In November 2000, in the northeastern Indian state of Manipur, ten civilians were killed in an incident involving security forces operating under a law granting them broad powers in the region. Irom Chanu Sharmila, then twenty-eight, decided the only response equal to her anger was to stop eating entirely until the law was repealed.
She began a hunger strike that would stretch on, with brief interruptions, for close to sixteen years, during which authorities repeatedly arrested her under a law against attempted suicide and force-fed her through a nasal tube in a hospital room she was largely confined to for the majority of that period, unable to live freely even while continuing her protest.
Her protest made her one of the most recognized civil rights symbols in India, drawing international attention to the law she opposed, even as the specific legislation she was protesting remained in place in her home state for the entire duration of her strike, an outcome that tested how long conviction could be sustained without the immediate result it was fighting for.
In 2016, she ended her hunger strike, saying she wanted to pursue change through electoral politics instead, having concluded that continuing the fast alone was unlikely to move the government further than sixteen years already had. Her protest remains one of the longest hunger strikes recorded anywhere in the world.