http://brpbhaskar.blogspot.com/2009/10/raise-your-voice-against-military.html
The
following is a joint statement issued by the Campaign for Survival and
Dignity, a national platform of Adivasi and forest dwellers' mass
organizations from ten States:
The Campaign for Survival and Dignity unequivocally condemns the reported
plans for a military “offensive” by the government in the country's major
forest and tribal areas. This offensive, ostensibly targeted against the CPI
(Maoist), is a smoke screen for an assault against the people, especially
adivasis, aimed at suppressing all dissent, all resistance and engineering
the takeover of their resources. Certain facts make this clear:
• The government tells us that this offensive will make it possible for the
“state to function” in these areas and fill the “vacuum of governance.” This
is grossly misleading. The Indian state is very, very active in these areas,
often in its most brutal and violent form. A vivid example is the illegal
eviction of more than 3,00,000 families by the Forest Departments a few
years ago. Laws have been totally disregarded; Constitutional protections
for adivasi rights blatantly ignored and their rights over water, forest and
land (jal, jangal, jamin) glaringly violated. Every month an increasing
number of people are jailed, beaten and killed by the police. If this is the
picture of what “absence” of the state means, people are terrified of what
the “presence” of the state will mean. It can only mean converting
brutalized governance into militarized rule, a total negation of democracy.
• This is not a war over “development.” People's struggles in India today
are over democracy and dignity - Meaningful development must contribute to
strengthening the right of all people to their resources and their
production, and thereby to control over their own destiny. For generations,
adivasis have fought for their Constitutional rights and entitlements. More
recently, mass democratic movements have fought for new laws and policies,
such as the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act (PESA), the Forest
Rights Act, the right to work and the right to food, in addition to earlier
laws like the Minimum Wages Act, the Restoration of Alienated Lands Acts,
and land reform and moneylending laws. These laws make it possible for
people to fight for greater control over their lives, their livelihoods,
their lands and their forests. However these laws are respected more in the
breach; if the government wants “development”, let it first stop the blatant
disregard of its own laws. Let people determine the path of their own
development, in accordance with their rights over their resources and the
type of infrastructure they desire. The Constitution itself requires this
kind of planning. The claim that “development” can be provided through
military force is both absurd and ridiculous.
• This war is not about “national security”; it is about ‘securing’ the
interests of global and Indian capital and big business. Any government
worried about security would send its troops against mining mafias, the
forest mafias, violent vigilante groups like the salwa judum and others.
Rather than being curbed, these killers are in fact supported by the police.
Have the security forces ever been deployed to defend the people struggling
to protect themselves, their forests, their livelihoods and their futures?
The answer is no. The notion of “security” being advanced by the government
clearly has nothing to do with the people. Rather, it is to enable big
business to engage in robbery and expropriation of resources, which they
have decided will be one of their main sources of accumulation. Hence,
mining, “infrastructure”, real estate, land grabbing, all aimed at
super-profits, are being projected as “development” needed by the people.
Huge amounts of international and government money are being pumped into
so-called “forestry projects” which displace people from their lands and
destroy biodiversity (even while they are trumpeted as a strategy for
climate change). The UPA is rushing into agreements with the US and other
imperial countries to throw open mining and land to international
exploitation. But where do the forests, land, water and minerals lie? They
are found in the forest and tribal areas, where people - some organised
under the CPI (Maoist), some organized under democratic movements, some in
spontaneous local struggles, some simply fighting in whatever manner they
can – are resisting the destruction of their homes, resources and their
lives. The “offensive against the Maoists” is only a subterfuge to crush
this citizens’ resistance and to provide an excuse for more abuse of power,
more brutality and more injustice.
• The government knows perfectly well that it cannot destroy the CPI
(Maoist), or any people's struggle, through military action. How can the
armed forces identify who is a “Maoist” and who is not? The use of brute
military force will result in the slaughter of thousands of people in
prolonged, bloody and brutal guerrilla warfare. This has been the result of
every “security offensive” in India's history from Kashmir to Nagaland. So
why do this? And why now? Unless the goal has nothing to do with “wiping out
the Maoists” and everything to do with having an excuse for the permanent
presence of lakhs of troops, arms and equipment in these areas. To protect
and serve whom?
• Hence the need for fear mongering and hysteria about Maoist “sympathisers”
and their “infiltration” into “civil society.” The government has a very
long history of labeling any form of dissent as “Naxalite” or “Maoist.” The
Maoists' politics are known; their positions are public; the only secret
aspect of their work is their personal identities and military tactics. We
who work in these areas do not fear this bogey of “infiltration” in our
groups by Maoists, for the different stands taken by our organizations and
theirs are clear, and in some areas there are open disputes. This
scaremongering is just an excuse to justify a crackdown on all forms of
dissent and democratic protest in these areas, a crushing of all people's
resistance, and the branding of any questioning, any demand for justice, as
“Maoist.”
In the final analysis, peace and justice will only come to India's workers,
peasants, adivasis, dalits and other oppressed sections through the mass
democratic struggle of the people. A democratic struggle requires democratic
space. The conversion of a region into a war zone, by anyone, is
unacceptable. In the forest areas in particular, there is now a need for a
new peace, one that can only be achieved through a genuine democratic
dialogue between the political forces involved. For this to happen, this
horrific “offensive” must first be called off. If the government really
wishes to claim that it is committed to protecting people and their rights,
let its actions comply with the requirements of law, justice and democracy.
The following are members of the Campaign for Survival and Dignity:
Bharat Jan Andolan, National Front for Tribal Self Rule, Jangal Adhikar
Sangharsh Samiti (Mah), Adivasi Mahasabha (Guj), Adivasi Jangal Janjeevan
Andolan (D&NH), Jangal Jameen Jan Andolan (Raj), Madhya Pradesh Jangal
Jeevan Adhikar Bachao Andolan, Jan Shakti Sanghatan (Chat), Peoples Alliance
for Livelihood Rights, Chattisgarh Mukti Morcha, Orissa Jan Sangharsh
Morcha, Campaign for Survival & Dignity (Ori), Orissa Jan Adhikar Morcha,
Adivasi Aikya Vedike (AP), Campaign for Survival and Dignity – TN, Bharat
Jan Andolan (Jhar).
--
"Sometimes — quite often — the same people who are capable of a radical
questioning of, say, economic neo-liberalism or the role of the state, are
deeply conservative socially — about women, marriage, sexuality, our
so-called 'family values' — sometimes they're so doctrinaire that you don't
know where the establishment stops and the resistance begins. For example,
how many Gandhian/Maoist/ Marxist Brahmins or upper caste Hindus would be
happy if their children married Dalits or Muslims, or declared themselves to
be gay? Quite often, the people whose side you're on, politically, have
absolutely no place for a person like you in their social, cultural or
religious imagination.That's a knotty problem politically radical people can
come at you with the most breathtakingly conservative social views and make
nonsense of the way in which you have ordered your world and your way of
thinking about it and you have to find a way of accommodating these
contradictions within your worldview."
-Arundhati Roy
ANIL
Anil Tharayath Varghese
New Delhi-110058
INDIA
Mobile - 09971170738
email - [email protected]
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