There is something
achingly poignant about this wise, rugged man on the sidelines —
co-warrior who gives the fight invisible breath, middle-aged brother
who gave up his job to “look after his sister outside the door”,
family man who now relies on the Rs 120 a day his wife makes from weaving.
The comfort line of the ordinary is sometimes the most difficult line
to cross. Pain and affection and pride quarrel now over his good-natured
face in the hospital corridor. Irom has been refusing the nasal feed
for several days. Her health is deteriorating. Incarcerated against
her will in aiims for a month and a half, she is demanding that she
be produced in court, demanding that the State explain why she is in
custody. It’s a month and a half since Singhajit managed to smuggle
Irom out of Manipur with the help of two activist friends, Babloo Loitangbam
and Kangleipal. For six years, Irom had spent her time isolated, under
arrest, in a single room in JN Hospital in Imphal. Each time she was
released, she continued her fast. Three days later, she would be arrested
again. But now the war had to be shifted to Delhi. Six years of jail
and fasting had yielded little in Manipur. Arriving in Delhi on October
3, they camped in Jantar Mantar for three days. The national media responded
with cynical disinterest. Then, predictably, the State swooped down
in a midnight raid and arrested Irom for “attempt to suicide”
and whisked her off to aiims. She has written three passionate letters
from there to the Prime Minister, the President, and the Home Minister.
But there is no answer. Irom’s voice is magnetic in its moral
force, but it is not violent in its beckoning. If she hijacked a plane
perhaps, the State would respond with quicker concession.
“We are in
the middle of the battle now,” Singhajit says. “We have
to face trouble, we have to fight to the end even if it means my sister’s
death. But if she had told me before she began, I would never have let
her start on this fast. I would never have let her do this to her body.
We had to learn so much first. How to talk, how to negotiate —
we knew nothing. We were just poor people.”
But, in a sense,
the power of Irom Sharmila’s story is in her pure, untutored vulnerability.
She is not cosseted by any large, co-ordinated political movement. And
if you are looking for the charismatic rhetoric of battle, the clichéd
heat of heroism, you will be disappointed by the quiet woman in Room
57 in the New Private Ward of aiims in New Delhi. This 34-year-old’s
satyagraha is not an intellectual construct. It is a deep human response
to the cycle of death and violence she saw around her — almost
a divine intuition. “I was shocked by the dead bodies of Malom
on the front page,” Irom says in her clear, halting voice. “I
realised there was no means to stop further violations by the armed
forces. So I decided to fast.” On November 4, 2000, she sought
her mother, Irom Shakhi’s blessing. “You will win your goal,”
Shakhi said. And the stoic woman turned away. Since then, though Sharmila
has been incarcerated in Imphal within walking distance of her mother,
the two have never met.
”What’s
the use? I’m weak-hearted. If I see her, I will cry,” Shakhi
says in a film on Irom made by Delhi-based filmmaker Kavita Joshi, tears
streaming down her face. “I have decided that until her wish is
fulfilled, I won’t meet her because that will weaken her resolve…
If we don’t get food, how we toss and turn in bed, unable to sleep.
With the little fluid they inject into her, how hard must her days and
nights be… If this Act is removed even for 5 days, I will feed
her rice water spoon by spoon. After that, even if she dies, we will
be content, for my Sharmila will have fulfilled her wish.”
This stoic, illiterate
woman is Sharmila’s intimation of god. It is the shrine from which
she draws her strength. For the rest, she practices four to five hours
of yoga a day — self-taught — “to help maintain the
balance between my body and mind”. Doctors will tell you Irom’s
fast is a medical miracle. It is humbling to even approximate her condition.
But Irom never concedes any bodily discomfort. “I am normal. I
am normal,” she smiles. “I don’t know what lies in
my future, I don’t know what I will do. It is God’s will.
I have only learnt from my experience that punctuality, discipline and
great enthusiasm can make you achieve a lot.” The words —
easy to dismiss as trite clichés — take on a new charge
with her utterance.
Still, the brother’s
frustration is potent. The failure of the nation to recognise Irom Sharmila’s
historic satyagraha is a symptom of every lethargy that is eroding the
Northeast. She had already been fasting against the Armed Forces Special
Powers Act for four years, when the Assam Rifles arrested Thangjam Manorama
Devi, a 32-year-old woman, allegedly a member of the banned People’s
Liberation Army. Her body was found dumped in Imphal a day later, marked
with terrible signs of torture and rape. Manipur came to a spontaneous
boil. Five days later, on July 15, 2004, pushing the boundaries of human
expression, 30 ordinary women demonstrated naked in front of the Assam
Rifles headquarters at Kangla Fort. Ordinary mothers and grandmothers
eking out a hard life. “Indian Army, rape us too”, they
screamed. The State responded by jailing all of them for three months.
Each subsequent
commission set up by the government since then has added to these injuries.
The report of the Justice Upendra Commission, instituted after the Manorama
killing, was never made public. In November 2004, Prime Minister Manmohan
Singh set up the Justice Jeevan Reddy Committee to review the afspa.
Its response has come in a dangerously forked tongue. While it suggests
the repeal of the afspa, it transfers its most draconian powers to the
Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. Every official response is marked
by a dogged apathy, a determination to be uncreative. The then Defence
Minister Pranab Mukherjee had rejected the withdrawal or significant
dilution of the Act on the grounds that “it is not possible for
the armed forces to function” in “disturbed areas”
without such powers. This is an opinion backed by government think tank
members like Ajay Sahni, executive director, Institute of Conflict Management,
and inevitably snakes up all the way to the top rungs of power.
But such myopia
could prove costly. Despite the fractured nature of Manipur’s
polity, despite the deep ethnic divides and hostilities, there is a
sense of a gathering endgame around Sharmila. Willy nilly, the moral
force has acquired a kind of violence of its own. “Some decision
has to come in this session of Parliament. Irom Sharmila is very revered
now. If she is allowed to die, not just Manipur, the whole Northeast
will boil over,” says Onil, an activist helping spearhead the
Sharmila campaign in Delhi.
Curiously, it took
Iranian Nobel Peace prize winner Shirin Ebadi to raise proportionate
heat on Irom Sharmila in a recent trip. “If Sharmila dies, Parliament
is directly responsible,” she thundered at a gathering of journalists.
“If she dies, courts and judiciary are responsible, 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…”
Yet we who have
discussed Lage Raho Munnabhai and the great advent of Gandhigiri in
India 2006 across channels and papers, have remained steadfastly oblivious
to Irom.
It is a parable
for our times.
If the story of
Irom Sharmila does not make us pause, nothing will.
It is a story of
extraordinariness.
Extraordinary will.
Extraordinary simplicity.
Extraordinary hope.
It is impossible
to get yourself heard in our busy age of information overload. But if
the story of Irom Sharmila will not make us pause, nothing will.
