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

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.