ABSTRACT
This chapter builds on the progression of the tribal movement led by the JACAATB from the deployment of counter-conduct practices to evade the laws of the state to a movement advancing a separate administration for the hill areas of Manipur. Drawing on Foucault's conceptualisation of power relations as agonic, the chapter analyses the contentious politics of claims and counter-claims, replication of techniques and tactics between the state and the JACAATB, and the development of a new subjectivity and a new form of governance. Here the mobilisation of the political lives of the martyrs by the JACAATB is central in staging insurgent constitutionalism as Foucauldian critique and counter-conduct. There are three strands of embodied martyrdom that this chapter develops as a part of the argument on insurgent constitutionalism. The first strand of the argument dwells on the various technologies of immortality to immortalise the ‘tribal martyrs.’ Secondly, the insistence to refer the deceased in the state violence as ‘tribal martyrs’ is an attempt to foster camaraderie and solidarity between the two main divided ethnic tribal groups in the state. This forged camaraderie is understood as an instance of negative solidarity. Thirdly, this chapter advances the argument that the refusal to perform the last rites of the nine martyrs until the three bills are withdrawn and the demand for judicial inquiry and central government political observer are instances of resistance for alternate form of governance. These techniques of resistance are performed by mobilising the corporeal bodies of the martyrs to ascribe meaningful justifications for the lives lost and to uphold constitutional safeguards through a separate administration or the extension of the Sixth Schedule under Article 371 C of the Constitution of India.
