http://sanhati.com/excerpted/2041/
Dantewada, Dec 14th to 17th 2009: Three days in the cauldron, on the eve of the *Padyatra* <http://sanhati.com/excerpted/2041/> *January 11, 2010* By Amit Basole, Sanhati. Photos by Rudra Rakshit Saran. *Hum aah bhee bhartay hain to ho jaatay hain badnaam Voh qatl bhee kartay hain to charcha nahin hota* Akbar Allahabadi [A sigh is enough to earn us notoriety While they get away with murder] *....* ** * Wednesday, December 16th Yesterday and today, Suresh, the AID-India worker from Hyderabad has been helping me type up English translations of the Hindi affidavits which document cases of police atrocities on the adivasis. I get an idea of the exact nature of oppression. One episode sticks out, recounted matter-of-factly by the tribal who experienced it and lived to tell the tale. I paraphrase the account from my recollection. Many similar affidavits are available at the VCA. “I had gone to my farmshed along with my son. Leaving him at the shed I went to a nearby water source to take my bath. On returning I found there were some SPOs waiting there for me. They had with them a few other villagers and their belongings. They caught me also, took my money and clothes and brought everyone to the village. From there they took the entire party along with the looted belongings towards the forest. On the way, they divided us into three groups. One group, of which I was a part, was left with the belongings. A few SPOs took the other two groups into the forest on either side of the road. Soon we heard gunshots and we realized that the SPOs were killing our companions. The SPOs returned by themselves and we started walking again. After a while I heard one SPO say to another, `lets finish the work and go.’ I heard a gunshot behind me and looked back to see one of my companions had been shot and blood was flowing from his chest. I realized I was next. I dropped the stuff I was carrying and ran for my life into the forest. I made my way to my village and told people what had happened. They went back to the spot to investigate, but I was too afraid to go.” After this straightforward account, the letter addressed to the SP of Dantewada requests that an FIR be registered regarding the incident. One source of irritation for the Chhattisgarh administration has been that Himanshu Kumar and his associates have constantly kept such cases visible via the system of the police and the courts. Even though no favorable court judgments have been handed down, the process keeps up pressure on the administration. [image: amit6conv.jpg] A child SPO outside the VCA as part of Himanshu Kumar’s security detail After breakfast, while the day’s plans are still unformed, some of us are hanging out with the SPOs on duty. One of them, I haven’t seen him before today, looks barely 14 years old (see photo). His gun reaches up from the ground to his shoulders. He is a tribal boy who doesn’t speak Hindi though he seems to understand it. The other SPOs and police officers gather around us and we discuss the tribal situation. One of the policemen, a striking Gond man, outlines the mainstream position on the matter. The problem is these tribals do not integrate with the rest of society. If they did, they would be better off. I wonder if he has the Gonds in mind, a scheduled tribe, which has intergrated to a larger extent with society, albeit at the bottom of the social ladder. One of us asks the policemen how much they earn. Rs. 10,000 a month, no doubt a princely sum in this context. This is probably the wage of a regular police officer. SPOs must earn a lot less, perhaps in the range of Rs. 2000-3000 per month. Around 10am Himanshuji asks us if we would like to visit the town of Sukma on the Orissa border where he knows a local CPI leader, Manish Kunjam. Kunjam has organized several mass protests in the region against Tata, Essar etc. Himanshu wants to get Kujam’s help for propagating word of the Jan 7th Jan Sunvai. We set off in the Bolero as before, the police van following closely. Along the way we stop at the VCA’s legal office in Dantewada town. Waiting for Himanshu and Sandeep to finish their work Rakshit and I talk with the ASI who always accompanies us. A tall, dark, heavily built man, with a light paunch, and trim mustache, he seems to fit a stereotypical image of the small town police officer. He offers us his analysis of the problems. The problem of Chhattisgarh, he says, is that it has been part of the periphery, the edge (kinara). No leader or officer from Delhi comes here in the interior areas. Sure people read about it in the newspapers, but he says “Akhbar ka padha hua alag cheez hai aur practically andar mein ghus ke dekhna ki log kaise rehte hain, kya khate hain, kya awagaman ke saadhan hain,” this is something else. [Its one thing to read about it in the papers and its something else to practically see it for yourself, how people live, what they eat, what are the means of transport.] The main problem he says, lowering his voice for some reason, is that people here are not educated (shikshaa kaa abhaav). Otherwise, even unemployment is not such a big issue here. But because people are uneducated, illiterate they have been misled by the Naxals. If they had been educated they would not have been duped (unki baaton mein na aate). The main cause of the lack of development is the Naxalites, he says, contradicting his earlier proposition that the main problem was neglect of the region by the authorities…This is a very large area, he says after a pause. You haven’t been inside the forest. Its beautiful, no pollution, very serene. Not like here. As if on cue a goods train passes by whistling and thundering. Ore? I ask. Haan, jahan apan kal gaye the na, vahin kaa le jaate hain maal.” [Yes, where we had gone yesterday you know, they take the ore from there.] The train goes to Vishakhapatan, he says and from there the ore goes by ship to Japan. How many trains pass by here daily? Asks Rakshit. Difficult to say, but there is a train almost every 15-30 minutes. They spent a lot of money on this route, digging tunnels etc. When was it made? Asks Rakshit. 1964-65. With Japanese investment. The road to Sukma goes through small towns and plains with the forests looming in the distance. As always the road is in excellent condition. On the way Himanshuji discusses the issues with us. Yeh issues Naxalite party se zyaadaa bade hain, naxalite party khatm ho sakti hai, issues bachenge. Yeh issues chunki janate se jude hue issues hain, aur janata government se badi hai. Agar government yeh samajhti hai ki who janata par kabu kar legi to woh ghalatfahmi mein hai. Agar yeh form of government ne kaam nahin kiya to yeh form of government bhi mitaayii jaa sakti hai. Aur yeh koi ideal form of democracy to hai nahin. [These issues are larger than the Naxalite Party, the naxalite party may go, but the issues will remain. This is because the issues relate to the people, and the people are greater than the government. If the government thinks that it can control the people, it is mistaken. If this form of government does not work, then this form of government can be destroyed. After all this is not some ideal form of democracy.] Himanshu points out that even Vinoba and others have criticized this form of government where 49% become zero and 51% becomes 100%. They used to talk of consensus…Democratic values are developing but government cannot fathom these values. It thinks elections are the sum total of democracy. While democratic values mean the autonomy of the citizen. This is what the people’s system. If the government violates its liberties, the public will overthrow its government. aur aaj zyaadaatar ladai janata versus system chal rahi hai, janata har jagah aapke system se takraa rahi hai, police se takraa rahi hai. [most of the conflict is a people versus the system type of conflict, the people everwhere are challenging your system, challenging the police.] Hal ek hi hai, jo saare akalmand logon ne kahaa hai, ki bhai khuda ne sabko barabar diya hai, isko barabar baaton. Vinoba kehte the kii dhoop aur pani ki tarah zameen bhi sabki barabar hai. Jo samajik andolan hoga woh values ko badalne kaa andolan hoga. Yeh jo hamari sadi-gali values hain na, jat-pat, firkaparasti, bade aur chhote ko jaayaz manane wali, inke rehte naya samaj to bani hi nahin sakta. In values ko badal kar jo naya samaj banae kaa movement hai who hi Gandhi aur Vinoba kaa movement hai. Mohammad, Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, Vinoba sab yeh kaam kar rahen hain. Main to Buddha ko dekhtaa hun, unse badaa to koi communist nahin hai. Saare purane values ko tod karke, jo hai, jo vastaviktaa hai usko sweekaar karo. Woh to na ishwar to mantaa hai, na tantra to mante hai, na rajya ko mante ha, usse bada anarchist nahin hai, buddha se badaa. [There is only one solution, which all intelligent people have spoken about. That, God has distributed everything equally, so distribute everything equally. Vinoba (Bhave} used to say that the land belongsto everyone equally, like the sun and water. Now the social movements that will happen will be movements that bring about a change in our values. The decadent values that we have, casteism, communalism, values that reinforce inequality and hierarchy, as long as these persist no new society can be built. The movement to change these values and in the process create a new society, is the movement of Gandhi and Vinoba. Mohammad, Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, Vinoba, all are doing this work. When I look at Buddha I think there isn’t a bigger communist than him. Shatter all old values and accept reality for what it is. He does not believe in God, nor in the State, there isn’t a bigger anarchist than him, than the Buddha.] We reach Sukma around 1pm. Just as we are settling in our plastic chairs in a school compound where Manish Kunjam is waiting for us, a police jeep arrives with a sub-inspector and 4-5 plain clothes policemen. These are reinforcements from Dantewada. Apparently the four gunmen who have accompanied us are not protection enough. We have ventured far from Dantewada and more protection is needed. Our retinue now consists of the six of us, two sub-inspectors, and nine plainclothes policemen and SPOs armed with self-loading rifles. Manish Kunjam, himself a tribal leader, talks about the problems of the adivasis in the state. The percentage of jobs etc. reserved for STs is 22%, a carry over from the days when the region was part of Madhya Pradesh. Tribals now constitute over 32% of the population of Chhattisgarh, but the reservation quotas have not been revised. The tribal is being exploited in a state created in her name. Further the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution that gives greater autonomy to the adivasis and creates a Tribal Advisory Council, which has the power to modify laws passed by the centre and the state, has not been properly implemented. The State has come just a middleman for the big corporations. These days helicopters are being used for city municipal elections. Where is this money coming from? He talks at length on the difficulties in working under the CPI banner in the presence of the Maoists. People say that the Naxals also oppose Tata, the Communist Party also opposes Tata, we carry a red flag, they carry a red flag, so people think we are the same. But they have damaged us greatly in elections by publishing pamphlets against us etc. In Bijapur we were once very strong, now we are finished. And the Naxals have killed adivasis not big merchants or contractors or those who are exploiters. Is this consistent with Marx’s vision? He asks of the Naxals and says that they have yet to give him a satisfactory response for this question. But if the CPI takes a stand against Naxalism the party worker in the villages will get killed. This is what the Congress and BJP want. So the Naxals are helping them in this regard. The CPI, says Kunjam, suffers from both ends. When the force comes to villages, who will they kill? Those carrying red flags. So our workers will also get killed. More than one lakh people are now refugees in Andhra Pradesh. Even more than were there at the time of Salwa Judum’s campaign. The Maoists have to think about this. The Police and the administration will only work in the interest of big capital. But if they [Maoists] want to keep a movement alive, they will have to leave arms and enter into discussions. Otherwise adivasis, who the Maoists consider their biggest source of popular support, will get eliminated. One of the police sub-inspectors sitting right behind me speaks up taking advantage of a pause in the conversation. Sir, ek question hum karen sir? Yeh jo development ya vikaas jo wahaan se chalta hai woh yahan se shuru kyun nahin hota hai? Delhi aur Raipur se hi kyun chalta hai? Yahan se shuru karen aur wahan khatam karen jaa ke. [Sir, may I ask one question? This development, that starts from there, why doesn’t it begin here? Why does it [development planning] originate from Delhi and Raipur? We should start it here and end it there.] It’s a good question, everyone agrees. That is what should happen. Where there is poverty and unemployment, there will be terrorism, says the inspector. True, agrees Kunjam, but we didn’t think of ourselves as poor. More than poverty it was the forest officers, the patwaris that forced people to take to arms. The patwari, the forest-wallah had to be wined and dined whenever they went to a village. Roads were constructed by forest officers with unpaid adivasi labor, Naxalites came and stopped this. In those days they seemed like messiahs. Today the patwaris don’t exist but their place has been taken by the police force. Nothing has changed for the adivasi. After the meeting with Manish Kunjam we stop for lunch at a dhaba in Sukma town. It would be an amusing sight if it was not also ludicrous and tragic at the same time. Into the dhaba, behind us march nine policemen with large rifles. It is like a VIP has stopped in to inquire about the welfare of the masses. While we are drinking tea after lunch, Himanshuji receives a phone call. His landlord has asked him to vacate the Ashram premises. The landlord, who knowing VCA’s work, had given them space earlier this year, has now been threatened with the loss of his government job unless he asks Himanshu to go. It has been decided that everyone except the ASHA worker will leave for Raipur tonight. A Press Conference has been arranged at the Raipur Press Club tomorrow at noon. There is nothing more to be done in Dantewada for the moment. Himanshuji will carry the word of what is happening to the world outside. As we eat dinner that night, before leaving for the bus station, the police chief of Dantewada comes to the VCA. He is all smiles, politeness itself. He wants to know if three armed policemen can accompany us on the bus to Raipur. After he leaves, Himanshuji tells us that this is the same person who has created a lot of trouble for VCA in Dantewada by harassing its workers, arresting them on false charges and so on. The administration’s duplicity and lies permeate through its entire fabric. *** *Thursday, December 17th* The trip to Raipur on Payal Air Lines is uneventful. It is a sleeper bus and I don’t even realize when I fall asleep. I wake up to daylight and the outskirts of Raipur. Himanshuji has called an autowallah to the bus stand. This autowallah helps him out regularly in Raipur. And thereby hangs another tale of police harassment. After the autowallah has dropped us at Rajendra Sail’s office, he calls Himanshuji a little while later. The police are looking for him. They are saying he has stolen a bag from one of the bus passengers. The State has many tiny and not so tiny ways of troubling those who trouble it. We leave for the Raipur Press Club around 11:30. The press conference is at noon. The floor of the press club is so shiny I almost slip on it twice. Reporters are hanging out in the foyer and outside room, but the conference room itself is empty. We start setting up inside and around 12 people start trickling in. Go to http://vimeo.com/8574824 to listen to the 50 min recording of the Press Conference. [image: amit7conv.jpg] *L to R: Rajendra Sail (PUCL-Chhattisgarh), Himanshu Kumar (VCA) and Sandeep Pandey (NAPM) at the Press Conference at the Raipur Press Club.* After the Press Confernece we leave for the courts. Dr. Binayak Sen is in town today because his case if up for hearing. I am quite excited at the prospect of meeting him. After Dr. Sen was imprisoned on cooked-up charges of sedition etc. by the Chhattisgarh government, the Free Binayak Sen campaign managed to make his case gain global attention. Still it took two years to get him out on bail. Not surprising in a place like Chhattisgarh where a “routine visit” to the police station can mean a few years in prison. Still, Binayak Sen was a member of the urban elite, albeit one who had chosen to live in the other India. The doctors and engineers sitting in offices and universities all over the world could identify with him. What about Kopa Kunjam, who is now in jail under false charges? What about many other lesser-known adivasis rotting in jails all over the country for the crime of being an adivasi sitting on resources we need? How many Free Binayak campaigns will it take to free them? And are we up to the task? [image: amit8conv.jpg] *L to R: Dr. Binayak Sen, Himanshu Kumar, Rajendra Sail and Sandeep Pandey at the Raipur courts.* After lunch at Sail sahab’s office, Dr. Sen leaves to go back to the courts. Back at the office some people sit around talking about the situation. Tragi-comic events are described. Such as a Tata-sponsored “jan sunwai” for land acquisition in which local people are kept out by force using the police, and 50 people are brought in from the nearby town of Jagdalpur for the sunwai. Who are we fooling? The adivasis? Or ourselves? Himanshuji inquires rhetorically. Tomorrow he heads to Delhi, before coming back to Raipur and finally to Dantewada where the satyagraha is due to start on the 25th. I am heading back to my infinitely calmer world of the weavers of Benaras. As I was writing this report the situation is changing very fast on the ground in Dantewada. Himanshu Kumar, on the 9th day of his indefinite fast, was detained by the police along with Sodi Sambo, the adivasi woman who has been shot in the leg by the CRPF and is an eye-witness to the attack by secuity forces on her villge of Gompad. The police have been looking for her, presumably so they can extract a false statement from her as they did with four rape victims from Samsetti village. These women, who had been raped by the police and had raised their voices about it, were later threatened by the same officers who had raped them to retract their statements. Suresh, the AID-India volunteer I met during my stay there was first places under house arrest at the VCA premises, along with three other visiting journalists and students. Later FIRs were registered against them for trying to confiscate cameras from local journalists. It is through relentess lies lies these that the State seeks to wear out its opponents. Sitting a thousand miles away from the Alice in Wonderland world of Dantewada, it feels like I am writing the script of a very ordinary Bollywood movie. Would that it were so. -- Peace Is Doable -- Peace Is Doable
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