Talk:Irom Chanu Sharmila

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[edit] Irom Chanu Sharmila

The English language has an excellent piece of advice: One should not blow one's own horn!

Irom Chanu is a Meitei woman, a citizen of Manipur. Whether Manipuris are or are not Indian subjects is not something that belongs here. The Indian State is not God; states come and go, nations - or ethnic groups - outlive states. The ethnic groups of Manipur have been around for considerably longer than the Indian State, and for hundreds of years, the ancestors of today's Manipuris were blissfully ignorant of so momentous a "truth" that they were "Indians"!

It is beyond controversy that the Indian State used brute force to terrorize various peoples and states to merge themselves into the Indian Union. That was the work of Sardar Patel and Jawaharlal Nehru, both of them criminals of the first order.

It is beyond controversy that Manipur is not a historical part of the South Asian ethno-cultural continuum.

It is beyond controversy that the King of Manipur was forced to "merge" his Kingdom into India at gunpoint, an act that, due to duress, is illegal, null and void of its own nature.

There is nothing "POV" about calling a spade a spade, or calling a draconian "law" a draconian "law".

But what urges our vandal to whitewash or rather suppress such vital - and embarassing - information that the AFSPA "empowers" Indian military personnel to "to arrest citizens; search or destroy property without warrant; to shoot – and even to kill – on suspicion alone, and moreover gives the armed forces near-total immunity against any judicial action"? Is it moral cowardice?

AFSPA is a "legal charter" for State Terrorism.

The Indian State does not care a damn whether Irom Chanu dies or not; it objects to what it considers "blackmail" against its acts of terrorism and as attempts to curtail its "rights" to perpetrate State Terrorism, and so it indulges in brute force against one unarmed girl under the pretence of "preventing suicide"! This is moral hypocrisy of the highest order, besides being gross misuse of powers, exposing the Indian State for exactly what it is - totally bereft of any concept of morality or acquaintance with any such notion as "conscience".

My Wikidness 17:09, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

I am afraid that all of the things you say, while possibly true, are not agreed with by many people; I urge you to consider the fact that someone will come along soon and, if they see your words on the article, change it to a version completely opposed to yours. Please consider instead accepting an version of the article that will not annoy either of you enough to click the edit button. Hornplease 15:35, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

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I can accept a truly "neutral" version of the entry. Points which need to be stressed:

1. While Manipur is de facto governed by India, there remains legitimate reasons to doubt that this is legal and morally so. The people who are fighting for Manipur's independence have as much a right to the respect of their fellow-men as do the Indians, and, very probably, a greater right indeed, given that India's occupation is very questionable. I cannot accept that India's monopoly on viewpoint is either moral or "NPOV"!

1. There are no reasons to whitewash or suppress vital information concerning the nature of the AFSPA and which make it so objectionable to the peoples of Manipur, even those who are, like Irom Chanu herself, very probably favorable towards India.

Etc.

Kind regards,

My Wikidness 15:51, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your prompt response. I agree that alternative POvs belong on WP. Howeverr, the kind of detailed discussion of Manipur's independence movements and the nature of the Act that you wish to include should belong on the Manipur and Armed Forces Act page, which are linked from this one; the interested reader will follow the links. Please do consider editing there. Thanks, and happy editing! Hornplease 16:20, 5 December 2006 (UTC)