Le Mashale

[pronounced: Lay Muh-Shaa-lay]

le mashale chal pade hain log mere gaon ke

ab andhera jeet lenge log mere gaon ke

(The people of my village march armed with blazing torches in their hands to triumph over darkness)

- Balli Singh Cheema 

Irom Sharmila Chanu was an ordinary girl. She loved the mountains and the rivers just like any other girl. She helped her mother like any daughter. She loved poetry and books and started writing poems at a very early age. She was just one of the many girls of Manipur, a state in the north-east region of India, and grew up to be one of the many women there. Yes, she was just another woman who grew up fearing the green uniform of the Indian military and para-military forces stationed at every block. She was just another woman who could not get accustomed to the pair of eyes staring at her from under the helmet and behind the gun. She was just another woman who could not bear to read of yet another incidence of murder, rape or mass killings by the very protectors of the land. Yes, she was just another woman who wanted to stand up and shake India from its sleep and awaken it to the existence of her motherland. Yes, she was just another woman, who had the potential of making a radical difference and who used it.  She was just another woman who recognised what was most precious to her - her life - and who bet that very thing to get what she wanted - freedom from  human rights' violation of her people.

In 1958, the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) has been implemented in the north-eastern states of Manipur and Assam. An amendment in 1972 extended the same to all seven sister states of India: Manipur, Assam, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura, Meghalaya and Arunachal Pradesh. AFSPA is a black law that gives the armed forces unrestricted and unaccountable power to carry out their operations once a region is declared 'disturbed'. This means that any officer of the armed forces can arrest, search or shoot a person on mere suspicion. Under this act, the people of the north-east regions faced, are still facing, severe military and para-military oppression. There have been unwarranted and unchecked incidences of arbitrary arrests, detentions, torture, rape, murder, mass killings, and so on by the armed forces against which every voice raised is suppressed and then justified thanks to the draconian AFSPA.

In one such incidence in Malom, 10 civilians waiting at a bus stop for a bus were gunned down indiscriminately by an eight member troop of Assam Rifles on the 2nd of November 2000. Reason: unknown. The newspaper next day carried an article about this mentioning that among the dead was a 60 year old woman and and a 17 year old boy who had won a child bravery award.  This incident came to be known as the Malom Massacre. Irom Sharmila Chanu, just 28 then, working with a human rights organisation, took it upon herself to change this and to force the Government of India to repeal this act. The only way she could see was betting all she had, betting her very breath. She set on an indefinite hunger strike. In just a few days, on the 6th of November 2000 she was arrested for attempt to suicide, for the very first time. In just a few days she had struck the roots of the system. The government noticed her. They saw her way as being dangerous to their hitherto existing structure. Her path, hence, was the right path. Her aim clear: Repeal the AFSPA. Her resolve simple: fast-unto-death.

It's been over 10 years now, a decade of fasting. Irom Sharmila has faced series of arrests where she is force fed by a nasal tube. Then she is set free only to be arrested again in a few days time. But Irom Sharmila fasts undeterred. Although she has become frail, her determination surpasses anything one has ever seen. She is then rightly called the 'Iron Lady of Manipur'. There was Gandhi who showed many the non-violent path to light and then there is Irom Sharmila who is following it until life itself gives up before her undying will. Coming from the land of the Meira Paibis, the torch-bearing women who protect their village land, Irom Sharmila, too, true to this tradition, has armed herself with the torch on which she has set her entire life ablaze. And in the light thrown by this torch several seek their way out of this darkness.  

As Irom Sharmila herself writes:

When life comes to its end
You, please transport
My lifeless body
Place it on the soil of Father Koubru

To reduce my dead body
To cinders amidst the flames
Chopping it with axe and spade
Fills my mind with revulsion

The outer cover is sure to dry out
Let it rot under the ground
Let it be of some use to future generations
Let it transform into ore in the mine

I'll spread the fragrance of peace
From Kanglei, my birthplace
In the ages to come
It will spread all over the world.

-lrom Sharmila

This is a play by Ojas S.V. of Pune. I had a chance to watch this play and was mesmerized by the performance. As Ojas rightly says in the play, how much do we really know about the north-east apart from chinkies, Tibetan markets, green clad soldiers and insurgency? It is then that I resolved to do my share and tell my readers, however few they may be, about a struggle that is going on in the north-east, that is the past and the present of an entire geo-political region of my country, that forms a history I never studied in school and the future of which depends, to however small an extent, in our hands, in my hands. Here is to the institution that is Irom Sharmila Chanu.

Video courtesy Satyen K.