Women in Conflict Situation in Northeast India

Women in Conflict Situations in Northeast India

Introduction

From the prehistoric period, women and children were the worst suffers of the armed conflicts

both directly or indirectly. Their sufferings are attached to their counterparts who are taking

account of everything in silence across the world. Moreover, the myth regarding the power of

choice and having a liberating culture is the most reliable area of romanticism for an outsider

about the women of Northeast India. The women of Northeast have a brilliant approach towards

peace making in the region on account of which they have spearheaded a number of women‘s

movements. A decade of activism, ranging from the massive protest by women in Manipur

during British colonial rule and among the more recent protest is the Meira Paibis in Manipur

against the Indian state. The Naga Mother‘s Association in Nagaland and most recent was the

Mahila Shanti Sena in Assam. All these protest are actively working for resolving the disputes

and the conflicts and negotiating for peace in different states of the region. 1

My aim in this chapter is look at how women through their participation in peace negotiation

convey their feelings and representing the violent event as a source that can reveal how the state

policy and government are acting as active agents in promoting these violence and the

indigenous people has to go through a traumatic experience because of such state interventions.

Representation of Memories of Violence

Tilottoma Mishra (2010) wrote how memories play a vital role in expression of a traumatic event

whether in literature or oral narrations. According to her the most important thing to be noted in

such narrations is the difference between what gets presented and what is not. Thus, there is a

vast difference in representation of memories. The distinction between what is ―truth‖ and what

is ―fiction‖ in the whole discourse of representation of violence is much more complicated area

to pen it down in a certain sense. Regarding violent memories or experiences, the dilemma

1 Baneerjee Monika; Conflicts and Constructive Work: Strengthening Civil Society in the Northeast; in Preeti

Gill(Ed.) The Peripheral Centre Voices from India’s Northeast; 2010; Pp- 217-226

comes into being only when the memories that one is recounting through the experience may be

harmful for the victim. Thus, it becomes very difficult to study a traumatic experience after the

experience of the violence and moreover it will be a painful act of recalling the trauma that they

have faced and make it into literary discourse. Thus, this may be the reason why the intellectual

kept quiet when the government of Assam did not permit a social science research institute in

Guwahati to organize an academic lecture on Nellie massacre.2 People were so traumatized with

the incident that the sense of recalling was like a punishment for them. Moreover the process of

recalling generates some sets of questions in the mind of the investigator: what such intervention

will do the people who had recount the experience? Does the victim want to recall and narrate

the whole violent experience? Such type of questions emerges with the intervention of an

outsider. For women writers, literatures especially the poems and the shorts stories became the

medium of conveying their feeling and portraying the traumatic and violent situation that have to

face because of the state and the insurgency groups. Not only this there are women who merged

together and formed powerful organization and agencies to fight against the patriarchal system.

The Women’s Organizations and Agencies

There are many women organization and agencies that are working for the welfare of society

even after inhabiting in a violent environment. Some of the women organizations are actively

working for the peace and security of the region are3:

Meira Paibis: Meira Paibis is a women group that fought against the injustice and the brutality of

the military through stripping themselves in front of Assam Rifles Headquarters for allegedly

raping and killing of Manorama Devi. The event took place on July 15, 2004. It was the huge

revolt that took place in history where women challenged their culture, patriarchal ideologies and

the state policies that has given the AFSPA the right to take any step without any evidence in

2 Nellie Massacre is the large-scale violence that took place in the plains of Nellie, a central part of Assam on

February 18, 1983. Around two thousand Muslim peasants of East Bengal origin were killed while in the attack by the inhabitants of the area that includes the Assamese and the Tiwas. The event is recognized as the biggest collective acts of violence in postcolonial India. (Kimura,2013, 1) 3 As my dissertation is looking at three region of Northeast India; Assam, Manipur and Nagaland so I am taking up

only the women organizations that are operating in these region.

context of the suspects. This very act became a major site for debate but AFSPA is still there

operating in the same manner and being the threat for the region.4

The Naga Mother Association: Naga Mother‘s Association came into being in 1984 which stated

that Naga mothers felt the need for conscientising citizens towards more responsible living,

human development and the eradication of bloodshed and violence. They also pledged to be

negotiators and mediators of peace among the Nagas. The NMA has rendered valuable service

for the cause of peace. It mediated between the Government of Nagaland and Naga Students

Federation over age limit for job issues. Rallies and demonstrations for the withdrawal of the

Armed Forces Special Powers Act, seminars on drug trafficking and status of Naga women with

regard to inheritance rights, etc., have been initiated by the NMA. The NMA has not limited its

interest on gender issues alone. It expresses a lot of concern about issue of the ongoing cease-fire

between the Government of India and the armed Naga opposition. These women need to fight on

two fronts – (a) they have to fight against state violence, and (b) they have to fight against

patriarchal structures that discriminate against them. Thus, women groups have persisted in their

own way to express their desire for peace and to condemn violence. In a symbolic gesture of

condemnation and rejection of violence, the NMA has persisted in covering the body of every

victim of violence with a black shroud. This silent yet eloquent statement has gone unnoticed or

unheeded today. NMA is also playing a pivotal role in bring the NSCN and the other Naga

militants to the negotiating table (NEN Report). Similarly, the Mothers‘ Union of Tura has

managed to persuade some militant groups of Meghalaya to give up arms. Naga Women‘s Union

of Manipur together with the members of the NMA have also started the process of bringing

about reconciliation between different rival militant groups and put an end to ethnic and factional

killings. 5

4 Baruah Sanjib, Northeast India: Beyond Counterinsurgency and Developmentalism; Preeti Gill (Ed.), The

Peripheral Centre: Voices from India’s Northeast; New Delhi: Zubaan, 2010 (2013) Pp. -38 5 Anuradha, Dutta, ‘Women as Peacemakers: A study of Northeast India’ in Monirul Hussain (ed.), Coming out of

Violence: Essays on Ethnicity, Conflict Resolution and Peace Process in Northeast India New Delhi: Regency

Publications, 2005

Mahila Shanti Sena: Mahila Shanti Sena6 was formed with the help of Dr. Rama Shankar Singh,

who belonged to the Peace Centre of McMaster University of Canada in two parts of India: Bihar

and Northeast India. 7 The organization aims at empowering women in order to build peace, raise

mass awareness among women about their power and strength, focuses on the problems that

women are facing like poverty, negligence, illiteracy and unemployment.8 Today MSS has

trained 50,000 women who have working regarding the issues of village disputes to peace

resolution of insurgency groups.9 The organization also promotes women‘s writing. It held

workshops, seminars and conference in these regards.

Women Writing as a Response to Violence

Women writers used the literary discourse to portray the revolution and the effects on them that

was taking place in Northeast India due to continuity of violence and conflict in the region. Most

of the stories were written to show that how women survived such inhuman violence and came

up with an active protest against the state and society. One of the best example of this is Arupa

Patangia Kalita‘s Felanee (2011), whose life was surrounded by ethnic violence. The story not

only depicts with how ethnic violence affects a woman‘s life but it also deals with the theme like

intercaste marriage which was a taboo at that period. This story focuses upon women coming out

of the domestic space and fighting against the injustice that has destroyed her life and how she

succeeded in bring out the men folk from the police custody. This shows how women are stand

actively for protecting the patriarchal system.

A woman‘s life is always centered on her husband and children as they became her identity.

When this centered area gets destroyed women came up like fire to protect their close ones. The

urge to fight against injustice comes up when the question of identity emerges, who will be her

6 Mahila Shanti Sena was conceptualized by Late Acharya Ramamurti, a revered social activist and leader in

Ganhian tradition. It was created by rural women at the Buddhist City, Vaishali, in Vashali Sabha held in February 2002. It attracted about 10,000 women in Bihar to Vaishali Sabha. (http://www.hdf.org.in/MSSNewsletterMarch12) 7 http://seedsnet.org/seeds1/projects/MSS/MSS-2.htm

8 http://www.hdf.org.in/MSSNewsletterMarch12

9 http://ne.aidindia.org/Newsletter/Jan05/wNewsletterJan2005_files/page0002.htm

savior know, who will take the responsibility of her. In Bhadari10

a short story written by

Lakshminath Bezbaruah. This story is about a woman‘s life under patriarchal structure that goes

through domestic violence on daily basis but she lives a happy life with her husband in spite of

the ugly fights and beatings that she gets from him. Her final plea to rescue her husband from the

prison and forgiving her husband who tried to murdered her shows how women are socialized to

think that a men is everything for her. He is her identity, her proud, her savior (even though he

beat her or even tries to kill her) and her life. The process of socialization and the construction of

patriarchal ideas that revolves round the institution of marriage and family are problematic.

Bhadari‘s lie about the incident shows her devotion towards her husbands, how deeply it is

rooted in her that she can die but the idea of living a life with a husband who will remain in the

prison is a like a curse. Her effort and the feeling of anguish to fight for her husband portray how

forgiveness is inbuilt in woman throughout her life. She is taught to forgive her husband in every

situation of her life. Bhadari‘s story also throws light upon the identity crisis that she will face

when her husband will be in prison. She could not take this burden as it will be a threat to her

identity, her respect in the society. The story shows how woman identity is socially constructed,

dominated by patriarchal norms how she is mentally dependent upon the man that couldn‘t think

of surviving without him.

This perpetuation of violence on women in patriarchy does not end here but the state and

government is equally responsible for such violence. In The Figure of the Abducted Woman: the

Citizen as Sexed, Veena Das argues and raises questions on the abducted women in the

imaginary of the masculine nation. She deploys the notion of trauma attached to them and raises

questions like what kind of protocols for telling their story might have been imported into the

task of making visible (or audible) the suffering of women in the nationalist discourse?11

State in

protecting its dignity and in the notion of nation building it forget the major harm that it was

causing to a section of people. The Meira Paibis is good example of this where women came up

and stood actively against the injustice of the AFSPA and the policies of the state. They used

10

Bhadari is a short story written by Lakshminath Bezbaruah, that revolves around the domestic life of two protagonist Shishuram and his wife Bhadari who got engaged in a fight (as all other days) but this time it was a severe attempt of taking Bhadari’s life from her. The story is clear glimpse of a woman who has faced severe domestic violence but still want to live with her husband(even if he has tried to kill her). 11

Das Veena; The Figure of the Abducted Woman: The Citizen as Sexed; Life and Words : Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary; University of California press; Berkeley Los Angeles London; 2007; Pp – 20

their body (where the dignity and patriarchal norms were attached) as a weapon to protest against

the injustice and the violence that they have caused to the women of Manipur. This event

brought revolution in whole Northeast India. Women used their body as a language to protest

against the injustice of the state. Thus there is a shift from patriarchal supplication to protest.

Use of ‘Bodies’ as a Language of Protest

Paula Banerjee in his article Women in Assam and Nagaland argues women faces ―two sets of

belligerent institutionalized power, one composed of the state or majority community and the

other of the rebel, and being strangers to such power, their vulnerability is increased‖.12

Further

he argues that ―how women negotiate their own spaces within and between these two set

opposing patriarchal power, in what ways they influence conflict and whether a re- examination

of women‘s roles leads to a redefinition of the conflict itself‖13

. There are mainly two

predominant images of women in conflict: the victim and the amazon. There are movements

where women are victimized and as well as proved themselves to be fighter.14

One such

movement is the women‘s protest against the rape and killing of Manorama who was a suspect of

Maoist insurgent. She was brutally raped and killed by Indian Army in Manipur in July 2004.

With this brutal case a unique kind of non-violence resistance emerged in the state. A group of

women came out for naked protest named as ‗Mothers of Manorama‘in front of the Indian Army

headquarters, urging armies to come and rape them. In the article Reading Women’s Protest in

Manipur: A Different Voice?, Paromita Chakravarti argues that ―this protest was neither pacifist

nor passive, but through its quiet aggression exposed the naked predatoriness of the Indian state

against its own female citizens. The women ritualistically mirrored the state‘s repression through

mockery and subversion. By enacting the unnaturalness of violence on their ‗bare bodies‘ they

shocked the nation into realising the extraordinary conditions created in Manipur and elsewhere

through the deployment of the army and the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act 1958 (AFSPA),

12

Banerjee Paula; Women in Assam and Nagaland; Women, War and Peace in South Asia: Beyond Victimhood to Agency; Edited by Rita Manchanda; 2001; Pp-132 13

Banerjee Paula; Women in Assam and Nagaland; Women, War and Peace in South Asia: Beyond Victimhood to Agency; Edited by Rita Manchanda; 2001; Pp-132 14

Ibid Pp-132

which grants the army legal immunity‖. 15

Such kind of act brought into open all the nakedness

and all the routine rapes that are committed by the army. The protest was a clear picture of

women protesting the mode of the state and how gender became a focal point of in large social

movement peace building and development. The protest also showed that the Manipuri women

rejected the patriarchal construction of rape as dishonouring women and redefined the

boundaries of the public and private, the personal and the political.16

The women of Manipur used the language of naked protest, to have a disturbing impact upon the

Indian Army as well as the State. Not only this, it challenged the analytical frameworks of

understanding women‘s political demonstrations through a radical deployment of women‘s bare

bodies in the public sphere. Further, it is a bold redefinition of the discursive construction of rape

and of the realms of the public and the private. These bodies sought to deconstruct the politics of

objectification rather than representing itself as a site of male gaze or voyeurism or sexual

invitations.17

For this, Irom Sharmila is a good example, a bold woman who stood for the injustice of the

military, who fasted for her entire life creating a history over fighting against the repeal of the

draconian law AFSPA which treat its citizen unequally and inflict injustice by the State to the

common people of Northeast India. Irom Sharmila ―reclaims her body: as a means through

which to express her agency, ideas, emotions and values. Asserting her right to deploy her body

as she sees fit, she has inverted the norm—of eating.‖18

Daily meals are one of the basic needs of

human beings and thus refusal to have it is a challenge to whole system.19

Irom Sharmila says

that ―I am not a spirit. I have a body. It has a metabolism.‖ Any harm her body may incur is, in

her view, inconsequential. As she puts it, ―I have no other power. I do not have economic power,

or political power. I have only myself…. This is the only way I have to get my voice heard‖.20

Through this act she is restating the right to her own body and reclaiming through her self-

chosen action of fasting. Fasting is form of non-violence act. Hence, Irom Sharmila is fighting

15

Chakravarti Paromita; Reading Women’s Protest in Manipur: A Different Voice?; Journal of Peace building & Development; 02 Apr 2012; Pp-48 16

Ibid; Pp-48 17

Ibid; Pp-48 18

Mehrotra Deepti priya; Irom Sharmila’s Protest Fast: `Women’s Wars’, Gandhian Non-Violence And Anti-Militarisation Struggles; PEACE PRINTS; South Asian Journal of Peacebuliding; Pp- 9 19

Ibid; Pp-9 20

Irom Sharmila, Interview, New Delhi, December 2006

against violence through the means of non-violence which may bring a change in heart,

conversion in behavior and beliefs of the opponents.21

The sense of spirituality emerges from her

act. Through her act she has accepted the sufferings, pain and deprivation that are attached to it.

She has portrayed herself as an idol of justice, who is a rational being and who is representing

the universal truth through her act of fasting. 22

The Mother Figure

The idea of motherhood is a traditional construction. The idea of caring and nurturing evoke

initially to move on with peace process. Women are always imagined as potential mothers. Every

woman is women but every woman is not a mother. Both the Naga Mother‘s Association and

Meira Paibis are using the language of motherhood to intervene the conflict situation which

means reinforcing patriarchal ideology of caring and nurturing.

According to NMA, every person should be respected. They provided shawls for the dead body

whether they are the militant or the insurgents. They appealed both the parties to stop fighting

against each other. Further, they worked to bring peace in the society by fighting against the drug

abuse and alcoholism which was the integral part of their organization. They also joined hand

with Naga Women‘s Union of Manipur (NWUM), Naga Student Federation, Naga Tribal

Councils and the Naga Peoples Movement for Human Rights for the peace process.23

With the

claim of being mothers, NMA‘s activities got social acceptance and got reorganization in eyes of

the Nagas that women plays an important role in peace process. Further, this agency believes that

victimization will come to an end once they achieve victory in political struggle. All this,

whatever they have achieved is with the reclamation of idea of motherhood.24

As the position of

a mother brings with it the idea of respect, authority, caring and nurturing, this agency is using it

as a tool to bring peace in the society and to making effort to include the feminine voice to the

21

Mehrotra Deepti priya; Irom Sharmila’s Protest Fast: `Women’s Wars’, Gandhian Non-Violence And Anti-Militarisation Struggles; PEACE PRINTS; South Asian Journal of Peacebuliding; Pp- 9-11 22

Ibid; Pp- 11 23

Banerjee Paula; Women in Assam and Nagaland; Women, War and Peace in South Asia: Beyond Victimhood to Agency; Edited by Rita Manchanda; 2001; Pp-162 24

Manchanda Rita; Naga Women Making a Difference: Peace Building in Northeastern India; Women Waging Peace Policy Commision; Sanam Naraghi Anderlini, Series Editor, January, 2005

movements. But what is problematic here is that this will not end the idea of marginalization of

women in certain sense.25

The idea of motherhood that was evoked through these organizations is asexual. In the naked

protest women were seen as asexual being they portrayed themselves as mothers. As Soibam

Haripriya (2012) wrote ―Meitei society‘s discomfort in dealing with women‘s sexuality has

pushed women‘s movements and agitations into de-sexualized frame of motherhood. While the

emotive vocabulary of motherhood can be seen as an effective strategy in conflict-affected

societies, it can be also seen as an effective strategy in conflict –affected societies, it can also

substantially limit the space and scope of protests.‖26

The notion of a middle aged woman

stripping is acceptable but a young woman stripping is problematic because a young woman‘s

body is always seen as desirable, sexual. Thus featuring oneself as a mother means being asexual

being. This is not the end the idea of motherhood is also attached to the idea of nationalism. The

nation is our mother. Hence with the term ―mother‖ the notion of honour, dignity, patriotism and

nationalism is attached. Thus claiming oneself as the mother means the sense purity is attached

to it.

Conclusion

From the above discussion it is clear that in order to understand violence especially in Northeast

India, it is important to look at the role and intervention of women in this conflict and violence

situation. Though there is no positive response from both the sides- insurgent agencies and state.

The whole conflict situation is severely affecting the womenfolk. Whether a woman plays an

active role or passive she has work inside the periphery of patriarchal constructions. The naked

protest was the best example for this. It was a threat to the patriarchal ideology that a women‘s

body is site sexual invitation or voyeurism. This event also shows that women should fight for

themselves to protect their dignity as well as the men folk. The protest has raised questions about

Indian nation-state which is focusing on security of civilians but some way or the other giving

25

Banerjee Paula; Women in Assam and Nagaland; Women, War and Peace in South Asia: Beyond Victimhood to Agency; Edited by Rita Manchanda; 2001; Pp-163-174 26

Haripriya Soibam, Agitation Women, Disrobed Mothers; Eastern Quarterly; Vol. 8, Issues I and II, Spring and Monsoon 2012, Pp- 18

for rights and privilege to AFSPA to operate sexual violence and murders in the state. Rape,

abduction, kidnapping and brutal killing shows how the armed force that is there to protect the

nation is itself violating the norms and operating crimes under the set prominence. The law itself

is giving them the right to operate violence in the region which needs a critical analysis of the

working of sate and law in the construction of the nation. This raises a question of: is the law or

the nation state dominated by patriarchal ideologies which is creating gender biasness and

insecurity among the gendered category – women. Well if we look back in history it is clear that

the Indian nation state is dominated by patriarchal ideologies and norms which is why women as

a gendered category is facing so much trouble and a sense of insecurity and identity crisis is

always prevalent whenever it comes to women. This might be the reason why women adopted

the idea of motherhood to regain their dignity, honour and justice from the nation. The cultural

code and the process of socialization and the very space of being a citizen are dominated by

patriarchal ideologies then how we - ‗women’ can have a space of our own as an active and

powerful gendered category? And if this so then I guess we as women, being a gendered

category, have to break the barriers of this patriarchal ideologies and create a new mode of

women‘s resistance which redefined rape and rewrite the semiotics of nude, female body and a

new mode of resisting the cycle. The best example of this is Meira Paibis who refused to sue a

state which was antagonistic to its citizens, raised questions upon militarization of the state and

their urge for justice. But some way or the other by adopting the idea of motherhood these

agencies as promoting the patriarchal ideology which is problematic and calls for a critical

articulation. Thus, there is a contradiction regarding the women‘s role in conflict situation. On

one hand, they are working within the frame work of patriarchal ideology and on the other end

they are challenging the notion of patriarchy which is problematic.

References

Baneerjee Monika; Conflicts and Constructive Work: Strengthening Civil Society in the

Northeast; in Preeti Gill(Ed.) The Peripheral Centre Voices from India’s Northeast;

2010; Pp- 217-226

Misra Tilottoma; Women Writing in Times of Violence; in Preeti Gill(Ed.) The

Peripheral Centre Voices from India’s Northeast; 2010; Pp. 306-334

Bezbaruah Lakshminath; Bhadari; Comedy of a Spark and Stories; Translated by Manjeet

Baruah; 2003

Chakravarti Paromita; Reading Women‘s Protest in Manipur: A Different Voice?;

Journal of Peacebuilding & Development; 02 Apr 2012

Das Veena; The Figure of the Abducted Woman: The Citizen as Sexed; Life and Words :

Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary; University of California press; Berkeley

Los Angeles London; 2007; Pp – 18- 37

Banerjee Paula; Women in Assam and Nagaland; Women, War and Peace in South Asia:

Beyond Victimhood to Agency; Edited by Rita Manchanda; 2001

Anuradha, Dutta, ‗Women as Peacemakers: A study of Northeast India‘ in Monirul

Hussain (ed.), Coming out of Violence: Essays on Ethnicity, Conflict Resolution and

Peace Process in Northeast India New Delhi: Regency Publications, 2005

Haripriya Soibam, Agitation Women, Disrobed Mothers; Eastern Quarterly; Vol. 8,

Issues I and II, Spring and Monsoon 2012, Pp- 18-34