This war can’t be won by mines and bullets

It is not litigants who’ve gone to court seeking the rehabilitation of civilians or ‘civil society activists’ but the Maoists and the State who must answer for the deaths of innocents in Chhattisgarh...






20 May 2010
The Hindu

This war can’t be won by mines and bullets

It is not litigants who’ve gone to court seeking the rehabilitation of civilians or ‘civil society activists’ but the Maoists and the State who must answer for the deaths of innocents in Chhattisgarh

Siddharth Varadarajan

Whether Operation Green Hunt actually exists or is, as P. Chidambaram insists, a figment of the media’s imagination, Monday’s deadly Maoist attack on a bus in Dantewada suggests it is the hunted that are doing most of the hunting.

Over the past six weeks, the Maoists in Chhattisgarh have killed more than 90 policemen or jawans from the CRPF or local constabulary. The 76 men killed in Chintalnar in April represent, perhaps, the highest casualty figure sustained by state forces in a single incident in a war anywhere in the world in years. Apart from the six villagers executed on Sunday after a kangaroo ‘peoples court’ found them guilty of being “informers”, the Communist Party of India (Maoist) killed 15 civilians in their attack on the bus, injuring scores more.

In the latest incident, the primary target was probably the group of Special Police Officers (SPOs) who were travelling on the roof of the bus. But even so, the fact that the bus was full of civilian passengers would have been obvious to the Maoist commanders whose spotters were apparently tracking the SPOs. That they chose to go ahead and detonate the land mine or IED by remote control knowing a large number of non-combatants would die should be a lesson for anyone who harbours illusions about the Maoists and their project.

When I had the opportunity to put some questions in writing to Azad, spokesman of the Maoists, in March, I was keen to push him on whether or not his party believed it had an obligation to conform to international humanitarian law. This is the body of rules which regulates armed conflict. The targeting of civilians and the killing of captives, for example, is expressly forbidden. As a format, written questions and answers do not allow the interviewer to pose counter-questions. Given this limitation, I anticipated the answer Azad would give on the question of the laws of war – that his fighters were not obliged to follow them because the government itself wasn’t doing so – and suggested this was tantamount to admitting the Maoist party subscribes to the same political culture and moral universe as the state it condemns. This suggestion of mine was met with silence but the attack on the bus is answer enough. The Maoists are not Gandhians with guns.

The authorities can console themselves by saying the latest attack shows the “growing desperation” of the Maoists, or that the targeting of civilians by them will be their undoing. But the fact is that by any metric of warfare, they are the ones who seem to have the upper hand. And they have it not because Indian democracy is robust enough to allow for a debate on the rights and wrongs of official policy or for PILs to be filed in the Supreme Court but because the CRPF, local police and SPOs on whom the Chhattisgarh government and Centre rely lack training, discipline, equipment, mobility and motivation. Instead of squarely facing this problem, Mr. Chidambaram and his colleagues in the Home Ministry are busy pointing fingers at others or bemoaning the lack of a “mandate” to fight the Maoists.

More than “social activists”, it is the government that ought to be concerned about the fact that many of the “successes” notched up by the security forces in Chhattisgarh have turned out to be bogus. For example, most of the dozen odd naxals supposedly killed in a fierce encounter last fall near Gompad were innocent villagers, some of them elderly.

There is both a moral and a military issue at stake here. Killing innocent people is wrong but it is also militarily foolish. Passing off ordinary villagers as Maoist combatants and faking entries in official log books may help the security forces present an inflated account of their success but will make actual victory on the ground even more difficult. On Tuesday, the Home Minister reiterated the importance of the so-called “two-pronged strategy” to deal with naxalism: “One prong is police action, and the other prong is development”. Unfortunately, neither prong is being followed very effectively. Indeed, the fact that there is today in Chhattisgarh an inversion of the supposed hunt is precisely because the state and central governments have made a mess of both policing and development. Thanks to a disastrous counterinsurgency strategy, several hundred innocent villagers have been killed, thousands of dwellings destroyed and tens of thousands of adivasis displaced. In Gompad last year, the SPOs cut off the fingers of a two-year old boy, Suresh. The Hindu published his photograph on October 20, 2009. Not one word of condemnation or remorse was heard from Mr. Chidambaram or his ministry.

Far from weakening the Maoists as its supporters claimed it would, the Salwa Judum vigilante movement which both New Delhi and Raipur patronised for years has strengthened the insurgents. This is precisely what the petitioners who filed a PIL in the Supreme Court in 2007 against the vigilantes had warned would happen.

In a recent RAND Corporation monograph, How Insurgencies End: Key Indicators, Tipping Points, and Strategy, Ben Connable and Martin Libicki conclude their survey of 89 past and present insurgencies by noting that ‘anocracies’ are the one form of government least likely to prevail over an insurgent force. Democracies do best and dictatorships sometimes prevail through sheer repression but the anocracies do worst. An anocracy is a phony democracy, which is good at neither proper democratic methods nor full-fledged autocracy. Its institutions are weak and poorly developed, offering little possibility for the government to isolate an insurgency from the people in whose name the fight is being waged. But the need to preserve the façade of democracy also means the full panoply of repressive measures – air strikes, mass arrests, censorship – is not available either.

India may be an imperfect democracy but I do not believe it is an anocracy. And yet, one could argue that state practice in Dantewada and other parts of India is anocratic. Based on the RAND data, then, it is safe to assume the Maoists are not going to be defeated any time soon. The choice we face is to democratise or autocratise the state’s response and the wider machinery of governance. Those who want to autocratise favour a dramatic escalation of the war, the rapid deployment of large numbers of security personnel, the use of air strikes. They are also intolerant of dissent and are quick to label any criticism of official policy as ‘support for Maoism’.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi are coming under intense pressure from this faction but they know the problem will grow exponentially if the government goes autocratic. And yet, they lack the confidence to democratise. What would democratisation as a counter-insurgency strategy look like? First, this requires strict adherence to the laws of war. No one can question the state’s right to fight those who take up arms against it. But non-combatants must never be targeted, let alone allowed to get in harm’s way. This would also mean ending the practice of billeting jawans in school buildings and other civilian infrastructure or hitching rides on civilian transport. India may not have signed the Geneva Convention additional protocol on internal armed conflict but Common Article 3 of the four conventions to which India is a party – not to speak of the Indian Constitution – prohibits violence against those not taking active part in hostilities or against combatants who are in custody. The reason the laws of war are important is that they provide a measure of protection to both sides, not to speak of civilians.

Second, the Centre should support the plan, currently before the Supreme Court, for the comprehensive rehabilitation of all those displaced by the violence in Dantewada. Third, the government should seriously consider a mutual ceasefire so as to push the Maoists towards dialogue. The cessation of hostilities, if extended, would allow the Dantewada rehabilitation plan to be implemented under the overall supervision of the apex court. Fourth, every manifestation of autocratic behaviour – the farcical public hearings on land acquisition for mining and power projects, the filing of criminal cases against poor adivasis for minor violations of the Forest Act, has to stop.

As for the Maoists, they need to realise this is not a war they can win. The Indian state’s capacity to absorb punishment is far greater than the Maoists’ ability to inflict violence. Whatever else its lacks, India certainly doesn’t need more soldiers, guns and IEDs. What it could use is a strong political movement to give voice to the aspirations of ordinary workers, peasants, tribals, women and other marginalised sections. Mao may have said power flows out of the barrel of the gun. But he also said to put politics in command. Alas, in Chhatisgarh today, there is no politics.

Jyotirmaya Sharma on Arundhati Roy's Bureau of Moral Certification

In 2000, the historian Ramachandra Guha wrote a withering critique of Arundhati Roy, calling her the 'Arun Shourie of the Left'. Guha attacked her essay on the Narmada project and said her 'celebrity endorsement' of the NBA did the environmental movement more harm than good. "I am told that Arundhati Roy has written a very good novel", he concluded. "Perhaps she should begin another. Her retreat from activism would be - to use a term from economics - "Pareto optimum": good for literature, and good for the Indian environmental movement".

Ten years and many political essays later, Guha has been joined by the political philosopher, Jyotirmaya Sharma. Sharma, who is a professor at Hyderabad University, critiques Roy's long piece in Outlook on the Maoists, 'Walking with the Comrades'.

Roy's essay has generated strong reactions, not so much because of its criticism of the Indian State, whose violence and villainy against the tribals and others no rational person can defend, but because of her attitude towards the Maoists. On the splendid website, kafila.org, Anirba Gupta Nigam has picked apart her romaticism:

Two tropes underpin Roy’s rhetoric throughout: the constant equation of weaponry with beauty and joy, and the repeated emphasis – if without much insight – on the militarisation of daily life. Both seem to suggest to her, the epitome of revolutionary spirit – the one we have learnt India needs right now. But this affinity of death with beauty harks back to another – perhaps more accurate – tradition that Susan Sontag spoke of in her 1975 essay ‘Fascinating Fascism.’ National Socialism, she wrote, stood for values which at the time she was writing, were deeply cherished by ‘open societies.’ Among these were “the cult of beauty, the fetishism of courage, the dissolution of alienation in ecstatic feelings of community.” Roy’s representation of the Maoists is nothing short of similar fetishisation.

Sudhanva Deshpande has critiqued her "embedded journalism", Chasing Fat Tails doesn't like her tendency to lapse into Orientalism and B.G. Verghese finds fault with her distorted Maoist idyll. Of all these critiques, only Verghese has anything reasonably positive to say about the Indian State (I personally think he's being a little too happy-happy) but he cannot be faulted for introducing a note of realism about what the Maoists actually say they want (see, for example, the full text of my interview with Azad, spokesperson of the CPI (Maoist) or selected extracts from the same). The rest of the critics cited here, and dare I say most of the anti-Arundhati pieces I have seen over the past few weeks, come from a left-liberal POV. They are worked up because, as Guha's 2000 piece said in a different context, they fear Arundhati's criticism of the government's approach to the Maoist insurgency actually plays into the hands of the security establishment.

And the 'celebrity' factor is there again. Many academics and activists signed a statement recently attacking the Chhattisgarh police for threatening to charge Arundhati under the state's draconian Public Safety Act. The police is nuts and such moves must be condemned. But the trouble with 'celebrity' oriented campaigns is that we lose sight of underlying processes. If tomorrow the CG police decides not to charge Arundhati, that will not mean a change in their authoritarian attitude towards criticism and dissent. But many will feel the 'threat' has passed and that we can all relax. Two Delhi University professors, Ujjwal Singh and Nandini Sundar (who has filed a PIL against the salwa judum) were hustled out of Dantewada by the police recently, the Hindu's Raipur correspondent was prevented from reaching Gompad village (where the security forces killed innocent villagers) from the Chhattisgarh side, Manish Kunjam and other unsung and unnamed CPI activists have been at the forefront of tribal mass struggles all these years in the face of police pressure, local reporters who tried to expose Salwa Judum were attacked. If only such signature campaigns had been mounted then. The attempts to silence criticism did not begin with Arundhati walking with the comrades!

In his piece, Jyotirmaya comes at the problem from a philosophical angle. He shares Arundhati's disgust with official policies towards the tribals and her impatience with P. Chidambaram, the Home Minister. But he dislikes her mode of argument. Like Guha, her moral certitude and length of writings remind him of Arun Shourie. Sharma also sees in her 'us versus them' approach a reflection of Carl Schmitt, and goes after her for the manner in which she uses and abuses Gandhi.

Since the Mail Today website is pretty useless in terms of providing access to articles more than a few days old, I have posted his full piece below.

24 April 2010
Mail Today

We can do without her moral certificates

Jyotirmaya Sharma

There is much in Arundhati Roy’s writings and pronouncements that I have little difficulty, at least with certain qualifications, in accepting. I agree that Indian democracy is far from perfect. I agree that successive regimes in India, at the Centre and at the level of the states, have short-changed vast sections of Indian people, mostly the poor and the marginalized. I think that the continuation of outfits like the salwa judum is an abomination and no civilized society ought to tolerate such vigilante groups.

I am with Roy when she says that the lifestyles and livelihood of the adivasis is under grave threat in the name of harebrained ideas of progress and development.

I also agree that P. Chidambaram is a disaster as home minister and has scant political sense and no vision, the proverbial man without qualities. At the same time, I dislike Roy’s illusions of certainty, her self-righteousness, her inability to go beyond self-serving monologues and her prophetic tone.

Apologist

Arundhati Roy’s essays remind me of two people. Their length and their tone of moral certitude remind me of Arun Shourie, the journalist. He landed ultimately in the BJP and now endorses every crime and misdemeanour of the BJP, including the 2002 post-Godhra riots and Narendra Modi’s role during that period. The second person that Roy’s writings remind me of is Carl Schmitt.

Those unfamiliar with Schmitt would do well to remember that he was Hitler’s apologist, wrote tracts that supported the Nazi regime. He found liberal democracy and parliamentarianism impotent and mediocre ways of organizing human societies. But even today, he is studied seriously for suggesting that in the age of technology, the only political relationship that is feasible is the one between friend and foe. The political for him lies in identifying the enemy and eliminating the enemy. There is, therefore, always an in-group and an out-group, those who belong and those who do not.

While Roy might use the word `fascist’ as a term of abuse, she is hardly aware that she, perhaps unconsciously, shares much with one of the most articulate and thoughtful apologists of the Nazi regime.

In romanticizing the naxals and justifying their violence, she is merely a victim of a philosophy that designates virtue and moral superiority to one section of the population and delineates the rest as morally and ethically compromised. It would be perfectly right to say that the naxals imitate the criminality of the state (a phrase paraphrased from Marx, no less), but to justify violence as a legitimate means of redressal of grievances is plainly silly.

Justification

But Roy justifies naxal violence by adding emotive elements on to the question of naxal violence. Hunger and the loneliness of the forests in her eyes justifies this brand of violence. Let us take the question of hunger first. The assumption implicit in Roy’s argument is that once people are well-fed, they will not resort to violence. If this was the case, the bovine placidity and conspicuous affluence of the middle class in Gujarat ought to have ensured that not a fly was hurt in that state.

The loneliness of the forest is also based on an equally tenuous assumption. The romanticization of the naxal in the forest follows from a romanticization of nature as pure, unsullied, and benign. The aranyaka delineated in ancient wisdom is really an internal condition, a state of poise and repose than a material reality. In truth, the forest was always a terrain inhabited by bandits and sages alike, a home for wild beasts who consumed weaker animals for survival. Those who have worked tirelessly in protecting the weak in the forest have done so by taming the proverbial wild beasts rather than justifying violence as a way of finding solutions to the tyranny of the state and of various rapacious regimes.

Arundhati Roy will hardly understand any of this, not because she is incapable of understanding, but because she is incapable of holding a conversation with anyone other than those that agree with her.

This instinct has two sources. The first comes from the fear that she will lose her identity if she ceased to be marginal. Her marginality is her advertisement, and excess of anything, as Lenin’s Russia taught us, is advertisement. The second is a degree of Platonism, where politics is seen as a relentless tutorial in the hands of a few chosen wise men and women.

These wise men and women, it is assumed, have seen the Light and have truth and God on their side. Everyone else lives under a veil of ignorance, incapable of perceiving their true interests and what is good for society as a whole.

The reason why Roy finds Gandhi to be pious humbug stems from the above reasons.

Gandhi, with all his faults, did not divide the world into friend and foe. He did not believe in winning wars quickly and expeditiously. If delay in getting justice be the price to pay for simple ideas of decency and civility, Gandhi was patient enough to wait, sacrifice and endure, rather than let the wild beasts of the forest rule our world. Aurobindo Ghosh asked Devdas Gandhi what the Mahatma would have done in the face of an adversary like Hitler, who was different from the imperial, but fundamentally liberal, British rule. Gandhi thought it would be right for millions to happily die in the gas chambers than compromise on ideas of civility and decency.

Gandhi

Roy finds Gandhi redundant because his politics depended on a certain degree of theatricality and the presence of an audience, something denied to the naxals and the tribals. This is right in a way, since even Roy, the city-dwelling champion of those in the forest, has to invoke Gandhi in order to be heard in order to carry off her own piece of theatre. She obviously knows that the modern Indian state has nothing to do with either Gandhian ideas or with Gandhian methods.

Had she said Manmohan Singh is pious humbug or Sonia Gandhi is pious humbug, foreign newspapers would hardly have reproduced her article in their pages. Both Mont Blanc and Arundhati Roy need Gandhi, after all, to sell their products.

Having said this, Roy is `right’ that Gandhi has little to say about the plight of the naxals and tribals, and even much less about the mining sharks and the marauding multinationals active in India.

But he also did not have much to say about the cell phone, the ipod and cybercrime.

In sharp contrast, Roy is better placed in having a view about all things known and unknown.

She suffers from no degree of doubt, has little sense of irony and no humour. Along with the BJP and certain strands of the loony Left, she has opened her own National Bureau of Moral Certification.

We now await the founding of her autonomous republic, where the heart will always be full, but the mind empty.

A typical Chhattisgarh story

I just received this open letter by email. it is written by Alban Toppo, a young lawyer working in Bastar in Chhattisgarh, a no-rights zone in the world's largest democracy ...




AN OPEN LETTER & APPEAL

I am a fresh lawyer coming from a tribal family of Jashpur, Chhattishgarh. I finished my law graduation in year 2008, got enrolled with Chhattisgarh Bar Council and started working for poor and underprivileged. For which I had a commitment since my college days. I started learning basics of human rights litigation at Delhi office of Human Rights Law Network and very recently had come to Chhattisgarh to do research for right to food case which is going on in Hon’ble Supreme Court of India and for this. I went to Dantewada, and met Mr. Himanshu Kumar, Director of Vanvasi Chetna Ashram, who has done some study on this issue and taking information, his advice and guidance. I was also providing some legal assistance to him during my stay in Dantewada.

On 10 December, 2009 at about 2:30 P.M. the Thana Incharge (TI) of Bhairamgarh Police Station Mr. K.S. Nand in civil uniform came to the Vanvasi Chetna Ashram (VCA) situated at Katiyarraas accompanied by approximately more than 25 SPO’s in 5 cars. Director of VCA, Shri Himanshu Kumar and few other volunteers of VCA were present. I was also present there. TI spoke to Himanshu Kumar about taking Kopa Kunjam, s/o Lacchu Kunjam, resident of village Alnaar, Block – Geedam, P.S. Dantewada, who is a volunteer of VCA stating that they need him for some interrogation by the Superintendent of Police. He said, “SP Sahab ne bulaya hai, kuch puch tach karni hai”. No notice was served for this. However on being asked by Himanshu Kumar to give some written notice about it, the TI Bhairamgarh immediately wrote on a piece of paper that, “Prati, Kopa Kunjam ! Apse thana Dantewada me kuch poonch thanch karna chahta hoon. Kripya ap mere sath sadar P.S. kotwali chalein.” (I want to do some investigation with you at Dantewada Police Station. Please come with me to P.S. Kotwali). Being an Advocate present at the spot, I thought it to be my duty to accompany VCA Volunteer Kopa Kunjam to Dantewada police station. With the consent of Himanshu Kumar, Director-VCA I went alongwith Kopa Kunjam.

At Dantewada police station we were asked to sit down. After making both of us wait for about half an hour, we were asked to come and sit in a vehicle . Thinking that we were being taken to the S.P. Office, we sat in the vehicle. As vehicle proceeded, I introduced myself to the IT Bhairamgadh saying that I am an advocate, having done my law course from Hidayatullah National Law University, Raipur and am associated with Human Rights Law Network. When the vehicle crossed Dantewada, we became suspicious and asked as to where we were being taken now, to which TI, Bhairamgarh, replied, “Kopa Kunjam is now being taken to Beejapur District”. Kopa Kunjam refused to go further as he was not informed about being taken to Beejapur earlier. I also objected to it, stating that the police should follow necessary procedures under the law and should act as per guidelines of the Supreme Court and that they cannot take Mr.Kopa to Beejapur without giving any notice in this regard.

By this time, Kopa Kunjam came out from the Bolero vehicle and I also got out of the vehicle. The TI along with 2 others got hold of Mr.Kopa and with the help of around 15 S.P.O’s bundled Mr. Kopa into another vehicle which was also coming along with them. When I again resisted to such behavior saying that it was illegal to behave in this manner, two S.P.O.’s started abusing and slapping me and bundled me also inside the car. Before being bundled into car, I somehow managed inform my senior Lawyer, colleagues and friends in Delhi about this incident. Noticing this two SPOs, started slapping and beating me and tried to snatch my mobile and, but I didn’t give my mobile, but after this they force me inside the car and did not allow me use the mobile phone.

At about 5 P.M., we reached Bhairamgarh police station. The IT, Bhairamgadh asked me to give my mobile phone and also asked to switch it off and we were asked to sit there inside the police station. We were kept at a place inside police station with two S.P.O. keeping an eye on us. At about 8 p.m. we were taken for dinner in a nearby Hotel, from where we came in 15-20 minutes. At about 8:45 P.M. the officials of Bhairamgarh police station called me inside a room and tried to ask about the reason of me deciding to accompany Mr.Kopa. About three minutes later TI of Bhairamgarh started addressing me in an extremely rude and disrespectful manner and soon became violent and abusive. He started abusing me with slur and offensive language, which was followed by beatings with a thick bamboo stick and with a hard rubber cane, continuously slapping me while pulling my hair and kicking severely. After sometime he went out and started beating Kopa Kunjam. Kopa Kunjum was brought into the same room and both of us were beaten severely for 30 minutes by the TI Mr. Nand and an assistant constable Banjara, while some 15 other police staff & S.P.Os surrounded both of us. TI Mr. Nand also said that “ No Advocate in Bastar dares to speak in my presence and you talk a lot. Now show me how much you can talk! Show me how much law you know?” Later I was taken to a separate room and was questioned about the purpose of my stay in Dantewada and association with VCA. At around 10 PM, I listened someone saying that , “Sala Bada Admi hai , Delhi se Sahab ka phone aya hai.” Soon after this I was asked to write in a paper that I was brought to Bhairamgadh and as it has become late evening and there is no mode of transport and since the area is a very sensitive and unsafe, I decided to spend the night at Bhairamgarh station, where I am safe. In Bhairamgadh Police Station, they said that that Himanshu is a Naxalite and whoever is working with Himanshu is a naxalite and who stays with Himanshu it a Naxal supporter.

Mr. Kopa was very badly beaten and had received serious injuries on his chest, back and leg, due to which he was even unable to walk and sleep properly. I have got injuries on front portion of elbow of right hand, biceps and back causing severe pain and swelling. I was even not able to move my hands and back due to severe pain. I spend whole of night shivering and in pain, speculating what next is to happen.

On 11 December, 2009 at 9:30 a.m. I was sent to Dantewada police station accompanied by 4 S.P.O.’s in a vehicle and one head constable of Bhairamgarh police station, while Mr. Kopa was kept detained. When they reached Dantewada Police Station, two volunteers of VCA were called and I was handed over to them.

After being released, next date day, I went to Ambedkar Hospital, Raipur to get a medical examination done, however I was asked make a compliant before the police and I was informed that the police will come after I make the complaint and then MLC will be conducted in the presence of police. I thought of going back to Dantewada to lodge the F.I.R. but because I was scared of being implicated in any false case this time, I did not go there.

However, being very much concerned about the trend of even lawyers not being allowed to function freely and being beaten up like this, I have no other option except to write this open letter-cum-appeal addressed to every body so that the issue could be taken up by the society itself. I have been subjected this kind of brutality for working for poor and powerless. It is against law, against democracy and even against morality to do this to an advocate. If such kind of treatment is given to young lawyers who want to work towards a better society, young generation will loose hope.

Kindly take appropriate step against those who have abused power vested in them to beat and insult me in this gruesome manner and help restoring the faith of young people in the democracy and rule of law.

Yours Sincerely

Alban Toppo

Advocate