“Manipur, literally meaning "jewelled land", nestle deep within a lush green corner of North East India. Surrounded by blue hills with an oval valley at the centre, rich in art and tradition and surcharged with nature's pristine glory…”
I look, annoyed, at the chirpy way my colleague has started the paper on Manipur. Almost like the ‘generous’ pieces the travel publications, I write for sometimes, demand out of run-down places that have been turned into tourist destinations by building concrete govt. tourism guest houses and more concrete hotels around them. It also exudes a sense of peace and calm that sometimes I have to write about the same places while being surrounded by loud Bengali tourists. To notice the blue hills, the lush greens, the rich tradition and culture of Manipur in October 2009 requires the same amount of ignorance (and the supposed bliss it brings), an extremely optimistic disposition (may be caused by pressure of pay cheque) and a paradoxical detachment.
This is not to malign my colleague. His writing does get more critical...
“The last decade of the twentieth century is best remembered in Manipur for violent ethnic clashes on its soil. The first in the fray was the Kuki-Naga clashes which started in the year 1992 and continued till 1998 followed by the clashes between the Meiteis and the Meitie Muslims in May 1993. In June 1995, there was a sudden eruption of Kuki-Tamil clashes in Moreh. The latest was the Kuki-Paite clash in 1997-1998. In June 2001, there was Meitei uprising in Manipur Valley
To address such situations, the Indian parliament enacted the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act in 1958 (AFSPA), one the most draconian legislations that the Indian Parliament has passed in its 60 years. It was first applied to the Naga Hill areas of Assam and Manipur and was amended in 1972 to extend to all the seven states in the north- eastern states of India
... Anyone’s would have to. Manipur is nothing but a critical entanglement of complexity, all created and some consequential, right now. And the complexities do not end at ethnic dissatisfaction, insurgency and militarization alone. Proximity to Burma, heroin, guns, HIV/AIDS, counterfeit money, nefarious nexus between Indian state, the Marwari businessmen, leaders of Under Ground groups (UGs, they are lovingly referred to as in Manipur and from now on here), dirty politicians, greedy officials… the whole game will make Puzo, Kubrik etc feel like a little girl.
I tried making a van diagram (remember we are writing a paper?), but it all soon became too complicated and a vague sense of failure similar to that of what I felt while doing my masters in Economics set in. So I borrowed this thing called friendship wheel from Facebook. (Sometimes FB is useful. Especially when you are writing a paper). And this is what it looks like:
(Image: Devraj Chaliha)
Any serious attempt at writing about Manipur has the danger of creating one’s own Frankenstein. To harness a story which is already out of hands requires creating epics. Thankfully, we (me and my colleague) only have to write a strategic paper about the conditions of poverty in Chandel district. But the lure of unleashing the monster also chases you in dreams while you are thinking about it...
Over the past couple of months the atmosphere in Manipur has been hot and stormy again. The killing of an unarmed ex-UG member in broad day light, in a crowded market place that was reported by Tehelka, lead to intense protests. Needless to say the state’s reply has also been intense. Many activists and protester are in prison, booked straight under the NSA (National Security Act). It means six months' prison without bail and without trial. What threat do people, who protest against military atrocities and fight for upholding human rights, pose to the nation? People who demand an equal and dignified treatment from their own state, who feel neglected and isolated from the identity that has been formed as a nation, are treated as threat to the nation by this government sworn under a constitution that guarantees civil liberties such as freedom of speech! This is why Jiten Yumnum and Irom Sharmila are in prison right now. Jiten is a friend and a fellow activist who works on issues of climates change and believes in justice. He was arrested from Imphal airport on his way to a conference in Bangkok
In Manipur, everyday, you read about at least a couple of killings of UGs by military. (Yesterday, 01.11.09: they killed 7). The rumor has it that the chief minister has been strictly ordered by the ‘centre’ to deal a heavy hand in bringing down the ultras. He has been given a target of 1500 killings by the end of 2009, to prove his men are working efficiently. The resultant massacre is designed slow but steady, taking away young lives off Manipur every day. Death by military bullets has become a part of everyone’s life in Manipur. Here is one story about that:
A woman lost her son to the bullet. She got the news that she had to go and bring the dead body of her son from the morgue. Naturally her neighbours and friends accompanied her to this ordeal. When they reached the morgue, another woman, a neighbour who had gone with her to hospital found her own son also there, lying as a dead body. This mother did not even know that her son was killed too.
As we drove around Manipur, through the blue hills that my colleague mentioned at the beginning, it was difficult to feel the usual sense of elation and carefreeness that mountains bring. Instead a sense of anxiety hung from the leaves of the forests and the edges of the really bad roads that are ubiquitous to North-East like its bamboo baskets and monsoon rains. Each village had an army camp adjacent to it and two check gates manned by the army. One at the entrance and one at the exit, from whichever direction you approach. At each check gate, the driver had to get down and register his vehicles and answer innumerable questions. The passengers had to get down and walk over to the other side of the lowered bamboo barricade so that the army could search you and the vehicle. In our case, we were 9 people in the vehicle and the back door of the Marshal did not open. Getting everyone out meant a drill more difficult than the army’s and we had to do it more than 10 times in a distance of about 40 km. But that is not all. There were also patrolling troupes who stopped us few more times on the way asking us questions like 'what are you doing here?' - in Hindi. In our car out of the 9 people, 7 were from that part of Manipur. We were in fact visiting their villages. The other 2 were me and my colleague. My colleague is from Manipur and I am from Assam India
The head of the organisation, through which we had organised the visit, was adamant on driving the vehicle himself. The young driver had to sit at the back. The road was really bad. We had to push through knee deep mud longer than we could drive the car. I asked why he was not letting the driver drive. He laughed and said that the driver does not understand Hindi much and if the army asks him to stop and he does not understand, they will immediately fire upon us. That moment it became clear to me why they were pointing to the hills that folded into the horizon towards Burma and told me moments ago, “This place is called Death Valley ”.
Each moment in Manipur throws you with her incredible stories. The Meitei’s talking about the rest, the friendships between a Naga and Kuki that immediately polarizes if you happen to mention the conflict between the 2 groups, the women who have taken in the role of both protectors and protesters in this time of trouble. But my favourite story from Manipur is this one...
-->
Let the gate of the prison be flung wide
I will not go on another path
Please remove the shackles of thorn
Let me be not accused
For being incarnated in the life of a bird
---- Irom Sharmila
Irom Sharmila is also one of the many who are arrested under NSA for posing threat to national security of India
Sharmila was arrested in 2000 for being on a fast-unto-death strike. Few months before, security forces had indiscriminately fired upon a gathering of people killing 11 civilians. Sharmila announced she will not eat until AFSPA has been removed from Manipur. This killing of innocents has to stop! And it has been 9 years since she ate, showing how powerless the Indian state is that even their brutal laws have not been able to break her resolve. She lives in the hospital, being nose fed by force. The law says that the longest the police can keep one under custody under NSA is 6 months. So every six month Sharmila is set free for a day or two. As a free bird, she heads straight for the relay hunger strike that continues outside the hospital in her support. The police arrest her back after 2 days again for six months.
9 years, AFSPA still remains in Manipur, killing many. But Sharmila’s spirit remains alive and kicking the oppressive state in the face. Her friends plan to celebrate her indomitable spirit this November through poetry, music, theatre, dance and much more. I salute her with a few jumps and screams with my arms stretched to the sky.
- Here I recommend SURFACE, the book by Siddhartha Deb, published by PICADOR
if only i could read writing like this in a newspaper.... maybe there would be candle light marches in delhi. like for 'jessica' or ' the taj'. and then perhaps india would become foreign to it's 'indian - ness - less.'
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