Propagating Peace: draft 1

I have written this on the presumption that the leaders of our country and the Naxalite parties are really sincere about the idea of peace. This is, of course, a big presumption. It is also a big presumption that a war motivated by economic means can find a peaceful resolution.

Yet I had to write this, barring my naiveté, my own desperation, to bring myself to entertain a foolish hope, and obviously, to help clarify my position as a journalist, and my motivations as a human being.

Questioning the idea of peace talks between the Government of India and the Maoists

We’re constantly talking about ‘addressing the socio-economic problem’ that feeds the Naxalite base yet no one is yet to tell me how to address it, and to whom, and when?

Answer: if anyone is aware of what happened at Andhra Pradesh in 2004, peace talks between the Government of India and the CPI (Maoist) Party, as of now would lead to nothing. The government isn’t going to turn the entire system upside-down nor are the revolutionary parties ever going to lay down their arms considering what it really took them to gain them. Neither party has anything to lose as of now, nor anything to gain from peace talks. The further the military operation continues, the further the base of the Naxalites shall grow and the further the GOI manages to destroy the sustainable livelihoods of agrarian societies that have existed for thousands of years without outside interference, the further they can justify industrial development.

(On another note: Mr.Chidambaram, why can’t we allow the agricultural sector to grow to feed out GDP? Don’t you think, considering that more than 70% of this country lives in rural India, we’d have a phenomenal rate of growth if they, the poor, and not corporations, were allowed profit?)

Now, let us get back to the topic of peace talks, which at this present moment, seems as improbable as hell freezing over.

A few days ago, I met Shankaran of the Committee of Concerned Citizens. In all my time being confronted with the tragedies of the Naxalite issue, somewhere within the room with that gentle old man, I could sense one of the graver tragedies of this whole mesh of violence and counter-violence. He holds himself morally accountable to the failures of the talks, for he was in a position to do something. Yet the talks fell apart. Clause 7 was a monster. Both parties blamed the other for the failure of the talks. Violence erupts. Bloodshed. Silence. And the violence spilled over to other states.

Irrespective of how the Centre views the Andhra model of dealing with the Maoists, one shouldn’t discount the obvious truth that there is relative peace in Andhra because all the violence shifted to other districts. Most of the higher-up Naxalites in those districts are from Andhra Pradesh. And now things are a lot more complicated. This isn’t just about the peace talks between the Government of Andhra Pradesh and the Naxalites. Now, there’s the Salwa Judum, respective state governments, corporate interests, the Government of India and the international stage  – a spotlight for the Naxalites, for each and every one of those buses that they set alight in the last four years as a form of protest. And all of this, is for the poor, invisible, oppressed poor. This of course, is another big presumption.

Now, the issue has our attention. Now, we must talk. First, let us differentiate between ‘dialogue’ and ‘peace talks.’

Peace talks, as the Naxalites coming out of their hideouts to meet the GOI leaders, is an act of idiocy considering that the IB will be trailing every shadow and the reclusive Politburo members know that.

Peace talks are theatrical and we don’t need drama, we need an environment where dialogue is possible – where debate is possible – debate that is followed by sustainable action on the ground. We, firstly, obviously need a bilateral ceasefire. A cessation on the use of IEDs, the killing of so-called informants, and the targeting of off-duty policemen as a matter of sport. We need a cessation on the murder of SPOs, their families and members of the Salwa Judum. We need a cessation of fake encounters and combing operations that always seem to only further aggravate the general population who always believed that this war would never touch them. As I have said before, just because every fake encounter and burning of a village is not reported in the mainstream press, it doesn’t mean that it ceases to exist – it doesn’t mean that it fails to act as a stimulus to push grieving, desperate villagers over the edge.

This entire campaign against the free press and the ‘no access’ idea that the government is trying to impose onto brave and insane muckraking reporters and activists is also highly questionable. I think, this has to do with the idea of hubris more than credibility – as it is, the Indian government doesn’t have much credibility in the Red Corridor, and I don’t know why it’s trying to protect itself from the crimes it commits in the Dantewadas and Lalgarhs.

The adivasis are very well aware of who they kill, and it’s easy for them to know that, as they are the ones who are being killed. But it’s not the adivasis who the government wants to hide the truth from – it’s the higher-upper-middle classes. The government doesn’t care a hoot about what the adivasis think of them. The adivasis are not one unit – they do not possess a political unity as other groups do. This disunity does not seriously threaten them. The starvation deaths of the Birhors do not affect the Baiga who are being displaced, or the Muria who are being hunted down or turned against one another, or the Dongria-Kondh who are being evicted from their Mountain God.

The state pays little to no attention to them and I don’t remember a single time in the recent past, that it’s even seriously considered their grievances. Mr.Chidambaram’s upcoming public hearing in Dantewada is a positive step, but it is a redundant public relations stunt unless it is followed up with serious policy changes. And it must address the people who live further in the jungles. These are tribes that have existed for centuries without outside interference and they can very well exist for centuries without them, provided their symbiotic relationship to the jungle is kept intact. And that is the very thing they’d be coming to him for – their jal, jangal, jameen – their lives.

Along with another very certain thing – they’d want security, thus they’d want a cessation of combing operations – a military ceasefire.

And along with a military ceasefire, it is absolutely imperative that we have a ‘cultural’ ceasefire – where there is freedom to express your views without a witch-hunt, freedom to resist the state, to portray dissent, without being branded off as a ‘naxalite sympathizer’, (yet what is a Naxalite sympathizer really? It is quite contentious as it is and some clarity is required. And of this, we shall get to, as well). Yet coming back to a cultural ceasefire, we need a guarantee that not all resistance movements are branded off as ‘Maoist fronts’, simply so the state can justify violence onto them. No one gave the Maoists a monopoly over resistance movements but the Government and the media itself.

Now, we need a guarantee that grievances are addressed and calling for more troops becomes unnecessary. Let all the men who scream for blood drink their own.

Of course, the greater emphasis is on the Maoists themselves for an initiative for peace. To an extent, they are morally responsible for the well-being of the people they represent. They can’t possibly take them through a brutal war for political power. The adivasi way of life is already under threat and the poor bear the brunt of police action. How many fake encounters and how many arbitrary arrests have taken place, one will never know. The pervasive environment of fear and suspicion has driven all sides to commit atrocities and this isn’t benefiting anyone but those who thrive in war and benefit from it. This environment of fear has further been exacerbated by the ‘no access’ policies of the administration. Hopefully, the upcoming Satyagraha and Padhyatra in Dantewada would help to negate this fear and help to create an environment for peace.

One of the reasons I talk to the villagers, is for this reason – for an environment for dialogue, for understanding, for truth.  For applicable dialogue, you need reality – a stone to shatter any idea of a status quo that defends itself with nothing but brute force. For dialogue, you need to shatter the myths – every policeman is a monster, every Naxalite is a monster, and death and murder is the only solution – no, it is not, no, they are not, and no matter how much we’re trying to demonize one another, I can guarantee to you that peace is possible. And this is not a war between gun-toting Naxalites and policemen and neat little terms for innocent civilians such as ‘collateral damage’. Mothers don’t call their dead children collateral damage, and orphans will never grow up to think their parents were just collateral damage. We must shatter the myths of a public that believes war is for heroism and the protection of good over evil. Let the people know what war is – visceral and brutal beyond words, it exists beyond abstractions, beyond concepts of nations, ideologies and heroism.

***

It shouldn’t be easy for the manufacture of consent to war in the country of Gandhi, even though it surprisingly is. It shouldn’t be easy for us to be complicit in the murder of peoples who did no wrong to anyone, even though it always has been. Let us leave our comfort zones and put ourselves on the front lines.

And this is why we need aggressive reporting. Why every drop of blood must be investigated. Why every voice must be heard.

In Sri Lanka, the murder of the free press made it easier for the general public to accept denial. The voices of dissent were systematically shot down. Because there was no real free press, the issue of atrocities and war crimes became a question of tit-for-tat violence and idiotically-justified eye-for-an-eye counter-violence; along with whether atrocities were taking place, or not – when in reality, there shouldn’t have been any question about whether they were taking place or not, and their legitimacy should be questioned – yes, so we’re killing innocent people, is this the best that we can do in this situation? Do they deserve it? Or is there an alternative? Can we have dialogue?

Now, dialogue is unimportant with particular Islamic fundamentalist groups who only call for the entire destruction of people.  The question of dialogue is important in this case, because the Naxalites claim to be representing an oppressed people whose oppression cannot, under any circumstances, be disregarded. To an extent, this claim to representation is entirely justified, and is further inevitable, every time the security forces enter villagers and behave as naturally as they usually do – taking the psychology of a soldier, out of fear and hatred, atrocity is inevitable.

The Naxalites, meanwhile are not stupid enough to believe that there will be no collateral damage every time they fire on off-duty policemen or blow up anti-landmine vehicles with landmines. The villages adjacent to these attacks often bear the brunt of state repression. Yet what do we see? We see state repression – not the fact that the Naxalites helped to manifest a situation where the biggest losers are the innocent people who had nothing to do with what happened.

Someday, I shall meet revolutionaries who fight for the people but don’t expect the people to fight and die for them. Someday.

Propagating a peaceful environment: step 1

The first thing we need to do is to get the Arnab Goswamis of the media to shut the fuck up. If that bigoted idiot even uses ‘Maoists’ and ‘Taliban’ in the same sentence, I’m going to personally take him into the red corridor and leave him to the hospitality of the so-called Maoist sympathizers – villages of the Muria where there’d be no electricity, no healthcare, no ration, no nothing and everyday they live in fear of being raided by the security forces – of losing their loved ones, their homes, their lives. And let him be fed their rice even when they have none for themselves, and let him try to write them off as ‘collateral damage.’

Most people often race to judgments as a matter of closure. No one wants to sit out and sift through all the details. Details make mediocre minds uncomfortable. One simple conclusion is enough – the Naxalites are bad and we must kill them, or the state and the police are working for corporate interests and it must be stopped. The media, of course, has the most blame for this. It plays by the nouns and it dies by them. People go off screaming bloody murder on the ‘naxalite sympathizer’ and does anyone have any idea what a ‘naxalite sympathizer’ is?

Semantically speaking, a majority of the so-called intelligentsia and general public are ‘tribal sympathizers’ and 90% of the Naxalites are tribals, fighting for their land, fighting for their homes, fighting for their families, and most have little to no option in securing another choice – it is a matter of geography – they live in areas where the state has never entered – places where they have grown up their whole lives, or have their land. As the women of Tatemargu would say: ‘if you want to live here, you need to bear a few beatings.’

And what sympathies do these people have for the Naxalites? Do they send Hallmark cards to the Politburo members for Chairman Mao’s birthday? They mostly, wish for the Naxalites to leave them alone. And pray not, all of the higher-up Naxalites, are evil gun-toting madmen. The late Anuradha Gandhi, Kobad Gandhi’s wife, is still spoken of affectionately by the adivasis of Kutroo block – one of the bastions for the Salwa Judum. The same people would still go about to insult other members of the Dalam or the ‘higher-ups’ whose atrocities they remain witnesses of. Yet she remains closer to their hearts.

This, of course brings us to a question for the Naxalites that I can also ask the Indian government: do you have a free press and a judicial system where you can be held accountable for the crimes you commit on the adivasis?

Now this also brings us to the other breed of the ‘Naxalite sympathizer’. The lawyers and the activists and the social workers who have bled their souls dry, trying to make this democracy, a real democracy. After failure, after failure, after failure, they sit down and watch all their efforts go in vain. A failing judicial system, a failing administration and peaceful protests that accomplish nothing as the people who they represent lose faith in them and their courts, and their means. If the government fails these people, what other option do they have? What purpose do you serve by arresting the Chhatradhar Mahatos of the country? What purpose do you serve by brutally repressing peaceful resistance movements? By murdering soldiers/social activists such as Colonel Pratap Save and Gangaram Kalundia who were one of your own, who stood up for the poor, the oppressed?

‘Fine then, you don’t want to deal with us through the courts and peaceful protests, you can go deal with those fellas.’

Of course, a majority of the people who have those moments of weakness go back to sleep and wake up in the morning to continue in their absurd existences, their spirits unbroken, their throbbing hearts still yearning for the days where justice shall be something definable, something graspable. Of course, the world shall never change, we’d all keep fighting all our days, today, this government, tomorrow another. It’s the means to struggle that change, the ends remain the same – a distant dream.

Violent insurrection itself, is an absurd means. The only difference between the peaceful protest – the rock held in a fist and violent insurrection, is catharsis. Violence is catharsis. It is Fanon’s Wretched Earth. And if someone crosses over the line, they’re entering a world where the idea of justice will get far more convoluted, especially if you manage to keep your conscience. For the revolutionary with a conscience, the justification of murder can only be justified by the utopian dream. Yet what happens if there is no utopian dream? What happens to the justification of murder when the utopian dream gets more distant by the day, and all one is left with, is a compulsion to continue the violence, to continue the pursuit of the dream, justifying murder after murder after murder, for that is the only way out of the trap?

Today we have the Law, a bruised, battered abstract that is flouted and abused and left a toothless abstraction, and I see, some of them, chose the gun as a means for justice. Tomorrow, if they smash it all to bits, what shall I be doing? I shall still be documenting their crimes, I shall still be taking them to court. The struggle shall go on. Just the means shall change.

And right now, the guns need to be holstered, for they can be. You can fight your war with policy changes, with dialogue, by shifting back to a development-centric model that actually considers the grievances of the poor – a drought, a failing crop, encroaching corporations, land rights. To the poor, those are the ends – not the annihilation of the Maoists, nor the bringing down of the semi-bourgeoisie, semi-imperialist Government and all that yahoo.

The poor don’t want iron ore mines, nor do they want a market democracy. They want their land, they want their livelihoods, they want their environment. They want their handpumps and their roads. They want healthcare. And most importantly, they want their security and that can only be guaranteed by all warring parties yet someone has to take the initiative and declare unilateral ceasefire if the other does not.

War against your own people is an act of genocidal seppuku. Eventually, we shall reach a point where too many people shall be killed and there’d be no more turning back (if we haven’t reached that point already), and I shudder to know that there shall be a time, where the truth shall be, that violence is justified. And I know I am not just being a peacenik here.

During one of my visits to Bijapur in Chhattisgarh in January of this year, I met an experienced inspector who told me something very interesting. His superior, the Superintendent of Police had asked him what he’d need to deal with the Naxalites. He replied that even if he had ten battalions, he still wouldn’t have managed to do anything about the Naxalites. He was aware that there is no military solution to this insurgency and there never has been. The world is wrought with insurgencies today. And everywhere, where there is an insurgency, there’s a cruel repressive state machinery at place. This is the cause-effect-cause problem of our age. Terror breeds terror breeds terror. Action breeds reaction breeds reaction. Ad infinitum.

Unless there is dialogue. Unless there is restraint. Unless there can be an environment created that is capable of peace. This environment is impossible as the killings continue, and there are obviously two parties culpable.  Rage and vengeance knows no dialogue, no words, no hopes – there’s an unfathomable darkness in that jungle that knows no politics, no human rights, no chairman Mao, no Chidambaram, no neo-liberalism: it knows nothing but sheer terror – death, the machine, hidden from the world, where people die and continue to die.

Of course, I met another policeman during that same period who told me something else, he said, ‘fuck your human rights, and we can fix this whole problem.’

I think we know who among the two policemen, is having the last laugh now. Tomorrow, I shall fuck my human rights and not call back. After all, who in this country is really being accountable for their actions?

the dissenter

this is my country, my dirt,

my sanity and my humanity,

that always comes first.

 

this is my country, my faith

and to accept it blindly,

I can not take.

 

this is my country, my lover,

my youth, my time, my purity,

 

to just love

 

something as it is, within my fists,

 

within my eyes, within my soulless, ruthless

life,

as this dissent, this ascent, is my right,

my fight,

my desire for truth

 

and justice.

 

And now I am quiet, very quiet,

as you bind my hands and kick my face.

And I laugh, I laugh again, as it is my riot

of love,

against the insecurities of the human race.

 

to accept you is only to defy you later,

mr. power-keeper,

said the rebel laughing under the boot,

crushing his skull but not his smile.

 

religion has no claim over my faith,

my friend, he said, as they called him:

terrorist, you should all be killed,

 

apostate, you should be skinned alive.

 

And this is my country, this is my dirt,

he says as he licks the mud and spits out blood.

 

to love my country on lies

and denial, is not love,

and is not even my country.

 

to love blindly is not love,

and is not a demand you can make of me.

 

you, the caretakers of the meaning of life,

lover,

you taught me truth.

 

this is my fate,  my destiny,

and you just wish to shoot me,

 

you, mr. power-keeper,

you kiss the lips of your revolver,

and you put it against my temple,

 

‘to love the truth and the love within it,’

 

said the rebel laughing under the boot,

crushing his skull but not his spirit.

Operation Tribal Hunt?

This article of mine first appeared as the lead story for The New Indian Express on the 15th November, 2009.

Original link – http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/story.aspx?Title=Operation%20tribal%20hunt?&artid=IkJdbe8mAgY=&SectionID=XVSZ2Fy6Gzo=&MainSectionID=fyV9T2jIa4A=&SectionName=m3GntEw72ik=&SEO=Operation%20Green%20Hunt,Maoists

This is a note I wrote for myself about the photograph of the boy who lost his fingers -

“Something is wrong here. I am looking at a baby with his fingers cut off. I have to take his picture. Something is wrong here.

The boy would be whimpering ceaselessly. He would weep when his father would leave his side. His father himself is only eighteen years old. And he’s lost his wife.

The boy himself was petrified of cameras and who could blame him? It does look like a gun.

I must’ve spent around forty-five minutes with the two of them – before I told the father that we must take his picture. I warned him that his son will cry again and I hoped to God I would get the picture in just the few shots. Yes, I didn’t cut off his fingers, yes, I didn’t murder his mother, but I am making him cry right now.

Yet we managed to pacify him. He’d stop crying. He got used to us and I managed to keep him distracted. Towards the end of it, Y made him laugh. That was the first time I saw that boy laugh and my god that was the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.

As always, the most beautiful things in the world escape being captured in eternity, escape being etched into little pixels.

As always, the most dangerous things in the world escape being captured by my eyes -

now, how will those fools use this photograph I have just taken, to justify Naxalite violence?”

OPERATION TRIBAL HUNT?

‘Witness accounts from the villagers who escaped the recent upsurge of violence in Dantewada’

18 month-old Madvi Mukesh lost three of his fingers during an attack on his mother, allegedly perpetrated by the security forces.

According to witness accounts, nine people were killed by the security forces at the village of Goompad at Konta Block, Dantewada District in Chhattisgarh.

Madvi Yankaiya (age 50) was hacked apart with an axe, according to his brother Madvi Joga.

Madvi Bajaar (50), his wife Madvi Subhi (45), their daughters Madvi Kanama (20) and Madvi Mooti, (8) were killed, as their home was the closest to the approaching forces.

Their neighbours, Soyam Subaiya (age 20) and Soyam Subhi (18) were only married for a year before they were killed.

Two more people were killed from the neighbouring village of Bandaarpar on the same day.

The Adivasis of Bastar have little to no use of the Roman calendar and for this very reason it is hard to calculate the exact date of the attack, or the exact age of the victims. However, there is a consensus amongst the surviving witnesses that this event took place around the first week of October – around the same time, Operation Green Hunt commenced. The Superintendent of Police, Dantewada had also announced that an encounter had taken place at the village of Goompad on the 1^st of October, 2009. They brought no bodies of the Naxalites to the police station, claiming they were carried away by the villagers.

On the said day of the attack, most of the villagers ran away, hearing sounds of gunfire and screaming, few looked back to see what was happening. They did manage to see that the attackers wore ‘punjaar gadu’, which when translated from Koya to Hindi, means ‘phoolwale kapde’ – an adivasi way to describe jungle fatigues.

Many villagers left with the clothes on their back and the few items they could have carried for the Andhra Pradesh border. After the security forces left, a few villagers returned to their homes to assess the damage. Two homes were burning. And lying before one of these burning homes was one-and-half year old Madvi Mukesh, covered in blood, crying next to the remains of his aunt, Madvi Mooti (age 8).

Madvi Mukesh was missing three of his fingers. His mother lay in a pool of blood – a fate shared by his maternal grandparents.

The villagers who returned to bury their bodies claim they saw numerous stab wounds on the bodies of most of the victims. According to a witness, the one-and-a-half year old boy lost three fingers during the violent attack with a sharp object on his twenty-year old mother. He was, fortunately, spared.

His father was in another village on that day and would only meet his firstborn again when they’d all cross the state border to enter Khammam district of Andhra Pradesh. More than half the villagers of Goompad are now Internally Displaced Persons in Andhra Pradesh, living in fear of the Andhra authorities with no intention to return to their village in Chhattisgarh. Interestingly, only the villagers of the Dorla tribe left for Andhra Pradesh, the villagers from the Muria tribe have stayed back at Goompad.

Understandably so, as all the dead are also Dorla whose ‘para’ or section of the village bore the brunt of the assault – hearing gunfire, the rest of the village had enough time to escape into the jungle.

At Goompad, the villagers also claim that there is an equal number of Muria families and Dorla families. The first Muria family started to live at Goompad around twenty-five years ago and now the ratio is almost equal. There have been no intra-tribal tensions between the two in this village.

‘We go to their festivals, they come to ours.’ Said one IDP from Goompad in an undisclosed village in Khammam district.

‘What about the Naxalites? Have the Naxalites done anything to you?’ I asked.

‘No.’

‘Have they done anything good for you?’

‘No.’

‘Then what?’

‘Sometimes they come and take us for meetings and sometimes they come and ask for food when we barely have enough, but they mostly leave us alone.’

Goompad is an interior village – which means, it is a village off the road, devoid of any government services and is always seen as a ‘Naxalite supporting’ village, by the security forces.

Villagers never say anything bad about the Naxalites openly for there are fears that there are informers in their midst. However, I often interview villagers alone. I asked another villager.

‘Have the Naxalites ever beaten anyone in the village?’

‘Once, when a man didn’t want to go to a meeting.’

Home Minister Chidambaram might be right when he says that Operation Green Hunt is a media creation – for what is believed to be Operation Green Hunt has been happening in Chhattisgarh consistently over the last four years.

There have been indiscriminate killings of non-combatants taking place in areas that are not under government control by the security forces. All of those killed are termed as Naxalites. Because the press in Chhattisgarh is often harassed and imprisoned for talking to villagers, there were few reporters willing to enter these areas. There are even reports that villagers were punished for talking to reporters and outsiders. Yet the pattern remains – the security forces comb an area, claim they killed Naxalites, and the villagers speak of atrocities – provided someone comes to listen.

Meanwhile, villagers have consistently tried to escape violence and migrated to Andhra Pradesh where their new settlements are often burnt down. However, many villagers do not leave Chhattisgarh and begin to live further into the jungles. Those that escape to Andhra Pradesh do tend to return back to their homes, after further harrasment from the Andhra authorities and the local populace.

Meanwhile, there are 315 new families from Chhattisgarh who have migrated to Andhra Pradesh. Each police station carries a list of local tribal residents and anyone who is not on the list is seen as a suspected Naxalite. Intra-village tensions often take place on the issue of land – a recent event in the village of Maamillavaye at Khamam District, saw the native tribals burning the settlements of the new arrivals from Chhattisgarh. At the same time, they also burnt the settlements of the IDPs who have been living there for the last four years.

At another village of Kamantome in Khammam district, a recent encounter of a Naxalite, would also see nine people of the village detained by the police for six days. Seven of them were released without being charged. Two of them, Madvi Hidma and Sodhi Oonga, are still in Warangal jail, booked under the Andhra Pradesh Public Security Act. Kamantome is a village of the Muria tribe and most of them have been living there for the last four years – escaping the Salwa Judum-Naxalite conflict. They have no ration cards or voter IDs and each villager possesses around two to three acres of land that he is constant dispute over, with their neighbouring native Koya villagers.

Names of the witnesses have been changed or withheld to protect their identities.

“Aapke Gaon Mein Kya Hua Tha?”

I had spent the night at Tatemargu – the village cut-off from the mainstream – no roads go to Tatemargu. And there is no electricity – in the dark recesses of the night one can mistake a lone firefly for a shooting star.

Newspeak-wise, their only window into the other world was through the radio, through month-old newspapers that are sometimes carried there.

Considering that I spent two nights with a few villagers, we often spoke about things that weren’t related to Naxalism or Salwa Judum, or the attack that took place on their village. We’d often speak about our families, ourselves – our pasts. A particular favourite story was about how one of them would go to school before the Judum started. He apparently used to travel two days, just to get to school.

“Phir SDM saab ke saath mein mila tha ek din.”

And the district magistrate would listen to how he’d travel for two days to get to school and two days to get back home. This was the time when government did try to exist at Bastar and the Magistrate made arrangements for him to study closer to home.

Of course then one of them asked me about 26/11.

‘Aape gaon mein kya hua tha?’

And I described it to them.

In vivid detail.

I told them how the gunmen got off and started to shoot at everyone and anyone. I told them about Victoria Terminas Train Station. I told them about the Taj.

And they were horrified. Genuinely horrified.  Why were they doing that? How can people do that?

I replied they ceased to be human beings.

‘Woh insaan nahi the.’ – that’s all i could say.

Interestingly, they didn’t know that there were many poor people among the dead. They knew little bits about it. They knew something happened but they didn’t know it like we did.

The story about VT affected them the most.  Throngs of travellers waiting to return home, being confronted with madmen who shot indiscriminately in every direction – at everything that moved.

One particular villager would softly gasp when I described the attacks.

Empathy.

Just ten days ago their village was attacked by the security forces and they lost their homes and four of their people, and yet they genuinely felt  sadness for what happened in Bombay.

I don’t grieve the human race.

No Distance Left To Run

Internally Displaced Persons from Dormangum, Kistaram Panchayat, Chhattisgarh, before their shack of sticks and palmera leaves at Khammam, Andhra Pradesh.

As more people escape the upsurge of violence in Chhattisgarh and begin to settle in Khammam District as Internally Displaced Persons, the true extent of the destruction reveals itself.

According to witnesses, five villagers were killed by security forces at Gachanpalli, 30 kilometres from the town of Konta in Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh. Madvi Admaya, Madkam Sulaya, Madvi Joga, Kovasi Gangaya, Madkam Moiyi were killed in their village after being apprehended by security forces during a raid sometime in late October. Four of the five men killed were over the age of sixty and were too old to escape into the jungle. One of them, Madkam Moiyi was apparently crippled and incapable of walking. They were allegedly bayoneted and shot to death in the middle of the village.

Nineteen homes were also burnt down. This was the second attack on the village of Gachanpalli. In 2005, sixty-fives homes of the village were burnt down by the Salwa Judum.

‘I have so much land at Gachanpalli, but no one to work on it now.’ Says Kovasi Jogi, aged 60, from the village of Gachanpalli, now in an Internally Displaced Person settlement in Khammam. Her village is almost empty now. Most of the villagers have scattered further into the jungle or have migrated to Khammam, Andhra Pradesh.

Sodi Rani (name withheld) left her village of Pallecharma with her two children for Andhra Pradesh where she is living at the charity of her relatives. According to her, three people were killed from her village of Pallecharma by the security forces.

Sodi Sanausi, Tunki Chinnay and Dodhi Adma were killed sometime in late October. The police had apprehended them in the morning as alleged Naxalites and shot them dead sometime in the evening. The villagers of Pallecharma were unaware that they were killed and when news of their death reached them, they left their village for Khammam District, Andhra Pradesh.

On the same day as the attack on Pallecharma, Vaika Madvi (name withheld) was apprehended by the security forces. He was held captive by the security forces along with an unidentified villager from Pallecharma. Vaika Madvi managed to escape, leaving behind the unidentified villager from Pallecharma, whose fate is unknown. Vaika Madvi now lives in Khammam District, Andhra Pradesh.

Near Pallecharma is the village of Batiguda where Sodi Venka (name withheld) was regularly harassed by Special Police Officers and Naxalites. He was detained over a year ago by security forces and asked to relocate to the Maraiguda Salwa Judum camp, abandoning his five acres of land. At the same time, the Naxalites threatened him – that he dare not to leave his land.

Meanwhile, his village of Batiguda has had four handpumps installed about 12 years ago. Out of the four of them, three have stopped working. The villagers of Batiguda approached the authorities at Konta for help to fix them. Instead they were sent away by the authorities.

‘Go ask your Naxalites to fix your handpump.’ – was what the dejected villagers had to repeat again and again to the rest of the villagers who asked them about what happened.

‘And what do the Naxalites say?’ He says with a fatalistic snicker, ‘They say, go to Badhrachalam and buy all the materials and we shall fix it. But we don’t have any money!’

Sodi Venka now lives in Khammam district of Andhra Pradesh where he earns around Rs.60 a day working as a landless labourer – for about 10 to 20 days a month. Back at his village, he used to sell a kilogram of imli for five rupees, each mango for two to three rupees. However, he used to sell mahua for twelve to fourteen rupees a kilogram and had to buy a kilogram of mahua for twenty rupees.

He left his village soon after he heard about the killings of Pallecharma.

Muchki Deva, age 65, was picked up by Gondi-speaking SPOs from his village of Oonderpad near Bhejji and taken to jail to be repeatedly beaten and allegedly given electric shocks. He was incorrectly reported as being burnt with oil by other publications – in fact, he had no idea what they were doing to him. He was only released after four days, when a superior police officer found him in the company of young Special Police Officers who were beating him. The officer chastised the SPOs and ordered them to release the old man. He was neither booked nor asked to give a statement. He soon left his village for Khammam district, Andhra Pradesh.

On the 24^th of October, at Maroodbacka of Usur Block, Bijapur district, Katam Kistaya (age 20) and Bhandavi Bhimaya (age 18) were picked up by the police during a raid on their village. Bhandavi Bhimaya was incapable of escaping as he was incapacitated in his hut due to high fever. Both of them are now, reportedly languishing in Dantewada jail. Soon after, around 15 families of Maroodbacka left their village for Khammam District, Andhra Pradesh.

Others like Madkam Mooti from Bijjamariaguda weren’t waiting around for the attack on their villages, and left for Andhra Pradesh with their families.

When news of the attacks on Tatemargu, Pallodi, Doghpar, Pallecharma spread across the tehsil, villagers from Paytalguta, Ampeta and Dormangum from Kistaram Panchayat also left their villages afraid of an impending attack, and are now living in Khammam district, where they have no land, no ration cards, no schools, no angaanbadi and are at the risk of being branded off as Naxalites or Naxalite sympathizers by the Andhra Pradesh Authorities.

Adding to their complications are inter-tribal conflicts. The Gotti Koya from Chhattisgarh and the local Koya villagers find themselves at odds at times, fighting over meager forest resources. Even then, many settlements are made with permission from the local Gram Sabhas and there is no confrontation as the IDPs also work as manual labour for them. Many more IDPs are living with their relatives and face no local opposition.

However, there are reports that party members from New Democracy (CPI-ML) have been threatening the local Koya villagers to evict the Gotti Koya IDPs and send them back to Chhattisgarh. The Andhra Pradesh police and the forest officials are also considering a similar proposal and have reportedly approached the Collector’s office for provisions to ‘pack off’ the IDPs back to Chhattisgarh.

Meanwhile, Gandhibabu of the ASDS (Agricultural and Social Development Society), who has been interacting with government officials and the IDPs entirely disagrees.

‘Firstly, it is their constitutional right, freedom of movement. Secondly, how can you send them back to Chhattisgarh where they’d end up in Salwa Judum camps and thus in danger of being killed by the Naxalites or to their villages where they’re in danger of being killed by the security forces? They really have no place to go back to, at the moment.’

“How can you do this to your own people?”

Rice to ash: Sodi Idma with the remnants of his produce. Like most of the villagers of Tatemargu, he lost around twenty-thirty quintals of rice to the fire that ravaged his home, when his village was raided by the security forces on the 9th of November, 2009.

On the 9^th of November, 2009, security forces had raided the village of Tatemargu of Konta Block, Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh.

Once news of the approaching forces reached the village, all the villagers ran into the jungle with what they could carry. They scattered in all directions and only returned once they got news that the security forces had left their village. They returned to find burning homes and distraught villagers who were taken into custody by the security forces, and then released in the village itself. They told the rest of the villagers their stories and identified those who was taken away. Many took their time to return from the jungle. And only once all the villagers were back and reunited, did they begin to piece together what had happened – and who was missing.

Eventually, the villagers received news from villages closer to Kistaram, some fourteen kilometers away, that seven people were killed near the police station.

One of them was Madkam Idma from Tatemargu who ran with most of the villagers when news of the approaching forces reached them. However, he turned back to his home to collect some food to survive in the jungle. He was inevitably captured with some 14 other villagers, and was one of four of his village, who were taken towards Kistaram police station, where they were reportedly shot dead on the 10^th of November.

Two villagers from Doghpar, who were working in the fields, were apprehended prior to the raid on Tatemargu, and were also shot dead.

Security forces had also raided the village of Pallodi, some 12 kilometres from Tatemargu, where they reportedly burnt some 30 homes and apprehended Madvi Joga, who was also shot dead as a Naxalite, taking the total dead to seven.

‘With so much difficulty I bring my children up, and this is what happens.’ Says Madkam Jogi, mother of the young Madkam Idma, who was described as a shy reclusive young man of twenty. She also had to clear the rubble from her home with her remaining son, who is around fourteen years old. She has around 10 acres of land and lost around 20 quintal or rice in the fire that consumed her home.

Eventually, a few of the villagers decided to go to Kistaram police station to recover the bodies. At the police station, they were told that the bodies were taken away. They returned, dejected and confused, and would eventually begin to assess all the damage to their homes and their produce.

Some villagers would also begin to rebuild their homes with whatever they could find. However, most of them are still afraid to return to their homes out of fear that the security forces would return. They now live in the fields or in the jungle.

At Tatemargu, there were around sixty burnt homes disproportionately damaged. Some were raised to the ground, and others were partially saved from the fire by the villagers. Some were made of brick and cement and others were smaller homes made of mud and hay. Some homes survived in their entirety with all their produce while others were burnt to the ground with everything in them –  along with bicycles, clothes, money, radios and even the bell-gaadis.

One villager, Kalmu Soma, who has around 30 acres of land, lost around 60 quintals of rice, around 20 quintals of Mahua, a solar plate and its battery, a motorcycle and his home. Another, Vanjam Mungdroo, who has around 3 acres of land, lost around 3 quintals of rice, 1 quintal of Mahua, 2 goats, a chicken and his home.

Vanjam Idma lost 10 quintals of rice, 2 quintals of Mahua, 30 kilograms of imli and both of his homes.

Sodi Sukda, lost around 40 quintals of rice, 7 quintals of Mahua and a house of cement and brick that took him five years to build.

Hoongi Madkam, age forty, managed to save her house and her produce but lost her husband, Oonga Madkam.

Sukda Raja, age 50, lost his brother, Dodhi Raja.

‘These kinds of things happen in war’ – is what the visiting Naxalites would tell the villagers.

Devi Idma, helping to clear her father's home of ash and debris, after the security forces attacked her village on the 9th of November, 2009.

The Combing Operation

On the day of the raid, which started around 11 in the morning, a few villagers, were apprehended by the security forces and then eventually released. They were kept in separate groups under different guard. Five were kept in one group, and ten in another. The two villagers from Doghpar were kept in the group of five.

According to the ones who were released, the security forces numbered to more than five hundred and they would begin to capture the goats, the chickens and the ducks of the village of Tatemargu and start cooking them in separate areas. There is no exact estimate on the number of animals eaten by the security forces but each home out of the 27 interviewed, claims to have lost an average of around two-three chickens. One villager claimed that six of his pigeons were missing. There is a rough estimate that around ten-fifteen goats and five-ten ducks were eaten.

The police had also taken the group of 10 villagers to a monolith painted in red that had been built to commemorate a fallen Dalam member Chutey Khoja, who was shot dead in Bijapur last year. He had apparently joined the Dalam as a ten-year old, claiming to be an orphan. In fact, he had joined the Dalam after an argument with his mother, who now lives alone at Tatemargu.

Eventually the police started to question the villagers about the Monolith. Who built it? Who is this person? Why is Comrade Chutey Amar Rahe written on it? When the villagers feigned ignorance out of fear, they were beaten. They eventually confessed that the Naxalites had asked them to build it and the police would begin to chip away at its base, hoping to destroy it. However, the structure remained – the security forces would only rip off the sickle and hammer that stood on the crest of the monument.

Around the same time, a few of the Special Police Officers (SPOs) would begin to misbehave with the six women that were in their custody. They would deliberately start cutting the hair of eighteen-year-old Jogi Madvi with a knife. According to the witnesses, who were eventually set free, a senior ‘adhikari’ in uniform, who spoke Hindi came to her rescue.

‘How can you do this to your own people?’ said the officer who apparently snatched the knife from the perpetrator and threw it away. The women weren’t mistreated after that.

The same officer also refused the food that was made from the livestock of Tatemargu..

The security forces left the village of Tatemargu around five in the evening and camped across the mountain in the jungle with the four villagers from Tatemargu and two from Doghpar. The next day, they entered Pallodi, where they allegedly burnt down 30 homes, and captured one villager.

Somewhere, on the way, all seven of them were shot dead.

Devi Mangdroo sleeping next to her son and the remnants of her burnt home, as well as her newest settlement. She lost around three quintals of rice in the fire that was started by the security forces.

Tatemargu, a Naxalite Village?

Most of the Muria villagers from Sukma first settled at Tatemargu around fifty years ago. They brought their techniques of cultivation from Jagdalpur and the abundance of resources made Tatemargu an ideal location for cultivation. They had an ample supply of water, and they have never used pesticides on their crops. Reportedly, agriculture has never failed in their village, even though cultivation has all but ceased in the majority of Dantewada and Bijapur districts of Chhattisgarh – ever since the inception of the Salwa Judum.

At Tatemargu, long before the Naxalites came, a villager was beaten or chastised by a forest official for cutting too many trees for cultivating land, or for some other discretion. ‘To live here, you must bear a few beatings.’ – was what the old women of Tatemargu would tell their children.

Eventually, the village would begin to thrive. The villagers started to build large homes with bricks and cement. Some of them would spend around five years building their homes. Many families had produced an average of around 30 quintals of rice per season. Two villagers, one Deva Kovasi, claims that a Special Police Officer (SPO)  stole some Rs.30,000 from him when he was trying to escape the raid; the other, Oonga Kanmu, claims that he lost Rs.15,000, along with some jewels from his home.

Some families had around 30 acres of land, some around 100 cattle. There are currently around 800 people and a majority of the families have over 10 acres of land, yet there are still many poorer Muria who have only five to three acres. Most of the homes have goats, cattle, chickens and even some ducks. The village of Tatemargu, is unofficially described as the number one village at Konta block.

The Naxalites had imposed prohibition – restricting the intake of liquor rather than completely banning it. They also ensured that everyone worked on everyone’s land. Those who drank too much and did little work, weren’t allowed more than three acres.

The government opened an angaanbadi centre. There were 10 cases of polio in the village before the angaanbadi services started, but as anti-polio vaccines were made available through the angaanbadi service, there have been no cases of polio. However, angaanbadi services have been discontinued since the Salwa Judum started. Healthcare is now minimal. Only the leftover medicines for sore throats, fevers and headaches remain. Most have expired. If people are capable of traveling to a city for healthcare, they often choose to. If they are incapable of traveling and afflicted with a severe illness, they often just die.

In fact, Tatemargu in Konta Block has been left completely untouched by government influence ever since the Salwa Judum. One handpump was installed during Ajit Jogi’s last tenure and it has stopped working over a year ago. There is no one to repair it.

There has never been any electricity at Tatemargu. Two villagers had two solar panels which were wrecked by the security forces. They even vandalized whatever remained of the angaanbadi centre and the school.

In 2005, the only remaining teacher was given a choice to teach in one of the Salwa Judum camps near Konta, or to discontinue his service. He has around twenty acres of land and more than a hundred cattle at Tatemargu, his home – he claims that he can produce around 30 quintal of rice, and 20 kilograms of ghee a year – why should he be a teacher in some Salwa Judum camp where he and his family would have nothing? As it is, his family grew up in Tatemargu and refused to budge, and he wasn’t ready to abandon them. Is this what makes me a Naxalite? Is this why I deserve to die?

Yet families were still split apart. Many families of Tatemargu have relations at Konta or Sukma, living in Salwa Judum camps. Quite a few of the villagers of Tatemargu keep that fact a secret for fear of retribution, or incurring the wrath of the Maoists. They seldom meet one another and only manage to do so clandestinely. When the villagers of Tatemargu travel, which they seldom do, they always claim to be from some other village.

Their markets have also shifted – they have to sell their produce to middlemen from Andhra Pradesh, for a price of Rs.600-Rs.700 per quintal for rice, or to Kistaram market, for Rs.990 per quintal. They barely sell their wares at Kistaram for fear of being apprehended, or branded off as ‘Naxals’. This market situation also led to the hoarding of rice. Additionally, the hoarding is also an indication of a man’s wealth – the more rice you have, the richer you are.

This has been their situation since the Salwa Judum started.

‘When Muria kill Muria, who benefits?’ Asks Poodiyan Lakhma of Tatemargu, regarding the Salwa Judum. He was in Andhra Pradesh when he got news of the attack on his village by security forces. The news was bittersweet – while his three children and his young wife managed to escape unhurt, his home was burnt to the ground. He lost two quintals of rice, one quintal of Mahua, forty kilograms of corn and 20 kilograms of salt. He has only three acres of land and is one of the poorer inhabitants of Tatemargu.

Sodi Sukda sitting before the burnt produce from her home. She lost around forty quintals of rice - some seven years of produce.

Text and photographs by Javed Iqbal/For The New Indian Express

Land and Exile

The remains of the IDP settlement of Erragotta that was burnt down by the villagers of Maamillavaye on the 10th of November, 2009.

Maamillavaye at Aswapuram Mandal, at Khammam District is an Adivasi village that a road leads to – after that there’s nothing but the jungle.

There are some seventy Koya families at Maamillavaye and their ancestors first started to cultivate land here more than a hundred and fifty years ago. Recently, there has been a steady increase of Muria coming in from Chhattisgarh. There have always been two or three Muria families in the area but now there are about 16 families.

Most of them have escaped the Salwa Judum – Naxalite civil war, and a few families have escaped the recent upsurge in violence. All of them are classified as Internally Displaced Persons. They have no land rights, no ration cards, no voter IDs. The ones who have been living at Maamillavaye for over four years, recently got their NREGA cards with the help of the Koya villagers, but they barely get work.

They live in fear of being uprooting again – they have no promised land.

Now, resources are a matter of contention at Maamillavaye. The sixteen Muria families have to build their settlements on about 10 acres of land – ‘a gift’ from the Koya. Their settlement called Erragotta has a rivulet which is drying up – it flows from Maamillavaye. Even in November, they need to dig into the riverbed to get water – it truly is a drought year. Then of course, the water from the handpump at Maamillavaye also has a high content of fluoride – the rusted smiles of the Koya women are a perceptible symptom.

Eventually, the issue of land started to reach boiling point. The new IDPs began to cultivate land that the Maamillavaye Gram Sabha did not permit them to cultivate. Their grazing animals started to feed on their cultivated land. They started cutting trees that they shouldn’t have cut. They blocked passageways. They started petty fights. The Koya fears of the infamous Muria ferocity started to fuel xenophobia.

Irritations led to frustrations that led to further resentment.

The Koya are not quite affluent – not everyone in the village has land. The seventy families have to do with around 350 acres, that is, roughly five acres per family yet there are disparities in distribution. There is greed. There is a need for self-preservation – a need to feed one own children that outweighs all other needs. There are fears. Eventually, their tolerance reaches breaking point – they go to the police to deal with them. The police don’t do anything for a resolution or a compromise. The Koya are further aggravated.

They call a few Muria villagers to talk. Instead, the Muria villagers go to talk to another Sarpanch, annoyed that the Koya had gone to the police first. The Koya feel ungrateful.

One evening on the 10th of November, 2009, there was a confrontation between the Muria and the Koya, tempers flare, there’s still no compromise and eventually some forty of the Koya villagers burnt the IDP settlement of Erragotta – all the fifteen homes that housed the sixteen families.

 

The IDPs go to the police. They are now told by the police that nothing should happen to Maamillavaye. No more violence. No retaliation. If anything happens to the Koya, they will all be held directly responsible.

The Muria are furious that there’s no one for them.

When I reach the village, I find about forty angry villagers. I came to find out about what happened in Chhattisgarh and if any of the new IDPs wish to talk to me, they can. Unfortunately, they all lie. There are no new IDPs in the village when we all clearly see they are there. But they’re afraid that if anyone finds out about the new ones, they’d be sent back to Chhattisgarh, or informed to the police. The Muria can be fantastic liars at times especially when they’re afraid. And I don’t blame them – they have good reason to be scared.

A few days ago, at another village that I shall not mention, a long running land dispute between locals and migrants, led to a local villager informing the police that there’re naxalites amongst the migrant settlement. Truth was, this ‘naxalite’ wanted more land – and wasn’t heeding to warnings. He was eventually shot dead by the police and many of the IDPs were sent to jail and booked under the Andhra Pradesh Public Security Act.

Now, for the IDPs at Erragotta everything is about land – about this promised land in Andhra Pradesh – this temporary heaven. Hell with what happens in Dantewada.

A few of the families hope to return to Dantewada to cultivate their own land.

Eventually, at Erragotta, a team of social workers and lawyers from Seva, ASDS, the Human Rights Law Network and Telangana Rashtriya Samiti arrive. From a fact-finding mission, it turned into a need to find compromise between the two villagers and two tribes – they were going to take the angry villagers to angry villagers.

Slowly, with tentative demeanour, they began to walk towards Maamillavaye. A small group of Muria villagers from Erragotta followed. The women walking ahead.

Maamillavaye is less than five hundred metres away from the IDP settlement of Erragotta. One Muria villager from the IDP settlement told me ‘I’m not going so far’, when I asked him if he would get water from the hand pump at the village when the river dries up. There is genuine intolerance here. Good fences don’t make good neighbours.

Walking across, two of the oldest friends – one migrant and one local, both senior citizens come together first, and mumble to one another, wary of the other crowds. I’d give a million acres to find out what they were thinking.

One of them was Ramaiya, a Muria man who has lived at Erragotta for more than ten years. He has 25 acres bodu land, and is the spokesperson for the Muria families.

Finally, a few local villagers begin to get chairs for their distinguished guests. The village elders are also seated. Yet it takes time for the villagers of Maamillavaye to arrive.

The migrants all sit quietly at one end of the road, blocking it entirely. The locals arrive, slowly, and sit too far away from them. There is very little eye contact. Eventually the local crowd outnumbers the migrants. Yet they’re still sitting too far from one another, talking amongst themselves as children run amok in the background. We finally coaxed them to sit closer to one another as we told them that we need to take a picture. That was a cheap trick

Eventually, it begins. First the complaints, heard one by one, every person is given a fair chance. Yet it didn’t take more than five minutes before Ramaiya – stood up, shook his fist, screamed at the whole Koya lot, and gestured to all of his people to leave. Tempers hit the sky – everyone was screaming vociferously – all the activists and the lawyers were standing in the middle of two opposing tribes rushing at one another – trying desperately to mitigate the crowd. This was exactly how the huts at Erragotta were burnt down.

‘No compromise.’ Said Lawyer Advinarayan, as I watch the Muria walk down the long road leading away from Maamillavaye. The swan-white marshmallow clouds would begin to blush – it was dusk now. The hills that curved across the road were darkening. Oddly enough, that was all forest department land.

As of now, there are corporate land grabs further marginalizing marginalized communities – what more needs to be said about what is happening at Chhattisgarh? 99 SEZs have been approved in Andhra Pradesh alone. There are always going to be a thousand more Maamillavayes and a thousand more Erragottas.

Back to Maamillavaye, Ramaiyas discrepancies were exposed for all the villages to know. A few of the Muria did return to talk. And I noticed, some of them didn’t leave. Everyone would now be speaking in separate groups about different things. My translator vanished. And I wish I could understand what everyone was saying – so much was even lost in translation before, now there was too much too translate and no one to do it for me.

Eventually, I find out that Ramaiya even went so far as tell the village elders of Maamillavaye that he’d get rid of all the IDP families and keep all the land to himself. This happened when the elders of Maamillavaye raised concerns about the increasing number of new families. Apparently, Ramaiya was encouraging the cutting of trees and cultivation of land. According to some villagers, Ramaiya had around twenty five acres for himself and wanted more.

The Koya and the Muria agreed to a compromise once Ramaiya was out of the picture. Two acres for each IDP family. The Koya even promised to help rebuild the homes of the Muria. There would also be no more indiscriminate of cutting trees. No more blocking of passageways. Two acres is enough for the Muria who hope to return to their land in Chhattisgarh someday.

A tentative happy ending.

Meanwhile, Ramaiya would be sitting on his haunches at Erragotta before the remnants of the destroyed homes – his family sitting quietly behind him. He would calmly say that he has land elsewhere and would leave this place.

A very tentative happy ending.

Chidambaram’s Omelette: Part II: Ingredients

Madvi Mukesh, with his father. Madvi Mukesh, barely two years old, lost three of his fingers during an attack on his mother, allegedly perpetrated by the security forces. His mother did not survive the attack.

 

 

Chidambaram’s Omelette: ingredients -

Add:

1) one part megalomania.

2) two parts stupid economic policy.

3) a big cup of bullshit: an illusion of a free press

4) three baby fingers, a la collateral damage.

 

More ingredients coming.

 

(Photograph – Javed Iqbal/With arrangement with The New Indian Express)

Chidambaram’s Omelette

'It looks like murder, but it's poverty.' - A paralysed Baiga lady asleep in her village of Harra Tola, Madhya Pradesh. Her village has no access to healthcare nor clean water. It is about 50kms away from Kanha National Park.

Chidambaram’s Omelette: or why I’m left with a very bad taste in my mouth after swallowing your insane ideas of  development

Okay, what is development?

I have often had to ask myself this question over the last few years and I’ve so far, found it safe to conclude that it is one of the most ambiguous words used  in recent times. It’s more than a mere contradiction, and the fact that one word can affect whole communities, whole cultures and the very idea of subsistence is frightening. This is not merely an article detailing that development has contradictorily become synonymous with extinction for many people. I have written this to bring myself to understand the politics of a simple idea of development, whose contradictions I have often been confronted with during my travels through rural India.

 

One thing, however, is obvious. Development is dignity.

Development is thus, private property – land to the tiller. Development is the freedom felt in the hands of a once landless labourer who feels that mud in his palms, that hope. Development is knowing that he shall not lose his land, his meager acres for the profit margins of private companies. Development is knowing that he can feed his own children and work on his own land. Development is knowing that he shall not have to kill himself because of debt incurred on his shoulders so others can get rich, fat, grotesque and happy. Dignity is not profit. Dignity is not greed. Dignity is not wearing a $100 pure cotton t-shirt to impress your latest fuck-fad, as cotton-farmers commit suicide for being incapable of paying the $100 debt that falls upon them thanks to farming practices enforced upon them. Development is not the free market. Development is not a world where freedom means desire.

Development is, a mother knowing her children shall not starve to death.

Development is, knowing a mother shall not die giving birth to her children. Development is, knowing a family shall not have to have so many children for fear that most would probably not even make it beyond their 5^th birthday – being victims to preventable disease like diarrhea, malaria and dysentery. Yet we rank 171 out of 175 in public health expenditure, according to WHO, and hospitals are so far away from the rural poor that it would take them a whole weeks wages just to travel to a hospital.

Development is not apathy. Why do we live in a world where cynicism is the religion of the urban middle class?

It’s not supposed to be noble to help someone, it’s simple decency. Unfortunately, it has no market value nor any impetus on the stock market. It has no existence in the free market, bought by the rich, held by the rich, over the dust and bones of the poor, with the invisible hand of the market, that is invisible simply because it does not exist.

Live and let live, they say, do we have any idea how much murder we have condoned by that stupid fucking excuse of a morality? Live and let live, we say to the rioting mob who has just burnt a man alive for his is a faith that is not our faith. Live and let live, we say, as we don’t care about justice for the many whose family was just burnt alive for their faith is not our faith. Live and let live, we say, and we accept war and death as natural orders of human civilization, as they’re mere inconveniences to us, so, so far away. Live and let live, we say to the man beating his wife to death.

Live and let live, we say, and we merely fail to protest the horrors of the human condition.

Live and let live, we say, as we destroy whole communities for profit for the few or the many – depends on who is doing the mathematics.

Let me try first.

Let’s take the equation of industrial development and it’s idea of ‘employment generation’. I shall take the National Mineral Development Corporation and Tata’s joint venture in Bailadila in Chhattisgarh as an example. Below are the details of an RTI  query filed with the NMDC regarding this issue:

Question: What is the percentage of tribals employed in executive positions of the PSU,NMDC?

Answer: The total number of ST Executives in NMDC was 45 and the percentage is 4.82%, as on 31st Oct 2006.

Question: What is the percentage and number of Scheduled Tribes employed directly by the Bailadila projects (BIOP) of NMDC in non-executive positions?

Answer: The percentage of the Tribals employed directly by the BIOP in non-executive positions is 31.41% and the total number of ST’s employed directly by BOIP is 935.

Contrast that number to the 200,000 people who hit the streets of Dantewada on the 14th of 2006, to protest against the Salwa Judum and the land acquisitions of Tata and Essar.

Then of course, there are the Dhurlis and Bhansis – two villages synonymous with the issue of land in Dantewada. Essar Steel wants their land for a 3.2 million tonne steel plant: they want 200 hectares from Dhurli and 400 hectares from Bhansi.

All the meetings between the villagers and the company take place through the people from the Collector’s office, or the Sub-District Magistrate’s office. Meanwhile, the Naxals have threatened to kill the villagers who accept Essar’s compensation packages and surrender their ancestral land. They have killed two people from Bhansi who had accepted their proposals in 2006, and allegedly acted as their agents. A majority of the villagers say no to compensation: aware that money runs out. Another majority wouldn’t sell their ancestral land for money for what their land means to them: it is their sacred mountain. To sell it for money, is to imagine Muslims selling off Mecca, or the Hindus selling off the Chaar Dhaams: Puri, Rameshwaram, Badrinath and Dwarka.

Whenever I think of this, I remember overhearing the superintendent of police of Dantewada saying: ‘we’d have peace here if the Adivasis were taught greed.’

I remember visiting Bhansi on April 2009, tentatively approaching a whole bunch of villagers sitting on their haunches, with axes, bows and arrows in their hands. They were mostly drunk. I remember these were villages where journalists were looked upon with suspicion and treated with scorn.

‘Don’t worry, I don’t work for a company.’ I said, with my hands up, and they all burst out laughing.

Now, let us consider the amount of water that the 3.2 tonne steel plant would need on a daily basis. The proposed Essar project would require around 80,000 meters cubed of water per day. This would also affect those living downstream from the plant. Now, consider that the average amount of water consumed per person in rural India is 100 litres per day. Therefore, the Essar steel plant’s thirst for water would equal the water needs of 80,000 people.

So what development are we talking about now? Policymakers of the country believe these sacrifices must be made for industrial growth, for a stable economy, for ‘development’ and the good of all.

Or what we can summarize as: a few eggs must be broken for Chidabaram’s omelette.

Development is truly, cannibalistic.

* * *

The villagers of Hiroli, Dantewada, marching to the police station to demand the body of Channu Mandavi, 19, who was shot dead in an allegedly fake encounter on the 12th of April, 2009.

Development, is the greater good?

Now, industrial development has taken on a whole new form – it has become a gospel, out to build a new Jerusalem, a promised land, a Utopia that is forgiven for it’s imperfections and no one shall question it.

More people have been murdered, burnt at the stake, and marched into concentration camps over the idea of progress and the greater good – than the idea of senseless slaughter itself. There’s a huge difference between a psychopathic serial killer out on a shooting spree and the McNamaras of the world. One of them, has the grandest excuses to justify mass murder – take patriotism, take ideology, take God, and take development and the progress of nations.

When did McNamara really realize that he was responsible for being part of a historical machine that killed three million Vietnamese civilians and over 60,000 Americans? I wonder. Camus was right when he said that murder punishes the executioner as much as it punishes the victim. The executioner just doesn’t know it yet. And as long as he has an excuse to justify murder, he’d be fine.

Meanwhile, development in India, under the flag of patriotism, is used explicitly to kill the citizens of our country, and we can do a better job at it, than other countries – and surely! THAT is a matter of national pride!

Development, allowing policy-makers to sleep peacefully after they just condemned thousands of people into poverty for the common good of the few. DEVELOPMENT ZINDABAD! Bhenchodd.

Development, the common good! – laying out IED’s and landmines to blow up off-duty policemen and security personnel, hacking to death police informants and dissidents as a matter of survival, attacking police stations and letting a mob gruesomely dismember policemen and policewomen to leave a symbolic message. Surely, a classless society is easier to build, by killing everyone. There isn’t a greater sin the Naxalites are guilty of, than the creation of executioners out of the victims of oppression.

A cycle repeated by the Chhattisgarh State government, by its support for the Salwa Judum.

And what have we done for the oppressed? How much has the legal system failed them? How much has the press failed them? How much as the political system failed them?

How much has ‘developed’ India failed them?

* * *

An old lady of Pisepara, Bijapur district, waiting to return home to her village after three years. Just a few weeks after she was rehabilitated, the Naxalites would murder two people near her village at a village called Hirapur. Hirapur, recently rehabilitated, was once again abandoned.

If given the choice to sacrifice one man for the good of ten thousand, every rational thinking person would sacrifice that one man without much adieu – it’s simple mathematics. Of course, with a little more power and megalomania and you’d be sacrificing ten thousand people for what you presume are ten million people. This has been happening for centuries, from the Reign of Terror, to the  Soviet Gulag system, to the extremes – the Khmer Rouge, who killed for the greater good by killing everyone.

Yet I wonder, what happens if we don’t think rationally for once?

What happens if we don’t sacrifice one man for the good of ten thousand? For the good of a whole billion?

Let us hesitate, let us think about it, maybe the whole world will not fall apart, maybe this little naïve idea can actually change the way this world works.

One man’s life has value – just as every man’s life has value. Is it really simple mathematics? (And of course, let us not forget ‘national security’, where the credo is often: ‘to arrest a 100 innocent men to catch one guilty man who are capable of killing another thousand’ – a difficult choice to make, quite explicitly logical too.) Of course, these ‘difficult choices’ seem to be made by people who have absolutely no difficulty in making them. It has become so easy to condemn people over an idea. Every man is some raging psychotic about to hammer the firing mechanism of a nuclear bomb in the middle of the market, wearing hot-pants and singing Geeta Dutt songs.

Shoot him, please, someone says, it’s logical that he must die so millions don’t evaporate. Of course if this is Bombay, the crowd merely watches as some spurned Majnun is throwing acid onto the face of his beloved Laila.

Okay, bad example – the madman in hot-pants singing Geeta Dutt songs is not as dangerous as the Home Minister who proclaims that he will wipe out the Naxalites and then bring development. Firstly, the Naxalites are just like him, killing for the common good, or what they think is the common good. Secondly, he’d merely be contributing to the destruction of the Adivasis, whose development he should be considering but has yet to detail any plan on how he shall make their lives any better. He has ordered the use of brutal force to kill an enemy who has been made an enemy thanks to the complete failure of the Indian State to bring the murderous, atrocious Salwa Judum to justice, or to provide the tribals with the protection of their rights, a semblance of security, or what is actually Development.

Atrocities are symptoms of war just as apathy is a symptom of peace. They are inevitable. So we shall not argue about whether anyone can have a ‘clean’, ‘heroic’ victory over the Naxalites. Even if he orders the individual States to ensure minimum civilian casualties in their combing operations, one must not discount the fact that many of the people working in the administration have no sympathies for villagers, who they presume, are ‘Naxalite sympathizers.’ They probably are, because the government has done nothing for them but burn their villages, beat them up, or willfully given their support to the Salwa Judum, who has been given a free reign to do as it pleases.

Of course, it’s easy to imagine how the state supported the Salwa Judum when it first came to bloom in Bastar.

History has taught us, that in most situations, insurgencies die as they lose the support of the public – the anger of the oppressed. That’s how the insurgency of the Khalistani movement died out, as did the Islamist insurgency of Algeria. Both movements played out the historical imperative, and came to their logical conclusion – a general public horrified by violence who either turn indifferent to day-to-day killings, or in the exceptional case of Bastar, mutate into a ‘spontaneous’ amoral counter-insurgency backed by an invisible market desire for land.

The people of Bastar turned against the oppressors who once promised them deliverance, the state saw it’s golden opportunity – the Salwa Judum was the theatrical face of a public who had had enough – thousands and thousands of people attended Salwa Judum rallies, screaming anti-Naxalite slogans. It was a big show – and the show must go on. The state began to support it, officially and unofficially, as completely short-sighted as they often are. It was perceived as a peaceful Gandhian movement to everyone but those who were forced out of their burning villages, to everyone but those who were beaten, raped and murdered in cold blood. The same brutality that the Naxalites were known for, was now given state-support and a new moral right. Most of the SPOs as it were, were ex-Sangham members – Naxalites.

Now, we can look back and see the Salwa Judum as the monster it really was, back then, some people saw it as hope from Naxalite oppression. Before the Indian government entered some villages of Bastar for the first time, to burn it, and for the second time, to burn it again, the Naxalites were there. There are no secrets amongst the public that the Naxalites have helped in some ways – they ensured better wages for the villagers of Bastar and they did help stop the exploitation of the tribals by private contractors and the forest officials. But they are victims of an old human trait: the vanity of good – the illusion of it, they are the Robespierres and the Saint-Justes of India, violence begets violence, tyranny follows violent revolution, day follows night follows the day -  the Naxalites oppressed the very villagers they wished to serve.

The State meanwhile, was a victim of it’s short-sightedness by supporting the Salwa Judum and made a whole bloody mess by giving a whole angry community right back to the Naxalites. A short-sightedness, that they’re still suffering from, trying to bring parallels of the LTTE’s apparent destruction by the Sri Lankan military, to the Naxalite movement. Number one: if you do manage to weed out every red-book waving hardcore Maoist out from the mass of angry tribals fighting for their land and their rights, will you provide the mass of angry tribals with their land and their rights? Number two: what development are you talking about when you’re yet to detail any plans for healthcare, education, angaanbaadi, roads and yes, dignity for the Tribals by the protection of their land rights?

Development, is the Fifth Schedule.

Human rights, lest we forget, is also development. This is not the age of genocide, nor it’s consent, this is not the age of extrajudicial killings that leave families hopeless, or it’s consent. Tell weeping families that their children were accidentally killed in an encounter for ‘development’, for the ‘common good’.

I dare you.

Number four: development is justice.

If the Indian state wishes to bring development to the Adivasi people, then it should disband the Salwa Judum and indict and punish every individual responsible for the rape, killings, lootings and arson of the villages of Bastar.

* * *

Special Police Officers (SPOs), on duty during a Salwa Judum rally at Bijapur on the 21st of January, 2009.

For the common good, murder is easy, almost consistently, beyond borders. Maybe it’s easy because it’s not about the common good at all – maybe it’s easy because it’s fun. And it’s fun because it’s about power. Power, is the porn of the inhuman. Compassion and mercy are not virtues for men in power. Why would they protest to murder?

People who protest to murder are often social workers, activists, journalists, the Gandhians and they are, the very people who’ve suffered from persecution for their dissent – ‘the human rightwallas’ as some policemen I met would call them. They are a civil society, the conscience. And we’ve obviously not forgotten about the Binayak Sens and the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act.

A little warning sign – the systematic destruction of a dissenting civil society as it has taken place throughout history has only led to one logical conclusion: a society that condones and commits genocide. Sudan’s systematic destruction of her civil society during the early 90’s has inevitably led to the consent to genocide in Darfur, and the recent outpouring of public support by the Sudanese public for their President Omar Al-Bashir, indicted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes and crimes against humanity, is evidence that dissent is dead. The same applies to Putin’s Russia. Human rights activists and lawyers who speak up about atrocities committed in Chechnya, are systematically assassinated. The forgotten war in Chechnya continues. After Beslan, it’s hard for anyone to question it. And the best example shall forever remain Nazi Germany.

When I was growing up, I chanced to come across one of the most potent photographs of the concentration camps. It was not a photograph of a myriad mangled corpses lost in the dichotomies of the scorched landscape nor any portrait of a man who was nothing but skin and bones and bloodshot eyes. It was a photograph that Margaret Bourke-White had taken of the citizens of Weimer asked to look at the atrocities of the Buchenwald Concentration camp. They, the citizens of Germany could probably smell the rot of corpses. Their faces were cringing and yet their expressions remained stoic. They had now become witnesses to one of the worst atrocities committed in recent times.

‘My God? How could we let this happen?’ I wonder if any of them had ever asked themselves that.

* * *

Portrait of a mother and child in the village of Avapalli, Bijapur district, 2009.

All across the country today, farmers – especially Adivasis and Dalits are fighting against the land grabs for SEZs and development projects. It is not a matter of remuneration and compensation, at most times, that is not even adequate.

It is about a way of life.

As I mentioned earlier in this piece, development projects and SEZs mostly provide employment to the white collar worker, not the farmers. At times, the farmers are paid compensation and pushed off the land, and everyone is aware that the compensation money will run out. The farmers have spent their whole lives on this land, nurturing each tree, digging each pond, tilling each acre, weeping for every drought that destroyed their Kharif crop. There is a sentimentality that money cannot replace.

Economic growth, of course, is blind. Sometimes, I wonder how much growth is possible if the rural sector was allowed to grow. If small companies and small holders were allowed to grow.

Nevertheless, there will always be more Narmadas, Nandigrams and Singurs. There are around 68 SEZs notified in Andhra Pradesh alone and the villagers are not pleased. There is resistance. They have mobilized themselves, they have said: NO. Activists and lawyers take them across bureaucratic and legal hurdles and into the democratic fold, to fight peacefully for their rights. And what happens when that fails?

It has always been the responsibility of the civil society to bring the issue justice. And if we don’t care about what is happening to the Muria farmer, or the Irom Sharmilas of India, then India ceases to exist. There is an old saying, it is not about how deep you feel but how wide, and this has always applied to nationalism more than anything else – to live in a country where we care about every one of our citizens, rather than sending military battalions to deal with insurgencies to protect ‘national interests’ and our ‘sovereignty.’

That day, is the day, we will be a developed country.

* * *

Meanwhile, a MBA graduate with a goatee and the newest Blackberry approaches a semi-nude farmer sitting on his haunches, drinking salfi and waiting for the rain.

‘We’re here to claim your land for a new factory for rich people who think you smell funny.’ Says the MBA graduate, who I shall now, refer to as, the Developer.

‘Why?’ asks the confused farmer.

‘It’s called development. It shall be good for you.’

‘How?’

‘It will make us a superpower. Our GDP and our growth would increase and investors would come flocking to our country. It’s all economics, I don’t think you’d understand.’

‘What about me?’

‘You stop being a farmer who can barely pay your debts because of government policies and people like me, and you become a chapraasi for one of our CEOs.’

The farmer thinks for a second.

‘What if I say no?’ He asks.

‘Then we get our goons to come beat you up. And we always have the bureaucrats. Even the banks belong to us and you will never get another loan.’

‘What if I still say no?

‘Then we send the whole damn army after you.’

‘What if I still say no?’

‘We shall break your spirit.’

‘And if my spirit doesn’t break?’

‘We shall kill you all.’

(Now this is where I take some more creative liberties and shall try to draw out a logical continuation to the above scene.)

‘Okay, you can have my land, but you die first.’ Says the farmer to the Developer.

‘What?!?’

‘I read somewhere that development really follows a logic that Some need to suffer for the Many. And sacrifices must be made. I believe your friends, the Maoists, say the same.’

‘What? My friends?!’

‘So I will give you my land, if we can chop your arms off first.’

‘What? No!’

‘It’s development, why not?’

‘No.’

‘Come on, you and your CEO, you and your government.’

‘Are you mad? Get away from me.’

‘….you all should make sacrifices for development too!’

‘No!’

‘The world is a cruel place and difficult choices must be made.’ Says the farmer.

‘Get away from me!’

‘Okay, I’ll just chop off one testicle, is that okay?’

The farmer brandishes a rusty blade, the Developer runs away, the farmer sits on his haunches again with his salfi along with a harbinger. Tomorrow, a combing operation in the name of hunting Naxalites shall leave his village burnt, his crop destroyed and his children hungry.

‘DEVELOPMENT ZINDABAD! Bhenchodd!’ Says the farmer.

* * *

Once upon a time, a man holding his young daughter walked under the office of Robert McNamara, the architect of the Vietnam war. To kill a man, you can save millions? Unfortunately, that logic doesn’t work for people who wouldn’t even take a single life. This is the real protest to the human condition.

Norman Morrison was that man’s name. He lay his daughter down, and in protest to the Vietnam war, he doused himself in kerosene and immolated himself to remind the executioner of what he is doing to himself.

At Tiananmen Square, the man who stood before the tank was not the only hero of the day, there were many people who stood before tanks that morning who were systematically run over. The other hero of that day was the man who was driving the tank……… who hesitated, who stopped.

Archive: Greetings From Basaguda

There are still shoot-at-sight orders at Basaguda police station at night.

‘Villagers who escaped the Maoist-Salwa Judum conflict return to their homes after three years’

On the fifth of March, 2006, the thriving village of Basaguda was attacked around nine in the night by an angry crowd shepherded by gun-wielding Naxalites. Four people were killed by axes and hatchets. There are reports that one man was executed in front of the entire village.

Eventually, the raiders disappeared into the darkness, and the villagers took the bodies of their friends and neighbours across the bridge to the police station to file a report. On the way back to their homes, they were beaten by the C.R.P.F. and the Salwa Judum and dragged back across the river to live in decrepit Salwa Judum camps. They were not allowed to return to their homes.

A few days later there was an explosion in the vicinity where around nine villagers were injured. One man, Erragalla Lakshmaiya would eventually succumb to his injuries. This was one of the six IED blasts on the road to Avapalli to Basaguda, that mostly targeted civilian vehicles. According to the police, the bombmaker is an ‘anghutachap’ – a man who neither reads nor writes.

At the same time, the police re-entered the village Basaguda and started to harass villagers who had somehow managed to remain in their homes and on their land. The police threatened to strip all the women if the villagers did not inform them about the movements of the Naxalites. They also threatened to arrest everyone from the village. Eventually, they caught three men and accused them of being Naxalites and asked them to run into the jungle. The villagers were aware that this was a ruse, and they would surely be shot dead, in an ‘encounter’, if they even considered to run.

Eventually, they were set free and everyone had enough of the harassment and left the village of Basaguda by June 2006.

Not very far away, around two kilometers from Basaguda, the village of Lingagiri, specifically Boreguda, was attacked by the C.R.P.F. and S.P.O.s on the 25th-26th of December of 2006, where three men were killed, two women were raped, out of which, one was also shot dead. Another man was stabbed repeatedly by the C.R.P.F. and managed to escape to Cherla in Andhra Pradesh, some seventy kilometers away.

Another girl, Gantal Beby was nine months pregnant as she was escaping into the jungle. She would deliver her baby in the middle of the jungle and would eventually name him, ‘Aadvi Ramudu’ – which means, simply – ‘boy born in the jungle’.

All villagers of Boreguda escaped to the village of Cherla where they lived as landless labourers in abject poverty. Their village was completely burnt to the ground, and was entirely empty by 2006.

On the other side of Basaguda, two kilometers away is the village of Pisepara and Pakela – twin villages, a stone’s throw away from one another. Both villages have seen arbitrary arrests, beatings, lootings, arson and threats from the Salwa Judum and the security forces. Three people died as they were escaping the Salwa Judum raid – two from snakebites and one from overexposure to heat. Two people from Pakela were arrested as Sangham (village-level Naxalite group) members and are now languishing at Jagdalpur jail. All the villagers of Pakela and Pisepara had abandoned their village as well, in 2006.

There are also reports that during this same period, three people from the village of Maharpara, which is a part of Basaguda were killed by the Naxalites as they were trying to find materials for their homes. The villagers of Maharpara also left their village in 2006.

The same fate had fallen upon all the other villages and ‘paras’ in the vicinity – Kumarpara, Doleguda, Dharmapur, Pathanpara and Nayapara. A constant feeling of dread and terror had pervaded all the nights of Basaguda Block, at one time, it was a thriving marketplace that even drew visitors from Andhra Pradesh. It had a river, endless fields, a rice mill, a mosque, a school, a sense of community – for this is a land where there are Mahars, Telgas, Murias, Muslims, Halbas, Dalits, Kunbis and Kalars. Yet this would be the land, where the villagers of Lingagiri would huddle in a mass, and take refuge at Pathanpara – the hamlet of the Muslims, yet even they were not spared. Almost all the homes were burnt – there was really no discrimination.

By late 2006, all villages of the area were derelict empty wastelands, every other home was burnt to rubble, looted, and all the inhabitants had disappeared. By late 2006, no one crossed the bridge to Basaguda, to Lingagiri, to Pisepara, to Pakela, to Maharpara, to any of the villages or paras on that side. People languished in Salwa Judum camps, and had no access to electricity, ration, transport and most importantly, their land and their harvest. Women would walk some seventeen kilometers in the sun to Avapalli and carry back around ten kilograms of rice on their heads. The only remaining schools were also seventeen kilometers away in Avapalli and many children in the camp would suffer from Grade 2 malnutrition.

Other villagers languished at Cherla, in Andhra Pradesh where they lived as IDPs – Internally Displaced Persons – refugees in their own countries. People languished in small rented shacks and shanties in the towns of Avapalli and Bijapur, trying to find whatever work they could find. Many people started to live further within the forests, higher up in the hills, away from the reach of the combing operations of the security forces.

And of course, there are implicit causes to what happened in Basaguda. Nothing speaks for itself more than a sworn statement signed by the villagers of Basaguda themselves –

‘On the 5th of December, 2005, the workforce of Salwa Judum and the C.R.P.F. visited Basaguda and stuck posters that said that a Salwa Judum meeting is going to be held at Avapalli on the 1st of January, 2006, and if the villagers do not turn up, they shall be called Naxalites. We attended the meeting on the 1st of January 2006. We were told that, if those who are members of the Sangham (village-level Naxalite groups) do not surrender right away, all of us will be killed. Nine of the villagers who were not members of the Sangham were forcefully made to admit that they members of the Sangham. After this, we stayed till the meeting ended and came back to our village. After some days, on the 21st of February 2006, the Salwa Judum workforce came to Basaguda and asked us to deliver a speech against the Naxalites, and those who would not, would be deemed as a Naxalite.

Two days later, villagers from (names withheld) were made to carry out a rally at Lingagiri, Boreguda Korsaguda, Sarkeguda, Mallepalli, where many houses were burnt, people were beaten and many women were raped. Out of rage, a few days after the rally, the Naxalites came to Basaguda on the fifth of March, 2006 at 9pm. They attacked the villagers and killed four people.’

* * *

As of now, May 2009, the matter of the legality of the Salwa Judum is still in the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court also instructed the Administration to rehabilitate the villagers back to their rightful homes and to provide compensation. According to Human Rights Watch, there have been at least 40,000 people displaced by the violence in Chhattisgarh since 2005. Some sources place those numbers as high as 60,000 people, other’s as high as 1,00,000. Officially, there have been 644 villagers that lie empty.

India, herself is no stranger to displacement. In the name of development, uprooting whole communities and whole villages is almost a mainstay of the development gospel. According to some sources, around 50 million people have been displaced due to development-related projects since independence.

This time, people have been forcefully displaced out of some experimental idea of severing the Naxalites from their home base. Of course, that’s what it is on the surface, as many, including the Naxalites themselves, claim that entire idea of herding villagers into Salwa Judum Camps is merely a ruse to capture the land of the Tribals and to sell it to the companies like Essar and Tata.

Whatever it is, it’s no small thing for people to live in exile in their own country, without rights, without land and with constant risk of being uprooted again.

As many have said, it’s no small thing to not have a home – to lose your land.

In a country like India, the issue of land is close to boiling point, the heart of the matter. More than half of India languishes below the poverty line for they have neither land nor the ability to harvest on the little that they have. Many farmers are actually incapable of producing anything profitable. And farmer suicides are tragic events that only manifest the real faceless expression of an India that weeps herself to sleep, as the GDP soars and the Naxalites find arguments to justify killing. People can earn less than Rs.30 a day, and have to feed around five children. And finding opportunities to earn Rs.30 a day is not that easy itself – the landless have to beg for work at times. And eventually they find a landlord who’d provide them a day’s work. They’d toil and they’d toil on someone else’s land who can barely pay them.

Their fate is such, that even the beggars in the metropolitan cities can earn more than them.

Give these many landless labourers land, so many have said, and people have been fighting for their rights, for the redistribution of land. After all, companies like Tata and Essar will not starve to death if they don’t have land.

In Bastar, people had land. Even if they only had about five acres or three acres, they all had land. The villagers of Basaguda had land. The villagers of Lingagiri had land. The villagers of Pisepara had land. The villagers of Pakela had land. The villagers of Doreguda had land. They all had land.

The villagers of the entire mineral-rich Bastar, also have the Fifth Schedule and their rights have been protected, or so it says in the Indian Constitution. Not a single building can be built or torn down on tribal land without exclusive permission from the Gram Sabha – the heads of the village.

Yet so many of them lost it all and lived as landless labour, or as ‘coolies’ as they’d call it. So many had left their homes with nothing but the clothes on their back. So many had left their homes with nothing but the memories of a serene life. All they knew was that they had to go back.

The villagers from the camps of Basaguda made repeated requests to the Collector’s office of Bijapur to help them reclaim their homes. They weren’t even aware of the Supreme Court’s requests to the Collector’s office to rehabilitate the villagers to their rightful homes.

With the initiation of numerous activists and a local Gandhian NGO, Vavasi Chetna Ashram, that the people of those villages have been motivated to return. First, there was the village of Nendra in Dantewada that was rehabilitated a year ago. Then it was the villagers of Lingagiri who were brought back from Cherla with help from NGOs from Andhra Pradesh such as the ASDS. Yet they were initially detained at the police station and prevented to go back to their homes.

A week after Lingagiri, the villagers of Basaguda were taken back by human shield volunteers.

Within the first five weeks, there were little to no attempts of the administration to provide assistance for the people of Basaguda and Lingagiri. They had repaired one hand pump and their other major contributions have been the constant harassment of the Vanvasi Chetna Ashram and their workers. On one occasion, the police confiscated around fifteen quintals of rice brought by the NGO for villagers of Lingagiri who had long run out of ration. They had also stolen about 35 kilograms of cooking oil from the same confiscated ration.

A few policemen had also entered Boreguda and verbally abused some of the villagers. And the perpetrators of the crimes of Boreguda roam free. Gantal Raju, whose sister was raped and murdered can identify a man riding a motorcycle at Bijapur as the killer of his sister. And barely does he talk about justice. He has repeated his story a thousand times to a thousand different people – journalists, human rights lawyers, activists, and often he’d exclaim that he’s tired of it.

Eventually, the neighbouring villages of Doleguda, Pisepara and Pakela also requested help from the NGO to help them reclaim their homes. The NGO organized transport, their human shield volunteers, and informed the administration of their intentions. They also prepared the long list of demands and problems that the villages would face. The homes in their villages are inhabitable and the monsoons are coming. They would all have to start again from scratch. They would require ration, a bus service, access to clean water, and most importantly a sense of security – they want nothing to do with the security forces and the Salwa Judum or the Naxalites. They want peace.

Back on their land after three long years, the villagers slowly and hesitantly rummaged through the remains of their lives. Soon enough, without much initiation, the villagers began to rebuild their lives, together. They would share the little food they had and they would work together to clean up the remnants of one another’s homes. People were laughing even if they had nothing. People were happy to be back to the vestiges of the little bit of the past that has survived, that’s now embellished with Naxalite graffiti calling for a boycott of the general elections. People ignore all of that, most don’t even have voter cards, so how will they vote?

The fact remains, that the villagers of Basaguda block reclaimed dignity. The State made that little miscalculation when it rehabilitated people into Salwa Judum camps and expected them to fend for themselves. Why would they, really? It was not theirs, they did not ask for it – this little shack, this small plot of dirt, this non-existent land, this ‘concentration camp’. Why would they want to rebuild their lives in poverty? It was on their own land that they’d work, for on their own land, they’d find dignity. It was on their own land, that they’re masters.

Eventually, I had asked a group of villagers from Basaguda and Lingagiri, about what they’d do if ‘they’ come and burn their village again.

‘We’d never leave, we’d die here, we know there’s nothing else out there.’ – is an answer I often heard.

* * *

Two days after the villagers of Pisepara and Pakela were rehabilitated on their land, the state demolished the main buildings of the Gandhian NGO Vanvasi Chetna Ashram. The state claims that the NGO was encroaching on forest land, while the NGO claims that they live on land with express permission of the Gram Sabha. The matter was still sub-judice, and therefore no action was to be taken by the state. The notice to leave the premises by the 17th of May, was delivered to the NGO on the 16th of May, when it was issued on the 13th of May.

A week after the demolition, the NGO begins initial work on the rehabilitation of villagers from Jagargonda block.

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