Will power, yoga made ‘Iron Lady’ survive for 16 years

Imphal, August 10

The secret of Manipur’s ‘Iron Lady’ Irom Sharmila’s fairly good health even after undertaking a hunger strike for 16 years, during which she was forcibly nose-fed, lay in her will power and the habit of practising yoga daily.

According to her associates and family members, she learnt yoga in 1998, two years before she sat on the hunger strike which ended yesterday.

“It is her strong will power and daily habit of practising yoga, which kept her physically fit,” Sharmila’s brother Irom Singhajit said.

As a young woman in the nineties, Sharmila was fascinated by the subject of nature cure and took up a course which also included yoga as a means of natural well-being.

“Yoga is not like football. It is different. If a person does yoga, it can help one to live longer. By doing yoga, one can live up to 100 years! It is not so with other sports like football,” Sharmila had told her biographer Deepti Priya Mehrotra in the book ‘Burning Bright’.

She recalled that she began doing the yoga asanas in 1998-99 and since then she has been doing it every day.

Describing Sharmila as someone exceptionally close to nature, the book says she used to experiment continually with her body through Yoga and walking.

Under police detention, since indefinite hunger strike is viewed as an attempt to commit suicide which is a punishable offence, Sharmila has spent almost all of the last 16 years at the Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Medical Sciences Hospital here.

Through a Ryles tube which reaches the stomach through nose, she was forcibly nose-fed a liquid diet made from boiled rice, dal and vegetables.

As an undertrial prisoner, she rarely had visitors and led a solitary life during her fasting period.

‘Iron Lady’ keeps her mother waiting

Having broken the world’s longest hunger strike yesterday, Sharmila is maintaining her resolve not to clip her nails, comb her hair, go to her house and meet her mother till AFSPA is repealed.

On November 5, 2000, when she took a vow to start an indefinite hunger strike till the government repeals AFSPA, which gives armed forces immunity against prosecution for their actions, her protest had multiple dimensions which went beyond not taking food and water.

The toughest one was not to go home and meet her 84-year-old mother Shakhi Devi till achieving her goal of getting AFSPA revoked.

Sharmila has not visited her house at Kongpal Kongkham Leikai, on the edge of Imphal city, even once all these years.

The 44-year-old ‘Satyagrahi’ has made it clear that she would not go home till AFSPA is repealed and preferred to stay in an ashram till then.

Her associates said to avoid any emotional outbursts, Sharmila had not been meeting her mother during the fasting period.

Elder brother Singhajit said their mother is waiting for the moment of her victory which will come only when AFSPA is repealed.

Although living only few meters away from each other, the duo has met only once in all these years when Shakhi was admitted to Jawaharlal Nehru Hospital, where Sharmila was force-fed through nasal tube and kept under detention by the police for attempt to suicide. — PTI