Tribal uprisings in Orissa were the first of organized assaults on the British, against the Hindu Kings, as well as on the Brahmin supremacists. The indigenous were united against oppression way before the Sepoy Mutiny took shape. They had no loyalty towards the kings and unlike the Paikas and Sepoys, they had no interest in releasing the royal families from British domains. In fact, the tribals shone in their capacity to challenge the Rajas as much as they expressed disdain towards British agents.
Therefore, when the native Kings of Khurda, Kanika and Kujang made a confederation to oppose the British invasion, the tribal agitators knew the kings had no motives other than to safeguard their royal privileges. Although Khurda Movement is usually declared as the first mass movement against the British following hanging of Jayakrishna Rajguru who has been eulogized profusely, its anti-imperialistic nature is highly suspect. Bakshi Jagabandhu Bidyadhar and his chief associate Krushna Chandra Bhramarbar Ray have been equally immortalized in history for their involvement in the anti-British movement. But the true champions of the organized revolt upon which the royal clan depended for survival were the forgotten tribal masses of rebels.
Khurda Movement did not start with Bakshi Jagabandhu, it started with 400 Kandhs in Banpur who came from the neighboring territory of Ghumsar. For seven years the movement lasted with the help of fellow tribals – the Kandhs, Savaras and Panas of Banpur, Nayagarh, Boudh and Daspalla. It was not the loyalists of the royal families, but their dissenting and oppressed subjects who took to arms and fought the British which indirectly benefited the needs of the local kings of the time. But the tribals never gave in to the manipulative designs of the kings either, thus constituting an independent stream in Orissa’s freedom movement, inviting wrath from the mainstream historians.
A. Das in “Life of Surendra Sai” (1963) decries the tribal revolts in Sambalpur. While glorifying Surendra Sai as a freedom fighter, the actual heroes of the revolt – the indigenous masses – have been portrayed as nothing less than crazy looters. Tribal uprisings have been compared with “the tyranny and lootings carried on by the Burgees of the Maratha days.” Surendra Sai, despite being a rebel claimant to the guddee of Sambalpur, was solely interested in the throne. To eulogize him as the charismatic anti-British hero while attacking the Gonds upon whose abilities he rode high, would be to use history as a paternalistic tool. And yet, for years into historical research, this is exactly what has been done. Surendra Sai has become a hero, while the tribal uprisings have been denounced as daylight robberies.
Ramnarayan Mishra in his paper, sponsored by Indian Council of Historical Research (1980), writes about Sambalpur following tribal uprising, “Life and properties were quite unsafe, the ryots could not raise their crops in their lands and as soon as they were ripe, they were looted and removed from the fields by these bands of robbers. There were day-light robberies and dacoity; the economic and social life of the people were completely paralyzed…Even now the days are remembered with alarm as the memories have come down from generations to generations. The atrocities of minor nature were the looting of cakes, which were being prepared by the housewife a certain evening, and the looting of all the belongings of the bride when she was on a procession to her father-in-law’s house for marriage….”
It is astounding to notice how the historians have continually felt sympathies with the landlords and the propertied class of Orissa. Mishra recalled the days with alarm when the tribal rose in revolt against the Brahmins in Sambalpur. Little did he pause to imagine the days from the lens of those that were forced to revolt. Much of the histories about Orissa still continue to be produced from the ruling class elitist visions of the past, part of the reason why the true history of peoples’ struggles is yet to be documented in totality.
Andrew Fraser in “Among Indian Rajah and Ryot” (1912) describes the Kalahandi revolution as though it were the responsibility of the Kandhs to forgive the Koltas. “The wretched prisoners fell at the feet of the leading Khonds and begged them to spare their lives; but they were told that none of the men among them would be spared,” he writes.
L.S.S. O’Malley in “Modern India and the East: A Study of the Interaction of their Civilization” laments the passage of the British interventions. Ramnarayan Mishra agrees with the old British thesis and writes, “The old ceremonies called the Mariah sacrifice which had been put down with great difficulty by the British officers some years before was revived. The sacrifice involved killing captives and hacking off pieces of their flesh which they buried in the fields as an offering to the earth goddess which would ensure their fertility.”
What O’Malley and subsequently, Mishra have omitted out of their deconstructions is that Mariah sacrifice was not merely about human captives. The tribal resistance was not nonviolent in nature, principally because it was always part of a defensive reaction, as opposed to the oppressors’ tactics which were premeditated murders. It is presumptuous to assume that the historically oppressed and dispossessed tribal population of Orissa show solidarity with the ruling class hooligans of Rajput and British origin who were profiting from the lands of the indigenous by imposing bonded labor terms upon them.
Therefore, even as ruling class histories suggest Orissa lost her independence after death of the last Hindu King Mukunda Harichandan, the tribals never really thought so. Contrary to mainstream belief that Muslim rule in Orissa was oppressive, there was no recorded revolt by the tribals against the Muslim rule.
Prasanna Kumar Mishra in “Political Unrest in Orissa in the 19th Century” (1983) writes, “The people of Orissa lost their independence from the sixteenth century, but could not fully express their dissatisfaction against the aliens throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Only when a foreign trading company began to rule through exploitation and oppressed them socio psychologically, the people woke up from their slumber and began to raise their voice against this foreign rule.”
What is crucial here is the fact that the first organized mass rebellions were organized by the tribal people of Orissa. They were organized against the British as well as against the Hindu (of Rajput origin) rulers of Orissa. Both the anti-British and anti-royal movements were part of the larger national struggle that were to arrive following the footsteps of the Orissan tribal revolutions.
In this context, it is important to observe the Mariah sacrifices. Dismissing them as mere tribal superstitions bordering on criminality is also a dismissal of their roles in the national freedom movements orchestrated by the oppressed subjects against the ruling classes. The human “sacrifices” had elements of not just violence as a last resort, but also of targeted violence with a distinct class character that eliminated landlords, dewans, British agents and associates of royal families. The British were afraid of the tribal movements precisely because of the violent nature of their resistance. It was an economic war justly organized by the majority oppressed against their minority oppressors. Not some religious abstractions, as later historians tend to stress.
Ramnarayan Mishra dismisses the tribal movement as nothing other than a selfish pursuit to guard their traditional interests, that had no bearing upon the freedom movement against the British. He writes, “The resistance movement (against the British) in the States was a middle class movement sponsored by the people of coastal areas and it had nothing to do with tribal solidarity.”
P. Mukherjee in “History of Orissa” (1954) writes that the reason behind tribal uprisings in Orissa was their apprehensions that alien rule intended to “assess their lands, punish their leaders for the religious rites performed by them.”
H. K. Mahtab in “History of the Freedom Movement in Orissa (1957) writes, “The Khond risings in Baudh, Ghumsar and Khandmal during the years 1846-1848 were just temporary show of disaffection and resentment of the Khonds at the governmental interference in their religious rites.”
Not only have the tribal contributions been grossly overlooked, and their participations have been looked down upon as anarchical, even many false heroes have been recreated in the process to overshadow the real ones. Fakir Mohan Senapati is one such historical character who has been eulogized at the expense of Dharanidhar Naik. Collective celebration of Fakir Mohan as a literary champion has also necessitated the destruction of his challenger, the other literary genius in Dharanidhar. Dharanidhar was duped not only because Fakir Mohan was a state agent interested to earn loyalty points from his beloved king who was otherwise an oppressive ruler, but also because Naik belonged to a lower caste not worthy of literary celebration. Likewise, British agent Superintendent Ravenshaw who organized military tactics to capture Dharanidhar remains immortalized to this day, whereas his roles in suppressing the tribal uprisings have been held with esteem.
It is again astounding as to how an entire state can celebrate the act of immoral trickery on part of the oppressive ruling class to capture a tribal hero. And yet, every primary school student in Orissa is taught precisely this. Capture of Dharanidhar is almost a climax in Oriya nationalism, whereas nothing could be farther from the truth. And when Dharanidhar emerged more popular after his imprisonment in the hands of Fakir Mohan, the upper caste upholders of Brahminical education started portraying the tribal revolutionary into a universal saint. Pandit Nilakantha Das and Pandit Gopabandhu Das subsequently claimed to have learnt from Dharanidhar, the saint, about life’s essences. Apparently, Dharanidhar gave them an apt philosophical lesson, “First try to be a true human being, and then only free the country.”
Ironically, the last of the tribal revolutionaries in the pre-1947 era, Laxmana Naik is celebrated today as the foremost tribal leader. It is so understood because Laxmana Naik led the movement which for the first time collaborated with the mainstream Congress strategies. Naik was beyond doubt one of the bravest and most courageous of leaders to have emerged anywhere. But he was only a successor to a long history of indigenous revolts in Orissa that witnessed countless distinguished tribal leaders like Dora Bisoi, Chakra Bisoi, Sadhu Jani, Nabaghana Kahnar, Bira Kahnar, Ratna Naik, Dharanidhar Naik, Nirmal Munda among others.
And more importantly, these leaders found their subsistence not through royal scriptures or British mentions of honor, or national awards by the independent republic, but through innumerable masses of people who supported them throughout their long and historic struggles against land-grabbers – both foreign and domestic. Their historic struggles ever so radical, fundamentally unforgiving towards their oppressors.
And no matter how much the lousy, corrupt, and incompetent administrations of this day work overtime to ignore the vision of the indigenous for a socially just world of equality and prosperity, of ecological respect and communitarian solidarity, the courageous blood of the tribal ancestors still boils in the veins of their successors. And through the movements today once again against the oppressive ruling elites stationed in Bhubaneswar, New Delhi, Washington DC, London, Kolkata and Seoul – the blood shows.
The blood narrates Orissa’s history as the history of tribal uprisings against socio-economic injustice. And that, her future, too, shall be shaped by the mandates of the dispossessed, not by the whims of the oligarchs.
Freedom will not come
Today, this year
Nor ever
Through compromise and fear….
I do not need freedom when I’m dead
I cannot live on tomorrow’s bread
– Langston Hughes
Using brute police force to silence indigenous peoples’ mass uprising in Orissa is not just an act of sheer cowardice and criminality; it is a decision founded upon gross ignorance of the unique stream of struggles which characterize the class war in the land that has witnessed more organized revolutions than enforced reforms.
Orissan tribal uprising has a definitive historical pattern. It is not exclusive to the current state of unrest. The administrations – both Union and the State – deliberately fail to acknowledge the peoples’ organized movements as thus. It is not a Maoist prerogative to envision the path of violent resistance among the oppressed in Orissa. Quite the contrary, actually – it is the continuation of radical dissent among the peoples of Orissa that has generated a certain Maoist character within the struggle.
The indigenous in Orissa have never retired from their relentless rebellions against the land-grabbers. They have violently challenged the zamindars, formed alliances against the kings, conspired to overthrow the British, and have demonstrated ample courage in battling caste supremacism. Tribal resistance movements in Orissa have consistently targeted foreign interventions via expropriation of their lands that threaten to result in economic distress.
Prof J. H. Hutton (quoted in G.S. Ghurye’s “The Scheduled Tribes”, 1961) observes, “All these rebellions were defensive movements: they were the last resort of tribesmen driven to despair by the encroachments of outsiders on their land or economic resources. As such they could have all been avoided had the authorities recognized the aboriginals’ grievances and taken steps to remedy them out… but before the pressure on the tribesmen had made an outbreak unavoidable. Indeed anyone with first hand experience of conditions in the backward areas must be surprised, not by the occurrence of risings, but by the infrequency of violent reactions on the part of the aboriginals to the loss of their ancestral lands and to their economic enslavement.”
Ghumsar Risings
One of the first organized revolts by the indigenous, known as Ghumsar risings, during early 19th century, illustrates how the people have cried for freedom from invaders, both local and global. Ghumsar, a small estate in Ganjam district was ruled by the Bhanja dynasty. Owing to default in revenue payment to the Empire, the British intervened in the affairs of Ghumsar and its ruler Srikar Bhanja was deposed in 1800 CE. When the British took control of Ghumsar after overthrowing Srikar’s son Dhananjaya, it was Dora Bisoi, a leader of the Kandhs (who was awarded the title of Birabar Patra) who won the support of the common people as well as Kandh chiefs to decide on the fate of Ghumsar. Since a Kandh leader could not be allowed to rule, Bisoi brought a 12-yr old girl and substituted Dhananjaya’s son of that age with her and ruled the estate on her behalf. Dora Bisoi was the leader of the masses and this was the reason why the Collector of Ganjam failed to arrest him for over three years.
Administrative officers did their best to harass Bisoi and finally, he escaped to Torabadi at Soroda. The Kandhs then garnered support of the Savaras in this movement against the British and the royals. In the meantime, Srikar Bhanja was again placed on the throne, but he failed to manage the affairs properly upon which his son Dhananjaya was reinstalled on the condition that he paid the dues to the British. British force under Sir Henry Taylor finally occupied Ghumsar in 1834.
Dora Bisoi, the leader of the anti-Bhanja rebellion now led a revolt against the British which claimed lives of several British soldiers and burnt down British camps. British Government appointed a special officer George Russell to capture Dora. Rebel leaders including Kollada, Galeri, and Durgaprasad lent support to Dora in their collective fight against the British, while they found shelter in the mountains of Daspalla and Nayagarh.
Special Commissioner Russell unleashed one of the greatest assaults upon a resisting people that changed the character of India’s freedom movement. The British offered an unprecedented Rs 5,000 as a reward to anyone who could capture Dora. Many rebel leaders were captured and hanged, but Dora escaped first to Patna before escaping to Angul. It was there that the Raja of Angul handed him over to the British and received the reward. Dora Bisoi died tortured in a state prison of Madras. But his ability to lead and create many rebel leaders in Orissa continued to inspire. Great Oriya patriot and nephew of Dora Bisoi, Chakradhar Bisoi took his place and Ganjam’s destinies were reshaped after what the people demanded, not what was imposed from above.
In Banpur, the Kandhs alongwith another low caste people Panas organized their struggle under the leaderships of Krutibas Patasahani, Sadhu Jani and Dunai Jani. Kandhs of Baudh also joined the movement and were united by leaders such as Nabaghana Kahnar, Bira Kahnar, and Madhab Kanhar. The Kandhs remained united in struggle for social justice and economic improvements against both the British and their Rajas. All efforts by the British to divide and rule over the tribals drastically failed.
Mariah Revolt
Elsewhere in India, people used to heed to their Kings as mediators between them and the British. Not so in Orissa. When the British could not accept their defeat in the hands of the Bisois and people of Ganjam, they used the Kandh practice of Mariah sacrifice as a moral justification to attack the indigenous. Chakra Bisoi flat refused to negotiate and the British brought the King of Baudh to intervene. Chakra Bisoi and his comrades not only defied the Baudh King, they burnt down the camp of the British agent and forced the Raja to be sent back with them.
Chakradhar successfully organized the Kandhs in the territories of Angul, Ghumsar, Boudh, Patna, Kalahandi and Paralakhemundi. He also led the Savaras in Paralakhemundi, the peasants in Nayagarh, as well as the Kandhs of Ranpur and Daspalla.
In 1846, right after rainy season, British officer Macpherson marched into Kandhamal to recover his prestige. His troops managed to burn down some houses of the Kandhs. But the Kandhs organized to strike back and plundered in every direction, making the revolt more widespread than before. Orissa’s tribal revolt against the royal thrones as well as British officers became such a matter of concern that the Madras unit of British Government sent a whole army under the command of General Dyee to control the situation. Government of Bengal cooperated with General Dyee to put an end to indigenous revolts.
Tribal leader Nabaghan Kahnar of Baudh and Chakra Bisoi harassed the British no end. Rani of Sonepur, Raja of Angul and Raja of Baudh tried their best to apprehend them and a reward of Rs 3,000 was declared this time. Failing in all their efforts to suppress tribal resistance, Raja of Baudh had to cede Kandhamal to the British.
Governments – both British and the feudal – tried all measures, including arresting Rendon Majhi, head of Borikiya Kandhs of Kalahandi on charges of performing human sacrifices. Most warrior class among the Kandhs, the Kutiya Kandhs joined the larger tribal movements and demanded the release of Majhi. Zamindar of Madanpur was removed when he failed to act against the rising violent rebellions. In the meantime, Chakra Bisoi escaped to Ganjam and joined with the Saoras to rise in rebellion under leadership of Radhakrushna Dandasena. The British ruthlessly attacked and burnt down scores of villages and hanged Dandasena.
Many rebel leaders were hanged and eliminated by the British forces. But this never stopped the march of the revolts. When the Baudha Raja in collaboration with the British oppressed the downtrodden in his state, a new leader Narayan Maliah led the Kandhs to lead yet another violent rebellion.
Bhuinya Risings
In 1868, the Bhuinya revolts determined the shape of things to come in Keonjhar. The newly appointed King Dhanurjaya was not recognized by the Bhuinyas. Tired of being brutalized by the royal family, tribal leader Ratna Naik led a popular agitation against the king. The Dewan of Keonjhar Nanda Dhal took help of officer Ravenshaw, the Superintendent of the Tributary Mahals. But the Bhuinyas did not remain silent for long. They rose in revolt, captured Nanda Dhal and Raja’s other associates, and plundered Keonjhargada, the kingdom.
The Bhuinyas found support from the Juangs and the Kols. The Deputy Commissioner of Singhbhum marched to Keonjhar and demanded that the indigenous groups return the captives. The Bhuinyas refused to cooperate and the Deputy Hayes requisitioned for another contingent of army from Singhbhum. Equipped with bows, arrows and swords, the Bhuinyas bravely confronted the British armies but had to finally surrender. Ratna Naik was captured by the Paiks of Pallahara on August 15, 1868 and brought to Cuttack. Paiks who were agents of the British helped arrest several hundreds of tribal revolutionaries. In a show trial, seven were sentenced to death, 27 were transported for life and 149 revolutionaries were imprisoned. Ratna Naik and three of his comrades were hanged in Cuttack.
Dharani Meli
Minor in age, but a boy of immense moral courage, Dharanidhar Naik of Bhuinya tribe was well educated for his age. The Raja of Keonjhar even appreciated his talents. But when he attempted to educate the fellow Bhuinyas, it did not sit well with the king. Dharanidhar, his brother and friends did not bury the lessons of their education. They organized the bonded labor class of Keonjhar against the King and demanded that they be paid for their work.
This infuriated the King of Keonjhar who had fancied that his tribal subjects were forever deemed to remain as slaves. Dharanidhar, even at such young age, did not submit to various temptations as offered by the King, and went ahead to foster a spirit of resistance among the oppressed indigenous peoples. Many of them then joined Dharanidhar in submitting a petition to the Superintendent of Tributary Mahals. The Superintendent obviously did not act upon the petition and the Raja arrested the petitioners.
Dharanidhar then went on to organize the people to revolt against the Raja. This shocked the ruling class. Dharanidhar led the people inside the palace and looted the palace and distributed the ill-gotten wealth among the people. The King of Keonjhar fled to Anandapur and sent his Assistant Dewan Fakirmohan Senapati to control the situation. Superintendent Ravenshaw also helped the King by sending a detachment of British force to Keonjhar.
Fakirmohan resorted to ugly tricks against the tribal leader. He assured Dharanidhar that the British police was there to help the tribal people. Dharanidhar on good faith appeared before the police officer, but little did he know that Fakirmohan was acting on behalf of the King and the British to punish the poor people who demanded their rights to dignity of life. Dharanidhar and his comrades were arrested and sent to years of rigorous imprisonment by the royal-feudal-bureaucratic-British nexus.
Sambalpur Revolution
Not only were the Adivasis exploited economically, they were also culturally forced to submit to higher-caste whims. The tribal deities were Hinduised and the indigenous were compelled to show allegiance to the protectors of their new Gods. In the guise of developing personal relationships between the rulers and the ruled, the indigenous peoples were routinely recruited to fight on behalf of the ruling class.
Sambalpur was a classic instance of cultural exploitation during the Sepoy Mutiny. Surendra Sai, a claimant to the guddee of Sambalpur used the Gond and Binjhal tribal chiefs to wage a war against the British Government because the British opposed Sai’s demands. The Gonds of course cooperated in resisting the British, but they also figured out that they were being manipulated by the ambitious ruling class hierarchies.
Sambalpur and adjoining areas were inhabited by the Gonds and the Binjhal tribes who enjoyed autonomy in governance, economic and political. When the king of Sambalpur died without a son, the British Government let his widow Rani Mohan Kumari to succeed him. The patriarchal upper-caste mindset prevalent in the kingdom could not allow a woman to govern the state. The biggest opponent happened to be Surendra Sai, a royal descendant from the Chauhan Raja of Sambalpur, who himself aspired to the throne.
Under the prevailing tensions, the British removed the Rani and replaced her with Narayan Singh who was also from the royal family. The Gonds agitated against Narayan Singh who was appeasing the higher castes by creating 37 Maufi tenures. The Gonds made remarkable progress in Sambalpur. They shook the foundation of royal families which were ambitious in their designs and atrocious in their actions against the dispossessed indigenous.
The Gonds brought Sambalpur to a standstill and organized mass movements to teach a lesson to the Brahmins and the royal family collaborators. In a historic episode now described as “Gond Maru”, the Gonds attacked higher caste people, burnt down their ill-gotten wealth and killed the caste supremacists who were encouraged by the royal families. King of Sambalpur entrusted a Brahmin talukdar of 96 villages with the task of putting down the tribal agitation. The Adivasis rose in revolt against the prescript and killed several Brahmin landlords. The British Government directly intervened to suppress the uprising, but considerably failed to.
Kalahandi Uprising
Kalahandi revolt was a direct result of economic exploitation of the Kandhs by the Koltas, a class of prosperous agriculturists from Western Orissa. Kandhs had been the pioneering agronomists in Kalahandi for generations, and yet, the Koltas, with financial and military backing of the kings expanded their reach. The Rajas supported the Koltas under the pretext of receiving higher rents, and the Koltas stopped at nothing to exploit the Kandhs, resulting in an agrarian revolt by the latter.
In May 1878, the Kandhs organized a meeting in Balwaspur where they decided to defend themselves against the Koltas. The British Superintendent of the State intervened to stop the Kandhs agitation. The Kandhs resolved to attack whoever came on their way. Several Koltas were killed and many more taken captives by the Kandhs in a mass agitation movement.
The British, acting on behalf of the wealthy, sent additional forces from Raipur, Ganjam and Sambalpur to suppress the Kandhs agitation. Ten Kandh leaders were hanged. Although “peace” was restored, the Koltas were afraid of committing any more atrocities upon the Kandhs in the region.
Gangpur Revolt
Attacks on the tribal sovereignty in Orissa continued from both the British regime and the rulers of the princely states. In 1897, several tribal village chiefs were forcibly replaced by the royal ruling class. In Gangpur, the Raja installed the aristocratic oligarchy of Sambalpur in charge of the tribal population.
The indigenous peoples led by Madri Kalo organized a mass agitation movement against Agharia and the rich elites. The Raja sought help from the British to suppress the tribal agitation, but open revolt by the oppressed remained difficult to counter. Many poor people were captured on charges of committing dacoities, but the class/caste war in Gangpur continued without a pause. In 1938, Gangpur witnessed a serious agrarian discontent when Mundas were forced to pay higher rents. The Munda uprising led by Nirmal Munda demanding exemption from payment of land revenues to the colonialists resulted in British intervention causing the Simko firing which killed 41 tribal rebels.
Revolution Never Ends
Orissa’s indigenous never ceased their strikes against the oppressors. Countless revolts – varying in scale – resulted from the organized dissent. This is the nature of struggle that the poorest section of Orissa have engaged in since centuries. It is unlikely that they shall abandon their freedom movement now, simply because the seat of power has been transferred from the white-skinned elites to the brown-skinned ones.
And just as the indigenous organizers were correct in their assessment of human values in the past, it is more likely that keeping in view the status quo of power dynamics in independent India, their dissent towards the power this time around, too, is indicative of appropriate impatience towards prevailing rampant social injustice.
The morning of 12 May 2010, the Chief Minister of Orissa Naveen Patnaik decided to tell a big fat brutal lie with the hope that it comes true merely by saying it. Was he echoing somebody from World History?
If laws are meant to protect the people, then the only thing illegal in India must be the Government.
Only a morally bankrupt, democratically inept and humanistically regressive group of parasites can sustain corruptible power through twisted legal clauses organically designed to crush collective aspirations.
It is only logical that a group of vandals in active collaborations with their masters stationed abroad get united to use the name of a country to misappropriate authorities, subjugate millions of informed as well as ignorant people, and repress dissent as though indifferent silence on part of the people were a virtue, enforced cowardice a boon and act of their withdrawal from organized solidarity movement a progress.
Only a perniciously evil group of power-wielders can fantasize about their achievements through stamping out the radical roots deeply embedded within the humanity. Using the shield of a country and the notions of sovereign indivisibility can the ruling class throttle the dissent of its subjects.
MacMohan Singh regime’s control over the Republic of India and Naveen Patnaik’s monopoly over Orissa’s fortunes are instances of despotic tendencies masquerading as democratic setups. When fraudulent acquisitions of natural resources are forbidden even by laws of nature, then governments such as the above are instituted to play debased brokers. And when proscribed negotiations over what is entitled to the indigenous are maneuvered for private profits, legal injunctions are recreated by the State powers to arrogate the land, and assault the people.
Recent interventions by the Government of India to clamp down on the democratic rights of the dispossessed by prescribing 10 years imprisonment for any person who supports whoever the ruling classes feel free to declare as terrorists, is an incursion into a historical territory that must serve as a warning to the rulers and as a weapon for the ruled.
Indian government’s frontal assaults on a freethinking people’s ability to challenge administrative and police atrocities in their own lands is not of recent origin. Throughout its history, Indian subcontinent has been subjected to arbitrary rules by opportunistic royalists, colonialists and democrats. And all throughout, the majority of people have suffered immensely, dispossessed for the most part as they had been rendered.
The biggest sufferers of organized State assaults have been the indigenous. From the days of the Aryan invaders, to the trickery of the British traders, to electoral victories of the domestic capitalist class in cohort with Western imperialistic powers – the idea of India has triumphed at the expense of the Indians.
The indigenous tillers and cultivators, the forest dwellers, the river worshippers, the upholders of matriarchy, the huge majority of Indian population have been constantly harassed by their feudal lords – of various colors and races. And yet, never have the poorest section of the society suffered silently. Through rebellions and revolutions, through armed struggles and insurgencies, they have fought back against the perpetrators.
The peasants and the factory workers of India, the landless and the dispossessed of the biggest so-called democracy in the world, those that are the refugees in their own lands, who cultivate and yet never benefit, who withstand the worst natural calamities and yet commit suicides to avoid corporate banking penalties, those that consider their children as their only treasures and yet have to put them up on sale so the children can survive the bureaucratic assaults, those that tend to the forests and the rivers only to witness them being snatched away by the agents of the government at the behest of multinational firms – these are the people who have always known that they shall lose the battles against the mammoth militia, sponsored by unaudited parliamentary budgets. And yet, these are the people, the working poor that constitute the unfortunate majority of Indians, who have never given up in their resolution to fight the power.
They fight the power braving the scorching sun, bringing along bows and arrows, organizing in hand-weaved red flags, lining up to raise their voices, dry and hungry, with babies in arms, soiled towels to wipe away the sweats off the forehead. They miss several meals, several more working days in protesting against the encroachment of their lands. The lands that are their own, are the only thing they call their own. Without their lands, they are landless in settlements and statistics in slums. Just as India’s sovereignty is supreme with the states and union territories intact and untouched by foreign powers, their sovereignty is equally a matter of pride and dignity. After all, they are the majority Indians.
They are the Indians that weakened the feudal structures, fought the exploitative kings, organized the movements against the British, and finally led India to a new awakening in 1947. And yet, the majority Indians are the unfree Indians. Little did they know that the concept of freedom is not universally applicable. That, equality and liberty do not distribute as democratically as the electoral promises of the free Indians.
The free Indians are different species altogether, forever exulting in their personal achievements, in career growths and televised glories. The free Indians are forever expanding their ambitions and territorial profit schemes. The free Indians are represented by political parties that actually work for them to set up engineering colleges and international airports. The free Indians read newspapers and watch television channels that reward the industrialists, update dinner minutes between Singh and Obama, immortalize Ratan Tata, interviews Anil Agarwal and manufactures opinion polls among urban youths that reestablishes the credibilities of Naveen Patnaik.
The free Indians are the ones for whom the country exists, the law and order system exists, the educational infrastructure exists, the collaborative business model exists. Even the official political parties – right, left and centrists – exist. The conversation about the country is an exclusive conversation among the free Indians.
During one such exclusive conversation among the free Indians, it has been decided that the long standing demands of indigenous peoples in Orissa and elsewhere should no more be ignored. Breaking all conventions in the past, it has now been decided that the demands of the poorest sections be heard. In fact, the demands be recorded well. Not only their demands, but also of those people who extend any amount of overt or covert support to them. For once, the free India has decided in favor of listening to the captive people, so that, for once and for all, they can all be forcibly silenced. 10 years or fine, or both – for all people who express solidarity with the majority Indians. At long last, the majority Indians are going to be recorded.
For most people, the corporate houses are faces of terror because it is they that expand their profiteering bases without consideration towards the inhabitants, especially the poor and destitute class. But the Indian government finds it otherwise. It paints the victims as the terrorists. And those that support the victims then are branded as sympathizers of terrorism.
History repeats itself. In India’s history, several times over. As in the past, the illusions of permanent freedom are once again fading away. For, one can use a transient administrative machinery to cowardly assassinate the revolutionaries, but no one can ever eliminate the historical inevitabilities of revolutions.
Arrest us all, if you must. Every person that cries in despair at the state of subjugation that is called India today, is guilty of supporting the victims in the class war waged against the expansionist politico-corporate nexus. Perhaps those of you that enjoy the power corridors and make way for the billionaires to spread their empires are enjoying the freedom of trickled down bribes. However, for the rest of us, our freedom is not conditional upon the success of the ruling class structures and your economic masters.
Our freedom is not about piecemeal compensations as agreed upon by corporate giants of South Korea, Japan and the United States. Our freedom is not open to half-hearted round table negotiations. We are yet to attain the freedom we have been dying for since generations. And we are yet to give up the hope that one day, we shall collectively inhabit the planet, without submitting any portion thereof to any greedy private capitalistic interests, irrespective of geographical territories.
You can call us unacceptable names, attribute us with political stigmas, categorize us into one way or the other for your divisive ruling habits. But the working people of the world demand immediate withdrawal of profiteering interests from common lands. From Orissa to Chiapas, we are united by our belief in formation of a world, devoid of imperialistic intents. And this collective conviction for human freedom is not up for demise within next 10 years, or anytime thereafter.
Part 1: Some footage of the police firing at Chandia village on 12 May 2010 that caused the death of Lakhman Jamuda, aged 55, and an active member of Bisthapan Birodhi Janmanch.
Part 2: Nephew of Lakhsman Jamuda, who was killed in the firing on 12 May 2010, speaks about the mysterious disappearance of the dead body.
APPEAL FROM Abhay Sahu, POSCO PRATIRODH SANGRAM SAMITI (PPSS)
Dear Friends,
Our sincere and heart-felt thanks to you all for your continuous supports and cooperations to the people in struggles for the protection of their lands and livelihoods from the clutches of the South Korean eagle POSCO. Now, on behalf of the POSCO Pratirodh Sangram Samiti (PPSS), I am writing this letter with a special request.
As you know, in protest of the joint conspiracy by the Manmohan Singh Government at Delhi, Naveen Government at Bhubaneswar and South Korean President, we, the people of Dhinkia Charidesh have been continuing our day-and- night peaceful Dharna (Sit-in) at Balitutha since last 107th days began from 26th January 2010 mid-night. Everyday thousands of women, men, children from families of peasants, fisher-folks, landless labourers, dalits are participating in the sit-in. Sadly enough, views of affected people did not create any sense of responsibility among the governments supposed to represent people of India. Moreover, they have been showing extra-ordinary favours to the corporates such as POSCO, Vedanta and TATA.
On the last Republic Day, both Manomohan Singh and Naveen Patnaik governments had assured to South Korean President Lee Myung-bak in a special meet at Delhi that the state government will expedite works ‘to hand over lands to POSCO’. Throwing behind all protocols related to Republic Day celebrations in Orissa, a frustrated CM rushed to Delhi to prove his allegiance to SK President. PM, CM along UPA Chairperson had a meeting with him. They did not hesitate to sell the ‘dignity’ of people’s India to a private company on the same day of India’s pride.
Utter failure to displace the people by any means has made the desperate Orissa Government blood-thirsty. On 12th May 2010, the Orissa Police killed a person at Kalinga Nagar, where they had massacred 14 persons on 2nd Jan 2006. They are going to use the same murderous tricks at Dhinkia Charidesh to dissuade people from their resistance. On 11th May they sent, twenty five platoons of heavily armed police force have arrived and have already taken position around Balitutha and Dhinkia Charidesh to attack, the unarmed peasants, fisher-folks, landless daily labourers, dalits, other backward classes, women, men, children those who continuing their peaceful resistance movements the lands and livelihoods. With a well-crafted evil design, they have also brought 3 Magistrates with the police and sent 5 ambulances to nearby Kujanga Hospital. Almost all the schools at nearby villages have been forcibly occupied by the Police force in spite of the opposition by the villagers.
At this decisive juncture, PPSS decides to face the reality and calls to observe Mass Resistance Week from 15-21 May 2010 at Balitutha and affected villages. People in thousand numbers will gather there to express their support and solidarity to the struggling villagers. In this context, we would like to call people’s movements, political parties, trade unions, human rights organizations, solidarity groups, activists, supporters, sympathizers from various corners of the country to participate in the Resistance.
We are glad enough to invite you to make it possible to join the Resistance Week. You may, please, come to Balitutha and Dhinkia Charidesh on or before 15th and leave after 21st May 2010. We would also request you to bring your own fooding, tents and banner with you. Those who cannot physically be present may organise protests or send letters, faxes or phone calls of protest to the addresses below. Your smallest support will be our greatest inspiration.
Shri Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India, Prime Minister’s Office,
Room number 152, South Block, New Delhi, Fax: + 91 11 2301 6857
Shri Shivraj Patil, Union Minister of Home Affairs, Ministry of Home Affairs,
104-107 North Block, New Delhi 110 001 India, Fax: +91 11 2309 2979.
Chief Justice of India, Supreme Court,Tilak Marg, New Delhi -1,
Fax: +91 11 233 83792, Email: supremecourt@nic.in
Chairperson, National Human Rights Commission of India,
Faridkot House, Copernicus Marg, New Delhi 110 001, Tel: +91 11 230 74448,\
Fax: +91 11 2334 0016, Email: chairnhrc@nic.in
Mr. T. Theethan, IAS, The Joint Secretary, National Commission for SC,
5th Floor, ‘B’ Wing, Lok Nayak Bhavan, Khan Market, New Delhi 110103,
India. Email: jointsecretary-ncsc@nic.in
Today, the police have killed one person in Kalinganagar and critically injured at least thirty more; at the proposed POSCO plant site in Jagatsinghpur, Orissa, 25 platoons of police have been deployed to crush the people defending their land. They expect an attack tomorrow or the day after.
As national platforms of democratic forest movements, with more than 200 organisational members spread across the country, we unequivocally condemn this brutality. But such atrocities are not occurring in isolation. Operation Green Hunt and the increasing miitarisation of the conflict in central India is wreaking devastation in our homelands.and closing the space for democratic struggles. We first reiterate the following facts, to expose the myths being promoted by the government:
In all the areas where Operation Green Hunt is underway, aside from individual atrocities, security forces are now preventing people from entering the forest, cultivating their lands or collecting minor forest produce. The numbers that are threatened with starvation or disease as a result is not even known. These facts have been ignored even as the tragic loss of lives in Maoist attacks have received a lot of attention. How can an offensive with such results be justified?
An offensive in the name of the “rule of law” has been launched in areas where the government has never shown the slightest respect for the law. Under the law, land acquisition in Scheduled Areas is subject to consultation with the gram sabha (village assembly); diversion of forest land in all forests is subject to the consent of the gram sabha; and people have rights over village common lands, forests, water bodies and grazing areas. Can the government name a single place in the country where the rights of people over forests and lands have been fully recognised and respected? Can it name a single “development” project in the forest areas that has complied with the requirements of law? Rather, in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh alone, after 2006 the government has illegally granted in principle or final clearances for the use of 15,411 hectares of forest land to various “projects”.
The government’s true intentions are revealed by their response to democratic movements in the majority of forest areas, where the CPI(Maoist) does not exist. As an indicator, in just the few weeks between March 20 and April 20, activists in Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Assam and West Bengal were arrested or attacked by police for the crime of standing up for the law and demanding legal rights. The protesters at POSCO and many other places, who have no link whatsoever with the Maoists, are being attacked. These are examples of a trend that has become far worse with Operation Green Hunt, under which the label “Maoist” is used to justify all kinds of brutality. The Home Minister’s latest statement threatening anyone “supporting Maoism” with jail is clearly aimed at justifying yet more such brutality.
The conflicts in forest areas, whether with the CPI(Maoist) or with other movements, have nothing to do with “security” or “development”. What is at stake is the right of people to control their ecology, their production systems and their lives. Can a community lead a life of dignity when they are harassed, beaten or killed every time they cultivate forest land, collect minor forest produce or protest evictions? People are not demanding welfare; they are struggling for the right to live with freedom and dignity. This is the true meaning of security, development and the rule of justice.
It is clear that the government’s offensive is driven by more obvious interests – resource grabs (in water, minerals and land) have become a key source of profits. As the Maheshwar Dam, Vedanta or POSCO projects were found to break the law, the government has scrambled to bend or break the law itself to favour the corporates. When the Forest Department promotes illegal policies in international negotiations on climate change (i.e. the REDD agreement), these are not just condoned but promoted as a point of pride. Meanwhile, people’s rights over minor forest produce, forest land and common lands are frustrated at every turn by official violations of the Forest Rights Act. Clearly this is why the government now wants to crush all resistance, whether it is organised by the CPI(Maoist) or not.
Beyond Green Hunt: A Call for Democratic Space
We believe in and stand for the mass democratic struggle of the working people for social transformation. From this perspective, the damage is not limited to this offensive and the devastation it is wreaking. More insidious but much longer lasting is the destructive impact this militarisation is having on the democratic space for people’s struggles. This militarisation is not limited to Operation Green Hunt.
Even outside this offensive, the government has consistently used its force against all democratic formations and those who speak the language of people’s rights; it has thrown the Constitution to the winds. The CPI(Maoist) has also engaged in indiscriminate physical attacks against those who are of a different political allegiance, and has often shown little tolerance for those who are engaged in other movements or who are critical of them. The turning of vast areas of the country into war zones, where all else is subordinated to the perceived military needs of the government or the CPI(Maoist), is unacceptable. It constitutes a betrayal of the values that both the CPI(Maoist) and the government claim to believe in. For this reason above all, there is an urgent need at this moment to restore basic democratic norms in the conflict zones.
Our Call:
1. The paramilitary forces must be withdrawn and the salwa judum, as well as other similar private militias in other states, must be disbanded. Public facilities – schools, clinics, etc. – must be treated as out of bounds for the conflict.
2. The government must respect the rights of people over their lands, forest produce and community forest resources as provided by the Constitution, the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, the Forest Rights Act and other such laws. It must comply with the requirements under these Acts relating to the consent of the community prior to diversion or acquisition of land.
3. The security forces must stop interfering with the rights of people to cultivate their fields, go to markets and engage in their livelihood activities.
4. Illegal arrests, fake encounters and police murders must be halted immediately.
5. The CPI(Maoist) should make clear its position on the activities of other political forces in the conflict areas. It should respect the right of the people to be members of other parties, including opposing parties, or other movements and to otherwise exercise their democratic rights.
6. The right of refugees and the displaced to return home, especially in Dantewada, must be respected by the security forces and their private militias.
Signatories: Campaign for Survival and Dignity:
Madhya Pradesh Jangal Adhikar Bachao Andolan
Jangal Adhikar Sangharsh Samiti (Maharashtra)
Bharat Jan Andolan (Jharkhand)
Campaign for Survival and Dignity – Orissa
Jan Shakti Sanghatan (Chhattisgarh)
Adivasi Mahasabha (Gujarat)
Jangal Jameen Jan Andolan (Rajasthan)
Orissa Jan Adhikar Morcha
Campaign for Survival and Dignity – Tamil Nadu
Adivasi Jangal Janjeevan Andolan (Dadra and Nagar Haveli)
National Forum of Forest Peoples and Forest Workers:
Adivasi Banihar Shakti Sangathana (Chhattisgarh)
Nadi Ghati Morcha (Chattisgarh)
Jharkhand Jangal Bachao Andolan (Jharkhand)
Chattisgarh Jan-ban Adhikar Manch
Birsa Munda Vu-adhikar Manch (Madhya Pradesh)
Patta Dalit Adhikar Manch (Uttar Pradesh)
Kaimnoor KShettra Majdoor Sangharsh Samittee,Sonebhadra,UP
Ghad Kshettra Majdoor Sangharsh Samittee,Uttarakhand
National Forum of Forest People and Forest Workers (North Bengal Regional Committee)
Whenever the dreams of human liberation
Take on a stable form,
Like Jesus Christ
Finds the ultimate place on the cross
This regularity, most familiar down the centuries
Continues unmitigated
Why doesn’t a rupture come about,
That some new form could be nurtured?
Even to this day, dreams remain yet unrealised
Successes – all futile somewhat, somewhere.
- Ramana/Ramanand (translated by the author)
Buddha had spoken of the middle path. But in an age of extremes, how can one follow the middle path? Those who follow the middle path may, often be colour blind, not seeing the black or the white but seeing and swearing only by the grey. The middle-roaders are bound to be mowed down from both the left and the right. How can a well-meaning person be a moderate when the majority of the people live under extreme conditions and face forms of extreme oppression? Wikipedia says, “The terms extremism or extremist are almost always exonymic — i.e. applied by others to a group rather than by a group labeling itself.” In other words, ‘extremism’ or ‘extremist’ are not self-referential terms. The ‘extremists’ who fight some or the other form of extreme oppression may invariably think that what they are doing is the right thing to do or even the most human thing to do under the existing conditions. They hold political views and biases that radically and essentially diverge from the views and biases that are most commonplace and conventional. This is no indication of the rectitude or objectivity of the most commonplace and conventional modes of thinking.
India today is home to a wide variety of ‘extremists’ from the Maoists and the nationality movements to the Islamic militants and Islamist terrorists. The Indian State today seems to make no distinction between terrorists who indulge in the indiscriminate act of killing of innocent civilians and other kinds of militants involved in genuine political assertions of rights because it has got a vested interest in de-legitimising all of them alike. Each of these ‘extremists’ are fighting a specific form of extreme oppression be it the militant in the nationality movement in Manipur fighting under the extreme conditions of Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 (AFSPA, 1958) and the divisive tactics of the Indian State or the Maoist fighting against conditions of extreme class oppression such as an impending situation of genocide of the Adivasis in the name of ‘development’ through mining or the Islamic militant fighting against extreme forms of violence and discrimination against the Muslim minority.
To speak of the anti-Maoist drive of the Indian State, by all indications, the Operation Green Hunt in urban India has already begun. This is what the BJP and other hardliners among the ruling class parties have been insisting on: ‘Crackdown on the sympathisers of the Maoists.’ The Union Home Ministry communiqué reads, “It is brought to the notice of the public that under Section 39 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, any person who commits the offence of supporting such a terrorist organisation with inter alia intention to further the activities of such terrorist organizations would be liable to be punished with imprisonment for a term not exceeding ten years or with fine or with both”. The CPI(Maoist) and all its formations and front organisations have been designated as terrorist organisations. These could be pointers towards a new wave of witch-hunt awaiting us. So the recent arrest of Sunil Mandiwal, an Assistant Professor at Dyal Singh College and the arrest and detention of trade union leader, Gopal Mishra, an activist among working class in Delhi and Anu, his partner who is an activist among women workers can be considered as very much a part of the ‘Operation Green Hunt’.
Does being sympathisers of the Maoists constitute a crime in itself that you deserve to be arrested? Does the possession of some Maoist literature in your residence make you guilty enough to be arrested and detained under the UAPA, 2008? Does the Indian political system allow you to ‘profess, practise and propagate only your religion’ as under Article 25(1) – a dwindling right though – and not allow you even to profess your political beliefs?
The urban activists/Maoist sympathisers who have been arrested in Delhi were clearly non-combatants in the ongoing war between the State and the Maoists in the far-flung rural areas of our country. The urban agenda of the Maoists is quite remote, something deferred to the final stage. Whenever draconian legislations become operational, the open, overground, legal activists in the civil society who are the political face of the militant movement and could have been potential links in the negotiation between the State and the insurgent group become the easy targets and victims. Laws such as the UAPA, 1967/2008 have the potential to make what Fareed Zakaria (1997) for one called, ‘illiberal democracies’ wherein despite the formation of governments through regular elections, the State is ‘not restrained from infringing upon the liberty of individuals, or minorities’.
Are we, in the days to come, going to witness something akin to McCarthyism that was practised in the US during the Cold War whereby anyone with Communist leanings were put under the scanner of suspicion and arrested?
The justification is readily forthcoming: ‘They are supporters of extremists.’ But is it not extreme conditions that give rise to the extremists? The cultural process of constructing ‘the Other’ of the extremists is a dangerous syndrome. The very recognition in the general public that ‘they’ are not ‘us’ can lend legitimacy to the idea that the ‘extremists’ can be exterminated by the State or other ‘interested’ forces like the Salwa Judum (meaning. ‘peace movement’) or the ‘people’s militia’ being set up by mainstream parties like the CPI-M. The terms such as, ‘peace’ and ‘people’ invoke the privilege to kill mercilessly.
One might pause to ask, ‘Why is not the UAPA, 2008 applicable to Bal Thackeray who has, for decades, led the movements against sections of innocent people like the lungiwallahs or the Musalmans or Raj Thackeray whose fulminations against the bhaiyyas do not stop. Narendra Modi in Gujarat still enjoys his position as the ‘CEO of Gujarat’ despite the fact that he was clearly indicted in the Gujarat carnage of early 2002 by none other than the National Human Rights Commission, the highest human rights body of the Government of India. Sajjan Kumar and Jagdish Tytler who are popularly perceived as the instigators of the anti-Sikh riots in Delhi in 1984 still enjoy the benefit of doubt by the judiciary. Obviously, the Indian State is selectively repressive towards those who violate its canons. After all, the Maoists do not communally or ethnically divide people even as they are waging a war to abolish class differences.
The Maoists seem closer to the ideals envisaged by the Preamble of the Indian Constitution than many of the luminaries heading the Government of India. Are not the Maoists striving “to secure to all its citizens”: “JUSTICE, social, economic and political”; “EQUALITY of status and of opportunity”, “FRATERNITY assuring the dignity of the individual”? Should we not be fair towards the ultimate intention of the Maoists to constitute India into a “SOVEREIGN SOCIALIST SECULAR DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC” which is exactly what the Preamble visualises? It is true that the terms, ‘socialist’ and ‘secular’ were incorporated through Constitutional amendment in 1976 during the hated emergency. But is it not also true that they have not yet been deleted or amended through subsequent amendments? Although the Directive Principles in Part IV of the Indian Constitution are not legally enforceable, they were meant by the architects of the Constitution to be injunctions upon the State, a political manifesto. Are not the Maoists striving towards the implementation of many of these Directive Principles?
As Prof. Manoranjan Mohanty says, ‘It is the ruling classes in India who violate the Constitution of India much more than the people’s democratic forces.’ Rather, ‘the Constitution itself has become a big threat to the ruling classes.’ In this context, it may be remembered that not all the people’s movements presently facing State repression have been militant movements. For instance, Chasi Mulia Adivasi Sangha (CMAS – Farmer, wage labourer, tribal association) at Narayanpatna in Koraput district of Orissa now facing heavy-handed repression has been a peaceful movement within the bounds of law for restoration of illegally alienated tribal land. The President of CMAS, Wadeka Singana was shot dead by police in November 2009 and subsequently, its leaders, Gananath Patra and Tapan Mallick have been arrested and even Nachika Linga, the hero of the movement is being hunted out.
Now what were the activities of these ‘extremists’ who were arrested in Delhi? Gopal Mishra was alleged to be associated to Mehanatkash Mazdoor Morcha (MMM) which is working towards organising mainly the workers in the unorganised sector, although Anuj, the convenor of MMM says that Gopal Mishra was not a member of MMM and yet they can extend their support to him as a democratic activist. MMM has been waging its struggles well within the bounds of the law: It has been demanding minimum wages and other benefits that are due to the workers such as ESI, PF, etc. Most of its members have been working under contractors in unregistered, ‘underground’ factories that do not display a board nor maintain pay rolls. In other words, this is a trade union working towards organising and securing rights in the unorganised sector in the country which according to the Arjun Sengupta Committee report comprises of 77 per cent of the population of our country and subsist on less than 20 rupees a day. Anu was involved in bringing out a publication for women workers, Tootati Saankalein, meaning, breaking door chains. Gopal Mishra, et al have been preparing to launch an agitation against rising prices. Seditious activities, indeed!
Trade union bureaucracy has been the bane of the working class movement in our country. The established/mainstream left has already made over to the side of neo-liberal reforms. So it should not look surprising that Marxist-Leninists/Maoists are the only force among trade unions in our country opposing privatisation.
Do not the Maoists have much better democratic credentials than those who are setting up mining SEZs and carting away non-renewable natural/mineral resources? It is worth recalling that as reports have it, P. Chidambaram who is presently the Union home minister had formerly been an advocate for the now-extinct American corporate giant, Enron which has come to symbolise the rentier and decadent face of monopoly capitalism. He had also been on the board of Directors of Vedanta Resources, which is the name of the Sterlite farm in England which is now taking over ten thousand acres of prime land on the Puri-Konark sea coast in Orissa. He has also represented Vedanta in the Bombay High Court. Manmohan Singh, our Prime Minister, with his track-record in the World Bank also looks far removed from the aspirations of the hungry millions in our country.
Past the centenary of Gandhiji’s Hind Swaraj and nearly 63 years past the transfer of power, down the blind alleys of the neo-liberal extremism, it would be illuminating to fall back on the theoretical resources generated by the freedom movement. Jawaharlal Nehru’s “Tryst with Destiny” speech in the midnight on 14 August 1947 and its promise “to wipe every tear from every eye” today sounds a laughable platitude. But it seems worthwhile to harp back on the ideals of Gandhi, Subhash Chandra Bose, Rammanohar Lohiya, Jayaprakash Narayan, Sarojini Naidu, Durgabai Deshmukh, et al and not to forget, those of Bhagat Singh and B R Ambedkar, especially on the idea of Swaraj. For all our differences of opinion with Gandhiji, his question, ‘Will not the poor, the hungry and the naked have a share in Swaraj?’ should haunt us out of our complacencies.
A recent report from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), published in August 2009 and titled, Progress for Children: A Report Card on Child Protection has come up with damning facts about, what we can say, the level of structural violence in our country. It says that 6000 children die in India every day, out of whom 3000 from malnutrition and bulk of the rest from preventable diseases or lack of proper healthcare. By contrast, in the violence in the eight states of Maoist militancy in the whole of the year 2009, a total of 998 persons have lost their lives. These included the deaths of 392 civilians, 312 security forces and 294 Maoists according to the data provided at www.satp.org.
Both the State and the Maoists vouch for democracy although they hold differing conceptions of democracy itself i.e., liberal democracy and people’s democracy, respectively. As Prof. G. Haragopal used to insist, both the State and the Maoists seek people’s support. For the Maoists, it is their ideology that is their source of legitimacy and for the State, it is the Constitution. We should leave it to the people to decide whom they should support. What Haragopal was speaking of was a question of popular legitimacy. On the other hand, the question of legality or illegality (such as of the arrests made recently) ultimately depends on power relations, which in turn, is based on the class character and the broader social character of the State: Which coalition of class/social forces hold dominant influence upon State power? Neither the State nor the Maoists can ensure through brute force or coercion alone, what Gramsci calls, ‘hegemony’ i.e., the moral and intellectual leadership of class/social forces in society. Hegemony requires the generation of active consent/complicity of the governed. To quote from the American movie, Spider-Man, ‘The cunning warrior attacks neither the body, nor the mind but the heart.’ P. Chidambaram should take heed: The application of draconian legislations and brute force can subjugate the bodies and the minds but can be quite counterproductive in winning over the hearts. Is this not the warning we have received down the ages from Antigone, the daughter of Oedipus through Greek mythology, Socrates, Jesus, Joan of Arc, Gandhiji and the like who have been martyrs who, in the words of Prof. JPS Uberoi, ‘have borne witness to the truth irrespective of its consequences to themselves’?
Dr. Gilbert Sebastian is a researcher at Indian Social Institute, New Delhi. The views expressed are personal.
Those who celebrated the death of universals and the triumph of the particular have been shown repeatedly by history the myopia of their understanding. The experiences of particulars have been determined in ultimate analysis by universals. The fallacious understanding that the upholders of social justice would be different from their opponents has been exposed time and again. Those who thought that the backward caste and dalit ‘upsurge’ in north Indian states were revolutions that would subvert the system were repeatedly confronted with the dynamics of identity politics that used such mobilizations in the interest of the emerging elite of these castes. The formation of classes within the caste system has reached a new stage and the contemporary identity politics reflects that amply and starkly. This politics helps in containing the class conflicts and corrupts the anti-casteist ‘guerrilla fights’ against social segmentation by their sublimation to competitive identity assertions.
The universal of capital has been in control of the state of affairs in India for quite some time now. Those who deny the universality of capital deny the centrality of the labour-capital conflict, determining the shape and tenor of various other social conflicts. Thus, they neglect the existence of an integrated coherent social formation in India under capital’s command providing meanings and functions to various forms of exploitation and oppression (both new and old).
It is this universality of capital that brings together the authoritarian, repressive and outrightly neoliberal United Progressive Alliance (UPA) with other political formations when the Right to Education Act is passed in Parliament or when the health system is commodified through National Rural Health Mission or when Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan becomes the flagship programme to give a substandard education (!) to every poor and deprived Indian.
Those who supported the Right to Education Bill (and there were none in the Parliament to oppose the flaws of the new Act) included not only the politicians of all hues and colours but also the amorphous civil society actors. Not even a month has elapsed since its implementation and there are concerns at why the Ministry of Human Resource Development wants to turn the School Management Committees (SMCs) into advisory role in aided schools. Through the proposed amendments the Indian government declares that
‘let there be democracy, participation and empowerment of community happen only in the government schools while the other schools be allowed to become centres of manipulation which would give a hoot to what those who should actually control the schools – the people – think and want’.
These amendments have been proposed on suggestion of politicians who fear that the original role of SMCs may affect minority schools adversely. It is surprising that while one form of identitarianism is culminating into taking away whatever representation the democratic aspirations of people had within the suffocatingly commodified school system, there is another form of identity politics that wants to hand over the health system in rural areas to private capital. Yes, in Uttar Pradesh the Bahujan Samaj Party has opened doors for big health sharks – Max, Rockland, Fortis and Apollo – to manage, upgrade, operate and maintain the rural health sector. In the initial phase there will be four district hospitals, eight community health centres, twenty three primary health centres and 210 sub centres.
School Management Committees have been seen in positive light because they are potentially believed to bring Dalits, women and other underprivileged groups into the core of a control group that would manage schools. Though there are a lot of questions regarding how effectively would it work looking at the past experiences of the Village Education Committees (VECs) which many states in India already have. How could they be made more effective is a matter of separate debate but their existence as an instrument to democratize the school education at local level bases itself on the principle that there are sections (seen primarily as social identities) in our society which have been systematically excluded from roles of managing institutions meant for masses. Hence, an idea of operationalising social justice and bring about equity through the model of identity politics constitutes the bedrock of such endeavours. And the recent proposal to amend the Right to Education would dissolve even that possibility.
On the other hand, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), whose existence has been based on the politics of social identities, has very effectively demonstrated through its politics how neoliberal capital can use such a politics to further its agenda. Laced with the idiom of social justice and equality for the Dalits, BSP’s politics has always implied a disjunct between economic and social justice. Given the nature of a wide economic disparity in Uttar Pradesh it cannot be part of any social justice imagination to hand over the health services to private capital. It can only be in the interest of capital and not the people who have been time and again mobilized on the basis of their social and economic deprivation. This becomes starkly clear when one looks at the statistics. According to the NSSO survey carried out in 2004 – 2005, the average monthly capita consumption expenditure (MPCE) in rural UP was Rs.532.63 and in urban areas it was Rs.857.05. However, MPCE of 78.6% of the Scheduled Caste (SC) population in rural areas was below the average MPCE of the rural population of the state and 81.6% of SCs in urban areas had less than the average MPCE of urban population. These figures tell a lot about the purchasing capacity of the Scheduled Caste social group of the state. Identity politics, then, becomes an important tool for the expansion of capital while it continues to weave a web of illusion that it represents the interests of those on the margins of the society.
Hence, we have in front of us two apparently different forms of political streams. We have a UPA, which unabashedly pushes the agenda of neoliberal capital through its policies and programmes and also validates the need for identitarian politics through slogans of justice and equality when its ‘young’ marshal sleeps and eats with ‘dalits’. On the other hand, we have the Bahujan Samaj Party which has survived through identity politics of different forms and content and is gradually moving towards becoming an effective agent of neoliberal capital. What lies as a common ground between them, and in Indian politics in general today, is the perpetuation of competitive identity politics that mutilates the anti-systemic possibilities inherent in the generalized social crisis borne out of the ongoing process of capital accumulation. Identity politics creates a façade of an equal and horizontal competition for “social inclusion”. Social identity becomes the easiest possible means to mobilize the masses whenever the need arises. In fact, it becomes an important means for particular stages of capital accumulation to sustain and expand their regimes. Hence, whosoever holds the reign of political power the winning slogans of social justice and equality, with all its farce, are important cards wrapped under its belt to be flashed whenever required. They would act as agents of neoliberal capital while flashing those cards, singing the song of liberation of downtrodden and oppressed, keeping the dangers of a class war at bay. Identitarianism becomes the new tool for neoliberal capital to expand itself by obscuring the vertical divide in the society and by intensifying horizontal competition. This keeps the working class politics at the margins, “as the organisation of the proletarians into a class, and, consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers”. While it becomes easier to identify the perils of such a political conjuncture, it is becoming, surprisingly, difficult for the working class politics to wage a battle for social justice and equality as principles essentially located outside the neoliberal fold.
Support the struggle for democracy and social justice in Nepal
The following joint statement of solidarity has been signed by a number of left and progressive organisations in the Asia-Pacific region. If your organisation would like to sign on,
please email international@socialist-alliance.org.au.
Please distribute widely.
On May Day, international workers’ day, a huge demonstration of between 500,000-1 million people took place in Kathmandu. Called by the Unified Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (UCPN-M), people came from all over Nepal to make their voices heard.
It was the largest demonstration since the fall of the centuries-old monarchy and was the culmination of a growing series of mass demonstrations and strikes aimed at restoring civilian supremacy and democracy. Despite right-wing rumours and slanders, the marchers were unarmed and there was no violence.
The demands of the demonstration were for the illegitimate government of Prime Minister MK Nepal to resign and allow a government based on the will of the people to take its place.
MK Nepal, who has never won an election, has refused to stand aside. In response, an indefinite general strike began on May 2 that aims to continue until the demands of the people’s movement are granted.
In the 2008 constituent assembly, the Maoists won the largest number of seats — more than twice their nearest rivals. The Maoists have pushed for a transformation of the Nepalese state inherited from the monarchy to grant previously unheard of rights for the poor, workers, peasants, national minorities, lower castes and women.
They have carried out widespread popular consultations to seek to create a genuinely pro-people constitution.
The elite, terrified of the growing power of the poor majority, sabotaged the Maoist-led government. The heads of the Nepalese army, supporters of the deposed king, refused to implement the peace accords that ended Nepal’s armed conflict. The army chiefs, backed by the parties of the status quo in the assembly, refused to subordinate themselves to the elected government.
Unwilling to accept military rule, the UCPN-M was forced to leave government — in violation of the people’s will. The UCPN-M has now received two powerful mandates: the 2008 constituent assembly election results and the massive May 1 demonstration.
The deadline for a new constitution is May 28, which the existing government says it will not meet. Through the general strike, the people are fighting for the key demand of the pro-democracy movement that overthrew the king — a new, democratic constitution.
Having overthrown a king and won a republic, the Nepalese people are now fighting for a “New Nepal” that advances their interests.
The signatories to this statement:
• Support the struggle, led by the UCPN-M, to restore civilian supremacy and democracy, and to continue the process of creating a pro-people constitution, and seek to publicise and build solidarity with Nepalese people’s struggle.
• Call on the Nepalese army and the parties in government to abide by, and implement, the peace agreements that ended Nepal’s armed conflict. The people’s will should be respected; there must be no violent suppression of the people’s movement fighting for democracy and social justice.
• Call on all foreign powers, especially the United States and India, to cease interference in Nepal’s internal affairs. The Nepalese people must be allowed to determine their own fate.
The long-oppressed people of Nepal are making their voices heard. The red flag is flying in Kathmandu. A new revolutionary front is developing in one the world’s poorest nations, with Asia’s lowest life expectancy.
As the posters by Nepalese unions calling for the mass demonstration on May Day declared: “Workers of the world unite!”
If your organisation would like to endorse the statement, please send an email to international@socialist-alliance.org.
Signed by: Partido Lakas ng Masa (Party of the Labouring Masses, Philippines)
Partido ng Manggagawa (Labor Party, Philippines)
People’s Democratic Party, Indonesia (Partai Rakyat Demokratik – PRD)
Socialist Alliance, Australia
Socialist Aotearoa, New Zealand
Socialist Party of Malaysia (Parti Sosialis Malaysia – PSM)
Socialist Worker, New Zealand
Workers Party of New Zealand
Working People Association, Indonesia (Perhimpunan Rakyat Pekerja – PRP)
Once again a crisis is looming over Nepal. After a decade long People’s War and 19 days’ historical People’s Movement, the people of Nepal uprooted the 250 years old monarchy and Nepal was proclaimed a republic. Further the Constituent Assembly election paved the way for the drafting of a new constitution. These achievements were the result of Peace Accord signed between the Maoists and the then government of Nepal in 2006. The CA election was held in April 2008 and it was agreed that by 28th May 2010 a new constitution would be written for the country with an expectation that it would be the first pro-people constitution of Nepal Republic.
But as the Maoist led government was formed in August 2008, those centers of power became active who hitherto enjoyed all sorts of privileges in the old system and were afraid that the new constitution would bring them down to the category of ‘common men’. Though the monarchy had ended constitutionally, but the feudal elements were still active in many political parties and groups. Later, the then Army Chief Rukmangad Katwal, shamelessly violating the Peace Accord and the instructions of democratically elected government, started fresh recruitment for the Nepal Army which compelled the then PM of Nepal Prachanda to sack him. President Ram Baran Yadav’s unconstitutional act of reinstating Katwal in his post gave rise to circumstances which forced the Prachanda’s government to step down.
It can be easily understood that this was the beginning of political crisis in Nepal began which worsened with the passing days. It was from here that the Indian intervention became palpable. The Indian ambassador to Nepal continuously added fuel to the fire through his remarks. Although a new government was formed under the leadership of Madhav Kumar Nepal, the people of Nepal, however, could not accept it as their government. They always felt the government was a puppet dancing at India’s music. On closely examining the developments of last few mo nths one can easily make out that the reactionary forces were unhappy with Nepal’s advancement on a progressive path. And they also did not want it to succeed come what may. Suddenly it was observed that pro-monarchy feudal elements started voicing in favor of making Nepal a Hindu nation again. And at the same time the ex-king Gyanendra started hinting about the possibility of revival of the monarchy in Nepal. Some ministers of Madhav Nepal government too, openly expressed their views which were against the progressive aspirations of the people.
Now the work of drafting a new constitution had become irrelevant for the existing government. With the 28th May in the offing, the people became restless. The biggest party of the constituent assembly UCPN(M) was isolated. It was only this party which aspired the true feeling of people of Nepal for a new and progressive constitution. The slogans of CA election and the making of a new constitution were raised only by this party. The other two big parties, the NC and the CPN (UML), were against new constitution and believed that the old constitution can be amended to address the new aspirations of the people. But under the people’s pressure they too had to unwillingly agree on Maoists’ slogans. Even after Prachanda’s continuous assurances, Indian government remained suspicious of the Maoist led government. When the Maoists realized that under existing circumstances it had become impossible to draft the new constitution they demanded the formation of a government of national consensus and initiated the program of People’s movement in support of these demands. The people of Nepal wholeheartedly embraced the Maoists’ call for a national consensus government. Assessing the people’s aspirations for a national consensus government, Madhav Nepal agreed to resign provided the Maoists put forward the name other than Prachanda’s for the post of PM. Unfortunately India too appeared to make similar suggestions which later became an issue of debate. People wondered as to who would choose the PM of Nepal, the party leading the government or ‘some’ foreign players. Before leaving for Thimphu to attend the SAARC summit, Madhav Nepal hinted that he could resign but on his return he refused. Some newspapers of Nepal and India reported that he did so on Manmohan Singh’s advice. These reports were confirmed when the Vice-President of the ruling party CPN (UML) Bamdev Gautam, in an interview to BBC, said that after returning from Thimphu Madhav Nepal told in the politburo’s meeting that India’s PM Dr. Manmohan Singh expressed full confidence in his government and was asked to stay put.
This is a very critical situation. The people of Nepal are being deprived of their right to choose their own government. This is an unwanted interference by the neighboring country. The people of Nepal have chosen a peaceful path to fight against this humiliating situation. Since May 1, tens of thousands of people are on the roads of Kathmandu and massive demonstrations are also going on in all the major cities and towns of Nepal. The people are demanding resignation of Madhav Nepal so that the national consensus government is formed and the new constitution is drafted on time. People are afraid that the reactionary forces inside and outside the country do not want this to happen and after 28th May, President’s rule might be enforced. In this way the pro-monarchy people may again get a chance to take over.
‘Indo-Nepal Solidarity Forum’ wholeheartedly supports the struggling people of Nepal against these conspiracies. We are always against every direct and indirect intervention in Nepal. And we honor the aspirations of the people of Nepal. We believe our progress as a nation is closely linked with the peace and prosperity of our neighboring countries. We appeal the government of India to respect the aspirations of the Nepalese people so that the peace process reaches its logical end and people may get a constitution of their choice.
