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print version8 October 2009
As I write this critical note on the worst ever crisis undivided
Bastar is facing, ambushes and gun battles between para-military,
Salwa Judum and State Police forces and Naxal cadres are being played
out in jungles of Dantewada and Bijapur districts of undivided Bastar
in South Chhattisgarh. To understand this crisis one needs to have a
brief knowledge of the previous crises that have confronted Bastar. It
must be stated upfront that since historically this region has been a
forested, tribal dominated and physically difficult terrain, it has
also been a malgoverned region ! And this malgovernance manifested
itself in injustice and denial of rights for the tribals inhabiting
this region with the State eyeing it only for its mineral deposits and
forest resources. This somewhere laid the ground for the crisis that
is unfolding here since June 2005.
In June 2005, as part of a larger plan to tighten control over the
rich mineral and forest resources of Bastar, the State, backed by
private capital, launched a major offensive on tribals of this region
and called it ironically Salwa Judum or peace movement. On the face of
it Salwa Judum was a people’s uprising for peace against Naxal
violence but the hidden agenda, as is gradually unfolding, was the
corporate grabbing of resources. The sum total of four years of Salwa
Judum has been the internal and forced displacement of more than 3.5
lakh people from their villages, a 30 fold escalation of violence and
a 22 time swell in support base and area under control by the very
Naxals whom the Judum aimed at decimating ! But the State never learns
from failures – even after unleashing the loosing battle of horrifying
violence on tribals of Bastar in name of Salwa Judum, it has launched
a phase two in the name of Operation Green Hunt and Operation Godavari
in Bastar and adjacent districts of Malkangiri (Orissa). This
confrontation of Bastar’s tribals with the ‘guns of peace’ will
unleash the worst crisis this region has ever seen or will ever see ….
but that is only if remaining tribals ever survive these ‘guns of
peace’.
So through this note I am attempting to simply analyse each strategy
and act of the State and map its impact on tribals of Bastar and how
counterproductively it has benefited the CPI (Maoist) party !
The State launched Salwa Judum in 2005 to counter insurgency by cadres
of CPI (Maoist) or Naxalites through civil defense by
recruiting and training civilians in ‘armed resistance’
But soon Salwa Judum cadres went beyond the control of para-military
and police forces under whom they were supposed to function and began
looting, burning, raping, murdering and kidnapping of tribals and
remained beyond any accountability due to political support
The State forcefully evicted tribals from 700 villages and dumped them
in 30 odd camps built for them and cordorned by security forces –
it was protecting people from Naxal violence ! It was following the
American counter insurgency strategy of ‘draining the water and
killing the fish’ …. State forgot that tribals are not fish and
villages are not fish bowls !
But freedom loving and nature-dependent tribals refused to move into
camps and fled for fear of being captured, tortured and then deported
to camps – reminds one of the Jewish Holocaust. While a meager 50,000
population shifted to camps, about 50,000 fled to the adjacent
district in Andhra Pradesh and Orissa where they had relatives and
clan families and remaining 2.5 lakh people hid deeper in jungles
living a life of fear, hunger and death
Human rights and civil society groups watching over the State’s
warfare, challenged its American copy of counter insurgency. And when
they were tried to be silenced, they went up to State High Courts and
Indian Supreme Court challenging the notions and strategies of
mitigating Naxal violence and restoring peace
The State retaliated by creating an imaginary divider, obviously
through corporate media houses, in the minds of the middle class. If
you are in its camps, you are with the State and if you are in the
jungles, then you are Naxalite …. thus declaring the 2.5 lakh tribals
hiding in the jungles as Naxalites and thereby justifying training its
guns of peace on them ! And another divider declared anyone supporting
the ‘Naxal tribals’ as Maoist sympathizers or informers and liable to
imprisonment and torture under the draconian Public Securities Act. It
unjustly put activists who questioned it behind bars or bulldozed
their premises, not even soaring sources of drinking water or simply
diverted them by bribing them with funds, contracts and opportunities
for sharing the great wealth created through Salwa Judum !
Indian Supreme Court, hearing out petitioners against Salwa Judum
ordered the State to reconsider its civil defense strategy and stop
evicting tribals from villages. Instead it asked the State to launch a
rehabilitation drive to resettle tribals, provide them with basic
services and entitlements and asses damages to life and property. This
damage assessment was to be followed by compensation and registering
of criminal cases against the offenders, in particular Salwa Judum and
para-military forces. This was aimed at cleaning up the mess of Salwa
Judum and starting afresh all attempts at just and democratic
governance
The State responded by blatantly violating the Supreme Court
orders,speaking white lies before Court when questioned about its
inaction.
It neither attempted rehabilitation efforts nor set up district and
State committees to look into damage assessment or filing of cases
against offenders and also it did not make any attempts at rethinking
its strategies. Rather it continued its forced evictions, its looting,
burning, rape, kidnap and murder and printed in bold letters its
justification of continuing Salwa Judum. In fact it even went a step
further by sabotaging and blocking any civil society attempts at
rehabilitation, damage assessment and filing of cases against
offenders. It used the Public Securities Act against volunteers
working for the rehabilitation of internally displaced tribals !
Tribals who fled their villages and hid in jungles are still living
nomadic and terrorized lives. In the face of an inhuman onslaught on
them, they clung to the only support they got in the forests …. that
of the Maoists who appeared more human to them than persecuting State
forces ?! Their attempts at seeking justice and dignity as citizens of
this country were met with arrests and abuses. Their faith in the
State dwindled and converted into anger and despair. It was therefore
natural for them to pick up their traditional weapons in their
self-defence because the State had left no option before them
How did the State respond ? Whenever tribals came seeking justice
through democratic and legal means, their FIRs were not registered,
their court cases were dismissed without a hearing and they were
arrested for being Naxalites. And any sympathetic judge or officer to
the tribal cause was either sent on forced leave or transferred out.
No one was ready to listen …. not even local mediapersons who
benefited from State dole outs of contracts, advertisements and
general patronage. National media too ignored the Bastar question or
made half-hearted attempts at covering truth because they were
bankrolled by corporates eyeing the mineral and forest resources of
Bastar ! How could they let the cat out of the bag and lock out
opportunities of profiteering ? Tribals were isolated and rendered
helpless
In such a complex situation of denial and injustice, the State has
been expecting tribals to show loyalty to it, abide by its laws and
support it in restoring peace. These expectations could be justified
and binding on tribals had the State shown respect for the same
virtues !
The State talks of loyalty when it has itself distrusted its own
tribal citizens and branded them Naxals when they have come seeking
justice at its doors … State talks of abiding by its laws when it has
itself made a mockery of its own laws – holding Gram Sabhas at gun
point to coerce tribals into giving away their lands to mining
corporations, subverting laws protecting the tribals’ rights to land
and forests as stated in PESA, disrespecting Supreme Court’s orders to
rehabilitate villages, deliver entitlements and services, co-opting
judiciary, executive and legislature to ratify and justify violence
and terror by its forces and so on. In fact the State has been
attacking its poor to secure the interests of the rich and still it
expects the poor to abide by, put faith in it and support it ? There
are thousands of cases where the law of the land has been bent
backwards to accommodate corporate interests but when it comes to
tribals State puts on false pretence of legal systems and democracy !
The State wants tribals to help it in restoring peace – but when did
the State believe that peace was possible without justice or that
tribals could make peace with guns firing around them – does the State
believe that tribals will confront its guns of peace without first
arming themselves in their self-defence ? And what peace is the State
talking of restoring – had it wanted peace it would have allowed
rehabilitation, it would have allowed the nation to know the truth of
Bastar, it would have respected its laws and would have adhered to the
democratic governance systems it has put in place ??
Despite all that I have stated above (not that people in the State do
not know what I have stated ?), the State has launched its second
Salwa Judum through its strategic military operations called Green
Hunt (hunting whom ?) and Godavari. But what will be the net impact of
this Salwa Judum II ? The same, if not worse. The crisis will just
deepen, the tribals will get further terrorized, Naxals will further
consolidate their support base and area under control and voices of
sanity among civil society and human rights groups will further get
silenced and decimated. This military offensive will only isolate the
tribals more and they will begin to look upon every non-tribal as an
aggressor. And do we believe that in such a situation peace and
democracy can prevail ? Thus military operation will simply push
democracy further away and endanger the Indian socio-political system.
Thus, as tribals continue resisting corporate grab of land and
resources in the garb of Salwa Judum and Operation Green Hunt, State
repression will just rise manifold. One must remember that it is not
as if repression never happened but it has got heightened with dash of
corporates to set up mining and industrial units while the great
global market goes booming. Corporates are just making hay while the
sun is shining and all this at expenses of the State ! And Governments
have also readily complied by disposing off their socialist agenda to
follow routes tread by private capital. And to make this a reality,
these proxy wars are being fought on tribal territory.
But who really will be targeted ? Not Naxals who are deft at guerilla
warfare and will escape bullets of Salwa Judum and para military
forces. It will be the tribals who will be caught in the crossfire.
Salwa Judum (Phase I) resulted in a near civil war that destroyed over
644 villages and displaced 3.5 lakh tribals in one way or the other
and filled the lives of tribals with fake encounters, gangrape of
tribal women, looting and burning of livestock and belongings of poor
tribals, brutal suppression of any resistance or protest has become
the order of the day in the name of combating Naxals. This makes us
wonder whether they are still bonafide denizens of this country or
have they been obliterated as people of India !?
We have gone to villages to understand the truth behind encounters,
have interviewed dozens of tribal women gangraped or enslaved for
months by Salwa Judum and para military forces and witnessed the total
demolition of my house and office premises because we dared to expose
these acts of violence through several cases filed in Chhattisgarh
High Court. Is this the democracy and tribal development our
Governments want us to espouse? I shudder to think what will be the
outcome of Salwa Judum (Phase II) …….. yet another fake encounters,
yet more gangrapes and yet more souls gone down fighting injustice and
repression in the name of peace and democracy ?
But for how long are tribals going to bear the brunt of a brutal and
inhuman police force? For how long will tribals stand in the crossfire
between Naxals, a militarized State and a demonized police? For how
long will middle class ‘bhadralok’ remain silent spectators to State’s
colonization of tribal territory to subsidize urban growth in the name
of ‘tribal development‘ ? And for how long will we look on helplessly
as tribals get butchered, raped and exterminated? We believe that some
day the tribal specter will rise and fall heavily on those who repress
loot and pauperize them. But who will get sacrificed and who will
survive? The fittest … as Darwin eulogized evolution? The question is
who is fitter – you and me who enjoy privileges of a subsidized
consumer culture or tribals whom we have hanged giving them the name
of savage, backward and poor ? I guess we all know the answers …. but
don’t want to articulate it, preferring to ignore it exists. But we
cannot so this and so we strive to call the State’s bluff and turn
every stone in our path in the attempt to bring justice, peace,
dignity and democracy into Bastar so that we never have to confront
the guns of peace !
Himanshu Kumar
-Vanvasi Chetna Ashram
-Dantewada
