Irom Sharmila's story: A national icon reduced to homeless social reject

Till two days ago, Irom Sharmila was an icon with no parallel in independent India; but today, she is a homeless social reject. Now that the Manipuris have more or less outcasted  Irom, her strategy of carrying on the fight against the special powers of the Indian army through mainstream politics, let alone becoming the chief minister of the state, is unlikely to work. And ironically, her real and everyday challenge will now be more mundane – food, which she voluntarily shunned for 16 years, and shelter. This is the tragedy of political iconisation that’s built on personal sacrifice – one just can’t leave a cause midway because more than the cause, sacrifice is the main story. And what happens if the icon drops the main story? Unfortunately, history offers no scope for that. There’s no alternative storyline. Either you win, or die. Irom Sharmila tried to rewrite the story and has evidently failed. Had she looked back in history, probably she wouldn’t have dropped out and risked disgrace because all the great political icons had a story of enormous personal sacrifice. What immortalised their glory was that they stayed on till the end of the fight or lost their lives for their cause. The template was set by leaders like MK Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi and Malcolm X. In fact, only extraordinary people can fit this template. [caption id=“attachment_2949514” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Irom Sharmila. Reuters[/caption] Irom Sharmila was also extraordinary in that respect, only until 9 August. She was either crazy or too strongly committed to her cause in refusing to eat for 16 long years. She literally abandoned her personal life at a prime age of 28, but what happened in the course of her fight was that her right to choose was involuntarily taken away by the people whom she stood up for. Today when she is asking for the return of that right, fellow Manipuris think she is a traitor. The problem is that when she symbolised their fight against Afspa (Armed Forces Special Powers Act) sacrificing her life, fellow Manipuris lived a part of that sacrifice without actually experiencing it. With her stopping the fast, they too lost a sacrificial life by proxy that they have been living. Seemingly, they cannot come to terms with this personal loss because it also means a big setback to their fight. Afspa is a painful reality and the resistors now have lost their way. Irom Sharmila’s tragedy should be a lesson for people who jump headlong into causes, without thinking about personal consequences, most importantly their rights. The most dangerous trap in this process is the iconhood that Sharmila had achieved long ago. Burmese national leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who also lost almost the same number of years of her life to house arrest while fighting for her country’s independence, always resisted efforts of iconisation. As this Firstpost article explained, she played down all the virtues, including personal sacrifice, attributed to her. In 2012, Suu Kyi told Indian journalists (Barkha Dutt and Karan Thapar) that she was no saint, had a bad temper and that she had made mistakes. In her interviews with them, she made it clear that her house arrest was her choice and strategy, and not sacrifice, to fight back. There was no spirituality, mystery or superhumanness to her persona, but a practical resolve to bring back democracy. What’s more, she told Karan Thapar that she believed in the army and wouldn’t mind a back-door and front-door access. Suu Kyi’s success was that she ensured that her right to personal choices remained inalienable, irrespective of people rallying behind her, whereas Irom Sharmila didn’t realise that her personal rights were being usurped by the same people that she fought for. Could she have done anything differently? Of course, she could. There are two more templates available in the country. One is that of high-profile activists who straddle two worlds and the other. The most recent example is that of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who unlike nobody in Indian history, had converted a civil society movement to a political party in two years. The first choice is most convenient because there is no personal loss and substantial gains of fame and power. One hops between the world of activism and that of convenience without personal sacrifice. You could wander with Maoists in the hills or spend time with Edward Snowden in Moscow fighting the imperialists, but be certain that you could get back to your regular existence in Jor Bagh. One could spend a few days trekking through Adivasi dwellings and places of farmer distress and return to the global lecture circuit for the rest of the year. One could make a whole lot of money selling workers’ equity and read Marx to them. This is the easiest route to be an icon, small or big. It’s fast and returns are handsome. The second choice, the political model pioneered by Kejriwal demands a lot of conviction and strategy besides hard work. It’s a better model for social change because it looks for political disruption. It doesn’t conceal any double standards and is open to people’s audit. The first model wouldn’t have befitted Irom Sharmila because she couldn’t have straddled two worlds. But probably, 16 years into a futile fight, she wanted to change course and the path before her was that of Kejriwal – of politics. And it would certainly have made sense and people could have stood by her. But unfortunately, what she didn’t realise was that she didn’t ask the tens of thousands of Manipuris, who were also living her life by proxy if they were willing to change course as well. The moral of the story is that if you are not too sure of the consequences, don’t become an idol. You may lose everything.