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| India's Armed Forces hunting the Maoists |
Recently India, particularly the media, celebrated two
events: (1) the success of Operation Sindoor which was a quasi-war on Pakistan,
and (2) the killing of the Maoist chief Nambala Keshava Rao and 27 of his
warriors. Personally, I felt uneasy about both the celebrations. Neither of
them is a victory, something within me kept whispering to me. They are both
tragedies masquerading as victories in the history being fabricated by certain
vested interests.
The truths about the Pak affair will
come to light only much later. Perhaps, they may never see the light of day.
This post is going to look at the second affair.
With the killing of the Maoists,
especially its Supremo, Maoism in India is all set for its last rites. That is
what excited the Indian media. I didn’t come across any TV channel or other
significant media agency that probed the reality from the perspective of the
Maoists.
I hasten to add that I don’t endorse
any kind of violence at all, least of all insurgencies like what the Maoists
led. This post is merely an attempt to perceive the other side of the reality,
the side which neither the government nor the media wants us to see.
Maoism, ever since its origin in
India in the 1960s, has been an attempt to resist the systemic oppressions
faced by the marginalised communities, especially the tribal (Adivasi)
populations in the forests and rural areas of a few states of the country. The
gaping socio-economic inequality was just one of the problems faced by these
people. In addition to that, their homelands were taken away from them in the
name of development. Forestlands were handed over in rather shady deals to the
corporate sector in the names of mines, industries, and infrastructure.
In the last 15 years alone, over
305,000 hectares of forestland was diverted by the government of India for
so-called development, and given to the corporate sector. In 2022-23, a year in
which India’s Prime Minister launched numerous environment programmes and
projects such as Mission LiFE (Lifestyle for Environment) and Green Credit
Programme, 17,381 hectares of forests were transferred to corporates. “The
mindful and deliberate utilisation of resources” proclaimed in Mission LiFE turned
out to be sheer mindless hypocrisy.
No less than 60 million people have
been displaced from their homelands by the so-called development projects of Indian
government. 40% of that 60 million are tribals in forestlands. And out of utter
helplessness and frustration, some of those 40% became Maoists – to defend
their very lives. Their livelihood, cultural practices and their very
sustenance were all being snatched away by their own government. Were they to accept
their decimation mutely?
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| Arundhati Roy with some Maoists |
Arundhati Roy is one of the few vocal
defenders of these tribal people. She has written and spoken voluminously about
their issues. In one of her essays titled Walking with the Comrades,
she states that the day the Indian Parliament adopted the Constitution of the
country was “a tragic day for the tribal people.” Because that day the government
became the custodian of tribal lands. The Constitution of India “criminalized a
whole way of life,” in Roy’s words.
The government turned brutal by and
by. In Roy’s eloquent words, “Having dispossessed and pushed them (the tribals)
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’.”
And development increasingly became
the prerogative of the privileged in India. The government now has become a
plutocracy wearing democracy’s motley coat.
Maoism will die. Soon. All opposition
is dying in India. Soon India will have one King, one God, one language…
One caste? No, I bet.
The caste system will remain. In a
new form. The new Brahmins are already wielding their power from their
respective anchors. The latest killing of the Maoists is just one minor
headline in their new history. The wives of those men who died wearing the
uniform of a dream for a homeland lost the sindoor on their foreheads too. And
that was erased by their own government!
Hari OM
ReplyDeleteIt's dispicable. It's ethnic cleansing - but the wider world is ignorant of this occurrence. I agree with your opening 'discomfiture' about so called celebration... YAM xx
Ethnic cleansing has become a norm, it seems. There's always a justification too for it, like Hannah Arendt's banality of evil.
DeleteTragedy lurks at every corner!
ReplyDeleteThe real sleight of the State is to have taught a new Mother-tongue to the nation - that is mainstreaming Doublespeak and Obfuscation, as the Lingua Franca, where everything is post-truth, from Jal, Jameen, Jungle and Jindagi.. If the Sindoor of the wives of the Maoists has been obliterated by the State, the Sindoor taken off by the terrorists, stage-managed mercenaries, has been commodified by the state, in the godimedia, shall I say, 'prostituted' for harvesting political mileage. Doublespeak administered as unsuspecting Mother-tongue.
ReplyDeleteYou've put it as eloquently as Arundhati Roy would have put it.
DeleteI can only say with Alan Paton, Cry my Country.
Thanks for having made space and time for the Msoists.
ReplyDeleteCould I have escaped it?
DeleteThanks for the Royesque Compliment. When I give voice to the voiceless, I find myself eloquent, like a Shaman. It comes over me... That the plight of the poor, orphaned by the State, like Father killing the son and mother beating her own tiny tot, to death, on the rocks, by the sea, did not escape you, shows that the humanum is welling up within you... The cynic in you is gracefully turning over into a protesting bard, calling forth the spirit in the spiritless conditions, giving heart to a heartless world (Marx).
ReplyDeleteI too sense a lot of change in me. Thanks a ton for supporting that change and being with me on this new journey.
DeleteYes. You are indeed changing.
ReplyDeleteThat's all very sad. "Progress"? Yeah, no. I wish people realized that once these ways of life are gone, they're gone. And we're richer with them than without them.
ReplyDeleteIt's catastrophic now here in my country which is decimating the tribal people as well as their unique cultures.
Delete