Security fears drown voices against AFSPA

It is ironical and yet revealing that the Northeast — the Seven Sisters, as they are called — is best known in the rest of India by the long fast against the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 (AFSPA) by Irom Sharmila of Manipur. She is force-fed through a nasal tube. In the author’s view, “The imposition of the AFSPA in September 1980 and the militarisation of the state which followed, have led to an unprecedented crisis of governance in Manipur, from which it is still to recover.”

The background was the alleged acts at Malom by Assam Rifles (AR) on November 2, 2000, and the anti-AFSPA movement gathered momentum by the alleged rape and killing of Thangam Manorama by AR personnel on July 11, 2004.

K.S. Subramanian deserves to be listened to because he has served in the region as a civil servant and undertook a mission in November 2009 to examine human rights violations by security forces in Manipur. He has no doubt that the Act has been a failure which was “introduced as a short-term measure for a limited geographical area (and) has been in force for more than half-a-century”. While several committees and commissions have looked at AFSPA, nothing materially has changed because of the Army’s opposition to doing away with the Act.

The author quotes a comment reportedly made by General V. P. Malik, who had commanded counter-insurgency operations, to the Mainpur chief minister in 2004 that it was “either the AFSPA or no counter-insurgency operations”. Indeed, successive governments have been unable to reconcile the demands of the citizens with the Army’s opposition to doing away with the immunity the Act offers.

In geographical terms, the Northeast after Partition is joined to the rest of India by a narrow corridor at Siliguri in West Bengal. The impact of state violence and counter-violence from armed opposition groups on women has been serious. The volume provides case studies of Manipur and Tripura leaving out Nagaland and Assam for later investigation.

However, the author liberally relies on other expert opinion and publications to buttress his arguments and his staccato style can be grating.

Indeed, the editing of the volume leaves much to be desired although the complexities of the situation in each of the states are well brought out. The remedy, he proposes, is the setting up of multi-disciplinary study-cum-action groups on the Andhra model in its fight against Maoists.