Narayanpatna: Movement On The Run

This article appears in The New Indian Express on the 6th of February, 2011.

‘Nachika Linga’s owner’s house used to be this one,’ Says the Border Security Force commander, regarding the newest BSF camp set up at Podapadar village, one of the flashpoints of the Chasi Mulia Adivasi Sangh movement. The house in question belonged to Nila Kancha Parida who literally owned Nachika Linga – a bonded labourer on his own land who used to earn Rs.5 per month, eventually a leader of a tribal movement, and now, one of the most wanted people in Narayanpatna block. It is literally petty symbolism that the once-oppressor’s house is now used by the Border Security Force to track down members of the Chasi Mulia Adivasi Sangh, who stood up for their land rights in 2009.

Today, their entire movement has gone underground, over 150 of their members and their supporters are in jail, including Gananath Patra, of the CPI (ML), who was arrested as a Maoist, as well as his associate Tapan Mishra, who has already clashed with officials in the prison after going on numerous hunger strikes. Yet the vast majority of the CMAS live in fear further within the jungles, often on the move, without food, in constant risk of being apprehended.

Nevertheless, six Kondh tribal women and four infants had gotten onto the Hirakhand Express at Koraput railway station on the 25^th of January 2011 to travel to Bhubaneshwar. For many of them it was the first time on a train. There was never any need to go to Bhubaneshwar, or anywhere beyond their jungles in Narayanpatna or Laxmipur before. But secretly, and quietly, these six women travelled to Bhubaneshwar, and were told that they would have to testify at a public hearing, to the National Human Rights Commission.

All six women have lost their husbands to state violence.

Balsi Kendruka w/o Andru of the village of Baliaput, Narayanpatna lost her husband on the 20^th of November firing/’camp attack’.

Sonai Kendruka w/o Singana of the village of Podapadar, Narayanpatna lost her husband on the 20^th of November firing/’camp attack’.

Kamla Tadingi w/o Ganguli of the village of Bagam, Narayanpatna lost her husband when he was picked up by the police in Narayanpatna, and died in custody in Koraput Jail on the 12th of April 2010.

Kamla Sirika w/o Ratna of the village of Siriguda, Narayanpatna lost her husband when he went for treatment for an unspecified illness to Narayanpatna town, and was arrested by the police and died in a hospital in Berhampur on the 8^th of June, 2010.

Saibo Honika w/o Jimme of the village of Jogipalur, Narayanpatna lost her husband when the security forces raided her village. He was allegedly drowned in Janjawali river.

Singaru Huika w/o Katru of the village of Talameting,  Laxmipur was shot dead by the security forces the day after the Maoists had raided the nearby NALCO plant where they killed ten CISF jawaans and lost four of their own on the 12^th of April 2009. Katru Huika is suprisingly even mentioned as a ‘public witness’ in the FIR filed regarding the NALCO attack.

And the women barely spoke at the hearing.

The irony is that K G Balakrishnan, chairman of the NHRC returned to Delhi a day before the hearing. (The bigger irony was that he would have been sharing the dias with the senior advocate Prashant Bhusan who, along with his father, had indicted him as one of the ‘eight corrupt Chief Justices of India’),’ in a now-famous affidavit.

The hearing itself indicted the government of Orissa regarding ‘state repression on the rise in the state particularly on people’s movements against displacement and land grabbing.’ As for the recent spate of encounters in Bargarh, Keonjhar, Jajpur and Rayagada, it had called for ‘an independent and impartial investigation’.

The Way Of The Gun

Since the firing on the 20^th of November, 2009, still widely considered to be a ‘camp attack’ by the police and the administration, all that the Kondh adivasis of Narayanpatna have seen is the slow militarization of their lives. Not only have three BSF camps been set-up in Narayanpatna block, but Maoist activity has also been on the rise. There had been one IED blast that claimed four civilian lives in January 2010, and since then there have been numerous IEDs recovered by the police in regular intervals. Just recently another IED exploded on the 11^th of January, 2011 near Jogi Palur, injuring three government officials.

There have also been a series of killings by the Maoists in August of 2010, most infamously, of Anand Kirsani, the leader of the embryonic state-backed anti-CMAS group, the Shanti Committee, who was also a Zilla Parishad member and a Congress party leader. The Maoists also killed a member of the CPI (ML), Arjun Kendruka as an informant. Another villager, Ghasi Kendruka from Gotiguda village was killed on the 15^th of August. The General Secretary of the CPI (Maoist) Ganapathy himself has stated in a recent interview about the gains made by his party in Narayanpatna block, and against the ‘revisionist’ tendencies of other members of communist parties working in both Narayanpatna and Bandhugaon block. And there has been no secret that the Bandugaon movement and the Narayanpatna movement have been at odds over the last two years.

And yet the core issue remains land.

While the Shanti committee has been ‘finished’ after the murder of their leader Anand Kirsani, there is still no gaurantee that the paddy that rightfully belongs to the tribals would not be illegally split 50-50 between the tribals and the non-tribal Sahukars and ‘landlords,’ as had happened last year, after the suppression of the Chasi Mulia Adivasi Sangh.

Cultivation is taking place in many of the strongholds of the Chasi Mulia Adivasi Sangh at Narayanpatna, and yet the BSF presence is ominous. On the 27^h of January itself, reports emerged that 6 homes in Musalmanda village of Narayanpatna were allegedly burnt down by the security forces.

Images from a video capture of the burning of the homes of Narayanpatna.  Courtesy – Source.

A Soldier’s Crisis

‘You know what would solve this whole Maoist problem?’ Asks a BSF commander, ‘There should be mandatory military service in either the CRPF or BSF by all citizens of India. This way some politician’s son can also end up at Podapadar.’

The imaginary border is drawn across the jungles, cutting across mainstream India and that which belongs to the Kondh of the Chasi Mulia Adivasi Sangh at Podapadar. The Border Security Force is once again strategically isolated as most security camps within the jungles are. A school functions a few metres from the camp, and hillocks surround the camp.

‘If we’re attacked, we’re on our own,’ Said the commander, ‘And we had asked for another spot, but they gave us this one.’

And the risks don’t stop there.

‘You don’t even have to ask us about mosquitoes,’ Said a BSF soldier, laughing, who mentions there have already been a handful of malaria cases in the camp.

Yet what remains striking is that the BSF soldiers were aware of the existence of bonded labour at Narayanpatna block. ‘Five generations of Nachika Linga were slaves.’ Mentions the BSF commander, yet the manhunt against him continues.

No one in Narayanpatna ever forgot the ‘dead or alive’ posters of Nachika Linga that were posted across the town.

Season Of Encounters: Part One

This article appears in The New Indian Express on the 30th of January,2011.

Winter in Orissa has seen a spate of encounters, starting with a now infamous incident in Bargarh district on the 27^th of December, where two alleged Maoists were killed, who’d later be identified as a BJP block president, who was also an anti-mining activist, and his associate.

In Jajpur district, five more alleged Maoists were killed on the 1st of January, including three women and a 12 year old girl. And as the Supreme Court states that the ‘Republic can’t kill her own children’, while referring to the death of Maoist leader Azad, nine more of the Republic’s children were killed in their sleep on the 8th of January in Rayagada District, in what has been widely described as a late night ambush by the Special Operations Group and not an encounter – (a surprise tactic used by the police, right out of a Maoist handbook on ambushes.)

It has been the first time that encounters of this scale have taken place in both districts.

And again, two more alleged Maoists would be gunned down on the morning of the 12th of January, some 35 kilometres away from Jajpur, at Keonjhar near the village of Pancham. According to the police, Sadhu Munda (24) and a teenager from Mayurbanj district were shot dead early in the morning, even though the body of the boy started to reveal signs of putrefaction at 3pm, which only takes place 72 hours after death.

Sadhu Munda hails from Baligotha village, as did the 12 year old girl killed on the 1^st of January in Jajpur, who was identified as Janga d/o Ramrai Jamuda.

Baligotha is a village on the forefront of the protest of the Bisthapan Birodhi Jan Manch against Tata Steel’s project in Kalinganagar Industrial Park, and has often been accused as a Maoist-front. No one from the village of Baligotha claimed the body of the 12 year old girl who was killed, yet within the next ten days of the encounter, over 10 alleged Maoists, including minors, would surrender to the police, including Saley Pallei, who also hails from Baligotha. Saley would be taken by his mother to the Tata Transit Camp at Sukinda.

And Sadhu Munda’s brother, Nitchandra Pallei, a resident of Baligotha, who now lives in Tata’s Transit Camp called a press conference in Jajpur, to plead with the Maoists to release his daughter and his son, who he claims are still fighting with the Maoists. The entire press conference was orchestrated by the police who refused to stand before the cameras. ‘I took a picture of Nitchandra, and the policemen stopped me. They told Nitchandra to hold his hands, and then I should take a picture,’ Said a local journalist who was a part of the conference. The next day, Sadhu Munda’s brother refused to talk to the press without police presence, or collect his brother’s body from the police station.

Meanwhile, the leaders of the Bisthapan Birodhi Jan Manch have denied any links with the Maoists.

‘We are stupid then,’ Rabindra Jarika of Chandia village said, ‘If we wanted, we could’ve sent 200 men into the jungles. But yet we resist peacefully, and we’re dying here.’

Interestingly, Rabindra Jarika has also faced threats from the Maoists in the past, who he establishes have been functioning in the Sukinda mines area, far away from the villages protesting against Tata’s common corridor.

‘Have the Maoists threatened you?’

‘Twice.’ He replies.

‘Janshakti Maoist party of CPI Maoist party?’

‘Both.’

‘Any idea why?’

‘They say I am doing dalaalgiri.’

Death By Development

Sadhu Munda, Janga Jamuda and Saley Pallei are one of the first direct instances of exclusive development’s contribution to the recruitment of Maoist cadre. In fact, the SP of Jajpur S. Kutte would release a list of 21 names from the village of Baligotha who he claims have joined the Maoists.

Kalinganagar Industrial Park had become infamous on the 2nd of January, 2006, when 12 tribals protesting against Tata Steel’s common corridor were killed in police firing. Since then, they have lived in a virtual prison, often facing arrests, attacks, and raids by police personnel as happened in April of last year when the police fired plastic rounds into protesting crowds, and pro-BJD and Tata-goondas had roughed up the BJP president Jual Oram’s convoy as well as journalists, as they tried to enter Baligotha to address the BBJM members.

While the gunning down of a 12 year old Maoist had gone almost unnoticed to the mainstream media, the fact that the Maoists are recruiting minors did not. In fact, three of the alleged children-Maoist-cadre come from families that have been torn apart. Nitchandra Pallei, who had given a press conference, asking the Maoists to release his children, had abandoned them in April at Baligotha village, when he had agreed to be rehabilitated by Tata, due to ill-health. The state demolished his house while his children still remained in the village afterwards, without any guardianship. Ramrai Jamuda, whose daughter Janga was shot dead, had also died two years ago. And Saley Pallei who surrendered to the police, lived almost unattended as his mother was injured in the attack in April 2010, and after her recovery in the hospital, she was also taken to Tata’s transit camp.

Season Of Encounters: Part Two

Kaliamani Jhodia’s eleven year old daughter was arrested as an alleged Maoist on the 14th of December, 2010 at Dhobasil village of Rayagada District.

Widow Hasmani Jhodia’s twenty-two year old daughter Sabita was also arrested on the same day.

This article appears in the New Indian Express on the 30th of January,2011.

To understand what happened in Khurigan(Basangmali), Rayagada district where nine alleged Maoists were killed in an ‘encounter/ambush’ on the 8^th of January, one has to look into an incident on the 14^th of December 2010, where in the village of Dhobasil in Kashipur block, five alleged Maoists, including two minors were arrested in what is described in the police FIR as ‘a meeting’ with ‘weapons training.’

According to the police First Information Report, the police had ‘prior information’ that a meeting was taking place near ‘Singamui jungle,’ so they had embarked on an operation, where they would eventually discover a meeting of 25-30 Maoists cadres along with 10 to 15 other supporters engaged in ‘weapons training’. Along with the five arrested, the FIR even goes on to mention the following names in the FIR as the ‘Details of known/suspected/unknown/accused’ – Rabi, Lenju, Mamata, Kamala, who’d all be killed in the encounter, along with Sabyasachi Panda, the most-wanted Maoist leader of Orissa, and then, Lado Sikaka, one of the Dongria Kondh leaders of the Niyamgiri movement, already featured in a farcical photo-op session with Rahul Gandhi, and even Bhagaban Majhi, an activist of the Prakrutik Sampark Surakhya Parishad whose movement has long struggled against bauxite mining and the Utkal Alimuna International Limited – a struggle that led to innumerable false cases and arrests, regular protests of over 5000 people, road blockades and it all culminated in a police firing at Maikanch on the 16^th of December, 2000, when the police fired and killed three men and wounded another seven.

In the FIR regarding the 14^th of December ‘encounter’, the Inspector-In charge of Kalyansinghpur police station claims that, ‘Most of them had put on olive green dresses. From the dress code and the firearms with them, I became confirm that they are the members of the banned CPI (Maoist) organization.’ The OIC then claims to have repeatedly asked them to surrender, after which the Maoists fired back to ‘kill and demoralize the police party’, and the police would fire two rounds, and the Maoists then ‘took to their heels in the jungle.’

Eventually the police managed to apprehend five people including two young girls. One girl, Koni Jhodia is aged 11, as per the ration card prepared on the 1^st of August, 2010, yet in the FIR she is mentioned to be 16 years old.

‘On taking search of the kit bag of Kani Bijaya Jhodia,’ Continues the FIR, ‘it was found that the kit bag was containing 03 numbers of gelatin sticks,’ Yet according to the villagers of Dhobasil, she had run into the house when she saw the police approaching, and was dragged out from there. Sabita Jhodia (22 years old), was also sleeping in her house when she was kicked and dragged out of the village.

According to the villagers of Dhobasil, around 20 members of the police in civilian clothes had come to their village with two other men, and started to ask for Sabita Jhodia, a young woman/alleged Maoist who returned to her village, after leaving her abusive husband.

‘They put a gun to my neck and asked me where was Sabita.’ Claims Koni Jhodia’s older brother, Beladhara. At this point, the other two men were being kept by the police in the middle of the hamlet, along with Sabita’s younger sister Lalita. They only let Lalita go, once they had Sabita, who was dragged out of her house. Finally, they had gone to the Kondh hamlet of Dhobasil, and taken away Jodi Jhodia d/o Shyam (wrongly identified as Anjali), who was also ten years old, claims her older pregnant sister, who adds, ‘it was all Sabita’s fault.’

‘After they took them away, we thought they’d be killed.’ Says Kaliapani Jhodia, mother of Koni.

Dhobasil is a small village of two hamlets, one belonging to the Kondhs, and another to the Jhodias. The Jhodia hamlet has nine homes, and it is a hamlet where the people have ration cards, but they don’t get ration, where they have NREGA cards, but they don’t get work, where they have electric poles and wiring, but they don’t get electricity, and the families live on the edge of hunger, surviving on a little semme (beans) and some imli. Add to that, the Jhodias are not even recognized as tribals by the government, meaning: they can starve and die like the tribals, but they can’t live like them.

They are tribals living on tribal lands who are not entitled to the laws to protect them from land alienation.

The Anti-mining Activists

Bulika Miniaka, of Barigaon village in Kashipur block has been fighting against land alienation for over 15 years now. He, himself, was one of the Kondh leaders who was in jail for over four months in 2004-2005, when the police had come to his village on the 9^th of December 2004. Today, combing operations often disrupt life in his village of over 180 homes.

‘This land is ours, this jungle is ours, these rivers are ours, these trees are ours, and who are these police people to come here? What do they want? Why are they here?’ Says Bulika Minika.

Three unmarried girls from Barigaon, Sunita Miniaka d/o Massi, Seboh Miniaka d/o Sapora and Phulkoh Miniaka d/o of Uchaba, were killed in the encounter on the 8^th of January. The people of Barigaon were not informed of their deaths, and only discovered it once they saw the newspapers.

‘Who are the police to kill these people?’ Continues Bulika, ‘And those you kill, you should at least, tell us, you killed.’

The people of Barigaon held a feast in their honour, as per Kondh tradition. The three people killed in Maikanch led to the stalling of the UTKAL project, albeit unsuccessfully, and a judicial enquiry offered no justice to the adivasis. The three killed as Maoists opens the newest chapter to the adivasis of Kashipur who have been fighting the companies since 1993.

Meanwhile, Bhagaban Majhi was completely unperturbed by his name being mentioned in an FIR involving Maoists. For one, there has always been a reason why Bhagawan Majhi would be targeted. There is a song he often sings before every gathering or meeting for thousands of adivasis who protest against the companies who not only displace but cause irreparable pollution.

Hawa, Hawa, Company Hawa,

Wind, wind, company wind

Blowing all over Odisha.

 

Let us stand together for justice.

We will save our mother earth

And redeem ourselves.

 

We will not hand over our land to these companies,

Let us all stand together,

Don’t just watch us and wait.

Don’t you see the danger?

 

What we are facing today,

You will face tomorrow.

Gadchiroli: Narratives

The closer one gets to the eastern border of Gadchiroli district in Maharashtra, the closer one gets to the eerily similar narratives of violence and counter-violence.  Maoist graffiti marks the asphalt, the walls, while police outposts find themselves marooned in the middle of nowhere, and the stories of brutal suppression, encounters, informant killings, and the threat of violence gets onerously louder.

This article appears in The New Indian Express on the 3rd of October, 2010.

The Road To Abhujmarh.

‘Nobody can even move anywhere. There’s too much risk.’ Says Superintendent of Police Veeresh Prabhu about the policemen posted at Laheri and Bhamragad police stations, closest to Maoist ‘liberated-zone’ Abhujmarh in Bastar.

‘I asked them why they were beating my son, and they beat me too.’ Said Dama Pada of the village of Mungner. ‘They told me that I was feeding Naxalites, and they beat me.’ Said the village-head of Mungner village.

‘The girl wanted to, but we believe that the family was too afraid to pursue the matter.’ Said a civil rights activist about a 13 year-old girl who was allegedly raped by a member of the elite C-60 group of Maharashtra.

‘As much as I have seen, the people are more afraid of the police than of the Naxalites.’ Said deputy collector of Gadchiroli, Rajendra Kanphade. On the 24^th of August, he, along with eight members of the government visited the village of Binagonda in Naxalite-territory to look into the condition of the government-run Ashram schools.

The Fallout

Security forces on patrol on the Gadchiroli – Dhanora Road on the 1st of September, 2010.

Five security personnel were killed on the 31st of August, 2010 in Kanker district in Chhattisgarh. Two days later, in the neighbouring district of Gadchiroli in Maharashtra, security personnel are on a patrol on Dhanora road. Anti-landmine vehicles, and groups of 4-5 CRPF personnel and state police are positioned 30-40 metres along the Gadchiroli-Dhanora road. Just a few kilometres through the jungle is Kanker, where search operations are taking place.

‘Gadchiroli is Bastar’ isn’t something that far-fetched and one barely finds ears who disagree with it. The district of Gadchiroli in Maharashtra State, borders Rajnangoan, Bijapur, Narainpur District, Kanker district of Chhattisgarh, and more specifically, Abhujmarh, the infamous Maoist-bastion.

The river Indravati forms the border through Bijapur and Gadchiroli, yet the districts and their forests intersect near Bhamragad or Laheri police station in the north, and there is no surprise that here the police live in virtual prisons – no one dares to venture out too far alone.

Nearby, three young men cross the Indravati river in a dugout boat from Chhattisgarh to enter Gadchiroli. There is a clear organic link between Bastar and Gadchiroli. The Madia Gonds of Gadchiroli are similar, yet differ from the Murias and Koyas of Bastar, often referring to the ‘Abhuj Murias’ or ‘Hill people’ of Abhujmarh as the ‘Bada Gonds’.

‘Did the Salwa Judum ever come to your village?’ I asked one of the boys who just came from Bastar. He is a Muria boy. He affirms that the Salwa Judum had come to his village. And they burnt their village down, and beat people. Yet then a forest department ward officer shows up. The boy says hello to him and leaves.

A few days earlier, a team of government representatives had crossed this same river. They were led by the Deputy Collector, Rajendra Kanphade, and they crossed into Abhujmarh after being detained by the police in Laheri.

They had gone into Naxalite territory on the 24th of August, Tuesday, to check on the condition of the Ashram schools in the village of Binagonda. And there were no news of them for the next eighteen hours, and numerous officials believed they had been kidnapped by the Maoists. Yet they reappeared on Wednesday evening the next day, unscathed – nobody had harassed them, but the police at Laheri who had detained them a day earlier and refused to offer them protection.

Deputy Collector Kanphade would then deliver a scathing report about the condition of the schools in Binagonda.

‘The situation of these schools is terrible, there are irregularities in the number of students and malnutrition is pervasive.’

‘We already have schools from the Zilla Parishad, why do we need schools from the Tribal Welfare department also?’ Said Mr. Kanphade.

‘Some people are taking advantage of poverty. This is all just a money-making racket.’

There were around a hundred or more villagers who came to meet the Deputy Collector, the Tehsildar and other members of the team at Binagonda and the officials even took cognizance of the relationship of the people with the Naxalites.

‘They (the Naxalites) come to these villages with guns. So the villagers do what they want. And here, they’re evening paying for food.’ Said Mr.Kanfade. ‘I have been to many areas, and here too, it seems that the people in these areas are far more afraid of the police than the Maoists.’

‘There is legalized violence committed by the state, and illegalized violence committed by the Maoists. I do not agree with the violence of any party, especially the Maoists, but I personally feel that the legalized violence of the state is far more destructive.’

A few days after Mr.Kanphade would make similar comments in the local and national press, the Superintendent of police Veeresh Prabhu would request the Collector’s office to initiate disciplinary measures against the Deputy Collector, for his statements have ‘maligned the image of the government’ and ‘affected the morale of the police.’

Commenting that some of the news reports had misquoted him, Mr.Kanphade, nevertheless stuck with his statements.

‘What have I done?’ Retorts Mr. Kanphade, ‘I have gone to a village and reported on the issues of the village. Instead of addressing the issues of the people, the police want to suffocate the truth.’

The village of Mungner

On the 31^st of August, 2010, in the predominantly Madia Gond village of Mungner in Gadchiroli district, Maharashtra, four villagers were beaten by the security forces during a routine operation.

‘They came from all sides, and they asked all the villagers, men, women and children to come at one spot.’ Said Tukaram Walko, the village-head or ‘Patel’, who was caught returning from his fields with an empty steel box. ‘A policeman saw my empty box, and said I was feeding Naxalites and slapped me there and then.’

‘Then they told us not to support the Naxalites, and threatened us.’ Said another villager, ‘He (Hingle, the CO) said that I can kill ten of you just like this.’

Mungner is said to be around three kilometres from Chhattisgarh and unsurprisingly, the villagers are not shy to reveal that the Maoists do visit them. Three years ago, they had even killed the then village-head for being a ‘mukhbir’ or informant. At the same time, the villagers revealed that a ‘surrendered’ Maoist had brought the police to their village.

‘Don’t tell them.’ Screamed a woman from the hut, when asked about his/her identity. An animated discussion ensued in Gondi between the rest of the villagers thereafter.

‘There were bullets flying across our homes’

This was not the first time the police had come to Mungner – a village where the crops failed for lack of monsoons for the last two consecutive years, where there is one patta (title) for 180 homes, where contractors defaulted on NREGS payments, and the Forest Department had been cutting bamboo for Rs.1 over thirty years ago. Mungner is deep within the jungle but a dirt road does lead to it from Dhanora Police Station.

On the 6^th of April 2009, an encounter had taken place near the village of Mungner, and three security personnel were killed, while the police claim over seven Maoists were also killed.

On that day, the villagers heard gunfire that lasted till evening, and claimed that gunfire had even gone over their roofs.

‘Us din duniya bhar ki gadiya gaon aa gaye the.’ (all the world’s cars had come to our village that day), Said Budram Galme, the Sarpanch of Mungner, referring to the police rescue party.

Yet irrespective of the proximity to the Maoist ambush, the villagers claimed no one was mistreated by the police in retaliation.

‘Munna Thakur (commander C-60) was good to us,’ said a villager, ‘whenever there was an incident of firing nearby, he used to tell us to stay away. And no one from our village was harassed.’

‘He may have been something else to other villages, but he was okay with us.’

The legend of Munna Singh Thakur.

Munna Singh Thakur is a name well-known in even adivasi villages in Gadchiroli district. The commander of the elite C-60,  a specialist counterinsurgency group, Munna Singh Thakur lost his older brother Lalbabu Singh to an encounter with the Maoists on the 8^th of July, 1988.

‘He was shot seventeen times, I still remember that day,’ Said Munna Singh Thakur, who was 18 at the time, ‘He was left alone to fight. The other policemen had all run away. And even now those policemen are still in the service.’

Munna Singh Thakur would then serve in anti-naxal operations in Maharashtra for the next 21-22 years. There are many observers who even believed that the C-60 under Munna Singh Thakur worked without the authority of the then S.P Rajesh Pradhan, but worked directly under the auspices of the Director General of Police (Anti-Naxal Operations) Pankaj Gupta. Munna Singh Thakur functioned out of Pendri police station, effectively given a free hand since around 2004.

The immediate villages around, would grow to fear him and his reputation, or in the particular case of Mungner, find him reasonable – making him a proponent of a carrot-and-stick, counterinsurgency.

Nevertheless, 2009 was a particularly brutal year for the police. There were three highly reported incidents where the security forces were ambushed, often with deadly results. 15 police officials including a sub-inspector were killed on the 1^st of February near Markegaon, 16 police officials, including five women personnel were killed on the 17^th of May, and 18 were killed near Laheri police station on the 8^th of October during the assembly elections. Munna Singh Thakur was the CO when his party was ambushed near Mungner village where they only suffered three casualties. And 2009, has now ensured that no police party can move within the sensitive areas of Gadchiroli in smaller numbers.

In that year alone, there were a total of 52 fatalities from the police, in contrast to a total of 27 fatalities amongst the police in the four years preceding 2009. In 2009, Gadchiroli district was elevated to being one of the worst-affected LWE (left-wing extremism) districts.  In 2010, there have been minimal incidents of violence, with only two fatalities amongst the police as of September the 13^th. Interestingly, all three, Munna Singh Thakur, Pankaj Gupta and the then SP Rajesh Pradhan, were transferred out in 2009 itself.

‘The police had not followed basic standard operating procedures in 2009, they kept going out in small numbers and made mistakes. The incidents were self-created.’ Said a local journalist in Gadchiroli, ‘Munna Thakur with his signature of carrying two rifles, was useful, quite dynamic, if he was told to rescue one police party, even as he is engaged in another area, he would.’

‘A particular incident took place where a police party was stranded in the jungle, and their commanding officer was too circumspect to move, believing they’d be ambushed if they did. Munna Thakur, dutifully, would be sent to rescue the party. And yes, mission accomplished. No casualties.’

‘There were many incidents like this where I was involved,’ Said Munna Singh Thakur, now posted in Nagpur, ‘I once had to rescue a jawaan who lost his hand at 12 in the night.’

‘But I got tired of all of it.’ He says, ‘I had to take note of my family, my children are older now and the risks I took, affected them. I have been wounded, my jawaans were killed.’

‘I got tired.’

The village of Paverval

Advocate Anil Kale, of the Indian Association of Peoples Lawyers was sent a message through the Jailer of Chandrapur jail, by one of his clients in jail. The message was about a young girl who had just arrived in prison. In violation of the Juvenile Justice Act, a child who was proved to have been born on the 20^th of March, 1996, was sent to prison after being arrested by the police in the village of Paverval on the 4^th of March, 2009. She was just shy of her thirteenth birthday.

‘My client had also told me that the girl claimed she was raped by the police.’ Said Advocate Kale.

The girl would eventually be released on bail after she was produced before the Juvenile Justice Board. She had been booked under sections 307 (attempt to murder), 143, 147, 148, 149 of IPC and section 3, 25 of the Arms Act.

Payal (name changed) had been visiting her sister in the village of Paverval when the police had raided the village on the 4^th of March, 2009. An unidentified man had run past her sister’s home at the edge of the village as the police gave chase. Gunshots were heard, and the police returned to the house without the man, and started to beat villagers, including Payal’s brother-in-law Kaju Potawe insinuating that they were helping the ‘Naxalites.’

The police would spend the night in Paverval village, with eight villagers, including Payal detained in the home of Dayaram Jangi. At some time in the morning, Payal was raped repeatedly. One of her alleged rapists was none other than Munna Singh Thakur.

Eventually, all of them were flown out by helicopter.

‘She gave us graphic details, these were not things a thirteen year old should know.’ Said a civil rights activist from the Committee Against Violence on Women who was involved in the fact-finding team that would take Payal to the police and register her complaint.

‘Payal did not use the word rape.’ Mentions the fact-finding report, ‘She used the word “badmash kaam”. Payal said that her breasts and her entire body were pressed. Then, that portion of the male body from which urine is passed was pushed into that part of her body from which she urinates. The first person who raped her told her that he was Munna Singh Thakur, and that she must have heard of him. Payal said that she was in great pain, and after sometime she fainted. She gained consciousness when the police were splashing water on her.’

‘The investigation into the rape was initially lukewarm,’ Said Advocate Kale, ‘We even took the girl and the family to meet the Superintendent of Police, but he stuck with his man. Eventually, they had an inquiry and he was transferred.’

‘At night, the DSP had asked us about where we’d be sleeping. They knew we’d be sleeping at the guest house. And over there, the girl identified Munna Thakur, loitering around the guest house.’

‘All those allegations are just the work of Naxals.’ Said Munna Singh Thakur in Nagpur, ‘There were 60-70 of us there, and we encountered that girl, and put her on a helicopter and took her. Nothing else.’

Yet that is not the only cause of anger against Munna Singh Thakur.

‘Munna Singh Thakur should be hanged.’ Says  Manik Jangi of Paverval village. His own son Ramse Jangi was shot dead by a police-party lead by Munna Singh Thakur in 2006, and at the same time, another son is the only one in the village who has studied past his 11^th grade.

Post-Script

A memorial room for policeman slain in Naxal-related violence in Gadchiroli police station. The earliest dated portrait was of Lalbabu Singh of the State Reserve Police Force who was killed in 1988.

Maoist grafitti on the road to Bhamragad commemorates two fallen Maoists, Mangesh and Ravi.

Mixed Fortunes: Manik Jhangi of Paverval village, Gadchiroli district, lost one son to the police in 2006. Another son is the first boy in his village who has passed his 10th standard.

Family Matters

In Bastar, the un-sanitized war is brutal, unforgiving and uncompromising. And it’s impact on families has been specifically devastating. Battles aren’t just fought in the jungles – this a war where villages are the battlefields, homes are the trenches and your family is a weapon and a target.

This article appears in The New Indian Express on the 14th of August, 2010.

The day after a combing operation in Dantewada.

Kosa Mangli was a Special Police Officer from the village of Hirapur in Bijapur District of Chhattisgarh. The Maoists killed her father Mangoo with an axe soon after she became an SPO during the first few months of the Salwa Judum. They then threw his body a kilometre from the police station where she was posted. A year later, they killed her mother Lakhi too. Kosa is no longer a SPO. She was taken into the regular police.

Such incidents are not isolated, nor are families of combatants, only a target to the Maoists.

Padmakka w/o Balakrishna, resident of Ramnagar, Hyderabad was arrested in August 2007 in Bijapur, Chhattisgarh and was booked under section 302, 149 of the IPC, and 27 (1) of the Arms Act. No evidence was produced against her and she was acquitted of all charges on the 10^th of August 2009, and the Bilaspur High Court had ordered her to be released from Central Jail, Raipur.

She then disappeared from custody.

Her lawyer would wait the whole of 11^th August for her and the jail authorities claimed she was released on the 12^th of August, 2009. He would file a Writ Petition (Habeas Corpus) against the State of Chhattisgarh, fearing for her life, and demanding she be produced.

But in reality, two days after she was acquitted of all charges, she was re-arrested from Central Jail, Raipur, and booked under section 147, 148, 307 of the IPC, and section 25 and 27 of the Arms Act, and remanded to judicial custody.

Padma w/o Balakrishna, was now identified as Padma w/o Rajana, a resident of Bhopalpatnam, Bijapur, who was shot dead in an encounter on the 15^th of October, 2006, in the Ballampalli forest. Padma w/o Rajana was a Mangi squad commander and was a known Maoist, and a warrant for her arrest was issued on the 4^th of October, 2001 by the Chief Judicial Magistrate A.S. Chandel and was executed by ASI Ravindra Yadav on the 12^th of August, 2009, when he arrested the recently-acquitted Padma w/o Balakrishna from Central Jail, Raipur.

On the 20^th of August, Padma had gone on a hunger strike in prison, to demand her rights to inform her advocate and her family of her situation. She also demanded to write a letter to the magistrate who remanded her. She was granted those rights, and continued to languish in prison on a case against a long-dead Padma.

Later on the 10^th of March, 2010, her new court date drew nearer. Yet Padma w/o Balakrishna, was not produced in court, as ‘the authorities said there was no escort’, according to her lawyer V.V Balakrishna, who was carrying evidence of the death of Padma w/o Rajana – the testimony of her son and husband, their photos in telegu dailies speaking about their Maoist-mother. But it didn’t matter, two more Padma ‘cases’ were now attached to Padma w/o Balakrishna.

And why all of this? Was this just a simple case of mistaken identity? No – Her husband Balakrishna AKA Bhasker Rao is a known Maoist and the member of the Andhra-Orissa Border Committee.

Treatment meted out to family members of known-Maoists has had a long history in the Red Corridor, especially in Andhra Pradesh. Padma being just another instance in the abuse of a legal system that neither protects one’s rights nor does it establish any Rule Of Law, as instances such as these give the Maoists arguments to challenge the legitimacy of the Indian state.

And you don’t need the mainstream media to tell a Maoist-husband how his wife is kept in jails. Even then, every instance of state terror, they use frequently and vocally, to justify counter-violence.

Senior Maoist leader Ramanna, one of the masterminds of the Tadmetla encounter, in a recent telephone interview with Tehelka magazine had stated, ‘The security forces are now torturing and raping innocent tribal women and girls.’ (Referring to the recent allegations of rape committed by the security personnel in the villages around Chintalnar.)

‘I know most of them (the forces) are from poor families.’ He had continued, ‘Some of them are also tribals. But that is no excuse for atrocities they are inflicting on women and girls. We will conduct a similar ambush like the one we did at Chintalnar and Chintagufa and teach them a lesson ’

And to avenge rapes allegedly committed in Dantewada district, 27 jawaans die in Narayanpur District on the very day Ramanna had issued his statement.

This brutality and intensity of blind terror shows no sign of subsiding.

‘I may have never seen combat, but this, this is as bad as it could get.’  Said Head constable R. N. Bhairagi of Maharani Hospital in Jagdalpur, ‘It just keeps getting worst.’

Over the last few months, every other wounded, dismembered and dying jawaan from Narayanpur, Dantewada to Bijapur District, would arrive at his hospital; the closest to the theatre of war. And there hasn’t been just one or two wounded men, who’ve stepped on landmines, or had their faces and limbs blown off whose last moments he has witnessed. 76 killed. 8 killed. 31 killed. 26 killed. That’s just been since April.

Of course, this brutality that shatters families, creates widows and leaves fathers and mothers without their sons, has been around for years and is an everyday part of life for the adivasis, especially since the fratricidal Salwa Judum-Maoist terror campaign turned friends and families apart.

‘Woh, mera bhai lakta hai,’ (He’s like a brother to me), said M, from X village in the ‘liberated-zones’, about one of the leaders of the Salwa Judum in Konta – Soyam Mukha.

‘How?’

‘We studied together.’

‘Do the dadas (the Maoists) know about this relationship?’

‘If they did, I’d never be able to live at home.’

Today, apart from the dreaded ‘encounters’, the adivasis are frequently subjected to beatings, interrogation and as they are released there itself, it is seldom reported. During combing operations, forces often interrogate villagers (out of procedure), beat, threaten, and force them to act as guides through the jungle (out of need).

To state the obvious that is not obvious anymore: one doesn’t seem to notice that these aren’t criminals we’ve gone to war against, these are families. These are people living to face a brutal police force with their mothers and grandmothers, daughters and infant sons. Farmers who till their land, parents who work to feed their children. Maoists themselves often constitute of husband and wife squad members, often eventually widowed to be then driven by more blind vengeance. Many who’ve gone underground even leave behind families, who’re constantly under surveillance and aware that every phone call and meeting place could mean a death-trap.

‘She made her choice, as a Gandhian I may disagree with her views, but I have to accept her.’ Says K, a husband of a Maoist, long underground who he hasn’t even seen in more than a year.

Adivasis, of course are all suspected Maoists, by a simple twist of fate, a weird matter of geography – you just happen to be living for centuries on the highest-value iron ore and the Maoists come and visit you once in a while, and refer to your village as a ‘liberated zone’.

‘The forces need to go comb further in the jungles,’ Said, Ajay Singh, a Salwa Judum leader from Bairamgarh in Bijapur district of Chhattisgarh in March of 2009.

He was complaining that the government had abandoned the Salwa Judum and the police didn’t conduct their operations properly. But someone took his advice, and combing operations took place in September and October, 2009, further in the interior villages or the ‘liberated zones’ of Gompad, Nukaltong, Velpocha, Gacchanpalli, Pallecharma, Gattpad, Tatemargu, Pallodi, where numerous reports of innocent civilians being killed surfaced in the media.

For instance, as reported by the New Indian Express in November 2009, 18 month old Kattam Suresh of Gompad, lost three of his fingers, his 20 year old mother, his eight year old aunt, and both his maternal grandparents when the forces raided their village in the first week of October 2009. And as of now, he was last seen detained in Konta Police station along with his father on the 14^th of January, 2010.

‘The DGP is not listening….The point is when you are given an assignment the first thing you need to do is become a part of the solution. The illegal killings have contributed to the problem. So if you are party to it then you become a part of the problem,’ CRPF Special-Director General Vijay Raman had told The Week magazine a few days ago.

The Director-General hadn’t mentioned where these ‘illegal killings’ took place. But do families permit a ‘legal’ killing of their loved ones?

Sadly, what should be the last option (an escalation of fratricidal violence), is the first opted by the government, and the Maoists themselves have shown no restraint.

Post-Script- Family Album

Ajay Singh, a Salwa Judum leader with his daughter.

Kottacheru: A Short History Of Violence

This article appears in The New Indian Express on the 27th of June, 2010.

Kottacheru is a village in pieces. There are fragments of it across the countryside – the anonymous, forgotten, cursed Muria people of Kottacheru can be found everywhere but at Kottacheru. It was a village born just 25 years ago when the adivasis from Nagaras migrated there to cultivate land. Then came the war.

‘It all started with Pandu.’ Laments Aitu (name changed), a refugee from Kottacheru in Khammam district, Andhra Pradesh. A few years before the Salwa Judum, Vanjam Pandu s/o of Maala (23) was a wanted man by the Maoists. They told him they would kill him for some alleged corrupt dealings and he fled his village of Kottacheru and built a shack right in front of the police station at Gadiras, far up north, hoping that he would be safe.

Eventually, he would be apprehended by the Maoists, then brought before the other villagers of Kottacheru and tied up. After a summary ‘jan adalat’, the Maoists slit his throat.

A while later, his good friend and Sarpanch of Kottacheru, Kovasi Bhime s/o of Idma was killed by the Maoists.

Then there was the infamous Oonga Madkam case. Oonga Madkam (35) s/o Madkam Admaaih was assassinated by the Maoists in 2004. He was travelling by motorcycle between Chetti and Konta – the bordertowns of Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. He was approached by four assailants on two motorcycles. Then shot in the head. And after he collapsed on the ground, one of the assailants crushed his head with a small boulder. The assailants, young adivasi youth, then shouted ‘Laal salaam! Laal salaam!’ repeatedly and disappeared.

Oonga Madkam left behind four wives, one daughter, seven sons and an unknown number of mistresses. He was also a ‘Janpath Adishak’, who the Maoists also killed for alleged corruption. The current leaders of the Salwa Judum in Konta had close ties to Oonga Madkam.

Then in 2006, the village of Kottacheru was attacked by the Salwa Judum and five persons, Madkam Deva s/o Bhima, Madkam Admaiah s/o Maasa, Madkam Admaiah s/o Linga, Madvi Deva and his father Madvi Bhudra were killed.

Madkam Admaiah s/o Linga was killed by the Salwa Judum as he tried to save his house from burning down. He was the father of the same Oonga Madkam whose head was smashed in by the Maoists at Konta.

Then on the 6^th of February, 2006, the Maoists killed nine personnel of the Naga Battalion with the use of an IED near the village of Kottacheru.

And it still doesn’t end there.

‘Nine of our people were killed in our village,’ Said Maala (name changed), another IDP from Kottacheru. But when I asked him for the names of the killed, he only gave me five names – the five people who were killed by the Salwa Judum. Then another woman, reservedly gave me the name of ‘Kovasi Dhoole,’ a young woman who was coming home to Kottacheru. And she wasn’t clear about how she died.

‘Did she die when the Salwa Judum raided the village?’ I had asked.

‘No.’

‘Did the Maoists kill her?’

She was quiet.

Eventually, over the course of six months, after interviewing over 14 villagers of Kottacheru in three different locations in Khammam district, including Kovasi Dhoole’s sister, I managed to piece together the story of Kovasi Dhoole and the story of Kottacheru.

In 2007, Kovasi Dhoole was a young woman on her way from Nagaras to her village of Kottacheru. She was stopped at Errabor police station and allegedly detained against her will. She only reappeared two months later, as a SPO, married to another SPO, a ‘turrka’ or Muslim, according to the rest of the villagers of Kottacheru. They also alleged that she was forced to become a SPO, and there was no ‘consent’ in the marriage.

A while later, on the 9^th of July, 2007, a combing operation was ambushed near the village of Gaganpalli by the Maoists. 25 security personnel were killed via the use of IEDs placed in the trees and small arms fire. The security personnel retreated out of the jungle and it would take them three whole days to recover the bodies of their fallen comrades. Kovasi Dhoole was one of the injured who was abandoned to the Maoists who found her bullet-ridden body. She was still conscious and breathing. Yet there was no mercy killing. For some reason, the Maoists took her injured body and left it at the road, hoping someone would take her to the hospital.

No one did.

Kovasi Dhoole from the village of Kottacheru, bled to death.

This is the short story of violence in the village of Kottacheru. Now what about the even shorter story of justice for the villagers of Kottacheru?

The National Human Rights Commission’s Enquiry Team held a public hearing at Cherla, Andhra Pradesh in 2008 with a few villagers from Kottacheru where they had alleged that their homes were burnt down and looted by the Salwa Judum, and they had given three names of people who were killed by the Salwa Judum and the security forces.

The NHRC team then visited Kottacheru, found the village partially destroyed and completely abandoned. It also could not find any villagers from Kottacheru in any of the Salwa Judum Camps. Thus, they could not ascertain as to who was responsible for the burnings, killings and lootings.

Thus, ends the story of justice for the villagers of Kottacheru. Now what about the shortest story of storytelling for the villagers of Kottacheru?

Anthropologist Nandini Sundar who started to realize the extent of terror and violence unleashed by the Salwa Judum in 2005 had gone to the editors of most prominent mainstream publications and channels and passed on report after report of burnings, lootings, killings and rapes that were taking place in Dantewada and Bijapur District.

‘They just couldn’t believe it was happening.’ She responds, ‘It is a bit unbelievable. The extent of violence.’

Six years after the Salwa Judum, a hundred Kottacherus later, things still remain invisible to the mainstream media. Instead about talking about forest rights, land rights, agricultural development, malnutrition, exploitation, hunger, drought, child labour, dispossession, displacement, rehabilitation, they talk about the Maoists. Instead of attempting to understand what is really causing the violence, they’re asking about the army. And what is the army really going to do?

Besides create a thousand more Kottacherus?

Rape As A Weapon Of War

This article appears in The New Indian Express on the 11th of June, 2010.

On the 21^st of September, 2007, the adivasi gangrape victims of Vakapalli, Andhra Pradesh, declared in a memorandum to the Sub-Collector of Paderu. “We, the Adivasi women of Vakapalli village who have been raped, wish to place before you the reasons why we have decided to go on an indefinite fast…

On 20-08-2007, Greyhounds police (21 in number) raided our village Vakapalli and raped 11 women. We have brought this brutal and terrible act of the police to the notice of not just the government and the judiciary but everyone we could reach out to. We asked that justice be done to us. When an incident like this takes place, the government should respond and take steps to ensure that the accused are punished. It must stand by the victims and give them protection. Over a month has passed since we were raped. A criminal case was registered but not a single accused has been arrested so far. On top of it, they are trying to make out that nothing has at all happened.”

“Are we not citizens of this country? Will these laws and courts not do us justice? Can they not protect us? Will they only side with the police? In that case, at least take action under international laws if any. In case there are no such laws, then do us justice as per principles of natural justice.

If this system fails to give us justice and security, we, who are helpless, refuse to remain so. We are ready to even sacrifice our lives so that such brutality is not visited upon us and those like us ever again. We therefore, humbly state that we have decided to sit on an indefinite fast.”

On the 22^nd of May, 2010, over two and a half years after the incident at Vakapalli in Andhra Pradesh, three adivasi women of village Mukram near Chintalnar, Chhattisgarh, allege to have been raped by members of the security forces. And it has been over just a month after 76 jawaans were killed by the Maoists near Chintalnar. Initial reports alleged that 10 women were raped around Chintalnar over the last few days but owing to a virtual police blockade, all reports couldn’t be entirely verified.

These are not isolated cases. Four women claimed to have been raped under similar circumstances in the village of Samsetti, Dantewada by SPOs in 2006. Five women from the village of Potenar allege to have been raped in the Jangla Camp in 2005. Two women were raped by the Salwa Judum and SPOs in Lingagiri in 2006. One woman alleged to have been gangraped in Konta police station. Three woman claimed to have been gangraped at Tatemargu in November 2009 during a combing operation.

The list is endless. And not even once were the First Information Reports ever registered by the police. Only five girls from Potenaar had testified to the National Human Rights Commission’s Enquiry Team on the 10^th of June 2008 but the team (comprising out of fifteen police persons out of sixteen) inferred that the allegations could not be substantiated.

‘During the enquiry it was observed that there were many inconsistencies in the versions of alleged victims, in the petitions given by them, as well as in the statements of the alleged victims. These inconsistencies were with regard to the number of victims raped, number of SPOs who took them away from the camp, number of SPOs who actually committed the act and their identity, and the accompanying circumstances.’ – As mentioned in the NHRC report.

Yet nowhere did the NHRC report mention that rape didn’t take place. And it ‘recommended that a further enquiry may be conducted by an independent agency.’ Nothing happened after that. The Writ Petitions that had challenged the legality of the Salwa Judum had alleged a total of over 99 cases of rape, and the NHRC Enquiry Team that was appointed to investigate into these allegations by the Apex Court, only spoke to five of the victims who were not even mentioned in the petition. Then of course, the NHRC team investigated only another allegation of rape at the village of Polampalli.

At Pollampalli, two women were allegedly raped and murdered but the NHRC report states, ‘The names of Bhusaki Bandi and Selam Bhima could not be identified as from this village. However, the villagers denied any incidence of rape in their village.’

Of course, the NHRC Team visited the wrong Pollampalli. There are two Pollampallis in Bastar, one in Usur Block and another in Konta Block.

The fact remains, rape is a part of everyday life for the adivasi women of Bastar, and according to many independent observers it is used as a Weapon of War.

Rape as a weapon of war, was recognized by the United Nations Security Council in 2008, ‘as a tactic of war to humiliate, dominate, instil fear in, disperse and/or forcibly relocate civilian members of a community or ethnic group.” In the Red Corridor, the predominately non-tribal police force looks at the predominately tribal Maoists as an distinctive group. There is a definite sense of racism and collective punishment. The three girls who were raped at Mukram on the 22^nd of May, were accused of being ‘Maoist supporters’ and were alleged to have helped in the ‘Chintalnar attack on the CRPF’.

The police have often claimed all of these allegations of rape as baseless and the Maoists motivate women to make such claims to undermine the morale and legitimacy of the police. As it is, in many cases, owing to the stigma related to rape, as well as further threat to their lives, the victims never come forward. It took the women of Samsetti three years to even come forward and even then the police didn’t lodge their FIRs. They would eventually harass the women, detain them, and beat them after they lodged a case against them in the  JMFC in Konta.

The Maoists are not beyond rape either even though they don’t use it as a weapon of war.

I get a chuckle from the adivasis from Konta every time I ask about a particular Area Commander called Comrade Naveen. His real name is Sodhi Gangaya and he hailed from the village of Curreygudem in Konta block, deep within their ‘liberated zones’. When I ask villagers about Sodhi Gangaya, I get a blank stare, but when I say Comrade Naveen, they chuckle indignantly.

Comrade Naveen had raped a girl in the village of Curreygudem in 2008. When I asked the villagers of Curreygudem if they had ever complained to anyone about it they responded, ‘hum itne bade aadmi ke bare mein aesa kaise bol sakte hai…’ (how can we say such a thing about such a big man?)

Eventually, a relative of the girl complained to a senior Maoist and Comrade Naveen disappeared from the forest. Of course, it didn’t end there. Comrade Naveen left the party and eventually became SPO Sodhi Gangaya.

He was recognized by the villagers of Tatemargu on the 9^th of November, 2009, as one of the guides for the police contingent that raided their village where over 60 buildings would be burnt down, seven villagers would be killed, and three women would be allegedly raped.

How many Comrade Naveens exist amidst the Maoists, can count as just as many SPO Sodhi Gangayas there are amongst the police. But how many more Vakapallis will there be?

“If this system fails to give us justice and security, we, who are helpless, refuse to remain so. We are ready to even sacrifice our lives so that such brutality is not visited upon us and those like us ever again.”

Yes, Minister, My Sympathies

The parents of 19 year-old Channu Mandavi waiting for the police to release the body of their son. Channu Mandavi was shot dead in an encounter as an alleged Maoist in 2009.

This Op-ed appears in The New Indian Express on the 13th of May, 2010.

Sympathy • noun (pl. sympathies) 1 feelings of pity and sorrow for someone else’s misfortune. 2 understanding between people; common feeling.3 support for or approval of something. 4 (in sympathy) relating harmoniously to something else; in keeping. 5 the state or fact of responding in a way corresponding to an action elsewhere.

— ORIGIN Greek sumpatheia, from sun- ‘with’ + pathos ‘feeling’.

Mahasweta Devi challenged Chidambaram to put her in jail for 10 years, in response to the centre’s newly found enthusiasm for using the UAPA to arrest so-called Maoists sympathizers. As of now, I truly sympathize with the home minister for being humiliated by a gutsy 84 year-old woman.

Yet sympathy is a thought-crime thanks to the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, and accordingly, ‘any person who commits the offence of supporting such a terrorist organization with inter alia intention to further the activities of such terrorist organizations would be liable to be punished with imprisonment for a term not exceeding ten years or with fine or with both.’

I like to place some emphasis on ‘intention to further the activities’ of the Maoists. Since we have brought public debate on Operation Green Hunt down to the ludicrous and the farcical, I’d like to ask one question: who has really furthered the activities of the Maoist any more than the exploitive economic policies of the state and their counter-insurgency tactics? I mean, what’s more useful to the Maoists, a Writ Petition filed by activists for the adivasis, or the state’s security apparatus that terrorizes the population on mere suspicion and suppresses dissent and civil society?

Maoist sympathizers, or supporters, according to the state, are simply anyone who stands up for the rights of the adivasi. Not long ago in the Supreme Court, an accusation was hurled at just-another-activist who was fighting for the rights of the adivasi, for being a Maoist supporter. The response by the judges was fitting. ‘Suppose somebody fights their (victims) case, so what does that imply? First you say they are Naxals, then you say they are sympathisers, then you say they are sympathisers of sympathisers… Why all these innuendos?’

‘Sympathy is fighting for their cause (victims). Nobody is advocating their cause. They are not saying their action should be condoned.’

And who is really advocating the Maoist cause? Anyone with even half a brain would know that even if the Maoists do capture state power, we’d merely be dealing with a whole bunch of clowns, who’d merely shoot the students at JNU, if there was even a single squeak of dissent.

And unfortunately I need to have yet another fashionable pot-shot at Mr. Chidambaram whose policies are single-handedly the greatest support for the Maoists to help ‘further their activities’. First, let’s start with the Salwa Judum, that was given unbridled freedom to do as it pleases – burn, rape, loot and murder in every place that was known to have a strong Maoist presence, and the Maoists had the last laugh – as recruitment was an all-time high. How much did the Salwa Judum help to ‘further the activities’ of the Maoists? Does the centre now know that the Salwa Judum had even burnt down villages that had no Maoist links? And killed people who had no grudge against the state?

That the same misguided counterinsurgency rationale is being used again with Operation Green Hunt, is indicative enough that the centre learnt nothing from the terrible experiment that was the Salwa Judum. COBRA battalions that are directly under the Union government have been singlehandedly responsible for a majority of adivasi deaths since September of last year.

Counterinsurgency isn’t really an exact science – it’s a methodology of killing, of keeping kill-ratios, of area domination. It’s really measured by ‘who is more effective to terrorize the local population’ – the insurgents or the state? And both the state and the Maoists are trapped in their own contradictions, they exist violently for the other is – the brutal killing of alleged informants by the Maoists as a deterrence, follows the same logic of the state that brutally cracks down on the local adivasi population that it considers ‘supporters’.

‘Agar woh Maovadi the ya nahi, woh unke supporter toh the.’ (whether they were Maoists or not, they were definitely their supporters)’, Said a forest official to me about the Singaram massacre of 2009, when 19 tribals were killed.

We know the home minister believes that the state has a philosophical right to violence, yet so does the right to fight back that is very easily propagated to the Adivasis of Dandakaranya. And the Maoist version of the truth, is truth to the adivasi who has no other option.

It’s almost impossible not to sympathize (emotionally) with everyone in such terrifying consequences.

‘Naxali hai bimari, hum hai dhulayi.’ Said an inspector to me at Kirandul, during a ‘casual chat’ outside the police station. We were all waiting for the police to release the body of a 19 year-old adivasi boy to his parents.

Adivasi women don’t weep – they cry in song, a rhythm of grief, and Channu’s mother ‘sung’ continuously for over two hours outside the police station. Fifteen feet beyond barbwire, an autopsy was being conducted on her son, in the open, shielded from the eyes of the passing world, by blue tarpaulin sheets. She sung across barbwire until two SPOs with masked faces yelled at her to get lost. That if she wants to cry for her son, she shouldn’t do it in front of the police station.

Meanwhile, the inspector would tell me his own version of ‘1084 ki Ma’. There was yet another encounter in Bastar and an old frail woman had come to the police station all the way from Andhra Pradesh to claim the body of her son.

After putting her son onto the bullock-cart, she stoically, turned towards the inspector and told him that this was her second son who was a Maoist, who was killed in an encounter.

The callous inspector had sympathized.

Development for Dummies

This article appears in two parts in The New Indian Express on the 25th of April, 2010, here. And here.

Just as the NMDC mines are in Kirandul at Kuakonda block, a few kilometres away, the house of Bhima Mandavi in Badepalli was burnt down along with all of its produce in 2009 and 2006. Since the inception of the Salwa Judum in 2005, all healthcare services, schools and angaanbadi services were discontinued in his village.

‘I have always believed India is destined to emerge as an important industrial power. It is only through rapid industrialization that we can find meaningful solutions to the problems of mass unemployment and underdevelopment. Of course, considering that nearly 70% of our population lives in rural areas, we have to lay adequate emphasis on increasing agricultural output and agricultural productivity. Yet, since the per capita availability of land is less than 1.5 hectares, there are severe limitations to expanding employment opportunities in agriculture on a large scale. Therefore, we have to find ways and means to accelerate the process of industrialization and also to ensure that this process is sufficiently labour intensive.’ – Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on the 1^st of May, International Labour day, 2007 in an inaugural speech for the Institute for Studies in Industrial Development.

 Young labour at work on a road in Dantewada, 2009.

We, the forest people of the world – living in the woods, surviving on the fruits and crops, farming on the jhoom land, re-cultivating the forest land, roaming around with our herds – have occupied this land since ages. We announce loudly, in unity and solidarity, that let there be no doubt on the future: we are the forests, and the forests are us, and our existence is mutually dependent. The crisis faced by our forests and environment today will only intensify without us. – from the Dehradun Declaration of June 2009, by the National Forum for Forest People’s and Forest Workers.

The villagers of Hiroli waiting outside Kirandul police station for the body of Channu Mandavi who was killed in an encounter on the 12th of April, 2009.

Lingaram Kodopi from the village of Sameli, of Kuakonda block of Dantewada district, as previously reported was locked up in the toilet in the police station for over forty days and forced to become an SPO. Through the help of activists and the court he was able to free himself, yet the harassment continued until it became impossible for him and his family to live in his village. A few months after he escaped, an encounter had taken place on the 23^rd of January in his village of Sameli where four adivasis were killed. The violence never ends for his people yet this article is not about how his people die, but how they live.

He recently gave a testimony to a packed hall room in Delhi for an Independant People’s Tribunal on land acquisition, resource grab and Operation Green Hunt. He was asked by one of the jurors the billion dollar question – ‘What kind of development do you want? Where do you expect the government to get money for schools, education, etc. if they are not getting revenue from the mines? Do you want development, mines and all, or do you want to stay away from this whole process? How can you oppose the state’s developmental policies and still ask for schools, education, etc? Look at Delhi, don’t you think it is well developed, with superb streets and buildings? Don’t you want your adivasis to live like this, and become lawyers, doctors, etc?’

‘Who wouldn’t want that kind of education, sir?’ Lingaram responded, ‘But development around our state is poor, in fact it is pathetic. The NMDC mines have been there for years and they have not brought development. We don’t want that kind of development where the mines come and everything else is supposed to follow from that supposedly, when it hasn’t with NMDC.’

Lingaram Kodopi isn’t wrong. Taking the National Mineral Development Corporation in Bailadila in Chhattisgarh as an example, below are the details of an RTI query filed with the NMDC regarding one of the most direct so-called benefits of industrial development – employment generation:

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 of 935 + 45 tribals to a conservative 40,000, or alleged 200,000 adivasis 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. If just less than a thousand tribals directly benefit from the mines that have existed in South Bastar for over 30 years, what are the estimated 475,975 adivasis (2001 census) supposed to do?

There is no secret for the adivasis that industrial development is a sham. Yet what about agricultural development?

This land is your land

Lakhmu, from the so-called ‘liberated-zone’ had once asked me what had happened in my village (Mumbai) on November, 2008. He heard a lot about it from the radio and the newspapers that came to his blacked-out, isolated village in the middle of Dantewada. I told him what I knew. I started with the VT station firing – Kasab and his partner gunning down commuters at will. I told him about the killing in the kitchens of the Taj. Lakhmu was appalled. He was horrified with every detail I offered him.

‘How could anyone do that?’ He asked me and I had no answer.

This exchange took place on the 20^th of November 2009. Six days later, the country marked the first year after the Mumbai attacks. Just 9 days ago, Lakhmu’s village of Tatemargu was attacked, and security forces had allegedly killed four people, raped three and burnt down over 60 buildings with all of its produce. All in the name of development – ‘I will wipe out the Naxalites, and then I will bring development.’ Said Union Minister Chidambaram, a while ago.

And I asked Lakhmu, what he thought about development. He said, ‘We’re fine. Just give us a road so we can go to the market, and electricity. Everything else we can fend for ourselves.’

And I could see why. Tatemargu, was described as ‘the number one village in Konta block’ . And it was an agricultural success story. The ultimate irony for me was that I could only assess its success by sifting through its remains. There were homes that lost forty quintals or rice, there were homes that lost a hundred kilograms of corn, mahua and imli, and right there, all of it was ash. There were no noticeable signs of malnutrition amongst the infants, alcohol prohibition was in place, there were vast numbers of livestock, huge homes built with brick and cement, bought by the adivasis from Andhra Pradesh by the cash earned by selling rice.

‘How is there so much rice cultivated here?’ I had asked Lakhmu. And he replied that it is about water. And the village of Tatemargu has access to water – ponds were dug by all the villagers, by the instructions of none other than the Maoists themselves.

So now what about water?

The villages of Dhurli and Bhansi of Dantewada are famous villages by now. 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 have taken place through the people from the Collector’s office, or the Sub-District Magistrate’s office. Mahendra Karma himself would drive down to the villages to convince the villagers to part with their land. Meanwhile, the Maoists 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 for land, aware that money runs out, while a few have asked for shares in the company, tacitly of course.

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. How much water is the steel plant going to be taking from the adivasis then?

‘The entire Sankani river is red,’ Says Mangal Kunjam of the village of Goomiyapal in Dantewada district. The river Sankani runs through Dantewada town, the Bailadila, the NMDC mines, and over thirty villages, ‘I’ve spoken to so many villagers and they all have the same complaints.’ Continues Mangal, ‘Those who depend on the river for fishing, say there are no fish. Those who depend on the river for cultivating their land, say their fields are suffering. This is not development for us.’

‘You’re an educated boy, you’re even going for training to work with the NMDC.’ I had asked Mangal, ‘I’ll still ask you, would you prefer industrial development or agriculture?’

Without hesitation, Mangal replies agriculture and the cruelest tragedy is that this choice is never left to the adivasis. Barring economic policies, MOUs and land acquisition decisions, ever since the Salwa Judum came into being, agriculture has more or less ceased to exist in a majority of villages. The idea of dragging and herding people from their villages into mismanaged state-run camps left the fields empty, left people without any alternative but to choose other professions, to become SPOs, landless labourers in other states, – the choice of agriculture, to till their own land, taken away from them.

‘We get enough from our land to feed us.’ Continued Lingaram Kodopi from Sameli, in Kuakonda. Kuakonda block didn’t suffer as much from the looting and arson of the Salwa Judum and only in 2009 has the violence really intensified in the block. ‘What is development?  NMDC has operated in our area for 52 years but only caused destruction.  Naxals don’t help us, but they don’t hurt us either. If having a company nearby could give us development, then considering that Bailadila (NMDC mines) is 20 kilometres from us and has been there long before the Naxals, then we should have had a lot of development. What is the reason that we still have no education and no hospital? Not one hospital in 52 years. When our people go to Bailadila for treatment, they humiliate us and don’t admit us to their hospitals.’

At the same time, near the Bailadila hills there are 14 extremely high grade iron ore deposits, worth billions yet there are again villages that have never even been surveyed by the government. This pattern shall now repeat itself as the Collector Reena Kangale has recommended 108 villages in Dantewada to be exempted from the census.

An activist once had a story about one of these villages where he met a young boy and asked him, ‘Has the government ever come to your village?’

The boy allegedly replied, ‘Yes, they came twice, once to burn it to the ground, and the other time they raped a woman.’

The story might be apocryphal yet for many villages it isn’t so farfetched. For these villages, it is easy to presume that there is absolutely no healthcare and no education. The same is reserved for villages beyond the Indravati, in Abhujmaad and the same is reserved for villages that once had access to both education and healthcare, but it was withdrawn by the government once the Salwa Judum went into full swing, on the grounds that these villages supported Maoists.

‘What happens in your village when someone falls really sick?’

‘We take them to the hospital in Badrachalam (Andhra Pradesh),’ Replied Lakhmu from Tatemargu, nonchalantly, ‘But sometimes, they just die.’

In 2006, Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), a reputed humanitarian organization that won the Nobel peace prize in 1999, began to work in Bastar, to treat the adivasi victims of the civil war between the Salwa Judum and the Maoists. In 2007, they were accused by the government of Chhattisgarh of providing healthcare to injured Maoists. The government had asked them to restrict their activities to the Salwa Judum camps and not venture into the jungle.

And now as the state of Chhattisgarh has asked for 108 villages in Dantewada to be exempted from the census due to ‘inaccessible terrain’ and ‘prevention by the Maoists’, one wonders how the government can even send it a single paracetamol tablet.

73-74-75-76

Dantewada: Terror and Counter-terror

This Op-ed appears in The New Indian Express on the 7th of April, 2010.

No calls for blood: A crowd gathers around a fact-finding team in the village of Vaingur, after it was raided by the Police on the 20th (?) of April, 2009. There wasn't a single call for vengeance and retribution. No anger. Just desperation. Just who are the Maoists killing for?

‘When the adivasi picks up the gun and becomes a Maoist does he really cease to be a human being? Or just as human as us?’

The killing of 73 security personnel is unprecedented in South Bastar. The previous major attack took place in Ranibodli on the 15^th of March 2006 when the Maoists had attacked a police camp in the dead of night and literally butchered 55 policemen. The word ‘butchered’ would be used as there was no fair fight. The policemen were caught surprised and many of them were too inebriated to fight. By morning, the camp lay in cinders, the bodies mutilated and all the weapons had disappeared. Only three CRPF personnel had survived as they hid in the nearby tribal girl’s hostel. When Maoists inquired if anyone was there, the girls claimed there was no one with them. That was all that saved them – young tribal girls, not their guns.

Tuesday’s attack has taken place in the dead of the jungle during a combing operation at six or seven in the morning. While there have never been so many killed during encounters or ambushes in one incident, history can tell us that Maoists have consistently inflicted casualties on security forces over the last few years.

On the 19^th of July 2009, 29 security personnel including the Superintendent of Police were killed in an ambush in Rajnangaon, Chhattisgarh. In Dantewada itself, 25 security personnel including SPOs were killed via the use of IEDs placed in the trees and small arms fire in Gaganpalli on the 9^th of July 2007. The security personnel retreated out of the jungle and it would take them three whole days to recover the bodies of their fallen comrades.

Around a year ago, on the 10^th of April 2009, 10 security personnel were killed in the forest near Chintagufa. 19 more were wounded, while only three Maoists were killed. The Maoists were soon announcing the attack as revenge for the Singaram massacre when 19 innocent tribals were allegedly killed by the security forces. But it never stops. 12 more policemen were killed in Dhamtari on the 11^th of May, 2009. 12 more were killed when their truck was hit by an IED near Tongpal in Dantewada on the 20^th of June, 2009. The list is almost endless.

Ambushes and IED blasts are routine affairs yet casualties can range from anywhere from 10 to none. At Koyras on the 2^nd of May, 2009, an IED blast followed by gunfire left three CRPF personnel with a few scratches, while an IED blast a few days earlier near Bijapur town had killed three personnel who were traveling by an anti-landmine vehicle.

And the one thing no one (but the security personnel) want to admit, is that the Maoists are a very capable guerilla force and every time the forces enter the jungle, the PLGA or the People’s Liberation Guerilla Army have the upper-hand. Across rough hilly terrain, across thick jungle, over a hundred security personnel tend to move at a snails pace, hoping to avoid IEDs or Maoist ambushes. The Maoists may be barefoot, but they are mobile and hidden and they know the terrain in-and-out. They always have the first shot, hidden deep within the jungle. The security personnel on combing operations can only return fire, or counter-attack, but by the time they’re aware of what’s happening, the PLGA disappears.

How are they going to militarily deal with the Maoists is beyond one’s imagination.

Of course, no one would want to admit that the adivasis gain absolutely nothing from Maoist attacks on police personnel as well. The Maoists would probably refer to the killing of 73 CRPF personnel as a major victory, but would the adivasi care? Does the killing of police personnel stop displacement? Does it protect his home and his village? Will the 700 villages that were burnt down or emptied by the Salwa Judum be rebuilt? Will it bring back the countless adivasis who were killed in fake encounters? No. Every attack that takes place, in whatever part of Dantewada or Bijapur district has only one direct consequence – the counter-terror unleashed onto the local populace. And the Maoists are fools if they believe that they are not responsible for the terror that would be unleashed onto the local population by the state.

I can imagine the numbers 73-74-75-76 repeating themselves, over and over again in the minds of the CRPF soldier manning a machine gun nest, or interrogating Muria men during combing operations. Fear breeds violence. Blood follows blood. Terror and counter-terror.