Bodies at protest and power of the image: Irom Sharmila as an icon.

Irom Sharmila, also known as the 'iron lady' of Manipur (India), has fasted for 16 long years, sustained through forced nasal feeding, making it one of the longest political fasts in the world. She struggled against the rule of emergency law in her land through the mechanism of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. In an attempt to explore the power of an image, the paper traverses the aspects of iconization of Irom Sharmila. The image of a woman, frail in structure and a tube attached to her nose triggers bodily pain in the spectator which comes from the innate violence in her image. The paper examines how the body of Sharmila has been actively transformed into a site of resistance and a ground on which politics is played out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]