[But
in India, where hunger
strikes serve
as a common tool of protest — playing a prominent role even in the modern
state’s creation — not all of them grip the public imagination in quite the
same way. Ms. Sharmila’s lonely, nonviolent struggle has endured in obscurity,
along with her cause: to get India
By Lydia Polgreen
 |
Manpreet Romana for The New York Times
Irom Chanu Sharmila on a hunger strike in
where she is force-fed through a tube in her nose.
|
Irom Chanu Sharmila, a 39-year-old poet and activist, gave her usual
reply: no. With that, she was taken back to the hospital room where she spends
her days in isolation, force-fed a sludgy mix of nutrients though the tube in
her nose. This routine has gone on, remarkably, for 11 years.
A recent 12-day fast by the social
activist Anna Hazare paralyzed
India
But in India, where hunger
strikes serve as a
common tool of protest — playing a prominent role even in the modern state’s
creation — not all of them grip the public imagination in quite the same way.
Ms. Sharmila’s lonely, nonviolent struggle has endured in obscurity, along with
her cause: to get India
She spends her days cut off from her supporters, her family and the news
media. The authorities tightly control access to her. Still, her determination
is unwavering. “I am strong,” Ms. Sharmila averred, eyes ablaze, in a brief
interview in the judge’s chambers. “I am just waiting for God and his
infallible judgment.”
In appearance and culture its people have more in common with East Asia than distant New Delhi
Soldiers here have a much freer hand because they are shielded from
prosecution by a law known as the Armed Forces Special Powers Act of 1958.
Under the law, military personnel can arrest people without a warrant, shoot to
kill on suspicion and use deadly force to break up gatherings of five or more
people. They cannot be prosecuted without explicit permission from the central
government, which rarely comes.
Unsurprisingly, the law has led to decades of human rights
abuses. Thousands have been killed, injured, arrested and tortured
with impunity, human rights workers here say.
The episode that prompted Ms. Sharmila to begin her fast took place on
the afternoon of Nov. 2, 2000 , in a village at the edge of Imphal
called Malom. A mysterious explosion along the main road leading to the village
sent a company of soldiers of the Assam Rifles flooding into the village. The
soldiers killed 10 people, including teenagers and a 62-year-old grandmother.
Seven of the dead were shot at close range while lined up at a bus stop; the
other three were gunned down elsewhere in the village.
The soldiers claimed that they had been fired upon, but a judicial
inquiry found no evidence to support their assertion.
“The firing by the Assam Rifles personnel have resulted to the death of
10 (ten) innocent persons,” said the inquiry report, which was completed last
year, nearly a decade after the killings.
Among the dead were Chandramani Singh, a 17-year-old high school student
who had won a national award for bravery for saving his younger brother from
drowning in a fish pond when he was 4 years old. He had traveled to New Delhi
“The family was completely shattered,” said Manichandra Singh, the
brother Chandramani had plucked from the fishing pond, now a 25-year-old
doctor. “My two brothers who were living together with me suddenly killed in
cold blood by those fellows.”
Two days after the massacre, Ms. Sharmila sat on a hand-woven rug
beneath a metal roof along the main road and hung up a sign that read “Hunger
Strike,” said Babloo Loitangbam, a human rights activist and adviser to Ms.
Sharmila. Her goal was to get the central government to revoke the Armed Forces
Special Powers Act so that the men who carried out the attack on Malom could be
prosecuted.
“We thought it was going to be a few weeks,” Mr. Loitangbam said. “A
month at most.”
Almost immediately she was arrested under a clause of the Indian penal
code that makes attempting suicide a crime. She was hospitalized and force-fed,
a practice the World
Medical Association deems
“a form of inhuman and degrading treatment.”
Ever since then she has been shuttled between hospitals and courtrooms,
making an appearance every 15 days to reaffirm her wish to starve herself to
death. Once a year the court is obliged to release her — the maximum sentence
for the crime she is accused of is one year. She is usually arrested the
following day.
When she was released in 2006, allies helped smuggle her into New Delhi
Ms. Sharmila passes her days in almost complete solitude. Convicted
criminals are allowed two visits per week, but she is kept in isolation in her
hospital room. She does four hours of yoga a day and reads many books; her room
is lined with biographies of Nelson Mandela, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King
Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi, heroes of nonviolent struggles like hers.
But she is not averse to lighter fare. Asked what she had been reading
lately, her eyes grew wide.
“Stieg Larsson!” she replied, with a giggle. “Very impressive.”
She said she had heard of Mr. Hazare and admired his dedication to his
cause.
“I feel very good thinking about his courage,” she said.
Mr. Hazare and his allies had written her a letter inviting her to join
their struggle against corruption.
“I cannot get the advantage of exercising my nonviolent protest for
justice against my concerned authority as a democratic citizen of a democratic
country,” she wrote in reply. “Let me get free, like
yours, to join your amazing crusade to root out corruption — which is the root
of all evils. Or you can come to Manipur, the most corruption affected region
in the world,” she also wrote.
Activists like Ms. Sharmila have been working to get the security laws
here dropped for years, to little effect. Debates about Manipur’s human rights
problems are more likely to be heard in international venues, like the United
Nations and the European Parliament, than in New Delhi
Now Mr. Hazare’s fast has shone new light on Ms. Sharmila’s struggle.
Mr. Loitangbam has been inundated by calls from the Indian news media, and a
senior government minister, Salman Kursheed, also called, asking how Ms.
Sharmila’s fast could be ended, he said. Mr. Hazare himself has expressed
interest in visiting Ms. Sharmila in Manipur. But many here worry about some of
the nationalist elements that have rallied to his side.
“On the one hand, Anna is giving us a spotlight,” Mr. Loitangbam said.
“But we don’t want to be completely absorbed into it.”
Ms. Sharmila said she had no intention of giving up her fast until she
gets the justice she seeks.
“Until and unless my demand is fulfilled, I will be passing my life in
this way,” she said. “There is no other way.”
