On the Killing of Mahendra Karma
Any keen observer of Chhattisgarh could have foreseen Saturday’s deadly Maoist attack at Jeeram ghat in Bastar, though not perhaps its magnitude. Mahendra Karma’s death was long expected, though politicians like him who flirt with the dark side usually have enough security to keep themselves safe. With a string of killings of Maoist leaders under their belt, the security establishment thought the Maoists could be written off. However, like other insurgents elsewhere have always done, the Maoists scaled back only to strike hard.
Calls for more concerted military action ignore what has actually been happening. In fact, in recent months, the security forces have ratcheted up operations, densely carpeting Maoist strongholds with CRPF camps. In the 46 km stretch between Dornapal and Chintalnar, there are now 7 camps, with the latest two, Burkapal and Minpa, having come up in the last fortnight. Overnight, large stretches of forest were cleared in Burkapal, for a helipad on one side and a CRPF camp on the other, and the question of forest clearances for this, or any other security installation, is never even seen as an issue. The biodiverse forests of Bastar – which are national treasures - have been one of the biggest casualties of this war, which rages across trees, roads, transformers, schools and the bodies of men, women and even little children.
Skeptical villagers argue that rather than reducing hostilities, the presence of the camps will mean constant skirmishes between the forces and the Maoists, following which the forces will take it out on them. They report that security forces steal chickens from their homes when they are out in the fields; and indeed, with camps close by, even going out to defecate, cultivate or collect fuelwood becomes a hazard, especially for women. In Chintagufa, where several buses are parked to ferry security personnel back and forth, the forces have taken over the primary health care centre and the school. The Supreme Court’s orders on keeping off schools mean nothing to them.
Simplistic morality plays may be good for the TRPs, but will not address the real issues. The Maois ambush came barely a week after an equally terrible attack by the security forces, again during area domination, on the villagers of Edesmetta in Bijapur who were celebrating Beeja Pandum, the seed sowing festival. Eight villagers, including four children, were killed, while severely injured villagers were given medical aid only a day later after local media coverage. The Beeja Pandum is one of the most important festivals of the adivasi calendar. The only glimpse that non-adivasis get is when they are stopped at roadside blocks placed by women and children, and they assume it is just for some easy money. But the ritual significance is that anyone crossing the village during beeja pandum must be fined for taking the seed away with them.
As in Tadmetla March 2011, where security forces burnt 300 homes, raped and killed; Sarkeguda June 2012, where they shot dead 17 villagers during their Bijja pandum last year; and Edesmetta 2013, the Chhattisgarh government has ordered a judicial enquiry into the Jeeram ambush. But since the Congress knows well what this means, they have preferred to enlist the NIA. Given a list of 537 killings by salwa judum and security forces, the state government has ordered magisterial enquiries into 8 cases since 2008, of which 7 are still pending!
The Chhattisgarh police claim they need SPOs for intelligence gathering, refusing to disband them as the Supreme Court ordered. But what kind of intelligence are they getting if they claim Edesmetta was a Maoist gathering, and could not predict the Jeeram ambush? Instead, the fortification of SPO’s with better guns and more money as the renamed ‘Armed Auxiliary Forces’ only increases alienation.
Even if they support massive human rights violations, politicians are not combatants. The same is true for unarmed villagers who may support the Maoists ideologically. An attack on party leaders engaged in electoral rallies must be strongly condemned, and the Maoist’s expanding hit list is truly reprehensible. However, it is only partially true to say that what happened is an attack on democracy. In a democracy, someone like Mahendra Karma would have been jailed long ago. Even when confronted with evidence of his personal involvement in the Salwa Judum atrocities, quite apart from the CBI FIR against him for his role in a major tree felling scam, the Congress chose to retain Karma within the party. And despite declaring Naxalism the gravest security threat facing the country, never once so far has the PM felt the need to visit the area himself to find out why people support them, or console grieving adivasis
Under the Constitution, Chief Minister Raman Singh, and the Union Home Ministry who are as responsible for Salwa Judum as Mahendra Karma, should also be held accountable. At least 644 villages were affected, over a thousand people killed, hundreds raped, and some 150,000 displaced. Small children were cruelly bashed to death or thrown into ponds, and old people who could not run away were burnt alive. Yet there has been no prosecution or compensation, despite the Supreme Court’s repeated orders. Indeed, there is a danger that, with Karma gone, the more uncomfortable questions regarding official culpability for Salwa Judum will be closed. The Constitution and Democracy are not terms of expediency, as the Congress and BJP seem to think – they embody difficult moral principles which must guide our collective behavior
To respond with even more force now would be a grave mistake, for insurgencies thrive on government excesses. The combing operations underway must take great care to see that ordinary villagers are not harassed. It is unlikely that anyone will countenance calls for peace talks now, as the war has become a prestige issue on both sides. But eventually, there is no alternative to negotiations. If a country like the US with its military might could get bogged down in Vietnam and Afghanistan, what makes us think we can succeed militarily? A far better model would be the Latin American countries, like Peru and Guatemala, with similar histories of guerilla war and exploitation of indigenous people which resolved their conflicts through Truth and Reconciliation Commissions. If FARC and the Colombian government can come to an agreement on land reforms after thirty years, what prevents a democracy like India?
http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?285795
http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?285795
http://nandinisundar.blogspot.in/2013/06/on-killing-of-mahendra-karma.html
On the Media's Need for Whipping Boys
I am sick to death of TV panel discussions which ask whether human rights activists are soft on the Maoists, romanticise the Maoists and so on. Why doesn't someone ask if our honourable politicians and security experts are soft on police torture and extra judicial killings? Television is not interested in a serious discussion - all they want are whipping boys. The sight of Arnab Goswami mocking Prof. Haragopal for giving an "academic analysis" was especially nauseating, compounded by his showing off about "Emily Durkheim" (sic!). Why bother to have a panel at all, if only hysterical calls for the army to be sent in to wipe out the Maoists count as 'analysis', and every other viewpoint is seen as biased?
The media's vocabulary is also very limited. I remember a particular excruciating interview with Binayak Sen where he said he "decried" violence and the anchor repeatedly asked him if he "condemned” it. As far as I know, the two words mean roughly the same thing. Nowadays, even before the media asks me, I start shouting "I condemn, I condemn." I wake up in my sleep shouting "I condemn." I am scared to use other words to describe complex emotions, because the media is unable to understand anything else.
The only reason why I agree to participate in any television discussions at all or give interviews to the media, is because I have such limited space to express my views. Most of the time the media is completely unconcerned about what happens in places like Bastar, and when there are large scale deaths of civilians, no-one runs non-stop news or panel discussions. Perforce “human rights activists” have to speak in unfavourable circumstances, because that’s the only time when the media is interested in our views; and that too, not because they want to hear us, but because they need a "big fight" to raise their ratings. That's what is called 'balance'. One can almost see visible disappointment on the anchor's part when panelists who should disagree actually agree on many issues.
Since May 25th I have been inundated with calls from journalists asking for my views. But when I want to write, there is little space. A leading national newspaper refused to publish me on the killing of Mahendra Karma, till they had enough pieces which promoted a paramilitary approach. Even when I do get published it is under strict word constraints. I wrote the first opinion piece ever written in the national media on the Salwa Judum in 2006, but was given 800 words, under the fold. In the first year of Salwa Judum, I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of articles on Salwa Judum. I personally met several editors and showed them photographic evidence; and begged TV editors for panel discussions, but no-one was interested. If they had been interested then, perhaps things would not have come to such a pass.
I am unable to write my own book on Salwa Judum because of the court case and all that it takes. I have been wanting to write on it since 2005 because I am, above all, an anthropologist. In any case, my mental space is so clogged by the media noise and the strain of being confined to "opinion pieces" that keep saying the same things because no one is listening, that I can't write. I am almost glad the IPL has taken over again, and we can all forget about Bastar and the Maoists till the next major attack.
I reproduce below an extract from my article, Emotional Wars, on the public reactions to the death of the 76 CRPF men in April 2010. This was published in Third World Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 4, 2012, pp 1-17:
"Government anger was directed not just at the Maoists but at their alleged ‘sympathizers in civil society’, whose verbal and written criticism of government for violations of the Constitution and fundamental rights, was morally equated with the Maoist act of killing in retaliation for those policies.[i] Within minutes then, given the government’s role as the primary definer of news,[ii] whether the alleged sympathizers had adequately condemned and expiated for the attack, became as critical to the framing of the news as the attack itself.
The largely one-sided government and media outrage - the targeted killings or rapes of ordinary adivasis rarely, if ever, invite direct calls upon the Home Minister to condemn each such incident - easily summon to mind Herman and Chomsky’s distinction between “worthy and unworthy victims” as part of what they call the media ‘propaganda model’.[iii] While news coverage of the worthy is replete with detail, evokes indignation and shock, and invites a follow-up; unworthy victims get limited news space, are referred to in generic terms, and there is little attempt to fix responsibility or trace culpability to the top echelons of the establishment.[iv].....
1. For example, after a Maoist attack in which 4 men of the Central Industrial Security Force were killed, the Home Ministry put out a statement asking “What is the message that the CPI (Maoist) intends to convey? These are questions that we would like to put not only to the CPI (Maoist) but also to those who speak on their behalf and chastise the government…We think that it is time for all right-thinking citizens who believe in democracy and development to condemn the acts of violence perpetrated by the CPI (Maoist)." Chidambaram slams Maoist sympathizers, Times Now, October 26, 2009,http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2009-10-26/india/28067149_1_maoist-sympathisers-cisf-jawans-chhattisgarh, accessed 12 November 2011
[ii] Hall, S. et al., Policing the Crises: Mugging, the State and Law and Order, London: Macmillan Education Ltd, 1978; Gans, HJ. Deciding What’s News, Northwestern University Press, 2004 (1979).
[iii] Herman, E. S. and Chomsky, N. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of Mass Media,Pantheon Books, 2002, pp 37-86)
[iv] An enquiry was immediately ordered into the Tadmetla attack headed by a former Director General of the Border Security Force, EN Rammohan. He found several lapses in the leadership and functioning of the CRPF, including their failure to adhere to standard operating procedures. However, the commander responsible for this debacle, DIG Nalin Prabhat, while initially transferred, was given a gallantry medal a year later in 2011. Further, the government itself takes no responsibility for orchestrating this mindless war on its own people.
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