Deepti Priya Mehrotra has documented her struggle in her book Burning Bright: Irom Sharmila and the Struggle for Peace in Manipur.
Today marks 10 years since Sharmila began her fast. We re-publish a feature first published in 2009:
It is March 2007, and spring is in the air. Bees and butterflies hover around fragrant white flowers of the china orange tree next to my window. Kites and crows fly overhead, bulbuls and sparrows twitter near at hand, searching for safe places to nest. Fresh green shoots come up on the fern I thought was dead. All winter I have hardly watered the lawn, yet the grass is indescribably lovely. I think of Irom Sharmila Chanu, a tall slim woman, intelligent as can be who became my friend during four winter months.
I write of her because I miss her. When I begin writing, she is no longer in Delhi; I can no longer reach her within half an hour. On 4 March 2007, she flew back to Imphal. I write of her because she is history in the flesh, being lived out in our times.
Irom Sharmila, a young Manipuri, has been on indefinite fast since November 2000. She is fasting to protest the killing of innocent people by security forces meant to protect them. She is opposing the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), a law promulgated to curb insurgency in the state. Under this law security personnel can shoot and arrest anybody, and raid premises, upon mere suspicion of insurgency. They often target ordinary people, misusing these special powers. Newspapers report innumerable incidents of false encounters. Human rights organizations have documented hundreds of cases of killing, arrest, rape and torture of innocent people.
People throughout Manipur live in a state of fear: on the one hand they fear insurgents, on the other hand security forces. A cycle of violence has been set up by these two groups. Caught in the crossfire, ordinary people in this beautiful state have lost all semblance of normal life. Rather than being an effective counter-insurgency measure, AFSPA is in fact encouraging growth of insurgency.
In November 2000, ten innocent people were mowed down by security forces in Malom, a village near Imphal. Irom Sharmila, who hails from a very ordinary family of Imphal, could not accept the situation. In response to this tragedy, she sat on hunger strike her demand: withdrawal of AFSPA from Manipur. She refused to eat until and unless this draconian legislation was removed. Later in the same month the government arrested her, and began force-feeding her through a nasal tube. She has been released, and re-arrested, innumerable times since then. For over eight years now, she has stood by her demand, refusing to eat. She has spent most of these years alone in jail, in Imphal.
