Adivasis Need Speedy and Impartial Justice – An Open Letter

Posted on May 15, 2013 by gandhifriends

May 6, 2013

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.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of The Gandhi Foundation.

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Civilizational Gandhi – a new paper by Rajni Bakshi

Posted on April 18, 2013 by gandhifriends

civilizational gandhiGateway House’s Rajni Bakshi analyses the Mahatma’s civilizational vision and explains how it can guide us through contemporary economic and identity-related conflicts.

From the central hall of the Indian Parliament in New Delhi to a statue at Union Square Park in New York, and across far flung corners of the world, M.K. Gandhi is loved and celebrated as an apostle of non-violence. Yet it is Gandhi’s little-known work on what it means to be truly civilized that might be far more crucial to the future of our species.

The multiple global crises – social inequity, financial turmoil and ecological imbalance – have made it imperative to revisit and pay close attention to Gandhi’s radical but more sustainable civilizational vision. Within India, both the economy and polity are in a state of distress. More than six decades after independence, India remains at the bottom of the United Nations’ Human Development Index. Twenty years of economic liberalisation have expanded the size of India’s middle class, but not raised the standard of living for the overwhelming majority of Indians. Globally, people are slowly acknowledging that the global financial system is fundamentally flawed and not just going through a cyclical low. We are also more sceptical now about the ability of the prevailing market culture to ensure even basic well-being for the seven billion people who inhabit the earth. At the same time, the human economy and nature’s eco-systems appear to be critically out of sync. Despite an increasing urgency for trans-national cooperation, there are persistent fears about a clash of civilizations – primarily between the West and the Islamic world, but also within multi-ethnic societies in large parts of the contemporary world.

This paper explores how the Mahatma’s civilizational vision can serve as a new lens to understand contemporary global crises – identity-based conflicts, the failed promise of universal prosperity and the threat of ecological collapse. What we have here are not ready solutions but a framework which might help us to forge solutions.

Download the full paper free of charge by signing up here: http://mad.ly/signups/71601/join

Originally published by Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations: http://www.gatewayhouse.in/

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of The Gandhi Foundation.

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New Book Review – Whose Country is it anyway? by Gladson Dungdung and reviewed by Felix Padel

Posted on January 29, 2013 by gandhifriends

whose country is it anyway GD.Gladson Dungdung - Whose Country is it anyway?

Review by Felix Padel

This collection of activist essays is out just when it is needed most: a book touching on every aspect of the Adivasi situation by an Adivasi activist prepared to take on the big questions and the key perpetrators of violence, from the big companies staging takeovers, headed by Tata, to the police increasingly serving these companies rather than India’s citizens, and the politicians facilitating the takeovers.

The book’s starting point is a recent Supreme Court Judgement that validates Adivasis’ identity as India’s original inhabitants. Significantly, this case involved an Adivasi woman stripped naked and shoved around a village in Maharashtra. Another piece focuses on the plight of Anna, a domestic servant, whose unheard plea for justice is symptomatic of mass exploitation and oppression of Adivasi women in domestic service. As for exposure to rape – what about rapists in uniform? Hasn’t rape been used against tribal people as a weapon of subjugation for decades? When tribal women are gang-raped by police or army personnel, are perpetrators ever punished? “Are these women too?” is one of the book’s strongest essays, covering the sexual abuse in a school in Chhattisgarh and other episodes that bring national shame.

The first essay starts at the beginning with the inspiring, yet harrowing story of the first Adivasi to oppose East India Company invasions, in 1779, with the words “Earth is our Mother”. Baba Tilika Manjhi paid for opposing the British with a gruesome death, giving the lie to the mastermind of this Paharia campaign, Augustus Cleveland, whose memorial in Bhagalpore claimed that he brought this tribal people under British rule “without terrors of authority”!

The book’s documentation of the many forms of violence and prejudice ranged against Adivasis fills a vital gap in literature. The detail is often sickening and will make any sane person extremely angry. It is shown how Adivasis are being displaced by dams, by industrial/mining projects, by continuing tricks of non-Adivasis, and – perhaps most outrageously of all – by the new University for the Study and Research of Law at Nagri. As Dungdung points out, the head of this university is also Jharkhand’s Chief Justice. If this isn’t a blatant conflict of interest, what is? This university’s takeover of land lays down a pattern of trampling on the Law that does not bode well for its future!

The book documents the situation in other states besides Jharkhand, such as Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Assam, where the Forest Department’s use of Boro tribal people to evict Adivasis from their forest land shows a typical colonial technique of turning one tribe against another. As the author asks, if Rahul Gandhi says he is Adivasis’sipahi in Delhi, he needs to speak up a lot louder and more often on Adivasi issues!

Dungdung rightly points out that in many ways Nehru is the ‘Architect of Adivasis’ misery’, through his ideology of dams as ‘temples of modern India’. The experience of tens of thousands of Adivasis whose lives have been ruined by dams forms a blatant contradiction to Nehru’s stated principle that tribal people should always be allowed to develop according to their own genius. However well-meaning Nehru was in his words, his violent actions towards tribal communities at certain times have yet to be recognised: apart from the horror of his big dams, he also sent in the troops against tribal communities in Telengana in 1948, destroying the achievements of 3,000 villages who had effected a democratic redistribution of land, and similarly in Nagaland and Manipur during the 1950s, where troops used extreme levels of violence to force submission. In each case, ‘security forces’ established a level of habitual violence, including use of ‘rape as a weapon of war’, for which thousands of perpetrators went unpunished. Operation Greenhunt is just the latest manifestation of the recurring patterns of state violence that these two operations initiated. Offering just military action and ‘development’ to counteract today’s Maoist insurgency is no solution at all ‘precisely because the injustice, discrimination and denial are the foundation of the violence’.

Gladson Dungdung records the starvation levels of hunger still faced by large numbers of Adivasis. As Binayak Sen has pointed out using medical and nutrition statistics, over 50% of Adivasis and Dalits are presently living under famine conditions of malnourishment. This being so, how can India’s rulers claim they have brought ‘development’ at all to these sections of society? To be real, development needs to be under local democratic control, not dictated by corporations and opaque government hierarchies.

As the two most discriminated-against groups in India, Dalits and Adivasis share many experiences. Yet the difference between the two groups is also important to be aware of: Dalits were more or less enslaved by mainstream society, while Adivasis maintained a high level of independence up to British times. As such, they developed their own diverse cultures and languages to a high level. Adivasi cultures are still too often perceived through stereotypes as ‘primitive’ and ‘backward’, when the reality is that they are extremely civilised and highly developed in areas of life where mainstream society is weak or degenerate. Centuries of development is often destroyed when Adivasi communities are thrown off their land by projects usurping the name ‘development’.

Adivasi society needs to be recognised for its formidable achievements, including an economic system that is based on and in accordance with the principles of ecology, and therefore sustainable in the true sense and the long term. Cultural Genocide is the term for what Adivasis are facing now all over India, and this book is a landmark in spelling out the injustice. By bringing out the truth, and documenting the situation from an authentic Adivasi perspective, it gives hope for a turning of the tide that will counteract the genocidal invasions and takeovers of Adivasi land.

Dr Felix Padel is an anthropologist who has lived in India for 30 years. His latest book ‘Out of This Earth: East India Adivasis and the Aluminium Cartel’ by Felix Padel and Samarendra Das is published by Orient Black Swan. ISBN: 9788125038672

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of The Gandhi Foundation.

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Conflict Resolution: From Gandhi to Galtung By Anupma Kaushik

Posted on January 16, 2013 by gandhifriends
Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi

Peace can be defined as a two sided concept. On the one hand it implies absence of violence and on the other the presence of positive, harmonious, cooperative relationships. These two aspects are referred to as negative and positive peace. Johan Galtung clarifies that peace research is based on the assumption that peace is as consensual a value as health. He further states that interdisciplinary and multilevel approaches are needed for peace research besides adoption of symmetry. Peace research needs to draw from all corners of the world and in order to understand an issue the researcher needs to see it from either side but the solution should not be based on the assumptions of one party alone. No party should be allowed to prevail over the other. Solutions should be found from which both parties might benefit. Findings should be symmetrically available. Peace research should be open in all its phases, never clandestine, never classified. Galtung also opines that for peace research most modern techniques of empirical study should be used. Data should be collected, processed, analysed and systematised into theories so as to provide a deeper understanding of the nature of conflict and that of peace. Last but not the least is the relevance of research. Research should help in the realization of peace. A researcher should not stop by ending a research project with policy implication but should get involved in concrete action by making propaganda among intellectuals and the public; persuading the establishment into action and challenging the monopoly of decision makers.1 Thus the scope of peace research is very wide. It covers the efforts for understanding of conditions that may prevent violence and also steps necessary for creation of conditions for furtherance of harmonious relations.2

Peace research recognizes that people as people are not always peace loving. Often governments are prodded on by an angry nation but more commonly governments share their nation’s  idiosyncrasies and they even find it useful to play them up in order to have backing for their rule and policies. In other words irrational nationalism is deeply enshrined in people’s feelings about themselves and other people.3 In order to eliminate conflicts ways are to be devised to prevent misconceptions.4

Conflict consists of three components: incompatibility, action and actors. It is a situation in which a minimum of two actors strive to acquire at the same moment in time an available set of scarce resources. Examples of extreme conflicts are war, systematic repression, sexual and domestic violence, totalitarianism and genocide. In conflict both the parties want to win but that often is not possible or does not resolve the conflict completely and permanently.

Conflict Resolution is a social situation where the armed conflicting parties in a voluntary agreement resolve to peacefully live with and/or dissolve their basic incompatibilities and henceforth cease to use arms against one another. Thus conflict is transformed from violent to non-violent behaviour by the parties. In theory there are seven distinct ways in which the parties can live with or dissolve their incompatibility. First, a party may change its goal i.e. its priorities. The second way is when parties stick to their goals but find a point at which resources can be divided. The third way is horse trading in which one side has all of its demands met on one issue while the other has all of its goals met on another issue. The fourth way is shared control. The fifth way is to leave control to somebody else and the sixth way is resorting to arbitration or other legal procedures that the parties can accept. The seventh way is that the issue can be left till later or even to oblivion.5

There are certain conflict catalysts which can be divided into positive and negative. Positive catalysts are creative. They promote but streamline the conflict and create a healthy atmosphere for communication, understanding and cooperation for reconciliation whereas negative catalysts activate the conflict, format it, bring a bad taste to it. They substantiate the conflict and escalate it to an irrepressible stage, to the point of liquidating the parties. Negative catalysts are fear, force, bad language, exaggeration, secrecy, distrust, prejudice and adding new conflict issues. Positive catalysts are fearlessness, faith, love of opponent, empathy, morality, openness, introspection, confining to conflict points, readiness to compromise, voluntary initiation of dialogue.6

In analyses of conflicts, an analysis of incompatibility is necessary i.e. identification of conflicting interests, positions and needs of the parties. Then conflict strategies are to be analysed through which parties aim at reducing the influence of the other side and enhancing the influence of its own side. The behaviour of the other side is watched carefully. A positive announcement must be followed by positive steps otherwise the former is regarded as propaganda and the later as the reality. Once there is shift in behaviour a dynamic development may follow and build momentum. The parties may search for compatible positions and finding them will attempt to create new structures via which these can be expressed. Spoilers may be dealt with carefully for they will attempt to shift the conflict back to upper level.7

In civil wars and intra-state conflicts concerned parties will have a longer shared history of conflict and cooperation. The dividing lines can be ideological, economic, social, ethnic or racial. Here the most important issues are: first, to construct a social and political system that gives reasonable social and political space to all groups. The second is the issue of security as the one party that wins acts against the other. Thus it is important to end violence in a way that it removes this security dilemma. Without the parties being secure, subjectively and objectively, peace is unlikely to be sustainable. Democracy can be a solution here as it gives a way to handle the participation of parties in a society after a violent conflict and to give space to a host of actors who have previously been suppressed or excluded from having influence. Democracy also gives choices apart from winning and perishing such as winning but not gaining complete dominance; being strong enough to play a role; having some strength which can be enough to prevent undesirable developments or losing but still keeping a position in society. But for this to be a reality three conditions are important. First, the winner must be committed to respecting the rights of the loser and make a come back. In other words defeat with security. Secondly, the state should not be seen to belong to any of the parties, and thirdly, a neutral peace keeping force. Reconstruction of society on principles of inclusion is also necessary for example to solve the problem of refugees. This signifies that the extreme condition that gave rise to the flight has been removed. Human rights’ provisions and international connections are also important.8

There can be territorial solutions within a state in the form of self determination, autonomy and federalism. In self-administration devolution of power takes place from the centre to local level. Autonomy is given by the centre and is subject to policy changes by the centre. It can be of weaker or stronger type. Autonomy can also be guaranteed by outside actors not just subject to policy of the centre. Federalism is created for many units with uniform constitution and the central government is composed of constituent units.9 These are useful especially in cases where minority groups are regionally clustered. Self-control of regional groups over their internal affairs allows the protection of dignity, identity and cultures by placing minority groups on an equal footing with the rest of the national security.10 These go a long way in building positive peace where exploitation is minimized or eliminated and there is neither overt violence nor structural violence. For structural violence is built into the very structure of social, cultural and economic institutions and is more indirect and insidious than observable physical violence. It denies people important rights such as economic well being; social, political and sexual inequality; a sense of personal fulfilment and self worth. Thus positive peace-building implies establishment of non-exploitative social structure i.e. something that does not currently exist.11 This also implies that structures and institutions need to be created that are capable of ensuring human rights and managing the effects of democratization and liberalization.12 In other words positive peace cannot exist without human rights.

Gandhian Approach to Conflict Resolution

The people who established peace studies in the west – Johan Galtung and Kenneth Boulding were admirers of Gandhi.13 However in the west peace studies have taken a very different path to that of Gandhi. Probably the reason was that Gandhian peace demands a great deal of sacrifice from the practitioner. He calls it satyagraha i.e. ‘adherence to truth’ and truth and non-violence are the main planks of satyagraha. A person who resolves to adhere to truth cannot remain silent at the sight of violence which is negative of truth. Truth functions in the form of nonviolence or love. While the lover of truth ought to oppose violence such an opposition would mean ‘fight the evil’ while ‘love the evil doer’. It is a dynamic soul force based on the concept of self-suffering. As there are many forms of injustices there are many forms of satyagraha too such as non-cooperation, civil disobedience, fasting, hijrat, hartal, picketing, boycott, and renunciation of titles, honours and positions.14

Dr Anupma Kaushik is Associate Professor in Political Science, Banasthali University

Rajasthan kaushikanupma@yahoo.co.in


References

1- J. Galtung, ‘Peace Research: Past Experiences and Future Perspectives’ in Radhakrishna (ed), Peace Research for Peace Action, Gandhi Peace Foundation, Indian Council of Peace Research, Sahitya Kendra Printers, New Delhi, 1972, pp- 13- 31.

2- Mahendra Kumar, Current Peace Research and India, Gandhian Institute of Studies, Varanasi, 1968, p- 9.

3- Gunnar Myrdal, ‘Peace Research and Peace Movement’, Ghanshyam Pardesai (ed), Contemporary Peace Research, Radiant Publishers, New Delhi, 1982, p- 30.

4- Ghanshyam Pardesai, Contemporary Peace Research, Radiant Publishers, New Delhi, 1982, p- 4.

5- Peter Wallensteen, Understanding Conflict Resolution, Sage Publication, London, 2007, pp- 3- 51.

6- Pooja Katariya, Conflict Resolution, Deep and Deep, Delhi, 2007, pp- 68- 73.

7- Peter Wallensteen, Understanding Conflict Resolution, Sage Publication, London, 2007, pp- 54- 56.

8- Ibid, pp- 121- 152.

9- Ibid, pp- 171- 172.

10- Ho- Won Jeong, Peace and Conflict Studies: An Introduction, Ashgate, USA, 2006, p- 235.

11- David P. Barsh and Charles P. Webel, Peace and Conflict Studies, Sage Publication, New Delhi, 2002, pp- 6- 8.

12- Roland Paris, At War’s End, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2004, p- ix.

13- Negeen Zinovieff, ‘Ancient Wisdom’, The Gandhi Way, No 96, Summer 2008, Glasgow.

14- Pooja Katariya, Conflict Resolution, Deep and Deep, Delhi, 2007, pp- 68- 73.

 

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of The Gandhi Foundation.

 

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India’s National Highways Widening Project – Bulu Imam

Posted on October 9, 2012 by gandhifriends

Bulu Imam
Hazaribagh
23rd August, 2012

Over the past decade and half India’s government conceived and implemented the plan to widen the country’s major highways. This included in the first phase the old Grand Trunk Road running east to west across north India through the vast plains and densely populated villages along the road. Millions of ancient fruiting and sacred indigenous trees were felled, and in the Jharkhand forested area the road ploughed through the forest. The existing eighty feet wide highway area was doubled, in some places almost tripled. This was the legendary road developed by Sher Shah and the Mughals in Delhi and later was to prove useful to the East India Company in 1772 in pushing its domain westward across northern India. This became a flagship project under the so called Golden Quadrilateral Project (linking Delhi, Chennai, Mumbai, Kolkata), the presently called National Highway 1. It is impossible to comprehend what such a project across a densely populated, forested and agricultural country like India could do. Two lane highways were expanded into treeless, habitationless, desert like tracts winding across the endless north Indian plain, in summer cutting all traditional transport connectivity between villages. India has planned to widen 70,934 kilometres of such highways eventually. The idea began during the BJP government when Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee conceived it fourteen years ago (1998). Originally called The Golden Quadrilateral Project it was implemented by the National Highways Development Project to upgrade, widen, rehabilitate India’s major highways, in various stages. Managed by the National Highways Authority of India under the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, it was implemented with an outlay of USD 60 billion (INR 3,00,000 crores) (USD 71 billion as of 2006). The highways to be upgraded through this dream project cover in its first phase, the golden quadrilateral 5846 kilometres initiated by then Prime Minister A.B.Vajpayee which is estimated to cost USD 6.8 billion funded by special petroleum tax revenues and loans from international banks, including the World Bank. Sixty percent of the project is to be privately financed. The World Bank has reportedly already given a loan of USD 40 billion for the overall highways expansion project. It is designed along American lines and the highways themselves when completed will largely resemble the treeless barren highways of the United States.

 In its second phase the project covers the north-south 2000 kilometres (Srinagar to Kanyakumari), east-west 2000 kilometers ( Silchar in the North-east to Porbandar in western Gujarat). It is definitely the “mother and father of all Silk Roads”! In the third phase the government recently approved upgrading 12,109 kilometres of highways on a Build, Operate, Transfer (BOT) basis handed to contractors and which will expand existing highways between state capitals and economic centres across India. Contracts have been awarded for 2075 kilometres. Later more such expansion phases will come.

God alone knows the effects which they will have on both the common man and the environment – both of which do not appear in India’s economic chart. Because I have been witness to its destructive potential at first hand I am fearful for the overall impact of this kind of project on the whole nation. Certainly it will usher in a sea-change, but will the impacts of this new addiction bear good fruit? In my opinion it can not.

This ambitious project has shown its destructiveness to villages in its way, and the roadside trees which were the glory of Mughal roads in India, and in our region which were developed by Sher Shah. As the road widening slowly started showing its effects we witnessed the disappearance of the landscape along the roads, the wholesale cutting down of massive trees. My own N.H 33 in Hazaribagh was denuded of an estimated fifty thousand ancient trees on its way to Ranchi barely 100 kilometres away. Hundreds of thousands of smaller trees also disappeared along the highway. From Kolkata to Barhi to Benares and Allahabad and on to Delhi the old Grand Trunk Road became a barren treeless mass of linear concrete winding across the northern plain, the villages on its both sides being largely destroyed by the massive ever widening concrete road running through; small towns felt the full wrath of the highway with hundreds of thousands of solid brick and cement houses being destroyed. Where there were forests such as in the highlands of Jharkhand, these were mowed down. In bigger towns and cities immense flyovers and by-passes were built. The present highway expansion across India covers a distance of 60,000 kilometres at a cost of approximately a billion dollars for every thousand kilometers. The loss of buildings and normal life along the highways is not calculated, nor is the ecological costs incurred through cutting down of ancient shade, fruit, and sacred trees like banyan (ficus bengalensis) andpipul (Ficus religiosa). Other valuable trees like mango (Mangoferus indica) and neem (azadirachta indica) have been destroyed by the millions. I have seen the effects of this highway expansion in my home state of Jharkhand first-hand and the effects it is having on the roadside buildings and populations, often very poor people, as well as the clearing of all the roadside trees that formerly provided shade during the very hot summer. The summer temperatures every year are dramatically rising, the concrete highway being a burning concrete strip, while rainfall patterns in these areas has dwindled affecting the rice plantations along the highway. Millions of hectares of rice fields have also become victims of highway expansion. The National Highway 33 passes through Hazaribagh, the town where I live, a stretch of slightly over four hundred kilometers connecting the nearby town of Barhi (on N.H.1) and the town of Baharagora in the southwest on the border of Jharkhand with the state of Orissa. This road is entirely within Jharkhand state. It is only one of the many similar highways in my region being destroyed to create a new India. Like all other state development projects the costs are not counted, neither human, social or ecological costs which will be handed over to future generations of Indians. There is another cost, the one of the aesthetic loss to the nation. The danger of the highways expansion is not only affecting the national highways, but is also affecting state highways, which are being developed from two to four lanes as well. The roadside trees and villages face the same harrowing fate as the “national” highways have started. Recently I visited south Jharkhand and saw the road from Simdega to Kunkurri being widened, a distance of approximately a hundred and odd kilometers. The present roads in the small township of Simdega are hellish, so is the present road from Simdega to Kunkurri (In Chhatisgarh state) is equally hellish, but instead of repairing the existing roads a massive new highway is planned. In the small village of Kurdeg which is on this highway I was shown where 40 feet on either side of the existing 80 feet wide road would destroy houses. It was an appalling sight, but in retrospect only a microcosm in comparison to what is happening in almost every district of India even now as I write!

When will modern India learn to value her own great traditional wealth and stop imitating the west? When will we learn to stand on our own feet? I return to Hazaribagh.

Earlier the N.H.33 ran through the most picturesque hilly scenery imaginable running from the plateau of Hazaribagh through densely forested Ghats to the beautiful valley of the Damodar which has been turned into a desert of concrete arteries, underground coal mine fires smoking beside the highway, atmospheric pollution so dense you can cut it with a knife, coal blackened streams and shanties in which the coal blackened faces of the former healthy tribes-people stare at you as you pass in your air-conditioned vehicle. THIS is the cost of modern India’s development. The poor and their lands have been sacrificed, the minerals stripped by the state, and the residue of humanity left to rot by the wayside…When one revisits this stretch of road from the still “pleasant leafy town of Hazaribagh” (Lonely Planet Guide) in the observations of a famous administrator during far-off British days – F.B.Bradley-Birt in his book CHOTA NAGPORE: A Little-known Province of the Empire (1903) – one is immediately transported into the past. He has left us with an unforgettable view of these plateaux – the old road from Giridih to Hazaribagh; the approach to the Ranchi plateau from Purulia; and of course the road from Hazaribagh down to the once-beautiful valley of the Damodar, and up the picturesque hill ranges to the fertile farmland of Ranchi plateau mainly inhabited by the Oraon and Munda tribes. I know that things change, but change has been brought too fast and haphazardly in modern India. England may not be exactly as Caesar knew it, but when I have driven by the English shires I have been constantly aware of the preservation of the lovely English landscape, and its archaeological sites (even Stonehenge!). There has to be in the official developers of nations a sense of history, an appreciation of landscapes, and a respect for citizens’ rights. In modern India these senses and understandings have been completely lost. It happened during the 1950s in Soviet Russia, it is happening even now in China. India must learn to understand the value to future generation in the preservation of its social and natural environment for future generations. We do not want to leave them a desert of a once fruitful and bountiful land? The government’s preoccupation with the Neo-Liberalism, the Economy and Growth, has led to the destruction of modern Indian society and the environment. I know that the once red-gravel (morum) highways had to become tar-macadam sometime, even as they are now turned into cement-concrete, but why have we lost the old sense of the need to preserve what we in fact do not need to destroy. To destroy something for a brief momentary gain to incur a significant long-term loss is either highway robbery or crass stupidity. I think our modern Indian planners are guilty of both. The administrators being government servants can do little but take orders and sometimes reap side benefits, the politicians and legislators steer a course for personal and party profit.

The Hazaribagh-Ranchi stretch of the N.H.33 described by Bradley-Birt is today a sight of the most abject desolation where hundreds of thousands of roadside trees have been systematically cut, some very ancient, using villagers’ axes and JCB machines to carry the old trunks away, village houses and small-town buildings have been swept away, crumbling ruins and slum shanties everywhere, millions displaced. I heard that when a search for the felled trees was made they were untraceable, the timber having been pirated! These things are taken for granted in modern India, after all there are bigger scams happening in New Delhi! This is always the excuse for not reacting to scams at the state level – the scams are bigger in the national capital!!

The greatest danger to the fabric of India’s human and natural environment is overlooked in contrast to the scale of India herself – a vast and almost limitless land, a densely inhabited and rich agricultural and forested habitat from the rising Himalayas in the north to the sun swept lands of the south and fairly barren Deccan plateaux, nursed on either sides by the Eastern and Western Ghats which stand as ramparts over the Bay of Bengal in the east and the Arabian Sea on the west. When the National Highways Project is seen in context of Indian highways it accounts for only a mere two percent of India’s highways (much left by the British) but the new highways being widened are crucial for economic development since they carry 40 percent of India’s industrial traffic. With the government’s promotion of economic liberalism ever since Rajiv Gandhi introduced this as state policy during the 1980s, to the efforts of successive governments, prime ministers and finance ministers, both of the BJP and Congress, the mantra of economic development sounded sweet and economic liberalism was promoted as government policy in this “developing the nation”. With the rapid increase of economic-liberalism and the increasing advent of corporations and government’s privatization of public sector industries the effects of the world economic order started to weigh heavily on Indian priorities. The evolving corporate state has become the anathema of everything which Gandhi envisioned for modern India. The peoples’ lands are being grabbed at gunpoint, sectors of tribal society are being declared terrorists and hunted down, stricter and stricter legislation is being imposed and in my view India is evolving towards a police state. But democracy still stands. Unlike in Pakistan or China we can still speak our minds in public. But for how long? George Bernard Shaw in his inimitable way once remarked “Democracy is not real freedom”. He was referring to government. Democracy is all about government and not about freedom. It is perhaps the greatest hoax perpetrated against freedom, whether Abe Lincoln would have liked it or not. And so we are saddled with government, and dissent against government policy can make one anything from a seditionist to an anarchist, let alone a Luddite. But I still hold India is a Democracy in the best sense because its citizens – at least up until this moment – can voice dissent. Perhaps it is a carry-over from the nationalist freedom movement, the idealizing of the dissent of India’s freedom fighters against British rule, the creation of martyrs, and the distribution of Tamba-0patras (Copper Plate awards) to Freedom Fighters. The fight for India’s independence from British rule laid down the foundations upon which modern India was built.

However, to return to the subject of these new national highways being drawn out by planners in New Delhi sitting in air-conditioned buildings, to the common man living with his family along the remnants of his house on a new highway being built …. Supposedly for the welfare of his children (!) is a long distance. As we have seen the National Highways expansion project is not only mind boggling for a nation in which 40 percent live below the poverty line (50 cents a day), but also in the scale of its mass destruction of trees and the cost to the nation of losing housing whose value to the common man have never been taken into consideration both as national assets or as the production of human resources of Indians themselves which are national assets in the long run. On the other hands the dozens of billions of dollars in loans which the government is taking from international banks including the World Bank (I am informed USD 40 billion) is money in the government’s hands on the hypothecation of the nation’s natural reserves, which should be seen as an impoverishment of this nation. The human and ecological losses can never be calculated. As India presents itself as a growing economy so too daily India is falling into the trap of other developed nations relying on foreign banks…. It is falling into a debt-trap from which it cannot emerge, and which will have to be faced by future generations – and our rising population, climate change, and resulting lack of will to live will destroy the fabric of future Indian life.

Bulu Imam is a cultural activist and joint recipient of The Gandhi Foundation International Peace Award 2011. He can be contacted at: buluimam@gmail.com

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of The Gandhi Foundation.

Filed under: 1. News & Events, Living & Environment, Politics & Democracy, South Asia | Tagged: , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Jharkhand Human Rights Movement Condemns Police Atrocities on Rights Activists

Posted on July 31, 2012 by gandhifriends

JHRM
Jharkhand Human Rights Movement
C/o-Mr. Suleman Odeya, Near Don Bosci ITC Gate, Khorha Toli, Kokar,
Ranchi -834001. 0651-3242752 Email: jhrmindia@gmail.com

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.

Filed under: 1. News & Events, Adivasi Campaign, South Asia | Tagged: , , , , , | 1 Comment »

The Gandhi Foundation International Peace Award 2011

Posted on July 30, 2012 by gandhifriends

“India in Chronic Famine, Funded From London”

By John Rowley

Presentation of The Gandhi Foundation International Peace Award for 2011 jointly to Dr Binayak Sen (left) and Bulu Imam (right) and presented by Lord Bhikhu Parekh (centre).

 

The Gandhi International Peace Award was established by Lord Richard Attenborough, Surur Hoda, Diana Schumacher and Martin Polden in 1998 “to honour unsung heroes and heroines for their advocacy and practise of Non-Violence”. The Gandhi Foundation’s Vice-President, Lord Bhikhu Parekh presented the much delayed 2011 Award jointly to Dr Binayak Sen and Bulu Imam, the cultural activist, ‘for their humanitarian work’ amongst the tribal peoples of India, the Adivasis, on 12th June in The House of Lords.

Dr Binayak Sen is a highly respected expert on children’s health and has become a very effective human rights campaigner. He was made an Amnesty Prisoner of Conscience in 2007 and is still on bail despite being released twice by the Indian Supreme Court. He is currently under charge for Sedition. One reason for his oppression by the Chhattisgarh State is his criticism of their health care system. In his speech, he argued from his Government’s own statistics that India has been, and remains, in a state of chronic famine and that the hardest hit are, yet again, the impoverished and the dispossessed. He showed how the Indian Government has enacted increasingly draconian laws designed to eliminate dissent and implemented them through the Courts, the police and the Army. He said that all of this is being done in collusion with multi-national corporations under the banner of neo-liberal capitalism and so they are jointly responsible for both the famine and the widespread abuses of human rights.  Dr Felix Padel told us that global mining strategy and much of the funding for its implementation is decided in the City of London and that, therefore, the Coalition must demand the same transparency in the mining and construction industries as they are now demanding of the banks.  Bulu Imam, joint Recipient of the Award, said that only a ‘New Consciousness’ would allow humankind to survive. This meant greater understanding and insight into what is really happening around us, learning from peoples like the Adivasis, who are directly in touch with the elements of life, and for us to behave less selfishly and more for the benefit of others.

                                                                    —————

Dr Sen’s speech was entitled “Hunger, Dispossession and the Legitimacy of Dissent”. He produced figures from The National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau whose latest survey show that between 45% to 47% of children under 5,  37% of the whole adult population and an astonishing 60% of Minorities and Scheduled Castes are malnourished by weight-for-age criteria, that is, Body Mass Index. The World Health Organisation declares a famine when more than 40% of a nation’s peoples have a BMI less than 18.5.

The Adivasis, with whom he has worked for 30 years, have been able to survive the famine only because their traditions dictate that all have equal access to their common property – land, water, shelter and crops. Since Rajiv Gandhi opened India to foreign investment, the State has increasingly “acted as the Guarantor to the expropriation of common property resources, handing them over to corporate interests under the doctrine of Eminent Domain, through which the State is the ultimate owner of all the resources in the country”.  And so, for decades, the vast resources of minerals, from bauxite to coal, under Adivasi land – never paid for at anything like the true ‘capitalist market rate’ – has been mined at an increasing rate, their valleys dammed for power, factories built and top flight transport systems to serve them. PM Manmohan Singh is celebrated as a key figure in India’s spectacular economic development but he and his Government brook no opposition.  He called the Naxalite insurgency in the so-called Red Corridor [from Jharkand to Andra Pradesh] ‘the greatest threat to India’s security’ and in 2009 launched Operation Greenhunt deploying a huge array of the armed service to target the so-called Naxalites – actually The Communist Party of India [Maoist]. As usual, this is having its most devastating impact on the people caught in between – the Adivasis.

As more and more mines, factories, dams and roads are built on their land, 70 million Adivasis and many other Minorities have been purposively starved, dispossessed, impoverished, physically violated with impunity, falsely imprisoned and barred from fair judicial process or suffered all six.  Dr Sen pointed out that, quite obviously, resistance had to be organised if they were to survive these onslaughts. “But they and others right across India are now faced with a panoply of laws, old and new, that severely restrict free speech and any form of protest. However peaceful and non-violent these protests are, they are branded as ‘sedition’, ‘rebelliousness’ or  ‘insurgency’. Too often protests are met with violence by police, army and corporate goondas. There are thousands of people in jail right now, just like me, who have been convicted under false charges. I am one of the very few lucky ones. I have been granted bail twice by The Supreme Court who stated ‘that no evidence had been produced by the Chhattisgarh Government’, but I still await a final judgement.”

How can peace be achieved when both sides resort to violence? Dr Felix Padel suggested that India needs its own model of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The UK Coalition and The City would have to appear. The Foreign Office and the Departments for Business and International Development all share a current duty of care to show us the effects of their actions with our money and also to demand that all corporate communications and financial transactions in the UK are made transparent. For here in The City, Dr Padel pointed out, is: “The global centre for coordinating corporate investment in mining and now hosts the vast majority of the corporate headquarters, their Banks and their financiers.  It is imperative that we can all see the link between  decisions made here and the actual impact they have on real people and environments.  There should be an Independent Commission into the Mining Industry, stronger even than the Vickers Commission on Banking, as equivalent scandals wait to be revealed there too”.

Dr Padel said that there is colossal ignorance here in the UK about what many call India’s Civil or Hidden War.  Too often this can be labelled ‘wilful ignorance’, that is, not knowing what you should know.  One professor in statistics at the prestigious Indian Institute of Statistics in Kolkata estimated that the professionals involved in designing, building and managing an Aluminium factory or dam were aware of only 2% of the effects their projects have on local communities and ecosystems.  But there is what could be called ‘purposeful ignorance’ – hiding facts intentionally, not telling the Whole Truth, lying by omission. There has also been a noticeable lack of press coverage in the UK of the War and its causes.  This has ensured that few people have any understanding of the violence and corruption which we, as a people, are indirectly causing – ‘innocent ignorance’? “Many, including Arundhati Roy, have unpicked and exposed the links between the elites of corporate elites, politicians, armed services, bankers, big philanthropists and media owners and are not surprised at our collective ignorance. She and many others contradicting the image of India as a model of democracy and economic success have been vilified, spied upon, attacked and falsely accused. ”

Joint Recipient Bulu Imam called for “A New Consciousness”. We need Satyagrahas for the 21st Century, in other words, Citizens who take responsibility for understanding their society, act solely for the welfare of others and who are prepared to offer their lives in the pursuit of justice. He said that “industrial civilization is an aberrant civilization. It has strayed from the path of Nature. It has made war, brutality and profit a path without compassion or hope. It heralds planetary catastrophe from causing global warming. India with its older order of ancient spiritual values, non-violence toward man and nature, tolerance and psychological fulfillment still stands ready, even now, to show the way. The culture of the Adivasis, developed centuries before we arrived, offers us that very model. From them we can all learn, we can each learn how to become non-violent within, towards each other and to the planet.  All of us here must act now to stop all these self-centred forces destroying these fragile and exemplary communities and their priceless eco-systems. Once you see the links between your life and theirs, you will understand that their struggle is our struggle and you will foresee that only profound mutual aid between all the planet’s communities can save some of us from the apocalypse rushing towards us.”

An hour’s lively debate ensued. From the 90 distinguished guests packed into Committee Room 4a, the Panel could respond to only a few of the comments and questions clamouring to be heard. Those chosen were Martin Horwood MP [LibDem & Chair, The All Party Parliamentary Group on Tribal Peoples], Bianca Jagger, Aruna Roy, Professors John Gilbert and Narinder Kapur, C B Patel, Colin Bex, Antony Copley, Martin Polden and Jennifer Wallace. Whilst all admired our two Recipients, there was little consensus on the way forward. The Gandhi Foundation would like to facilitate discussion and so will shortly publish here on our website, an edited transcription of the key points raised.

The question now facing The Gandhi Foundation is “What are we going to do about this?”

If you are still unconvinced that Non-violent Direct Action against the violence being perpetrated by the Indian Government is required urgently, read Cathy Scott-Clark’s article about Kashmir. She heads it with a quote “We Need Protection” [www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jul/09/mass-graves-of-kashmir]. She reveals the atrocities – extra-judicial murder, torture and other illegal human rights abuses – that the Indian Army has committed in Kashmir. We now know that they behave no differently under “Operation Greenhunt”.

If you would like to see one example of how The Gandhi Foundation can be effective, albeit indirectly and in a very small way, then read Decca Aitkenhead’s article on Clive Stafford Smith which she also heads with a quote: “The jury system in this country is utter insanity” [www.guardian.co.uk/law/2012/jul/08/clive-stafford-smith-jury-system-insanity].  You will notice that Clive has included “The Gandhi International Peace Award 2005” as the only other point worth mentioning in his CV.

Finally, why don’t you compare the laws against Terrorism and other forms of Dissent in India with our own?

John Rowley is a Trustee of The Gandhi Foundation and Project Manager for The Gandhi International Peace Award 2011.

To view Bulu Imam’s speech: The Need For A New Consciousness by Bulu Imam

To view Dr Binayak Sen’s speech: Click Here

To view the photographs from the event click on the photo gallery in the right hand column of the homepage

Filed under: 1. News & Events, 2. Peace Award, South Asia, UK & Europe | Tagged: , , , , , | 1 Comment »

Is Judiciary Biased Against Adivasis? by Gladson Dungdung

Posted on July 27, 2012 by gandhifriends

Is Judiciary Biased Against Adivasis?

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

Filed under: Adivasi Campaign, South Asia | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Gloomy Thoughts on India Today By Antony Copley

Posted on July 14, 2012 by gandhifriends

Gloomy Thoughts on India Today by Antony Copley

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

Filed under: Adivasi Campaign, Living & Environment, Politics & Democracy, South Asia | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

The Buck Stops at Your Door Mr Chidambaram by Gladson Dungdung

Posted on July 13, 2012 by gandhifriends

The Buck Stops at Your Door Mr Chidambaram

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

Filed under: 1. News & Events, Adivasi Campaign, Living & Environment, Politics & Democracy, South Asia | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

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