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| Nine long years |
| Monday November 2, 2009 , Imphal |
| Nine years ago on the second of November I arrived in the dusty city of Guwahati for a year's assignment in the North East Bureau. The city looked unusually quiet and relaxed. And I had no idea what I was getting into. I had no idea either that on that very day a young lady somewhere in India's North East started an agitation which is today considered unprecedented in the history of resistance. I am not sure whether we even covered the Malom massacre of Imphal, which shocked Irom Sharmila Chanu into a silent and lonely struggle against the draconian Armed Forces Special Powers Act. I am not sure how many massacres we covered, even after Malom. We tried to ticker them when we were informed of encounters, killings and operations.We hardly questioned. We never investigated and despite our scepticism we moved on. Television has a wonderful one line alternate to reportage, which is a five-worded sentence that runs as a scroll below the main news bulletin. Anybody familiar with the North East of India has heard of this Act, which is singularly responsible for hundreds of extra judicial killings and for further alienating the civil society from the state's effort in countering insurgency. And it is in Manipur where the Act has been abused the most. Its there where Sharmila under arrest on charges of suicide continues her dogged protest against this Act and is kept alive in a hospital room fed forcefully by government agencies. The tragedy of Irom Sharmila's resistance is not only the indifference that policy makers have towards what citizens want but also the fact that she is herself now a trophy for civil right and human right groups. I met her a couple of times and she appeared too weak to rationally articulate. But what I have heard from others and read, indicate that her moral stand and moral strength remains unchanged and she is focussed on just one goal - repeal of the Armed Forces Act. Discrimination is a sensitive word in India's North East. It can trigger off a range of emotions in almost all sections of people including the media. Notwithstanding the risk I must say my first encounter with North East was through two discriminatory Acts of Parliament - the IMDT Act in Assam, which was finally repealed, and the Armed Forces Special Powers Act applicable in the disturbed areas of the region. The IMDT Act was the most ludicrous Act to identify and deport an illegal migrant and the Armed Forces Act is one of the most repressive Acts which grants immunity to the army and paramilitary forces who can search, arrest and even kill without any questions asked. My first visual impact of the region was from a visit to a town in Lower Assam after a Diwali night massacre by the ULFA killing eleven people. The temple bells were mysteriously ringing that evening when they sprayed bullets on people celebrating the night of bright lights. A three year old girl ran out from a nervously downed shop shutter as our vehicle parked near it. I remember picking up the child and was numbed to see a bullet scar below her left knee. The image stayed on with me. Fear was an everyday emotion then. It still is. The places may have changed. The degrees vary. And its not just fear from what is fashionably called non-state actors. But there is fear from state actors as well. Statistics can be even more dehumanising. But I remember in the first four months of 2006 in Manipur seventeen young boys had been killed in extra judicial deaths. Each year the number increases with the armed forces under pressure to perform. It can perhaps never be substantiated but the reported weekly headcount for each battalion of forces in disturbed areas is very disturbing. The point I am also trying to make is that what has the Armed Forces Act achieved? In Assam ULFA has come back stronger each time the government has claimed to have isolated them. The terrifying eighties may have become a shade better but the proliferation of groups, the failure of peace talks and the regime of abduction and extortion underlies how the Act has failed to give any teeth to counter insurgency operations. Interestingly almost everyone agrees that the Act must go. With everyone, I mean even government agencies that study, follow and decide on policies relating to the law and order. The only agencies that are against the review and repeal of the Act are the army and the paramilitary forces. Since I arrived here nine years ago, at least eight outfits have come overground. A few more are on no-war mode. But still the situation is far from even normal. These are days when any city is vulnerable to terrorist strikes. But one is looking beyond the cities. Large parts of Assam, two districts of Arunachal Pradesh, a little of Tripura, Nagaland and of course Manipur are still dotted with insurgencies. Along with insurgency, comes underdevelopment, extortion, unemployment and every other source of fostering further disgruntlement. Add to all this an Act of repression by the government and it feeds on the insurgent elements to push their cause with people. Single temp plates will never work in this region. Why? Because I wish there was no North East. I wish there was just eight states like the other states of the country. Each of these states is unique. For example Meghalaya has nothing in common with Manipur. The North East deconstructed may give a little more clarity to people who decide the fate of the people here. As for me I wouldn't have had to cover an area starting from the Chinese border at Tawang to the other Chinese border at Nathula. With Bhutan, Bangladesh and Myanmar borders thrown in between! |
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Kishalay Bhattacharjee is a broadcast journalist obsessed with the audio visual medium. Very opinionated that journalism is far removed from activism and he hates long bios. An Edward Murrow Fellow, Kishalay received the Ramnath Goenka Award for Journalism 2006-2007.
