We are a nation that fasts for a result, most often religiously, to appease the gods. So it was a natural corollary that Gandhiji picked fasting as an effectual form of protest against the British. Modern-day Gandhians like Sunderlal Bahuguna and Anna Hazare took to it as and when they required to lead a protest. Hazare did it at New Delhi's Jantar Mantar early April. It wasn't the first time. He had done it before in his home State Maharashtra. By the time the sun downed on the fourth day of his fast-unto-death on April 9, it had not only developed into a mass uprising of the middle class against corrupt politicians and systems, but it nearly made the Government quake.
Hazare is now basking in the success of generating a nationwide movement against corruption; and if all goes well, a historic legislation is on its way.
But the trajectory Hazare's protest took may have exposed the Central Government's double standards. In faraway Manipur, a frail woman called Irom Sharmila has been under arrest for years now. Her crime: Fasting for over a decade. She has been fasting to demand the repeal of the colonial Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act. An Act, Irom says, is blatantly used for a series of human rights violations by army men in the north-eastern State. Incidentally, Sharmila too got media attention when she came down to Jantar Mantar in 2006.
A promise unfulfilled
In 2004, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh went on record promising amendment to the Act because “it needs to be humane”. The Justice B.P. Jeevan Reddy Committee report in 2006 recommended the repeal of AFSPA. The Prime Minister's promise was never fulfilled, the Reddy report is tucked away, forgotten, on some government office shelf. Well-known political commentator on the North East, Sanjoy Hazarika, who was a member of the Reddy Committee, is livid. “The recommendations of the committee are gathering dust only because the Indian Army does not want it. The army says it needs it to fight insurgency effectively. However, the action taken by Bhutan and Bangladesh has done much more to dismantle insurgency in the region than our Army's operations.”
“Though the committee members did not have the remit to examine the action of Sharmila or its merits, it did advertise in the media and its website for submissions/depositions, and there was none from Sharmila,” says another committee member Lt. Gen (Retd.) S.V. Raghavan of the think-tank, Delhi Policy Group. Of course, nobody ever thought of meeting Sharmila to get her side of the story, like the government did in Anna Hazare's case. The report, a copy of which The Hindu had in 2006, clearly ruled that “The Act is too sketchy, too bald and quite inadequate in several particulars.”
Hazarika, author of a well-received book on NE insurgency, “Strangers in the Mist”, blames the Central Government for its impunity. “It treads on one section of its citizens while it fetes the other,” he says. “The Army's security angle is nonsense, it has to go back to the barracks,” he underlines. “The condition in NE is better today. Insurgents are in dialogue, some are in jail, many have been killed. Look at the recent Assam election, it was incident-free. Every time elections happen in the NE, more and more people come out to vote. So why do we need the Army there?”
Many civil society groups across NE have been asking for repealing of the Act and raising the issue of Sharmila being treated like a criminal. A section from the world of arts is trying to raise awareness through their work in various States. But Sharmila and her cause lack mass support in mainland India. Well-known psephologist and Senior Fellow at the Centre for Social and Development Studies, Yogendra Yadav feels “This is because there is a general indifference towards the NE, particularly the Hill States. Both physically and mentally, people here are far way from it. There definitely is a cultural and ethnic difference with people from the mainland and the gap is apparent.” Ironic since Manmohan Singh relies on Assam for his Rajya Sabha seat. Yadav equates the relationship of the Central Government with the NE to that of “the landlord and tenant”.
Celebrated social and political commentator Ashis Nandy comments, “People came out for Hazare's protest because the issue was corruption, the middle class can easily identify with it. But not too many can identify with Sharmila's cause, those fighting for it are in a minority. The fight is always tough for a minority in a democracy. It is true of all countries. Look at the U.S.; one-tenth of its population lives below the poverty line, yet no politician talks about it.”
He adds, “Since Sharmila's campaign has gone on for too long, the middle class and media have lost interest. There is so much to distract the middle class today.”
But Hazarika has a counterpoint to the oft-perceived ‘limited' scope of Sharmila's campaign. “Hazare only questioned the corrupt politicians, so it was easy for the Government to respond to it but Sharmila has questioned the State and its wrongdoing. That is why she is facing stiff resistance. She has done what she could do, now is the time for the civil society from all over India to take up her cause and force the Government to amend the draconian law. Why can't people from outside Manipur organise a mass fast on her behalf? If the Government listens only to Hazare, I request him to fast for her.”
Will Hazare oblige?
