Invite from Team Anna ! Irom Sharmila's strength
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: August 23 2011 -

Irom Chanu Sharmila on 9th March 2009

One is a former driver in the Indian Army, an anointed Gandhian, a man who has managed to grab the attention of the country, send the political establishment into a huddle whenever he announces his intention to stop eating and he has been on a fast for the last seven days or so.

The other is a poet, anointed Iron Lady by her fellow people and someone who has largely existed on the periphery of the country's consciousness and she has been on a fast since November 2000 without creating so much of a flutter in the corridors of power.

Both are activists in their own rights and while Anna Hazare has managed to fire the imagination of a large number of Indians with his take on corruption, Irom Chanu Sharmila has been waging a quiet struggle away from the spotlight in a heavily fortified room at the security ward of JNIMS to demand the repeal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act.

Anna Hazare is News, Sharmila is a Non-Entity.

This is the perception that has been created by the political class and the section of media which is generally understood as mainstream media.

This is the reality and the more then ten years of her solitary campaign against a legislation enacted by the Government of India, which is applicable only in the region known as the North East and Kashmir, is enough indication that the relative obscurity she has been subjected to through sheer callousness and insensitivity is not going to affect her stand against the controversial Army Act.

Sharmila personifies not only the battered people of a region under an Act passed by Parliament but also the fringe position that the people of the North East occupy in Delhi's overall scheme of things. Corruption has mutated to an institutionalised virus for which there is as yet no vaccine with the middle class mostly exposed to its life sapping sting.

Some say this is one reason why Hazare's campaign has been able to strike a chord with the Indian middle class.

On the other hand the policy of Delhi in making sure that AFSPA is applicable only in the North East and Kashmir has shielded the Indian middle class from the ugly face of this Army Act and while this measure has resulted in Sharmila unable to churn a political storm in Delhi like Hazare, such a policy is double edged and gives that degree of legitimacy to the claims of discrimination propagated by the armed groups and also felt by many, who for decades have had to live under the shadow of this Act.

It is against this backdrop that Anna Hazare or more precisely Team Anna extended the invitation to Sharmila to join them in the anti-corruption campaign at Delhi. That Sharmila is presently under Judicial custody and is kept in the security ward of JNIMS is something that may have missed the knowledge of Team Anna, but does the invite itself say anything significant ?

It does in different ways and in how it may be viewed. Any invitation to an event which has managed to grab the attention of the country and is prime news material is an acknowledgement of the cause taken up by the invitee, which in this case is Sharmila. But does this make the twain meet ?

This question will have no easy answer, for as with other aspects of human life where not everything can be understood or explained through the Mathematical model of 2 plus 2 equals 4 anywhere and under any circumstances, the invitation itself can be subjected to different interpretations.

This is the beauty or the difficult part of coming to terms with extraordinarily subjective issues and the invite extended to Sharmila fits this category like a T. Is the invitation a demonstration of extending solidarity to the cause that Sharmila has taken up or is it something else ?

If yes then why don't those sending out the invitation come down to Imphal and demonstrate their solidarity ? And if not, won't her participation in an agitation against corruption dilute her steadfast stand against AFSPA ?

The controversial Army Act is unique to the North East and Kashmir and taking it up along with an issue which has a pan India characteristic, which is corruption in this case, would only help in sidelining the cause which she took up in the first place. And half the fight against AFSPA would be lost if its discriminatory facet is diluted.

This is not to remotely suggest that corruption does not haunt Manipur. Far from it, corruption has eaten into the vitals of all Government machineries in the State and the audacity with which corruption has become institutionalised here may find no parallel in India.

The inertia, the ineffectiveness of the Government, the culture of the political class etc are all products of the growing culture of corruption and in fact such is the situation here that indulging in corruption has been elevated to the level of an art. Thus crusades against corruption and the draconian Army Act cannot be compartmentalised into water tight categories.

There is however the need to take care that Sharmila the crusader against AFSPA should not be diluted by another crusade, however justified it may be.

The history of the land, the persona of Hazare and Sharmila, the course through which the anti-corruption campaign and the anti-AFSPA protest has traversed, are unique in their own ways and mixing them up would only make a cocktail for the so called mainstream media to gloss over.

Sharmila's aura has been generated not by any media coverage nor by support or solidarity to her cause but by her sheer will and determination. There is no reason why she should reach out for any crutch at this moment of her campaign.

This is her strength. Diluting it would be criminal.