["The key point seems to be ‘intention to further the activities’ of the Maoists. So the question that must be asked is, has anyone furthered the activities of the Maoist more than the state with its exploitative economic policies and its counter-insurgency tactics? What is more useful to the Maoists, a writ petition filed by activists for the Adivasis, or a security apparatus that terrorises the population on mere suspicion and suppresses dissent and civil society?"]
http://expressbuzz.com/opinion/op-ed/in-india-sympathy-could-be-a-thought-crime/172936.html <http://expressbuzz.com/opinion/op-ed/in-india-sympathy-could-be-a-thought-crime/172936.html>In India, sympathy could be a thought-crime Javed Iqbal <http://expressbuzz.com/searchresult/javed-iqbal> Legendary writer Mahasweta Devi has challenged Union home minister P Chidambaram to arrest her and put her in jail for 10 years, in response to the Centre’s newfound enthusiasm for using the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, to arrest Maoist ‘sympathisers’. One must sympathise with the home minister for being humiliated by a gutsy 84-year-old woman. Yet sympathy is a thought-crime thanks to the UAPA, which says: ‘Any person who commits the offence of supporting a terrorist organisation with inter alia intention to further the activities of such terrorist organisations would be liable to be punished with imprisonment for a term not exceeding 10 years or with fine or with both.’ The key point seems to be ‘intention to further the activities’ of the Maoists. So the question that must be asked is, has anyone furthered the activities of the Maoist more than the state with its exploitative economic policies and its counter-insurgency tactics? What is more useful to the Maoists, a writ petition filed by activists for the Adivasis, or a security apparatus that terrorises the population on mere suspicion and suppresses dissent and civil society? Maoist sympathisers, or supporters, according to the state, are simply anyone who stand up for the rights of the Adivasi. Not long ago in the Supreme Court, an accusation was hurled at an activist for being a Maoist supporter. The response from the judges was fitting. “Suppose somebody fights their (victims) case, what does that imply? First you say they are Naxals, then you say they are sympathisers, then you say they are sympathisers of sympathisers… Why all these innuendos? Sympathy is fighting for their cause (victims). Nobody is advocating their cause. They are not saying their action should be condoned.” And who is advocating the Maoist cause? Most people know that even if the Maoists capture state power, we would be dealing with a group that would shoot the students at JNU if they heard a single squeak of dissent. Unfortunately, and perhaps unwittingly, Chidambaram and others of his ilk are proving to be the best recruiting agents for the Maoists. Let’s start with Salwa Judum, which was given unbridled freedom to burn, rape, loot and murder in every place known to have a strong Maoist presence. But the Maoists had the last laugh — recruitment was at an all-time high. Did anyone work out how Salwa Judum helped to ‘further the activities’ of the Maoists? Does the Centre know that it even burnt down villages that had no Maoist links? And killed people who had no grudge against the state? That the same misguided counterinsurgency rationale is being used again with Operation Green Hunt indicates that the Centre has learnt nothing from the terrible experiment that was Salwa Judum. Combat Battalion for Resolute Action (COBRA) battalions directly under the Union government have been responsible for a majority of Adivasi deaths since September last year. Counterinsurgency isn’t really an exact science --- it’s a methodology of killing, of keeping kill-ratios, of area domination. It’s measured by ‘who is more effective to terrorise the local population’ — the insurgents or the state? Both the state and the Maoists are trapped in their own contradictions. They exist violently — the brutal killing of alleged informants by the Maoists as a deterrent mirrors the logic of the state which brutally cracks down on the local Adivasi population that it considers ‘supporters’. ‘Agar woh Maovadi the toh nahi, woh unke supporter toh the.’ (whether they were Maoists or not, they were definitely supporters)’, a forest official said about the Singaram massacre of 2009, when 19 tribals were killed. We know the Union home minister believes the state has a philosophical right to violence, yet the same is true of the right to fight back that is propagated to the Adivasis of Dandakaranya. And the Maoist version of the truth is truth to the Adivasi who has no other option. It’s almost impossible not to sympathise (emotionally) with everyone in such terrifying consequences. ‘Naxali hai bimari, hum hai dulaiyi’ (Naxalism is the disease, we are the remedy). A police inspector told me at Kirandul, in a ‘casual chat’ outside the police station. We were waiting for the body of a 19-year-old Adivasi boy shot dead in an encounter, to be released to his parents. Adivasi women don’t weep, they cry in song, a rhythm of grief, and this woman ‘sang’ continuously for over two hours outside the police station. Fifteen feet beyond barbed wire, an autopsy was being conducted on her son, in the open, shielded from the eyes of the passing world, by blue tarpaulin. She sang until two SPOs with masked faces yelled at her to get lost. If she wanted to cry for her son, she shouldn’t do it in front of the police station. Meanwhile, the inspector would tell me his own version of ‘1084 ki Ma’. There was yet another encounter in Bastar and a frail old woman had come to the police station all the way from Andhra Pradesh to claim the body of her son. After putting her son onto the bullock-cart, she stoically turned towards the inspector and told him that this was her second son who was a Maoist, killed in an encounter. The inspector had sympathised. *ja...@expressbuzz.com* -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To post to this group, send an email to greenyo...@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to greenyouth+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth?hl=en-GB.
