Staging agitation in a mediatized culture
- Part 2 -

Dr Nongthombam Premchand *

General Strike against 'BT Road Shoot-out' on August 03 2009 :: Pix - Sudhir Anand

The Government of Manipur took up redressive measures and it constituted Commission of Inquiry. The agitation died down gradually over time. But, the process ended at the stage of redressive action with promises from the Government accompanied by the hackneyed techniques of buying time. The Government said that the act was removed from Imphal area but this was not the demand of the people. The demand was that the draconian Act which forfeits the basic right of a human being that is 'right to life' should be repealed once for all.

The Government's response was far from expectation of the people. The agitation faded into oblivion in due course of time. But there left a schism in the form of a gaping wound between the Government and the people.

The third major conflict is the prolonged agitation against the shoot out that took place at the most crowded market place of Khwairamband Keithel in broad daylight killing a pregnant young woman and a man on the 23rd July,'09. The agitation was sweeping in full force even at the time of writing this paper after nearly four months.

The incident of killing was the breach. The police/Government claimed that the incident was an encounter and that the woman was killed by an insurgent in the encounter and that subsequently the insurgent was killed in the follow up action of the police. But the talk of the town that spread within minutes of the incident was that it was a fake encounter.

People had enough reason to be suspicious, because there has been a continuing action of the security forces allegedly killing people after having picked them up from their homes or from elsewhere.

Some days after the incident, sequential still photo- graphs suggesting a fake encounter leading to the killing of a young man called Sanjit in cold blood came to be appeared in the Tehelka magazine.

The photographs have suggestively shown that it was not an encounter as claimed by the Government.

The Government which initially tried to overlook the breach was caught in a highly embarrassing circumstance. The breach came to be widened leading to a prolonged liminal period of crisis experienced earlier by the people.

There were no positive redressive actions taken up by the Government other than trying to justify the police action through a means that could be termed as covert.

There have been many cases of social drama, apart from these three incidents, that took place between the years 2000 to 2009. But these three are of greater significance and dramatic impor- tance, and they held the society for a longer period of time with greater intensity during the liminal phase of crisis. The first one concerns with the territorial integrity of Manipur that was threatened.

The next two incidents and most of the somewhat minor but very significant social dramas that staged were concerned with the Armed Forces Special Powers Act 1958 which the people wanted to be repealed, and on the contrary the Indian government wanted to keep enforced.

Once, Erving Goffman said in 1958 in his book Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life that human beings communicate through performance.

When we talk to or try to communicate nonverbally in a normal circumstance of life we tend to rise to at least some amount of performance to convince a person we are speaking to. Performance is the organizing principle through which we can study from very small artistic acts of communication between to individuals to very large performance situations like an agitation or a great historical event of a country that has been spilt over to public domain.

During the time of a social drama mentioned above the social activists act more with a subconsciously felt sense of performance propelled by an 'excited fluidity and heightened emotion', to use Clifford Geertz's phrase from his 'Blurred Genres', generated by the conflict situation.

Moreover, at a time like the present Manipur when there is an upsurge in the use of media technology like cable television network, global television news network, mobile phone, internet connectivity, etc. social events or dramas become more dramatic and sensational that it contains all the elements of both information and entertainment, or infotainment in short.

The theatrical content during performance or when shown through media is found heightened. This is in matters related with space, acting/performance, use of properties, and meaningful use of digital still and video camera.

Infotainment becomes a very useful weapon for the agitators, strikers at a time when the state becomes rogue with its security forces engaged in unwarranted violent actions against their own citizens. In the year 2000 the state and its security forces were novices in confronting agitation.

But, after so many instances of social dramas having experienced the state forces now in 2009 have a lavish budget and knowledge of subduing agitation.

They are armed to their teeth with inexhaustible amount of tear gas canisters, rubber bullets, mock bombs, live bullets, plastic shields, water canons, canes and head gears. There are numbers of newly arrived central women police and also a big number of home recruited women police force. People are not an organized army nor do they have weapon compatible with the state to use during confrontation. So they resort to throwing stones, using of catapults, blocking of traffic flow, calling bandhs, setting into fire of discarded tyres on the street, displaying of phanek (the wrap around cloth worn by women in Manipur down their waistline) conveying a message of 'shame to you' to those who are in power. Women organize very powerful and also impressive rallies at night holding torches with cloths wrapped around their heads and cloths used as waistbands.

They also organize sit-in-protest sessions at powerful spaces like a marketplace or a roadside or a crossroad. At these places they also set into fire the effigies of the VIPs immediately concerned with their agitation, and burning effigies is the most dramatic sequence in the over all scheme of the agitation.

There have been cases of self immolation in full view of spectators, pressmen and media personnel wielded with digital camera which can feed the global news network. In 2004 one Pebam Chitaranjan died of self immolation at Bishenpur marketplace in front of cameras and many attempted the same in front of the state Chief Minister's bungalow, all for the demand to repeal the Armed Forces Special Power's Act (1958).

To be continued....