Here is the transcript of Binalakshmi Nepram’s — founder of Manipur Women Gun Survivor Network — TEDx Talk: Responding to Rising Armed Conflict in South Asia at TEDxSecunderabad
Listen to the MP3 Audio here: Responding to Rising Armed Conflict in South Asia by Binalakshmi Nepram at TEDxSecunderabad
Binalakshmi Nepram — Founder of Manipur Women Gun Survivor Network
I wanted to be a Physicist. From Manipur I came to Delhi to do my Physics. I missed by 0.2%, ended up with Mathematics Honors and realized that it’s not going to be my cup of tea. So I switched to Indian History.
After doing five years of Indian History and then getting a Master’s degree, I realized there is not a single chapter of 45 million Indians living in Northeast region in the text books of our country. This is even after 60 years of Independent India. That is a reason the part of India that I come from continues to be in a state of war and of conflict for more than 60 years.
Now, our journey of why did — 50,000 people died in India’s Northeast, mind you 50,000 people died. South Asia’s first conflict is not in Afghanistan or in Pakistan where our friends are from in this room. It started from the epicenter off the northeast region, the first shots of insurgency were fired there and why was it fired because the kind of incomplete nation building, because the British succeeded in dividing all of us together with unnatural boundaries, also had its repercussions is India’s northeast region.
So what is happening right now is South Asia, the kind of thing as I said — first a little bit of South Asia, South Asia where again Hyderabad, Delhi, all these places, for us from Northeast South Asia is a bit far away.
First is — so there is — we always think there is bomb blast in Pakistan, bombings in Afghanistan. It’s far away. This year in Manipur we had more than 32 bomb blasts; last year more than 60 plus bomb blasts. Yet the news from this part of India never reaches.
The journey that we started in Manipur, we discovered that yes many of us in particular northeast region like we have, as I said, this is one of the worst militarized zones in the whole world. We’ve got 300,000 Indian Army on our soil. We have gotten an army law called the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which gives any armed forces personnel the right to shoot, to kill anyone on mere charges of suspicion. That means if an Army jawan suspects you, they can shoot you dead and no law in the country will allow you to be prosecuted.
Is this fair? Is this fair? Very quiet. I thought so, because we look at the Indian Constitution which is a guiding principles for many of our works and we realize it’s a violation of Article 21 of the Indian Constitution which gives every Indian citizen the right to life. Isn’t it? Do you know our constitution well? One of the biggest constitutions in the world, it gives every Indians a right to life. Even in the Indian Constitution it says even before arrest, you have to produce a warrant. In Manipur, they don’t have to produce a warrant. They can come to your house at 3:00 in the morning, 12:00 in the night and shoot you, kill you, rape you. This is what is happening in our — one of the most beautiful parts of India, called the Northeast.
But my story is not just about Northeast. I’ll take you back and forth South Asia, because the discovery – that we discovered there is what I wanted to share with you in this TEDx Talk. For me, TED or no TED, life is about a community of people learning and sharing. OK, so I am here taking this opportunity coming all the way to your beautiful city, just to share a few of our learnings so that we join hands together.
So what happens? In the Northeast we discovered, we realize — you know, there is a saying in English, in the darkness even the rope looks like a snake; Isn’t it? So what happens is the entire Northeast we discovered that why there is so much of violence? So we started investigating the reasons for this violence.
Conflict exists in our minds. Right now you must have thought, when you come here, what should I wear this morning? OK. Conflict is in our minds, it’s in our families. Tell me a family who doesn’t have conflict in this world? I have. Everyone has this. Nations have conflict. But the difference is — the only difference is because the world of technology has become so much that the lethality of when you have a gun in your hand, then it really wipes human life.
Can anyone in this audience tell me how much of rounds an AK-47 can fire a minute? In a minute, an AK-47 can fire in a minute how many rounds? How many rounds can a Kalashnikov which is very famous in all our Hindi films produce fire in a minute? 600. Imagine the lethality of a gunman walking into your shopping mall here, if they want they can shoot all of us in this room dead. It’s happening all the time. In Manipur, we discovered weapons from 13 countries flooding Manipur, Northeast India.
When we discovered, yes, there is violence, there is conflict. But then what really matters is in these who is laughing all the way to the bank. We discovered weapons from 13 countries. United States of America would have never heard of Manipur but its M-16s are a favorite with our insurgents. Is it really oozies are available there? Rocket launchers are available there. And if you think that you only get buy one get one free in Big Bazaar, you are wrong. For every M-16 that you traffic you get a landmine free. OK, and this is not serious; don’t laugh, OK. It’s quite, quite serious. Anyway laugh.
Anyway the thing is, you see it’s very very serious. In India, 5,000 Indians are shot every year. It’s not just the Mumbai attacks which happened at the Taj. 12 Indians are shot every day because of gun violence. And we think it’s normal life. Don’t get frightened, just a reality we must understand.
Couple of years back, a 20-twenty year old something, Soumya Vishwanathan, a journalist was driving home from her work. She was shot dead in Vasant Kunj, the posh South Delhi Vasant Kunj area. A single woman driving a car in India is considered she is too free. She was shot dead around 1 o’clock in the night. And you know with what weapon did they shoot her dead? She was shot with a katta. A katta is a crude weapon which you can buy with 500 rupees where a bullet costs about 2 rupees. But the life of one of the brightest young journalists of our country was cut short by people who had access to illegal arms.
Chain snatching, many of them carry kattas when they try to snatch your chain. People have shot each other because of car parking space in Delhi. Children have brought their father’s pistols and shot classmates dead in our country. In the whole world, after United States, India with 40 million firearms has the second highest civilian possession of firearms.
Now let me enlarge it to South Asia. So we think yesterday we celebrated Bapu’s birthday. Mahatma Gandhi. OK, I am afraid that Bapu must be turning in his grave. The independence of this country was one without firing a single bullet. Non-violence gave freedom to this country. Do we agree?
But today, our country, India has become the world’s largest importer of weapons. Is this fair? Last year, India’s defence budget increased but the budget for education, social welfare, all decreased. And let me tell you something. The amount of money India used on one day for international day of yoga: 100 crores. For advertisement for one day is the same amount of money Government of India has allocated for one year for work on women and child. This is a reality of how our policymakers are taking care of our country, from the learnings that we found in Manipur where our whole research was on mapping who is arming our insurgents, how did the guns come to Manipur, because as I said, I may fight with you but if I have a gun, then I may want to shoot you dead, because anger knows no boundary. And you do what you have to do.
So it’s a very very serious trend that one must understand. I’m sharing this because when we did this research, it’s published in a book called South Asia’s Fractured Frontier. This all research that we did on mapping small arms proliferation across South Asia region, we published in a book which is a part of my M.Phil thesis in Jawaharlal University International Relations and it’s a book called –
Now what happens? So a book can transform a life, OK. So if you have any issues which you feel, write it down. You don’t have to have a correct English. Remember that. Express what you feel, write it in your mother tongue, write it in whatever language but write it, publish. A book is like a second visiting card.
Number one, so writing what’s happening around you is extremely important. For us that was the spark which gave our work. After that what happens? After you write a book, publish papers, I could have become a professor in any university in the world that I desire. But no, we didn’t do that. What we decided was turning that research into social action — was a second step that we did.
So what happens is we took the research, what we found that in Manipur alone because of the violence, 20,000 women have become widows because of gun violence. And out of that, only 2% were given government support. Do you know anyone in this room how much a widow gets her pension? How much does a widow in India get pension? And it’s a very important question because in India still, while a lot of educated women we are in this room and outside but many women are made to depend on their husbands for their things. So it is — in Manipur, it’s 300 rupees a month – widow pension. How can you — this is not even a cinema ticket in Hyderabad.
So what’s happening here is we have a huge amount of women who have lost people in the conflict. So in 2007 we set up the Manipur Women Gun Survivors Network which was a new idea. What we did was we went to many villages and identified women who needed our support. The women that we work are all women below poverty line, women who have lost family members.
And what did we do? Even before the Prime Minister Narendra Modi started, more than 10 — like seven years back, we opened the bank accounts of more than 5,000 women across Manipur. A lot of women — people would say, paisa kahan se aaya? Where did the money come from? Always when you say you are an NGO, they think you are fraud.
So where did the money come from? It came from the fellowship money I had from writing my books, from writing my articles. It didn’t come from foreign agency. It didn’t come from anyone.
So when you start something, no one will help you. But remember you have an idea that you feel strongly about, go for it. This is how our work has started. Now we work in 300 villages, all across India’s Northeast. We are now becoming the voice of India’s Northeast. And confronting not just a nation state but also the non-state armed groups. In the Northeast, we have got 72 insurgent groups. Can you for a moment think — imagine Hyderabad City, lock down for two months where your children cannot go to school, you cannot go to your colleges, you cannot go to your jobs?
Imagine for a moment, everything locked down for two months? You cannot move on the streets because they are burning tires. This was exactly what happened to Manipur in July and August. No children could go to school for two months. No one was able to get in or get out. It was a state of a complete lockdown. None of the Indian press covered this. This is the apathy we have for fellow countrymen in this particular part of our — like what’s happening in the state.
So we have a lot of changes that we need to do. Violence in South Asia is an issue. But how do we respond but at the same time what we did? We took to Twitter as a social media platform to tell our stories. Indian media failed to report what’s happening. National media is not national media; it’s Delhi NCR. Where their OB vans can reach, that is national media. That is why even from South, even from Hyderabad, I don’t think none of your stories are reported properly. That is why rather than getting angry and upset, we internalized it and said where are the different platforms, so we have used social media to the hilt to tell our stories to the world and our stories are reaching. So that is one technology that we use to ensure that the stories which traditional media do not cover for us are reaching. OK, so turn it positive.
The other thing that we really have to understand is how do we ensure that – OK, that I’m going to leave with — the last parts I am going to leave with is this. You know if money could change the world all the billionaires would have transformed the world. But they didn’t. They bought their private jets. They did their beautiful things, yet 500 million people still live without electricity and in dire poverty in our country alone, India. So it’s not money, and we as non-government organizations we do not believe in asking for money. It’s ideas and asking for solidarity.
And I’ll tell you why. In Manipur, when we started the work — OK, let me tell you — the dress I’m wearing is not made in China. It’s woven by the women of Manipur in their looms. OK, it’s not made in China, it’s done there. When we realized that the skills that our village people have, our women have, we took their skill up, and then we realized that they didn’t have the capital. We asked how much capital that you need to start weaving. We were shocked and horrified when we were told: 2,500 rupees was all that the women in the villages of Manipur asked us for support. I was shocked. I am not an economics student, I was totally shocked. If this is the way they were taking a 20% from money lenders and earning 800 rupees a month in spite of being master-crafts women. We broke that line.
We started giving resources to the women to start weaving. And they started weaving en masse. We have now 300 villages who are churning out products and last week for the first time the women survivors came to Delhi, took the first flights of their life, all women below poverty line, widows whose husbands were shot dead, and for the first time in one of India’s premier India International Centre the women had their first ever exhibition. And it has transformed their lives in the way and we already got 300 orders to work on the issue of women, peace and security. It’s a landmark resolution Government of India – the United Nations started 15 years back. What we realized was that in a country as big as India of 1.3 billion people, we have to take our own issues up, that the stunning video from the woman from Hyderabad who spoke about sexual exploitation. I know that we all feel pain when we hear these stories.
Listen to it but look around and see where — I always say like she said, change is not when you go out into the stage and say this is the change I made. Change is look around in your own locality, see what is a transformation that — that’s how we started our work in Manipur 10 years back and has now become not only a national phenomenon but fighting against gun violence for peace and security has become a movement and we are proud that the women of Northeast have led this process for the country and the world.
Thank you.
Related Posts
- “Why this is the Moment to Invest Your Attention Wisely” – Saj Shah (Transcript)
- Who Pays For Assassinations On The Dark Web? – Carl Miller (Transcript)
- How Tiny Particles May Explain Why We Exist: Dr. Lia Merminga (Transcript)
- How To Learn Languages Effectively: Matyáš Pilin (Transcript)
- Why Objective Truth Still Matters: Michael Ward on C.S. Lewis (Transcript)