The Shy Peace Hunter

Here's why Chhattisgarh’s experiment of forcing adivasis to take on the Maoists is leading to strife:

• The state-sponsored Salwa Judum, ostensibly a people's movement to fight the Maoists, has made adivasis the new target of the Naxals.
  
• The armed wing of SJ is seen as the tribal face of the police attacking Maoists.
  
• Innocent tribals forced to join the SJ have been pushed out of the jungles into refugee camps. These camps are being attacked by the Maoists.
  
• Tribals not joining the movement are beaten by the SJ, their houses are burnt.
  
• The entire tribal belt of Bastar has turned into a war zone. Over 250 deaths have been reported since SJ was formed last year.
  
• There is widespread discontent among the tribals who feel that the onus of tackling the Maoists has been thrust on them.

Marvinda says, "I didn’t want to leave. But the police beat me, tied my hands and hung me upside down from a tree. Then the Salwa Judum (SJ) burnt our huts. They said if we didn’t want to leave our villages, we must be Naxalites."

For tribals like Marvinda, Bastar has turned into a battlezone ever since the Salwa Judum, roughly ‘peace hunt’, a state-sponsored movement against Maoists, was created. Working closely with the police, SJ members—drawn from the local elite, wealthy tribal leaders, traders and contractors, all victims of Maoist anger, and the Special Police Officers (SPOs), temporarily recruited by the government from among young SJ activists or ex-Sangham members (village-level Maoists)—have been coercing adivasis to abandon their villages for the dubious comforts and "security" of the camps.

Those who have resisted the move to the camps have been punished. Statements issued by the CPI (Maoist) Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee, between May and November 20, 2005, list about 90 adivasis who were killed, five of whom were raped, by the SJ and security forces.

If the killings by the SJ/security forces began on May 1, 2005, the day the SJ was "launched", retaliatory killings by the Maoists began on June 19. According to the district administration, 64 adivasis, reportedly SJ sympathisers, were killed till November 21, 2005. For the adivasis, caught in the crossfire between the SJ-SPO-police combine and the Maoists, this is a holocaust in the making.

This comes through starkly in Kotrapal, located a few miles off the main artery that links Gidam to Bijapur. An adivasi—who earns Rs 15 a day as a peon at a government school—bravely offers to escort us on foot. Here, he shows us the home of the mukhia, Kanglu Vedhe, who was picked up and killed by the Maoists, and a burnt shell, once home to Santu, a Sangham worker, who had to face the SJ’s ire.

The SJ has no clear structure, hierarchy or functionaries barring the man who heads it, the controversial Congress Legislature Party boss Mahendra Karma, a wealthy adivasi known in political circles as "the 60th member of BJP CM Raman Singh’s cabinet". When Outlook spoke to Raman Singh, he said loftily, "There is no government or Opposition here—both parties work together for the welfare of the adivasis."

Indeed, the SJ experiment has the Centre’s tacit backing. A Union home ministry document says: "Efforts will be made to promote local resistance groups against Naxalites but in a manner that the villagers are provided adequate security cover." Confirming the theory that the SJ was largely government-sponsored is the Dantewada collector’s ‘Work Proposal for Salwa Judum, 2005’: "It is imperative," it says, "that the campaign receive administrative support...adequate security must be provided to the participants so that they can overcome pressure from the Naxalites...villagers must be provided transport, food and a place to stay at government expense." Clearly, the SJ is not the "popular people’s uprising against the Maoists" of government propaganda.

Curiously, opposition to this disastrous experiment comes from within both the BJP and the Congress: If BJP leader Ramesh Bais describes it as "gale me haddi samaan, something you can neither swallow nor throw up," former Congress CM Ajit Jogi has been vocal in opposing it as well.

But Raman Singh is convinced he is onto a good thing: "For the first time in 15 years," he says, "the Maoists are being challenged on their own turf. That’s why we are backing the SJ." But how long will the emptying of the jungles continue? "Maybe, in a couple of years, they’ll go back. We’ve already prepared 36,000 pattas through a survey; once the central Tribal Rights Bill is passed, these pattas will be handed over."

But if the CM envisages the adivasis returning to their villages, Dantewada collector K.R. Pisda doesn’t: "We’ll build compact housing settlements (read urban slums) on the main roads. We can then provide drinking water, health facilities, schools. Now, the villages are too remote for the administration to provide such facilities." If they like, he adds kindly, they can walk everyday to their villages to check their fields.

Till June 2005, the Maoists were targeting only corrupt policemen, forest rangers or village heads, but the situation changed dramatically after the SJ burst on the scene. The adivasis, who for many years had looked to the Maoists for "instant justice" and "protection" from a venal civil administration, have now themselves become targets of Maoist ire.

Specially vulnerable are SJ workers—even those coerced to join—and young SPOs. The latter receive rudimentary training, "assist" the administration and act as police informers—and earn Rs 1,500 per month. Some carry bows and arrows; others carry guns. They don’t wear uniforms and, being undisciplined, harass people with impunity.

In Bijapur, shopkeepers recall April 17, when Maoists attacked the Murkina police post, 15 km from the city, killing 12 men on duty and escaping with 40 guns. The SPOs went on the rampage, beating up locals. Shopkeepers downed their shutters for two days in solidarity with those who had been killed and to protest harassment by the SPO. On the third day, local shopkeepers told Outlook, the SPOs arrived, saying if shops were not opened instantly, they would loot them.

Indeed, Outlook, too, got a taste of what the locals face. When we decided to head to Gangalur, the driver of the Toyota Qualis we had hired at Raipur refused to go any further, saying he didn’t wish to be blown up by a landmine. Eventually, my colleague "persuaded" a "friendly" Bijapuri to lend us his motorcycle—and so our journey into the jungles became possible. But when we returned, SPOs surrounded our vehicle and searched its contents, a procedure repeated at every checkpost to Dantewada.

For local journalists, living in Bastar is a nightmare: Kamlesh Paikra, the Bijapur correspondent of a Jagdalpur-based daily, was hounded out of town for criticising the SJ and the administration in his reports. Eventually, he relocated to Dantewada, but he lost his job. Asked about his case, Pisda says, "He was coming out of the jungle at midnight." But, that’s not a crime—journalists work at odd hours. "No," says Pisda firmly, "at midnight, you should be asleep in your own bed."

Adding strength to such pronouncements is the recent enactment of the Chhattisgarh Special Public Protection Act. The Act, People’s Union for Civil Liberties member Vinayak Sen points out, "is a draconian law" which will empower the government to imprison anyone who disagrees with it. Worse, points out advocate Sudha Bharadwaj, "There is no provision for appeal or bail." The PUCL also alleges that the government is deliberately emptying the jungles so that vast tracts of the forest can be handed over to big companies.

As we head back to Raipur, the lasting image is that of a blazingly hot afternoon on the outskirts of Gidam. In an open field, a cockfight is in progress. Wild roosters are pitted in pairs against each other. As feathers fly and blood spurts, adivasi men press against the barricade. Clutching currency notes in their hands, they place bets on the birds of their choice, shouting and cheering simultaneously—the scene is much like a city stock exchange, where only the initiated know what is happening. But money rapidly exchanges hands as yet another pair of roosters lunge at each other. This is routine Sunday entertainment in Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada, one of the three districts carved out of the old Bastar region. But it is also a metaphor for the state-sponsored civil war launched by the state government, in which adivasis are being pitted against adivasis—cannon fodder for a failed administration.