News material of AFSPA : The Pillai Package
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: September 29 2011 -

The nude protest against AFSPA in 2004 which has become part of folklore-File photo - Pix :: TSE

The irony is not lost on us. The Armed Forces Special Powers Act seems to have caught the fancy of mainland media basically on the strength of who has had a say on it rather than the very fact that this Act has been in force in the North East region for decades, the whole of Manipur alone accounting for more than 30 years.

This observation does not come from groping in the dark but from what has been spun out on the pages of the newspapers as well as what the anchors on prime time TV have had to say.

The Devil that is in this Act was not acknowledged when ten civilians were mowed down in front of RIMS way back on January 7, 1995.

Not when nine civilians were shot dead at Malom on November 2, 2000, not when spectators of a volley ball match were lined up and killed in cold blood at Heirangoithong, not when Oinam was raped and defiled in 1987, not when numerous people have been made to disappear, certainly not when Manipur erupted when the defiled, battered and bullet riddled body of Th Manorama was found in 2004.

It did not matter when Irom Sharmila Chanu began her fast unto death agitation and that fast crossed the one decade mark. To the media in the metros of the country, the shadow of Sharmila managed to cross the chicken neck on the back of Ana Hazare and company and after Bollywood stars Amir Khan and Abhay Deol spoke out in her favour.

The controversial Army Act is once again in the news, at least as far as the media across the chicken neck is concerned, thanks to former Union Home Secretary GK Pillai who has gone on record to state that the Act should be repealed.

So if AFSPA is talked about in the cities of India today, then the credit should go to these personalities not the crusader that we see in the person of Sharmila nor over the brutalised, defiled bodies of numerous people who have been at the receiving end of this Act.

A master piece of a policy thought up and perfected by Delhi to keep the idea of India as a Nation intact. That Delhi has felt the need to dip their hand into the leftovers of the British Raj to keep intact the spirit of India is a point that has been conveniently forgotten and herein lies the second irony.

An Act revived from the erstwhile British rulers to keep the idea of a new born Nation intact is self defeating and in many ways it runs contrary to the very idea of Nationhood or Nationalism. No spirit of Nationalism can be secured through military might and at best it can only be transient.

Apart from catapulting AFSPA to news material, the statement of GK Pillai has also thrown light on certain interesting points. For a bureaucrat who went on to become the Union Home Secretary, no one would doubt the mental agility of the man in question here.

Manipur and GK Pillai go back a good number of years, long before he became the Home Secretary.

The neglect of Tamenglong district and the need to develop it is best exemplified by the Pillai Package more than ten years back, before the turn of the new millennium, when he was an officer of the rank of Joint Secretary in the Union Government.

As Home Secretary, his involvement with the myriad of issues confronting the State, including the vexed Naga Integration question, the alternative arrangement as mooted by the United Naga Council, the peace talk with the IM group of the NSCN, has been substantive.

This connection with the region, more particularly Manipur, sits pretty on the profile on GK Pillai and given this background, he must surely know what he was talking about when he talked about the “past mistakes” committed by the Government of India in Manipur and towards the people of this State.

The former Home Secretary did not stop at that but went on to mention how an ancient kingdom like Manipur was overnight turned into a Part C State of the Indian Union. This observation is interesting and so was his call for the Prime Minister or the Home Minister to apologise for the past mistakes.

In a sense this can mean that Delhi is finally coming round to the idea that it has indeed made some mistakes in the past but is not ready to admit it politically, leaving the job to an old hand plus a retired bureaucrat.

Pillai's take on AFSPA is welcome though the uneasy feeling that this could just be a ploy to steal the thunder from the people who have been crusading against it for years, such as Sharmila cannot be entirely written off, as this makes political sense, in Delhi’s scheme of things