AFSPA is rule by the executive arm instead of a rule of law as mandated in the Constitution of India. The result is the sheer disregard for life, dignity and rights, for which the natives have to pay.
India celebrated its 75th Independence Day in August 2021. A platinum jubilee is a long time but unfortunately, the process of nation-building has been apparently only half completed when we talk about India as a nation-state. The mainland British India became “India” effortlessly for several racial, cultural and geographical reasons but despite the decades of building the idea of India and Indianisation processes in the form of acculturation and sheer coercion, there are some regions, particularly in the peripheries that have never been, to use Benedict Anderson’s concept, a part of India’s imagined communities. At face value, it appears as a political issue, yet as we will see, that’s just the starters.
We can begin from the latest logic-defying and barbaric incident in one of the peripheries. On 4 December 2021, the Indian military gunned down six coal miners and another nine civilians in Mon district in eastern Nagaland that borders Burma. Multiple narratives are still coming out from both the sides: the army and the villagers, yet there is one generic result. The incident has brought the spotlight back on the draconian Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act 1958.
Many elected representatives and civil society organisations in the so-called India’s Northeast are now demanding that the State must repeal this act, which has its roots in the colonial Armed Forces Special Powers Ordinance 1942 that was enacted by the Britishers to suppress the Quit India Movement.
Political experts maintain that AFSPA is a “legal fiction” that conceals a political act, which reinforces a rule by decision of the executive arm instead of a rule of law as mandated in the Constitution of India. The result is the sheer disregard for life, dignity and rights, for which the natives have to pay. And they are visibly tired and frustrated from decades of protests against this act.
The consensus in mainland India is also that the AFSPA is not only extra-constitutional but also counter-productive, and that it is an antithesis to constitutional democracy, though unsurprisingly the military establishment of this country has always had a different opinion.
For the natives, one of the bitter experiences of becoming a part of the Union of India is the colonial nightmare that has persisted even after the departure of the Britishers. Meanwhile, AFSPA has become another tool for serving neo-colonial interests while further alienating and discriminating groups of people in the peripheries (read those in Assam, Kashmir, Manipur and Nagaland.)
G Kanato Chophy, a Naga anthropologist, has coined the term, a Constitutional Indian (Scroll.in - “For Nagas, the idea of India is not defined by the Brahmanical notion of a timeless civilisation”, 11 September 2021), which he explained as “many of the young in my community, and perhaps the North East more broadly, are culturally conservative, proud of their region’s distinctive history, tradition, language, and ethnic identity, but at the same time seeing and desiring common ground with fellow citizens in other regions of the country that have their own – sometimes almost incomprehensibly different – language, history, and culture.”
It seems apparently there are different kinds of Indians, and most ironic to India as a nation-state, there are as many ideas of India. This also gives rise to the idea of “unintegrated regions,” which are also the regions or peripheries where martial laws are in effect. Incidentally, in a public lecture two years ago, external affairs minister S. Jaishankar stated that: “A nation that has the aspiration to become a leading power someday cannot continue with unsettled borders [and] an unintegrated region.” (External Affairs Minister's speech at the 4th Ramnath Goenka Lecture, 2019, Ministry of External Affairs)
It is noteworthy that, in a place such as Manipur, several insurgent groups have put a blanket ban on all things national – this includes singing of national anthem in public places and all kinds of Hindi entertainment from the late 1990s. Two things are clear from this: the idea of India, as it exists today, is highly fragmented, and an act such as the AFSPA is adding insult to the injury.
For a long time, there has been a deep sense of alienation among the natives that is made even worse by the sheer lack of political will of the Union of India. Else, as things stand today, it indicates only an incompetent way of engagement or arbitration.
Moreover, the ignorant and arrogant approach of the State in dealing with insurgency as well as the people and the land in these peripheries is nothing but the coercion to include them in the governance and administration of India. Albeit this is one of the areas that India has failed miserably even after 75 years of independence. If the Indian policy-makers are of the view that AFSPA is going to contain insurgency and negotiate with the fight for the natives’ right to self-determination, they might as well leave their jobs or re-read the ground realities again. Currently, the terms of reference for militarisation only manufactures dissent and it’s still not over.
One way out of this quagmire is to understand that the issue is political. First, the Nagas have been demanding self-rule from the days of the Simon Commission. Second, Manipur was annexed to the Union in 1949 through the controversial Merger Agreement. It is an open secret that the then king of Manipur was forced to sign the agreement under duress and without consulting the then popularly elected Legislative Assembly of Manipur. This is the genesis of armed movements in Manipur. Incidentally, one of the first democratic elections in Asia was held in Manipur in 1948, yet the half-formed assembly was dissolved after being forced to become a part of the union.
In such political realities, heavy militarisation might serve as a band-aid solution. Still, when the very foundation of military deployment is based on a State’s monopoly on using violence, there will always be resistance. In other words, as much as the issues are political, if finding the solutions is the aspiration for India, then it must be based on political grounds. This has never been the case ever since the Union of India started fighting against the rebels in some of these regions with the imposition of AFSPA in 1958.
An observer once pointed out that the Union depends on the Kautilyan concept of statecraft to fight insurgency in these peripheries. This consists of the four principles of reconciliation, split, force and monetary inducement. Perhaps this explains how one of the oldest insurgent groups, NSCN IM was convinced to come to the table for ‘peace’ talks with the Government of India. These talks started all the way back in 1997 yet the solutions have become even more elusive over the years for reasons that both the parties know well yet are equally clueless.
One of the other approaches of the Union is to call all the insurgents a secessionist and proscribing the armed organisations. People on the other side of the fence would differ by arguing that: (i) they have never been a part of India and the question of secession never arises; so they are fighting for political resurgence and (ii) they are merely experimenting with political possibilities since India has never cared about anything but the land and territory in these peripheries.
In a nutshell, history is proof that you can build an empire in 75 years; however, the Union of India has never been able to realise its form and structure of a modern nation-state in as many years. Maybe this is an indication that it must change the strategy for its own benefit. If it can either convince the Kashmiris, Manipuris and Nagas about the idea of India or explore the other political possibilities with an open mind, half of the guns and ammunition in the peripheries will vanish in a fortnight. The most satisfied beneficiary from this kind of approach in these conflict zones will be civilians and the general public, who have long endured violence and disorder from the power tussle between the State and Non-state actors, both of which claim to represent and work for the welfare of the people.
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