Disrobed and dissenting bodies of the Meira Paibi: Postcolonial counterpublic activism

Abstract

In this essay, I explore Manipur-based women’s group called Meira Paibi as a postcolonial counterpublic. I suggest that when we use the lens offered by counterpublic studies and postcolonial studies, we can trace activism that delivers a sharp critique on the politics of a democracy. The current research on Meira Paibi’s activism has specifically focused on their naked protest of 2004 and their peacebuilding activities in the northeast region in India. While scholarship on the Meira Paibi offers critiques on their activism in the face of human rights violations and the postcolonial condition of the state, their impact in relation to the Indian democracy is lacking. Therefore, in this essay, I focus on the creation of the Meira Paibi postcolonial counterpublic that not only seeks to maintain order in the midst of chaos but also challenges the Indian democracy and poses a threat to its neoliberal aspirations in Southeast Asia.

Keywords

Counterpublic democracy Manipur postcolonial women’s movement

Fifteen years ago on July 15, 2004, the Meira Paibi took to the streets to protest against the rape and murder of Thangjam Manorama, a woman, arrested by the Assam Rifles division of the Armed Forces Special Powers as a suspected member of an insurgent group. The Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) in India grants armed forces stationed in places considered to be in “internal conflict” the right to execute special powers. These powers have led to several documented human rights violations in the country. Prior to the Meira Paibi’s naked protest, mild indifference characterized public interest on the conflict in Manipur, since majority of the media reports focused on the insurgent-Army conflict, declaring the region struck with civilian strife. McDuie-Ra (2014) notes that the images of Manipur that dominate mainstream news are those of people standing up to the Army as the latter seek to gain entrance into their neighborhoods (p. 384). The naked protest by the women’s organization, the Meira Paibi, received attention in the form of media reports that showed the bodies of the women, some carrying signs, and others standing naked. The reports publicized the protest as retaliation against gross violations done to a woman’s body in the form of rape. Major events occurring in the northeastern states of India often receive a short span of prime time coverage, or none (Palchoudhury, 2015). Aikojam (2013) reports that out of the stories from the northeast, “60 per cent of the total stories covered in national dailies were only briefs” (para. 8) whereas “full-fledged stories from the eight states find very little space in newspapers” (para. 9). The reasons for alienating issues of the northeast owes to the postcolonial relationship that the “mainland” shares with the northeast (Bora, 2010; Gaikwad, 2009; Palchoudhury, 2015).

Differences based in ethnicity, food habits, and culture separate the northeast from the central regions of the country, making the postcolonial relations more prominent. Moreover, academic scholars, who write about Manipur and Nagaland, two states of the northeast where conflict has been an ongoing part of civil life, contend that the Indian government chooses to ignore infringement of public life by the presence of armed forces. Commenting on mainstream Indian media’s lack of coverage of issues faced by the poor and tribal people, Denyer (2014) observes, “there was far too much written and said from afar, and too little good quality reporting from the ground” (p. 172). According to Denyer (2014), reporting by the Delhi-centric Indian media shows an inadequate understanding of regional nuances and variation of issues among individual states. Together, the postcolonial condition of the state and the powers granted to the armed forces that led to the protest poses the Meira Paibi’s actions as that of a postcolonial counterpublic.

Four years after Manorama’s rape and the protest that followed, Kaushik Basu, an economics professor, wrote in 2008 that if the region remained cut off from the rest of the nation for long, then war would be inevitable. Although it has been eleven years since Basu predicted trouble for the state of Manipur and India broadly, the Meira Paibi protest, fifteen years ago, shocked the country with the images of middle-aged women protesting naked, and this protest precedes Basu’s premonition about an impending war. In a region ignored by the Indian government and mainstream media, the mild disinterest gave way to national coverage after the naked protest. It sparked attention about the rape of a civilian woman by the Army. Meira Paibi, a women’s organization that was perhaps only popular regionally occupied national interest after their protest posed a counterpublic challenge. The images represented a fractured image of democracy in the lived experiences of the people of the region, and not just a casualty borne out of the insurgent-Army conflict. In fact, at the end of 2004, a few months after the nationally publicized naked protest took place, AFSPA ceased occupation of seven constituencies in the region. More importantly, Kangla fort, which had been occupied by the Assam Rifles division of the Army, was handed back to the Manipuris. After 2004 when the naked protest took place, Chakrabarti (2010) notes that the Indian government took the stand for instituting a soft power approach in negotiating with civilians in Manipur. The naked protest played a big role in drawing national attention to the loss of innocent lives and disruption of normal lives of the citizens, including the Indian government’s soft power approach. It is important to note that after the naked protests, the women were jailed and only released after 3 months but the perpetrators were never identified or indicted. Nevertheless, as The Quint (2016) reports, the armed forces were pulled out of Kangla fort, a remnant of Manipur’s pre-colonial Meitei kingdom.

In this essay, I explore the Meira Paibi as a postcolonial counterpublic to suggest that when we use the lens offered by counterpublic studies and postcolonial studies, we can trace activism that has stronger effects on the politics of a democracy. The Meira Paibi represents postcolonial counterpublic status on three levels: (1) marginalization of the entire region by the Indian democracy; (2) the brutality and human rights violations which receive very little coverage by mainstream media; and (3) sexual violence by the army, a state institution. Together, these aspects serve as the threat on the claims of inclusiveness of the Indian democracy. The current work on Meira Paibi’s activism has specifically focused on their naked protests of 2004 and their peacebuilding activities in the northeast region. Scholarly work on the Meira Paibi offers critiques of activism in the face of human rights violations and postcolonial condition of the state, while inquiry into their impact on the Indian democracy is lacking. Therefore, to emphasize how a postcolonial counterpublic can deliver a sharp critique of a dysfunctional democracy and pose a threat to its neoliberal aspirations in others parts of Southeast Asia, I will discuss in detail the historical ramifications that shaped politics in Manipur. Attending to the scholarship produced on the Meira Paibi’s protest, I explore how a counterpublic critique further accentuates the impact of their activism. Next, I turn to scholarship that interrogates the construction of the Indian public sphere in relation to the democracy. I specifically focus on how minorities interact with the dominant public sphere. Finally, I expand my argument on the creation of the postcolonial counterpublic against the social and political upheavals in Manipur and India. I attend specifically to the decoding of gendered bodies by the armed forces and the compelling confrontation with profound consequences indicated during the Meira Paibi protest. In the next section, I begin with an overview of counterpublic studies in relation to issues of postcolonial societies to emphasize the suitability of terminology offered by the conjunction of these critical tools.

Counterpublic studies and postcolonial spaces

Exclusions in Habermas’ bourgeois public sphere has been widely scrutinized (Asen, 2000; Asen & Brouwer, 2001; Fraser, 1990; Gunaratne, 2006; Squires, 2002). Fraser (1990) asserts subaltern counterpublic as the term that captures the actions and motives of simultaneously existing groups that do not occupy the same power as dominant groups. Tracing issues concerning minorities, counterpublic scholarship attends to more than concurrently existing thoughts and discourse. Squires (2002) locates counterpublicity in oppositional action, and Chávez (2011) unpacks movement building functions provided by elements of counterpublic action. These approaches expand our understanding of political goals in the functions and forms of rhetoric that counterpublics take part in. Cho (2005) suggests interrogating about the impact of the physical body in communicating counterpublic action besides the discursive functions traditionally associated with counterpublic activity. As demonstrated by many, physical body in protest accomplishes passionate force on a public argument (Carr-Gomm, 2012; DeLuca, 2008; Morris & Sloop, 2006).

Understanding how non-discursive actions operate enables the visualization of counterpublic action beyond oppositional goals and discursive characteristic of protest. In this article, I trace counterpublic action as confrontation. More importantly, the counterpublic confrontation that I examine draws from the political context that places the entire population of the northeastern state of Manipur in conflict with the center represented by the Indian democratic nation-state. Manipur’s relationship with the Indian democracy deserves attention for the postcolonial geopolitics that shape the counterpublic confrontation and implications that I trace in this essay. Fortunately, scholars have attributed a thriving interconnection between postcolonial and counterpublic scholarship (Brouwer & Paulesc, 2017; Dube, 2011; Stephenson, 2002). The assumptions of counterpublics scholarship transcends location, and hence appeals to issues and exigencies pertaining to groups without power in postcolonial settings.

Scholarship on the development of counterpublic spheres in postcolonial settings contributes to the circulation of counterpublic scholarship, but with careful attention to putting forth terminology that faithfully represents the political and cultural logics that shape the spaces under critique. Postcolonial and counterpublic scholarship both, as Brouwer and Paulesc (2017) explain, “examine, expose, and challenge domination” but the productive critiques that the combination of these critical lenses generate should be carried out with care (p. 87). For Brouwer and Paulesc (2017), counterpublic critique involving postcolonial issues and people should be committed to drawing from “localized histories” to theorize the counterpublic opposition at work. They warn us that drawing from counterpublic studies and postcolonial studies warrants that we “carefully account for the ways that domination occurs in each case or context and, ultimately, to attentively examine the particular conditions of discourse” (p. 95).

Rightfully identifying Habermas’ public sphere as a Western-European variation, Dube (2011) argues that the critique of nation-state firmly should be the goals of counterpublic critique. As Dube (2011) further explains,

the inclusion of the dystopian postcolonial moment normalizes the antagonistic relationship of the state and civil society so that we may see why and how from the very beginning the counterpublic sphere and the nation-state must indeed be engaged in an antagonistic relationship. (p. 220)

Here Dube (2011) focuses on reworking counterpublic critique through a postcolonial lens to examine the exclusions by the “public sphere” such as the nation-state. Dube’s visualization of the antagonistic relationship between the counterpublic sphere and the nation-state is useful in understanding the postcolonial conditions that shape Manipur’s relationship with the broader nation-state of India, which I interrogate in this essay.

If Dube (2011) calls attention to the nation-state as the dominant public sphere, scholarship in rhetorical studies turns a critical eye toward the interaction between counterpublic sphere and the public sphere. Brouwer and Paulesc (2017) note that the shadow of the public sphere is always at work when we discuss counterpublic issues while Pezzullo (2003) and Warner (2002) advocate for unpacking the connections between the public sphere and counterpublic spheres instead of considering binaries that separate the two. Agreeing with Habermas and advocating for a tradition of inquiry that critiques democratic institutions for their imperfections, Loehwing and Motter (2009) suggest that merely replacing publics with counterpublics leaves out the potential for invoking the “rhetorical ground on which exclusions are made legitimate”(p. 234). Articulating for ways in which publics can take shape in the points of contact and rhetorical engagement, Loehwing and Motter (2009) suggest that publics in a state of negotiation shape democracy. Hence, expanding on this examination of counterpublic sphere in relation to the dominant public sphere or the nation-state, in the next section, I lay out the geopolitical issues that inform the antagonistic relationship of the nation-state and its counterpublic in the postcolonial Manipur—Indian nation-state context.

Categorizing the Indian set up of civil society as a variant of the Marxian bourgeois class, Chatterjee (2001) theorizes the subaltern activism of minorities as democratic participation of a distinctive but constricted political society. For Sundar and Sundar (2012) who turn to the entangled relationship between fight for rights and political participation under capitalism, Chatterjee’s classification implies that minorities do not consider themselves equal and capable of claiming for rights as citizens. This discussion shows that a simple or a singular understanding of the Indian public sphere in India would fail to account for the heterogeneous ways in which publics organize and place their demands. For the people of the state of Manipur, colonization involves more than just the British colonial legacy that shapes the history of the entire country. India’s colonization of the kingdom of Manipur and the ensuing fraught relationship with the broader nation-state molds Manipur’s postcolonial status. The colonial relationship shared by Manipur with the broader nation-state deserves a more in-depth exploration.

The state of Manipur

Formerly a country with its own constitution, Manipur became a part of the Indian Union only in the year 1949, two years after India’s independence from Britain’s colonization. In their attempts to enforce ownership, the newly formed Indian government stationed large numbers of armed forces in Manipur. With the powers executed under the protection of the aforementioned tyrannical law—AFSPA—factions of the Indian Army resorted to carry out brutal actions (McDuie-Ra, 2005; McDuie-Ra and Baruah, 2011). The Armed Forces Special Powers Act grants the Indian Army the right to arrest people on suspicion as well as enter and search homes without a warrant. The 1958 law authorizing the Indian Army the power to operate above civil laws has allowed the Army to unleash terror in any conflict-ridden part of India (Bora, 2010). The special powers granted to the Indian Army have led to “arbitrary arrests, detentions, custodial deaths and rapes” in the northeast (Bora, 2010, p. 344). The brutality used by the Army through the AFSPA in regions with political unrest such as Kashmir and the northeastern states is well known. Since the time this controversial law has been in place, nongovernmental organizations, humanitarian groups, and women’s organizations have criticized the armed forces for humanitarian crimes. However, the attention to women’s rapes or arrest of teenagers without warrant was hardly covered by the media during that time (Bora, 2010; McDuie-Ra, 2014).

Apart from using military strength, the Indian Army has also sought to attend to soft power appeal to enhance the national sentiments among the people of the region. However, these steps are part of recent efforts that started in 2006. As Chakrabarti (2010) explains, the army’s soft power undertaking includes verbally appealing to the people of the region not to support the insurgents. Mc-Duie-Ra’s research also shows that the armed forces have sought local involvement through several other strategies in the recent years. This form of extraneous effort on the part of the Army reflects the precarious relationship that the people in the northeastern states share with the larger nation-state. Chakrabarti’s (2010) discussion of counter-insurgency efforts in its alternative forms that seeks to gain the confidence of the people in the region through emotional appeals is part of the newly written manual by the Indian Army that came out in the year 2006. The events that led to the protest, discussed in this article, occurred in the year 2004. Therefore, the manual, marking a new approach in dealing with insurgency, came into existence two years after the protest had drawn public attention. Human Rights Watch reports that killings and disappearances of civilians continue to terrorize the region, as insurgent-Army conflict remains prevalent in the area. As Times of India (Mahapatra, 2012) reported, “1,528” innocent people have been killed in Manipur between 1979 and 2012. Counterinsurgency effort oriented toward controlling people shapes the arrest and rape of Manorama and the protests that followed it.

Perspectives on the Meira Paibi: nakedness to peacebuilding strategies

Outlandish actions in public by protesters generate affective responses from the public and institutions alike. Scholarship on Meira Paibi’s July 2004 protest has mainly focused on the varying levels of significance of the protest. Tracing political motherhood to peacebuilding efforts, scholarly writings trace women’s activism against the background of militarization and civil strife. In the critiques drawn by academics in relation to Manipur, inadequate attention has been given to how the Meira Paibi posed a threat to the values of democracy painted under the imaginary of pluralist norms espoused as the inherent goals of the Indian democracy. As I argue, the postcolonial counterpublic actions of the Meira Paibi threatened the democratic ideals assumed by the dominant public sphere—the nation-state—in Manipur.

Writing about the Meira Paibi protest, scholars have theorized the implications of the nakedness in protest. Without attending to how agency took shape, Meira Paibi’s naked protest, as Sultana (2013) urges, can be reduced to a “vouyeristic” engagement. Hence, for Sultana (2013), Meira Paibi protest risks being celebratory rather than motivational. While Sultana (2013) shows ambivalence about the impact of the protest, others have identified the agency-building characteristics embedded in the act of displaying the body. Sarkar (2013) identifies their actions as political motherhood, while Lacy (2014) perceives the Meira Paibi protesters as seeking out justice for human rights abuses against women. Gaikwad (2009) examines feminist agency by urging that the protest is not explainable by rationality but as a sense of “haunting” and “madness.”

Bora’s postcolonial critique explores the deep legacy of colonialism under which northeasterners are denied the same citizenship status as those living in the “mainland” under the Indian nationalistic imaginary. However, Bora (2010) focuses on explicating how the women’s rights as human rights approach is limited by Eurocentric and Westernized lens. My analysis goes a step further by interrogating how citizenship and nationalism constitute an imagined subjectivity where non-belonging resonates in state actions or discourse. In other words, the postcolonial counterpublic that the Meira Paibi represented and the moment of confrontation that they engaged in with their naked protest deserves further attention. To understand how the larger democratic setup is structured in India, I turn to critiques about the secular aims expressed in claims about the Indian democracy.

Assumptions of the Indian democracy as secular and multicultural

Inclusivity in visualizing the public sphere is lacking, despite the emphasis on preservation of secular values spelled out in the Constitution (Ali, 2001; Varshney, 2015). While the “upper realm of the public sphere” benefit from the connections and networks they form within the elite sphere comprising of business people, the government in New Delhi, and international bodies, the rest have to rely on the demands they can make on the state (Varshney, 2015). Indian democracy, as Varshney (2015) explains, is composed of low- to middle-income groups and theoretically with the core resources that the Indian democracy makes available, lower classes and marginalized groups stand to gain. The non-dominant publics of the Indian democracy, as can be implied from Varshney’s assessment, come into contact with forces of democracy primarily through “voting, demonstration, and riots” (p. 101).

Saeed (2015), who attends to the decline of media within the Indian democracy, reminds us that democracy

can be seen as a political system where the state institutions and civil society are two actors, even if at the two extremes of the spectrum, opposing each other but connected in the difficult negotiations of power that are played out every day. (p. 467)

Media, as I have explored in an earlier section, has disproportionately addressed issues of Manipur, in that there are very few stories reported about the conflict in Manipur and they tend to ignore majority of the issues of the northeast, the “other” within the Indian democratic nation-state. Therefore, media which Saeed (2015) notes should be the “fourth pillar” that supports the other three—“the executive, the legislative, and the judiciary”—pillars of democracy is already apathetic to the concerns of the region, because of distance and cultural differences (p. 469). To sum up, scholars writing about the public sphere, democracy, and media establish that inattention to affairs of minorities plagues the Indian democracy.

In tracing the unique characteristics of democracy in India, Ali (2001) uses the term “vernacularization,” and in so doing, he explains that the popularity of the Indian democracy can be observed in the form of “values and practices of democracy becom[ing] embedded in particular cultural and social practices” (p. 2420). For instance, since the 1990s, Indian democracy has seen an “upsurge in the political participation of political leaders from humble social backgrounds” (Ali, 2001, p. 2419). Owing to the volatility in the northeast, similar democratic values may be absent but such kinds of indigenousness echo in the dissenting actions of the Meira Paibi as well as in the northeastern women’s movements since the early 20th century. The conflict in Manipur and its postcolonial status has denied similar involvement and growth that the aforementioned vernacularized political parties participate in. Nevertheless, the Meira Paibi has been instrumental in working toward serving the public through social actions. I trace these actions as that of a postcolonial counterpublic. Before I unpack the Meira Paibi as a postcolonial counterpublic, an overview of the postcolonial state of Manipur and its relations with mainland India is necessary to recount.

The northeast: the “other” of the nation

Geographical distance is not just the only factor that separates Manipur from the eminence that New Delhi offers. Political turmoil and insurgent activities are also tied to the ethnic disparities in Manipur. Baruah (2009) explains that negotiation of peace talks by the Indian government has not yielded much because of ethnic differences that have not sustained a common vision of statehood. But more significantly, as Bora (2010) notes, people in the northeastern region may be Indian citizens but owing to differences based on ethnicity, language, food habits, and physical features, they do not occupy the imaginary of the Indian citizen among the dominant population in India. Moreover, considering the historical context since British occupation of India, Bora (2010) explains that northeast India inadequately belonged to India because of closeness to distinctive south Asian civilization, different from the Indic civilization, central to the majority in India. Hence, insensitivities to the politics of the region or their demands for separation owing to ethnic differences frame much of the dynamics of the actions against insurgency in Manipur. Ethnic communities in Manipur have opposed the forced belonging proposed by the Indian government, especially alongside AFSPA presence. In the following section, I will focus specifically on the women’s organization represented by the Meira Paibi.

Meira Paibi, the postcolonial counterpublic

The counterpublic role played by women who call themselves Meira Paibi harks back to pre-British period in Manipur’s history. The term “Meira Pabbi” stands for “guardians of civil society” or “women torch bearers” (“Is the Meira Paibi Facing Extinction,” 2013; “New Challenges Ahead,” 2017). They organized rallies to fight alcohol and drug abuse in the region, while their condemnation of the AFSPA is pivotal and intertwined with the politics of the region. Recounting the rich history of Meira Paibi activism, gender activist Binalakshmi Nepram (2005) states, “During Manipur’s dark days, the Meiras must have inspired many women to come out of their homes to save the youth of Manipur from many a death, disappearance, illegal torture and extra-judicial killings” (para. 7).

Against regional and state violence that frames the naked protest, the Meira Paibi postcolonial counterpublic took shape. Bhattacharya (2010) notes that while the Meira Paibi started as social advocates, they later went on to carry out such activities as “alerting the community about imminent army patrols and sometimes negotiating with the army when men of their community were detained” (p. 235). Alongside the insurgent-Army conflict, ethnic differences between “valley and hill dwelling” communities, including indigenous and non-Manipuri groups are responsible for the conflict in Manipur (McDuie-Ra, 2014, p. 376). While the Meira Paibi may not be involved in handling ethnic peace, their actions to counter Manipur’s forced belonging to the Indian democracy shapes their postcolonial counterpublic actions.

Meira Paibi’s opposition to alcohol abuse

Shortly after Manipur gained statehood in the 1970s, and prior to being known as Meira Paibi or torch bearers, they were known as Nisha Bandis—they prohibited and stopped illicit substance abuse—at a time when alcohol and narcotic substance abuse had led to addiction and social decline (Bhattacharya, 2010; Deka, 2016). As an economic activity, the production of cheap alcohol increased alongside rice farming and animal husbandry. The government supported the growth of foreign liquor shops, which in turn helped the economy of the newly turned state but combined with the increasing alcohol abuse, the feasibility of Manipur as a geographically suitable drug route between Southeast Asian countries like Thailand and Burma aggravated abuse of illicit drugs among the youth. Even though the Meira Paibi were not able to execute any influence over the complete prohibition of alcohol production, they practiced shaming the alcohol abusers, mainly men, in public and carrying out vigilant exercises in their community. Produced in 2005, Soldiers in Sarong, a documentary film, records groups of women carrying sticks and marching on the streets to stop men from drinking. Another video footage captured in the documentary shows a man, with his head bowed in shame as he walks in front of the Nisha Bandi women, carrying a garland of empty alcohol bottles around his neck. These actions speak of the political role that served as the foundations for the formation of the Meira Paibi postcolonial counterpublic.

Rallying against chaos in the insurgent-army conflict since the 1980s

Fighting against patriarchal forces proved to be just the tip of challenges for the Meira Paibi. Starting in the late 1970s, the presence of armed forces increased in Manipur. In the 1980s, the Indian government declared Manipur a “disturbed area” right after the Meira Paibi had asked for a just probe into killings by the armed forces. In an interview included in the documentary, President Yumnam Mangol reveals community pride and a deep anxiety about the presence of the armed forces. Translating from the local language, the documentary interviewer quotes Mangol as stating, “Do not requisition soldiers for Manipur. We Manipuris live with dignity. Deploying your soldiers shall be disastrous for Manipur” (North East Network & Aramban, 2005). Besides establishing faith in their own strategies of dealing with the issues in the state, Mangol’s words distinguishes an “us” the people of Manipur, and them—“your soldiers.” Mangol’s response shows distrust and distance from the state institutions responsible for deploying the armed forces. As the brutality disrupted economic activity along with the increase in violence directed toward women in the form of rape, forced childbirth, beatings, and releasing of dogs on women’s rallies, the Meira Paibi took on a deeper political role.

Meira Paibi has fought to maintain a sense of order in the midst of challenges presented by a patriarchal community affected by alcohol and drug abuse, a colonizing federal state, and the ground brutality in the form of the presence of the armed forces. Leadership involves a president, selected on the basis of political experience and activism, including a secretary, treasurer, and adviser, while “married women in the age group of 18-80 years are the usual members” (Deka, 2016, p. 163). Divided into three levels “state, district and leikai (village),” they gather for rallies in situations that “range from neighborhood issues . . . to issues with potentially larger ramification such as threat and demand for extortion from the insurgent groups” to army operations that cause “desertion and distress” (p. 168).

The naked protest: counterpublic confrontation

For the Meira Paibi, the act of shedding off their clothes and daring the Army to violate them in the same ways as they did with Manorama evokes confrontation by female bodies. Hence, the Meira Paibi as a collective of female bodies, all older and more mature than Manorama, registers the significance of their female body in protest. Stark in contrast to Manorama’s youthfulness, the women posed their matronly middle-aged bodies in sameness with Manorama, but at the same time distinguished themselves from the rest of the country. The images show five women holding each of the two banners that cover their bodies from chest to a little below their knees. The banner is the only piece of cloth that covers the naked bodies of the women. Other women, who do not carry either of the banners, stand naked with their hands stretched open and their untied hair flowing over their shoulders calling out across the gate to the perpetrators.

One of the banners of the naked protest states “INDIAN ARMY RAPE US” while the other states “INDIAN ARMY TAKE OUR FLESH.” These sentences are written in red bold letters on the banner with a white background. The letters in the words “RAPE” and “US” in the first banner and the word “FLESH” in the latter are shown as dripping a bright red color to stain the white background. Because of the use of the color red, the letters appear to drip blood. While some parts of the letters “RAPE” and “US” appear to drip red blots of blood, some of the blots appear as stains. Given that Manorama had suffered injuries and had been raped before being murdered, the references to the atrocity of the death Manorama may have met with is strongly suggested in the representation of blots and stains in the writing. Furthermore, the bodies of the women stripped off any covering challenges the status quo to visualize the counterpublic in the same ways as they would do those with whom they may share a greater sense of belonging; for example, their own wives or mothers. In so doing, the Meira Paibi drive home the point that they, the counterpublic bodies in action, do not differ much from the bodies of loved ones familiar to the perpetrators, or the dominant public, silent and sitting at home, viewing the protest in their newspapers the next day.

The implications in the form of stains of blood on the banners symbolize injustice done to Manorama. The words dripping with what they seek to represent as blood emblematically indicates the dead woman’s ruthless murder and disposal. The representation of trickling blood off the letters suggests a reference to the wounds inflicted on Manorama’s body through the beating prior to her rape. These blots and stains serve as a reminder of state aggression and power of violence on the bodies of the women. Tired of the ineffectual appeals made through sit-ins and rallies, the direct confrontation by stripping off clothes stands out and makes an impact about the injustices against people of the region. Protesters exhibited their naked bodies daring the Army to rape them. The words signaled an outraged outpour against their conditions as they display their bodies, defiantly standing up to the armed forces on the other side of the gates. In reading the banners declaring “Indian Army Rape Us,” and “Indian Army Take Our Flesh” as a performance of confrontation, I find the emphasis on harm and assault within these sentences to show the Meira Paibi as wary of civil ways of criticizing the unchecked power of the Army. The bodies exposed in open challenge and the words chastising an institution responsible for protecting them enacts confrontation on two levels.

Cultural ideals of motherhood versus brutality by army

Meira Paibi’s gender embodiment shaped their protest in how they sought to decode the representation presented by the Army. The women were known to stage protests in the region. Leaving dishes out in the open as a show of dissent to organizing protests and embracing broader social justice issues, Meira Paibi were already well known as community saviors (Bhattacharya, 2010; McDuie-Ra, 2014). Protesting as the “torch bearers” that they are known as, the Meira Paibi would not have had the same impact if their protests had not carried the decoding of the body in protest. In the act of decoding the signification carried by Manorama, the dead woman’s body and the protesting women’s bodies, they projected an upside-down picture of the traditionally respected role of mothers.

The body as coded and treated by the Assam Rifles Division and the AFSPA negated any consideration of humane treatment, once Manorama was taken in as a suspected member of the People’s Liberation Army. As Chakravarti (2012) reports, ignoring the Human Rights council warning, “police did not hand the body over to the family and it was cremated as an unclaimed corpse even as her relatives mourned their inability to perform last rites” (p. 48). In the eyes of the Army, the act of violating the body was justified, considering that Manipur was a war zone (Bhattacharya, 2010; DasGupta, 2008; Sultana, 2013). Therefore, for the Army, normalizing the codes of criminality onto Manorama’s case proved easy when confronted with rationalizing their actions. For the Army, Manorama could have easily been just another war casualty.

As scholars note, grassroots activism and daily life unfold alongside the tight Army presence within the capital city. Writing about the urban landscape in Manipur’s capital Imphal, McDuie-Ra (2014) quips,

A modern capital counters the image of Imphal as chaotic and lawless while also putting the city on par with other state capitals in India. The new state legislative assembly is a clear example of this: an ultra-modern building for a modern polity. The grand doomed building is a staggering contrast to the haphazard construction in most of the city. (p. 383)

Just as how the cityscape represented a bifurcated state-civil society space, the body of Manorama fit into the codes already dehumanized by the Army, which worked to justify their actions. Hence, the culprits facing the Meira Paibi were more than what Chakravarti (2012) considers as “way ward sons” whom the Meira Paibi sought to shame through their naked protest (p. 54). They were men who knew that the suspicion-filled relationship with the local tribes of the region would suffice as the rationalization for their actions.

Commenting on the AFSPA presence in Manipur, Kshetrimayum (2009) notes,

The Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) that have been operating in the entire Manipur state since 1980, is violating and threatening people’s freedom from fear, freedom from violence, and freedom from humiliation and indignity from people. Arresting without warrant, beatings, kidnappings, manhunts, killings, rapes and so on are common. Women are treated like with indignity and are chased, beaten, pushed, abused and fired upon by police personnels during protests. (p. 20)

So, when the protesters gathered outside Kangla Fort, the Army occupied space and started disrobing until they stood completely naked with their hair flowing down, the rationalization that the Army had been operating under gave way and Manorama’s violation and rape registered for the broader public. For the onlookers and those who tuned into the news or opened their newspapers, the aged matronly bodies struck a discomforting picture. Here the codes reserved for motherly bodies were subverted to present disorder and chaos. In a 2014 interview with The Quint, recounting the naked protest, Rajmani Devi stated, “They had their weapons and we had our bodies” (para. 8). Devi’s comparison of physical bodies claiming the public space to dismantle the sense of control indicated by weapons was driven by how the bodies defied the codes that the state institution had used for their actions.

In their nakedness, the bodies reflected just the physical bodies and their anatomical imperfections, removed from the cultural/sartorial factors that differentiated the Army from the local people. As older women, embodying their aged features, they represented women that the Army may encounter elsewhere in the nation, their own cities, and their own lives. Hence, the reactions to the naked protest through immediate arrest of the Meira Paibi protesters and attempt to curb access by the media show us how the embodied protest carried two implications. The body became the site to express their counterpublicity and at the same time, the body also served as the means through which they drove home the point that the Meira Paibi in their nakedness are the same as Manorama whose body was viewed as the means to show domination by the perpetrators.

The message in the form of the counterpublic gendered embodiment was clear. The protesters showed that despite the sartorial differences or the differences based in facial features or culture, the northeast, and Manipur and the women who belong to the tribal communities do not look different in their nakedness from those of the dominant public—the state. Second, within the assumed murkiness about the Army’s—a state institution’s—culpability, the violation done on the local bodies was overshadowed in the national limelight with a nonchalance by the rest of the country. Unpacking how residents, and women in particular, challenge the armed forces with blockades, McDuie-Ra (2014) observes, “Photographs of these small blockades are one of the most common images of Imphal transmitted in the national media in India and such images perpetuate the notion of the chaotic city in need of control from the top down” (p. 384). Amid these constructions that were at work, the half-hearted interest by the media, the assumption of complex politics that seemingly made it difficult to pinpoint a culpable entity, and perhaps the most glaring difference, distance from the capital both in political views and culture, Meira Paibi’s actions proved to be dramatic yet edifying. As Nagel (1998) explains,

Nationalist ideology, that is, beliefs about the nation—who we are, what we represent—become the basis and justification for national actions, that is to say, activities of state- and nation-building, the fight for independence, the creation of a political and legal order, the exclusion or inclusion of various categories of members, the relations with other nations. (p. 248)

For the Army, their actions were justified by their sense of duty toward their nation and the killing of Manorama was one such activity. However, the other side that the counterpublic—the Meira Paibi—brought to the fore was another element of the nationalist ideology that the Army and the Indian government in extension had conveniently erased amid their ambitions for enacting state power.

This other side, which the Meira Paibi represented as mother’s bodies and women’s bodies stripped off decency, challenged nationalist ideals that upheld women. First, the patriotic reference of “Bharat Mata” or “Mother India” is included in many accounts of Indian nationalist discourse (Banerjee, 2012; Roy, 2006). Banerjee (2012) notes that women’s bodies are associated with “national honor” (p. 64) while Roy (2006) explains “Women’s bodies not only function as markers for the national fantasy but they also serve as the property of the nation” (p. 249). Hence, the counterpublic bodies represented by the Meira Paibi through their display of motherly bodies undercut the national discourse associated with women’s bodies. In one instance, the images of naked middle-aged bodies simplified the seemingly complex rhetoric of insurgent-Army conflict as a case of sexual violation enacted by the Army—a state institution. On the other hand, for the entire nation, including the Army as well as the nation state, Meira Paibi’s bare bodies and cries of protest disrupted the nationalist ideals of “brave men” protecting the women and the nation (Mother India). The Meira Paibi’s actions forced the state to sit up and pay attention when the images of the women were plastered on all the newspapers, arousing national discomfort and international attention. Chakravarti (2012) notes that the Manipur government had ordered a media blackout on that day but images had circulated by then and the images represented anguish and desperation.

Gaikwad (2009) calls the naked protest a sense of “haunting” and Chakravarti (2012) considers the protest the means by which the Meira Paibi registered the denial of humanity. While attention on the unfolding of “haunting” or the inhumane-ness capture Meira Paibi’s actions, they do so in isolation. As Chakravarti (2012) explained, contrasted with well-toned bodies that the media usually displays, the bodies of mothers appeared differently. The gendered bodies of mothers as “haunting” images or the significance of mothers’ bodies plastered across national news register deeper implications against the cultural ideals of motherhood in India.

For a nation immersed in celebrating the traditional ideals about mother figures, the naked images of the Meira Paibi along with the chants of “INDIAN ARMY RAPE US” and “INDIAN ARMY TAKE OUR FLESH” functioned to shake the basis of cultural ideals of motherhood. The actions of the Army proved to split the gendered nationalistic discourse into us–them status, where women’s bodies were not taken as entities to be protected. In other words, while the Army seemed aggressively to push forth their masculine ideology as duty to the state through the rape and killing of Manorama, the women, relegated to non-violent ideals, took to the streets and exposed not just their bodies, but also the fractured nationalist ideals to which they or Manorama did not belong. Hence, the Meira Paibi counterpublic contested these nationalist representations to draw attention to the facade of Indianness in their belonging. The sham of cultural ideals of motherhood, shared between the dominant public, the state, and the counterpublic—the emasculated region of the northeast, Manipur—was shaken to its core with the naked protest. The Meira Paibi’s protest and the media circulation threatened well-preserved values shared by the rest of the country, when in the moment of nakedness, elderly women laid bare the dystopic picture of mothers standing in nakedness and the images engulfed the national imagination with Manipur’s postcolonial conditions. Meira Paibi’s gendered embodiment as a postcolonial counterpublic representing the oppressed state of Manipur’s citizens portrayed fractured ties with the rest of the country. In the next section, I examine how the visualization of the naked protest through media and implications of ruptured nationalist ideals made an impact. In other words, confrontation by the Meira Paibi postcolonial counterpublic contested assumptions that carried the potential to have an impact on the nation-state.

Manipur’s geographical location and India’s “look east” foreign policy

The Meira Paibi postcolonial counterpublic confrontation threatened to complicate India’s foreign policy involving neighboring countries like Burma. As the corridor to Southeast Asia, Egreteau (2008) notes that the northeast serves an important function for India’s relationship with countries in Southeast Asia. Therefore, the impact of the Meira Paibi confrontation signifies further importance. India’s “Look East” policy that was geared toward establishing stronger trade policies with Burma so that India would be able to compete with Taiwan and China in growing ties in the southeast indicates broader implications of the confrontational moment of the Meira Paibi’s protest.

Despite the heavy army presence geared toward maintaining control over the space and activities of the local people, insurgent activities prevail in the region. The geographical closeness between Burma’s “remote Naga, Patkai, and Lushai hills” and India’s northeast regions has also meant that the Indian government has sought Burma’s help in combating the counterinsurgency and anti-India groups operating in the northeast (Egreteau, 2008, p. 940). India’s stand on Burmese politics such as support for Ang San Suu Kii that some Burmese factions found objectionable, and India’s own support of Burmese rebel groups have thwarted steady Burmese support of India’s aims to curb insurgent operations in its northeast region, which includes Manipur. Hence, as Egreteau (2008) reports, this has led to the Burmese police allowing the “underground operations” to continue. In fact, instances of bribery and corruption have further aided the insurgent operations, much to the dislike of the Indian side.

In the wake of unsteady relations with neighbors like Burma, the counterpublic confrontation staged as “Indian Army take our flesh” infuses anti-Indian sentiments with a deeper threat about loss of control of the northeast region and severity in the weakened ties with Burma. Furthermore, the northeast as the point of connection between India’s ambitions for trade in the southeastern Asia and the geographical advantage that a stable northeast can produce is threatened when the confrontation insinuates a postcolonial counterpublic to obstruct neoliberal aspiration of the Indian government based in New Delhi. Discussing Indian economic growth, Egreteau (2008) reports, “A viable east-west trade corridor aimed at linking India’s Northeast region to Thailand and southwest China via Mandalay and Rangoon has yet to materialize” (p. 951). Lack of peace and the continuation of strife would mean that “India cannot expect to use its eastern frontier to benefit from any economic opening up with Burma without significant security concerns and challenges” (Egreteau, 2008, p. 955). Given the presence of armed forces and attenuated relationship between the Indian government, represented by New Delhi, and Manipur straddling between insurgent operations and neglectful democratic conditions, the Meira Paibi postcolonial counterpublic threatens to deepen the rift. In other words, Meira Paibi, well known for their involvement in dealing with social issues in the region, stages a chaotic picture that directly rejects the state on the basis of democratic rights supposedly meant for all. Therefore, the threat of further repercussions challenged the state into responding with a “soft appeal” policy.

Conclusion

Commenting on the role of women’s movements in the northeastern states, Deka (2016) explains that women’s movements have increasingly involved not just activism against alcohol prohibition and peacebuilding, but in “crafting a public space for women to articulate their opinion” (p. 159). Regarding the Meira Paibi, Deka (2016) astutely observes that their actions specifically in conjunction with other social welfare bodies like “United Committee of Manipur” and “All Manipur United Clubs’ Organizations (AMUCO)” signify that the Meira Paibi “cannot be identified as mere neutral groups of women who have no political agenda” (p. 166). Deka’s field interview conducted in 2012 shows the power that the Meira Paibi has gained over the years. Therefore, as a postcolonial counterpublic, the Meira Paibi has undertaken roles that have further strengthened their ability to exercise influence over economic, social, and political directions taken in Manipur, especially with the presence of the armed forces. Furthermore, as Deka (2016) notes, in 2013 the Meira Paibi along with another women’s group of the northeast, the Nagaland Mother’s Association were awarded the “Times of India Social Impact Award for Life Contribution” (p. 165). Unlike the earlier neglect shown by media, awareness of social impact made by the Meira that led a leading media outlet like Times of India to give the award echoes India’s soft approach toward Manipur.

While Chakrabarti (2010) notes that the soft approach was enacted in 2006 after the Meira Paibi protest, McDuie-Ra (2014), reporting about the concurrently existing Army presence alongside the local people in Imphal, the capital of Manipur, notes that the city represents a “militarized urban landscape” (p. 380). Writing about the army’s local involvement in Manipur, McDuie-Ra (2014) observes that the Central Reserve Police Force display photographs showing them “planting tree saplings,” “helping an injured man,” and giving awards to children who have scored well on tests includes some of those actions. These actions complement the kind of soft approach discussed earlier. The presence of a thriving counterpublic like the Meira Paibi proves to be crucial in fostering these strategies of serving the people of the region by the army.

The Meira Paibi postcolonial counterpublic delivers an acerbic critique of Indian democracy while striving to foster order amid chaos in a region devastated by armed conflict, often indiscriminately affecting the locals. Their confrontation in the form of naked protest has challenged the Indian government to recognize the counterpublic demands. Combining postcolonial and counterpublic critique carries the transformative potential of understanding how publics at the margins challenge assumptions of democracy. Moreover, women’s agency through public display of bodies can challenge assumptions about protection and national honor to drive a counterpublic critique of exclusion within democracy.

Footnotes

ORCID iD

Minu Basnet

Author biography

Minu Basnet is a Lecturer of Communication and Rhetoric in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Colorado State University-Pueblo, United States. She earned her PhD at Wayne State University. Her research focuses on the intersections of social movements, borders, and gender in South Asia and South Asian communities in the United States. Her research has appeared in Women’s Studies in Communication.

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