South Asia Reading Group: Abandoning Martyrdom: Irom Sharmila and the Afterlife of a Hunger Strike
South Asia Reading Group
February 24, 2023
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Register for Zoom:
Calendar
Download iCal File
Virtual event
Irom Sharmila began her fast in 2000 to demand the repeal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, 1958 (AFSPA). She declared her protest as a fast unto death, though it was a fast for a good life for the people living under AFSPA. During a court hearing after her arrest for allegedly attempting suicide, Sharmila stated her love for her life yet would end it for the cause.
The tube through which Sharmila was force-fed became a visual signifier, transforming her into a spectacle without engaging with the cause. Sharmila’s decision to break her fast after 16 years was seen as a failed martyrdom. In Sharmila’s rejection of martyrdom, she thwarted the collective desire of an expected spectacle. Various debates ensued after her fast ends to reveal the place of women in the construction of collective resistances and martyrdoms. The seminar will explore the politics around the hunger strike and beyond.
Soibam Haripriya is Fulbright-Nehru Postdoctoral Fellow at the South Asia Institute, University of Texas at Austin (USA). She taught at the Centre for Sociology and Social Anthropology- Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Guwahati campus and Gender Studies Programme at Ambedkar University, Delhi. Her areas of interest are gender and violence in Northeast India and Poetry and/in Ethnography.
Date posted
Feb 8, 2023
Date updated
Feb 15, 2023