Leading a normal family life can appear a piece of cake compared with going on an years-long hunger strike.
But then, one meets Irom Chanu Sharmila, and the idea is turned on its head. Sharmila thinks that the pressures of wedded life are tougher than leading a civil agitation.
Having staged a gritty hunger strike lasting 16 years in protest against the draconian Armed Forces Special Powers Act, Ms. Sharmila feels that the family life that followed it was tougher even as her genial husband, Desmond Coutinho, sitting next to her, breaks into a smile. He playfully presses her hand as she starts worrying about his health.
The ‘Iron Lady’ from Manipur who is a civil rights activist, political protagonist and poet, was talking to The Hindu on the sidelines of a function held at the Sacred Heart Autonomous College, Thevara, to mark the inauguration of the State camp of the National Service Scheme here on Friday.
“I have not deviated from the fight against injustice. Neither do I consider myself a failure,” says Ms. Sharmila when asked whether a sense of emptiness has set in after calling off her iconic fight. She still gets driven by the prospective of fighting together, cutting across the barriers of language, culture, and distance - a reason why she had visited Jammu and Kashmir in the aftermath of the revocation of Article 370, stripping the Himalayan State of its special status. While she could easily relate herself to the sentiments of Kashmiris who suffered from excesses committed by security forces, Ms. Sharmila feels that Kashmiris’ sufferings went beyond that.
“They suffer from various draconian laws and it is not just about the armed forces. Their sense of pride as Kashmiris has taken a hit,” she says. The alienation of the Kashimiri people could be gauged by the incident where she and family were unwelcome at an orphanage there despite their good intentions, while their presence at a funeral evoked suspicions of Indian surveillance.
Notwithstanding her penchant for fighting injustice, the affable lady has decided not to contest another election after the humiliating outing at the hustings in the Manipur Assembly elections in 2017.
She bats for gender parity, asking women not to perpetrate discrimination against themselves. “The blood of a girl is not any impure than that of a boy and at least mothers will have to stop such discrimination,” Ms. Sharmila says.
Being the face of non-violent protest, she is concerned about the normalisation of the culture of violence as manifested in the encounter killings of the accused in the rape and murder of a veterinarian in Telangana.
What is the need for law in that case, the Magsaysay award winner wonders aloud, even as she expresses her support to the nuns who are on a protest in Kerala.
