People vs people

In the history of Independent India, the most bloody conflicts have taken place in the most beautiful of locations.

In the history of Independent India, the most bloody conflicts have taken place in the most beautiful of locations. Consider Kashmir, whose enchantments have been celebrated by countless poets down the ages, as well as by great rulers from Jahangir to Jawaharlal Nehru. Or Nagaland and Manipur, whose lovely, mist-filled hills and valleys have been rocked again and again by the sound of gun-fire.

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To this melancholy list of gorgeous places wracked by civil strife, we must now add the tribal districts of the state of Chhattisgarh in central India. The origins of the conflict here are disputed. In one version, the trouble started when Maoist revolutionaries came in from Andhra Pradesh, and began working among the tribals, setting one lineage or group against another and all against the state. A second version holds the state responsible, arguing that it was the administration’s inability to provide schools and hospitals to the tribals — not to speak of gainful employment — that allowed the Maoists to present themselves as a more appealing alternative.

Whether they would have come here anyway, or whether the state in effect invited them to do so, the fact remains that in the last two decades, the Maoists have made steady progress in Chhattisgarh. Their greatest gains have been in the districts of Dantewara and Bastar, part of what they hope will one day be the ‘Dandakaranya Liberated Zone’, a solid base from which to launch a countrywide insurrection.

In the third week of May, a team of independent citizens travelled to Dantewara and Bastar to study the impact of the Salwa Judum movement. Apart from the present writer, they included a former editor of this newspaper, the editor of the leading newspaper in Jharkhand, a former secretary to the Government of India, a professor of the Delhi School of Economics, and a leading social activist. We spent a week in the area, talking to a wide cross-section of people — hundreds of villagers, dozens of Salwa Judum supporters and several of its leaders (including Karma himself), many officials (including the Chief Secretary and the collectors of the two districts), journalists and other local residents.

Salwa Judum is a novel way of fighting revolutionary action. How has it fared in the one year of its functioning? What have been its consequences for law and order and for the lives of ordinary citizens? Should it — can it — be extended to other areas of central India where Maoists are active and powerful? These were the questions that our team was invited to investigate.

We found that far from controlling the conflict in Dantewara and Bastar, the creation of Salwa Judum had, in fact, intensified it. The killings had increased, on both sides. The Maoists were laying land mines and blasting bombs at citizens alleged to be supporters of Salwa Judum. On the other hand, tribals alleged to be sympathetic to the Maoists were having their homes burnt and their throats cut. There was a cycle of violence and counter-violence, of revenge and retribution, early anticipations of what might — if not tamed and checked — become a full-fledged civil war.

A Maoist leader we spoke to confirmed that his party does not recognise the Constitution of India. They are committed to the overthrow of the State by means of armed struggle. But, as we found, their opponents are scarcely committed to the Constitution either. In taluk after taluk, the state has ceded control to the Salwa Judum. In effect, the government of Chhattisgarh has outsourced law and order to a band of armed young men, a process productive merely of lawlessness and disorder. The roads and towns are controlled not by the local police but by the Salwa Judum. This we noticed throughout our travels, and, in one place, to our own cost, when we were attacked outside a major police station and had our possessions snatched away. That we were carrying a letter of authorisation from the Additional Chief Secretary of the state cut no ice, for vigilantes recognise no authority other than their own.

Since the Salwa Judum movement began, the law and order machinery has broken down and the violence has escalated. Our third and, in some ways, most depressing finding was that the burden of the conflict has been borne by the villagers, and by the tribals among them in particular. An atmosphere of fear and insecurity pervades the district. Families and villages are divided, one half living with or in fear of the Maoists, the other half in fear of or in roadside camps controlled by the Salwa Judum. Although exact figures are impossible to obtain, probably close to a thousand innocent civilians have been killed in the year since Salwa Judum began. Several thousand homes have been burnt and looted. And an estimated 40,000 people have been displaced.

In recent statements, the Prime Minister and the Home Minister have both drawn attention to the severity of the Maoist threat to the Indian nation. That revolutionary violence must be contained, and peace and lawful governance restored, are ends on which most Indians agree. But questions remains as regards the means. When the Naxalite movement first emerged in the late Sixties, the Prime Minister of the day, Indira Gandhi, admitted that it was as much a ‘socio-economic’ as a ‘law and order’ problem. Alas, that admission was not followed up by concrete action. The tribals continued to be treated abysmally by the administration. And it is precisely in tribal areas that the Maoists have made the greatest gains in recent years.
Dantewara and Bastar are both districts of enchanting beauty — hills, forests and many rivers, the sublime Indravati among them. They are as beautiful as Kashmir, and as bloody. Here, too, ordinary villagers are squeezed between armed revolutionaries and a State alternatively apathic and brutal. But there are also crucial differences. For one thing, in Chhattisgarh, the situation is made more complicated — and more bloody — by the power of a vigilante group that works alongside the administration and sometimes appears even to control it. For another, its geographical isolation has meant that the region gets covered far less in the national press than is perhaps its due.

What happens in Chhattisgarh is as crucial to the fate of India as what happens in Kashmir. Here, a year ago, a new method of tackling Maoism was initiated. It seems clear that it has gone horribly wrong. The human costs are huge, and still mounting. Maoism must indeed be fought — not by armed vigilantes, but by a state force that is both fearless and respectful of civilian rights, and by a state administration that is committed to providing the disadvantaged the hope and opportunities that can restore their faith in the ideals of the republic.