NB: The author of this thoughtful article is to be congratulated for doing his research. He ends thus “To address the problem, India needs to do something infinitely more difficult than killing Maoists: Giving Adivasis some justice.” The sabotage of justice in India has been unfolding as a recurrent nightmare for decades, and it concerns not only the tribal population, but all of us. All the victims of communal massacres, of the unfair use of preventive detention acts (whose history goes back to 1818); all the undertrial prisoners without legal help who have spent years in jail without being tried or released… the list is endless. Indian Maoism has not been curbed for nearly six decades. Why, and from where will our selfish political and corporate elite obtain the will to give justice to Adivasis? They’re too busy fighting the Mughals, mutton and biriyani. Yes, ensuring justice is indeed infinitely more difficult than killing Maoists. DS
Last week, police announced the killing of 29 Maoists in an ambush in Kanker, the largest number ever claimed in a single firefight. To some Adivasis in Bastar, the slain insurgents are heroes, inheritors of a tradition of desperate resistance against the annihilation of a people.
The Adivasi rebellion
The Republic of India ends somewhere past the school, post office and the Mahalaxmi ice cream store: The earth track from the town of Bechaghat is interrupted by ditches and barriers, making it impossible for vehicles to traverse. The bridge the government has sought to build across the Kotari River remains just an idea, because of resistance from the villagers it is intended to serve, as well as the risk to the life of any contractor who seeks to build it.
Everywhere along the path to the dry hills leading to the site of last week’s fighting, there are memorials to slain insurgents. The massacre of 22 police personnel in April 2021 and 10 more last summer are to be celebrated as revenge, not mourned.
For many living in those hills, the story began in the year of the Bhumkal, or earthquake, long before the birth of independent India. Early in 1910, the Adivasis of Bastar rose against the small British colonial force stationed in the remote kingdom, pillaging the bazaars, killing merchants, and attacking government offices. Tensions had been building up for more than two years among the Parja Adivasis living around Jagdalpur, the historian Hira Lal Shukla has recorded, who were subjected to rape, looting and extra-judicial killings.
Led by a charismatic shaman known as Gunda Dhar, a loose network of village and town heads quietly prepared for war. Then, red chillies, mango leaves, and bows and arrows were circulated, as secret signals that the time to rise had come. The rebellion would take the colonial state almost six months to put down.
The political scientist Ajay Verghese has noted that the rebellion came amid seismic ruptures in the Adivasi world that were brought about by the colonial state. Across India, pre-colonial rulers had established a complex set of customs to regulate their relationship with Adivasis. The rulers of Rajputana, for example, gave Bheel and Meena Adivasis a role in government, recognising their status as the original inhabitants of the land. The Bakkarwal of Kashmir, similarly, were made tax-collectors….
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Annihilation – 50 years of Naxalbari
Yesterday once more – 50 years after Naxalbari
Naxalites should lay down their arms and challenge the ruling class to abide by the Constitution
In Naxalbari, forty-eight years later
India’s subdivision of criminality (how one massacre deserves another)
Police in Indian state of Uttar Pradesh accused of unlawful killings
Fr Stan Swamy, accused in Elgaar Parishad case, dies at 84
Bilkis Bano speaks: ‘Trusted highest courts, faith shaken, give back right to live without fear’
After the truth-shower 