I was thrilled to meet her and her partner in April this year in Kodaikanal, the popular hill station in Tamil Nadu. I felt happy and grateful I could meet the well-known human rights activist whom I have written and spoken about quite a few times.
The steely woman activist, Irom Sharmila Chanu, known as the Iron Lady of Manipur, had undertaken a hunger strike for sixteen years, protesting the army’s atrocities and demanding the repeal of a draconian law that gave the army total impunity. Manipur in North East India has suffered from years of violent insurgency. The Indian government had to declare Manipur as a disturbed area in 1980 and send the army to control the violence. It invoked a law passed in 1958 to tackle insurgency in the seven Northeastern States, called the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA). This Act grants security forces the power to search any home or premises without a warrant, and to arrest anyone and to use deadly force if there is “reasonable suspicion” that a person is acting against the state.
For a long time the local people and human rights groups have been accusing the army of blatant human rights violations, even rape and murder. So even as a young girl, Sharmila was a civil rights activist, engaged in peaceful protests against the army’s excesses. On November 2, 2000, in a town called Malom, ten civilians who were waiting at a bus stop were shot and killed by the army. Deeply agitated by ‘the Malom massacre,’ the 28-year old Sharmila began her hunger strike on November 5. Her demand was that the Indian government should repeal the Act (AFSPA) that makes the army kill innocent civilians with such impunity. She vowed not to eat or drink, not even comb her hair or look in a mirror until AFSPA was repealed.
As her health deteriorated rapidly, she was arrested by the police for ‘attempting to commit suicide’ and was force-fed through her nose. But several people and rights groups from all over the world supported her and her demand. In 2010, she won a lifetime achievement award from the Asian Human Rights Commission. In 2011 the ‘Save Sharmila Solidarity Campaign (SSSC)’ was launched, but the government did not yield.
Seeing the utter futility of her heroic hunger strike for sixteen long years, she finally decided to change her strategy. She ended her strike on 9 August 2016 and announced she would contest the State’s assembly elections. She got just ninety votes! She quit politics, but vowed that her fight for justice would continue.
In 2009, a man entered the lonely, painful life of this activist, declaring his love for her. Desmond Anthony Coutinho, a British citizen of Goan origin, reading a review of Sharmila’s biography, Burning Bright, by Deepti Priya Mehrotra when he came to Bengaluru in 2009 and seeing her pictures, fell in love with her. He met her in 2011 and later began writing to her, and sending her books and CDs of films. The police made it difficult for him whenever he tried to visit her and once even arrested him. The locals, who wanted her to be a martyr, did not like the idea of her getting married.
When I met them in April, Desmond seemed keen on marriage, as he wanted to give a new life to the woman whose sixteen years of starvation had damaged her digestive system. But she, the iron-willed activist, found it hard to make up her mind. Finally, thank God, love triumphed. I was happy to hear that in a quiet and simple ceremony Desmond and Sharmila got married on 17 August. After the ceremony, Desmond told the reporters, “I have been waiting for her for the past seven years. She has given me a new life.” Who was giving whom a new life?
It was clear that marriage would not smother the activist in the frail, fearless woman. She declared her fight for justice would continue and that she would speak up in all possible forums for the people of Manipur.
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