SHARMILA’S CHOICE
IROM SHARMILA’S MORBIDLY INSPIRING 16-YEAR-LONG FAST COMES TO AN END, UNSETTLING MANY OF HER SUPPORTERS. BUT WHILE AFSPA ENDURES, THIS IS NO SURRENDER, MORE AN AFFIRMATION OF LIFE—AND LOVE
Early in the morning, at around 7 am, Irom Sharmila, a sprightly 44, all things considered, can be found walking outside a pale blue building in Imphal’s Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Medical Sciences (JNIMS) hospital. She has been held here for most of the past 16 years, a thin nasal-gastric tube famously fastened to her nose so that she can receive the nutrients necessary to keep her alive. On this August morning, though, the clouds hanging low over the humpbacked hills in the distance, she is accompanied on her stroll by armed guards. It is out of the ordinary, local journalists and activists insist. Sharmila’s morning walk is the time to sneak in a few informal words, inquire after her health, offer support, and news. The authorities have clamped down, a guard says. Looking the other way while a journalist asks a question or two might result in a suspension, and the guards don’t intend to find out.
Sharmila is due to appear in court on August 9, at which point it is expected that she will do as she has announced, and give up one of the longest hunger strikes in history. It is a decision the central government will want her to stick to, hence the guards with guns. If the guards are nervous, taut with responsibility, Sharmila appears relaxed, turning to give a cheery wave before she is escorted through metal gates to her room in the ‘special’ ward.
Her decision to end her fast and participate as an independent candidate in Manipur’s assembly elections early next year has created widespread confusion, bemusement, even anger. “No one,” as the human rights activist Onil Kshetrimayum points out, “has the right to tell her what to do or to interfere in her personal affairs.” But, Kshetrimayum, dressed in a well-worn white ‘Repeal AFSPA’ t-shirt, concedes, “some of her supporters are disappointed that the decision was so sudden, so unilateral, without any discussion or consultation.” A popular local figure in human rights and NGO circles, he has worked closely with Sharmila, been a trustee of an organisation created from her prize money, and even helped facilitate contact between her and her boyfriend Desmond Coutinho, a Briton of Goan origin by way of east Africa. Kshetrimayum says his initial feelings when he heard about Sharmila’s decision to break her fast were of relief, of “happiness for her that she had chosen to move on with her life, to stop what was a kind of harakiri mission”. Those feelings of relief were quickly overwhelmed by worry— worry about how she would adapt after 16 years without swallowing a morsel of food or drop of water; worry about her entry into the murk of local Manipuri politics; worry about the future she appears to have mapped out for herself with such impulsive haste.
In November, 16 years ago, Sharmila’s decision to begin her hunger strike was as unexpected, as seemingly impulsive, as her decision a couple of weeks ago to end that strike. In the meantime, she has become an icon, an internationally recognised prisoner of conscience. Babloo Loitongbam, a prominent human rights campaigner, says Sharmila’s capacity to surprise remains unchanged: “When she came to me all those years ago to tell me she had begun a hunger strike, my first reaction was to say ‘hang on, this is too big a thing for you to take on’, but she had made up her mind, had already taken her mother’s blessings.” As Loitongbam remembers it, no one imagined Sharmila, a quiet 28-year-old volunteer remarkable only for her diligent attendance, could be capable of such a resolution.
Sharmila was, everyone says, a quiet girl. “She would wait,” Loitongbam says, “till after a meeting was finished to ask questions and
NO ONE IMAGINED SHARMILA, A QUIET 28-YEAR-OLD VOLUNTEER REMARKABLE ONLY FOR HER DILIGENT ATTENDANCE, COULD BE CAPABLE OF FOLLOWING THROUGH WITH SUCH RESOLUTION