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Manipuri women will be a decisive force in the upcoming elections: Teresa Rehman

Teresa Rehman broke the story of fake encounters for Tehelka newsmagazine in 2009, which was followed by a national outcry and international consternation

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Teresa Rehman, Sanjoy Hazarika, Dhrubajyoti Bora at Zee JLF
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Women in Manipur have a decisive role to play in the upcoming elections with more number of women voters than men in the electoral rolls. Yet, journalist Teresa Rehman feels that Manipuri women are everyday, ordinary women scripting changes in the realities of the troubled state. 

"Most of the women, specially the imas (grandmothers), are ordinary, next-door women. Most of the Meitei women come from a deeply conservative Vaishnavite community," she says.

Rehman broke the story of fake encounters for Tehelka newsmagazine in 2009, which was followed by a national outcry and international consternation. And she has since then not stepped back into the state, as anything can happen to her.  

In Jaipur, as part of a panel on the northeast at the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival, she also spoke about her new book, The Mothers of Manipur. The book focuses on the 12 imas who stripped down naked to stage a powerful protest against the Assam Rifles of the Indian Army at Kangla Fort in 2004. At the panel, she spoke about how one of the imas told her that she would cover her face, too, while sleeping. 

"For a woman like her to take off her clothes was a powerful, political act," she told the audience. "This is a deeply conservative and hostile society. And their grit under resilience was extraordinary."

"The book is a tribute to the grit of the mothers which is unparalleled in contemporary history," she said.

While speaking to dna, Rehman says that the women took a vow: that only the older women with wrinkled and sagging skin would take part in the protest. "When you grow up in a low intensity way, you tend to find a solidarity among your own, which surpasses political issues," she said.

She also spoke about Irom Sharmila, who has now floated her own party, the People's Resurgence and Justice Alliance, the only crowd-funded party to contest the upcoming elections. "She told me that the most important object in her room in the hospital, when she was under arrest was the wall clock. She said that the time was very precious to her," said Rehman.

Rehman said that she was tired of the controlled narrative that was coming  from the northeast. And, that she was waiting for someone to write about the 12 imas all these years. "I had all these stories with me all these years, but I was hoping someone from the state would do it," she said. "But, somehow it so happened that I had to write it."

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