Note
Life is Cheap
Gladson Dungdung
The Adivasis live and die with the Nature. They believe in the super natural God, therefore; they worship the Nature on every occasion. The Adivasis' economy is totally based on the Agriculture and Forest, which also depends merely on rainfall. Therefore, the villagers get together and pray to their Super Natural God before and after the harvesting. The Adivasi communities also have their own democracy, which is totally based on 'consent', which they practice in every village. On 28 June, 2012, the Adivasis of Kottaguda, Sarkeguda and Rajpenta villages in Bijapur district of Chhattisgarh had gathered at Kottaguda village to plan for the performance of the traditional festival "Beej Pandum" (Seed Festival) so that they would celebrate the festival and start sowing the seeds on their lands as the Monsoon has reached to the region. Unfortunately, 17 of them were attending this kind of meeting for the last time in their life.
The Cobra battalion of the CRPF and the Chhattisgarh police, who were deployed in the region in the name of combating the Maoists, surrounded the villagers and fired on them without giving any signal to the villagers. Consequently, 16 of them got bullets in their chests, heads and other parts of the body, and died on the spot and 1 was brutally killed in the next morning. The Security Forces claimed of killing 18 dreaded Maoists and celebrated it as one of the grand successes in anti-Naxal Operations. Similarly, P Chidambaram, the then Union Home Minister had also claimed that the Security Forces had shot top Naxal leaders in Chhattisgarh, and when the encounter was questioned he attempted to cover up it.
However, when the breaking news of encounter appeared on the television screens and the print media, the story seems to be totally untrue. The question immediately came into one's mind was, how could 18 top Maoists have a meeting in a village, which is situated merely at a distance of 3 km from the CRPF camp? The truth of Bijapur encounter was finally revealed. A brave Journalist Aman Sethi, who has been tirelessly reporting on the state sponsored crime against the Adivasis of Chhattisgarh; this time also exposed the lies of the top cops, the Chhattisgarh government and Union Home Ministry. According to his report, the security forces fired at a peaceful gathering of villagers, killing 20 of them, including five children aged 12-15, and sexually assaulted at least four girls during the encounter. The conclusion of the story was no Maoists were present in the village that day. The villagers had gathered to discuss the upcoming seed festival, when the security forces fired on them, which led to death of 20 villagers including 5 children.
The report of a three member Fact-Finding team comprising Mr J P Rao, Mr Kopa Kunjam and Dr Nandini Sundar, who visited Kottaguda, Sarkeguda and Lingagiri villages on 3rd and 4th July 2012 revealed the further shocking facts. According to the report, these villages were attacked by the Salwa Judum Militia in 2005. They had killed 2 people and almost all the houses in all three villages were burnt. Consequently, the villagers had migrated to Andhra Pradesh and returned to their villages only in 2009. They were again attacked by the Security Forces this time, which led to death of 17 villagers including 7 minors. Apart from that, 9 have been injured, and at least 5 women have been beaten, assaulted and molested.
When the truth was unearthed, the Union Home Minister and Architect of the 'Operation Green Hunt' P Chidambaram said 'deeply sorry' for killing of innocent civilians. The pertinent question here would be, is saying merely 'sorry' enough for brutal killing of 17 innocent Adivasis? Secondly, why are the political parties keeping quit in this matter especially the opposition party the BJP? Would they have behaved in the similar manner if 17 innocent non-Adivasis would have been killed in the cold-blooded murder? Will the BJP keep quit if the similar incident takes place in the Congress ruled state? Who is responsible for massacre of innocent Adivasis? Is it not P Chidambaram, who has been deploying the Security Forces in the Adivasis regions since, 2009 in the name of eliminating the Maoists?
The Tehelka's editor Shoma Chaudhary raised a most important question in her column 'editor cut' that Why is life in Bastar so cheap? A simple answer to this question is, since the Indian state seems to believe that all the Adivasis living in the forest regions across the country are Maoists/Naxals, who are biggest threat to the 'investment climate'. The India's Economist Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh is always worried about the investment climate rather than his constitutional duty to protect the rights of its citizens. In fact, the Indian State is determined to grab the resources of the Adivasi regions at any cost, which will pave the way to India becoming the 'super power'. Therefore, the Security Forces have been deployed in the forests to kill the Adivasis, who oppose to surrender their land, forest, water and other natural resources to the Indian state in the name of growth and development.
Frontier
Vol. 45, No. 6, Aug 19-25, 2012
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