I come from Jharkhand, have spent 20 years of my life in the land of tribals - have seen some of them very closely, their hardships, their battle for life, you just can't help but admire the way they always feel content and happy. But, something has changed in the past few years, people are now afraid to pass through the very jungles which used to be symbol of natural beauty and fresh air, they only commute in daytime or with patrolling jeeps along with them.
The same innocent tribals who came to towns to do small shopping and sell fresh produce from their small farms, are now viewed with suspicion. What if the person is a Naxalite, what if he is here to spy, what if he kidnaps my son for extortion money?
The Naxalite movement has done no good to the lives of ordinary tribals, it has just made it worse. The so-called jan adalats are nothing but a formal system of stamping justice to the atrocities committed by the Party.
I recently read this article by Arundhoti Roy in Outlook, seems like she has taken the role of their spokesperson - hell bent at justifying every crime perpetrated by this armed gang of hoodlums. She seems to have drained all the grey content out of her brain and does not seem to be at all concerned by the grave internal security threat posed by this movement. She is ignorant of the challenges faced by a common man in these areas due to the ongoing war between the maoists and the administration.
Maoists are a bunch of misguided youth led by a few selfish leaders at the top who are indoctrinating innocent children to realise their selfish motives. I believe country needs a man with an iron hand to douse this fire of unrest before it assumes large proportion to burn our motherland. I sincerely wish Chidambram delivers this before it is too late.
At the same time, the Indian government would need to take sufficient measures to ensure that the tribals feel themselves as a part of the country, share the fruits of development and have enough education and reason to deny the Party a space in their backyard.
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9 comments:
Very rightly said. Hope/Wish things change in future.
--Monu.
The natural consequence of oppression is the emergence of a rebel leadership that channels the pent up frustration and anger in a challenge to oppression. More often than not this rebellion takes a violent turn; exemplified by mutinies and rebellions (India in 1857 and scattered incidents throughout the first half of the twentieth century and Naxalite movement now). As has been seen in Africa where independence from colonial rule mostly has led to oppression at the hands of your own people, such means of achieving your freedom have never benefited the natives. India was a shining (and a rare one) example of fighting oppression the right way, the non-violent way under Gandhi, Nehru and the pre-independence Congress.
I think the moot point of Arundhati Roy's article was to remind us that there is a huge swathe of people with legitimate complaints against a society that hasn't treated them well. It reminds us that these people are not born with arms on their hands and solving the problem would require understanding their perspective. I think that the article "explores" how things came to such pass that Naxalites took up arms and that is not the same thing as justifying the act. How can you solve a problem until you understand the genesis of it? How can you fight Islamic fundamentalism without understanding its genesis? You have to remember that war (against Naxalites) may lead to battle wins but it will not solve the problem in any meaningful way. I think what Arundhati Roy was attempting to do was to remind us that as a society, we cannot fight violence by perpetrating further violence. It has never solved any problem without endangering more nefarious ones and it never will.
Nice post Modi... seems that u have thought to some extent on this issue...Naxalism as a threat has multi dimensions to it as has been mentioned by you...Fact that India is growing at a rapid rate calls for including the "other India" in its wing, otherwise the growth wud nt be sustainable...By "other India" I mean the economically and socially unprivileged parts of the nation, and mind you "other India" needs a vision to identify it!!!
Nice reply from Vijit. A mature mind indeed.
@Monu/Soumya: Thanks
@Vijit: Agree with you and arundhoti that the complaints of tribals are totally legitimate but their violent actions like murder of the likes of Francis Induvar is hard to justify, I would really love the day when these complaints are dealt with compassion and on priority but simultaneously the red bloodbath needs to stop.
Few things -
(1) Arundhati Roy is a whining cry-baby. She does intelligent analysis, but never ever comes out with even a smidgen of a solution. So she should not be taken seriously or discussed.
(2) The information that people living in small towns have started suspecting tribals was a new insight. And it could only come from someone who had actually lived there. Thanks for that.
(3) The Maoists have a 40 - 50 year plan to take over the Indian state. By that time most of their leaders would either be very old or dead. How then, do they have selfish motives? In my opinion they are just misguided and the money from (probably) the Communist Party of China is running their homes and feeding their children and running the entire movement.
The actions of Naxalites are never justified... but this is the result of years of negligence and oppression. If they haven't had protested in this violent way we would have been happy with shining India forgetting the tribals even exist in our India.
And as usual, Govt. of India is concentrating to remove the effect of the problem, rather than on the cause of this.
The peaceful tribals have become enemy of India, just because the rest of India did not treat them as another Indian who deserve basic civic facilities like other Indians.
@anonymous: agree with not taking arundhoti seriously..regarding the selfish motives, the maoist leaders too know that they would never be able to take over the Indian state. They are just enjoying the external funding and the loots from the extortion money collected from businessmen, mine owners, industrialists, etc
@Dip: The govt needs to pay heed to the problems of tribals to eradicate the problem but the key issue is tribals are very different in their desires, their wants from the cosmopolitan citizen that most of us know and hence, the need is for people to go and do the ground work and reach out to the tribal masses to develop a connect.
and the sad part is even after 60 years of independence, we did not realize that until the situation went out of hand...
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