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Editorial
Be In The Forefront of Rights
Battles
 India is
presently preparing to fight a war against the poorest of the poor,
and it is doing so because the richest of the rich are eyeing the
minerals and the land where the adivasis live. The adivasis, the
tribals, regard the Maoists as their friends for it is these rebels
who have stood by them.
All the normal
channels of redress are closed for them. The police beat them. The
political parties – be they the Congress or the Bharatiya Janata
Party – are with the Salwa Judum. The courts do not give them a
hearing. The media does not care. Where else will they go except to
the Maoists?
When the police
attack them, it is the Maoists who save them. As human rights
activist Himanshu Kumar who has spent time in Dantewada explained in
his talk on 31 October 2009 at the Press Club, Mumbai, "This is the
fight of the poor. If the centre thinks it can crush these people,
it is mistaken. Sometimes extreme oppression can embolden those who
are fighting."
As the
accompanying article on this page explains, and as the Voices For
Freedom brought out succintly, India is failing all its minorities
and marginalised people in a blatant fashion. Government is using
landmines in the Naxal areas just as the maosts are accused of
doing.
In the forests
of Dantewada, people live like aboriginals used to, in tune with
nature. Natural justice prevails there. In the jungles, there is no
police, no crime. But the Indian state is taking these new entities
there. The idea of state terrorism cannot be more blatant than seen
in the case of Salwa Judam. Since Salwa Judum knew that Maoists had
support among the adivasis, they are taking the lead in emptying the
villages and forcing them into camps near police stations.
The State has
created a situation in which the adivasi looks upon his own fellow
countryman as an enemy.
The Supreme
Court has ordered the government to rehabilitate the villagers,
compensate
them. Not one
village was rehabilitated, nor one adivasi compensated. On 10 June
2008, the Supreme Court gave instructions that the National Human
Rights Commission (NHRC) investigate the conditions in Dantewada in
the wake of Salwa Judum.
The fact of the
matter is that the government does not want peace; it wants land.
The PM and the Home Minister are happily concocting the blatant lie
that the Maoists are the greatest internal security threat.
In what kind of
a society does the the country's government demand that the thinking
men and women in the society should stop thinking about what,
according to the government, is the greatest threat to the country?
Clearly, the government wants to think on behalf of the people and
tell them what is right and what is wrong. It does not want the
intellectual component from the intellectual class.
Clearly, since
it is the corporate and the MNCs that are part of the ruling elite
and it is they who are deciding the major agendas of any government
in a liberalized capital-intensive credit-driven economy, it is easy
to brand the Maoists as the greatest internal security threat.
The strategy has
been employed by many regimes to lull the people into false tags and
labels. The stereotyping of the Muslim as terrorist, the
stereotyping of the Sikhs as separatists, the stereotyping of the
justice-seekers as trouble makers, the labeling of those fighting
for the community’s self-respect as nuisance makers is all part of
the classic Indian psyche that is controlled and maneuvered by the
entrenched brahamanical power structures.
We need to take
up a challenge on all fronts, and the Sikh community must be a an
active part of the fights for justice going around the country. As
well known scholar Cynthia Mahmood is fond of saying, the Sikhs are
the tall poppies in the field of human rights struggle and the cruel
hands of the marauders are likely to target them the first. We think
it is the blessing from the Akal Purakh that we are always chosen
for being in the fore front of the great battles for glory of the
mankind, and we shall not fail the Guru.
25
November 2009
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