[Reader-list] [Trivial Matters] Curfew and the Night, Imphal Manipur

[Akshay]

[image: Imphal Encounter]<http://www.flickr.com/photos/lecercle/3452836536/>

In the heat of day, all is silent in Imphal, except for the soldiers beating
their sticks against the hard pavement and the dogs barking in distant
neighborhoods. I had arrived a few hours earlier, unaware of the city’s
uncertain state of siege, traveling past alternating police checkpoints and
local highway blockades. At the series of police checkpoints my belongings
were scrutinized, papers examined, and bribes paid. The local blockades were
manned by angry Meithei women and children pulling on makeshift rope past
burning rubber tires, as much forms of extortion as they were forms of
popular protest. The bundle of ten rupee notes in my pocket helped me
negotiate these barriers with more ease then most.

Manipur was in a state of clampdown, the consequence of the kidnapping and
brutal murder of a young dedicated officer of the Manipur Civil Service, Dr.
Thingnam Kishan. His body was found along with his driver and guard, hacked
to death, strewn under a bridge on one of the state’s highways on February
13. Yet another death in the face of the terror Manipur faces from the armed
forces and from scores of militant groups, hardly any of it is reported
except by their local media.

The insurgents have been in the region in one from or another since the
birth of the country. Manipur is engulfed in a civil conflict with an almost
unending stamina for death. The only difference being that more groups have
mushroomed, crystallizing around the different ethnic and tribal identities.
Each of these groups has their own skewed separatist agenda. What they share
is a deep distrust of Indian soldiers and a love for extortion. India has
pumped in almost 55,000 soldiers and loads of money in this more than
half-century of conflict but neither seems to have staunched political
grievances or every day misery.

[image: Imphal Encounter]<http://www.flickr.com/photos/lecercle/3452800148/>

I walk over to the window and took pictures of the scene beyond the heavy
grill. The suspicious black box in my possession catches the eyes of one of
the soldiers, in a sudden jerk he dismounts his gun off this shoulder and
points its upwards; I drop my camera and protrude my hands through the metal
outwards to make my intentions clearer – my first exchange of fear.

If you have lived in Imphal long enough you will find that the life of its 3
lakh inhabitants revolves around perennial cycles of general strikes and
curfew. In fact Imphal and many parts of this north east corner of India
have remained in a permanent state of partial curfew for decades, a reality
incomprehensible to those of us who live in metropolitan India.

[image: The Elephant] <http://www.flickr.com/photos/lecercle/3387334784/>

Between 5am to 5pm, the city swings into action. Everyone is desperately
trying to get a share of the cash, before it runs out. Even the most routine
of transactions like buying vegetables or sugar takes on an air of siege.
Come evening the streets fill with people making a hasty retreat home - as
the last of Imphal throng outside ATMs before the shopkeepers down their
shutters and police loudspeakers announce the coming of yet another curfew.

A large photograph of a young woman - her nose covered by a medical swatch
making way for a IV tube, stoic and dogged, her eyes peer down at you –
dominates a makeshift bamboo hut in New Checkon in Imphal East. This is a
picture of Irom Sharmila, she has not eaten for nearly 9 years now – for
this she has been locked up by government and force-fed by tubes. She
launched into this almost decade long fast unto death, demanding the removal
of the repressive Armed Forces Special Powers Act(AFSPA) after she witnessed
the killing of 10 innocent civilians allegedly at the hands the Assam Rifles
in November of 2000. Their killings like many others Manipur has witnessed
came under the aegis of a law that gives the Indian army extraordinary
powers to quash ethnic insurgencies. In the hut Ima K Taruni and the dozen
other Meira Paibi, the torch bearers are angry as they sit in a relay hunger
strike for Sharmila. “Enough is enough, we will not vote until AFSPA is
revoked. What kind of democracy is this were members of our own army kill us
with impunity."

[image: Meira Paibi] <http://www.flickr.com/photos/lecercle/3452798484/>
[Ima K Taruni and the dozen other Meira Paibi, the torch bearers]

The smog gently floats over the valley in a vacuum left by the pause of
violence; in the days that follow it is the Yaoshang festival. A quiet
before the storm only to be pierced by gun fire. In the streets people
scatter, shop shutters come rumbling down and all is once more quiet in
anticipation of the next rattle of bullets. A photographer’s job is filled
with fool’s errands; we chase gunfire instead of escaping it. Meters away in
Imphal’s Kunjabi lekhai I find them breathing their last-two young men
murdered and branded as insurgents in yet another encounter. A 9mm pistol, a
grenade and some documents enough proof. People watch as their bodies are
propped and put onto the back of a pickup truck by a lanky policeman. In
Manipur death itself has become a spectacle.

Originally published in the Hindustan Times, April 18th

--
Posted By Akshay to Trivial
Matters<http://trivialmatters.blogspot.com/2009/04/curfew-and-night-imphal-manipur.html>on
4/18/2009 07:36:00 PM



-- 
Akshay Mahajan

+919833230562

http://trivialmatters.blogspot.com
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lecercle/