Dishevelled hair and feeding pipe : The AFSPA divide
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: November 07 2011 -

Sharmila speaks to the media at the Court premises after permission from the CJM on Nov 4 2011

Not a morsel of food for more than 11 years and now stepping into the 12th year. Nose fed, produced before the Court annually which then remands her to further custody under IPC 309, kept away from public glare at the security ward of Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Medical Sciences all these yers.

Irom Chanu Sharmila is today the most visible face against the continued imposition of the controversial Armed Forces Special Powers Act and while the world at large may have become familiar with the picture of a lady with dishevelled hair and a feeding pipe portruding from her nostril, her visage, on the other hand, reflects the story of a people living in a state of undeclared war for more than four decades. Make no mistake about it.

Anyone can be a suspect in the eyes of the security forces in areas where AFSPA has been enforced and logically this means that anyone can be pulled up, whisked away with only the lifeless body left to tell a story scripted to corroborate the claim of the security forces the next day.

Remember Thangjam Manorama in 2004 ? This is when the body cannot be disposed off easily or when the security personnel overlook certain things for in many cases the body may just disappear without a trace with no one held accountable.

Remember Sanamacha ?

There have been numerous other similar cases earlier, but all these cases have been reduced to the footnotes of counter-insurgency operations carried out under the protective garb of the said Act and justified by the notion of National security.

Statistics, figures of the dead and the missing have been noted down as collateral damages in an atmosphere of sheer impunity granted by the blanket cover of immunity to the men in uniform.

This brings into focus the spectrum where the understanding of National security and civilian rights exist at the extreme opposite end of each other, which is a fallacy.

It is only an Act like AFSPA which can give rise to the notion that National security cannot exist with the idea of civilian rights and such an understanding should be enough to indicate that an Act like AFSPA can only run contrary to the idea of an India as a Nation.

The divide that AFSPA spawns is deep and a situation where it pits the men, perceived to be protecting the integrity of a country, against a section of the people says something profound about the politics of promulgating such an Act in the first place.

The politics of AFSPA may be better understood by taking into consideration the fact that this is an Act which was inherited from the British Raj.

A more than 60 year old country feeding herself on the left overs of an Act whipped out by her erstwhile colonial ruler says something significant and seen in this context it may not just be about the question of continuing with an Act, but about the question of whether a country ought to be understood only in terms of her political boundary or whether it encapsulates the idea of a Nation.

Does Delhi understand National security only in the context of sending in its Army to an area for decades under the protective garb of an Act or does it mean something more ?

This question gains importance in the backdrop of the fact that AFSPA has been in force in the whole of the North East region for half a century which in essence means that the Army has been deployed in this region for the same period of time.

On the flip side the question, has the North East registered in the political consciousness of the country, may well be raised.

In as long as Delhi continues to maintain that insurgency in the North East is an internal affair, then it should also stand true that the continued imposition of AFSPA in this region is an undeclared, internal war on a group of people.

A state of undeclared emergency where the basic rights of the people has been suspended for decades is the apt description of the situation in which the people of the North East region have been condemned to live.

In such a scenario, it is not surprising to see the emerging mindset amongst quite a large number of the youth of Manipur that to Delhi the North East may just be the last frontier on the eastern side, which must be kept under a state of siege to protect her interest against any potential foe at the cost of the people inhabiting this region.

This is what runs contrary to the idea of India as a Nation.