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Police state, visitors, and anthropology
3rd January 2010
Ujjwal Kumar Singh, Professor of Political Science, Delhi University and I have
just returned (January 1st) from a visit to the police state of Chhattisgarh.
Ujjwal had gone for research and I had gone for a
combination of research and verification purposes to assess the livelihood
situation of villagers for our case before the Supreme Court, both entirely
legitimate activities. In Dantewada, we had checked into Hotel Madhuban on the
29th of December around 2 pm without any problems, only to be told later that
night that the management required the entire hotel to be instantly emptied out
because they were doing some puja to mark the death anniversary of the hotel
owner. We refused to leave at night, and were told we would have to leave at 6
am instead because the rooms had to be cleaned. As expected, other guests
checked in the next morning, puja notwithstanding.
At Sukma, we were detained by the police and SPOs at the entrance to the town
from about 7.30 till 10 pm, with no explanation for why they had stopped us,
and no questions as to why we were there or what our plans were. We were denied
lodging – all the hotel owners had been told to claim they were full and refuse
us rooms, and the forest and PWD departments had been advised not to make their
guesthouses available, since ‘Naxalites’ were coming to stay. Indeed, the
police told us that these days Naxalites had become so confident that they
roamed around in jeeps on the highways. Since everything was mysteriously full
in a small town like Sukma, the police advised us to leave that very night for
Jagdalpur, some 100 km away. We decided instead to spend the night in the jeep,
since we did not want to jeopardize friends by staying in their homes. Later,
we contacted friends and they arranged for us to stay in the college boys
hostel, since students were
away on vacation.
At midnight on the 30th, 6-7 armed SPOs burst into our room at the college
hostel, guns cocked, and then spent the night patrolling the grounds.
Evidently, the SPOs have seen many films and know precisely how to achieve
dramatic effect. They were also trying to open our jeep, presumably to plant
something. The next morning we were followed by seven armed SPOs with AK 47s
from Sukma in an unmarked white car, and this was replaced at Tongpal by twelve
SPOs, in two jeeps. None of them had any name plates. Given that we could have
had no normal conversation with anyone, we decided to do all the things one
normally postpones. In twenty years of visiting Bastar, for example, I have
never seen the Kutumbsar caves. Everywhere we went, including the haat at
Tongpal, the Tirathgarh waterfall and the Kutumbsar caves, as well as shops in
Jagdalpur, the SPOs followed us, one pace behind, with their guns poised at the
ready. Two women SPOs had been deputed specially
for me. The SPOs also intimidated our jeep drivers by taking photos of them
and the vehicle.
DGP Vishwaranjan claimed on the phone that it was for our ‘protection’ that we
were given this treatment since there was news of Naxalite troop movement, and
has gone on to say (Indian Express, 3rd Jan), “anything can happen. Maoists can
attack the activists to put the blame on the police. We will deploy a few
companies of security forces for the security of the activists.”
Clearly all the other tourists in Tirathgarh and Kutumbsar were under no threat
from the Maoists – only we, who have been repeatedly accused of being Naxalite
supporters, were likely targets. As for the police ensuring that we got no
accommodation and trying to send us from Sukma to Jagdalpur in the middle of
the night, such pure concern for our welfare is touching. The SP of Dantewada,
Amaresh Misra, was somewhat more honest when he said he had instructions from
above to ‘escort’ out ‘visiting dignitaries.’ The Additional SP shouted at us
to be more ‘constructive’ – not surprisingly, though, with 12 swaggering SPOs
snapping at one’s heels, one is not always at one’s constructive best. The next
time, I
promise to try.
The SPOs in their jeeps followed us some way from Jagdalpur to Raipur, even
when we were on the bus. In addition, two armed constables and an SI were sent
on the bus to ensure we got to Raipur. We overheard the SI telling the armed
constables to “take us down at Dhamtari” but fortunately this plan was
abandoned. Poor man, he narrowly missed getting a medal for bravery, and as the
good DGP tells the readers of the Indian Express, it would have been passed off
as an attack by Naxalites. On reaching Raipur, the SI was confused. Shouting
loudly and forgetting himself, as bad cell connections are wont to make us all
do, he said “The IG and SP had told me to follow them, but now what do I do
with them.”? The voice on the other end told him to go home. We flew out of
Raipur the next morning. In real terms, this was a rather pointless exercise
for the CG govt, since we were scheduled to come home the following day anyway.
But symbolically, it allowed the
SPOs to gloat that they had driven us out.
The CG government obviously wants to ensure that no news on their offensive or
even on the everyday trauma of villagers reaches outside. Many villages have
been depopulated in the south, both due to the immense fear created by Op.
Green Hunt and the failure of the monsoons this year. All the young people are
migrating to AP for coolie work. There are sporadic encounters – the day we
were in Dantewada (29.12.09), two ‘Naxalites’ were killed in the jungles of
Vechapal and three arrested. A week before seven people had been killed in
Gumiapal. Who is getting killed and how is anyone’s guess. The Maoists are
blockading roads with trees and trenches, and killing ‘informers’. There is
compete terror, fear and hunger throughout the district.
While the CG govt is busy providing us ‘protection’, it has refused to restored
the armed guard that was taken away from CPI leader Manish Kunjam. He has had
credible reports that his life is under threat, because of his opposition both
to multinationals like Tata and Essar and to the Salwa Judum and Operation
Green Hunt, and his independent stance against both state and Maoist violence.
Despite Raman Singh assuring the CPI leaders that this would be done, the DGP
has refused to act.
It is also remarkable that a government which can waste so many armed SPOs for
an entire day and night on two people who do nothing more dangerous than teach
and write, has been unable to catch the SPOs who are responsible for raping six
young women. Despite the trial court finding the SPOs and Salwa Judum leaders
prima facie guilty of rape and issuing a standing arrest warrant on 30.10.2009,
even two months later, they are ‘absconding’. Some of them even give public
speeches, but they are invisible to the police. In the meantime, when Himanshu
reported that the rape victims were kept for 3-4 days in Dornapal thana and
generally terrorized, the Chief Secretary’s response was to accuse him of
running an ‘ugly motivated campaign.’ All good men these, good fathers, good
husbands, good citizens. So was DGP Rathore and all the honourable men who
defended him, promoted him and awarded him despite what he did to Ruchika.
Unfortunately for these adivasi girls, they are not even middle class.
Bastar can no more get rid of me than I can get rid of Bastar. In 1992, because
I attended meetings to observe the protests by the villagers of Maolibhata
against the steel plant that was proposed to be sited
there, the government denied me access to the local archives. But it was the
government which then fell, and my book on Bastar, Subalterns and Sovereigns,
was published by 1997. In 2005, they stopped us as part of the PUDR-PUCL
factfinding on Salwa Judum; in 2006, as part of the Indepdendent Citizens
Initiative, we were stopped and searched in Bhairamgarh thana by out-of-control
SPOs, and one of us was nearly lynched inside the station, while the thanedar
was too drunk to read the letter we carried
from the Chief Secretary. In 2007-8, the then SP, Rahul Sharma, fabricated
photos of me with my arms around armed Maoist women and showed them to visiting
journalists and others to try and discredit my independence. He later claimed,
when challenged, that the photos were of one “Ms. Jeet’ and it was he who had
verified the truth. In 2009, we narrowly escaped a mob of around 300 Salwa
Judum leaders, police and SPOs, who, however, took away mobile phones, a camera
charger and vehicle registration documents from the jeep we had parked there.
The police refused to register our complaint and detained us for questioning
for a few hours, even though we had got the consent of the District Collector
and the
Mirtur CRPF contingent to visit Vechhapal.
For anthropologists, our professional life is difficult to separate from our
personal – our research depends on developing deep friendships with the people
we ‘study’. In the twenty years that I have been visiting Bastar off and on, I
have acquired a range of friends, acquaintances and people who are like family
members, whose concerns are my concerns. This does not in any way diminish
one’s commitment to independence and objectivity. As Kathleen Gough said in the
1970s, when the American Anthropological Association was debating whether to
pass a resolution against the war in Vietnam, ‘genocide is not in the
professional interests of anthropology.’
Nandini Sundar
Nandini Sundar is Professor of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, Delhi
University, and Co-editor, Contributions to Indian Sociology.
She has previously worked at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance,
Jawaharlal Nehru University, the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi and the
University of Edinburgh.
Peace Is Doable
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