Irom Sharmila's declaration that she is in love and will marry when her demand for the repeal of the draconian Armed Forces Special Provisions Act is met and she can call off her protest should shame the conscience of the nation. The 39-year-old Manipuri is about to complete 11 years of a hunger strike in protest against the AFSPA that gives security forces powers to kill with impunity. The United Progressive Alliance promised as far back as 2004 to replace the Act with a “more humane” law but has shown little interest in taking up the task in the face of opposition from the internal security establishment. Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram recently admitted there was no consensus within the government on the issue. Ms Sharmila's fast began on November 3, 2000, a day after security personnel shot down 10 people at a bus stand just outside Imphal. Within days, she was detained by the police. Since then, she has been nasally force-fed a liquid concoction of nutrients in a hospital, which serves as her prison. After every year in detention, she is released for a day and rearrested for attempting to commit suicide — because she refuses to call off her fast until the government repeals the legislation, which is in force in Manipur, Assam, Nagaland and parts of Arunachal Pradesh, besides Jammu and Kashmir. Hers may be the longest hunger strike in recorded history but it has generated little or no interest outside Manipur. In recent days, the attention Ms Sharmila has received in the wake of Anna Hazare's anti-corruption hunger strike has served to highlight her personal life. She comes out as a resolute but lonely woman, caught between her iconic importance to the struggle against AFSPA and her own only-too-human desire to lead a normal life. Her plan to marry, “after my demand is fulfilled” (as she told a newspaper), a British national of Indian origin who has been corresponding with her and who she has met once is remarkable testimony to her spirit.
But is Irom Sharmila being held hostage by the anti-AFSPA campaign? For their part, other leaders of the movement, who have long been depending on one woman's hunger strike to keep it going, are dismayed at the attention to her private life and suspect it might be a plot to break her and the campaign. If Ms Sharmila wishes to opt out of her chosen form of protest and return to normal life, others in the movement should allow her to do so with the dignity and solidarity she deserves. That will in no way be construed as a victory for the AFSPA. Ms Sharmila's peerless sacrifice, and the sacrifices of other Manipuris, in particular the Meira Paibi women who resorted to a naked protest to draw attention to the brutality of the security forces, are a big enough blot on the Indian state — one that can be washed away only by getting rid of the AFSPA.
