Manipur: Another Violent Wake Up Call! What really happened?
Suresh Kr Pramar, Freelance Correspondent
August 25, 2004 

For well over four weeks Manipuris have raised the banner of revolt against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. The immediate provocation for the agitation, which has spread to the entire state, is the arrest, torture, rape and murder of 33 year old Thangjam Manorama, a suspected activist of the banned Peoples Liberation Army, one of the 24 underground outfits operating in the state.
According to her family members, an Assam Rifles team entered their house after breaking down the door at midnight on July 11. They asked for Manorama, who by that time had already retired for the night in her room. "She was dragged out bed. When we tried to intervene the security men beat us up. They then took Manorama into a corner and thrashed her brutally for almost half an hour after blindfolding and tying her hands and feet," a family member said. Before taking her along with them, an arrest memo signed by Havildar Sureshkumar and Rifleman T Lotha was handed over to the family.
"The security personnel assured us that Manorama would be handed over to the nearest police station the next morning," Manorama's aunt said. Next morning before the family could approach the police, news came that Manorama's body with multiple signs of torture and bullet marks was found lying at a village nearby. 
The Assam Rifles claimed she was associated with the outlawed People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and was an incendiary expert. It is claimed that during interrogation, she confessed to her links with the PLA and agreed to take the jawans to a hideout of the insurgents. On the way, she was allowed freedom to ease herself. She used the opportunity to run, forcing the jawans to open fire. 
There are no takers for the Assam Rifles’ story. People say there are too many holes in this version. For one it does not account for the fact that her body bore numerous torture marks. Also, she was shot from the front and not from behind. More important, she had also suffered the ultimate humiliation before she was shot. Dr. Ksh Manglem, who conducted a second post-mortem in the case, testified before an official commission that Manorama had been shot in her genitals. 
Manipur, Jawaharlal Nehru’s “crown jewel”, burst out in anger. A dozen women, young and old, marched to the Assam Rifles Headquarters at Kangla Fort in the centre of Imphal, stripped to the raw and invited the jawans to rape them. They carried posters, which called upon the “Indian Army to take our flesh,” and “Indian Army rape us.”
The murder and the naked protest brought over a lakh Manipuris into the streets of the capital. Imphal, to protest against the atrocities committed by the security forces. Some 32 organisations joined the protest and Manipur was set on the road to chaos and destruction. Among the main demands voiced by the Apunba Lup, the coordination committee of the 32 organisations, is to scrape the Armed Forces Special Power Act of 1958, which they say, has been constantly misused by the men of the Assam Rifles. According to a local newspaper there has been a “spree of midnight raids and custodial killings since the Holi break five months ago. Thangjam Manorama and a few days before, Jamkholet Khongsai were the last in a series of 18 such extra judicial executions
The Armed Forces Special Powers Act, in operation since 1958, was used first in Nagaland when the Nagas launched their independence movement in the late 1950. It was later introduced in Mizoram and Manipur and briefly also in Assam. It gives the armed forces extraordinary powers with virtually no accountability. The Act gives the government the power to introduce provisions of the Act in any area or in the state as a whole by simply notifying it as “disturbed”. Once the Act is in force, no warrants are required for the jawans to enter and search any premises at any time of the day and night. They can also arrest any person. If the raiding party is convinced that a building is likely to be used by the insurgents, it can smash it to smithereens. 
If the officer conducting the operation “is of the opinion that it is necessary to do so for the maintenance of public order, after giving such due warning as he may consider necessary, fire upon or otherwise use force, even to the causing of death, against any person who is acting in contravention of any law or order for the time being in force in the disturbed area prohibiting the assembly of five or more persons or the carrying of weapons or of things capable of being used as weapons or of firearms, ammunition or explosive substance”. No prosecution of the guilty personnel is possible without the express sanction of the Central Government. In other words, they can get away with murder. 
Civil liberties organisations say the AFSPA is a colonial instrument, modeled on the Armed Forces Special Power Ordinance 1942. The original Act was enacted to neutralise the Quit India Movement. They accuse the government of Indian of violating the international standards of human rights, defined by the Constitution and the international Bill of Human Rights. 
The United Nations Human Rights Committee, in 1991, found Section 4 of the AFSPA to be incompatible with Articles 6, 9 and 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 1966, which was ratified by India on April 10, 1979. Section 4 of the AFSPA grants special powers to army officers, JCOs and non-commissioned officers to use force against a person who is acting in contravention of the law in a disturbed area. 
While upholding the constitutionality of AFSPA in 1997, the Supreme Court directed the security forces "strictly" to observe certain guidelines while exercising the special powers conferred on them by the Act. Evidently, compliance with these guidelines has not been ensured. The protests against the Manoroma incident are in reality an explosion of years of bottled-up rage against the actions that are covered up by this Act.
The army says that the Act is essential to fight insurgency since it is almost impossible to tackle terrorism under regular criminal laws, especially in a situation where no one is willing to testify or stand as a witness for fear of being killed. This was evident in Punjab and Kashmir; as also in the northeast, notably Assam and Nagaland. Security forces say that if they are to have any realistic chance of overcoming the terrorists, who regularly target them and civilians in pursuit of their goals, they need special powers.
The problem arises, says a security analyst, “when the security forces are kept perennially in a state where there is no improvement in the situation over time, they tend to become trigger-happy and overzealous. This has been the case of Manipur and Nagaland Much of the anger in Manipur reflects a state where the citizens have been reduced to a hapless lot, caught between the security forces and the militants who extort money and run parallel courts, and between governments in Imphal and New Delhi who seem to have no clue on what to do improve the people's lot.”
According to B.Raman, former joint secretary in the Union Home Ministry, now a columnist, “ Manipur does not prick the national conscience in the same way as the other states in the north and south do. This is as truer of the governmental machinery as it is of the civil society in the rest of India. This is as much true of the political class as it is of the media. For the rest of India, Manipur is a far, far away land. For the national political parties, Manipur hardly counts because it has only a handful of members in the Lok Sabha. Whether a national political party wins or loses in the election there is hardly going to make any difference to its political fortunes in New Delhi. For the media too, Manipur is hardly newsworthy and not worth the expenditure of covering it. When there is an upheaval in Gujarat or elsewhere in India, the entire press corps rushes there. 
“There have been many wake-up calls from Manipur during the last four years. They have had no effect on the policy-makers in New Delhi. There has been no attempt to deal with the problems of the people and the state, political, economic, social and criminal justice, in a comprehensive manner.” A clueless political class, an uncaring bureaucracy, a lack of comprehension of the local people by successive governments at the Centre, total insensitivity to the feelings and concerns of the local people and a lack of seriousness in dealing with the problems of the people. These are the ground realities in the state.
Raman says there is an utter lack of comprehension and the total insensitivity to the feelings of the local people. These were dramatically illustrated by the shockingly inept and casual manner in which the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Government, dealt with the demand from the National Socialist Council of Nagaland (IM) for a greater Nagaland incorporating Naga-inhabited areas of Manipur in Nagaland. This caused fear in the minds of the people of the state that the government was inclined to succumb to the pressure of the NSCN (IM) on this issue. 
“The violent upheaval it caused in the state came as a big surprise to the Bharatiya Janata Party government. Important pronouncements on such a sensitive issue had been made by the Centre without bothering to consult the local administration. The total ignorance of the sensitivities of the local people on this and other issues exhibited by the BJP-led government did not speak well of its capability for internal security management. 
“However, it was not an exception. All political parties, when in power in New Delhi, hardly paid any attention to the North-East in general and Manipur in particular. After Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, no other prime minister has shown adequate interest in understanding and redressing the grievances of the people of the North-East.”
At the heart of the crisis in the state and elsewhere in the Northeast, is complete failure of governments at the state level and of governance. Successive governments have failed to bring the basic facilities and fruits of infrastructure and development to the people. Insurgency is only the evidence of governmental failure to address local needs by the Centre and the state. 

Blaming New Delhi for the trauma that Manipur is going through is not the solution. While the Centre has to share the burden of failure so are the present state government of chief minister Ibobi Singh and his predecessor governments. These governments have done nothing to deal with realities at the ground level, or tackle corruption and the lack of public trust. 


Politicians in Manipur, as in other parts of the Region and the country as a whole, have failed the people. In Manipur the present members of the legislative Assembly, both Congress and Opposition, have realised how alienated they are from the public. A majority is prepared to quit their seats not because they want to but because of the possible backlash they would face.

Pradip Phanjoubam, Editor of Imphal Free Press and a respected newsman, feels the situation would not have come to the present stage had everybody played by the rules “The Armed Forces Special Powers Act (1958) has been in full force in the state for the past more than two decades, and in part force for twice as long, yet protests against its draconian nature reached flashpoint only in the past fortnight. At other times, it was a dull irritant at the back of peoples’ consciousness, providing fodder for academic and often less than academic seminars than actual street protests. 

“This itself should be an indicator that somewhere down the line the peoples’ sensibilities as well as limits of tolerance had been taken for granted by some who could have made the difference. The spirit of the AFSPA is for the military to be used in aid of the civil administration. If this spirit was the guiding principle, there can possibly have been no trouble. The problem is, this spirit more often than not was overturned, and in a situation where the rule of law has receded into the background, as is the case in Manipur, the gun becomes the law. If the law was held in awe by the people and more importantly law keepers, the dangers of the AFSPA getting out of hand may not have arisen. 

“The only way for Manipur to be purged of this soul consuming violence is for an enlightened leadership from within the state as well as non-state actors in this conflict to engage in a discourse that will make each accommodate the other’s ideas and aspiration in a spirit of give and take. The goal in such a discourse must not be the capitulation by one side, but of chalking out a road map to a common future.”

The Centre is still in two minds about the law. There was a proposal to take a relook at its various clauses and to remove those, which have been the cause of problems over the years. At the same time the Centre does not want to give the impression that it is acting under duress. It wants the situation to cool down before taking any steps. This waits and watch game might ultimately prove to be very costly.
The Union Home Minister, Shivraj Patil said the Government was willing to do everything possible, including shifting the Assam Rifles out of the Kangla Fort and its withdrawal from the State. “The Assam Rifles would ‘vacate the fort’ as it has become an emotional issue for the people of the State” On the controversial Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act whose repeal is being sought by the people of the state Patil has said the Centre would go by the ‘expert opinion’, to decide on the Act. It is a legal issue and I would not like to comment on it." 
In an interview with The Hindu Patil said, “There is no rigidity. We will do what circumstances demand and take [the] opinion of all sections of the people. There are people in the State who want the Act to stay. If [the] agitators are demanding withdrawal of the Act, there are people who feel it should stay for protecting their lives and property. So there are two views on it. The Centre's gesture will be for the benefit and [the] well being of a majority of the people. We are not rigid in our attitude. The Act will go if normality is restored in the State.” 
In the Rajya Sabha the Home Minister said the Government was ready for unconditional talks with anybody who was willing to talk in order to re-establish normality and peace in Manipur. "The Chief Minister is trying his best to defuse the situation. If we find that he is not acting in the interest of the country, we will not fail to act. We are a giving a chance to the elected representatives of the people. We are not going to excuse our own Government. Patil said while replying to clarifications sought by the members in the Rajya. 
"If we can agree to hold talks in Jammu and Kashmir, Andhra Pradesh, and Nagaland, we can certainly talk to the people of Manipur. This is an invitation to those who want to come and talk to us," he said. "We are walking on the razor's edge. We will not act hurriedly so that things do not fall in place but we will also not wait unnecessarily. Our authority is not so small so as to simply vanish and there is no difference between the Defence Minister or me. People who have picked up arms are also our brothers and we have a responsibility towards them as well," he said. 

The Opposition leader, Jaswant Singh, accused the Congress-led Ibobi Singh Government with indulging in "layered blackmail" and "complicity" in the ongoing unrest in Manipur. Describing the situation as a challenge to the country's unity and integrity, Singh said the Chief Minister was being pressurised to act in a certain manner and he, in turn, was pressurising the Centre. "We cannot let this layered blackmail to go on," he said. 
The need of the hour is for the Centre to take determined steps to usage the feelings of the people. This is necessary so as to ensure that the underground which no doubt is running the present agitation behind the scene does not take complete control of the situation. There is still ample scope to put the state back on rails. All it needs is some initiative from the Centre to show that it cares not merely in words but through action as well.