An article by Graham Peebles on the Countercurrents website brings some attention to a little known conflict so it is worth quoting from.
Kishanji, a Maoist leader is reported as saying, “We are the opposition in the true sense. All the political parties are the same in all the states. We want to destroy the state. This is a real war.” The insurgency, or “corporate war” as Arundhati Roy calls it, covers “over 40% of India’s land area, encompassing 20 of the country’s 28 states, including 223 districts (up from 55 in 2003) out of a total of 640.” Yet it remains largely hidden from the world. A war, according to the anthropologist Felix Padel, is “the worst war there has ever been in India, because it is directed against village people.” And yet, throughout the world, the majority “don’t know there is a civil war going on in India.”
India may not be choosing to feed its 450 million plus starving citizens or provide sanitation and health care to the rural poor and metropolitan slum dwellers, or even toilets to 50% of the population who defecate in the open, but it comes tenth in worldwide military expenditure, has the third largest standing army in the world and, India is a nuclear armed state. India is the third biggest dam builder in the world after China and America, 56 million people have been displaced by dam building alone since 1947. Large tracts of land are gifted to corporations for industrial arteries known as ‘Special Economic Zones (SEZs)’ and massive mining projects.
The battlefields for the forty-year internal conflict are the mineral rich afforested areas in some of the country's poorest regions – where some of the poorest people on earth live. In order of intensity the states affected, are: Chattisgarh/Jharkhand, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Orissa, Bihar, and Andhra Pradesh. These regions comprise the so-called “Red Corridor” (which covers over 1000 km) government slang for the most poor, backward and underdeveloped parts of the country. Deep within the Saranda forest in the state of Jharkhand (where Adivasi’s make up 26% of the population) lie’s the world’s largest deposit of iron-ore. The mining giants are firmly in residence in the north eastern state, which is now “a fully militarized zone, there are over a hundred bases with a total of 50,000 official paramilitary troops involved in military action, plus the mining corporations’ security forces.”
It is here that paramilitary forces, police and army are pitted against Maoist/Naxalite insurgents (numbering around 20,000 armed fighters with 50,000 supporters), made up largely of India’s indigenous people – the Adivasis (from adi meaning from the earliest times), a marginalised minority accounting for around 8% (or 85 million) of the population. In addition to paramilitary troops, “the state has also used death squads known as Salwa Judum (SJ), [set up in 2005] meaning Purification Hunt, to spread a reign of terror and drive out Adivasis from villages for the benefit of companies — and on a massive scale”. The vigilante group, which contained Adivasi in its ranks was banned in Chattisgarh by the Supreme Court in 2011, but the damage done was immense: “displacing 300,000 Adivasis, killing, raping, and looting them and burning down their villages. Five hundred charges of murder, 103 of arson, and 99 of rape have been levelled by citizens against the Salwa Judum, but the Chattisgarh government has not investigated or processed a single case, According to Human Rights Watch.
The true cause of instability is extreme inequality and social injustice, feeding crippling levels of poverty added to a law-and-order issue revealing the flaws in the way India is governed. The government has fuelled discontent and anger amongst the marginalized majority through lack of development, political and administrative corruption, callousness in places where there is less bang for the political buck, mis-governance or non-governance.
Along with the Dalit community (15% or 190 million people) the Adivasis have been completely excluded from twenty years of economic growth (averaging 9%) and are seen by the government and the ruling elite in the cities as an embarrassment, an unsightly hangover from the past to be swept aside, allowed to fester and die in rural poverty or urban degradation. Infant mortality amongst Adivasis (or Scheduled Tribes – of which there are 635 distinct groups) is 57%, and child malnutrition 73% (the national average is the highest in the world at 48%), and 42% of under fives are undernourished.
Some Adivasi groups have formed their own resistance movements – in Orissa for example, several tribes came together forming the Chasi Mulia Sangh, a tribal land movement (unconnected to the Maoists they assert) 5,000 strong. Armed with traditional weapons they are fighting for human rights and collective tribal ownership of their ancestral lands. They “claim they are caught between the two fires of an escalating Maoists/Naxalite insurgency and the governments paramilitary backlash” . Such movements face injustice and violent repression from security forces, which serve to push these groups into the arms of the Maoists. Once associated with ‘India’s greatest security threat’, “armed police are sent in, and village land is forcibly taken over with impunity. The Adivasi people have lived in harmony with the land for generations: within their culture the natural environment is sacred and belongs to the whole community – there is no concept of individual ownership. They have been condemned to live in grinding poverty outside the economic growth bubble by a government that is firmly wedded to the corporations.
Corruption is endemic within all sectors of Indian politics, the police and it is said the judiciary, and although large sums of money are ‘officially’ “being spent on tribal groups, only 1% or 2% reaches them, 98% is swindled, siphoned off” states Professor Manmath Kundu Ibid. “Thousands of Adivasi farmers have had their land stolen” explained Chasi Mulia Sangh leader Nachika Linga], and with the land goes the culture, including language and traditional practices. The Adivasi in Dr. Kundu’s view, “have a very bleak future, because the [economic] development is not ‘tribal friendly’ and means ‘de-tribalisation… ultimately there will be hardly any tribal groups left in the true sense”. According to the 1894 Land Acquisition Act the government is not bound to compensate displaced people with anything other than a cash payment – little use to an illiterate Adivasi man – women get nothing at all, who has just lost his home, his livelihood and his cultural heritage. This is feeding an insurgency which has taken tens of thousands of lives. A media-managed conflict in which paramilitary forces have herded large numbers of forest dwellers off their ancestral land into police camps, or forced to migrate to cities where they join the millions living sub-human lives in the slums.
The violent pattern of mining, environmental destruction, death and displacement of native peoples is an ancient story. It is the story of the powerful versus the vulnerable, corporations versus indigenous people, who happen to live on ancestral land rich in mineral deposits worth trillions of dollars. Corporations are free to suck out the minerals and forest resources and in the process transform large fertile areas into industrial wastelands. The Adivasi are simply an inconvenience.
“The first step towards reimagining a world gone terribly wrong would be to stop the annihilation of those who have a different imagination.” - Arundhati Roy
And as Graham Peebles adds “A re-imagination based on right relationship, with one another and environment; a life free from the insatiable drive for material possessions and accumulation to one rooted in sufficiency, simplicity and sharing.”
Kishanji, a Maoist leader is reported as saying, “We are the opposition in the true sense. All the political parties are the same in all the states. We want to destroy the state. This is a real war.” The insurgency, or “corporate war” as Arundhati Roy calls it, covers “over 40% of India’s land area, encompassing 20 of the country’s 28 states, including 223 districts (up from 55 in 2003) out of a total of 640.” Yet it remains largely hidden from the world. A war, according to the anthropologist Felix Padel, is “the worst war there has ever been in India, because it is directed against village people.” And yet, throughout the world, the majority “don’t know there is a civil war going on in India.”
India may not be choosing to feed its 450 million plus starving citizens or provide sanitation and health care to the rural poor and metropolitan slum dwellers, or even toilets to 50% of the population who defecate in the open, but it comes tenth in worldwide military expenditure, has the third largest standing army in the world and, India is a nuclear armed state. India is the third biggest dam builder in the world after China and America, 56 million people have been displaced by dam building alone since 1947. Large tracts of land are gifted to corporations for industrial arteries known as ‘Special Economic Zones (SEZs)’ and massive mining projects.
The battlefields for the forty-year internal conflict are the mineral rich afforested areas in some of the country's poorest regions – where some of the poorest people on earth live. In order of intensity the states affected, are: Chattisgarh/Jharkhand, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Orissa, Bihar, and Andhra Pradesh. These regions comprise the so-called “Red Corridor” (which covers over 1000 km) government slang for the most poor, backward and underdeveloped parts of the country. Deep within the Saranda forest in the state of Jharkhand (where Adivasi’s make up 26% of the population) lie’s the world’s largest deposit of iron-ore. The mining giants are firmly in residence in the north eastern state, which is now “a fully militarized zone, there are over a hundred bases with a total of 50,000 official paramilitary troops involved in military action, plus the mining corporations’ security forces.”
It is here that paramilitary forces, police and army are pitted against Maoist/Naxalite insurgents (numbering around 20,000 armed fighters with 50,000 supporters), made up largely of India’s indigenous people – the Adivasis (from adi meaning from the earliest times), a marginalised minority accounting for around 8% (or 85 million) of the population. In addition to paramilitary troops, “the state has also used death squads known as Salwa Judum (SJ), [set up in 2005] meaning Purification Hunt, to spread a reign of terror and drive out Adivasis from villages for the benefit of companies — and on a massive scale”. The vigilante group, which contained Adivasi in its ranks was banned in Chattisgarh by the Supreme Court in 2011, but the damage done was immense: “displacing 300,000 Adivasis, killing, raping, and looting them and burning down their villages. Five hundred charges of murder, 103 of arson, and 99 of rape have been levelled by citizens against the Salwa Judum, but the Chattisgarh government has not investigated or processed a single case, According to Human Rights Watch.
The true cause of instability is extreme inequality and social injustice, feeding crippling levels of poverty added to a law-and-order issue revealing the flaws in the way India is governed. The government has fuelled discontent and anger amongst the marginalized majority through lack of development, political and administrative corruption, callousness in places where there is less bang for the political buck, mis-governance or non-governance.
Along with the Dalit community (15% or 190 million people) the Adivasis have been completely excluded from twenty years of economic growth (averaging 9%) and are seen by the government and the ruling elite in the cities as an embarrassment, an unsightly hangover from the past to be swept aside, allowed to fester and die in rural poverty or urban degradation. Infant mortality amongst Adivasis (or Scheduled Tribes – of which there are 635 distinct groups) is 57%, and child malnutrition 73% (the national average is the highest in the world at 48%), and 42% of under fives are undernourished.
Some Adivasi groups have formed their own resistance movements – in Orissa for example, several tribes came together forming the Chasi Mulia Sangh, a tribal land movement (unconnected to the Maoists they assert) 5,000 strong. Armed with traditional weapons they are fighting for human rights and collective tribal ownership of their ancestral lands. They “claim they are caught between the two fires of an escalating Maoists/Naxalite insurgency and the governments paramilitary backlash” . Such movements face injustice and violent repression from security forces, which serve to push these groups into the arms of the Maoists. Once associated with ‘India’s greatest security threat’, “armed police are sent in, and village land is forcibly taken over with impunity. The Adivasi people have lived in harmony with the land for generations: within their culture the natural environment is sacred and belongs to the whole community – there is no concept of individual ownership. They have been condemned to live in grinding poverty outside the economic growth bubble by a government that is firmly wedded to the corporations.
Corruption is endemic within all sectors of Indian politics, the police and it is said the judiciary, and although large sums of money are ‘officially’ “being spent on tribal groups, only 1% or 2% reaches them, 98% is swindled, siphoned off” states Professor Manmath Kundu Ibid. “Thousands of Adivasi farmers have had their land stolen” explained Chasi Mulia Sangh leader Nachika Linga], and with the land goes the culture, including language and traditional practices. The Adivasi in Dr. Kundu’s view, “have a very bleak future, because the [economic] development is not ‘tribal friendly’ and means ‘de-tribalisation… ultimately there will be hardly any tribal groups left in the true sense”. According to the 1894 Land Acquisition Act the government is not bound to compensate displaced people with anything other than a cash payment – little use to an illiterate Adivasi man – women get nothing at all, who has just lost his home, his livelihood and his cultural heritage. This is feeding an insurgency which has taken tens of thousands of lives. A media-managed conflict in which paramilitary forces have herded large numbers of forest dwellers off their ancestral land into police camps, or forced to migrate to cities where they join the millions living sub-human lives in the slums.
The violent pattern of mining, environmental destruction, death and displacement of native peoples is an ancient story. It is the story of the powerful versus the vulnerable, corporations versus indigenous people, who happen to live on ancestral land rich in mineral deposits worth trillions of dollars. Corporations are free to suck out the minerals and forest resources and in the process transform large fertile areas into industrial wastelands. The Adivasi are simply an inconvenience.
“The first step towards reimagining a world gone terribly wrong would be to stop the annihilation of those who have a different imagination.” - Arundhati Roy
And as Graham Peebles adds “A re-imagination based on right relationship, with one another and environment; a life free from the insatiable drive for material possessions and accumulation to one rooted in sufficiency, simplicity and sharing.”
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