Political motherhood and a spectacular resistance: (Re) examining the Kangla Fort Protest, Manipur

ABSTRACT

This essay is a (re)examination of the Kangla Fort protest in Manipur (2004), where 12 imas (mothers) enacted a spectacular nude protest, with banners reading ‘Indian army rape us/Indian army take our flesh’. Based on interviews with the imas, I examine how the notion of ‘political motherhood’, along with a shared affective economy of hurt and pain produced a protest, both spectacular and singular, in its symbolic, as well as actual resistance against the atrocities of the Indian army. The 12 women who protested are members of the Meira Paibis (torch bearers), who draw their strength from their identity as mothers. Thus, their narratives, memories and articulations of the nude protest is saturated and conditioned by patriarchal idioms of ‘motherhood’, and how the ‘mothers of Manipur’ had to rise up, to save Manipuri people from the masculine Indian state. The essay grapples with the double bind that the notion of ‘political motherhood’ poses: on the one hand, the imas operate within the paradigm of benevolent patriarchy, drawing their strength from sacred and religious traditions that legitimise their roles as peacemakers; on the other hand, the event of the protest destabilizes and ruptures all social, historical, and cultural norms that constitute the members of the Meira Paibis as grieving mothers. In this essay, I argue that the spectacular and radical act of protesting nude in broad daylight speaks to the crux of recent feminist theorizations on subjectivities, where agency is understood as something that is not pre-discursive and prior to power, but produced by historically specific, concrete contexts. I argue that the singular and the spectacular act of protest gives a completely new meaning to agency, and even if momentarily, redefines the politics of resistance within a field over determined by social, political, and ideological constructions of normative femininity.

KEYWORDS:

• Sexual violence
• Political Motherhood
• Women’s Movement(s)
• Agency
• Meira Paibi

Acknowledgments

I thank Rajashri Dasgupta, Thingnam Anjulika Samom, and Nandini Thockchom without whom this research would not have been possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Griffin, “Rape: The All-American Crime.” 26–35; Brownmiller, Against Our Will etc.

2. Rich, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” 631–660.

3. Ortner and Whitehead, Sexual Meanings.

4. Iveković, Captive Gender.

5. Brownmiller, Against Our Will.

6. Chakravarti, Rape, Class and the State. http://www.pucl.org/from-archives/Gender/rape-class.htm

7. Geetha, “Some Thoughts on Extreme Violence and the Imagination.” 85–91.

8. Marcus, “Bodies, Fighting Words: A Theory and Politics of Rape Prevention” 385–403.

9. Enloe, Manoeuvres.

10. Butalia, The Other Side of Silence; Menon and Bhasin Borders and Boundaries, Chenoy Militarism and Women in South Asia and Batool et al Do You Remember Kunan Poshpora.

11. Kannabiran, ‘Introduction.’ 133 –137.

12. Viswanath, “Shame and Control: Sexuality and Power in Feminist Discourse in India.” 313 –333.

13. Enloe, Manoeuvres; 12–13.

14. Irom Sharmila Chanu also known as the ‘Iron Lady’ is a Manipuri civil rights activist, political activist, and poet and is best known for her hunger strike from November 2000 in demanding the repealing of AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Powers Act) from the Indian state of Manipur. Sharmila, after witnessing the massacre of 10 civilians, on 2 November 2000, in the town of Malom, by the Assam Rifles, one of the Indian Paramilitary forces operating in the state, went on a hunger strike which she ended on 9 August 2016, after 16 years of fasting against the draconian act that gave armed forces impunity. Sharmila has been recognized by many peace and human rights organizations and has been awarded the Gwangju Prize for Human Rights, the first Mayillama Award of the Mayilamma Foundation, lifetime achievement award from the Asian Human Rights Commission, the Rabindranath Tagore Peace Prize and the Sarva Gunah Sampannah ‘Award for Peace and Harmony’. In 2013 Amnesty International declared her a ‘Prisoner of conscience’. She entered mainstream electoral politics in the state of Manipur in 2016 and lost.

15. Duncan, Borderland City in New India.

16. Mathur, “Life and Death in the Borderlands: Indian Sovereignty and Military Impunity.” 33–49

17. Personal interview with Ima Gyaneshwari on 02.09.2016.

18. Thockchom, “Meirapaibi: The Role of Women’s Movement in Meitei Society.” 151–159.

19. Mukherji, “Meira Paibis: Women Torch-Bearers on the March in Manipur”. Available at https://www.mainstreamweekly.net/article2533.html

20. Brara, “Performance: The Gendered Space in Manipur.” 335–349.

21. Personal Interview with Ima Lourembam Nganbi on 03.09.2016.

22. Ibid.

23. Gillath, “Women against War: Parents against Silence.” 142–146.

24. Alwis, “Motherhood as a Space of Protest” 152–174.

25. Chenoy, Militarism and Women in South Asia.

26. Das, “Ethnicity and Democracy Meet When Mothers Protest.” 63.

27. Ibid; 56.

28. Sanghatana, We Were Making History; Roy, Remembering Revolution.

29. Sargent, “New Left Women and Men: The Honeymoon is Over.” ix-xxix.

30. Mohanty, Feminism without Borders.

31. Grosz, “Sexual Difference and the Problem of Essentialism.”

32. Rajan, “The Story of Draupadi’s Disrobing: Meanings for Our Times” 331–358.

33. See note 17 above.

34. Police allegedly strip Dalit family naked in UP for filing complaint. DNA. 9 October 2015. Accessed at http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report-police-allegedly-strip-dalit-family-naked-in-up-for-filing-complaint-2133171Video of Dalit family allegedly stripped by police creates storm on social media. The Hindu. 10 October 2015. Accessed at http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/video-of-dalit-family-allegedly-stripped-by-police-creates-storm-on-social-media/article7742836.ece.

35. Dopdi/Draupadi, a santhal (tribe residing in the state of Bengal)woman is a Naxalite (radical left group)who had been ‘apprehended’ by the armed forces and gang raped. When presented the next morning to the officer (Senanayak) who ordered her rape, she refused to be clothed. She walks up to Senanayak, and utters ’& What’s the use of clothes? You can strip me, but can you clothe me again? Are you a man? [&] there isn‘t a man here that I should be ashamed. I will not let you put my clothes on me.’ Devi, “Draupadi.” 19-38.

36. Draupadi, is one of the most celebrated women in the Indian epic Mahabharat. Married to five princes simultaneously, she is the only example of polyandry in our ancient texts. Her husband loses her to his cousins in a game of dice and she is dragged to the court, and being dependent on more than one husband is designated as a prostitute. The victors pull at her sari with the view of stripping her naked in full court and she silently prays to the God Krishna. She continues to remain clothed as the sari miraculously keeps reproducing itself.

37. Spivak, “Draupadi: Translator’s Foreword.” 1–18.

38. Rajan, “The Story of Draupadi’s Disrobing: Meanings for Our Times” 331 -358.

39. For more discussion on the distinction, see Misra, ““Are You a Man?” Performing Naked Protests in India.” 621.

40. See note 17 above.

41. Sarkar, Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation.

42. See note 17 above

43. Bora, “Between the Human, the Citizen and the Tribal.” 341–360.

44. Brara, “Performance: The Gendered Space in Manipur.” 340.

45. Gokhale, Tehelka. July 31, 2004 cited in Gill, The Peripheral Centre.

46. Gokhale, Tehelka. July 21, 2004 cited in Gill, The Peripheral Centre.

47. Sharma, “Manipuri Women’s Dramatic Protest” cited in Gill, The Peripheral Centre.

48. See note 17 above.

49. Butler, Gender Trouble; 145.

50. Butler, The Psychic Life of Power; 7.

51. Butler, Gender Trouble.

52. Mahmood, Politics of Piety.

53. See note 17 above

54. Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution,” 1.

55. Brown, States of Injury.

56. Yengkhom Jilangamba, however argues that mainstream media’s highlighting of Manipuri people’s ‘rejection’ of Sharmila is a re-enactment of an old binary of inhabitants of North-East as wild and savage; the imagery of the iconic figure rendered homeless by the very people she sacrificed her life for is a testimony to this binary. Jilangamba, “Sharmila and the Forgotten Genealogy of Violence in Manipur.” 15–19.

57. See above 44; 348.