The Heartland Conflict

Background:

A relentless cycle of violence and counter-violence is destroying the lives of the common people, who are predominantly tribal, in  Chhattisgarh. The Bastar region, in south Chhattisgarh, is a part of the so-called red corridor - a Maoist dominated sickle-shaped region on the map of India. The initial sympathy and support for the Maoists in this region was a result of a complete apathy on the part of the state apparatus, since independance, and a total absence of even basic neccessities. The interest of the Indian state in Chhattisgarh was evoked primarily because of its rich natural resources, which could be exploited, without taking into consideration the opinion of the local population, through the establishment of big industries and Special Economic Zones. As the violent resistance by the Maoists, as well as the non-violent resistance by several groups, to the government projects escalated, the central and state Governments in 2005 actively encouraged the formation of an armed vigilante group, predominantly comprising of tribals, called the Salwa Salwa “>Judum. The Salwa Judum cadres (euphemistically called Special Police Officers) drove lakhs of people from their villages to the jungles and into government supported roadside camps, purportedly to fight the Maoists. In Dantewada district alone, the state government admitted to have emptied 644 villages. In the process, cadres have burnt entire villages, pillaged animals and goods and committed various other atrocities. The formation of Salwa Judum resulted in pitting tribals of the vigilante group against other tribals, who may or may not belong to the Maoist groups. When the civil society and human rights activists in Chhattisgarh opposed such atrocities and started documenting them, the State responded by jailing several hundred activists, including the most well-known instance of Dr. Binayak Sen, under the draconian Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act (CSPSA). Finally, in response to a petition by the anthropologist Nandini Sundar, the historian Ramachandra Guha, and the former bureaucrat E. A. S. Sharma, the Supreme Court of India outlawed the Salwa Judum in 2008. However, the disarming of the cadre has not taken place and there is no end in sight to the violence.

Present situation:

Only eight thousand of the fifty thousand people who were initially driven into the Salwa Judum camps remain, as per the admission by the Home Minister of India. The rest have fled the camps as a result of the rape, arson and murder perpetrated by the Salwa Judum and the security forces. Considering that the population of Dantewada district alone was estimated at about three hundred and fifty thousand, it is fair to say that almost the entire population is either hiding in the jungles or have escaped to the border districts in neighbouring Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. Even if one concedes that around one hundred thousand people might have fled to neighbouring states, it still leaves around two hundred and fifty thousand people hiding in the jungles. Their misery is compunded by the approach of the State, with the Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh openly declaring that “those in the camps are with the Government and those in the jungles are with the Maoists”.

Meanwhile, the State has also been targetting peaceful organisations which are trying to provide a neutral space in the polarised world of the Maoists and Salwa Judum. A glaring example is the case of Vanvasi Chetna Ashram (VCA). This is a seventeen year old NGO, run by the Gandhian Himanshu Kumar, which had been trying to ensure efficient and transparent implementation of government schemes like anganwadi, health programme and NREGA. The crime of VCA, however, was that it was also involved in bringing atrocities of the Salwa Judum to the forefront by documenting them, filing cases in courts, and striving to rehabilitate tribals displaced by them. In response, the state Government demolished the ashram, spread over an area of about fifty acres, near Dantewada and slapped CSPSA on one of the members of the ashram who was volunteering as a “human shield” in a village where the displaced tribals were being rehabilitated.

Thus the State has been destroying the much needed neutral space in the region, while continuing to focus only on Maoist violence – and that too as a mere law and order problem – and denying that it is, at worst, a virulent symptom but not the disease itself. Since the end of September the Government of India has started publishing half-page advertisements in newspapers, featuring corpses with boxed names and a declaration that “Naxals are nothing but cold-blooded murderers”. The central Government has put into operation a major offensive against the Maoists in the Bastar region, “Operation Greenhunt”, which is being carried out by a force comprising of the local police, the paramilitary forces, such as the Special Task Force (STF), the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), the Commando Battalion for Resolute Action (CoBRA), the Rashtriya Rifles, as well as, the Indian army. The operation is backed up by the Indian Air Force. Reports suggest the mobilisation of around seventy five thousand personnel in this region. To put this number in perspective, the present strength of the combined NATO forces in Afghanistan is just under one hundred thousand soldiers. It must also be remembered that the paramilitary and military forces cannot speak the tribal dialects and, therefore, are in no position to distinguish between a tribal belonging to the Maoist group and a “neutral” tribal hiding in the jungle. They would depend on the Salwa Judum cadre for such a discrimination. Thus, the unprecedented use of Indian military force, against its own indigenous citizens, in the very heart of the nation, coupled with their dependence on local vigilante groups, which were responsible for displacing the same people from their villages in the first place, is certain to lead to a widespread slaughter of innocent men, women, and children.

Objectives of the proposed programme:

The actions of the Indian government in Chhattisgarh strike at the very heart of democracy, and raise grave doubts about the intentions of the State. Is the Government trying to follow the mandate of being “for the people”, or is it catering to certain vested interests and trying to “sanitize” the region, by eliminating the indigenous people, for their benefit? While we are facing the perils of a protracted civil war, as a likely consequence of such unprecedented military action against India’s own citizens, there is little awareness about the situation in the mainstream media and hardly a ripple of protest within civil society. The programme aims to initiate dialogue and debate within civil society on these issues, mobilise concerted opposition to the proposed military action in Bastar, and to pressurise the Government to adopt people-oriented policies in the region and treat political violence there as a symptom of larger socio-econo-political problems.

INVITED SPEAKERS

Himanshu Kumar

Himanshu Kumar is a Gandhian social activist working in the Dantewada district of Chhatisgarh. He set up Vanwasi Chetna Ashram (VCA) in 1992, a Gandhian organisation at Kanwalnar near Dantewada, commited to work for the survival, development and dignity of the tribal people of the Bastar region. VCA works on several modes of empowerment, with emphasis on human and legal rights and justice, community health services, elementary education, access to and implementation of NREGA and other government schemes and natural resource management activities. The VCA  documented several instances of human rights violations in the fight against Maoists and Salwa Judum and was also involved in highlighting the complicity of the state administration in several cases of extra-judicial killings – including the Singaram massacre on January 8, 2009. It is to be noted that the VCA has been using constitutional and peaceful means in all its activities aimed at preservation of life and dignity of the tribal-folk. The VCA has been ruthlessly targetted by the State machinery in Chhattisgarh as mentioned above.

Ramachandra Guha

Well known historian, sociologist and columnist whose research interests includes environment, social, political and cricket history. He is the author of well known books such as The Unquiet Woods: Ecological Change and Peasant Resistance in the Himalaya (University of California, Berkeley press; Oxford University Press (OUP), This Fissured Land: An Ecological History of India (OUP) (with Madhav Gadgil, 1992), Ecology and Equity (with Madhav Gadgil, 1995) (Penguin), Savaging the Civilized— Verrier Elwin, his tribals and India (University of Chicago Press; OUP)(1999), Nature, Culture, Imperialism: Essays on the Environmental History of South Asia (with David Arnold). He also authored best selling works such as India after Gandhi and Corner of a foreign field.

Sudeep Chakravarti

Author, Journalist, Professional futurist and Syndicated columnist. He is the author of the best selling book on present day Maoist movement called “Red Sun: Travels in the Naxalite country” (Penguin India)(2008). He previously worked with Asian Wall Street Journal, Sunday Magazine and India Today. He held variety of positions with India Today Group as Business Editor, Senior Editor and Executive Editor. He also served as a consultant editor for Hindustan Times and is a visiting faculty at Manipal Institute of Communications , where he is the member of Board of Studies. He holds a Bachelors in History from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi.

The motto of the hour seems to be shrillness. The space for nuanced, balanced understanding, seem to have gone out of the frame, with experienced anchors attempting to reduce complex socio-economic problems, to multiple choice questions, whose answer they know.  The government, in a brilliant propaganda offensive, prints huge, on your face, grisly advertisements, in newspapers. In a brilliant Goebbelsian blitz, a continuum is broken up into binaries (In a statement reminiscent of Bush, the chief minister of Chattisgarh says that those in the camps are with us, and those in the forest, are with Maoists, and thus, presumably, ought to be killed.). Repeat this, enough times, and you might just convince an Arnab Goswami, that there is a Kobad Gandhi, under his arm chair! Simple moral questions are asked of one side. “Is it ever correct to kill people? Should the protest be democratic, in a democratic state?” The questions assume the answers. No one condones the killing of a four year old child!

However, should a balanced media not ask some other questions? You see, “democratic protest” is easy. It does not require much involvement. The other options are incomparably more difficult, and require a much greater degree of involvement, and commitment. If some people, a lot of people really, seem to favour other options, does it mean something? By the way, these people have never read Motorcycle diaries, never heard of the long march. Can the media dare to ask the question, that whether, in India, democracy has been the luxury of the well fed? “Thats not true! The poor are very politically aware! Everyone knows that.” Yes. They do. (Though the statement seeks to bundle 70% of India’s population in one word). And yes, at least some people who find it rather difficult to make ends meet, are politically aware. They know whom they are going to vote for. However, it’s always coupled with the understanding, and acceptance, that their condition is not going to change. Their fathers, will still die -of jaundice- on a bus to Calcutta. They know that the local party cadre will build a palatial house, on no known sources of income. Any “democratic” protest will be fruitless, since the house is a beneficiary of “democracy”. When they decide, as any normal person would, that the house should not be there, people in suits, are going to shake their heads, and say “but such things have no place in a democracy”. But no one ever asks, what prompted a certain Chatradhar Mahato, knowing that he would certainly be arrested, knowing the torture he was bound to face, knowing that he could not “hide behind fashionable ex film stars, children, or women”, to come forward. He had no hopes of going to China or any other place. He could not cast himself as the doctor, who carried a gun. Then? Was he “fooled by the Maoists”? Perhaps, perhaps not. However, the question, that more people should be asking, is why are they so easy to fool? I mean Maoists can’t promise much, right? Is it, that no else is promising anything? Well, things can only get better, if theres no way for them to get worse. Is that the condition of most of the people, who admittedly do not read the papers, or watch the television?

http://www.civilresistance.info/files/18-naxa.pdf

However, why is there such a dearth of balanced journalism? I do not know the answer. But perhaps, we can look at a few things. The “infotainment” media, has been perhaps one of the greatest beneficiaries of the post 1990 “liberalisation”. Also, in the last couple of decades, there has been a distinct shift, towards a more “liberalised” outlook, in the academia. Today, most of the young, urban, educated people, who form the chief clientele of the infotainment industry, look upon “successful” business gurus, as role models. The impression is that they have “lifted India up, from the quagmire, and set her, irrevocably, on the path to 10% growth”. So, let us examine how “liberalised” our free markets actually are. All of the major poster boys, of nouveau Indian industries, register growths which are in excess of their competitors across the globe. Common anchor wisdom says that it is because “better governance… Shows what we are capable of…”. Reality checks are not really in order when people are in a vicarious self congratulatory mode. However, a little examination shows that this growth rides not on free market principles, but on feudal, and colonial principles. Indian industries have enjoyed unprecedented amount of subsidy. The growth difference is an image of that subsidy. Large tax breaks, and credit on taxes paid abroad, is the known part of the story. These breaks are given not only to start ups, but to established companies as well. However, what is never commented upon, is the below par gift of large quantities of land, that virtually every company in India has enjoyed. In a free market, it would have been extremely difficult to acquire that amount of land. What would have happened in a free market, is that as soon as a large corporation started acquiring land, the land price would start increasing, and it would have been costlier to acquire more land. Government help essentially short circuits this process, in favour of corporations. In effect, government acts as the feudal landlord, with absolute right over the land, and its transfer. Almost every company of note has been a beneficiary of this, and so also the new urban elite. The infotainment industry, knows its clientele and is not likely to do much, other than a couple of features about the horrid condition of say, the Bastar region, between Lux commercials. Thus, a move to scuttle greater government power to accquire land, is called regressive, though the respect for private property happens to be a central dogma of capitalism. Our free market enthusiasts want a free market, when it suits them.

So it is left to the fringes, to point out the inconsistencies in the rhetoric of the state. Its left to the fringes, to say that in principle, a democracy should also have place, within itself, for those who doubt it. Its left to the fringes, to say that the iron rod and half a carrot policy would be extremely economical. You won’t even need that half a carrot. An iron rod will be enough in most places. There will be no one left, to enjoy carrots. W enjoy dissent, when it is expressed in a language we understand. We enjoy it, when it does not threaten us, but boosts our ego. (See, how great we are! We tolerate all kinds of dissent.) However, when anything starts challenging our status quo, we can’t allow that. It’s a moot point, whether Naxals have advanced weapons, whether they get it from LeT (The only evidence for this, seems to be the statement of a suspected LeT operative.), or whether they kill innocents. The point that should be addressed is whether a state has any right to fight the people who geographically belong to it, but culturally, socially, and economically have been excluded from it. We also have to ask, what drives so many, without any ideological moorings, to embrace a path, which is extremely difficult. If we can answer these questions, probably, we will be closer to finding a solution. Triumphalism, and crushing of dissent, is not going to be solve a problem created by them.

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main42.asp?filename=Ne031009coverstory.asp

http://www.livemint.com/2009/10/02211218/Why-the-Green-Hunt-rhetoric-ri.html?h=B