A Terrible Beauty is Born

Irom Chanu Sharmila, the iron lady on a fast-unto-death protest against the against the continued promulgation of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, AFSPA, in Manipur briefly surfaced on the front pages of local dailies following the government’s decision to release her from her eight years and counting custody at the JN Hospital Porompat, where she is being kept alive through nose feeding.

Nobody however was under any illusion that this was a show of leniency by the authorities or that Sharmila who has indeed become a legend in her lifetime was about to give up her struggle.

Her re-arrest after two days of freedom yesterday was a foregone conclusion even at the time of her release.

The entire episode was an official drama which had been re-enacted several times during the eight years of her supreme resistance against what she believes is an unwarranted and draconian infringement into the freedom and dignity of the ordinary citizens of the state.

From the official point of view it was a necessary drama, and ironically it was meant to overcome the ceiling on the extent of penalty on “offences” such as Sharmila is deemed to have committed. Under democratic laws, you cannot keep somebody in custody without charge-sheeting her (or him) forever, so to dodge past this democratic safeguard, Sharmila had to be released before the ceiling was reached and rearrested on a new arrest warrant with a fresh ceiling.

And so there she is back in her lonely ward at the JN Hospital, fed through the nose even as she continues her heroic resistance – a struggle which is unfortunately increasingly beginning to seem futile.

It makes you shudder to think that there is seemingly no easy honourable way out for Sharmila.

At this moment it does seem there is no other dignified exit for her other than through the doors of death. One is reminded of so many classic cases of supreme resistances which concluded this way.

Undoubtedly the best known of these is the image of Jesus Christ on the cross. If Christ had lived on and died of old age, or cerebral palsy, probably the inspiration that made Christianity the most major religion in the world today would have been a lot different.

Just as his resistance to the social order of the time which led to his public crucifixion redeemed the faithful of this world, perhaps Sharmila in her own way can achieve the mission she set out to achieve only if she continues on with her resistance literally unto death.

Even the unlikely event of the government deciding to lift the AFSPA and compelling her to return to normal life would not be as much a ticket to immortality as the other scenario where her fight takes her to a new height of martyrdom.

We are in all likelihood faced with what can only be described as a tragic situation, but a tragedy that borders on the sublime nonetheless. When Sharmila was given freedom, there were rumours that she may end her fast and enter politics.

The feeling that came across to many of us was one of relief that she would live, and at the same time of a profound sorrow that such an awesome struggle she put up was destined to end in such a trivial fashion.

There was hence a reverse sense of relief when she was rearrested under the charge of attempted suicide from the PDA complex at Porompat where she joined her supporters doing a relay hunger strike to save her by having the government repeal the AFSPA. The sublime in her has remained sublime.

A terrible beauty indeed, for everybody knows that giving moral support to her in her struggle would amount to encouraging her to die. Saving Sharmila hence is not as a simple a matter as the woman ending her fast. Not anymore.

She has taken herself and her unique resistance beyond the point of no return and she can now only end up with one or the other of her goals achieved – repeal of the AFSPA or her death.

Every other alternative would be mundane and devoid of the catharsis Manipur so desperately hungers for.

So with a heart filled with a curious torturous mix of joy and sorrow, we join those who would have Sharmila achieve one or the other of her objectives without at any point capitulating. The preferred option of course would be for it to become possible for the AFSPA to be lifted.