When Government erases the sindoor of its own women

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? 

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!