Living with Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) as everyday life

Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), a legislation of the Government of India promulgated in the ‘disturbed areas’ of India’s North-East since 1958 and in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) since the 1990s merits spatial and contextual analysis. This is because in these regions where AFSPA operates, the armed forces are alleged to have committed one of the world’s least-known abuses of human rights but revel in legal impunity. For this, AFSPA is perceived as ‘draconian’ and ‘colonial’. Drawing upon ethnographic research, supplemented by 20 informal interviews, the key aim of the research is to examine the extent to which the people of these highly contested spaces continue to live with AFSPA as a part of their daily lives. Alongside, the research aims to highlight upon Ms Irom Chanu Sharmila’s silent protest; she was on her world’s longest fast for 16 years (since 4 November 2000 demanding revocation of AFSPA) until 9 August 2016. The key findings demonstrate that the ‘sense of alienation’ created by AFSPA is one of the major causes of disturbance in the regions, where the people desperately crave for peace to be restored.