals on October 2, the Mahatma’s memory was brought back in Delhi on October 4 this year.
Irom Sharmila Chanu was there along with a dozen students beside the Jantar Mantar and hardly a kilometer away from the Parliament House. And unlike the usual, there was no microphone there and Sharmila did not deliver a long speech from there. Well I happened to be in Delhi for some odd reason and staying near the Jantar Mantar. A stroll down the road, after a sumptuous dinner, was something that I would not want to miss.
And as I walked down the Jantar Mantar marg, which has now become the corner for all democratic protests (the Boat Club ceased to be the venue for protests many years ago when Rajest Pilot, an up-start in the Congress party displayed his managerial skills and prevented a BJP rally at the Boat Club in January 1993), realizing that the culture of protest was still alive and there were so many people from so many places registering their protest against so many things, I spotted my old friend Babloo Loitongbam from Manipur there. And I recalled the news item I happened to read in the morning’s papers. That Sharmila was there in Delhi to continue her fast against the AFSPA. And that Babloo had accompanied her from Imphal.
Well, I would not have noticed Sharmila and her struggle if I had not taken that after-dinner-stroll that day; I would not have noticed this struggle if I were staying in some other place in Delhi because I would have taken the stroll on some other road and not down the Jantar Mantar road! In any case, it so happened that I was there and after that, I decided to spend as much time with that frail young woman and the dozen odd young boys and girls from Manipur and studying in the various colleges in Delhi.
It is not as if I am unaware of the AFSPA. I have written against it in my columns and earned money out of that! And have known about Sharmila too. But have never participated in any agitation against that dreaded law.
Sharmila did not have the energy to deliver a speech. But then, she seemed to have something else in her that most of us do not have. Hmmm.. let me not speak for others. I don’t seem to have such courage and determination. For want of another word, let me call it determination. Sharmila looked frail and pale. That was obvious. She had not eaten anything since November 2000. She is on a fast.
And unlike the many others who announce a fast-until-death, Sharmila is determined to fast until the AFSPA, a notorious law that has been in force since 1958, is scrapped. She has been living without food and water for the last six years. All this while she has been under police custody and was being force-fed through a nasal tube in Imphal. The Manipur Police had first arrested her in November 2000 on charges of attempting suicide.
The maximum sentence for the ``crime’’ is one year’s imprisonment. Sharmila served that and persisted with her fast on release after a year, only to be arrested again, kept in hospital and fed through her nose. On October 3, 2006, Sharmila changed her strategy. After her release that day from an Imphal hospital, Sharmila hopped into a flight to Delhi and went to the Rajghat. After offering floral tributes to the Mahatma, she came to the Jantar Mantar Road to continue with her fast.
When she was arrested in Delhi late in the night on October 6, her pulse was 47, below the normal range of 60-80. She was also running temperature.
The incident that prompted Sharmila’s decision to go on this fast occurred on November 2, 2000. A convoy of the 8th Assam Rifles had resorted to indiscriminate firing at a market place killing 10 people. The dead included a 62 year old woman, and at least 42 people were injured by this cold-blooded action by the Assam Rifles forces. This happened in Malom Makha Leikai Boroi Makhong.
It may also be recalled that two years ago, Thangjam Manorama was abducted and her dead body was found dumped near the Assam Rifles camp. This incident had set the whole of Manipur on fire and brought the issue of the obnoxious AFSPA into national attention.
The protests prompted Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to appoint a panel headed by Justice B.P.Jeevan Reddy with the mandate to review the provisions of AFSPA and advise the Government of India whether (a) to amend the provisions of the Act to bring them in consonance with the obligations of the Government towards protection of human rights; or (b) to replace the Act by a more humane Act.”
The committee clearly does not find any justification for the Act to remain in force. It says that “the Act, for whatever reason, has become a symbol of oppression, and object of hate and an instrument of discrimination and high-handedness.”
And this, after all is Sharmila’s case too. While being arrested by the Delhi Police late in the night on October 6, 2006, she said, in a feeble voice but in emphatic terms: “My position is clear. I will not back out. Truth will triumph, no matter whether the struggle is long or short. The AFSPA should be scrapped.”
In this age when agitations do not go beyond symbolic acts and the language of protest is increasingly becoming stage-managed, Sharmila seemed to infuse a lot of fresh air and hopes. A sad part of this was that none from the political establishment cared to join Sharmila even in a symbolic manner. There was hardly anyone from the political parties to sit by her side. This was left to individuals from the civil society organizations and the young boys and the girls from Manipur studying in the various colleges in Delhi.
Well, Sharmila is not perturbed by any of these. She is determined to fight against the obnoxious law. Sharmila is indeed convinced that a day will come when the AFSPA will belong to the same league as the Rowlatt Act that the British brought in and were forced to scrap. I don’t think Sharmila is a lone dreamer. I realize that there are many others who share this dream. But then, Sharmila alone has had the courage to take up the cause and fight against the obnoxious Act with such patience and perseverance.
After landing in Delhi, Sharmila went to the Rajghat and offered floral tributes to the Mahatma. That was on October 4. Hmmm…I wondered if this legitimate legatee of the Bapu’s legacy had landed in Delhi just a couple of days earlier, the Delhi Police would not have let her in to the Rajghat. They would have prevented her from getting in there to ensure that the imposters from the establishment could walk in there and complete the ritual that is demanded out of them on October 2 every year!!!
In these cynical times when Mahatma Gandhi is remembered more because the political establishment thinks that it cannot afford to forget him and hence the leaders make a bee-line to the Bapu’s Samadhi in New Delhi or to one of his statues in the State capitals on October 2, the Mahatma’s memory was brought back in Delhi on October 4 this year.
Irom Sharmila Chanu was there along with a dozen students beside the Jantar Mantar and hardly a kilometer away from the Parliament House. And unlike the usual, there was no microphone there and Sharmila did not deliver a long speech from there. Well I happened to be in Delhi for some odd reason and staying near the Jantar Mantar. A stroll down the road, after a sumptuous dinner, was something that I would not want to miss.
And as I walked down the Jantar Mantar marg, which has now become the corner for all democratic protests (the Boat Club ceased to be the venue for protests many years ago when Rajest Pilot, an up-start in the Congress party displayed his managerial skills and prevented a BJP rally at the Boat Club in January 1993), realizing that the culture of protest was still alive and there were so many people from so many places registering their protest against so many things, I spotted my old friend Babloo Loitongbam from Manipur there. And I recalled the news item I happened to read in the morning’s papers. That Sharmila was there in Delhi to continue her fast against the AFSPA. And that Babloo had accompanied her from Imphal.
Well, I would not have noticed Sharmila and her struggle if I had not taken that after-dinner-stroll that day; I would not have noticed this struggle if I were staying in some other place in Delhi because I would have taken the stroll on some other road and not down the Jantar Mantar road! In any case, it so happened that I was there and after that, I decided to spend as much time with that frail young woman and the dozen odd young boys and girls from Manipur and studying in the various colleges in Delhi.
It is not as if I am unaware of the AFSPA. I have written against it in my columns and earned money out of that! And have known about Sharmila too. But have never participated in any agitation against that dreaded law.
Sharmila did not have the energy to deliver a speech. But then, she seemed to have something else in her that most of us do not have. Hmmm.. let me not speak for others. I don’t seem to have such courage and determination. For want of another word, let me call it determination. Sharmila looked frail and pale. That was obvious. She had not eaten anything since November 2000. She is on a fast.
And unlike the many others who announce a fast-until-death, Sharmila is determined to fast until the AFSPA, a notorious law that has been in force since 1958, is scrapped. She has been living without food and water for the last six years. All this while she has been under police custody and was being force-fed through a nasal tube in Imphal. The Manipur Police had first arrested her in November 2000 on charges of attempting suicide.
The maximum sentence for the ``crime’’ is one year’s imprisonment. Sharmila served that and persisted with her fast on release after a year, only to be arrested again, kept in hospital and fed through her nose. On October 3, 2006, Sharmila changed her strategy. After her release that day from an Imphal hospital, Sharmila hopped into a flight to Delhi and went to the Rajghat. After offering floral tributes to the Mahatma, she came to the Jantar Mantar Road to continue with her fast.
When she was arrested in Delhi late in the night on October 6, her pulse was 47, below the normal range of 60-80. She was also running temperature.
The incident that prompted Sharmila’s decision to go on this fast occurred on November 2, 2000. A convoy of the 8th Assam Rifles had resorted to indiscriminate firing at a market place killing 10 people. The dead included a 62 year old woman, and at least 42 people were injured by this cold-blooded action by the Assam Rifles forces. This happened in Malom Makha Leikai Boroi Makhong.
It may also be recalled that two years ago, Thangjam Manorama was abducted and her dead body was found dumped near the Assam Rifles camp. This incident had set the whole of Manipur on fire and brought the issue of the obnoxious AFSPA into national attention.
The protests prompted Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to appoint a panel headed by Justice B.P.Jeevan Reddy with the mandate to review the provisions of AFSPA and advise the Government of India whether (a) to amend the provisions of the Act to bring them in consonance with the obligations of the Government towards protection of human rights; or (b) to replace the Act by a more humane Act.”
The committee clearly does not find any justification for the Act to remain in force. It says that “the Act, for whatever reason, has become a symbol of oppression, and object of hate and an instrument of discrimination and high-handedness.”
And this, after all is Sharmila’s case too. While being arrested by the Delhi Police late in the night on October 6, 2006, she said, in a feeble voice but in emphatic terms: “My position is clear. I will not back out. Truth will triumph, no matter whether the struggle is long or short. The AFSPA should be scrapped.”
In this age when agitations do not go beyond symbolic acts and the language of protest is increasingly becoming stage-managed, Sharmila seemed to infuse a lot of fresh air and hopes. A sad part of this was that none from the political establishment cared to join Sharmila even in a symbolic manner. There was hardly anyone from the political parties to sit by her side. This was left to individuals from the civil society organizations and the young boys and the girls from Manipur studying in the various colleges in Delhi.
Well, Sharmila is not perturbed by any of these. She is determined to fight against the obnoxious law. Sharmila is indeed convinced that a day will come when the AFSPA will belong to the same league as the Rowlatt Act that the British brought in and were forced to scrap. I don’t think Sharmila is a lone dreamer. I realize that there are many others who share this dream. But then, Sharmila alone has had the courage to take up the cause and fight against the obnoxious Act with such patience and perseverance.
After landing in Delhi, Sharmila went to the Rajghat and offered floral tributes to the Mahatma. That was on October 4. Hmmm…I wondered if this legitimate legatee of the Bapu’s legacy had landed in Delhi just a couple of days earlier, the Delhi Police would not have let her in to the Rajghat. They would have prevented her from getting in there to ensure that the imposters from the establishment could walk in there and complete the ritual that is demanded out of them on October 2 every year!!!
posted by Krishna Ananth at
5:18 AM
3 Comments:
I'd been waiting for this post, ever since you told me you'd been part of the protest. Let
me repeat your words of some months ago for me: its a pleasure to be part of a protest and I envy you.
Irom Sharmila's experience brings me back to the same question I asked you then: what can we make of a state that criminalises even legitimate protest? What do we call a state that denies its citizens the right to protest at all? Medha Patkar too, remember, was arrested by the goons of the State and her fast broken.
The North-east has been under virtual army rule through the AFSPA. Indian policy is eerily reminiscent of French rule in Algeria - there is the same military build up, the same haughty arrogance against the locals.
But coming back to the question of democratic protest, what does Irom symbolise and what purpose does she serve?
The role of satyagraha is in exposing the immorality, not the illegitimacy, of the Other. It
does not delegitimise the ethics and morals of the Other, but quite to the contrary, holds
him accountable to his own ethics and morals.
Waging saytagraha against the Indian state thus entails pitting the oppressed against it,
claiming as a right what the state promises, but does not deliver on.
The Indian state claims its authority from the will of the people, and claims as its founding principle democracy and respect for the life and dignity of its citizens.
The Gandhian mode of protest, in showing through the body of the protester the limits of
these guarantees, serves to expose the hollowness of these claims. They would act as a locus for mass protests.
Hence, Irom is a symbol of the illiberalism of the Indian state, and a rallying point for
the masses to protest and overawe the state into submitting itself to the will of the people.
A second observation is also due here. The Gandhian method supposes the legitimacy of the Other; hence, a dialogue is possible on equal terms. It is thus a via media between differing ethics. More than attempting a debate to prove his superiority, the satyagrahi attempts dialogue that seeks a common ground based in the human-ness of both the oppressor and the oppressed.
However, there is one difference between British rule and Indian rule. British colonialism argued that British rule was legitimate because Indians were unfit to rule, and (in theory) put out a promise that freedom would be granted when Indians had emerge out of their 'child'-like nature.
Indian rule in the North-east, on the other hand, does not make this claim. It demand of the people Indian-ness: the successors of the Indian empire have branded the peoples and the lands as Indian, thus the people must swear allegiance. They have no choice, nor can they alter their destinies.
When the Indian State precludes the possibility of dialogue, is it possible to utilise the Gandhian means of dialogue, when the State assumes a monologue?
Satyagraha is not aimed at a dialogue… though a dialogue with the oppressor is the way to resolution as against annihilation of the oppressor.
Cheri, I do remember that exchange between us and yes. I did envy you at that time simply because you could be there expressing solidarity with the Narmada Struggle and there was nothing of the kind happening then in Coimbatore.
Now, about the state that criminalizes even legitimate protest: My understanding is that the state (and any state for that matter) creates, manages and maintains such of its arms like the police, the para-military and the courts only in order to preserve itself. In other words, the status quo and this is true of all times in history. And in that sense, even a socialist state (as in the Soviet Union or in China) born out of a long and even bloody battle against the status quo of the earlier era and its apparatus is bound to turn into an organ of repression of all the movements and tendencies that challenge its legitimacy and authority. It is imperative, hence, that we look at the character of the challenge and take sides wither with the state or the ``other’’. In this case, we take the side of Medha and Irom and such others while there are those who take the side of the state. Well, it’s a larger battle between what we perceive as change and legitimate.
While saying this, I am aware of a problematic in that this understanding presupposes the legitimate basis for the existence of a state and its machinery. It is possible then to agree that this problematic can be addressed to and the conflict resolved by insisting that nothing, not even the most revanchist platform (the RSS and the VHP for instance) should be dealt with repression and that we register our objections to any such measures by the state. In other words, to say that the state shall only be a welfare agent and that there is no role for the police and the armed men. I am not too sure if anyone of us will be able to take this position into our own political agenda and save ourselves from being seen as nihilists or anarchists. In any case, I will not consider nihilism or anarchism as a revolutionary position. Nor is that a rationalist position.
This takes us to the concrete reality in which the Irom Sharmila movement is rooted. And that is the situation in the North East. Yes, it is as bad as it was in French Algeria, in Chinese occupied Tibet, US controlled Afghanistan, Isreal’s occupied Palestine, the apartheid regime in South Africa and all such cases. And Irom Sharmila serves the same purpose as the protest movements in all these places: some of them strong as it is the case with Dalai Lama’s in Tibet or the ANC in South Africa. I mean, she symbolizes this spirit but certainly not the scale these movements achieved over time. I am clear that Sharmila represents the nucleus of this and the movement is still in its embryonic stage.
But then, she denies the luxury of legitimizing the use of AFSPA in the North-East. The fact is the armed combatants in Manipur or elsewhere in the North East, tend to legitimize, even if it is unintentional, the deployment of the army and such draconian laws there. This legitimization in other parts of the country is the basis for such laws remaining in the statute book. Irom Sharmila inspires a movement that will knock the bottom of the Indian state’s diabolic moves against its people. But this can happen only when the rest of India too wakes up and realizes that the struggle against the AFSPA is a legitimate and moral duty of theirs too. In other words, when more and more among us feel envious of those who were there with Irom Sharmila that day, the war of ideas gets stronger and this makes the war of positions invincible!
Satyagraha, I maintain delegitimises the oppressive state than an armed rebellion. An armed rebellion can end up legitimizing an armed intervention by the state and that we see happening in the North East. Satyagraha also exposes the myth about the state being a fair arbitrator of disputes between its people and the ruling elite. Its actions, such as the arrest of Medha and of Sharmila, conveys a different message. And all this cumulates to the cocretisation of a popular perception that the state is a artisan and its authority is illegitimate. This, as you have pointed out was the basis of the Gandhian mode of protest. The need to shatter the myth about the state being a non-partisan player!
And as for the presumption that the colonial state was not the same as the Indian state: Let us not forget that Gandhi was arrested and put in jail for sedition! And that Tilak was deported to the Andamans for the same ``crime’’. That several young men were subjected to torture and humiliation in the cellular jail in the Andamans. The colonial state stopped behaving the same way with Gandhi in 1931 because the satyagraha was no longer a case of isolated protests. It was becoming the creed of the Indian people!
The point is Medha Patkar, Irom Sharmila and such others are yet to represent a large movement. The movement is in the same stage as the struggle for independence was at the time of Champaran and Bardouli. We have miles to go and until then, the flame has to be kept burning. A holding operation in these bad times!!!! Well Medha and Sharmila are doing that and that’s why I consider it my privilege to be part of all this…..
I entirel agree with Krishna Ananth, sir. The point perhaps is not whether there lies a promise of freedom at the successful culmination of a "civilising mission" or whether mainstreaming into an unquestionable nationhood is demanded. The colonial state needed the civilising mission as a source of legitimacy and any modern nation-state sees nation-ness as a source for the same.
While in colonial times, it was easier to mobilise anti-colonial support because a large and diverse geographical area was commonly under obvious foreign rule.
In the case of the north-east, the problem has become a classic case of a "periphery's" grievances in the face of a numerically stronger mainstream.
The jawans posted in the north-east have been schooled in nationalism and discourses on the nation's defence. Nationalism being sacrosanct is no sin; Anderson is right in interpreting the nation as the emotional successor of religion. Both have a strong emotional grip.
Any armed resistance is not strong enough to take on the might of the state. At the same time, it reinforces in the minds of the jawans, and also mainstream public opinion, the emotional picture of the nation in danger. Hence, the war of position is lost. By the way, I am not denying here the existence among the mainstream and the armed forces a desire to exercise power.
What Sharmila's example does is to bring the universalist emotion of human suffering -- that can temper the discourse of the nation in danger -- into the minds of the "mainstream". For that moment, Otherness dissolves and there is a move towards empathy. When Gandhi went on a fast unto death in 1932, telegrams and letters were written from all over the western world to the British not to let him die.
Sharmila's strategy of visiting Rajghat has also evoked a universalism beyond the "us" and "them" in the minds of people in the north-east and the heartland.
Though I am strogly against metanarratives and for cultural relativism, I strongly believe that human empathy required for breaking such metanarratives can be best achieved through universalist images of honest human suffering, i.e., Satyagraha.
-- Vikas Pathak
In
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