anti-caste

GANG-RAPED ON ORDERS OF VILLAGE COUNCIL FOR PLANNING TO MARRY MAN FROM OUTSIDE THE VILLAGE

Village Council in India Accused of Ordering Rape (New York Times)

“A young woman in West Bengal was gang-raped this week on the order of a village council, to punish her for planning to marry a man from outside the village, according to the Indian police. [...]

“The episode began on Monday when Khaliq Sheikh, the man from outside the village, asked the young woman to marry him, and she accepted his proposal, the police said. When Balai Mardi, the chief of the village, heard about it, he quickly sought to block the marriage.

“According to local news media accounts, villagers went to the young woman’s house and detained Mr. Sheikh, and the next day, he and the young woman were taken to the village square, tied to separate trees and accused of breaking community rules.

“Mr. Mardi ordered the couple to pay fines totaling 27,000 rupees, or about $442, Mr. Yadav said in a telephone interview. Mr. Sheikh paid his portion and was allowed to leave, but when the young woman’s family refused to pay, Mr. Mardi ordered villagers ‘to enjoy her,’ said a police officer who spoke on condition that he not be named.

“She was then raped repeatedly in Mr. Mardi’s mud-and-thatch hut, according to local news reports.

“Mr. Mardi told the young woman and her family that if they reported the rape to the police, the village elders would burn their house down, Mr. Yadav said. [...]

“Village councils are common in rural India. They often enforce strict codes of conduct, and in some cases are deeply involved in deciding who will marry whom. Councils are often worried that marriages to outsiders will dilute communal land claims, among other concerns. Couples who defy the marital codes are sometimes murdered.”

A YEAR AFTER DELHI GANG RAPE, TWO UNRELATED CASES EVOKE PREVALENCE OF SUCH CRIMES

Two Indian Women Gang Raped Twice Almost Exactly a Year After Brutal Delhi Rape (BuzzFeed)

“Almost exactly a year after a 23-year-old woman died after being brutally gang raped in Delhi, a 16-year-old girl from Kolkata died this New Year’s Eve after she was allegedly set on fire by friends of the men who gang raped her twice last October. [...]

“Last fall, the victim was raped by a group of six men in an abandoned house near her family’s home in Kolkata. Her parents found her in a field the next morning. The next day her father, a taxi driver, took her to lodge a police report but on the way back she was allegedly kidnapped and gang raped by the same group of men in a taxi to teach her a lesson. She was found lying near a railway station. [...]

“In another horrific incident, a 20-year-old woman from the southern state of Tamil Nadu was gang raped by two different groups of men within the span of a few hours on Christmas Eve; a week after New Delhi held vigils marking the date when India’s most infamous gang rape took place.”

“CHAMAR, WHAT CAN YOU DO TO ME?”: RAPE OF UNTOUCHABLE WOMAN IN NORTH INDIAN VILLAGE EXEMPLIFIES THE VIOLENCE OF CASTE

India Rape Cases Colored by Caste (Wall Street Journal)

“Lalasa Devi says that before her attacker grabbed her by the throat, he snarled ‘Chamar,’ the name of the so-called untouchable caste into which she was born. ‘What can you do to me?’

“Then he threw her to the ground and raped her, she says.

“Ms. Devi, a mother of four in her mid-30s, says authorities treated her poorly when she registered a complaint against her alleged assailant, who belongs to a high caste in this small northern Indian village. Nine months after the alleged rape, the man she accused is free on bail, and it isn't clear when a trial will begin.

“‘I’m dying of shame,” she said in a recent interview, covering her head with the corner of her sari. “All I had was my honor... you lose that, you have nothing.” [...]

“Rural, lower-caste women such as Ms. Devi also face pervasive and deeply rooted discrimination against those once called "untouchables"—now known as Dalits, or oppressed people. ‘It’s the mind-set of the dominant castes,’ says Deepika, a Dalit-rights activist in New Delhi who uses only one name. ‘To them, raping a Dalit woman is not a sin.’

“A court in the western state of Rajasthan in 1995 acquitted five men of rape,saying upper-caste men couldn’t have raped a Dalit. The state has asked a higher court to review that case—a request that is still pending.

“Ms. Devi’s home village, Dalan Chapara, has a population of about 1,250, nearly all members of Ms. Devi's Chamar caste, whose forebears were leather tanners, and of the accused’s Rajput caste of traditional landowners.

“A gravel road running through the village divides the castes. For the most part, the Rajput houses are built from concrete and the Dalit houses have thatched roofs. There is no marriage across caste lines.

“Villagers said Dalits aren’t allowed in the homes of higher-caste neighbors. At community events, there is segregated seating and separate sets of glasses and tableware are used. Rajput visitors to Dalit homes won’t eat or drink.

“‘Constitutionally, everyone has equal rights,’ says Bipin Chand, a Dalit primary-school teacher who lives in the village. ‘But socially there is no equality.’”

IN INDIA, GANG RAPES ARE CASUAL AND SELDOM REPORTED

Gang Rape in India, Routine and Invisible: In Mumbai Case, a Group of Assault Suspects Had Little Fear of the Law
by Ellen Barry and Mansi Choksi (New York Times)

“At 5:30 p.m. on that Thursday, four young men were playing cards, as usual, when Mohammed Kasim Sheikh’s cellphone rang and he announced that it was time to go hunting. Prey had been spotted, he told a friend. When the host asked what they were going to hunt, he said, ‘A beautiful deer.’

“As two men rushed out, the host smirked, figuring they did not like losing at cards.

“Two hours later, a 22-year-old photojournalist limped out of a ruined building. She had been raped repeatedly by five men, asked by one to re-enact pornographic acts displayed on a cellphone. After she left, the men dispersed to their wives or mothers, if they had them; it was dinnertime. None of their previous victims had gone to the police. Why should this one?

“The trial in the Mumbai gang-rape case has opened to a drowsy and ill-attended courtroom, without the crush of reporters who documented every twist in a similar case in New Delhi in which a woman died after being gang-raped on a private bus. The accused, barefoot, sit on a bench at the back of the courtroom, observing the arguments with blank expressions, as if they were being conducted in Mandarin. All have pleaded not guilty. They are slight men with ordinary faces, nothing imposing, the kind one might see at any bus stop or tea stall.

“But the Mumbai case provides an unusual glimpse into a group of bored young men who had committed the same crime often enough to develop a routine. The police say the men had committed at least five rapes in the same spot. Their casual confidence reinforces the notion that rape has been a largely invisible crime here, where convictions are infrequent and victims silently go away. Not until their arrest, at a moment when sexual violence has grabbed headlines and risen to the top of the state’s agenda, did the seriousness of the crime sink in. [...]

“One problem is that perpetrators may not view their actions as a grave crime, but something closer to mischief. A survey of more than 10,000 men carried out in six Asian countries — India not among them — and published in The Lancet Global Health journal in September came up with startling data. It found that, when the word ‘rape’ was not used as part of a questionnaire, more than one in 10 men in the region admitted to forcing sex on a woman who was not their partner.

“Asked why, 73 percent said the reason was ‘entitlement.’ Fifty-nine percent said their motivation was ‘entertainment seeking,’ agreeing with the statements ‘I wanted to have fun’ ‘I was bored.’ Flavia Agnes, a Mumbai women’s rights lawyer who has been working on rape cases since the 1970s, said the findings rang true to her experience.

“‘It’s just frivolous; they just do it casually,’ she said. ‘There is so much abject poverty. They just want to have a little fun on the side. That’s it. See, they have nothing to lose.’”

Mumbai rape suspects

See also on anti-caste:

ON THE DELHI RAPE PROTESTS: SOME RECOMMENDED ARTICLES
(January 6, 2013)

NOTES ON THE DELHI RAPE PROTESTS (January 11, 2013)

NO SAFETY, NO RIGHTS FOR UNTOUCHABLE WOMEN IN CAPITALIST INDIA

Low-caste teenager's insistence on justice for gang-rape ordeal leads to blackballing by neighbours and murder of her mother (Daily Mail)

“The victim was 16 when she was snatched from the street as she walked to school and raped by two men in a moving car.

“She reported the attack to the police but three weeks later, on a date etched on to the wall of her home, her mother disappeared.

“Two days later she was found dead in a canal. Doctors said she too was raped before she was murdered.

“Now the teenager’s fight to see the men accused of her rape sent to jail has pitted her and her family against a hostile neighbourhood.

“They are Dalits, India's lowest caste who are derided as 'untouchables'; the suspects, who police say also raped and killed her mother, are upper caste. [...]

“The victim’s widowed father, a day labourer, said neighbours had repeatedly told them to drop the charges.”

MAHENDRA KARMA–CONGRESS-PARTY LEADER WHO ORGANIZED DEATH SQUADS AGAINST IMPOVERISHED TRIBALS AND LEFTIST FIGHTERS–IS TARGETED FOR DEATH HIMSELF

Chhattisgarh: Salwa Judum Founder Among Many Killed in Maoist Attack (Outlook India)

“At least 17 people, including senior Congress leader Mahendra Karma, were killed and former union minister V C Shukla and 19 others injured when heavily-armed Maoists ambushed a convoy of party leaders inside a dense forest in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar district.

“Karma, a former home minister of the state, who was a guiding force behind ‘Salwa Judum’ (anti-Naxal operation by vigilante groups), was surrounded by about 100 to 150 Maoists who peppered his body with bullets.

“The Maoists also kidnapped PCC chief Nand Kumar Patel and his son Dinesh after attacking the convoy of Congress leaders in Darba Gati Valley near Jagdalpur, headquarters town of Bastar district, police said.”

See also:

Mahendra Karma and his cynical form of vigilantism by Sudeep Chakravarti (live mint/The Wall street Journal, May 28, 2013):

“Salwa Judum vigilantes destroyed homes, and stores of grain and any other food they had; killed dozens of men, women and children; maimed and—or—raped several. Children were forced to watch the death and dismemberment of parents. Pregnant women were disembowelled. The death and torture of those suspected of allying with Maoist rebels was instant. This intimidation, blessed by posses of state police and Union government paramilitaries who have their own record of blood, lust and war crimes in the region, at one point herded in excess of 50,000 tribal folk into little more than concentration camps across Dantewada district—since last year further split to create the additional districts of Bijapur and Sukma.

“To be fair to Karma, there was a method to his madness. Maoists had begun to infiltrate the Dantewada region as far back as the 1980s—it was then part of the vast Bastar district of the undivided Madhya Pradesh—to establish what would later enlarge into the rebel-influenced Dandakaranya zone. Landlords such as Karma, himself a child of a tribal landed family, increasingly began to see left-wing extremists, then spearheaded by the vanguard of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) People’s War, as a threat. The perception was mutual.

“For the rebels, Karma and his ilk symbolized the class enemy—worse, a tribal who came from traditionally, socio-politically oppressed stock was the class enemy of fellow tribal folk. For Karma & Co., the stealthily and rapidly infiltrating rebels represented a threat in several ways. For one, at the barrel of the gun they could redistribute land to the landless. For another, they were a direct threat to the local practice of Malik Makbuja, the right of the Adivasi to cut trees on his own land that had been subverted to benefit middlemen and various vested interests.”

And see:

The war in Bastar (Frontline, June 29, 2013):

“The CPI (Maoist) has grown in strength in Bastar primarily because of three factors. One, it fought alongside the Adivasis against the local contractors and ensured that the contractors paid the Adivasis the minimum wages for tendu leaf (used for bidi manufacturing) collection, the main source of income for the Adivasis. It also helped people out of the exploitative Maalik-Makbuja bonded labour system in timber felling. Two, it organised people against the excesses of forest officials who took them for a ride. Three, through force, it distributed the lands of the malguzars (feudal lords) to landless Adivasis.

“Karma came from a feudal Manjhi family. He was one of the tribal landlords in the area who, like many other landed people, turned against the Maoists in the 1980s. Because of the land distribution process, initiated forcibly by the Maoists, Karma had always been working to form an alternative front that could fight the Maoists. Therefore, he developed strong associations with big businesses and feudal lords from across party lines. He supported land acquisition by the government, conducted Jan Jagaran campaigns against the Maoists, and advocated industrialisation and mining activities in Bastar. Because of such activities, many Congress leaders too were against him.

“In the early 2000s, he founded a group called Salwa Judum (Movement for Peace), ostensibly as a Gandhian movement. But it went on to appoint landed Adivasis as ‘special police officers’ (SPOs) and became a militant force. The State government used the Judum to its advantage as the SPOs helped the security forces in navigating the dense forests. Various civil rights groups strongly opposed the organisation. Many official and unofficial reports claimed that it displaced about 50,000 people from their villages and destroyed 650 villages in the area. Activists claim that constant plundering, torching of villages, rapes and killing of innocent Adivasis became a norm in Bastar. Salwa Judum was disbanded following a 2011 Supreme Court decision that declared the organisation ‘illegal and unconstitutional’.”

ICL ARTICLE ON DELHI GANG RAPE PROTESTS

India: Deadly Rape Sparks Mass Protests

For Women’s Liberation Through Socialist Revolution!

Workers Vanguard No. 1017

“The heinous gang rape and mutilation of a 23-year-old paramedical student in Delhi on December 16, who later died of her injuries, sparked a momentous wave of protests against the oppression of women in India. Demonstrations erupted in many of India’s cities, including Kolkata (Calcutta), Mumbai, Bangalore, Panaji and beyond. Significantly, demonstrations were also held in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka, where women face conditions similar to those in India.

“The epicenter of the protests was Delhi, which prides itself on being part of the ‘new’ India, where shopping malls and night clubs exist side by side with massive slums. In fact, the capital has the highest recorded incidence of rape of any major city in India. Demonstrations by students and other youth continued for days, courageously defying repression by the police who attacked with water cannons, tear gas and lathi (bamboo sticks).

“Anger among women intensified with an outburst of grotesque anti-woman chauvinism that sought to blame the victim for the crime. M.L. Sharma, a lawyer for one of the five accused, stated that ‘respectable’ women do not get raped, while the Indian president’s son, Abhijeet Mukherjee, baited the demonstrators for being ‘painted’ and ‘dented,’ i.e., ‘Westernized’ and not young. A leader of the fascistic Hindu-chauvinist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) declared that sexual crimes ‘hardly take place in Bharat but occur frequently in India’ (Wall Street Journal, 8 January). The RSS is connected to the Hindu-supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which openly espouses Hindutva (‘Hinduness’), a toxic mix of nationalism and religious obscurantism, to stoke violent pogroms, particularly against Muslims.

“The term ‘Bharat,’ the Hindi word for India, harks back to an imagined past of idyllic rural life—as opposed to urban India, which is supposedly blighted by decadent Western influence, especially on women. The reality of life for most people in Indian villages is extreme poverty and brutal caste oppression. In the countryside, rape of dalit (so-called ‘untouchable’) women is considered a matter of caste privilege by ‘upper’ caste men, who use rape as a weapon in the subjugation and humiliation of the woman and of her entire caste. A March 2006 study of violence against dalit women by the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights reported that out of 500 women studied, 116 had been raped or gang-raped; among the perpetrators, ‘dominant caste landlords emerged as the most prominent group.’

“Police often assist vigilante groups which conduct raids on entire dalit villages, burning homes and raping women. The scope of such violence is captured in a November 2012 incident in Tamil Nadu, where 148 dalit houses were torched by a 2,500-strong mob because of a non-dalit woman who had married a dalit man in secret. Police also rape and murder with impunity as part of the military offensive in areas such as Chhattisgarh in eastern India, where it is directed against a Maoist insurgency based on the adivasi (tribal) people. In Kashmir, the occupying Indian Army uses murderous violence, including rape, to subjugate the Muslim population, with the perpetrators exempted from prosecution by the Armed Forces Special Powers Act. In 1991 in Kunan Poshpora, units of the Indian Army gang-raped nearly 100 Kashmiri women, aged 13 to 80, in a single night.”

READ THE FULL ARTICLE

ON THE DELHI RAPE PROTESTS: SOME RECOMMENDED ARTICLES

Delhi gang-rape: Six accused laid a trap for us, says braveheart’s friend (Zeenews, January 8, 2013)

New Delhi Attack: The Victim's Story (Wall Street Journal, January 9, 2013)

How India’s rapid changes are putting women at risk by Miranda Kennedy (Washington Post, January 4, 2013)

Amid rape fiasco, India’s leaders keep up insensitive remarks (Washington Post, January 4, 2013)

A nation outraged (Frontline, January 12-25, 2013)

Delhi Gang-Rape Protests: What About the Sex Crimes Against Untouchable Women? by Palash R. Ghosh (International Business Times, January 5, 2013)

No candlelight protest for Lalli Devi by Badri Narayan (The Hindu, December 30, 2013)

How Do We Break the Indian Penile Code? by Meena Kandasamy (Outlook India, January 14, 2013)

For Rape Victims in India, Police Are Often Part of the Problem (New York Times, January 22, 2013)

India’s Narendra Modi and the Tale of Two Rapes by Shikha Dalmia (Bloomberg, January 17, 2013)

ICL ARTICLE ON MASS DETENTIONS AND DEPORTATIONS BY AUSTRALIAN GOVT OF TAMIL REFUGEES FROM SRI LANKA

Australia’s War on Tamil Refugees:
Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants!

Australasian Spartacist (No. 220)

“The imperialist-backed Sri Lankan regime has waged a decades-long bloody war against the large Tamil minority. In its final murderous offensive in 2009, government forces destroyed the remnants of the Tamil mini-state in the North and East of the island, slaughtering tens of thousands of Tamil civilians. Hundreds of thousands more were interned in horrific prison camps and interrogation centres. We uphold the right to self-determination for the oppressed Tamil people and stood for the military defence of the LTTE against the army assault. At the same time we give no political support to these bourgeois nationalists. Carrying out the logic of nationalism, the LTTE has staged attacks on Sinhalese villagers and driven Muslims from the historic Tamil city of Jaffna, while employing murderous violence against other Tamil nationalist groups.

“Four years after the crushing defeat of LTTE forces, many Tamils still remain confined in camps and the military is an ongoing, large and menacing presence in Tamil regions. The Rajapaksa government continues to use the Prevention of Terrorism Act to repress Tamil civil rights and the population in general. Disappearances, abductions, arrests, torture and rape by the police and military are widely reported along with deaths in custody and extrajudicial killings. A recent Amnesty International report detailed pervasive government-sanctioned repression against journalists, political opponents and human-rights activists. As Sinhala racism escalates, there have also been increasing attacks by Buddhist fundamentalist groups on the small Muslim community.

“There are numerous reports of Tamils being deported back to Sri Lanka only to be arrested, some before they even get out of the airport. This hasn’t deterred the Gillard government from deporting more than 1,000 Sri Lankans since August last year. Echoing Sri Lankan government lies, the Australian government deems them ‘economic migrants.’ Catherine Renshaw, a Sydney University PhD candidate, noted: ‘There is an easily discernible quid pro quo operating here. Australia refrains from seriously criticising the government of Sri Lanka for abuses of power, human rights violations and the failure to fully investigate war crimes committed during the years of conflict. For its part, Sri Lanka’s government does everything in its power to stop Sri Lankans setting sail for Australia.’ (theconversation.com, 3 May).”

Read the full article

FINAL VERDICT IN BATHANI TOLA MASSACRE CASE

All accused in 1996 Bihar Dalit carnage acquitted (The Hindu)

“The Patna High Court has acquitted all the 23 persons accused of perpetrating the massacre of 21 Dalits at Bathani Tola in Bhojpur in 1996.

“The carnage took place on the afternoon of July 11, 1996. Upper-caste (Rajput and Bhumihar) landowners of the Ranvir Sena — a private militia of the landlords — stormed Bathani Tola in Bhojpur district's Sahar block in Central Bihar and ruthlessly hacked the Dalits, among them women, teenage girls and babies less than 10 months old.

“Ajay Singh was charged with brutally killing 10-year-old Phool Kumari, Manoj Singh was charged with the murder of the three-month-old daughter of Naimuddin (one of the prime eyewitnesses) and Nagender alias Narendra Singh was charged with slaughtering two women, Sanjharu and Ramratiya Devi. They were awarded the death sentence by the sessions court.

“Bathani Tola, along with Laxmanpur-Bathe (where more than 60 Dalit men, women and children were slaughtered by the Ranvir Sena), have since become bywords for caste massacres that engulfed central Bihar from the mid-1990s onwards.”

See also:

Broken People: Caste Violence Against India’s Untouchables (Human Rights Watch, March 1999):

“The Ranvir Sena was founded by upper-caste Bhumihars in Belaur village, Bhojpur district, in 1994. It first made international headlines in July 1996 with its attack on Bathani Tola in Bhojpur district, Bihar, which left nineteen Dalits and Muslims, mostly women and children, dead. Sixty members of the sena reportedly descended on the village and set twelve houses on fire. Using lathis, swords, and firearms, the attackers continued the onslaught for two and a half hours. The attack was reportedly in retaliation for the earlier killing of nine Bhumihars in Nadhi village, also in Bhojpur district, by the CPI(M-L). The conflict began when CPI(M-L) began organizing the agricultural laborers to demand the statutory daily minimum wage of Rs. 30.75 (US$0.77). Landowners were only willing to pay Rs. 20 (US$0.50). CPI(M-L) members convinced laborers to refuse employment at that wage and called for an economic blockade against landowners. The attack on Bathani Tola, press reports claim, was an effort to weaken the resolve of CPI(M-L) cadres organizing in the village and to prevent a labor boycott on hundreds of acres of land. None of the Ranvir Sena leaders were ever arrested for the Bathani Tola massacre.

“Since its inception, the Ranvir Sena has been implicated in killings, rapes and lootings in the villages of Belaur, Ekwari, Chandi, Nanaur, Narhi, Sarathau, Haibaspur, Laxmanpur-Bathe, Shankarbigha, and Narayanpur. On April 22, 1996, the sena gunned down five members of a marriage party in Nanaur village. The victims were believed to be CPI(M-L) supporters. In 1997 the sena killed three Dalits in Jehanabad district for raising their voice against the rape of a Dalit girl by upper-caste youths.”

And see:

Agrarian Conflict in Bihar and the Ranbir Sena (People’s Union for Democratic Rights, October 1997)

And see further:

A travesty of justice (editorial) (The Hindu, April 25, 2012)

members of the Ranvir Sena responsible for the Bathani Tola massacre (Outlook India)

COMMENT BY AAKAR PATEL ON THE OCCASION OF THE UPCOMING TENTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE GUJARAT MASSACRE

“The words ‘communal violence’ are misleading, because they indicate a skirmish between equal communities. Violence by civil society in India is one-sided. The Muslims of Gujarat and the Sikhs of Delhi were recipients. The Hindus dished it out. The second aspect is that the participants are usually known to those they kill, maim and rape. The two most violently communalized cities of India are Ahmedabad and Vadodara. In both, it is neighbourhoods that go to war, with outsiders in supporting roles.

“On a later visit to Ahmedabad (a depressing, segregated and oppressively vegetarian city), I was driven through its upper-class neighbourhoods. Here the homes and offices of Muslims had been neatly picked out and burnt. Muslim colonies, what Gujaratis call societies, still had their entrances barricaded as forts. The compound walls had been raised and the gates were blocked, reinforced with metal, wood, whatever was at hand to protect them from their neighbours.

“The third aspect of the Indian riot is that the state steps aside and lets the aggrieved party avenge itself.

“A few weeks later, at a session hosted by Gujarat’s finest scholar of Islam, Asghar Ali Engineer, we tried to make sense of this. The former IAS officer, Harsh Mander, said the British system of administration and policing was so designed that the state could bring its wild citizenry to heel inside two days. That this had not happened in Ahmedabad and Vadodara showed the intention of the state.

“When vengeance is taken, there is a swift return to neighbourhood normalcy and the hatred vanishes. Where did it go? I found this disturbing because I could not understand it, and still don’t.

“Vadodara’s physics professor J. S. Bandukwala, whose house was vandalized, observed something about the 2002 violence. There is still an absence of remorse and absolutely no regret among Gujaratis.

“No truth and reconciliation commission for Gujaratis, or the barbarians of Delhi who cut down 3,000 Sikhs.

“When confronted with their behaviour against Gujarati Muslims, the snarling response of Gujarati Hindus, and I include my friends and family in this, is, ‘Ae loko-e sharu karyun (They started it).’

“One cannot argue against this because chronologically it is true. The use of ‘they’ convicts all Muslims for an incident in which some individuals participated.

“It is difficult to explain to Indians the wrongness of collective punishment. This is because our identity is collective, and so is our behaviour. The understanding that this is wrong comes mainly to those who speak English. Individuals are more easily produced by English because it opens access to the world outside the tribe. It is able to place us outside the narrow definitions assigned to us by Gujarati and Hindi.

“But for most Indians, if they started it then they must suffer for it.

–Learnt in Godhra, forgotten in Jaipur (livemint.com)

FOUR YEARS AFTER MASS ATROCITY LED BY HINDU RIGHT AGAINST CHRISTIAN UNTOUCHABLES

Remembering Kandhamal by Harsh Mander (The Hindu)

“It was a terrifying Christmas in 2007 for tribal and dalit Christians who live in the second poorest, deeply forested district of Odisha, Kandhamal. Long-smouldering violence targeting them exploded, and was to continue to rage for another full year. During this time, 600 villages were ransacked, 5,600 houses were looted and burnt, 54,000 persons rendered homeless, 295 churches and places of worship destroyed, and 13 schools, colleges and orphanages were damaged. The official death toll was 39, although unofficially the figure is claimed to be closer to 100. 30,000 people were forced to live in relief camps, and it is estimated that nearly half are still unable to return home. [...]

“Although the states of Odisha and Gujarat are located at the furthest eastern and western corners of India, separated by several thousand kilometres, the mass-targeted hate violence in both states, in 2007-08 and 2002 respectively have many striking — and deeply troubling — similarities. Each was characterised by a long build-up of hatred against religious minority residents, there is evidence of systematic advance preparation, state authorities were openly complicit in enabling the violence to persist for weeks and months, the attacks were unusually brutal and targeted women, thousands were displaced and discouraged from returning to their homes, facing organised social and economic boycott. And in both, compensation was tight-fisted and justice systematically subverted. [...]

“In Odisha, once again like in Gujarat five years earlier, the attacks were marked by exceptional cruelty. Kanaka Nayak recalls the horrific mob slaughter of her husband when he refused to reconvert to Hinduism. ‘They spat on him and started to sing and dance around him; they paraded him, and dragged him. They told him “you sing your songs and let Jesus come and save you”.’ [...]

“Women who suffered sexual violence in both massacres continue to live with the agony of memory and silences of shame. One said in confidence to the Tribunal, ‘The attackers removed their mask before they raped me. Earlier, they would respect me. I was shocked that they took revenge on me for my uncle's refusal to convert to Hinduism... Lots of things have changed in my life after that incident. I have been in hiding. I am traumatised, sad, depressed and struggling. I feel ashamed. I am unable to forget about the incident and carry on with life. But I feel I should be strong to get justice.’”

See previous anti-caste posts on Kandhamal

POLICE RAMPAGE IN DANTEWADA: FIVE DAYS OF KILLING, RAPING, AND ARSON THAT LEFT HUNDREDS OF POOR TRIBALS HOMELESS AS PART OF INDIA’S OPERATION GREEN HUNT

Chhattisgarh villages torched in police rampage (The Hindu)

“The operation began in the early hours of March 11 when about 350 heavily armed troopers marched into the forests of Dantewada. They returned to their barracks five days later, with three villages aflame, about 300 homes and granaries incinerated, three villagers and three security personnel dead, and three women sexually assaulted, the victims and several eyewitnesses told The Hindu.

“Last week, the Chhattisgarh police said three Koya commandos were killed in a Maoist ambush during a routine search, yet journalists attempting to reach the site were turned away by gun-toting special police officers. On visiting the area through a forest route, this correspondent was confronted by the aftermath of what appeared to be an attack by security forces on three tribal settlements in a 15-km radius of the police camp at Chintalnar, which has left hundreds homeless and brutalised. [...]

“Villagers say the force left by noon, having torched 37 houses. They also picked up Madavi Ganga, 45, his son Bima and his daughter Hurre, 20. ‘They took us to the Chintalnar police station and put me in a separate cell and stripped me,’ said Hurre.

“Hurre said she was kept all night in the station and sexually assaulted. Ganga and Bima said the police repeatedly asked them whether Maoists visited their village, and beat them through the night. The Madavi family was released when the women of Morpalli demanded their release at the Chintalnar station.

“Police sources say they found neither arms factories nor Maoists at Morpalli that day, though they did find a 15-foot memorial commemorating the death of eight Maoists in the April 2010 encounter, in which 76 CRPF troopers were killed near Tarmetla village.”

See also:

Scorched-Earth Tactics Return to Chhattisgarh by Eric Randolph (Current Intelligence, March 23, 2011):

“I saw the effect of these operations for myself when I travelled to the area recently. Trauma and fear pervades everyday life for these tribal communities. Whenever an outsider appears on the outskirts of a village, everyone prepares to flee. Only when they recognised our guide did they calm down. [...]

“An ongoing case in the Supreme Court has collected testimonies implicating the state’s security forces in the deaths of 537 people, including 33 children, as well as 99 rapes and the destruction of at least 2,825 houses. These testimonies relate only to the period between 2005 and 2007, when the violence was at its peak. The difficulty of reporting in this remote region means the figures cannot be exactly accurate – and the real numbers could be far higher. A large number of attacks have occurred since then as well and, it would appear, are continuing.

“In its early phase, the violence was fuelled by the formation of an anti-Maoist movement called the Salwa Judum, set up in 2005 by local elites keen to regain control of the region and its resources. The Judum quickly gained the backing and support of the police and the government, but by arming local tribals and seeking to divide communities, it triggered a spiral of brutal violence.

“The Judum held processions through the forests, forcibly relocating people to camps under police control. Evidence in the Supreme Court case states that 47,238 people were moved to the camps. The numbers have been steadily reduced to around 25,000 according to the Chhattisgarh government, spread across 23 camps. The majority of those remaining had joined the Salwa Judum and now fear reprisals from the Maoists and their fellow villagers if they return to their homes.”

And see:

In Dantewada, poor fight poor in a dehumanising war (Times of India, March 24, 2011):

“Newspaper images from the villages showed men and women staring at the charred ashes of their homes, food grains, belongings and lives. ‘What will we eat this year? All our grain is lost,’ former sarpanch Nupo Muta was quoted in Patrika, a Hindi daily. The paper reported 300 homes had been torched, five men killed and three women sexually assaulted.

“Between 2005-2007, villages here witnessed intense and savage clashes between Salwa Judum and the Maoists.

“Salwa Judum is translated as 'peace march' by some and as 'purification hunt' by others. This dichotomy of definition extends to accounts of how it began and what followed.

“Judum supporters claim it was a spontaneous upsurge by adivasis – fed up of Maoist diktats, they declared rebellion, moving out of their villages, to escape the wrath of rebels.

“But critics allege it was a government backed militia that launched brutal attacks on villages, forcing thousands to abandon their homes, in a ‘scorched earth' strategy, aimed at exposing rebel hideouts and cutting their supplies.

“Whatever be the truth, either way, the clashes of those years left the area brutally ruptured.

“Thousands moved to refugee camps along NH 221. Others stayed back – but found themselves abandoned by the government, as schools, health centres, anganwadis, every wing of the civil administration folded up in the villages.

“Last October, the state government informed the Supreme Court that Salwa Judum no longer exists. But this week, the rampage came as a reminder of its enduring legacy.”

And see also anti-caste: Operation Green Hunt–India’s Dirty War on Tribals and Leftists

A PORTRAIT OF VILLAGE INDIA IN 2010: SCARCITY, BIGOTRY, SYSTEMATIC RAPE OF UNTOUCHABLE WOMEN

India’s languishing countryside: A village in a million (The Economist)

“The 10,000-odd villagers—who make Shahabpur a medium-sized settlement in crowded north India—are arranged largely on the basis of caste. They live in caste-based ghettos; rarely socialise across caste lines, and never inter-marry. And the village dalits, as the former untouchables are now called, are often abused.

“The chamars, the biggest of Shahabpur’s half-dozen dalit caste-groups get the worst of it. They are, not coincidentally, the village’s poorest people. And several villagers—including from Shahabpur’s small Muslim community, well-informed observers of Hindu wiles—say they are routinely bullied and beaten. The worst dalit-bashers are said to be the patels, Shahabpur’s biggest community, which is about 3,000-strong. They are typical bullies: of a low-caste peasant order, the patels are just a rung or two higher up the caste ladder, which makes them jealous guardians of their perceived superiority.

“There is an exception to the caste divide in Shahabpur, which many Muslim and Hindu men enjoy. For a few rupees or handfuls of rice, they are said to demand and get sex with dalit women, typically just after sundown, when the villagers troop out to the fields to ablute. At an informal gathering of Muslim men outside the house of Anwar Ali—an upstanding clerk, who also housed your correspondent—it was estimated that perhaps 40% of the village’s non-dalit men upheld this ancient tradition. According to Sarju, until Sushila lost her youthful good looks, he suffered near-nightly terrors from drunken patel youths, who came clamouring for her outside his hut.

“This practice recalls a famous condemnation of village India by one of the country’s founding fathers, B.R. Ambedkar. The architect of the country’s 1949 constitution and a dalit, Ambedkar asked: ‘What is the village but a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow-mindedness and communalism?’ (Mohandas Gandhi, by contrast, considered the villages to be India’s ideal social units.)”

DEADLY REPRESSION BY INDIAN FORCES IN KASHMIR

[See also: All Indian and Pakistani Troops Out Now! Down With India’s Bloody Repression in Kashmir!,
Workers Hammer No. 212 (Autumn 2010)]

Not Crushed, Merely Ignored by Tariq Ali (London Review of Books)

“A Kashmiri lawyer rang me last week in an agitated state. Had I heard about the latest tragedies in Kashmir? I had not. He was stunned. So was I when he told me in detail what had been taking place there over the last three weeks. As far as I could see, none of the British daily papers or TV news bulletins had covered the story; after I met him I rescued two emails from Kashmir informing me of the horrors from my spam box. I was truly shamed. The next day I scoured the press again. Nothing. The only story in the Guardian from the paper’s Delhi correspondent – a full half-page – was headlined: ‘Model’s death brings new claims of dark side to India’s fashion industry’. Accompanying the story was a fetching photograph of the ill-fated woman. The deaths of (at that point) 11 young men between the ages of 15 and 27, shot by Indian security forces in Kashmir, weren’t mentioned. Later I discovered that a short report had appeared in the New York Times on 28 June and one the day after in the Guardian; there has been no substantial follow-up. When it comes to reporting crimes committed by states considered friendly to the West, atrocity fatigue rapidly kicks in. A few facts have begun to percolate through, but they are likely to be read in Europe and the US as just another example of Muslims causing trouble, with the Indian security forces merely doing their duty, if in a high-handed fashion. The failure to report on the deaths in Kashmir contrasts strangely with the overheated coverage of even the most minor unrest in Tibet, leave alone Tehran.

“On 11 June this year, the Indian paramilitaries known as the Central Reserve Police Force fired tear-gas canisters at demonstrators, who were themselves protesting about earlier killings. One of the canisters hit 17-year-old Tufail Ahmad Mattoo on the head. It blew out his brains. After a photograph was published in the Kashmiri press, thousands defied the police and joined his funeral procession the next day, chanting angry slogans and pledging revenge. The photograph was ignored by the mainstream Indian press and the country’s celebrity-trivia-obsessed TV channels. As I write, the Kashmiri capital, Srinagar, and several other towns are under strict military curfew. Whenever it is lifted, however briefly, young men pour out onto the streets to protest and are greeted with tear gas. In most of the province there has been an effective general strike for more than three weeks. All shops are closed.”

See also:

Indian Forces Face Broader Revolt in Kashmir (New York Times, August 13, 2010)

And see anti-caste: RAPE/MURDER IN SHOPIAN TURNS SPOTLIGHT ON NATIONAL OPPRESSION OF KASHMIR: INDIAN, PAKISTANI TROOPS AND SECURITY FORCES OUT! (July 15, 2009)

POLICE AND THE STATE ENFORCE CASTE LAW AGAINST YOUNG COUPLES: FORCIBLY SEPARATING THEM, CRIMINALIZING THE HUSBAND, SETTING THEM UP FOR MURDER

Honour killing: Between life and love (Times of India)

“Police protection hardly helps, say activists. Standard operating procedure in the case of a runaway man and woman ends up with the woman’s family filing a case of kidnapping and/or rape against the man or his family. The woman shows up as ‘missing’ in Haryana police’s records. From November 2009 to May 2010, of the 686 people filed as ‘missing’ on Haryana police’s website, a largish 30% are females aged between 15 and 28 years.

“Police hunt the couple down. If the girl is under 18, she is forcibly returned to her family. If her age is suspect, and she refuses her family, she is packed off to a nari niketan and the guy is jailed. This usually takes place in the month between a couple’s registering their wish to marry and the registration, which has mandatory month in-between: a provision begging to be altered. ‘Fear of cases filed under section 363 (kidnapping) and 366 (compelling/inducing woman into marriage) against the “husband” drives the couple to court. If registration is immediate, such cases can’t proceed,’ says advocate Kulbir Singh Dhaliwal. Jaipur-based activist Kavita Srivastava moots the idea of same-day registration. ‘The more time you give, more the problems for the couple,’ she says. Many couples also surface to protect their families. In the headline-grabbing Manoj-Babli murder, for instance, the posed picture of the two garlanding each other was taken for Babli to prove that she married Manoj of her own accord. This was the only way to ensure that the kidnapping case against her mother-in-law Chandrapati, of Karora village in Kaithal, could be quashed. It was on that visit that the two were murdered.

“As is clear, not every couple is killed. Activists say barely a handful are murdered: what determines the fate of the target is the couple’s financial independence, political clout or wherewithal to pay off the khap. Lawyers say 90% cases are ‘solved.’‘Nobody says a word when a politician’s children decide to marry against norms. It’s very selective,’ says Aidwa’s Sudha Sundararaman. Or when couples can pay the “fines” khaps impose, in short paying their way out. Matters come to a head if the woman marries a lower caste guy. Her succession rights can mean property going—via the girl—into a lower-caste family. Inter-caste, intra-village, intra-gotra are the big daddies frowned upon. But again, selective. ‘A khap had declared a couple brother-sister recently and nullified their marriage. We intervened and as the boy was Delhi-based and had clout, their khap revoked the decision,’ says Sundararaman.”

See all anti-caste posts on honor killings.

PRAFUL BIDWAI ON OPERATION GREEN HUNT

War on Maoists by Praful Bidwai (Frontline)

“The much-dramatised public exchange of telephone numbers between Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram and Communist Party of India (Maoist) leader Kishenji and their sparring over a 72-hour or 72-day ceasefire would have been amusing if it did not involve a grim life-and-death issue for millions of wretchedly poor and underprivileged people in India’s heartland. They face the full heat of Operation Green Hunt, the biggest-ever military-style mobilisation launched by the security forces in the central-eastern tribal belt. Until recently, such large-scale deployment was confined to Kashmir and the northeastern region.

“The operation, involving over 40,000 paramilitary troops and policemen armed with weapons ranging from night-vision-capable automatic rifles to helicopter gunships, supposedly aims in its first phase to clear parts of Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra of the Maoists. By all accounts, it will last indefinitely–until the tribal belt is fully ‘sanitised’ and the naxalites are militarily defeated.

“The Centre is coordinating, planning and directing Green Hunt–unlike in the past, when State governments led such operations. In a disturbingly strong signal, a brigade headquarters of the Indian Army is being established in Chhattisgarh, the most turbulent part of the tribal heartland. [...]

“According to numerous credible, well-documented reports, 30 to 40 tribal people are being killed each week in the Adivasi belt. Some 200,000 people have fled their homes. This number does not include the 50,000 who were driven out by Salwa Judum, the militia sponsored, armed and funded by the Chhattisgarh government in 2008-09. The bulk of the 50,000 cannot return home and have taken refuge in Andhra Pradesh and in forests close to the border. In addition to the paramilitary forces, the tribal people are being attacked indiscriminately by private militias or Special Police Officers (SPOs), who enjoy state support, as well as by Maoist guerillas. The testimonies of some of the victims, backed by eyewitness reports, speak of the deliberate targeting of non-combatant civilians by the police and the private thugs they support. Rape and sexual violence are rampant in Bastar and parts of Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra. The civilians killed greatly outnumber the Maoists shot dead–perhaps by a factor of 10. [...]

“[T]he state has lost legitimacy in tribal India. It is laughable to claim that its project of militarily overpowering the Maoists has popular support. Its police force is inefficient, corrupt, trigger-happy and anti-poor. The State represents little more than predatory, rape-and-run industrial groups, besides super-corrupt Ministers (like Madhu Koda who allegedly amassed wealth equivalent to a fourth of Jharkhand’s tax revenue in three years). It is no accident that the Centre has intervened to assert its full coercive power in an area that contains much of India’s immense mineral and forest wealth, now under transfer to private capital.”

See anti-caste: OPERATION GREEN HUNT: INDIA’S DIRTY WAR ON TRIBALS AND LEFTISTS

WAR ON TRIBALS AND LEFTIST GUERILLAS IS BEING HIDDEN FROM VIEW

Green Hunt: the anatomy of an operation by Aman Sethi (The Hindu)

“Away from the gaze of the media and the judiciary, the adivasis of Bastar are paying a heavy price... for just being there.

“An operation is underway in Central India, but no one really knows what it is. Variously described as a media myth, a comprehensive hearts and minds strategy, and an all-out offensive by paramilitary forces and the state forces along the borders of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, Operation Green Hunt has become a shoebox of news clippings, police reports, public demonstrations and armed encounters.

“Depending on the definition, Green Hunt either began in July 2009, September 2009 or November 2009. Speaking off record, senior policemen confirmed that the intensification of ‘search and comb’ operations in Chhattisgarh began as early as July last year. In September 2009 the press reported on the progress of ‘Operation Green Hunt’: a massive 3-day joint operation in which the central CoBRA force and state police battled Naxal forces in Dantewada.

“By November, the press was regularly reporting on the planning and progress of Green Hunt, prompting Home Minister, P. Chidambaram to term the operation a ‘media invention.’ Since then, the security apparatus has scrupulously avoided all mention of Green Hunt. The week-long joint operation, launched on December 25 2009 in Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra for instance, was termed ‘Police Week.’ The change in nomenclature could be prompted by a realisation that the battle between the state and the Naxals is unlikely to end anytime soon. Speaking on background, police sources confirm that the conflict shall take the form of ‘a prolonged, open-ended engagement’ rather than a short, fierce ‘operation.’

“There is also little clarity on the extent of troop deployment, the composition of the forces and the chain of command between central paramilitary forces and the state police. Privately, sources in the security apparatus admit that part of the confusion is by design rather than by default to control the information available to Naxal commanders. At present, the only information independently confirmed by The Hindu relates to the Bastar Zone, a 40,000 square kilometre area in Chhattisgarh that lies at heart of the battle. Sources state that 7 additional battalions of central forces have been moved in the area, bringing the strength of central forces in Bastar to a total 20 battalions including troops from the CRPF, ITBP, BSF and SSB. Taken alongside the 6,000 policemen deployed in Bastar, the size of the total fighting force in the zone is about 20,000 troops.”

See also:

India is ignoring its citizens by Eric Randolph (The Guardian)

“Under the broadbrush moniker of Maoists or Naxalites, these [left-wing insurgents operating in India’s poorest regions] represent one of the few forms of resistance for villagers and hill tribes against the inequities of continuing feudal structures and the encroachment of global corporations—backed by the state—who treat them as awkward impediments to mining plans.

“The Naxalites can be brutal, and the villagers under their control often find themselves unwillingly cut off from health services, education and development. But they have held on to the moral high ground thanks largely to a state response that has been unremittingly heavy-handed: special forces operations, the arming of vigilante groups, the dispossession of land, forced encampment—all accompanied by tales of extrajudicial killings, rapes and, for some godforsaken reason, the chopping off of children's fingers.

“India's civil society looks on in abhorrence at what is widely seen as a full-blown war against the poor. Even the government-appointed Council of Experts had to conclude that: ‘Often any individual who speaks out against the powerful is dubbed a Naxalite and jailed or otherwise silenced. The search for Naxalite cadre leads to severe harassment and torture of its supporters and sympathisers.’

“‘Those who try to report these crimes find themselves bundled away to police custody ‘for their own protection.’ This has been happening to Sodi Sambo, a 28-year-old woman from Gompar village in Chattisgarh who says she witnessed security forces murder nine of her neighbours in October 2009, and was herself shot in the foot in front of her two small children. She tried to file a complaint, only to find herself under armed guard in a nearby hospital with no visitors allowed and denied the right to travel to Delhi for treatment.

“With Amnesty International and the supreme court wading in, her case might just be heard. A couple of troops might even be reprimanded. In the meantime, the operations will continue. Just a fortnight ago, home minister Palaniappan Chidambaram announced another massive offensive across five states, confidently claiming it would target only insurgent leaders. Since no journalists are allowed anywhere near these war zones, we have to take his word for it.”

See anti-caste: OPERATION GREEN HUNT: INDIA’S DIRTY WAR ON TRIBALS AND LEFTISTS.

IN INDIA RAPE IS USED TO ENFORCE SOCIAL HIERARCHY

Rape takes bigger toll on dalit women: study (Times of India)

"The comparative study between Dalits and non-Dalits showed that Dalits felt anguish to a greater degree of intensity. They often see rape as "something ordained" by virtue of a double disadvantage: being Dalit and woman. "Whenever a Dalit woman is raped, it gets connected to all other sufferings and discriminations. Dalits being in a disadvantaged position and there's no resilience, no bouncing back," says [researcher Rajat] Mitra.

"'The women shared that during the attack, the men seemed to have more pleasure in humiliating their origins and background,' adds Mitra. The report details their almost-ritualistic ostracism after the rape where older Dalit women also attempt to explain rape as 'tradition'.

"In a qualitative assessment, the report says girls are almost prepared to expect assault. It says, 'Allusions to rape by upper castes begin to appear in subtle conversations and often inflate their anxiety and depressive symptoms that begin to mark (rape) as inevitable in the mind of young Dalit girls.'"

“OPERATION GREEN HUNT”: INDIAN GOVERNMENT TARGETS TRIBALS AND GUERILLAIST LEFTISTS

India prepares to fight rebel Maoists (UPI)

"India is preparing for a prolonged counterinsurgency fight against Maoist rebels once discounted as a ragtag group of irrelevant ideologues, officials say.

"The Maoists, intent on overthrowing the government, are operating in 20 of India's states, and have become a strong and dangerous insurgency, The New York Times reported on its Web site Saturday.

"Indian leaders are prepared to deploy nearly 70,000 paramilitary officers for the extended counterinsurgency effort.

"The Maoists say they represent the dispossessed of Indian society. Especially hard-hit, they claim, are indigenous tribal groups burdened with the highest rates of illiteracy, poverty and infant mortality.

"The insurgents charge the government wants to push tribal groups from their lands to grab valuable natural resources, the Times says. Maoists have escalated their efforts to sabotage roads and bridges, and even have attacked an energy pipeline."

The heart of India is under attack by Arundhati Roy (The Guardian (UK), October 30, 2009):

"Right now in central India, the Maoists' guerrilla army is made up almost entirely of desperately poor tribal people living in conditions of such chronic hunger that it verges on famine of the kind we only associate with sub-Saharan Africa. They are people who, even after 60 years of India's so-called independence, have not had access to education, healthcare or legal redress. They are people who have been mercilessly exploited for decades, consistently cheated by small businessmen and moneylenders, the women raped as a matter of right by police and forest department personnel. Their journey back to a semblance of dignity is due in large part to the Maoist cadre who have lived and worked and fought by their side for decades.

"If the tribals have taken up arms, they have done so because a government which has given them nothing but violence and neglect now wants to snatch away the last thing they have—their land. Clearly, they do not believe the government when it says it only wants to 'develop' their region. Clearly, they do not believe that the roads as wide and flat as aircraft runways that are being built through their forests in Dantewada by the National Mineral Development Corporation are being built for them to walk their children to school on. They believe that if they do not fight for their land, they will be annihilated. That is why they have taken up arms.

"Even if the ideologues of the Maoist movement are fighting to eventually overthrow the Indian state, right now even they know that their ragged, malnutritioned army, the bulk of whose soldiers have never seen a train or a bus or even a small town, are fighting only for survival."

anti-caste: Marxists in India would seek to mobilize the working class to defend tribals and leftist guerillas against this threat of massive state repression.

Unlike liberals and reformists, Marxists would not call on the capitalist state to better the conditions of tribals rather than killing and displacing them; to do so is to reinforce the illusion that this state does not necessarily act in the interests of the Indian bourgeoisie and its imperialist masters. The masses of the subcontinent need a revolutionary workers’ state to serve their own, counterposed interests.

While defending them militarily against police and paramilitary forces, Marxists would give no political support to the Naxalite (guerillaist) Maoists who, though presently under the gun, openly seek an alliance with a mythical “progressive national bourgeoisie.” Despite their claims to Marxism, the Maoist guerillas have nothing to do with the working class and base themselves entirely on peasants and the landless. As Trotsky explained, these classes, unlike the industrial proletariat, lack the unity, organization, and social power to play an independent revolutionary role. The burning social questions of the region—including the liberation of tribals, who are among the most oppressed and marginalized populations on earth—will not be settled in the jungles.

See also anti-caste: INDIAN GOVT COMMITTEE: "LARGE LANDOWNERS INVARIABLY BELONG TO THE UPPER CASTES" WHILE TATA AND ESSAR STAGE "THE BIGGEST GRAB OF TRIBAL LANDS SINCE COLUMBUS" (October 25, 2009)

And see anti-caste updates on Operation Green Hunt

INDIAN GOVT COMMITTEE: "LARGE LANDOWNERS INVARIABLY BELONG TO THE UPPER CASTES" WHILE TATA AND ESSAR STAGE "THE BIGGEST GRAB OF TRIBAL LANDS SINCE COLUMBUS"

Experts seek land ceiling like Bengal (The Telegraph (Calcutta))

"The Centre has been asked to impose the Bengal model of land distribution across the country by a panel it appointed to suggest land reforms.

"The non-binding advice, which recommends rural land ceilings more stringent than those in Bengal, comes at a time the [CPM-led] Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee government has tried to raise those limits to promote industry but seen its efforts stalled. [...]

"In Bengal, the ceiling in non-irrigated areas is 17 acres and in irrigated areas, 12 acres. Left-ruled Bengal, Kerala and Tripura are the only states with rural land ceilings, the limit for irrigated land in Kerala being 15 acres. Some other states have tried and failed to enact land ceilings.

"So, although the report on 'State Agrarian Relations and the Unfinished Task in Land Reforms' was handed in last January, the Centre has been unwilling to reveal its contents given their controversial nature."

anti-caste: The report of the government-appointed panel mentioned above, which is available online here in full, makes interesting reading, with frank and well supported analyses of the near-total failure of capitalist India to solve the land question. And it's only getting dramatically worse, with the current drive to separate poor and middle peasants, landless laborers (who are overwhelmingly untouchable), and tribals from what meager resources they had claim to on behalf of native and foreign-based capital. That shouldn't be news to the government that commissioned the report, since, as documented there, it's the one facilitating it. Liberal reformers regret the state taking on this role; Marxists know it's only doing its job. It's a dirty job, too: just look at Operation Green Hunt.

Excerpts below from the report's fourth chapter, Alienation of Tribal and Dalits Lands (with emphasis added by us throughout):

"Land and Social Hierarchy - Dalits and Adivasis in India

"Land is not merely an important economic asset, its ownership is also socially valued, sought and denied. In rural societies, ownership of land was and to a large extent is still coterminus with social status. Hence, its unequal distribution reflects both prevailing social stratification and also helps maintain the hierarchical structure of the society. In contrast, fair distribution of land strikes directly at the roots of an unequal social order and skewed power relations, and frees the marginalized from the clutches of perpetual bondage, for want of a sustainable livelihood. The landless, whose only remaining asset is their labour, are effectively separated from the other means of production, namely land, and remain dependent on large land holders for their survival. Powerful landlords have always opposed land reforms, fearing not only loss of control of assets, but also their dominant position in society, which straddles the economic and the political realms. The denial of access to land, thereby, functions both as a means of exclusion as also a mechanism of bondage. [...]

"The pattern of land distribution in India, therefore, reflects the existing socioeconomic hierarchy. While large landowners invariably belong to the upper castes, the cultivators belong to the middle castes, and the agricultural workers are largely dalits and tribals. [...T]he data of absolute landless families proves that the feudal society is firmly anchored in large parts of India, notwithstanding claims to the contrary.

"Tribal India – Land and People

"The tribal people, referred to in the law and constitution, considered the descendents of the original inhabitants, are largely located in the hilly tracts of Central and North Eastern India, Andaman and Nicobar Islands. [...] Earlier the temples of modern India reduced millions of tribal people to ecological refugees, now the minerals seen as the building blocks of modern India put the tribal people at risk of losing their land through acquisition and further disruption of their societies and economies. [...] Left without an alternative, either in the government or non government organizations, and left to a harsh fate of unmitigated exploitation, the tribal people initially gave the Naxalites succor and now have become their base. Most tribal areas in Central India are the abode to the naxalites, whose presence is a response both to past and future land alienation, the failure of the government to live up to its constitutional mandate and the withdrawal of the state from its responsibility to protect the tribal realm. [...]

"The data gathered from the village studies and from the records of the various governments all point out to the inescapable conclusion that alienation of tribal land continues unabated and alienation of land has actually accelerated in areas where irrigation and modernization of agriculture are making rapid strides and roadways, industrialization and urbanization is enveloping larger areas in the towns and cities. Four apparent forms of tribal land alienation are listed below. [...]

"Conclusion - The Biggest Grab of Tribal Lands after Columbus

"A civil war like situation has gripped the southern districts of Bastar, Dantewara and Bijapur in Chhattishgarh. The contestants are the armed squads of tribal men and women of the erstwhile Peoples War Group now known as the Communist Party of India (Maoist) on the one side and the armed tribal fighters of the Salva Judum created and encouraged by the government and supported with the firepower and organization of the central police forces. This open declared war will go down as the biggest land grab ever, if it plays out as per the script. The drama being scripted by Tata Steel and Essar Steel who wanted 7 villages or thereabouts, each to mine the richest lode of iron ore available in India.

"There was initial resistance to land acquisition and displacement from the tribals. The state withdrew its plans under fierce resistance. An argument put forward was ‘you don’t play foul with the Murias [a tribal group]’, it’s a matter of life and death and Murias don’t fear death. A new approach was necessary if the rich lodes of iron ore are to be mined.

"The new approach came about with the Salva Judum, euphemistically meaning peace hunt. Ironically the Salva Judum was led by Mahendra Karma, elected on a Congress ticket and the Leader of the Opposition and supported wholeheartedly by the BJP-led government. The Salva Judum was headed and peopled by the Murias, some of them erstwhile cadre and local leaders of the Communist Party of India (Maoist). Behind them are the traders, contractors and miners waiting for a successful result of their strategy. The first financiers of the Salva Judum were Tata and the Essar in the quest for ‘peace’. The first onslaught of the Salva Judum was on Muria villagers who still owed allegiance to the Communist Party of India (Maoist). It turned out to be an open war between brothers. 640 villages as per official statistics were laid bare, burnt to the ground and emptied with the force of the gun and the blessings of the state. 350,000 tribals, half the total population of Dantewada district are displaced, their womenfolk raped, their daughters killed, and their youth maimed. Those who could not escape into the jungle were herded together into refugee camps run and managed by the Salva Judum. Others continue to hide in the forest or have migrated to the nearby tribal tracts in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa.

"640 villages are empty. Villages sitting on tons of iron ore are effectively de-peopled and available for the highest bidder. The latest information that is being circulated is that both Essar Steel and Tata Steel are willing to take over the empty landscape and manage the mines."

See also:

‘The biggest land grab after Columbus’ (Hindustan Times, December 4, 2009):

"It seems no coincidence that India’s mining heartland is also the Maoist heartland.

"'If you map the forest wealth, the mineral and the poverty of India, it’s a complete match,' said Sunita Narain, head of the Centre of Science and Environment."

And see anti-caste: OPERATION GREEN HUNT: INDIA’S DIRTY WAR ON TRIBALS AND LEFTISTS.

WOMAN-KILLING CASTE COUNCILS IN HARYANA WANT LEGAL COVER

Khap panchayats seek legal claws (Times of India)

"Khaps are traditional area-based community organizations whose rulings have no legal sanction. In keeping with tradition, khap panchayats oppose marriages within the same 'gotra' (lineage) and are known to have meted out harsh punishments to 'erring' young couples.

"At a two-day meeting in Rohtak that ended on Sunday, the Sarv Khap Panchayat, a conglomerate of various khaps, decided to set up a core committee to suggest amendments to the Act to disallow same-gotra and same-village marriages as per Jat tradition.

[...]

"[Justice (ret'd) Devi Singh Teotia, a former judge of the Punjab & Haryana High Court, said:] 'One of the sections of the Hindu Marriage Act says that you can’t marry your brother or sister, unless custom permits.' This exception clause was added for some south Indian customs where sibling marriages are allowed under extreme circumstances. 'Since Jat custom doesn’t permit marriage within the same gotra and in the gotra of one’s parents, we can seek a similar clause.'

See also:

Pesticide pills for 'wayward' girls (Times of India, September 8, 2009):

"'With mobile phones and television, milna-julna (interaction between the sexes) is too much. What can parents do except kill a daughter who disobeys?' says a local teacher defensively.

"Girls who survive their mother’s womb are brought up as daughters of the village. Not just [one village's] daughters, but of 12 neighbouring villages, says a khap member. All 12 villages form the Khidwali Bara khap, a Jat territorial unit. It decrees that boys and girls within these 12 villages cannot marry. Interestingly, the entire onus of ‘siblinghood’ rests on the girl. She is the keeper of village honour. Exceptions may be made for a boy, if the khap decides, but a girl is never allowed to bend the rules. 'If a girl married in her community’s villages, she will be in purdah in her own house. How can we allow that?' asks middle-aged Bedo.

[...]

"Vidya, who teaches at a government school in Sanghi, says she has had students who died in mysterious circumstances. 'We are only told so-and-so is dead,' she says. The physical trainer in her school adds, 'Kaaran koi nai batata (No one gives reasons).' On average, 10 to 12 healthy girls die every year, locals reckon, but there are no reliable figures.

"Generally, it’s the parents or father-brother duos who kill ‘wayward’ girls. A sympathetic mother may plead with a daughter to take the goli herself. A protesting daughter may be force-fed a pesticide pill, the preferred mode. The other route is death by hanging, all the better to ‘show’ it as suicide. No police, no complaint, no records. 'Yahan izzatdar woh hain jo ladki ko marte hain (Those who kill their girls are respected here),' says another teacher.

"If a couple runs away, the women in their families run the risk of being raped, gang-raped, and boycotted. At times, khaps also ‘fine’ the families lakhs of rupees. For the locals, that is par for the course. 'What else can be done?' asks an old woman."

Sonia of Asanada village, Haryana stood up to a khap panchayat in 2004

And see:

Medieval justice just 50km from Delhi (Times of India, September 8, 2009)

"For its part, the state government grants them legitimacy. Its website reads: 'Khap Panchayats... would be requested to use their influence in combating various social evils.' Even CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda has defended them, saying they’re needed in times of crisis.

"But Ranbir Singh says the khap panchayats’ increasing assertiveness is a sign of the identity crisis within the Jat community. 'Their landholdings are fragmenting and many fear that they would lose their zamindar status.'"

Haryana, 2007: eloping couple Manoj and Bibli killed by Bibli's family

And see also anti-caste: COUPLE BELONGING TO THE SAME CASTE KILLED FOR BEING TOO CLOSE IN LINEAGE (July 14, 2007)

RAPE/MURDER IN SHOPIAN TURNS SPOTLIGHT ON NATIONAL OPPRESSION OF KASHMIR: INDIAN, PAKISTANI TROOPS AND SECURITY FORCES OUT!

Court orders arrest of 4 police in Kashmir murders (AP)

"The discovery of the women's bodies triggered widespread anger in Shopian, where the residents believed the killings were carried out by security forces. Two people were killed and more than 400 injured in weeklong violent demonstrations and clashes between residents and police in Shopian [a town outside of Srinagar, the main city of Indian-controlled Kashmir].

"On Wednesday, Ghosh asked Shopian residents to end the complete shutdown that has paralyzed normal life in the town since the bodies were found.

"Human rights groups and separatist leaders have long accused Indian security forces of using rape and sexual molestation to intimidate the local population. Rights groups say investigations into such crimes rarely yield results and are often meant only to calm public anger."

See also:

Militarization with Impunity: A Brief on Rape and Murder in Shopian, Kashmir by the International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Indian-Administered Kashmir (IPTK) (July 19, 2009) (via Kafila):

"While investigations have emphasized the procedural conduct of the police in their handling of the investigation, they failed to focus on the actual crimes that were committed, or the conduct of state institutions. The investigations in Shopian have not focused on the identification and prosecution of perpetrators or on addressing structural realities of militarization in Kashmir that foster and perpetuate gendered and sexualized violences, and undermine rule of law and justice. The investigations have instead concentrated on locating ‘collaborators’ and manufacturing scapegoats to subdue public outcry. ‘Control’ rather than ‘justice’ has organized the focus of the state apparatus, including all processes related to civic, criminal, and judicial matters."

And see:

2 Killings Stoke Kashmiri Rage at Indian Force (New York Times, August 15, 2009)

AFTER PAKISTANI GOVT ACCEPTS TRUCE WITH THE TALIBAN...

Class Dismissed in Swat Valley: The Death of Female Education (video by Adam Ellick and Irfan Ashraf for the New York Times)

A short documentary profiling an 11-year-old Pakistani girl on the last day before the Taliban close down her school.

In the course of this moving video, a young girl, her face veiled to conceal her identity, bravely reads the following speech at a school rally:

"Swat Valley: the land of waterfalls. Lush green hills and other gifts bestowed upon it by the nature. But my dear friends, today Swat has in the past few years become a heartland for Pakistan Islamic militancy. Today, this idyllic valley of peace is burning. Why the peace of this valley is destroyed? Why our future is targeted? Schools are not places of learning but places of fear and violence. Our dreams are shattered. And let me say, we are destroyed."

WATCH THE VIDEO HERE

But see also:

Who are the "Taliban" in Swat? by Humeira Iqtidar (Open Democracy, April 30, 2009)

"Much media attention has focused on the worsening plight of women in Swat, particularly after the video-taped public flogging of a 17 year-old girl. Unfortunately, the kinds of atrocities perpetrated by the TNSM against women also occur in the feudal holdings of many of the "secular" political elite of Pakistan. Yet these incidents do not make headlines in the same way. Few Pakistanis can ignore the fact that restricting women's mobility and reducing their educational opportunities (as the TNSM intend to do) along with gang rape, abduction, and honour killing have a long history in southern Punjab and Sind, areas where both President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani have vast landholdings."

INDIA'S TOP CAPITALISTS ENDORSE THE BUTCHER OF GUJARAT

Anil Ambani, Sunil Mittal promote Modi as PM (DNA)

"If India Inc had its way, Narendra Modi might well be the country's next prime minister. A day after Tata Sons chairman Ratan Tata hugged the Gujarat chief minister and showered praise on his leadership, holding Modi and his state up as an example for the rest of the country, corporate bigwigs Anil Ambani and Sunil Bharti Mittal added their voice to the growing chorus."

See also:

Modi locks adoring business in bear hug - Tata leads the charge in showering praise (The Telegraph (Calcutta), January 13, 2009):

"By the time Tata was through, the industrialist found himself locked in a hug with Modi who strode across the podium with open arms.

"'I have to say that today there is no state like Gujarat. Under Modi’s leadership, Gujarat is head and shoulders above any state,' Tata, who last year moved his small-car project from Bengal to Gujarat, told the Vibrant Gujarat Global Investors Summit in Ahmedabad."

And see:

Tata Motors Move to Gujarat Less Than Secular by Praful Bidwau (IPS, October 23, 2008)

As Chief Minister of the state of Gujarat and a leader of the fascistic Hindu-right BJP party, Modi presided over the 2002 Gujarat massacre, a state-sponsored paramilitary assault on the Muslim population of Ahmedabad led by Hindu-right organizations. Two thousand were killed, tens of thousands maimed, hundreds raped or sexually tortured, and as many as 100,000 made homeless.

PUNISHED FOR RESISTING RAPE

Dalit mother, daughter stripped in Ajmer [Rajastan] (NDTV)

"Their crime to deserve such treatment was that Phooli Bai resisted two Jat men, who wanted to forcibly take away her 16-year-old daughter, Ramkanya on Monday evening.

[...]

"Besides thrashing them, Phooli Bai said that they were stripped in full public view at Sihaar village in Ajmer.

"Phooli Bai said, 'They tore off my daughter's clothes and tried to drag her outside our home. When I tried to save her, they tore off my clothes also. They not only beat us badly but also shamed us in front of the whole village.'

"The tormentors even threw out the Dalit family from the village, threatening them with worse punishment if they told their plight to anyone.

"Since Tuesday the frightened Dalit family is sitting at the office of the Deputy Superintendent of police in Ajmer's Kekri town and they refuse to go back to their village for fear of losing their lives.

"Satya Narayan Kamad, Phooli Bai's husband said, 'As we have complained against them, our fear is that they will kill us. They won't spare us now.'"

HINDU RIGHT LEADS MASS ATROCITY AGAINST CHRISTIAN UNTOUCHABLES IN ORISSA

Christians in India are, with very few exceptions, untouchables or oppressed tribals. They take Christianity at least in part in order to escape their outcaste status, if only in name.

The Hindu right has been on a campaign since the late 1990s to intimidate and forcibly convert this small, vulnerable religious minority. The pattern of violence includes incidents of murder, rape, and arson. In one widely reported case in 1999 an Australian missionary and his two young sons were burned to death while sleeping in their camper.

That was in Orissa, and it is in that backward state, where nearly half the people live below the official poverty line, that the worst attacks ever against Christians in India were carried out last week. They took place in the district of Kandhamal, where Hindu-right activists have been organizing among the majority Kandha tribals, encouraging them to take up orthodox Hindu practices and exploiting their petty rivalry with the untouchable Panas, ninety-five percent of whom are Christians.

In Kandhamal's Bharakama village on the days leading up to Christmas celebrations, Hindu-right activists staged provocations against Christians and vandalized decorations. On Christmas Day a Hindu-right mob of thousands systematically destroyed Christian homes, churches, and institutions, killing several people and leaving thousands more homeless.

See:

Charting the history of sangh parivar violence in Orissa by Angana Chatterji (Communalism Combat)

See also:

Fact Finding Report by All India Christian Council Orissa Chapter

India: Stop Hindu-Christian Violence in Orissa (Human Rights Watch, December 27, 2007)

A dangerous mix by Soumyajit Pattnaik (Hindustan Times)

And for background on the Hindu right's anti-Christian campaign:

Anti-Christian Violence in India by Vinjay Lal

Anti-Christian Violence on the Rise in India (Human Rights Watch, September 29, 1999)

SINGUR, WEST BENGAL: CPI(M) CADRES RAPED AND KILLED FOR TATA

CPI-M activists get life term for Singur girl's murder (Indo-Asian News Service)

"A West Bengal court awarded life imprisonment to two Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) activists Wednesday for the 2006 murder of Singur girl Tapasi Malik.

[...]

"The court had convicted the two Tuesday for the murder of 18-year-old Tapasi, who was among those protesting land acquisition for the Tata Motor's Nano car project in Singur."

Tapasi Malik, the daughter of a landless laborer, had been active in the protests against the forced eviction of 6000 families from her locality by the CPI(M)-led state government of West Bengal to create a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) for use by Tata Motors, India's largest automaker. The Telegraph (Calcutta) reported on December 20, 2006 that "[e]ighteen-year-old Tapasi had become a hero of sorts for the small section of Singur still resisting Tata Motors’ small-car project. She was throttled, dragged to the Tata plot, dumped into a pit and set on fire."

Tapasi Malik's mother looking at her daughter's photograph

See also:

From Singur to Nandigram & Beyond: Development as dispossession by Praful Bidwai (January 27, 2007)

"If and when ordinary mortals like you and me buy land, we have to search high and low for an affordable piece, hire brokers, make several trips to different sites, and borrow bank loans, which we must repay through our nose over 10 or 15 years. Besides these high transaction costs in time and money, we must pay stamp duty to the government, which is usually a good eight percent of the land’s value.

"None of this applies to India’s biggest business house (and one of its oldest industrial families), namely, the Tatas—at least as far as the Singur car project is concerned. The Tatas are no ordinary mortals. In fact so special are they that West Bengal’s Left Front government woos them with the choice of six different sites, besides the Uttarakhand and Orissa governments. They choose one at Singur, next to an expressway, in one of Bengal’s most fertile tracts, just 45 km from Kolkata. But they do so after stipulating a series of conditions.

"The government must procure the land for them. This will cost Rs 140 crores. But the Tatas will pay only Rs 20 crores for it.

"They will pay no stamp duty.

"They must have a contiguous plot of 997 acres (almost 400 hectares, or 40 lakh square metres), although no Indian car factory has anything approaching this area. (Even Tata Motors’s giant Pune factory has only 188 acres.)

"The factory proper, say the Tatas, will have a built-up area of only 1.5 lakh sq m, or 4 percent of the land acquired.

"The land must be fenced off and Sec 144 must be imposed to suppress protests by the 12,000 affected people.

"That’s not all. The Tatas say the government must 'compensate' them for 'sacrificing' the 16 percent excise duty exemption offered by Uttarakhand if they locate the car factory there. This means 'upfront infrastructural assistance' worth Rs 160 crore.

[...]

"The Tatas claim the Rs 10,000 crore investment will directly generate 2,000 jobs. But noted economist Amit Bhadhuri estimates it will produce just about 300, besides indirect employment for 900. In the process, Singur’s flourishing economy, where two-thirds of land is multi-cropped with vegetables and paddy, will be devastated, along with the livelihoods not just of landowners and sharecroppers (bargadars), but of landless workers and rural artisans.

"Singur will witness counter-reform, a reversal of the most successful land reform ever undertaken in West Bengal. Even the bargadars’ share in the land (75 percent to the absentee landlord’s 25 percent) will be upturned in the land compensation formula. No wonder, the West Bengal government has used repressive methods, including mass arrests, Sec 144 and physical attacks to enforce the sweetheart deal."

REPORT: NANDIGRAM VIOLENCE WAS A "PRE-PLANNED, STATE-SPONSORED MASSACRE"

Report of the People’s Tribunal on Nandigram, Executive Summary (All-India Citizens' Initiative, May 26-28, 2007)

"The population is predominantly a mix of Muslim and lower caste Hindus, who have lived harmoniously together for a long time. The area has been till recently a political stronghold of the CPI and the CPI (M).

"More than anything else the area is famous for its historical role in the struggle against British colonial rule and during the Tebagha movement in the mid-forties when peasants in many parts of pre-Partition Bengal captured vast quantities of land demanding it their right as tillers of the soil.

[...]

"How the Police Firing Started

"On 14 March 2007 around 9.30 a.m. hundreds of policemen gathered at two entry points into Nandigram—one from the Tekhali Bridge, Gokulnagar, Adhikaripara and the other from the side of Bhangabera Bridge, near Sonachura. Apart from policemen local leaders and cadres of Communist Party of India (Marxist) were also present.

"The deponents claim that the people were peaceful. Only one deponent said there was stone throwing by boys and girls. There is no evidence of the carriage of any arms by the villagers.

"There was an announcement by the police party asking the villagers to allow them to repair the 'bund' [embankment, into which the villagers had dug a trench to defend themselves against developers and the state]. People replied that they would undertake this work themselves. There was very little dialogue over this issue and very soon the police went into the offensive. Police fired tear gas and immediately followed with bullets & rubber bullets, chased the people, mostly women & children, hitting out with lathis and iron rods, and firing. They were chased, and many were caught and mercilessly beaten, with sexual assault, including rape.

"The lack of parleying seems to suggest that the carnage caused by police firing on the retreating mass, mainly of women & children, was pre-planned.

"The depositions before the Tribunal also clearly bring out that police went on firing after the people started to flee and that they were not firing towards the legs.

"The police behaviour was brutal. According to one deposition Uttam Pal, after being shot down, was asking for water. Policemen spat on his face and beat up those trying to give him water.

"Several depositions before the Tribunal accused policemen of rape. Apart from rape, many women have deposed about being stripped, molestation (the breasts being frequent targets), indecent exposure, and filthy language. One deponent accuses policemen of having slashed her breasts. Several accuse policemen of forcing rod/lathi/gunbarrel into sex organs and turning the insert in some cases.

"The evidence definitely points towards serious sexual assault, including rape, by policemen.

"CPI (M) Cadre Allegedly In Police Uniform

"The deponents before the Tribunal spoke of the presence among policemen of others in police dress but wearing slippers (chappals [sandals]), black masks and red arm/wrist bands. There is also reference to others in white dress (sari) and 'ghomta' (veil) pointing out people. These persons were also firing guns and assaulting people with iron rods. They were even more vicious than the policemen.

"A large number of deponents agree that they were cadres of the CPI (M) and some of them identify and name the cadres too."

See anti-caste: CAPITALIST STATE TERROR IN WEST BENGAL: POOR VILLAGERS RESISTING LAND SEIZURE—UNTOUCHABLES AND MUSLIMS, MOSTLY WOMEN AND CHILDREN—CUT DOWN BY POLICE AND PARTY ACTIVISTS IN CPI(M)-RULED STATE (March 22, 2007)

CAPITALIST STATE TERROR IN WEST BENGAL: POOR VILLAGERS RESISTING LAND SEIZURE—UNTOUCHABLES AND MUSLIMS, MOSTLY WOMEN AND CHILDREN—CUT DOWN BY POLICE AND PARTY ACTIVISTS IN CPI(M)-RULED STATE

[See also India: The Nandigram Massacre—“Left Front” Government’s State Repression in West Bengal,
Spartacist Canada No. 159 (Winter 2008/2009)]

In late December public notice was given that 25,000 acres of farmland in the Nandigram area of West Bengal was to be forcibly appropriated by a development authority linked to the state, which has been ruled for the past three decades by the Stalinist Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)), to allow an Indonesian firm to build a huge chemical manufacturing center there (along with hotels, a golf course, etc.). The local residents immediately began to organize to defend their homes and livelihood. On the morning of March 14, several thousand of them gathered in protest of the seizure and were met by half as many police and CPI(M) cadre disguised as police, whose planned attack on the unarmed crowd—with women and children stationed at the front precisely to deter such an act—is described in the report excerpted below. The government admits to killing fourteen people and injuring over 200 more; residents and others put the actual death toll at over 100.

Report of Investigation into Nandigram Mass Killings by Association for Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR) and Paschim Banga Khet Majoor Samity (PBKMS)

"People were aware that there would be an attempt by the police and party goons to re-enter the area as a first step towards taking over their land. They decided to offer peaceful resistance by organising a Gouranga Puja [Hindu worship ceremony] (incidentally Gouranga is the God believed to be protector of the people nearby). They also planned a Koran recitation ceremony. Once this programme was known, people flocked to the spots where the Puja and Koran recitals were being held. At Bhangabera the Puja was in a trench that had been cut in the road earlier. About 5,000-6,000 people were present, of which 3000 were women and about 400-500 were children. The people were unarmed as they were in religious ceremonies. The women and children decided to stand in front as the people assumed that the police would not be that much violent with women and children.

"A large police force with firearms and tear gas arrived in vehicles and buses on the Khejuri side of the Talpatti Khal in the morning. They were accompanied by many armed CPM goons. They were also carrying truckloads of road repair equipments and materials. At Bhangabera Bridge, they first filled up a large trench near the bridge. None opposed this. They then began advancing across the bridge. There seems to have been no prior warning. It eas reported that, Anup Mondal of the CPM was using a hand mike, but most barring a few nearby heard nothing and were not forewarned about the police action. Without any proper warning the police-CPI(M) combine began throwing bombs and tear gas shells. This blinded the crowd and created confusion and panic. At this juncture, the the police-CPI(M) combine began firing from various firearms and advancing further while firing. Operations, including the firing and the filling up of the trench seemed to have been planned earlier. While the firing continued for about 15 minutes, other forms of violence followed for the next hour and a half or so.

"There are many complaints of horrific and deliberate acts of violence during this phase and afterwards. [...] Women were taken away and raped. Women who tried to hide or wash their burning eyes in ponds were forced to come out and then beaten up again. Houses and shops were looted. Instead of using minimum force necessary to disperse the unarmed people gathered there, maximum possible force appear to have been applied to instil fear and terror in people, to break their morale and teach them a lesson. The large presence of armed CPI(M) men, many also in police fatigue injected the element of vengeance and revenge in the operation.

[...]

"According to all the 200 or more villagers we met and the patients admitted in Tamluk Hospital and Nandigram Hospital, more than 100 persons have died in the firing. They alleged that most of the bodies were taken away by the Police-CPI (M) combine by truck towards Khejuri or buried under the newly repaired road at Bhangabera."

See also, on CPI(M) strategy:

Police and Cadres Kill 125 in Nandigram Massacre (appeal by Sanjay Sanjvai, an activist for the National Alliance of People's movements, at Kafila.org, March 15, 2007)

"The plan to push in police into the trouble-torn and tense area was chalked out by the CPI(M) top brass last Saturday. They were under pressure from the East Midnapur unit of the party led by MP Lakshman Seth who felt that the CPI(M) would permanently lose ground in the area unless barricades were removed and ‘normalcy’ was restored in Nandigram. A large section of the CPI(M) secretariat was also of the same view and felt that the manner villagers were keeping the administration paralyzed for over two months was creating a bad precedent.

"According to the strategy, the police was asked to remove resistance, enter the villages and ‘restore law of the land’. They were to be followed by CPI(M) activists, who would 'reinstall civil society' in Nandigram."

And see, on events leading up to the massacre:

A Bridge Too Far by Satya Sagar (Combat Law, May-June 2007):

"In Singur [where despite resistance local people had their land seized to set up an SEZ for Tata Motors (later abandoned by the company); see anti-caste: SINGUR, WEST BENGAL: CPI(M) CADRES RAPED AND KILLED FOR TATA (November 12, 2007)] while a section of absentee landowners had agreed to sell their land to the state, a bulk of farmers and sharecroppers in the area refused to acquiesce. In response, the state government occupied and fenced the Singur land, imposing section 144 of the Indian penal code to prohibit public protests—in other words using brute force to oust farmers from their own land.

"So when towards the end of 2006 state ministers and CPI(M) leaders started talking publicly of setting up a huge chemical hub in Nandigram under the Salim group, an Indonesian multinational, the local folk here started getting agitated.

"At a public meeting in Nandigram market on December 29, 2006, the CPI(M) member of Parliament, Lakshman Seth, urged farmers to pave the way for development and industrialisation in Nandigram by giving up their lands in return for monetary compensation. Seth, who is also the chairman of the Haldia Development Authority, in his speech, named the villages that would have to make way for the chemical hub. The total area to be acquired was a whopping 14,500 acres to set up the SEZ that would include a mega chemical and petrochemical hub and a shipyard.

"Though, according to CPI(M) leaders, no final decision has yet been taken about the exact location of the projects, an informal notice for public information regarding likely location of this project was circulated by the Haldia Development Authority to all blocks and Gram Panchayat offices of the area.

"This announcement, however, was enough to aggravate tension in the area as resentment grew among villagers at not being consulted on the issue and at the thought of being kicked out of their ancestral lands. 'If we leave our land we will become beggars in the cities,' says Jayanti, another resident of Sonchura, explaining the strong sentiments behind the local resistance.

"On January 3, 2007, villagers clashed with a police patrol that was surveying the Nandigram area. According to the CPI(M), the police had to be called in after members of the opposition Trinamool Congress ransacked the office of the local panchayat pradhan. Four people were injured in the police lathicharge and gunfire that ensued while one police jeep was set on fire by an angry mob.

"On January 5, 2007, several opposition party groups that had already been working in the area—ranging from the Trinamool Congress to the Socialist Unity Centre of India and the Santosh Rana faction of the CPI(Marxist-Leninist Liberation) decided to join hands to form the Bhumi Uchchhed Protirodh Committee (BUPC) loosely translated as ‘committee for resistance to eviction from homeland’.

"According to locals, the response to this political consolidation of opposition forces got a swift response from the ruling CPI(M). In the early morning on January 7, villagers alleged, CPI(M) cadres, armed with sticks, knives and guns attacked Nandigram, crossing the Bangabhera bridge from Khejuri. The official CPI(M) version is that it is the BUPC members who started the fight by attacking their people camped in Khejuri.

"Whoever started the fight, in the process three people from Nandigram—Bharat Mandal, Shekh Salim and Biswajit Maiti (just 12 years old)—died of bullet injuries. In retaliation, enraged villagers lynched Shankar Samanta, a local landlord accused of giving shelter to what they called CPI(M) goons and also taking part in the firings after which they ransacked and burnt down his palatial house close to the bridge.

"It was following this incident that the locals decided to dig a trench on the road connecting the Bangabhera bridge to Nandigram and block the road further with tree-trunks, boulders and bricks.

"In the weeks and months after the violence of early January, the Bangabhera bridge and adjoining areas became a war zone with almost daily attacks by CPI(M) cadre who had gathered in Khejuri, villagers said. These cadres included some of those who had left the Nandigram area, along with their families, due to threats from those opposed to the acquisition of land for the chemical hub project.

"In response, Nandigram villagers blockaded all entry points into their area making it a no-go zone for the state officials, particularly police. There are reports that some arms and ammunition also found its way into the hands of locals to be used against what has been termed as the superior firepower of the CPI(M) cadre, who, after all, also had the backing of state authorities."

And see also:

Nandigram, an atrocity on dalits by Tanveer Kazi, national secretary of the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights and member of a fact-finding team in Nandigram on March 16-17 and later from April 20-25 (India Today, May 5, 2007):

"It is clear that the majority of victims did come from the Scheduled Castes – not surprising as in the area and most parts of India the most economically vulnerable are the dalits. Lip service is all that these vulnerable communities receive in place of rehabilitation and compensation, and the same has happened in the case of land seizures too. As villager Santosh Patro reiterated to our team of the former residents of Haldia '...all those who left their land are selling cucumber and cleaning shit.'

"The decision to act with such force and brutality must be seen as pre-meditated and could also be related to caste or the perceived status or lack of, of those living in the area. Effectively the local residents were claiming political autonomy of the area, ridding it of party cadres and asserting themselves. This can be seen to reflect a deeper tension that the SEZ issue finally inflamed. The response was a decidedly brutal one, in order to put residents 'back in their place'. Terror is one of the most effective tools to manufacture submission and in this instance has already been effective; the mere sight of police was enough to disperse a crowd that had gathered after the discovery of charred remains in the area."

Muslims are also heavily represented among the peasants of Nandigram. As noted in the report quoted above, the mass protest that came under attack, though religiously oriented, was explicitly intercommunal (featuring both puja and recital of the Koran).

PAKISTAN: GANG RAPE OF TEENAGE GIRL AS HONOR PUNISHMENT OF FAMILY

Girl raped and paraded naked (Daily Times, Pakistan)

"The police have arrested six men who allegedly raped a teenage girl and forced her to parade naked through a village in a so-called 'honour punishment', officials said Wednesday.

"The men kidnapped the 16-year-old girl in Habib Labalo village in southern Sindh province on Saturday because her cousin had an affair with a woman from their family, local police officer Aftab Farooqi told AFP."

See also:

Pakistani rape victim says attacks increasing (Reuters, February 1, 2007)

"Mukhtaran Mai, who was gang-raped in 2002 on the orders of a traditional village council, said she was appalled by a similar attack on a 16-year-old girl at the weekend.

"'Such inhuman acts are increasing in Pakistan as the government is not sincere about punishing offenders,' Mai told Reuters on Thursday.

"'When I read about this girl's ordeal, I felt the work we have done for women in the last four years was for nothing,' she said."

See anti-caste: MUKHTAR MAI: EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF A LOW-CASTE PEASANT WOMAN WHO STOOD UP (January 29, 2007)

MUKHTAR MAI: EXTRAORDINARY STORY OF A LOW-CASTE PEASANT WOMAN WHO STOOD UP

After being gang raped by her village elders, Mukhtar fought back... (Telegraph (UK))

"Mukhtar and her family are from the lowly Gujar caste and are expected to be subservient to the Mastoi. She thought that she was being asked, as a respectable woman, to speak to the village elders on behalf of her brother. As Mukhtar, accompanied by her father, Ghulam Farid Jat, an uncle and a family friend, approached the mosque, she could see a large gathering of men outside. This was the panchayat, the village council. What she didn't know was that it had been taken over by the Mastoi men, who had resolved that to appease the honour of their caste, she must be raped in revenge for what they claimed was the rape of one of their women by Shakur."

See also:
Breaking the silence: review of Mukhtar Mai's new memoir, In The Name of Honor (The Asian News.co.uk, February 9)

Mukhtar Mai: history of a rape case (BBC News, June 28, 2005)

And see anti-caste article: Muslims and Caste

CASTE AND WOMEN'S OPPRESSION REINFORCE EACH OTHER

Untouchable burnt to death after accusing high-caste man of rape (The Independent (UK))

"Asha accused a local upper-caste man of raping her last year. It was no small matter for her to go to the police in Indian rural society, where being a victim of rape is still considered deeply shameful.... In the villages, a man accused of rape may be found guilty and punished by the courts. But a woman who comes forward as a rape victim is certain of her punishment by society. She faces little prospect of marriage, and life for an unmarried woman in the villages is bleak."

HINDU RIGHT TARGETS UNTOUCHABLES

Arrest dalit 'rapist', says saffron brigade (DNAINDIA.COM)

"Countering dalit outbursts in the aftermath of the Kherlanji massacre, the saffron brigade, which had kept silence over this incident, joined hands on Monday. It brought Bhandara city to naught by raking up a case of alleged rape and murder of a 10-year-old minor OBC girl by a history-sheeter, belonging to the scheduled caste. The bandh [protest shutdown of city shops], which didn't have the collector's permission, was a success."

KHAIRLANJI MASSACRE

September-December 2006
MAHARASHTRA BURNING

An atrocity left unpunished and a hero’s statue desecrated drive untouchable masses into the streets across India’s second-most populous state.

September 29: Four members of an untouchable family are horrifically lynched by men and women of the dominant caste in the tiny village of Khairlanji.
November 6: After over a month of negligence by the police and inaction from the state government, mass protests by untouchables break out in Nagpur and spread throughout the district.
November 28: A statue of the Independence-era untouchable leader B. R. Ambedkar is beheaded in the city of Kanpur.
November 29-30: Untouchable youth take to the streets in spontaneous protests across the state. In Bombay large groups target public transportation, emptying buses and a train and setting them on fire.

The rape/murder of the Bhotmange family in Khairlanji village occurred on September 29, but it was only at the end of October that the story first broke in the national press, under the ironic headline “Just another rape story.” There are hundreds of atrocities against untouchables and over a thousand rapes of untouchable women officially reported every year in Maharashtra state alone. And how many go unreported? As the Khairlanji lynching itself might have. If it hadn’t been for two surviving blood relatives who secretly witnessed this public massacre, the case would never have been registered with the police: even now, no one else will talk.

So why did the news of this particular horror spread mainly by word of mouth throughout the region and across the state? Why this time did rage over the incident simmer for two full months before finally boiling over in an unprecedented statewide uprising of the untouchable masses that took India by surprise?....

...see anti-caste article: MAHARASHTRA BURNING

see also:

Khairlanji and Its Aftermath: Exploding Some Myths by Anand Teltumbde (Economic and Political Weekly, March 24, 2007)

Dalits, Like Flies to Feudal Lords by Shivam Vij (Tehelka, November 4, 2006)

Village quiet after it ganged up to hack Dalit mother, 3 children by Vivek Deshpande (The Indian Express, November 8)

Khairlanji: How the Other Half Dies? (Central Chronicle [Bhopal], November 14)

fact-finding report on Atrocities against Bhotmange Family in Khairlanji by Vikas Adhyayan Kendra (VAK), a Bombay-based voluntary organization

He lives to see justice done by Meena Menon (The Hindu, November 17)

Dalit blood on the village square by Lyla Bavadam (Frontline, November 18-December 1)

A Flag Over the Dead by Dilip D'Souza (Tehelka, November 25)

Kherlanji's Strange and Bitter Crop by Satya Sagar (November 29)

Maharashtra: Dalit anger leaves 4 dead, 60 injured (rediff.com, November 30)

Dalit Rage by Smruti Koppikar (Outlook India, December 5)

The fear of democracy of the privileged by P. Sainath (The Hindu, December 8)

Khairlanjis of the past (Frontline, December 16-29, 2006)

A real agenda for Dalit liberation by Praful Bidwai (Frontline, December 16-29, 2006)

Priyanka Bhotmange (image via Atrocity News)

Bhotmange home (image via Atrocity News)

CASTEIST, ANTI-WOMAN ATROCITY BY HENCHMAN OF PAKISTANI MINISTER

Pakistani graduate raped to punish her low-caste family (London Times)

"A young Pakistani woman has been kidnapped, raped and beaten by a gang of high-caste villagers because her uncle eloped with one of their relatives. She was chosen for punishment because she had recently gained a degree and was the pride of her low-caste family.

[...]

"Last week human rights campaigners said Shaheen was unlikely to see her attackers brought to justice because President Pervez Musharraf had failed in an attempt to repeal the Hudood Ordinance, which requires four male Muslim witnesses to support a rape charge. If the accused is acquitted, the victim becomes liable to prosecution for adultery.

"While Musharraf was out of the country earlier this month, a committee of hardline Islamic scholars neutered his bill to protect women’s rights which would have repealed the Hudood Ordinance. The scholars claimed the bill was un-Islamic because it 'encouraged adultery'.

"Shaheen’s ordeal began last month when 11 armed men, believed to be security guards employed by one of Musharraf’s ministers, forced their way into her home, attacked her father and brothers and pulled her and her mother into the street."

See also:

Vendetta Rapes Continue as Pakistan Resists Change (New York Times, October 4, 2006):

"Since then, Ms. Shaheen’s ambitions have been shattered, and it is she who suffers scorn for the rape. She says she feels helpless. The school where she was to teach has refused to accept her.

"'They said they can’t accept me as it is a matter of their repute now,' Ms. Shaheen said."

And see:

PAKISTAN: Police and government henchmen abducted and confined a mother and a girl for 12 days (Asian Human Rights Commission, September 7, 2006)

WORKFORCE OF 1.8 MILLION—MOST YOUNG AND FEMALE—DENIED LIVING WAGES, SAFE CONDITIONS, AND RIGHTS

In Bangladesh, garment workers' payday not a sure thing by Syful Islam (American Reporter)

• "'The garment workers of Bangladesh may be the most deprived labor force in the world. Most are paid between US$14 to US$16 per month, the lowest salary in the world', said Amirul Haq Amin, Coordinator of the Bangladesh Garment Workers Unity Council (BGWUC)."
• "And even though the salaries are very low, most of the garment factory owners do not pay workers their salaries on time. There are many garment factories in Bangladesh where the workers may not get their paychecks for two to five months after they are due."
• "Trade union activities in the garment factories of Bangladesh are now strictly prohibited. Many garment workers lose their jobs because they try to form trade unions. Labor laws here are circumvented with ease."
• "About 90 percent of garment workers in Bangladesh are female. Though most work until after dark, there are no safety measures for them and no residential facilities provided. As a result, they frequently feel insecure, and for good reason: many garment workers are raped and abused by criminals who specialize in preying on them."