anti-caste

REPORT DETAILS SYSTEMATIC BIGOTRY AGAINST UNTOUCHABLE, MUSLIM, AND TRIBAL SCHOOLCHILDREN

India: Marginalized Children Denied Education (Human Rights Watch press release)

“The 77-page report, ‘‘They Say We’re Dirty’: Denying an Education to India’s Marginalized,’ documents discrimination by school authorities in four Indian states against Dalit, tribal, and Muslim children. The discrimination creates an unwelcome atmosphere that can lead to truancy and eventually may lead the child to stop going to school.

[...]

“‘The teacher tells us to sit on the other side,’ said ‘Pankaj,’ an eight-year-old tribal boy from Uttar Pradesh. ‘If we sit with others, she scolds us and asks us to sit separately. The teacher doesn’t sit with us because she says we “are dirty.”’

“Marginalized groups continue to face discrimination in India despite constitutional guarantees and laws prohibiting discrimination, Human Rights Watch said. School authorities reinforce age-old discriminatory attitudes based on caste, ethnicity, religion, or gender. Children from Dalit, tribal, and Muslim communities are often made to sit at the back of the class or in separate rooms, insulted by the use of derogatory names, denied leadership roles, and served food last.They are even told to clean toilets, while children from traditionally privileged groups are not. [...]

Selected Quotes

“‘Whenever the teachers are angry, they call us Mullahs. The Hindu boys also call us Mullahs because our fathers have beards. We feel insulted when they refer to us like this.’ – Javed, a 10-year-old Muslim boy, Delhi

“‘The teacher always made us sit in a corner of the room, and would throw keys at us [when she was angry]. We only got food if anything was left after other children were served…. [G]radually [we] stopped going to school.’ – Shyam, a 14-year-old Dalit boy, Uttar Pradesh

“‘We were asked to massage a teacher’s legs. If we refused, he used to beat us. There was a toilet for teachers, which is the one we had to clean.’ – Naresh, a 12-year-old Dalit boy, Bihar”

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’.”

TRIBALS DENIED TRADITIONAL RIGHTS TO USE FOREST RESOURCES TOIL FOR LANDLORDS IN QUARRIES AND MINES

Kols in UP: A life without rights (The Hindu)

“Though the Kols are anthropologically tribal, they are recognized as a Scheduled Caste in Uttar Pradesh. Not only has this deprived them of their traditional source of living–the forest, it has largely left them dependant and landless, languishing in silica quarries and sand mines. [...]

“Landless and dismayed by the rocky terrain that makes cultivation difficult, the Kols settle down close to silica mines, crushing stones for much of the day and bearing a nomadic existence. Over the years, a large number have contracted lung diseases like silicosis and tuberculosis. Some have lost limbs or sustained crippling injuries during the blasting of the rocks. [...]

“In most cases, the landlords provide the Kols space to work and live, and in return deduct portions from their silica mining. Kol women are also invited to serve as domestic help for no or minimum remuneration. They often endure the most of police apathy, with reports of them facing sexual harassment and violence going unheard or unreported. ‘When we go with complaints, we are shooed away and asked to come back later,’ says Indu Kol.

“However, the Kol’s most grim concern remains the forest department’s restrictions on the use of forest produce. Generally, they require permission to plant or use trees such as neem, amla and mahua. The Kols complain that they face harassment from the authorities even if they collect the twigs and barks and sell them. According to Amarnath Kol, who works with a local Kol organization, at least eight Kols have been booked by the forest department for carrying wood for sale. [...]

“Today, Kols are mostly followers of Hinduism. They claim their descent from Shabari, who in the forests of modern day Chattisgarh fed berries to Lord Ram and Lord Lakshman during their exile. As the legend suggests, the Kols have a close relationship with the forest.

“This bond was disrupted in the 19th century by the British East India Company, which indulged in deforestation and introduced zamindari to extract revenue from their forests lands. The Kols protested violently, in what is known as the Kol Rebellion (1831-32), where a British Major is said to have noted their ‘courage and daring.’”

STATE POLICE LAUNCH TERROR ATTACK ON TRIBAL VILLAGES AS PART OF OPERATION GREEN HUNT

Chhattisgarh: Preliminary Report on the Fact Finding in Bijapur by Democratic Students’ Union (Sanhati)

“In the three weeks from mid-January till the first week of February, several villages in the Bijapur District of Chhattisgarh experienced the terror of the armed forces of the Indian state. The CRPF, Chhattisgarh state police, erstwhile SPO’s of the Salwa Judum along with various coercive arms of the state orchestrated a systematic targeting of villages, burnt down hundreds of homes, ostensibly in random, further, burnt down the schools built by the people, picked up villagers, young and old, and physically tortured them while their homes burned to the ground. The affected villages are Pidia, Tomnaka, Singham, Lingham, Komati, Tomudum, and Kondapadu, and in each of these between eight and thirty homes were burnt down by the armed forces. In the village of Dodi-Tumnar, a school with hostel facility for about a hundred children, both girls and boys, run by the Janatana Sarkar was looted and then burnt down by the invading forces in the last week of January. Two battalions of about 1000 CRPF personnel each, besides Koya commandos and SPO’s arrived at the village school at 9 am on that day. They systematically proceeded to destroy the school after firing into the air twice. Even as the students and the schoolmaster fled into the forest, the armed forces caught an old man on his way to the field and chopped off his hand with his own sickle. Following this, the forces looted the storeroom and the kitchen of the school, poisoned the water well, and destroyed the roof, walls, and furniture of the school before finally burning it to the ground. They then marched to the nearby village of Pidia. This village, that houses approximately 265 homes, witnessed first-hand the ruthlessness with which the armed force burn down the homes and livelihood of those who stand up for their right to life and liberty. Close to thirty homes were burnt down in one part of this village alone. The charred remains of the homes, cattle sheds, storerooms, utensils can be seen littered with empty bottles of beer and other brands of alcohol. It is clear that this planned attack is part of the routine of military life that participates in wanton destruction and celebrates the impunity they enjoy. [...]

“In the name of developing the country the Indian state officially launched a massive operation of plunder of natural resources in 2009 by displacing thousands of communities living in the states of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and parts of Bihar, West Bengal and Karnataka. This ‘operation’, ironically called Operation Green Hunt by the corporate run media, undertaken by the current Central Government, expropriates the wealth of the country that rightfully belongs to the people for the benefit of imperialist forces. This wealth, in the form of resources of land, water and forests, is sold to exploitative multinational companies and comprador bourgeoisie. In turn, the resistance of the people has been termed an ‘internal security threat’ by the current Prime Minister who expresses his loyalty to the model of ‘development’ that feeds these corporate sharks.”

See also:

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

CHILD LABOR IN INDIA

Children Toil in India’s Mines, Despite Legal Ban (New York Times)

“Just two months before full implementation of a landmark 2010 law mandating that all Indian children between the ages of 6 and 14 be in school, some 28 million are working instead, according to Unicef. Child workers can be found everywhere — in shops, in kitchens, on farms, in factories and on construction sites. In the coming days Parliament may consider yet another law to ban child labor, but even activists say more laws, while welcome, may do little to solve one of India’s most intractable problems.

“‘We have very good laws in this country,’ said Vandhana Kandhari, a child protection specialist at Unicef. ‘It’s our implementation that’s the problem.’

“Poverty, corruption, decrepit schools and absentee teachers are among the causes, and there is no better illustration of the problem than the Dickensian “rathole” mines here in the state of Meghalaya.

“Meghalaya lies in India’s isolated northeast, a stump of land squashed between China, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Myanmar. Its people are largely tribal and Christian, and they have languages, food and facial features that seem as much Chinese as Indian.

“Suresh Thapa, 17, said that he has worked in the mines near his family’s shack ‘since he was a kid,’ and that he expects his four younger brothers to follow suit. He and his family live in a tiny tarp-and-stick shack near the mines. They have no running water, toilet or indoor heating. [...]

“India’s Mines Act of 1952 prohibits anyone under the age of 18 from working in coal mines, but Ms. Thapa said enforcing that law would hurt her family. ‘It’s necessary for us that they work. No one is going to give us money. We have to work and feed ourselves.’”

BEHIND THE EPIDEMIC SUICIDES AMONG UNTOUCHABLE AND TRIBAL STUDENTS IN ELITE INSTITUTIONS

Why there’s an alarming rash of suicides among Dalit students by Stepahnie Nolen (The Globe and Mail (Toronto))

“The sharply truncated life of Anil Meena was marked by a ferocious tenacity.

“From the mud house in rural Rajasthan, where he grew up in a family of subsistence farmers, he made his way first to school and then to the top of his class. He studied with monomaniacal intensity and passed the entrance exam to the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), the most prestigious of India’s professional colleges – an achievement almost unfathomable in the largely illiterate aboriginal community from which he came.

“At AIIMS, he battled through classes where he couldn’t understand a word of the English being spoken and pored over a dictionary to get through textbooks. When an arbitrary rule change – that just happened to affect only students from backgrounds such as his – cost him a passing grade in a crucial exam, he tried repeatedly to meet his course director, his friends say. He sat outside the man’s office for four or five hours at a time for a week.

“But Mr. Meena had come up against something his intelligence and perseverance could not overcome: Students of his kind are not welcome at AIIMS, no more than they are at other prestigious Indian universities. They rarely graduate. No one was prepared to help him succeed.

“On March 3, Mr. Meena hung himself from the fan in his small dormitory room. He was 22.

“His death was a crippling blow to his family, a shock to his friends and an ugly blemish for AIIMS. It was also the 20th reported suicide in four years at an elite Indian educational institution by a student who was either aboriginal or Dalit – the people from the bottom of the Hindu caste system, once known as untouchables.

“The suicides have emerged as a subject for fierce debate. Following the promise of the new India, these students are hyper-achievers from the grimmest of backgrounds, who made it into the schools that produce engineers, doctors and business leaders who are sought the world over.

“But when they get there, they are often isolated, humiliated and discriminated against. They are told overtly by their professors that they will never make it to graduation. Yet many feel they cannot drop out – families and communities are invested in their success, and many have taken huge loans.

“Some, trapped in this dilemma, have chosen to end their lives. [...]

“The suicides have occurred at 16 different institutions, including the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) and at the universities of Hyderabad and Bangalore.

“In 2008, a final-year Dalit medical student at Government Medical College in Chandigarh in the Punjab hung himself in the college library; Jaspreet Singh left a note in his pocket describing how the head of his department told him repeatedly to his face that he would never, ever be permitted to be a doctor.

“That professor had failed him several times in course work, although Mr. Singh had never before had anything but top marks. After his death, an external committee re-evaluated his exams and found that he should have passed. He was awarded his degree posthumously.

“On March 3, 2010, exactly two years before Mr. Meena’s death, another young aboriginal man killed himself at AIIMS. Bal Mukund Bharti, 25, was just weeks away from earning his degree, something unprecedented in his community in Madhya Pradesh.

“His parents, who’d taken out massive loans to support him, told a team from of investigators from the Insight Foundation, which works to support Dalit and aboriginal students, that he repeatedly complained of harassment from his professors.

“He said that one often complained, ‘I don’t know where they come from, these Dalits and [aboriginals], getting here without studying anything.’

“Yet Mr. Bharti was, in fact, brilliant. He had scored eighth among hundreds of thousands of students nationwide in the intensely competitive engineering entrance exam – he passed up the seat to become a doctor instead. AIIMS carried out no investigation and says he had psychological problems.”

See also:

Dalit suicide highlights discrimination (Alaska Dispatch, July 10, 2012):

“Allegedly sodomized and sexually harassed for two years, a Dalit student at a university in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh committed suicide Monday, adding to a string of deaths that have highlighted the continuing discrimination against low-caste Indians, even at institutes of higher learning.

“According to the Times of India, 22-year-old Ajay Pardole, a student at Rewa University, hanged himself in his hostel room Monday, after the special police division responsible for crimes against the so-called ‘Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes’ took no action on his complaint.

“Pardole had apparently complained on May 14 that a senior student had been sexually harassing him since 2010, but nothing was done. He wrote several letters to high-ranking officials, but received no response. And finally two days ago, he walked into the police station and told them flat out he planned to kill himself if nothing was done before July 9.”

And see:

AIIMS: A Death Trap for Aspiring Reserved Category Students by Gurinder Singh Azad (Round Table India)

And, see, further anti-caste: dalit and tribal suicides in elite institutions

INDIA ESCALATES ITS DIRTY WAR ON LEFTIST GUERILLAS AND IMPOVERISHED TRIBALS

Operation Green Hunt Enters New Phase (Sanhati)

“It is quite evident that after the phase of ‘Salwa Judum’ and the phase of ‘Operation Green Hunt’, anti-Naxal operations have entered a new phase variously called ‘Operation Haka’ [meaning driving out the wild animals in tribal Gondi language] and ‘Operation Vijay’.

“While certain media reports present very different pictures of this Operation [see appendixes], both the spokespersons of the Security Forces and Maoists claim that this Operation took place in the Abujhmaad/Maad area fairly deep in the forests; a large number of joint paramilitary forces about 3000 in number participated.

“While the police reports speak of Naxalite camps destroyed, Maoists encountered and arrested, the Maoist spokesperson claims that houses were burnt down, adivaasi villagers were beaten, including beaten to death, and those arrested have not been produced before courts.”

See also:

Security forces launch “Operation Abujhmad” in Chhattisgarh (March 12, 2012, UNI):

“Security forces today claimed to have captured vast areas from the Maoists' control in Chhattisgarh by launching their first and biggest ever anti-naxal operation in the rebel bastion of Abujhmad forests. [...]

“This was for the first time in the four-decade-old Naxal movement, the security forces entered the Naxal-controlled areas of Lalchawad, Pagdu, Bhatpal, Kohukameta, Chotedongar, Irukbhat, Toke, Donderaj, Mardapal, Jatawada and Kurusnar in the deep jungles of Abujhmad, which is considered as the safe heaven of the rebel outfit, the sources said.”

And see:

Naxals allege atrocities by forces on tribals (April 9, 2012, The Asian Age):

“The North-Bastar Divisional Committee (NBDC) in a statement issued to different media organisations here alleged that security forces had unleashed reign of terror against tribals in Abujhmad, said to be the Maoist capital, under the pretext of the anti-Naxal operations in March 13-18, assaulting scores of innocent tribals, leading to death of one of them, torching their houses and looting their foodgrains. [...]

“‘Security forces have launched anti-Maoist operations in Abujhmad to pave way for the Army to set up training centres in the area,’ the statement charged. The anti-Maoist operations, conducted under the code name, “Operation Haka” (meaning driving out the wild animals in tribal Gondi language), were launched simultaneously in more than one dozen villages of Narayanpur and Bijapur districts of Chhattisgarh and Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra, in which around 3000 jawans of CRPF, CoBRA battalion and the police forces of the two states participated.”

NEW COW SLAUGHTER LAWS IN TWO STATES WITH HINDU-RIGHT GOVERNMENTS TARGET MUSLIMS, CHRISTIANS, TRIBALS, AND UNTOUCHABLES

Of Laws, Cows and People’s Mutinies: Will the beef ban in BJP-ruled states fuel a new Mutiny? by Cynthia Stephen (Round Table India)

“The Gau-Vansh Vadh Pratishedh (Sanshodhan) Vidheyak (Prohibition of slaughter of cow-progeny Bill) just passed in Madhya Pradesh empowers the government to prosecute any person found slaughtering a cow or even transporting the calf for the purpose of slaughter. [...]

“In March 2010, the Karnataka assembly passed the The Karnataka Prevention of Cow Slaughter and Preservation of Cattle Bill 2010 by voice vote after uproarious scenes, and a four-hour acrimonious debate. [...] According to the Deccan Herald, the bill prohibits slaughter of cattle, sale, usage and possession of beef, puts restriction on transport of cattle and also prohibits sale, purchase or disposal of cattle for slaughter.

“The BJP governments in Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh may have brought these laws with the intention of putting pressure on the lifestyle and livelihoods of the minorities. But are these bills acts of political bravado on the part of the BJP? According to the Economic Times, 6th Jan 2012, beef is the most popularly consumed meat in India – 26 lakh tons annually. In comparison, only 6 lakh tons of mutton and 14 lakh tons of pork were consumed in India. The article quotes the US Food and Drug Administration, saying India is in fact the third largest exporter of beef in the world, exporting as much as 1.28 million tons of it!

“In Madhya Pradesh, in particular, there is a large population of tribals - 13 million - for whom beef constitutes a staple. In Karnataka as well, large sections of the state's population will be affected directly once the bill passes into law, including farmers, milk producers, leather workers, most of whom are Dalits and Muslims, and of course the common man. [...]

“James, a young Dalit Activist, is more graphic. ‘You (upper castes) take the best of the cow - its labour, its milk, its offspring, and sell it after you have no use for it. When we find ways to use this resource, you attack us and even kill us (referring to the killing of 5 Dalits in Jhajjar, Haryana, in 2008, who were skinning the carcass of a cow after purchasing it). You are taking our livelihoods from us, even though we make it out of the waste you discard. Is this justice?’

“‘This law will take away food from the poor who cannot afford to buy chicken or mutton’, says another Dalit activist. ‘The cost of mutton, already high, will go up to one thousand rupees’, said Siddaramaiah, leader of the Opposition, during the Assembly debate. ‘Thus you will be thrusting vegetarianism on the people. This is only possible in Hitler's regime. Is yours a Hitler's regime?’”

See also:

Cow Dung Blocks Nuclear Radiation (and Why We Don’t Eat Horses) by Eric Randolph (Kikobor, January 12, 2012):

“An article in The Hindu newspaper yesterday made a pointed comparison to the condition of people in Madhya Pradesh, which has the country’s highest rate of infant mortality and lowest rate of literacy. [...]

“The law has come into force a decade after riots in the state that erupted when Hindu nationalists took to the streets over reports Muslims were secretly killing cows. The riots helped bring the BJP to power in Madhya Pradesh a year later, in 2003.

“The BJP’s campaign against cow slaughter is seen by some analysts as part of its ongoing attempt to create a pan-Indian nationalism out of the myriad identities that exist in India.

“‘Outside a small section of modernised Indians, many still think of themselves not as Hindus, but in terms of caste, language and sect,’ said Ashis Nandy, a leading social theorist with the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in New Delhi.

“Promoting a ban on cow slaughter, he said, ‘is an attempt to steamroll these other forms of identity and have people think of themselves purely as “Hindus”. It is a cynical attempt to consolidate political support.’”

And see:

Bajrang vigilantes cry cow-slaughter, beat, humiliate Muslim trader (Indian Express, January 7, 2012):

“A Muslim cattle trader’s son was beaten and part of his head, one eyebrow and half his moustache shaved off by alleged Bajrang Dal workers in Chhindwara in Madhya Pradesh after he refused to give them money to allow him to ferry cattle which the attackers alleged were meant for slaughter.

“Police rescued the 25-year-old victim, Anish Aslam Kureshi, but charged him with unlawfully transporting cattle for slaughter under a state law for preserving cattle, and the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act. A sessions court in Chhindwara ordered his release on bail today.

“His attackers, whom the police identified as Bajrang Dal workers, were also arrested, but were charged with minor offences. They were released almost immediately by the Bichhua police station.

“On December 22, a tough new Madhya Pradesh anti-cow slaughter law providing for seven years in jail for eating beef, empowering police to carry out raids on mere suspicion, and putting the burden of proving innocence on the accused received presidential assent.”

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

UNTOUCHABLES AND TRIBALS: LAST HIRED, FIRST FIRED

SC/STs missing in private sector jobs: India Inc’s first caste census (Indian Express)

“The first-ever caste census of India Inc’s human resources has revealed that the proportion of Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe employees in the private sector in some of the most industrialised states of the country hardly reflects their strength in the general population of those states.

“The only exception is Tamil Nadu, which ranks number one in industrialisation and employment (by number of factories and persons, according to the Annual Survey of Industries 2008-09). SCs/STs account for almost 18 per cent of the industrial workforce and 20 per cent of the state’s population.

“In sharp contrast are some of the other most industrialised states such as Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and West Bengal, which show a sharp mismatch between SCs/STs as a percentage of the total workforce in the private sector and as a percentage of the states’ total population.”

LIBERAL WRITER AND ACTIVIST MEETS REFORMISTS WITH GUNS

Walking with the Comrades by Arundhati Roy (Outlook India)

“The Indian Constitution, the moral underpinning of Indian democracy, was adopted by Parliament in 1950. It was a tragic day for tribal people. The Constitution ratified colonial policy and made the State custodian of tribal homelands. Overnight, it turned the entire tribal population into squatters on their own land. It denied them their traditional rights to forest produce, it criminalised a whole way of life. In exchange for the right to vote, it snatched away their right to livelihood and dignity.

“Having dispossessed them and pushed them into a downward spiral of indigence, in a cruel sleight of hand, the government began to use their own penury against them. Each time it needed to displace a large population–for dams, irrigation projects, mines—it talked of ‘bringing tribals into the mainstream’ or of giving them ‘the fruits of modern development.’ Of the tens of millions of internally displaced people (more than 30 million by big dams alone), refugees of India’s ‘progress,’ the great majority are tribal people. When the government begins to talk of tribal welfare, it’s time to worry.

“The most recent expression of concern has come from home minister P. Chidambaram who says he doesn’t want tribal people living in ‘museum cultures.’ The well-being of tribal people didn’t seem to be such a priority during his career as a corporate lawyer, representing the interests of several major mining companies. So it might be an idea to enquire into the basis for his new anxiety.

“Over the past five years or so, the governments of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa and West Bengal have signed hundreds of MoUs with corporate houses, worth several billion dollars, all of them secret, for steel plants, sponge-iron factories, power plants, aluminium refineries, dams and mines. In order for the MoUs to translate into real money, tribal people must be moved.

“Therefore, this war.”

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

REPORT DOCUMENTS OPPRESSION OF MUSLIMS, TRIBALS, LOW CASTES, AND UNTOUCHABLES

Tribals, Dalits still at the bottom in most indicators (The Hindu)

“Indigenous groups and Dalits continue to be at the bottom in most indicators of well-being, the Muslims and the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) occupy the middle rung, while forward caste Hindus and other minority religions are at the top. The ‘Human Development in India: Challenges for a Society in Transition’ survey has found this.

[...]

“[M]ore than three out of 10 forward caste and minority religion men have salaried jobs, compared with about two out of 10 Muslim, OBC and Dalit men, and even fewer Adivasi men.

“Dalits and Adivasis are further disadvantaged as they either do not own land, or mainly low-productivity land. Not surprisingly, these income differences translate into differences in other indicators of human development.

[...]

“Dalits have long laboured at the margins of a society that depends on that labour, but that has often excluded them. Although some Adivasis in the northeast fared better, other Adivasis living in extremely remote locations have been left out of the recent economic progress or forced to migrate, only to work as low paid labourers. In some cases, such as for the OBCs and the Muslims, historical disadvantages have been exacerbated by structural shifts. A decline in artisan incomes has affected the Muslims disproportionately, while agricultural stagnation has affected the OBCs.”

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

BEHIND OPERATION GREEN HUNT

India’s tribes in land fight with business by Amy Kazmin (Financial Times, London)

“First, the land surveyors came. Then the rumours spread through the villages: Tata, one of India’s biggest conglomerates, would build a steel mill in the district.

“Finally, government officials came to ask the villagers in Lohandiguda in Chhattisgarh state, who are mainly illiterate farmers from the Gond tribe, to relinquish their fields for the promise of cash, jobs and a better future.

“For Banga Ram, the 65-year-old patriarch of a large family, the request was absurd. ‘What will we do with the money?’ he asked. ‘We have to do agriculture to feed these children.’ But local officials were not taking ‘No’ for an answer.

“Banga Ram was arrested. After he spent 13 days in jail, he says his sons signed away the land and accepted. [...]

“These conflicts, which tend to pit India’s most neglected people against its most powerful business houses, are helping to fuel the radical Naxalite guerrilla movement in the tribal belt, now increasingly considered India’s ‘Red Corridor.’ ‘There are slogans on walls saying “Naxals come and save us”,’ says Arundhati Roy, the writer and social activist. ‘People are begging them, “just come and train us.”’”

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

See also earlier anti-caste posts on Operation Green Hunt.

PHOTO ESSAY EXPOSES...

The Reality of Mining in India by Tom Pietrasik

“Beneath the lofty headline, ‘DEVELOPMENT KNOCKS ON BOKARO’S DOOR,’ was a list of planned local education and health initiatives. Upon closer inspection it was apparent that there was no substance to any of these projects. [...]

“When I mentioned the Hindustan Times article to Xavier Dias of BIRSA, an indigenous people’s group, a couple of days later, his rather bleak response was that, ‘The extraction of minerals is a guarantee that an area will never be developed.’ The tragedy is that Jharkhand desperately needs development. With only a quarter of indigenous Adivasi women able to read and an annual per capita income of just $330, there is every need for investment in local communities.

“For those that pull the strings of power however, talk of development is simply a means to an end. Health and education projects matter only to the extent that mentioning them helps placate the public. Development aspirations are a tool in much the same cynical way that the specter of a Maoist takeover can be used to justify the removal of obstinate communities from their land.”

“The Tata open cast coal mine at West Bokaro. Few of those employed at the mine are from the locally displaced Adivasi community.”

[photo and caption by Tom Pietrasik]

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.

NEW OFFENSIVE IN INDIA’S WAR ON LEFTIST GUERILLAS AND THE POOR

India launches Maoist offensive in five states (BBC)

“Thousands of Indian paramilitary troops and state policemen have launched a large offensive against Maoist rebels across five states this week.

“The offensive specifically targets top Maoist leaders, a senior interior ministry official told the BBC. [...]

“Home Minister P Chidambaram is personally co-ordinating the operation in West Bengal, Jharkhand, Orissa, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra.”

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

IN AFTERMATH OF HINDU-RIGHT POGROMS AGAINST UNTOUCHABLE CHRISTIANS IN ORISSA...

Survivors of Communal Violence in Kandhamal Under Threat of Evacuation for Third Time (Communalism Watch)

"Around 100 survivors of communal violence, who have been staying in an abandoned NAC market complex at G. Udaygiri of Kandhamal district after the forcible closure of relief camps by the government, have been asked by the local administration to vacate the place. With the news of visit of a European Commission team to the region, the government have ordered to remove the people again as a part of its attempt to project that government had brought back normalcy in Kandhamal and violence affected people are living at their villages peacefully without any threat.

"‘The BDO has asked us to vacate immediately and if we refuse police force will be used,’ said the worried survivors of Kandhamal violence. When the violence broke out on August 23, 2008, they were forced to leave their villages and their houses were burnt down. They had to take shelter in relief camps, but they were forced to leave from there also after the new BJD government come to power. Hence they had taken shelter in the market complex like beggars.

"‘Where can we go with these two babies?’ asked a crying mother Ms. Menaka Nayak (25). Her youngest baby was born in the camp itself. ‘We can not go back to our village, because they will not allow us to live there if we do not convert to Hinduism. The government is not prepared to provide security and necessary help. On top of it they are trying to throw us out from here also.’"

See more on Hindu-right atrocities in Orissa

“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.

POLICE "ENCOUNTERS": IN POOREST AREAS, EXTRA-LEGAL KILLINGS OF LEFTIST REBELS AND THEIR SYMPATHIZERS IS NORMAL

India Makes a Place for Dirty Harry (The New York Times)

"Numbering in the thousands every year, 'encounters' or 'encounter killings' are shootouts between the Indian police or army and any criminal element, from terrorists to petty thieves. Many Indians believe that at least some are stage-managed — with, say, a police officer placing a gun in the hands of a dead person — leading to the popular phrase, 'fake encounter killing.'

"The Singaram encounter was part of a long-running campaign to stem an insurrection in impoverished and isolated parts of eastern India by Maoist-inspired rebels known as Naxalites. Other cases, elsewhere in India, have involved Muslim militants and gangsters in Mumbai."

See also:

Chhattisgarh Killings: The Jungle Justice of the Trigger Happy (Tehelka, February 7, 2009):

“'They made us stand in a line and ordered us to bow our heads,” Deva says of those terrifying moments between life and death. “I was the last and that gave me just enough time to escape.'

"Four more proved lucky. But 19 others did not. A posse made largely of men from the Salwa Judum (literally, Peace Gathering), the tribal militia raised by the state as a quasi police force, killed 15 men and four women at this spot on the afternoon of January 8, 2009, triggering a massive furor across the state and worsening the battle lines between the armed Maoist insurgents, popularly called the Naxals, and the state police."

And see:

Rights Groups Probe India's Shoot-Out Cops (Time, February 14, 2009):

"That was when the media began to ask questions of the police account: Two terrorists tasked with staging a Republic Day attack on the national capital had stopped at a tea stall to seek directions; a police informer, who just happened to be present, spotted an AK-47 sticking out of a bag. An urgent tip-off prompted a dramatic chase and shootout, but the 'terrorists' lived just long enough to 'confess' their Pakistani nationality. Nor did it go unnoticed that this was the fourth such 'encounter' between police and suspects in the same area in less than a month."

TRIBE SEEKS LOWER STATUS TO QUALIFY FOR AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

Low-caste tribe riots in Delhi for right to be 'untouchable' (Independent (UK))

"According to Indian law, the Gujjars – many of whom live in the nearby desert state of Rajasthan – are classified as belonging to the country's second-lowest group, known as Other Backward Classes (OBC).

"In the complex, divisive system this category is one step up from the lowest level known as Scheduled Tribes and Castes (STC) otherwise known as Dalits, or 'Untouchables'.

"The Gujjars say they have been discriminated against in terms of jobs, health care and education – particularly in Rajasthan – but say that by being reclassified as STC they will be eligible for government positions and university places that are reserved for that group."

See also:

Why the Gujjars are so aggrieved (BBC News, May 31, 2007)

Fighting their way to the bottom in India (International Herald Tribune, June 1, 2007)

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)

HIDEOUSLY OPPRESSED MUSAHARS OF UTTAR PRADESH, THE "DALITS OF THE DALITS"

Two chappatis per day (The Times of India)

"The origin of the community's name is interesting. Some Musahars claim it is because they ate rats [musahar means "rat-eater"]. But Ram Prasad Vanbasi said the name was given because of the tribe's practice of ferreting out grain from rats' burrows. They are often stigmatised because of this association with rats. Without tribal status, they have no rights to access forest produce. They are bhumeens (landless). Mechanisation of agriculture has meant fewer jobs.

"On the day I visited Barrachawar the men had gone to trawl the ponds of a nearby village for a fruit called Ramdana, which they sell for Rs 40 per kilo. This kind of work is very labour-intensive. The Musahars social and political isolation was heightened when the British tagged them as a criminal community. In independent India they have remained vulnerable targets with the police forcing them to do begaar or forced labour."

CASTE-BASED BONDED CHILD LABOR IN SOUTH INDIA

India's cotton fields: Over 4 lakh child labourers (rediff)

"Nearly 4,16,000 children below 18 years, almost half of which are even younger than 14 years of age are working in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, the report said, adding that compared to the 2003-2004 harvest season, the total number of such children has risen.

[...]

"The overwhelming majority of the children working in the cotton fields are either Dalits or tribals, it said.

"Around 13 big Indian companies and two multinational groups are involved in this 'modern form of child slavery,' the report revealed."

LANDLORDS ABANDON PLANTATIONS, LEAVING WORKERS TO DIE

Workers starving due to closure of tea estates in North Bengal by Maureen Nandini Mitra (Down to Earth)

"More than 17,000 workers at these tea estates have been struggling; there are no other means of livelihood. An estimated 1,000 people—workers and family members—have died of malnutrition and related diseases since 2003 in the Dooars region.

[...]

"Most of the affected gardens are far from towns and villages, limiting employment options and healthcare services for the unskilled workers. Public transport to towns is infrequent and expensive—it costs Rs 60 for a 30-km bus trip to Jalpaiguri town from Raipur. The Plantation Labour Act of 1951 makes it the estate owners’ responsibility to provide the workers basic needs—food, education, healthcare. With the tea estates becoming unprofitable after the late 1990s, the owners abandoned their responsibility.

[...]

"Ethnicity of the workers has also been a crucial reason why this abysmal situation has been allowed to drag on for so long, human rights activists allege. More than 85 per cent of the workers are tribals—fourth generation immigrants of migrants brought in by the British from Jharkhand, Bihar and Chhattisgarh or low-caste refugees from Bangladesh’s Jassore, Khulna and Barishal regions."

See also:

Hundreds of workers die as India's tea industry suffers crisis (Guardian (UK), June 11, 2007)

And see:

Study on Closed and Re-opened Tea Gardens in North Bengal by Anuradha Talwar, Debasish Chakraborty and Sarmishtha Biswas for Paschim Banga Khet Majoor Samity and International Union of Food, Agriculture, Hotel, Restaurant, Catering, Tobacco, Plantation and Allied Workers’ Associations (IUF) (September 2005):

"In spite of the spate of re-openings that have taken place in the past one year, the 22 gardens seem to still be crisis ridden. Many may be on the verge of closing down once again. Huge amounts of money are owed to the workers. This is a criminal offence, but action has not been taken on this by the Government and/or union leaders against the rogue employers. At the same time there has been little long term planning by any of the stakeholders to ensure that these gardens become viable in the long run.

"Owners on the other hand in the closed gardens and in the industry in general are taking advantage of the closed gardens and the defensiveness of the workers and the unions to gradually cut down on the workers’ benefits."

And see also:

in Assam: A storied industry falls on hard times (Associated Press, September 29, 2007):

"The 'burra sahib'—the big boss—still lives in a cavernous house, overseeing nearly every aspect of life for thousands of employees, from housing to schools to medical care. Planters still gather from far-flung estates to drink at century-old clubs, and their wives still pass their days tending elaborate flower gardens.

"The laborers—tea plantations employ nearly 3 million, mostly women, in jobs often handed down through families for generations—are unionized these days, but most live just a few steps above the poverty line. In Assam, tea workers earn about $1.25 a day, plus free housing and subsidized food. According to union leaders, only about a third are literate."

tea worker in North Bengal (image via arnabchat)

REPRESSION OF TRIBALS RESISTING SEIZURE OF THEIR LAND

People's Version of Kalinganagar Firing by Independent Media

"At a protest in Kalinganagar, Orissa, on 2nd January, 2006 the State police opened fire on a protest by local tribals against the takeover and seizure of their land by a Tata Steel plant. Sixteen people died on the spot, four more died in the hospital, and a police constable was also killed in the clash."

family of tribal cut down by police

See also:

Resistance and tragedy (Frontline, January 14-27, 2006):

"The demand of tribal people who would be affected by the proposed project was that the government allow the construction of the boundary wall only after the company paid them adequate compensation and ensured proper rehabilitation. Instead, they were silenced with brute force by the government. As shots fired from semi-automatic rifles broke the mid-day stillness, panic-stricken men and women ran helter-skelter. The firing continued for nearly an hour. The policemen appeared bent upon avenging the death of their colleague."

And see:

Police firing at Kalinganagar, A Report by People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) Orissa (April 2006)