To: The Government of India,

Members of the Judiciary and All Citizens,

One of the most disastrous consequences of the strife in the tribal areas of central India is that thousands of adivasi men and women remain imprisoned as under-trials, often many years after being arrested, accused of ‘Naxalite/ Maoist’ offences.

The facts speak for themselves.

In Chhattisgarh, over two thousand adivasis are currently in jail, charged with ‘Naxalite/Maoist’ offences. Many have been imprisoned for over two years without trial. In Jharkhand, an even larger number of adivasis, possibly in excess of five thousand, remain imprisoned as under-trials. The situation is similar in many other states of central and eastern India currently affected by armed conflict between the government and adivasi-linked militant movements, namely Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha and West Bengal. The adivasi undertrial population may run into thousands in each of the states. Assessing the true scale of the problem is inherently difficult, given that none of the police or jail administrations are making comprehensive figures public, even after RTI requests have been filed by concerned citizens. This opacity adds to the injustice.

In each of these states, the adivasi under-trials, and particularly those arrested under special security statutes, face grave common handicaps that obstruct their Constitutional right to a fair, speedy trial, to justice.

One, language barriers. The vast majority of adivasi under-trials speak only adivasi languages, such as Gondi and Halbi. However, few if any courts have official interpreters/translators. This leaves the adivasis unable to communicate directly with the Officers of the Court or otherwise effectively make their case.

Two, the failure, in case after case, for evidentiary material, such as captured arms or explosives, to be promptly submitted in court by the security forces when they first produce the detainees before the Magistrate, as the Magistrate can statutorily direct the security forces to do when they level such serious charges. In the absence of prima facie proof, the grave risk of injustice being done to innocent adivasis is self-evident.

Three, procedural barriers relating to ‘Naxalite/Maoist’ and other security offences. Being charged with such offences, the under-trials are not produced in the courts for lengthy periods. Owing to this, the trial does not proceed for years together.

Four, other procedural barriers. Since under-trials charged with’Naxalite/Maoist’ offences are only held in Central Jails, many of them of them are transferred to jails at a great distance from their homes and families. In Chhattisgarh, for instance, nearly one hundred adivasi under-trials from Bastar have been transferred to Durg or Raipur Central Jails, a distance of over 300 kilometers. The great distance, coupled with the poverty of most adivasis, means that families are unable to regularly visit them or provide them with vital emotional support.

Five, the lack of proper legal defence. Lawyers who visit ’Naxal/Maoist’ under-trials in Chhattisgarh are photographed by the authorities and their information listed in a separate register, making lawyers reluctant to visit their clients. In any event, many of the adivasi under-trials are dependent on legal-aid lawyers who rarely go to meet the client or seek instructions regarding the case. Often lawyers are careless in their conduct of cases and are amenable to pressures from the police or prosecution.

In addition to the humanitarian imperative, the prolonged failure to provide speedy and impartial justice to these thousands of adivasi under-trials is damaging the prospects for peace in India’s heartland - by leading adivasis to feel that the Indian government does not treat them as full citizens and by intensifying their generalised sense of alienation. It is telling that in the widely publicised ”Collector abduction” incidents of Chhattisgarh and Odisha, one of the major demands raised by the insurgents was speedy and fair trial for these thousands of jailed adivasis, accused of being Naxalites/Maoists. Yet, virtually none of the efforts belatedly agreed to by the state governments – such as the ‘High-powered Committee for review of the cases of Adivasi undertrials in Chhattisgarh’, set up in mid-2012 under the aegis of Nirmala Buch, the former top IAS officer - have come to fruition or been acted on to any degree by the concerned governments.

More than anything else, the failure to ensure justice for the adivasis is a grave blot on India’s human rights record. Not only are we as a nation committed to democracy and human rights, but our Constitution provides extensive safeguards and rights to the adivasis that are being violated by not ensuring fair and speedy trials for these thousands of adivasi under-trials.

On every count – whether humanitarian or strategic – it is imperative that this prolonged failure to assure our country’s adivasis of speedy, impartial justice be set right immediately.

Justice is in everyone’s interest.

Hence, we the undersigned, a large group of concerned Indians - including adivasi leaders, jurists and lawyers, and public intellectuals – urge the Union Government, the concerned State Governments, and the Supreme Court to undertake to appoint a special Commission of eminent jurists to oversee dedicated fast-track courts that hear these cases speedily and impartially.

Sincerely,

VR Krishna Iyer, Mahasweta Devi, Swami Agnivesh, Nandita Das, Nitin, Desai, GN Devy, Jean Dreze, Gladson Dungdung, Anand Grover, Ramachandra Guha, Girish Karnad, Manish Kunjam, Harsh Mander, Vinod Mehta, Arvind Netam, Rajinder Sachar, BD Sharma, Nandini Sundar, Father Stan Swamy, Tarun Tejpal, Mukti Prakash Tirkey.

So, in July, 2012, after she completed her course, Hembrom, along with two friends — Joy Tudu, 36, an Adivasi social activist in Pakur, Jharkhand, and Luis A Gómes, 46, a Mexican publisher in Kolkata — established Adivaani, a trust that publishes books written by Adivasis. Hembrom looks after the editorial side, Tudu is in charge of marketing and Gómes handles the designing and printing.

Article & photograph courtesy of The Indian Express. Read the full article here

Whose Country is it Anyway? written by Gladson Dungdung is published by Adivaani. See a review of this book by Dr Felix Padel here

Press Release

Date: 26/07/2012

JHRM Condemns the police atrocities on Rights Activists

The Jharkhand Human Rights Movement (JHRM) an alliance partner of the Jharkhand Alliance of Democratic Movements (JADM) condemns the police atrocity on rights activists and protestors during the Jharkhand bandh (blockage) on 25 July, 2012. Needless to say that the Jharkhand Government has been acquiring 227 acre of fertile land of the Adivasis illegally and forcefully at Nagri village near Ranchi for the construction of IIM, IIIT and Law University. The villagers have been protesting against it since several months. They had sat in protest for 125 days, where 3 women died due to hit by the sun stroke but the government didn’t hear their plea. While they approached to the Supreme Court and the Jharkhand High Court, the Courts also denied hearing them. Finally, the villagers are in the street to save their lands. Several organizations and political parties are also supporting them.

On the eve of 25 July, 2012, several organizations had organized Masal Julus and informed the people about bandh. Accordingly, the Bandh started at 8 O’clock on July 25, the bandh supporters started their peaceful protest. They had also requested the police not to arrest them. When the people were protesting in Ranchi peacefully and requesting the people to support their bandh, the police started arresting them, beat them with lathis. The police also slapped, hit and kicked them.

Consequently, human rights activist Mr. Gladson Dungdung got severe injuries in his right leg, left leg and right ear-site. A student Mr.Pritam Tirkey also got severe injury in his right hand and General Secretary of Adivasi-Moolvasi Chatra Sangh Mr. Kamlesh Ram got severe injuries in several parts of his body. He was also beaten severely in the police station after his detention. The police also arrested more than 500 students, men and women who were taking in the peaceful bandh.

The JHRM demands for investigation and legal action against the police personals, who were involved in committing atrocities on the rights activists during the peaceful peace Jharkhand bandh.

With regards
Sunil Minj
Chairman
JHRM, Ranchi.

UPDATE 07/08/2012
Gladson Dungdung has been released on bail.

By Gladson Dungdung

Gladson Dungdung

JharkhandMirror.org

July 23, 2012

On 15 July, 2012, in the afternoon, the weather was cool, the sky was cloudy and it was drizzling. The hundreds of Adivasis of Nagri village entered into the central hall of the Birsa Agriculture University, Ranchi with the single point agenda to get back their agriculture lands, which has been captured by the State with the power of Gun. In fact the Birsa Agriculture University was also built on their land after snatching it from their ancestors. They have been resisting against the forceful and illegal land acquisition because the present government has been attempting to grab rest of their land in the name of growth and development. They are well aware that if they surrender their land in front of the Gun, they’ll become landless, homeless and helpless. Their survival, identity and existence will be  vanished. Therefore, they were there to attend a meeting called off by the “High Power Committee” constituted by the Chief Minister of Jharkhand, Arjun Munda on the basis of an order of the Jharkhand High Court, which states that the Government should resolve the land row of Nagri within a week otherwise; the court will directly deal with the land owners.

Read the full article by clicking the link below:

Is Judiciary Biased Against Adivasis by Gladson Dungdung

Gladson Dungdung is a Human Rights Activist

These reflections are prompted by attending the Gandhi Foundation Award ceremony in the House of Lords of the Gandhi International Peace Award for 2011 to Binayak Sen and Bulu Iman and a seminar given by two very bright graduate students of the University of Kent on the writings and film making of Arundhati Roy. Biographical details on the two recipients can be seen in the Gandhi Foundation Peace Award article on this website and their two acceptance speeches will also be published shortly, so this is no attempt to summarise what they had to say. But it filled me with a real sense of gloom about where India today is heading.

It was very moving to find oneself in the same room as Binayak Sen. It was something of a miracle that he was present at all to receive his prize, only by being let out of prison on bail and having his passport returned at a very late stage. Binayak Sen is a doctor and specialist paediatrician and he began by telling us that surveys on malnutrition, based on body mass indices, show that India is in fact in the grip of famine. Sen’s struggle for civil rights is well known. He ended his talk by telling us the Indian government is currently drawing up legislation in which almost all forms of dissent will now be branded as sedition. Such was the charge brought against him for his own active engagement in the struggle for adivasi rights and one that led to a sentence of life imprisonment.

Bulu Iman delivered a searing indictment against the current economic development of India with its rampant capitalism riding rough shod over the economic and cultural life of the tribal population. He opened up an apocalyptic vision of India’s own economic self destruction. All this ties into the consequences of climate change. None has done more than Bulu Iman to memorialise the remarkable culture of the forest people. We were recently provided with a brilliant photographic record of this culture at an exhibition of photographs by Robert Wallis in the Brunei Gallery at SOAS, conveying a horrifying sense of the threat from the coal-mining and mining of other minerals to the very survival of this culture. Talking to Bulu Iman afterwards he left me with a disturbing sense that, in fact, the battle for survival has been lost. He sees the materials in his Sanskriti Museum, Hazaribagh as time capsules. How can any culture of this fragile kind survive the destruction of its village life, with huge roads ploughing through the forest destroying all in their way? At least a third of the tribal population in the forest areas of eastern and central India have already been dispossessed and driven into urban slums.

Felix Padel, historian of the tribal struggle and vital intermediary between The Gandhi Foundation and the two recipients, endorsed their findings. If anything, he sees the situation as even more dire.

No-one has more vividly described this human catastrophe overwhelming the forest population than Arundhati Roy. I learnt that her imagery always refers back to the holocaust of the partition. Initially, I could see how this imagery would work for the disaster that has struck Kashmir and the horrors of communal violence in Gujerat in 2003 but I was less certain of its relevance to the tribal tragedy. But then it was explained to me that their forced dispossession precisely echoes those images of long lines of migrants on the move during the massive migrations of the partition years.

Has the India of its founding fathers really come to this? Was there some fatal flaw in Nehru’s vision for change, a paternalist concern towards the vulnerable in Indian society that could turn dictatorial? Did that visionary sense of rapid development with its power stations and dams in fact presage the rampant capitalism on view today? It was Nehru himself who laid the foundation stone 5 April 1961 of the Sardar Sarovar, the scheme for some 3000 dams on the River Narmada. The forest people were drawn into a Nehruvian development project. Of course it is tempting to place the blame for the exploitation of the forests on the Raj and its Forest laws of 1878 and it is true that much of its timber was set aside for exploitation- think of the amount of wood needed fort the Indian railways. But the colonial regime did set aside protected areas and sought to shore up the way of life of the forest people. It is also worth recalling that originally these were plains people but driven into the forest by aggressive agrarian castes. But independence seemed to release even great depredation of the tribal economies. In the eight provinces of Bihar that were in 2000 to become the state of  Jharkand, far more mineral wealth was being extracted and exported than development aid was being invested. Did it only need Narisimha Rao’s Congress government’s liberalisation of state controls over the economy in 1993 to release globalisation in all its exploitative greed? For decades India was the world’s most exciting prospect of a developing economy and yet did we foresee Shining India as its outcome? Bulu Imam for one was sceptical if there be any life left in any earlier visionary outlook.

Of course it is distastefully possible to be dismissive of the chances for survival in today’s economic imperatives of such vulnerable communities as the forest peoples. If you adopt a historically determinist approach, then so called primitive or backward communities simply have to give way to `progress’. At best, you offer the communities some share in the profits of the mining revolution. It was argued in that seminar on Arundhati Roy that the newly enriched Indian middle class have no sense that the forest people are worth protecting-they simply stand in the way of the making of wealth. It helps to understand such indifference if we realise the staggering profits that will be made from the mining of minerals in the forests. Maybe the forest people are themselves –or so it is sometimes argued- morally obliged to accept that they have no option but to share this wealth.

But of course there are very strong counter arguments. In the tribal way of life we are given an example of a sustainable economy, one that respects nature, and is just the example of sustainability we need if we are to stave off the disastrous consequences of climate change. Bianca Jagger, inter alia Council of Europe Goodwill Ambassador and Trustee of the Amazon Charitable Trust, in her intervention at the Award ceremony pleaded for new paradigm on development. There has to be a development plan that accommodates the needs of such vulnerable societies. Not everyone knows that Parliament now has an All Party Parliamentary Group for Tribal Peoples. The LibDem MP, Martin Forwood, its founder and Chairman, attended the ceremony. He reminded us of the threat from the Maoists. And clearly there are alternatives models for development than industrial capitalism. More radically, we need to abandon the concept of growth for one of sustainability.

So is there any prospect of checking this invasion of the tribal lands in its track? We have to live in hope. Ilina Sen agreed with me as we said farewell in the corridors of the House of Lords. Without hope we are lost. I do not myself give up hope that the progressive ideals incarnated in the Indian Constitution, the democratic political vision of Nehru, the role of a free press in independent India, have wholly disappeared. At least one Minister of Forests tried to rein in the corporation, Vedanta and delay the mining of bauxite in Chhattisgarh. If the political class are too hand in glove with the capitalists then we have to fall back on dissent from India’s intelligentsia. Aruna Roy, distinguished journalist of the Times of India, put faith in such dissent. Admittedly, if Binayak Sen’s fears over changing the laws on sedition are accurate, then there is a momentous struggle to be waged. Will university students, amongst others, stand up for Civil Rights?

Where does this leave the Gandhians? In an earlier struggle, the Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save the Narmada Movement), under the inspired leadership of Medha Petkar, a Gandhian movement went some way to check the flooding of the river by the dams and the destruction of its riverside tribal culture. And it may well be asked, why did this cultural vandalism not cause as much shock as that of the vandalism of the Babri Masjid mosque in 1992? In 1993 the World Bank withdrew funding, embarrassed by the wonderfully named Monsoon satyagrahas, with Gandhian activists ready to expose themselves to the rising waters, in the practice of jal samparan, sacrifice in water. The whole issue was referred to the Supreme Court. But it has to be acknowledged that in the end it came out on the side of the dam. In its judgement, `it became necessary to harvest the river for the larger good.’ There was to be rather more good fortune in a Gandhian protest against the Maheshwar Hydroelectric Scheme in Madya Pradesh, a protest linked to the NAPM, the National Advancement of People’s Movement, set up in 1996.Yet we were told at the award ceremony when the women of Tamil Nadu protested against a nuclear power station all 5000 were arrested. Has the iron entered the soul in current Indian policy making?

So can a Gandhian protest influence the outcome in the current struggle in eastern and central India? Few people are aware of the scale of the conflict today. Has the freedom of the press been stifled? Are people just indifferent? To deal with the conflict both the police and increasingly the Indian army are heavily engaged. Quite who carries out reprisals against the tribal villages is unclear to me though I was told in the seminar that Hindu communal nationalists are heavily involved. They hold the tribal peoples, who of course lie outside the caste system, in contempt. Many tribals have joined the Maoist led revolt, driven out of their villages, outraged at the violation of their women. But what do the Maoists,or Naxalites as they are alternatively known, want? Have they a vision which in the long run saves the economies of the forest peoples? It does not fit with Marxist notions of economic development. Admittedly Marx, at the end of his life, came to see in such simple communities the very ideal of the communist society he was envisioning. Might today’s Indian Maoists do the same? It seems far more probable that the Maoists see themselves as engaged in a power struggle with the Indian state and have but opportunistically seized on this social unrest. The majority of the forest people find themselves in the crossfire of a civil war between the Indian army and the Maoists. Is there scope for non-violent satyagraha? So Bhikhu Parekh argued for at the end of the Award ceremony. Arundhati Roy feels that up against the violence of the State there is little prospect for a Gandhian solution and wonders if there is a non-violent alternative to the violence of the Maoists. Bulu Iman, a committed Gandhian, is equally pessimistic. In his view a satyagraha can only impact if your opponent has a moral susceptibility to injustice and he feels that such receptivity, one that existed with the likes of a Christian Lord Irwin of the British Raj or a Smuts in South Africa, does not exist in to today’s India. It makes one fear that a committed Gandhian like Binayak Sen may yet be disappointed in his life’s struggle. But again, one must not give up hope.

Eastern and Central India is not the only locale for struggles by tribal people. It also rages in North East India, Kerala, and on every other continent. These are not saintly movements. Up against the threat from globalisation several have retreated into exclusivist and xenophobic autonomous movements .Their political future would be better served were they to seek out more pluralist solutions. Such tribal people are at risk world wide. In the Award ceremony much was made of the role of international capital, the City of London, host to most of the Corporations financing the mining of tribal areas, a particular villain. The threat to the forest economies is clearly a part of globalisation. The tribal people stand in its way. Their communitarian values and ideals of a sustainable economy may yet be the inspiration to save us all from the consequences of unchecked growth. Their struggle is one that concerns us all.

 Antony Copley
Honorary Senior Research Fellow, University of Kent and Trustee of The Gandhi Foundation

Books consulted, Alf Gunvald Nilsen Dispossession and Resistance in India : The river and the rage Routledge 2010, Ed Daniel J Rycoft and Sangeeta Dasgupta The Politics of Belonging in India: Becoming Adivasi Routledge 2011,Arundhati Roy Broken Republic Hamish Hamilton 2011

Gladson Dungdung

Gladson’s Burden

By Mallika Sarabhai

The Week, 20th April 2012

Gladson is an Adivasi living in the war-torn Jharkhand. When he was a year old, his family—farmers owning 20 acres of fertile land—became homeless. Their ancestral land disappeared when a dam was built on the Chinda river. As compensation, the family was paid∃11,000. When their neighbours and they protested they were sent to Hazaribagh Jail. Could a family of six ensure food, education, housing and health care for their entire life with ∃11,000? They headed for the forests. They bought a small piece of land, tilled it, collected forest produce and tried to make a go of it. There was no way of recovering the prosperity they had enjoyed, but with the additional income from their livestock, they got by.

Read the full article at:

http://week.manoramaonline.com/cgi-bin/MMOnline.dll/portal/ep/theWeekContent.do?tabId=13&programId=1073755417&BV_ID=@@@&categoryId=-1073908161&contentId=11441975

Gladson Dungdung

Who am I?

An emerging human rights organization of Jharkhand, the “Jharkhand Human Rights Movement” has released the first “Jharkhand Human Rights Report 2001-2011”, which was welcomed from all corners of the society. However, I was just checking to know the reason of absence of some Human Rights Activists in the report release ceremony held in Ranchi on March 10, 2012. While responding my queries, one of the noted Human Rights Activists of Jharkhand told me, “You have written a lot against us in the report”? I was stunned to hear such unexpected view, but repeatedly questioned him, “What do you mean by “us”? He responded me saying that he cannot tell me everything over the phone but he’ll talk to me later.

Indeed, he was quite upset and angry with me. He was upset with a chapter in the report entitled “Naxalism and Human Rights violation”. Perhaps, he associates himself with the Naxal Movement, which is, of course, not wrong. But often, I hear him justifying the killings by the Naxals. In the last year, when I had raised the questions against brutal killing of innocent people by the Naxals through the media, he had told me, “I don’t expect such things from you”. The relevant question here to be asked is should a Human Rights Activist be biased for anyone? How can a Human Rights Activist justify the killings? And can a human rights activist shield the perpetrators like the state does? Ironically, this activist used to hold a big position in the Indian based internationally known civil rights organization.

I recall that the same Human Rights Activist and his companions had clapped for me and my team, when the Jharkhand Human Rights Movement (JHRM) had intervened and exposed the rampant human rights violation committed by the security forces in the Saranda Forest last year. Consequently, the Security Forces were bound to vacate 25 villages and schools. In fact, I had become a champion of the civil rights for them that time. However, the Jharkhand Human Rights Report, which has created ripple impact in the state, made me villain in the eyes of those Human Rights Activists now. What a contradiction, paradox and tragedy!

Similarly, a few years back, when I came into the limelight through the Human Rights Activism, I was coined as an anti-national by the so-called patriots. A few youth had even ruthlessly questioned me whether I get money from Pakistan, Nepal or China for speaking against the Indian State? They had even attempted to coin me as a Maoists sympathizer and supporter. And when I intensified my interventions on the issues of gross human rights violation committed by the security forces in the name of cleansing the Maoists in the Red Corridor, some of them even told me that I’m an over ground Maoist and a Maoist Ideologue as well.

The story does not end here. The Law Enforcement Agencies have also been attempted to coin me as the working force of the Maoists. When I intervened on the issue of rampant human rights violation in Saranda Forest by the security forces, the Deputy Inspector General of Police (Kolhan) Naveen Kumar said that the Jharkhand Human Rights Movement is an outfit of the CPI-Maoist, has intention to derail the anti-naxal operations therefore, it is crying foul. The Jharkhand police also traced mobile record and other documents to prove our link with the CPI-Maoist but at the end they get nothing because the JHRM has nothing to do with the Naxals.

Similarly, in the last year, when I participated in a mass rally against police atrocities held at Khunti of Jharkhand, a police officer P.K. Mishra of Khunti police station had questioned me, “Why don’t you organize Rally against the Maoists, when they kill our police forces”? He had even threatened me to tear down and dry up if I don’t shut up my mouth on the issues of police atrocities. The worst thing is, I made a complaint to the Deputy Commissioner and the Superintendent of Police of Khunti about the incident and asked them for action against the police officer, but nothing was done against him. However, I didn’t shut up my mouth in demand of justice for the victims of police atrocities but I’m under the attack from all corners.

Meanwhile, I had two rounds of discussion with Jairam Ramesh, the Union Minister of Rural Development on the issue of Saranda Development Plan. I was surprised to know about his reactions. He told me that I have been raising the issues of human rights violation committed by the security forces but what about the Maoists? He also told me that the CRPF Officers are quite unhappy with me as I have been filing cases against them. However, when I inform him about the preparation of the Jharkhand Human Rights Report, which would also highlight the human rights violation committed by the Naxals in Jharkhand, he was quite happy and had expressed his willingness to release the Report.

The most interesting thing is that everyone wants me to shoot others on behalf of them in the name of the human rights. It seems that the India’s Corporate Home Minister P. Chidambaram’s theory of either this side or that side, and there is no such middle in between, is internalized by them. However, the fundamental rights i.e. right to life, liberty, equality and dignity of individual guaranteed by the Indian Constitution has no place in this theory. According to a noted educationist of Jharkhand Dr. Rose Kerketta, the state is a killer instinct therefore; whoever comes to the power will continue the same practice, hence, we should not expect much from the state for protection of human rights.

Of course, there is no doubt in the fact of the state being the biggest violator of the human rights, consequently, the state sponsored human rights violation has been in the rapidly growth across the country. However, can we put aside the human rights violation committed by the non-state actors and the society? There are three major violators of the human rights i.e. the state, the non-state actors (Maoists, other Naxal and criminal groups) and the society as a whole. However, the state is constitutionally responsible for the protection of human rights and in fact the small forces emerge only whenever and wherever the state is fail in delivering justice.

But, these days, it has become a fashion for the so-called Human Rights Activists to cry foul on human rights violation committed by the security forces but they keep mum when the non-state actors do the same thing. Hence, it is obvious that they are also batting on behalf of the Naxals similar to the state, who bats for the corporate houses? These kinds of actions of the so-called Human Rights Activists will only add more problems in the civil rights movement and put questions in the credibility of the Activists’ voices and the person like me will also struggle for identity? Finally, I would always keep clarifying to everyone that, I neither stand with the state nor with the Naxals but I walk with the most marginalized people, whose human rights are being violated everyday by the either sides.

Gladson Dungdung is a Human Rights Activist and Writer from Jharkhand.

will be presented to

Dr Binayak Sen and Bulu Imam

who will accept the award at Amnesty International UK

The Human Rights Action Centre 17 – 25 New Inn Yard,
London, EC2A 3EA

Wednesday 9th November 2011 at 6.30pm for 7pm – 10pm

Chair: Lord Bhikhu Parekh, Discussant: Dr Felix Padel

The current economic boom taking place in urban India is fuelled by the mining of coal, iron ore, bauxite, uranium and other heavy industry. Much of this activity is taking place in Central India on land belonging to indigenous tribal groups, known as Adivasi, who are being displaced from their ancestral lands with little or no compensation. The region is also the base for a violent anti-government insurgency opposed to mining and other industry on tribal lands, led by the Communist Party of India (Maoist), also known as Naxalites. The insurgency has been dubbed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as ‘India’s biggest threat to its internal security’. In 2009, his Government launched a paramilitary offensive in five states against the Maoists and tribals who have joined, or are considered to be supporting or sympathetic to, the Maoists. The government claims the offensive, labelled ‘Operation Green Hunt’ by the media, is necessary to rid forested areas of Maoists. Others claim it as a way to clear Adivasi out of the forests in order to make way for more mining and industry. Two years on, violence and human rights abuses by all parties to the disputes continues and is escalating.

The Gandhi Foundation and Amnesty International hope that this Award to two men who have worked in different ways to address the growing violence will serve both to raise awareness in the UK of the issues at stake and to offer practical, non-violent steps that can be taken in the UK to help bring about peace.

 The event is free but, if you wish to reserve a seat, please email John Rowley at:
 festival.of.nonviolence@gmail.com
giving your name, contact details & any link you might have to the issues at stake.

 THE RECIPIENTS

Dr Binayak Sen is a Bengali paediatrician, public health specialist and activist. He is the national Vice-President of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL). He originally started working as a paediatrician extending health care to poor people in the rural-tribal areas of the Chhattisgarh state, doubling up as a human rights activist. While working with the state on health sector reform, he strongly criticized the government on human rights violations during their anti-Naxalite operations advocating non-violent political engagement instead.

In May 2007, he was detained for allegedly supporting the outlawed Naxalites, thereby violating the provisions of the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act 2005 (CSPSA) and the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act 1967. The evidence presented against him included his meetings with the jailed Naxalite leader Narayan Sanyal and certain documents allegedly supporting his links with the Naxalites.  Soon after his arrest, Sen applied for bail before the Raipur Sessions Court and then the Chhattisgarh High Court but was only granted bail by the Supreme Court of India on 25 May 2009 following a huge outcry across India and abroad.

“Dr Sen, who is considered a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, was convicted under laws that are impermissibly vague and fall well short of international standards for criminal prosecution,” wrote Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific Director, on 24 December 2010. “State and federal authorities in India should immediately drop these politically motivated charges against Dr Sen and release him”.

On the very same day, the Raipur Sessions Court found him guilty again of helping the Naxalites, charged him with ‘connections with a banned organization’ and sentenced him to life imprisonment. Another huge outcry ensued. On 15 April 2011, the Supreme Court of India granted him bail which is still in force. This year he has received the Heinz R. Pagels Award and the Gwangju Prize, both for his work on human rights.

On 15 September 2011, a Judge ordered that his Passport be temporarily released “in order that he might come to the UK to receive The Gandhi International Peace Award 2011”. He was sponsored by Dr Priyamvada Gopal of Cambridge University.

Bulu Imam has worked for over thirty years in his home state of Jharkhand to preserve Adivasi culture, traditions and their environmentally sustainable way of life. These have all suffered under the onslaught of industrial projects to extract the mineral resources under their land. Increasingly violent confrontations over land rights led him to develop a theory of “Intellectual Satyagraha”.  He describes this as an updated version of Gandhi’s Satyagraha in that, when realised, violent confrontations are reduced to an absolute minimum.

Bulu, who married into a matriarchal tribal family, has spent decades documenting Adivasi archaeological sites across Jharkhand, especially the rock art and megaliths so deeply linked to sacred Adivasi beliefs.  He has campaigned to preserve these sacred sites, many of which are in the direct path of industrial projects.  He founded the Tribal Women’s Artist Cooperative in order to sustain the ancient rock art and village painting techniques traditionally passed down from mothers to daughters.  He has organised a number of international exhibitions of Adivasi art in conjunction with conferences and campaigns on indigenous rights. He has also recorded thousands of hours of Adivasi traditional story-telling.

The other key element of Bulu’s work has been to link the environmental issues confronting India with the global campaign to combat climate change. He is a member of the Indian committee of the global 350.org and founder of the Save Karanpura Campaign.  This is a valley of the River Damodar in Jharkhand in which 30 new open-pit coal mines have been planned.  If approved, these will displace hundreds of Adivasi villages, threaten important wildlife corridors, destroy archaeological sites and contribute to increased carbon emissions.  Thinking globally but acting locally has been a paradigm of Bulu’s life.

The Times of India (30-06-11) called him “an unsung hero who is an artist, a writer, a philanthropist and an environmentalist and who has made an unparalleled contribution to bringing tribal art to international attention.”

CHAIRMAN

Lord Bhikhu Parekh, Padma Bhushan, is Vice-President of The Gandhi Foundation, a Fellow of The British Academy and The Royal Society of Arts and former President of the Academy of Social Sciences.  He is Emeritus Professor at Westminster and Hull Universities and has taught at LSE and Glasgow. He has received The Isaiah Berlin Prize and been recognised as one of the great British political philosophers of the 20th Century.

DISCUSSANT

Dr Felix Padel is an anthropologist with degrees from both Oxford and Delhi Universities. He is co-author with Samarendra Das of “Out of this Earth: East India Adivasis and the Aluminium Cartel”, Foreword by Arundhati Roy, Black Swan, 2011 and the forthcoming “Ecology, Economy” with Jeemol Unni, Director of  The Institute of Rural Management, Anand. His earlier book “Sacrificing People: Invasions of a Tribal Landscape”, Foreword by Hugh Brody, caused a sensation.  He connects his life and work with that of his great-great grandfather, Charles Darwin.

THE BACKGROUND TO THIS YEAR’S PEACE AWARD

1. The Gandhi International Peace Award

The Peace Award was created in 1999 by Surur Hoda, Diana Schumacher, Martin Polden and Godric Bader with the support of  The Life President of The Gandhi Foundation, Lord Attenborough. The intention is to honour individuals and groups who have advocated and practised Gandhian Non-violence but who have received little recognition for doing so. Past recipients can be seen at: www.gandhifoundation.org.

This year’s Peace Award honours two exemplary advocates and practitioners of Non-violence. Both have been working hard to find consensual, mutually beneficial outcomes, a means and a goal The Foundation profoundly supports as the most effective way forward.  We will post a report of the meeting on our website and attempt to bring it to the attention of those in the UK we believe should be interested, namely, those in politics, diplomacy, business, finance and ngo’s.  The Gandhi Foundation hopes that any ensuing on-line debate will eventually prove to have a constructive impact on the process and progress towards a peaceful resolution in India.

Given that the violence and abuses are under-reported in theUK, the following points are intended to explain, albeit simplifying a most complex situation, why The Trustees became concerned and why we believe that everyone in the UK should also be concerned:

2. The Tribal Peoples of India

The term “Adivasis” (meaning original inhabitants) is an official category of the Scheduled Tribes listed in the Indian Constitution.  This guarantees them full rights to their traditional lands and forbids the sale of tribal lands to non-tribals “except for projects in the national interest”.  Unfortunately, this phrase is the loophole that has been exploited by the State, international corporations and local authorities ever since Independence.  Adivasis lands have been appropriated thousands of times in order to dig bauxite, uranium and coal mines, erect hydro-electric dams, build factories and construct roads to serve them – often wiping out places which the Adivasis have considered sacred for centuries.  Their traditional agrarian economy is closely tied to their ancestral lands on which they have maintained an ecologically balanced life for thousands of years.

However, since Independence, some 20 million of a total population of 70 million have been ‘internally displaced’ and The World Bank estimates that at least 90% of these have suffered a ‘drastic drop in their living standards’ as a result.

3. Some of the Legislation concerning the Adivasis in India

On top of subsequent amendments, the 1997 Environment Protection Act, the 2002 revisions to The Land Acquisition Act and the 2006 Resettlement & Rehabilitation Act have all been designed to protect these rights. However, there is a long way between the intentions of central legislators and their actual implementation on the ground.

Take the 2006 R&R Act, for instance. This was funded and closely co-authored by the UK’s Department for International Development. It demanded that all development projects must improve the standard of living of people they displace, on top of giving each person adequate rehabilitation and compensation. ILO legislation defines adequate rehabilitation as ‘land-for-land of similar size and quality to land being taken away’.  Paradoxically, it has now been proved that the Act, in reality, actually facilitates those very injustices that it was designed to prevent. In other words, displacement without compensation has rocketed and living standards have fallen yet further.  Surely DFID should care about the outcomes of its investment?

4. The UK’s Responsibilities towards the Adivasis

The UK Government bears an historical responsibility for imposing a set of cultural and political imperatives in India. The legal framework which resulted under the Raj can be argued to have laid the foundations for the present conflicts. 62 years later, the UK has become the main financial centre investing in many of those businesses most deeply involved in extracting minerals and power from traditional Adivasis land. London hosts the offices of key corporations including Vedanta, Tata, Posco, Balco and Jindal. The UK Government, therefore, also bears a current duty of care.

5. Three Parliamentary Questions tabled on 6th September

In preparation for this meeting, The Gandhi Foundation and Amnesty International drafted three Parliamentary Questions to the Coalition.  Keith Vaz (Chair, Home Affairs Select Committee) kindly agreed to table these but did so only after editing our proposed versions. The answers received demonstrate either the Government’s willful ignorance or, worse, callous indifference to the plight of the Adivasis. These answers will be discussed on 9th November.

    A. To William Hague MP, The Foreign & Commonwealth Office

The PQ AI and The GF proposed was: “To ask The Foreign Secretary what concerns he has expressed to his Indian counterpart (and what response he has received) about the situation of the Adivasi peoples in Central India who, as he will know, have suffered long-standing injustices and who have been and continue to be displaced in huge numbers as a result of their lands being acquired by many UK-based corporations for infrastructure work, mining, factory and dam projects in direct contradiction to the intention and specific directives of The Indian Constitution (in particular The Fifth Schedule), The 1997 Environment Protection Act and The 2006 Resettlement & Rehabilitation Act”.

The PQ actually tabled was: “To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what discussions he has had with his Indian counterpart on the situation of the Adivasi peoples in central India. (71078)”

The answer from Alistair Burt MP, Under-Secretary, FCO: “We have not discussed the situation of the Adivasi with the Indian Government. However, we regularly discuss human rights issues, including minority rights, with the Indian Government both bilaterally and through the EU-India Human Rights Dialogue. In addition, our high commission in Delhi also has regular meetings with the National Commission for Minorities and Indian Minorities Minister Salman Khursheed”. (12 Sep 2011: Column 1001W)

    B. To Andrew Mitchell MP, Department for International Development

The PQ AI and The GF proposed was: “To ask The Minister for International Development what measures his Department has recently taken and intends to take, to defend their rights of the Adivasi peoples in Central India under The Indian Constitution (in particular The Fifth Schedule), The 1997 Environment Protection Act and The 2006 Resettlement & Rehabilitation Act which his Department funded and co-authored, and to what extent these measures have mitigated, or could mitigate, the displacement and oppression of Adivasis?”

The PQ tabled was: To ask the Secretary of State what steps he has taken to help prevent the displacement of the Adivasi peoples of central India. (71154)

The answer from Andrew Mitchell MP: “DFID works in two central Indian states with high populations of Adivasi (tribal) people: Madhya Pradesh and Orissa.  DFID programmes in these states help to promote the health, education and welfare of tribal people, especially women and girls. DFID also supports civil society groups, who help tribal communities to combat discrimination and obtain public services and social entitlements. DFID is not currently supporting any programmes directly focused on preventing displacement.”  (13 Sep 2011:Col 1085W)

     C. To Vince Cable MP, The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

The PQ AI and The GF proposed was: “To ask The Business Secretary what enquiries he has made to corporations quoted on the London Stock Exchange that have invested in, or are directly involved in, the acquisition of Adivasi land in Central India about the legality of their work under The Indian Constitution (in particular The Fifth Schedule), The 1997 Environment Protection Act and The 2006 Resettlement & Rehabilitation Act and about their level of awareness of the well-documented inadequacies in the compensation, re-settling and employment of displaced communities and what answers he has received?”

The PQ tabled: To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills what discussions he has had on the conduct of British-based multinational corporations that are investors in the acquisition of Adivasi land in central India. (71153)

The answer from Mr Davey MP: “The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, my Rt. Hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Vince Cable), has not had discussions with specific British multinationals that are investors in the acquisition of Adivasi land in central India on their conduct of these transactions”.  (14 Sep 2011 : Column 1214W)

Suniya, his wife and Mangri Honhaga (right)

30 year-old Mangri Honhanga along with her 4 month-old son Dula Honhanga and other family-members had desperately come toRanchi the capital city of Jharkhand after travelling for more than 6 hours right from Saranda forest in West Singhbhum district of Jharkhand last week with the hope of getting justice. Both the mother and child have been suffering from illness – Dula is grade-3 malnourished patient and Mangri has been suffering from anaemia but they have no choice rather than facing all kinds of sufferings. The life was little better for them before 2 bullets of COBRA Jawans end the life of 38 year-old Mangal Honhanga the father of Dula and Mangri’s husband. Therefore, they had come to share their pains, sufferings and agony with the Chief Minister, the Top cops and of course, with the Media. Mangri Honhanga only knows that her husband was picked-up by the police from her house, taken to the forest and finally dead body was handed over to her.

Suniya Honhanga (27) and Ronde Honhaga (25) both the younger brothers of Lt. Mangal Honhanga are eyewitnesses of the brutal killing of their elder brother Mangal Honhanga narrated and exposed that what had happened with them in the forests at the end of June. Though the monsoon was on its pick-hour but the sky was clear and the morning was sunny on June 28, 2011. It was 10 O’clock in the morning when Suniya Honhanga and Mangal Honhanga were having mangoes in the courtyard of their house, they had just returned after ploughing the paddy field. Suddenly, they noticed the arrival of more than 300 security personals in their village called ‘Baliba’, situated at Chhotanagra police station in Saranda forest, which is indeed the heaven of the corporate sharks and also the abode of the Maoists.

The Superintendent of Police (West Singhbhum) Arun Kumar and CRPF commandant Lalchand Yadav were leading the operation. The forces caught Suniya Honhanga and Mangal Honhanga and took them to “Chabutra” (public sitting place in the middle of village) and asked all the villagers to reach to the spot. Once the villagers gathered, the forces tied all of them (men, women and children) with ropes collected from the village itself. The SP, CRPF Commandant and Jawans abused and threatened the villagers to face dire consequences if they don’t stop feeding, sheltering and supporting the Maoists. The villagers were kept whole the night in tied position. On the next day, 6 villagers were put in a chopper of Indian Air Force and transported to undisclosed location and another 16 villagers including Mangal Honhanga and Ronde Honhanga were asked to go with the paramilitary forces to the forest. But luckily, Suniya Honhanga was escaped.

Ronde Honhanga narrates the further developments in the forests. All the 16 villagers were asked to carry the luggage of the paramilitary forces whole day without food and water. In the night they were asked to sleep in the forest itself. On 30, June, the security forces asked them to move towards Chhotanagra police station. Hence, they started travelling at 3 O’clock in the morning. Meanwhile, Mangal Honhanga and another villager Tasu Sidu stop for a while and Mangal Honhanga took side for toilet. The COBRA Jawans assumed that Mangal Honhanga is running away. Therefore, they fired three times – one bullet in sky and two bullets on Mangal Honhanga. Consequently, he fell on the ground and died there. Tasu Sidu witnessed it. Immediately, the Jawans wrapped the dead body and didn’t show the villagers unless they reached to Chhotanagra police station. The dead body was transported to Chaibasa for post-mortem and finally, the police handed over the dead body and sent all the 15 villagers to Baliba village.

The SP Arun Kumar organized a press conference in Chaibasa and told the media persons about their grand success in anti-naxal operations. However, he accepted that Mangal Honhanga was innocent villager and a bullet of the security forces hit him while there was crossfire between the security forces and the Maoists. However, the villagers unearthed the truth, according to them there was no exchange of any fire; it was a clear case of brutal killing by the security forces. Since, the villagers knew the truth therefore, the top cops asked the officer-in-charge of Chhotanagra police station to offer compensation package to the family members of the deceased. Rs. 3 lakh and a job were offered to the family members. Ironically, the death certificate does not state the cause of death. This is one of the classic examples of killing, denial and manipulation by the police and security forces while carrying on the so-called anti-naxal joint operations.

In another similar case, the police killed a villager and coined it as the result of crossfire. On 18 August, 2011 the security forces arrive to Baliba village again. They caught 6 villagers including Ladura Barjo, Mangal Barjo, Sanika Barjo, Dubiya Barjo, Mangra Guria and Soma Guria. These people were taken to “Chabutra” of the village and, kicked and severely beaten with stick, tiles and butt of the guns. Consequently, Soma Guria fell down and became unconscious. On the next day, the security forces took them to the forest. Soma Guria was not able to walk but he was dragged towards the forest. According to the eyewitness, when he died due to injuries in the forest, the security forces fired two bullets in his chest. On 20 August, the villagers were handed over the dead body of Soma Guria and told that he was killed in crossfire.

In fact, the security forces land to any village, rob the houses, catch the innocent villagers, torture them, exploit women and shoot the man, and finally, they hand over the dead bodies to the family members after couple of day and tell that their man was killed in the crossfire. Thus, the endless inhuman acts of the security forces continue in the Saranda forest. The villagers are tired of sharing their pains, sufferings and agony. But do they have any choice? The security forces captured the house containing a ration shop of Patur Gagrai of Tiril Polshi village on August 3. He is also the president of village education committee. The police blame that he supplies ration to the Maoists. In another case, the security forces raped 3 women in Karampada village on August 1 and 15 people were picked up from Hatnaburu village on August 24 alleging them as members of the CPI-Maoists without any proof. The fact is, whenever, the security forces go for the anti-naxal operation, and they victimize the innocent villagers. The billion dollar question is, can the security forces rape women and kill the men in cold-blooded murder even if they are member of the CPI-Maoists?

The story does not end here. When the Jharkhand Human Rights Movement (JHRM) intervened and exposed the killings of Mangal Honhanga and Somu Guria by the security forces, the top cops started branding the JHRM as Maoist’s organization. The Kolhan DIG Naveen Kumar said, “The allegations by the family are Maoist sponsored. It is just to harass and disrupt police operations.” He also said that Mangal Honhanga was a rebel. Similarly, the IG and spokesperson of Jharkhand Police R.K. Mullick said that Mangal Honhanga had some explosive with him. What a brilliant idea of the top cops of Jharkhand for coining an innocent Adivasi as Maoist to bury their inhuman acts. However, when there was ample pressure, the Inspector General of Police did inquiry and found that both Mangal Honhanga and Soma Guria were innocent Adivasi and the security forces shot them when they declined to follow their instructions. The irony is still, the Home Secretary and the Director General of Police are tirelessly attempting to coin both the killings as results of the crossfire.

The most important point is, speaking about rights has become crime in the largest democratic country on the earth especially, when the rights are for the under privilege communities.  However, if you speak for the middle class or upper middle class, you’ll become the hero. Perhaps, second Gandhi, second Nehru or Second Patel. For instance, when the teachers of thousand of public and private schools asked their children (students) to take part in Anna Hazare’s movement after deserting their studies, it was glamorized by the 24×7 news channel instead of questioning and taking action against the teachers. In another similar case, when the poor children took part in a movement against POSCO project in the state of Odisha, the state government threatened the organizers for taking action against them in the name of violating the child rights. What kind of democracy is this?

Indeed, it’s very clear that if you stand against the police atrocities and reluctant to be alienated from the natural resources (land, forest and mineral), you’ll be coined as the extremists. Precisely, because both – questioning against police atrocities and displacement ultimately expose the corporate nexus with the government’s anti naxal-operations for mineral interest. Obviously, the Indian state bothers about the ‘threat to the investment climate’ rather than protecting its citizen’s rights and the constitution. Though the Jharkhand police have accepted the killing of Mangal Honhanga and Soma Guria but my assumption is, the family members would be shut up with the compensation packages and the cops will enjoy impunity as usual.

When I completed this piece, a report appeared in the news paper, which states that the Adivasis of Tholkabad village in Saranda Forest have vacated their village and went to elsewhere in fear of the police torture. Since, right from the beginning, when I started writing on so-called anti-Naxal operations, I have been mentioning that the ‘Operation Green Hunt’ was launched with the clear intention to create fear, insecurity and livelihood crisis in the villages so that the villages would leave the vicinity. Consequently, the government can hand over the Adivasis land to the corporate shark comfortable. The Jharkhand government has allotted iron-ore to 19 steel companies including Mittal, Jindal, Tata, Atro-Steel and Torian in Saranda Forest. Therefore, of course, they want to clear the land.

Published in the Jharkhand Mirror.

Gladson Dungdung is a Human Rights Activist and Writer. He can be reached at:

gladsonhractivist@gmail.com

jharkhandmirror.org

people at the mass meeting

On July 5, 2011, the Adivasis of Munda Khutkatti areas – Khunti, Murhu and Arki blocks of Khunti district gathered in Kachary Maidanof Khunti situated at a distance of 31 kilometres from the state capital of Jharkhand. In fact, the Khunti district administration had given them permission to hold a rally and mass meeting against the police atrocities. However, when the villagers started arriving to Kachary Maidan, Manoj Kaushik the Superintendent of police (Khunti) also reached to the venue and questioned Birsa Munda the leader of “Mundari Khutkati Ewam Bhuihari Parishad,” “Why you have brought so many people to protest against the police?” Birsa responded, “Villagers are facing police atrocities therefore they have come to express their pains and sufferings to the Deputy Commissioner”. The SP went back to his office after hearing Birsa’s response.

Meanwhile, the inspector of Khunti police station P.K. Mishra also started inquiring about the programme and the riot controller vehicle along with paramilitary forces reached to the venue. The police of Khunti, Arki, Murhu, Rania, Torpa and Karra police stations were already present in the venue. It seems that there was supposed to be an encounter between the police and the Maoists. As usual they assume it as a Rally and Mass Meeting of the Maoists. In fact, the police and administration consider all the rallies, mass meetings and protests organized against the police atrocities are as the programmes of the Maoists. Simultaneously, they had started their operations of stopping people in the entry points of Khunti. They stopped 3 buses at Arki and 2 buses and 3 Jeeps at Murhu block. However, 30 vehicles (buses and Jeeps) could able to reach to the venue and many people came by bicycles and by foot as well. There were more than 5000 people in the ground including more than 100 victims of police atrocities.

The Rally and Mass Meeting was organized by the “Mundari Khutkati Ewam Bhuihari Parishad”, which is a traditional organization of the Adivasis and it has legal validity as far the laws of 5^th Scheduled Area are concerned. It was 1 O’clock in the afternoon. The villagers started walking towards Khunti town by raising slogans against the police atrocities. They were shouting, “Police Atyachar Band Karo” (Stop police atrocities), “Nirdosho ko Jail se riha karo” (release the innocent from the prison) and “Maowadiyo ke name per Gramino ko pratarit Karna band karo” (stop torturing the villagers in the name of Maoists). These people had decided to raise their voices when the police and paramilitary forces crossed their limit of perpetrating atrocities against the villagers. Needless to say, that the police torture has become part and parcel of their lives.

I had also gone to participate in the Rally and Mass meeting. After hearing slogans against the police, the Police Inspector of Khunti police station Mr. P.K. Mishra and his guards stopped the villagers saying that they should not shout slogans against the police. “Why don’t you organize Rally against the Maoists, when they kill our police forces,” ‘P. K. Mishra questioned. In response, the villagers said that they have come to raise their voices and they are against of both the parties who perpetrate violence against the villagers. They are made sandwich by both the parties. However, P.K. Mishra didn’t hear the villagers and asked them to stop raising slogans against the police. The villagers continued their rally but the police stopped them three times. The police wanted to block the Rally and asked the villagers to go back to their villages. The villagers were not ready to do so. Since I was part of the Rally therefore I intervened on the matter and told the Inspector P.K. Mishra that he should not seize the democratic rights of the villagers.

Meanwhile, I introduced myself as a Human Rights Activist and also a member of the “Assessment and Monitoring Authority” under the Planning Commission of India and showed him my visiting card. He was looking like a wounded lion. He snatched and threw my card on the ground, humiliated me and threatened me saying, “shut up! If you don’t stop, I’ll tear down you and dry up”. “I don’t bother about losing my job,” he added. Meanwhile, four bodyguards of the Inspect got down from the vehicle and abused and started beating me but when the crowd intervened, they stopped. After sometime, the rally resumed and backed to the Kachahari Maidan and mass meeting was started. The villagers started sharing their plight one after another.

Since the launching of so-called anti-Naxal Operations known as “Operation Green Hunt’ in the areas, the innocent villagers have been facing police atrocities. On August 5, 2010, the police and paramilitary forces went to Birbanki village of Arki block and started abusing and beating the villagers. They also scattered belongings and caught two innocent villagers – Daud Samad and Lukin Munda alleging them as feeding the Maoists. Both are well known social workers of the region. Similarly, on October 30, 2010 the police and paramilitary forces caught three girl students of Narang village – Jasmani Soy, Magdali Purty and Juliyana Purty (age between 15-16)and put them in Jail for more than 45  days alleging them as members of the CPI- Maoist. They were set free from the prison but no policeman was punished for detaining the innocent girls.

Again on 27 November, 2010, the police and paramilitary forces entered in Basudih village of Arki block and tied up villagers and beaten them severely. The police arrested innocent villager Soma Marsal Purty and put him in the Jail after branding him as a Maoist.  Similarly, on June 4, 2011 the police went to Bankira village of Arki, while coming back the police arrested Johan Hansa and Karma Singh Munda of Kuita village and put them in the Jail. On June 5, 2011, the police went to Ittihasa village and bet Sanika Munda, Laka Munda and Durga Munda severely alleging them as sheltering the Maoists in the village without any proof.

The police and paramilitary forces also torture the villagers during the prayers. On June 5, 2011, the villagers of Sareyad village of Arki block were having Sunday Mass in the village church. The police and paramilitary forces captured the Church and targeted villagers from the windows of the Church and shouted, “Shoot them”. After hearing the police there was a chaos in the Church and few villagers came out of the Church. The police and paramilitary forces bet them severely. Thereafter, they asked the villagers to prepare food for them. They ate and also bet severely to the person who cooked food for them.

Similarly, on June 5, 2011, the villagers of Kudunba of Arki block had gathered for prayer at Bankira at 8 O’clock in the morning. The police rounded them and asked them to sit separately – men one side and women on the other side. Thereafter, they bet the men severely and tied up hands of 25 men behind their back with the ropes, which the villagers use to tie-up their cattle. They also caught four girls – Seteng Nag, Hanna Nag, Mariam Kandir and Jaiwanti Nag. The police took 25 men and 4 girls to the forest in the name of search operations. The villagers were kept in the forest for 2 days without food and water. Finally, 2 persons – Mansid Nag and Masih Nag were put in the Jail alleging them as the Maoists. Mansid Nag works as a tailor and Masih Nag is a para-teacher and also works as a traditional medicine practitioner.

Amidst, a delegation met the Deputy Commissioner of Khunti Mr. Rakesh Kumar and a memorandum was submitted to him. Surprisingly, he said, “I’m hearing about the police atrocities first time”. “I know about the laws of 5^th Scheduled Area and will take action,” he assured. The Dy. Superintendent of Police (Khunti) Mr. Anil Shanker was in a hurry to send the villagers back to their villages, he asked me several times, “Please send the villagers to their villages”. When the villagers were sharing their pain, suffering and sorrow in the mass meeting, a chopper of the Boarder Security Force (BSF) suddenly appeared in the vicinity and flew two rounds over the Kachary Maidan and returned to Ranchi. Perhaps, the top copes of Jharkhand were inside the Chopper, had come to see the Maoists in the mass meeting. Since inception of the state, the police have killed 550 people and arrested 4090 villagers in Jharkhand in allegation of being the Maoists. However, the police failed to prove the allegations.

Of course, there is a tendency in the police and administration that anyone who raises voice against the police atrocity is either a Maoist or their supporter. The most pertinent questions are do the villagers have democratic rights? Do we really live in a democratic country? And do we also have the democratic rights like other people of this country enjoy? Where should people go to plea for protection of their democratic rights? While talking to individuals, many villagers said that they are against of the Maoists however, if the police atrocities didn’t stop, then they can also take up the guns if the power only comes from the barrel of guns. I believe that this is the last warning for the Indian state. Therefore, instead of shutting down the democracy, the Indian state must hear the pains, sufferings and sorrows of the people and deliver justice to them.

Gladson Dungdung is a Human Rights Activist and Writer. He can be reached at:

gladsonhractivist@gmail.com

jharkhandmirror.org

Those who came to the Annual General Meeting at Kingsley Hall on 10 July 2010 were privileged to hear two presentations on the plight of the indigenous peoples of East India. The Adivasis are the tribal people of Orissa and Jharkhand state (formerly South Bengal). They live mainly in the forests and small villages preserving a culture that goes back for several thousand years and maintaining a balance between meeting basic human needs and preserving the natural environment. The Adivasis worship Nature and the spirits of their ancestors. Their megaliths and wall paintings are evidence of an ancient and sustainable civilisation.

The tragedy is that the land they occupy has been found to contain 40% of all India’s mineral wealth. Multinational companies have moved in to exploit huge reserves of coal, bauxite and other metal ores with scant regard for the needs of the Adivasi people. Photographer Robert Wallis showed a sequence of pictures which hinted at the rich culture of the past but vividly portrayed the depths to which the Adivasis have sunk. A people who lived sustainably on the land have been driven from their villages, seen their sacred spaces destroyed, had their water polluted and been forced to scavenge for bits of coal in the spoil heaps of the mines so that they have something to sell and obtain money for food.

The second talk was given by Felix Padel who emphasised the scale of the mining operations – open-cast coal mines, for example, several miles across and moving relentlessly across the landscape, destroying everything in their path. Felix recalled how Gandhi had seen the improvement of the villages of India as being the key to the welfare of the people. He warned Nehru that an industrialised India would never be independent. Nehru saw it differently. For him, the villages were concentrations of poverty and ignorance and therefore providing employment through industrialisation was necessary for the country to advance.

Nehru’s view prevailed and gradually more and more of the countryside has been given over to industry with few benefits trickling down to the poorest people. Roads and ports have been constructed to ship the minerals (and the profits) away to China and the West. In recent years the process has accelerated, driven by increasing costs for mining companies in other parts of the world and futures trading on the London Metal Exchange. The demand for steel is a major problem with firms like Tata and S R Steel exploiting a situation of rampant capitalism and being given support from the World Bank. Since 1947 some 30 million people have been displaced, about a third of them tribal people. Compensation or help with resettlement is rarely given. Inevitably, opposition has grown and the term ‘Maoists’ is used to refer to a range of disparate groups who are seeking to restrict the operations of the mining companies and the government that supports them. Most of the Maoists come from outside the area and have little knowledge or respect for the Adivasi culture. Some groups are well organised and ideologically driven while others are bent only on violence, attacking the police and committing atrocities against innocent people. The mining industry uses other militia gangs to protect their installations and control the population.

Felix saw little scope for effective action in relation to this dangerous and volatile situation. A new minister for environmental affairs in the Indian government showed promise and there was increasing opposition in Britain to British-based mining firms that are active in India. But the overall picture was depressing as a major part of one of the largest countries in the world appears to be sliding into a state of civil war.

For further reading:

• Out of this Earth: the East India Adivasis and the Aluminium Cartel by Felix Padel
• Listening to Grasshoppers by Arundhati Roy

Graham Davey is Treasurer of the Gandhi Foundation and has also organised many Gandhi Foundation Summer Gatherings.

“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.”
-Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850), French economist

‘But are the tribals doing anything with that land?’

‘We need the steel, the adivasis need to be compensated for their land properly. And in my experience, I have seen the companies pay handsomely but the money is lost in the lower levels of governance.’

‘How much money would be enough for your land?’

‘The tribals are the ones responsible for destroying the forests.’

The above statements are some of the most common observations/insights made by non-tribals about tribals and the ‘largest land grab since Columbus.’ But before we get to them, I’d like to write about another story of murder in Dantewada, South Chhittisgarh.

On the 23rd of January, 2011, a Special Police Officer Ismael Khan was shot dead in Dantewada, as he watched a cock fight at the market. It was not a gunfight, it was a targeted assassination by all accounts. And while it was nothing new to Kalluri’s Dantewada, there was something that troubled me about this one particular SPO’s demise. I knew his name, I knew something else about him.

There is a story untold: the story of Ismael Khan is the story of Kottacheru, and the story of Kovasi Dhoole, and the story of Dantewada and the adivasis of Bastar – the danger of a single narrative is the danger of the constant narrative – of violence, and counterviolence. Yet the single narrative needs to be repeated as a vain elegy for every passing statistic that shall appear at the end of the year by the Home Ministry, about the Maoists killed, or those the Maoists have killed, or the Security forces killed in ambushes or assassinated, on the great canvas of the gaping divide between the rich and the poor, the fat and the dispossessed.

But what is the story of Kovasi Dhule and Kottacheru?

‘‘Nine of our people were killed in our village,’ Said Maala (name changed), another IDP (internally displaced person) 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 (anti-Maoist tribal militia). 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 9th 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 bulletridden 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.’

The SPO, or ‘turrka’ who had married her was Ismael Khan. Before Salwa Judum, he was a shopkeeper at Errabor.

Death comes a full circle.

Every story without heroes ends simply with the death of the antagonists.

Yet why do I write about just another story of a dead soldier and a dead adivasi in Dantewada and what does this have to do with racism?

The story of Ismael Khan, is a manifestation of a cultural hegemony when it is armed – ‘join us,’ at the point of the gun. That the Salwa Judum is populated by young men, tribal and non-tribal with a state-as-god-given right to power is not a myth.

War has now become a way of life for a group of men living together in society. And they have created for themselves, over the course of the last few years a legal system that doesn’t need to work, and a media without any moral code but empty nationalism that glorifies their actions.

And when everyone from the Collector to the shopkeeper is an amateur anthropologist who knows what the tribals need and how they should live, one needs to wonder when it is openly evident that Operation Green Hunt, in its many forms, was a long way coming.

And why? Let us go back a bit and put things into context.

The furthest, darkest heart of central India is not where civilization or development hasn’t completely trickled down, it’s the place where the post-colonialist face of India is still stark-naked, where the mass delirium of India’s token democracy has not brainwashed people who’ve been very conveniently erased from national consensus.

The administration, when it functions, can only act as an anodyne for a superstructure that is almost entirely exploitative.

One of the most apologetic analysis of the situation in the jungle is that the people need ‘development’ or an administration that functions. Apparently if every village had electricity, a handpump, functioning ration shops and NREGA schemes devoid of corruption, there’d be no insurgency in the first place. Yet one thing that is missing in the entire narrative, is the explicit racism of the majority of the mainstream Indian population when dealing with the ‘other’ – a fascinating metanarrative of the mainstream believing that the adivasis don’t see democracy, or their rights, or their ‘development’ as ‘we’ do, just as the West believes about the East.

Firstly, both schemes, NREGA and the PDS, indirectly imply that the people cannot get work nor feed themselves. Yet why does that situation exist in the first place?

In the jungles, the state itself has been oppressive for decades. In many areas, the only face of the state visible to the tribal is the Forest Department that has routinely exploited, beaten, arrested and robbed the tribals of their land and forests not just for the last few years but for decades. The tribals would be happy as ever if such civilization never reached them. The Forest Department is a part of this same bureaucracy – Indian Administrative Service, Indian Police Service, Indian Forestry Service, all of the same crop of the most brilliant, brightest, minds or worst nightmares of the indigenous tribals of India – a ‘collector’, a word that denotes a collector of taxes, a post-colonial colloquism, but more importantly, a part of that same super-structure that has kept the adivasis away from their forests.

Recently, a survey by the Hong Kong-based Political & Economic Risk Consultancy put India’s bureaucracy as ‘the worst in Asia.’ What a surprise. But are our bureaucrats really such special beings or are they merely a manifestation of the culture and society that they are coming from?

This is what one of the members of the Constituent Assembly, Professor Shibban Lal Saksena had to say about the tribals in 1949, during the Constituent Assembly Debates:

‘That these brethren of ours are still in such a sub-human state of existence is something for which we should be ashamed…..I only want that these scheduled tribes and scheduled areas should be developed so quickly that they may become indistinguishable from the rest of the Indian population.’

That apparently, was a much common point of view during the debates of the Constituent Assembly that was elected to write the Constitution – the tribes were ‘sub-human’ and they had to be like everyone else. In other terms, that is called cultural genocide.

Even today the non-tribals will happily go to the Schedule Areas to cheat, manipulate and exploit tribals. I still remember a non-tribal contractor happily telling me that ‘you just come to Dantewada to make money in whatever way possible,’ and in the very next breath, he mentions how, ‘everything this Manish Kunjam is doing is all futile.’ Fighting for tribal rights, is apparently futile. And when half his party workers are in jail, and their hartals in jail are met with beatings, the state is doing its best to tell him it is futile.

A prominent journalist working in Dantewada who has often written about fake encounters and state atrocities had another interesting observation about industrial development: after spending his entire day with villagers from Lohandiguda, who spoke about false cases and state repression, who openly said they had no desire for the 35 or 50 lakhs of rupees for their fertile lands; he would turn to a foreign correspondent and tell him that this district needs Tata’s steel plant and development: so mining is okay if you don’t shoot the tribals?

‘What development?’ I had asked surprisingly, ‘how would Tata’s plant benefit the tribals here?’

‘That it won’t.’ He responded effortlessly.

Let’s not forget that Home Minister Mr.Chidambaram had once accused a social activist fighting for tribal rights, for wanting to keep tribals as ‘hunters and gatherers.’ The intellectual bankruptcy in that statement alone is enough proof of Mr.Chidambaram’s utmost condescension of over 80-90 million people of the country. Adivasis are farmers, Mr.Chidambaram, and if they are hunting and gathering to survive, it’s because the Forest Department has kicked them out of the forests and built plantations over the land they cultivated.

But there is more, ‘Yes, we can allow the minerals to remain in the ground for another 10,000 years, but will that bring development to these people? We can respect the fact that they worship the Niyamgiri hill, but will that put shoes on their feet or their children in school?’ – Thus Spake Chidambaram.

‘Will that solve the fact that they are severely malnutritioned and have no access to health care?’

Apparently the massive exploitation and the dispossession of their forests doesn’t have anything to do with a tribal’s inability to feed his/her family. On the 22nd of March this year, over 64 tribals and Dalits from Bolangir, one of the hungry KBK districts (Koraput-Bolangir-Kalahandi) of Orissa, were rescued from virtual bonded labour at a brick kiln in Hyderabad. They had been working without pay for over five months and faced regular beatings by their contractors.

There are an estimated 600 brick kilns (2005 figures) populated with tribals and Dalits from Orissa in Andhra Pradesh, and there is an endemic debt-trap, brought on by advance payments by ‘sardars’ or middlemen – and the worker and his family has no choice but to work in the brick kiln until he can pay off the advance, and often faces abuse in an almost un-regulated industry thriving in the universe of unequal power.

On the 28th of March, 2011, 44 adivasis and Dalits from Bolangir and Nuapada had to be rescued from a brick kiln at Pattancheru Mandal after one of the contractor’s relatives tried to rape a tribal woman.

Apart from that, almost all the workers complained of meagre weekly wages, threats and beatings. The incident of attempted rape was merely the breaking point. The Muslim husband-wife contractor-duo responded by calling it all lies, and that the adivasis were all just drunk.

The adivasis wanted go back home. The contractors wanted them to continue working.

After the perpetrator was taken away by the police, every conversation with the mistrys and contractors attempting to bring better working conditions for the people were met with responses like, ‘these people are all cheaters.’

‘they lie like this all the time.’

‘they don’t understand reason.’

Nearby contractors who also ran a brick kiln sat on the sidelines gave their wholehearted support to the Muslim contractor and his family. And class, the great equalizer plays its role.

One Matang couple who live in a village in Nandurbar in Maharastra without land of their own, and work in Brahmin fields for Rs.50 a day during the harvest season, had quite easily filled his shoes as a contractor-exploiter for the adivasis at brick kilns in Andhra Pradesh.

‘They were such nice people,’ She said, about the contractor-duo and their alleged rapist-relative, ‘these Orissa people had to ruin everything.’

Even their own workers caught up with me and told me that they weren’t treated well by them either. And while they went back to work, the 44 men, women and children from Bolangir and Nuapada were taken away by the government’s labour department and put on a train back to home – Bolangir, where droughts and hunger deaths had put the district in a spotlight, where all the recently-rescued said that they had no land, or if they did, there was no irrigation facility to help make it productive.

There are no figures on how many adivasis from the KBK districts migrate to work under adverse conditions at brick kilns in Andhra Pradesh. There are independent estimates in thousands while they’re almost invisible to the government.

And funny how the starvation deaths in Kalahandi, were used as arguments by Vedanta’s lawyers to justify the mining of Niyamgiri.

And yet ‘they’ – the ‘rulers of the country’, want an Adivasi battalion formed for the Dantewadas and Lalgarhs – like there hasn’t been enough fratricidal violence in the Red Corridor.

Instead of starving them, let them kill each other while we mine their mountains.

The state is not just oppressive, but the people have been for decades. The adivasis are seldom treated as equals by non-tribals and it’s not just ‘development’ or a corruption-free administration that the tribals need to rescue them (and themselves) from insurgencies.

There is more.

Insurgencies are symptomatic of the very idea of a nation-state. The fantasies of nationalism, these post-colonial hangovers, along with a bunch of elitist clowns with delusions of grandeur have drawn imaginary lines across communities where the majority literally drives minorities into the hole, and there will be identity-driven self-assertions of rights. A thousand times over, I’ve heard adivasis call themselves Muria, not Maoists, Kondhs, not Maoists, Muria, not ‘Indians’, Kondh, not ‘Indians.’ The Maoists from Andhra Pradesh in Dantewada had managed to build a base because they spoke Muria, they spoke Koya, they let the tribals remain tribals (to an extent) + (apart from entirely militarizing their society).

Now, has the Indian mainstream ever allowed minorities to be minorities? Have they allowed the tribals to at least decide their own fate?

Yes, we have. The Indian Constitution has one of the most progressive laws in the world –PESA or Panchayat (Extension to Schedule Areas) Act, where the tribals are allowed to govern themselves with their own Gram Sabhas. The Supreme Court would not have the right to veto a decision of the Gram Sabha if it said it didn’t want Tata or Jindal or Essar to build on their land. And yet, these Gram Sabha resolutions have been violated by the administration repeatedly across the Fifth Schedule, with complete impunity, often in the favour of big business, as well as the upper caste landlords, thekedaars and non-tribals.

So now as I brought it up, I must ask, why is our administration routinely flouting PESA resolutions?

This is what one of the Collectors of Bastar, J.P. Vyas had to say to Anthropologist Nandini Sundar, in 1992 about a proposed Steel Plant being set up in Bastar and the displacement it would cause.

‘If the people were consulted beforehand and asked for permission, inherent in this, is the possibility that they might refuse. And then where would the government be?’

He had gone on to tell her that the people were ignorant and once the experts decided where the project would be, there was nothing more to be said – (from her book on Bastar, ‘Subalterns and Sovereigns’).

Today, there are state-organized public hearings, where the representatives of big companies often tell the tribals, ‘there are other things here that are too technical to understand.’

Another brilliant expert, I had encountered, worked in the ITDA (Integrated Tribal Development Authority) Badrachalam, who didn’t know who the Murias were, and he requested that I tell the tribals to leave the jungles and come and live closer to the road so the government welfare programmes can reach them.

All of it pretty much summing up that the ‘tribals don’t know any better,’ that they ‘need to do something with their land’, or that land, life and livelihood can be equated with money.

I wonder where that idea comes from.

What becomes only too evident, is that we have a social apartheid, where we have an invisible, un-written set of value-judgements upon an entire class of people who live out of sight and out of mind, and we’re aping the West who’ve colonized, butchered, enslaved, and murdered indigenous societies for centuries, and we are too far from evolving into a democracy they have never been, and could possibly never be – one that is egalitarian, just and equal, impassioned yet restrained, and where the words ‘development’ would belong to the people.

To be a nation that is simply accepting of diversity, not just by shallow pretence but by substance. But we are just another half-democracy, half-republic and half-nation that needs to cannibalize itself to survive.

Javed Iqbal is a Mumbai-based journalist who wrote this article for The New Indian Express.

An exhibition supported by The Gandhi Foundation

© Robert Wallis

An exhibition of photography by Robert Wallis
and artwork by members of the Tribal Women’s Artist Collective from Jharkhand, North Central India

14th April – 25th June 2011

at The Brunei Gallery, SOAS, Thornhaugh Street, Russell Sq, London WC1H 0XG

In the early 21st century, India is experiencing unprecedented economic growth. The middle class is becoming more prosperous and numerous, the cities are rapidly expanding. But to fuel this economic boom, raw materials are being extracted by mining corporations at an ever‐increasing rate from mineral‐rich states in north central India inhabited by people who can claim to be the oldest dwellers in the land. These non‐Hindu tribal groups, known as Adivasi, have traditionally worshipped nature and maintained spiritual connections to ancestral territory where they have lived for thousands of years. Yet few Adivasi hold paper deeds to their land. As mining spreads, Adivasi are being displaced into resettlement camps or urban slums, dispossessed of their heritage and surviving as scavengers on the periphery of mines where they once hunted or farmed.

A growing economic gap between urban and rural India, and the so‐called “resource curse” of a rich land but poor people, is leading to militant insurgency in the countryside and prompting debate within the Indian government and beyond. Should India continue on its centralised model of development? Can the rights of Adivasi to continue living according to their ancient traditions be accommodated in the new India?

For more information and related events visit: www.soas.ac.uk/gallery

To download a brochure click here: A Disappearing World

Sunday 5th June at 3 – 5 pm

Burning Ground – Mining, Adivasis and India’s Civil War

A public forum with Arundhati Roy – whose new book Broken Republic examines the nature of progress and development in an emerging global superpower – in discussion with Felix Padel & Samarendra Das – authors of Out of This Earth (2010), which reveals the hidden finance and arms trade behind the aluminium industry connecting London to war-torn central India.

Moderator: Vinita Damodaran – Senior Lecturer in South Asian History

Free admission, but seating for the talk is limited.  To guarantee a place please RSVP by email: gallery@soas.ac.uk

Exhibition open from 1-7 pm on Sunday 5th June

After the arrival of the Monsoon, the city dwellers are enjoying the cool weather. The farmers are busily preparing their paddy fields. However, the atmosphere in the red corridor is more or less the same, a mood of anxiety, uncertainty, fear, pain and shock prevails in the region. Perhaps, one could hear the endless cry in the village like Sosokuti, which is an Adivasi dominated village comprises of five hamlets – Barulata, Hesahatu, Kochasindri, Sosohatu and Sosokuti situated in the middle of Balanda, Mosanga and Sosokuti forests in Arki block, which comes under Khunti district in Jharkhand. These forests are also known as the abodes of the Maoist Guerillas. Interestingly, Sosokuti is merely 75 kilometers from Ranchi the capital city of Jharkhand however the state has completely failed to content the discontents. Consequently, the Indian State included the village in the part of the red corridor and a camp of the Security Forces was established in the Primary School, at its neighbouring village Mosanga. Now both the parties – the Security Forces and the Maoists have been exploiting the innocent villagers but they can do nothing except shouting, weeping and crying.

It is obvious that the Security Forces have terrorized the atmosphere in the villages. Frankly speaking, when a vehicle enters a remote village, it becomes fun for the children. They start running behind the vehicle. However, the situation is just opposite in Sosokuti village. Whenever, a vehicle enters the village, all the villagers including children, women and men run away to hide, shield and protect themselves. These days, the police visit the village almost everyday and humiliate, beat and torture the innocent villagers and also destroy their food and shelter. Therefore, they assume that each vehicle entering their village belongs to the Police. However, there is some special rule, which only few people know that if anyone blows the vehicle’s horn before entering the village that means the vehicle does not belong to the police therefore the villagers have nothing to worry about. Once the vehicle enters the village by blowing a horn, the villagers gather nearby the vehicle immediately assuming that someone is there to hear them in the village. Once you start hearing them, almost everyone wants to tell you the painful, shameful and heartbreaking experiences, which they face almost everyday in the red corridor.

Creating livelihood crisis:

There are about 2500 people living in Sosokuti village, whose livelihood is based on agriculture, forest produce and daily wage. However, there is a huge livelihood crisis in the village after launching of the anti-Naxal operation widely known as ‘operation green hunt’. Earlier, each and every family used to earn Rs.100 to 150 per day by selling firewood, leaf and other minor forest produce in the local markets. Now the villagers have stopped going to the forests in fear of losing their lives while collecting the forest produce. According to Sufal Muda of Sosokuti, who used to sell the firewood, the police exploit the villagers in the forest. He says, “Police can catch us, shoot and present it as a case of encounter therefore we cannot dare to roam in the forest”.

35 year-old Etwari Devi of Sosokuti village is a daily wage labourer living in the village with her husband Arjun Lohra (40), mother-in-law Sokhi Devi (70) and 14 year-old son Rajan Lohra. Her family earns the livelihood through daily wage and selling of the firewood. Presently, she has been working in the road construction scheme under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA). On July 8, 2010, when she was busy in road construction, the Security forces entered her house after breaking the locked door, poured the cooked food (rice and vegetable) into the wood-burning stove and scattered the utensils. In the evening when Etwari returned home with a hungry stomach, she was stunned to see the broken door, scattered utensils and spoiled food in her house. She says, “I knew that the Police must have done this. However, I wanted to be confirmed therefore I asked my neighbour Ambika Devi who was present in the village when the incident took place who told me that the police had entered my house”. Suddenly she became angry and said, “Ask the police to give us food, clothing and shelter. We’ll desert the village if living in the village makes us Maoists. She asked, “The police torture us in the day and the Maoists in the night, what is our crime we want to know?”

A meaningless war between the State and the Maoists has terrorized the village atmosphere, which is resulting in migration of youth to the cities to ensure their livelihood. Three youth of Kochasindri, which is a hamlet of Sosokuti village, migrated to Panjab where there was no such case of migration before. A brave woman of Kochasindri, Shanti Devi, who fights against the police torture says, “The police humiliate, exploit and torture the innocent villagers after branding them as Maoists therefore the youth think that it is better to ensure livelihood from the outside of the village rather than facing police torture while collecting the firewood in the forest”. She asks, “Why don’t the police go to the forests and fight the Maoists instead of exploiting the innocent villagers?” Indeed, the villagers are facing a livelihood crisis, which will increase day by day and the failure of monsoon would just add fuel to the fire.

Happiness is a crime in the red corridor:

Can anyone be surprised to hear that the Security Forces do not want the villagers to lead joyful lives in the red corridor? The painful reality of Sosohatu, another hamlet of Sosokuti village, reveals the truth. 28 year-old Satnarayan Munda of Sosohatu and 20 year old Basanti Kumari of Nawadih village of Tamar block got married on 30 June, 2010. Thereafter, Satnarayan Munda returned to his village with his newly wedded wife Basanti and the villagers who were part of the marriage ceremony in Basanti’s village. There was a reception party in Satnarayan’s village on July 1 therefore the villagers and Satnarayan’s relatives had gathered in Satnarayan’s house. They did the reception rituals and thereafter ate, drank and danced till late at night.

Meanwhile, the Security forces assumed the marriage function was a celebration party of the Maoists and therefore they went to the village in search of the Maoists. It was 4 o’clock in the morning on July 2, nearly 150 security persons blocked Sosokuti from every corner. Satnarayan Munda’s father Dhan Singh Munda was lying on the bed in his courtyard when a team of the Security forces entered into his house and asked him, “Is it the party of the Maoist? He was stunned to hear the question but replied humbly, “Today, there was a marriage function of my son”. Perhaps, the security forces didn’t believe in Munda’s words therefore they continued their operations for hunting the Maoists.

Suddenly, some policemen entered into a bedroom where Satnarayan and Basanti were spending their first night. Basanti states about the nightmare saying, “I was shocked to see the Policemen entering into my bedroom without permission.” She asks, “Can any one do this? Who has given right to the police to take away our personal freedom whenever and wherever they want?” The police dragged out Satnarayan Munda from his bedroom and severely beat him in front of his wife. Basanti says, “My husband started vomiting and he fell down to the ground. I asked the Police, “What is his crime?” They replied, “He is a Maoist.” After a few minutes, the policemen took him with them.” “I don’t know what is his crime but of course, I know is, the police blocked my life before the beginning of a new adventure of my life”, ‘She added and started weeping.

The police also arrested Dhan Singh Munda, Rekha Kumari, Sunita Kumari, Devilal Munda and another two villagers who were part of the wedding party alleging that they supported the Maoists. Later on, the police released five of them but Satnarayan Munda and Rekha Kumari were sent to Jail. Ironically, Satnarayan was booked in 17 CLA though the FIR claims that he was keeping pamphlets of a banned Naxalite organization and working for it but it doesn’t mention arms. The interesting part is, the pamphlet which the police found from Satnarayan’s residence is issued by a forum called “Operation Green Hunt Virodhi Nagrik Manch”, which is headed by a pioneer Human Rights Activist Stan Swami and of course, the pamphlet is also drafted by him only. In fact the police have taken for guaranteed that the every party, function and marriage ceremony to be organized in the red corridor is of the Maoists. The million-dollar question is, do the villagers have no right to enjoy their lives? The villagers are between the sword and the sickle but where will they go in this situation? Who is there to hear their grievance? Do they have the right to live with dignity too?

Dress code in the red corridor:

We have heard so many times about the dress code imposed on women by the fundamentalist groups, of course, which is counted under the purview of violation of the liberty of individual. However, anyone would be shocked to hear that the Security forces have imposed (unofficially) a similar kind of dress code in the red corridor. Can you dare to wear a dress, which would be enough to brand you as a Maoist? 14 year-old Lalita Munda of Sosokuti village reveals the terrible experience which she had undergone and of course, there are many who go through the ordeal every day.

Lalita left her school after the death of her mother a few years back and now plays the role of mother. On July 8, 2012, about 100 security forces arrived to her village in the afternoon when she was boiling the paddy grains so that she could make rice out of it and cook it later. The security forces entered her house without permission (remember common men cannot enter the camps of the security force without permission but they can do anything with the power of the gun). She heard a voice coming from outside of her house, “Take her out if she is in ‘salwar suit’ and leave her if she is wearing a school dress”. Fortunately, Munda had on her old school dress, which protected her for the moment.

She says, “The security forces brand those girls as Maoists who wear salwar suit and take them to the police station, torture, molest and even rape them and finally put them behind bars therefore we cannot wear salwar suit”. After a few moments she gets angry and says, “If police want us to be naked, just tell us we’ll go naked. We’ll throw our clothes into the bay if clothes make us the Maoists”. After seeing the rapid growth of anger, one should not be surprised if these girls and women of the red corridor decide to walk naked in the capital city of Jharkhand. Are we ready for that? The Indian State must respond to the question very seriously because the same villagers have given their mandate to protect their rights.

The peculiar thing about every village situated in the red corridor is: there are more or less the same terrible experiences of humiliation, torture, molestation, rape, and cold-blooded murder of the innocent villagers by the security forces deployed in the anti-Naxal operations. However, no one goes to the police station for filing a FIR against the perpetrators for the obvious reasons. If anyone dares to speak against them they are labelled a Maoist and put behind bars. Xavier Soy of Shiyadih village comes under Kuchai block of Saraikela-Kharsawan district was put behind the bars for raising questions against the police atrocity. The Superintendent of Police (Khunti) Manoj Kaushik says, “The villagers speak against the police due to immense pressure from the Maoists, which is part of their strategy to use the villagers in their favour”. The pertinent question is why are the people not favouring the police? Is it only because of fear from the Maoist menace? Does it mean the villagers are voiceless? If so, it is a shame for Indian democracy, which could not empower the villagers for last 63 years?

The most worrying factor is, the way discontent has been growing against the Indian State and the victimization of the innocent villagers by the security forces is just multiplying the anger of the angry masses. The villagers are not against of the Maoists though they have also terrorized them but the villagers are going against the security forces. Therefore, one can only imagine what would happen if every discontent takes up the gun and joins the Maoist folk? In that case, the Indian State won’t be able to deal with the situation. However, the India’s corporate Home Minister P Chidambaram has publicly claimed that he will be eliminating the Maoist menace within the next three years by serving the development cola and organizing the licensed killings in the red corridor. But the question that may remain unanswered is will he wipe out the discontent of the villagers without addressing the issue of injustice?

Gladson Dungdung is a Human Rights Activist and Writer from Jharkhand, India. He can be reached at:

Email: gladsonhractivist@gmail.com

Website: www.jharkhandmirror.org

Source: Sanhati and Countercurrents

What is Intellectual Satyagraha?

The Satyagraha of the Mind is where the war for truth is sought to be settled in the mind of the aggrieved even before a chance for confrontation arises. Confrontation is where violence, including non-physical violence such as verbal abuse and threats, begins at some point owing to the power of the injustice that must be challenged. Intellectual Satyagraha is a principle of introspection that attempts to pre-empt the confrontational stage altogether with a powerful enough argument to cause realization of error in the offending party. If, however, the offending party refuses to accept its mistake then the argument has to be taken to another arbiter. Thus this type of Satyagraha is totally devoid of violence in any form.

What are the advantages of Intellectual Satyagraha for the present time?

In an age of advanced information and communication, Intellectual Satyagraha may be practiced by millions for any important cause by gathering information and writing to the authorities, and by publishing and disseminating information. The advantage of Intellectual Satyagraha is that it does not provoke the enemy as Physical Satyagraha does. It obviates the need for a violent response such as we saw with the British. Whenever Gandhi performed Satyagraha it meant tremendous tension for the British as well as the Satyagrahis.

What are the roots of Satyagraha in India?

India’s modern society is based  on the western industrial model, and our history and culture taught in schoolrooms is of an industrialized modern nation, with its great achievements in science and philosophy seen from a western stand-point. It is divergent from the historical facts of rural and tribal India, the histories of the untold masses who have toiled and developed themselves in the face of outside attacks, those who have over millennia saved India’s real sovereignty, her cultural identity, her national pride. This India is quite forgotten by the history books (except for epics such as the Ramayana).

The superiority of the western model in which we have indulged is notional and is based on industrial economics and consumerism, the market and its fads and fancies. It does not know of India’s greatest achievements, its various forms of yoga and self realization, its holistic dynamics as a spiritual nation. This side of India we are eager to veil and to destroy lest it upset the market. Gandhi stood for non-violence, which is an expression of this essential spiritual state of India, the nation we have called Mother. He understood this pulse in the people despite their sudden spurts of violence against injustice such as the tribal revolts of the nineteenth century. Gandhi understood the Indian genius for non-violence and it was this which won India’s freedom from British dominance over us for nearly three centuries. He turned physical violence into spiritual physical resistance through Satyagraha.

The violence we see today against law enforcement in India is precisely because the law is unjust and violence rises against injustice. It needs to be channeled into a form of peaceful resistance, and physical resistance even though non-violent is questionable as a technique today against injustice and torture. This is why what is required is the Satyagraha of the Mind. The human spirit ever rebels against injustice and this is a sign of a healthy society. It has to find the correct manner of resistance. It needs a new Gandhian channel, one that will expose the immorality of the corporate take-over of the lands from the nation’s poorest, most defenceless people with the assistance of the government.

What happens if Intellectual Satyagraha does not immediately succeed?

At some point, if the offender does not relent, an outside force must be appealed to but the flame of the campaign for justice must be kept alive from within and for this numerous Satyagrahis may be required. A single person may lead but a single person may not be physically able to fight on all fronts and that is why the greater the number of Satyagrahis the better.

Are there recent examples of Intellectual Satyagraha in India?

Intellectual Satyagraha targets decision-makers behind the scenes, even in far-off countries. One recent example is the campaign by the Adivasis of the Dongria Kondh against Vedanta over the mining of the Niyamgiri Hills in Orissa, which brought pressure to bear on the company’s offices in England. I have also myself practiced Intellectual Satyagraha for 23 years against the opencast coal mining of the Upper Damodar Valley in Jharkhand State, and have seen significant successes including mandatory recognition and protection both of wildlife corridors for protected animals such as tiger and elephant, and also of archaeological sites, being required before permission for mining is given. Other successes include the cancellation of a large World Bank loan to Coal India in 2000, and the recent Ministry of Environment decision not to issue coal mining leases in heavily forested areas.

Bulu Imam is the Convener of the Hazaribagh, Jharkhand Chapter of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH). He can be reached at:

Email: rch_buluimam@bsnl.in

Website: http://sinclairenvironmental.com/sanskriti/sanskriti.htm

Campaign: http://www.karanpuracampaign.com

By Gladson Dungdung

July 10, 2012

The Adivasis live and die with the Nature. They believe in the super natural God, therefore; they worship the Nature in every occasion. The Adivasis’ economy is totally based on the Agriculture and Forest, which also depends merely on rainfall. Therefore, the villagers get together and pray to their Super Natural God before and after the harvesting. The Adivasi communities also have their own democracy, which is totally based on ‘consent’, which they practice in every village in every occasion. On 28 June, 2012, the Adivasis of Kottaguda, Sarkeguda and Rajpenta village in Bijapur district of Chhattisgarh had gathered at Kottaguda village to plan for the performance of the traditional festival “Beej Pandum (seed Festival) so that they would celebrate the festival and start sowing the seeds on their lands as the Monsoon has reached to the region.

Unfortunately, 17 of them were attending this kind of meeting for the last time in their life. The Cobra battalion of the CRPF and the Chhattisgarh police, who were deployed in the region in the name of elimination of the Maoists, surrounded the villagers and fired on them without giving any signal to the villagers. Consequently, 16 of them got bullets in their chests, heads and other parts of the body, and died on the spot and one was brutally killed the next morning. The Security Forces claimed of killing 18 dreaded Maoists and celebrated it as one of the grand successes in anti-Naxal Operations. Similarly, P. Chidambaram, the Union Home Minister had also claimed that the Security Forces had shot top Naxal leaders in Chhattisgarh, and when the encounter was questioned he attempted to cover up it.

However, when the breaking news of encounter appeared in the television screens and the print media, the story seems to be totally untrue. The question immediately came into one’s mind was, how could 18 top Maoists have a meeting in a village, which is situated merely at a distance of 3 km from the CRPF camp? The truth of Bijapur encounter was finally revealed. A brave Journalist Aman Sethi, who has been tirelessly reporting on the state sponsored crime against the Adivasis of Chhattisgarh; this time also exposed the lies of the top cops, the Chhattisgarh government and Home Minister P. Chidambaram. According to his report, the security forces fired at a peaceful gathering of villagers, killing 20 of them, including five children aged 12-15, and sexually assaulted at least four girls during the encounter. The conclusion of the story was no Maoists were present in the village that day. The villagers had gathered to discuss the upcoming seed festival, when the security forces fired on them, which led to death of 20 villagers including 5 children.

The report of a three member Fact-Finding team comprising of Mr. J P Rao, Mr. Kopa Kunjam and Dr. Nandini Sundar, who visited Kottaguda, Sarkeguda and Lingagiri villages on 3rd and 4th July 2012 revealed further shocking facts. According to the report, these villages were attacked by the Salwa Judum Militia in 2005. They had killed 2 people and almost all the houses in all three villages were burnt. Consequently, the villagers had migrated to Andhra Pradesh and returned to their villages only in 2009. They were again attacked by the Security Forces this time, which led to death of 17 villagers including 7 minors. Apart from that, 9 have been injured, and at least 5 women have been beaten, assaulted and molested.

When the truth was unearthed, the Union Home Minister and Architect of the ‘Operation Green Hunt’ P. Chidambaram said ‘deeply  sorry’ for killing of innocent civilians. The pertinent question here would be, is saying merely ‘sorry’ enough for brutal killing of 17 innocent Adivasis? Secondly, why are the political parties keeping quit in this matter especially the opposition party the BJP? Would they have behaved in the similar manner if 17 innocent non-Adivasis would have been killed in the cold-blooded murder? Will the BJP keep quit if the similar incident takes place in the Congress rule state? Who is responsible for massacre of innocent Adivasis? Is it not P.Chidambaram, who has been deploying the Security Forces in the Adivasis regions since, 2009 in the name of eliminating the Maoists?

The CRPF DG Vijay Kumar shamelessly justified the criminal acts of the Security Forces saying that it was impossible for the forces to know who they were firing at that night. He further says that the entire area is a “very hazy world”, in which it is impossible to identify who is a Naxal and who is not. The can be raised are why did the Security Forces fire on the villagers if they didn’t know whom they were firing on? Who had given them order to fire on the innocent villagers? And can the Security Forces fire on anybody merely on the basis of suspicion? The SDM Kuruvanshi, who has been appointed to investigate, questions the villagers that why they were meeting at night? He also doesn’t want to visit villagers but has summoned the villagers to his office, which clearly indicates that the state is determined not only to deny justice to the Adivasis but also continue the state sponsored crime against them.

The Teheka’s editor Shoma Chaudhary raised a most important question is her column ‘editor cut’ that Why is life in Bastar so cheap? A simple answer to this question is, since the Indian state seems to believe that all the Adivasis living in the forest regions across the country are Maoists/Naxals, who are biggest threat to the ‘investment climate’. The India’s Economist Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh is always worried about the investment climate rather than its constitutional duty to protect the rights of its citizens. In fact, the Indian State is determined to grab the resources of the Adivasi regions at any cost, which will pave the way to India becoming the super power. Therefore, the Security Forces have been deployed in the forests to kill the Adivasis, who oppose to surrender their land, forest, water and other natural resources to the Indian state in the name of growth and development.

However, when we raise the question on fake encounter, the counter question comes back to us is why we keep quite when the Maoists kill the Security Forces? The answer for this question can be found in another question i.e. why does the Indian State send the security forces to the forest, where it didn’t reach in last 60 years? Is it for the protection of the villagers or to facilitate the mineral loot? If the Indian state sends the Security Forces to provide security to the people, then why do the security forces kill the innocent villagers, torture them and rape the women instead of protecting them? For whose security, the Security Forces are deployed in the Forests? Is it not true that the Security Forces are deployed in the forest to protect the corporate interest rather than protecting the people?

Whatever may be the intellectual arguments, but the fact is that the hundreds of innocent civilians have been killed in anti-Naxal operations across the country since 2009 but no major investigation Chidambaram must leave his office, precisly because he is responsible for the brutal killing of all the innocent villagers including 17 innocent Adivasis of Kottaguda, Sarkeguda and Rajpenta villages of Chhattisgarh. The questions should be asked to Mr. P. Chidambaram that is it enough to say sorry after taking away the precious lives of 17 innocent people? Will he go for the CBI probe in all the cases of fake encounters took place in anti-Naxal operations across the country? And will he punish the top cops for killing the innocent civilians or let them enjoy the impunity? Remember, the buck stops at your door Mr Chidambaram.

Gladson Dungdung is a Human Rights Activist in India.
He can be reached at: gladsonhractivist@gmail.com

JharkhandMirror.org

The cause of conflict lies in deep-rooted patterns of exploitation of India’s Adivasis (indigenous or tribal people). The signing of hundreds of new deals for mining projects around 2005 rapidly increased the exploitation as well as the process of dispossessing tribal communities of their land and resources. Some police experts admit that repeated failures to bring uniformed perpetrators of atrocities to justice are a main cause of tribal recruitment to the Maoist cause. But Maoist ideology is as ruthless in sacrificing lives to achieve set aims as state forces and mining companies are, and every killing of policemen invites mass retaliation on innocent villagers.

Everywhere, Adivasis are fighting a battle against huge odds to protect the natural environment where they have always lived, and do all they can to hang on to their homeland. Generally, their movements are characterized by meticulous non-violence. But when violent repression is unleashed to suppress these movements, a point comes when people despair of legal means, and heed the Maoists’ call to arms.

So among the first prerequisites for peace, is a far wider recognition of India’s indigenous movements, driven by the same ‘village India’ consciousness that inspired Gandhi. Alongside this is a need to recognize that the corporate takeovers, though promoted by local agents, are generally driven by foreign investment masterminded from the world’s capital cities and biggest banks. A recent example, where this consciousness caught fire worldwide and stopped a massive mining project in its tracks, is the successful resistance by Dongria Kond Adivasis against the UK-registered company Vedanta, whose plans to mine bauxite from the summit of a superbly forested sacred mountain, have been stopped after a seven year campaign. Remote Dongria villages in the Niyamgiri range were invaded, and Adivasi leaders harassed, abducted and murdered – a pattern replicated in hundreds of other areas, without the international coverage that helped save Niyamgiri.

It is often said that India has some of the best laws of any country, but that implementation is generally poor. The saving of Niyamgiri reverses this trend. But to stop the slide towards civil war, something else is needed. Villagers need to know they can get justice when atrocities are committed against them, by either side. The ideology of violence and the polarization in ideology need to be defused. This may not happen overnight. The Niyamgiri issue has brought a simmering debate to the foreground between those who believe in rapid growth based on a huge increase in mining the minerals in the mountains, and those who say that the effects of mining and metal factories are already dire on India’s environment and village communities. How can the millions of people already displaced be properly compensated? How can wealth be shared more fairly?

Moves for peace are already in place, via the widely respected grassroots campaigner Swami Agnivesh. Over a week from August to September 2010, India was gripped by a hostage crisis after a major gun battle between police and Maoists left many dead and wounded, with four policemen taken hostage. One was killed when initial demands were not met, the other three released unharmed. These events were said to be in revenge for the killing of the Maoist leader Azad on 2^nd July, just as he was apparently trying to negotiate for peace through Agnivesh. Any peace process has to come to terms with this chequered history. There were indications that Azad was tortured and killed in cold blood by security forces, in a ‘false encounter’ that also killed a journalist, so Maoists and Agnivesh are calling for an enquiry into these deaths as a step towards a new peace deal.

How would the Mahatma have tackled this challenge? One answer lies in a new application of Gandhi’s philosophy developed by the Jharkhand activist Bulu Imam in his campaign to save the Karanpura Valley from opencast coal mining. This approach, known as “Intellectual Satyagraha”, aims to influence those in positions of power by appealing to their sense of reason.

The target of this new Satyagraha must now be violence itself, appealing to all sides to refrain from violence and intimidation – leaders of industry, Maoist leaders, and also those in positions of power in state and national government alike. This Satyagraha of the Mind, using modern communication tools such as email and fax that did not exist when the Mahatma was alive, will see the citizens of India and the world challenge anyone who takes up weapons in the pursuit of their aims. The combined intellectual and moral wealth of the world will be available for Intellectual Satyagraha and neither corporate leaders, political leaders, nor the leaders of protest or revolutionary movements, will be able to easily get away with murder any longer.

In this way lies the best hope for India to become the beacon of freedom, democracy and tolerance that Gandhi intended it to be. The Gandhi Foundation asks you to join this campaign. Please sign our petition aimed at Maoist, industry and government leaders. Also, help in the spread of the Intellectual Satyagraha movement by starting local campaigns against those who use violence to further their aims.