“Mark my words, the day is not far when they(Maoists) will rule a grand majority of India. These 200 districts will become 400 in no time, and inch towards more. No government in India will be able to stop their growth through police, Salva Judums or army” Arindam Chaudhary
While this extreme statement is the hallmark of ‘Management Gurus’ to ensure being noticed and quoted more, this nonetheless is possible. Being another of the middle class indifferent Indian, I hardly cared or noticed any news about the Maoists, but the massacre in dantewada which shook the nation recently, got me interested into what was going on. That my family is staying quite close to the ground zero of April 2010 massacre, can be another idle reason. Adolf Hitler has written in his autobiography about how the media of Germany at the time was not showing the correct picture of Deutsland of the time to the common public and how it was in the control of a few. And this is India we are talking about. The extent to which the rules, laws, judiciary, elections, media and perception here can be subverted can be understood only after a long time spent in the country. If during this time, you are only following the internet items like the Governer’s story, or the extent to which our netas care about our ‘people’, the qualification of our PM, the Industrial growth story of the country, you will be amused. In case you have the typical Indian quality of following the news in a little details, you will be frustrated like most of the rediff.com commentators are. In case you had the divine opportunity to work closely with the government system in the country, it would be more hilarious than ‘Yes Minister”, more scandalous than Princess Diana, more juicy than Rakhi Sawant news and more heart wrenching than the persecuting of the Jews by Nazis.
But what if you are living in a forest, having no electricity, symbol of education, totally cut off from the mainstream economic strides of the democratic giants, whose boundaries you don’t know. What if, all you know is the few square kilometers of forest around you which you worship as a God and which is the source of livelihood for you. What if you don’t know that education is your fundamental right and what if the only understanding of government or ‘India’ that you came to know of was the visit by the forest guards who come and collect money from you or some trucks you might have seen passing by, collecting the woods of trees, which is home for you. What if you suddenly see that the number of trucks coming closer and closer to your small, unknown village is increasing by the day and what if you come to know that 600 villages have been burnt down by some people and your turn might come any time. What if some strangers come to your village with arms and introduce themselves as “Salwa Judum” and ask you to leave your forest, your home, your village, and move to camps created by the government somewhere unknown. What if a slight protest may cause some of your village members to be killed or beaten mercilessly? Would you get violent? If yes, the rest of the content is useless for you, if not, read on.
What if this whole practice is institutionalized? As in, this is not some stray incident, but a regular phenomenon happenning over a course of days and then months and then years. And the pollution from the city is reaching the forests now, the dust, the ores being mined in near by areas. What if some of your village member recites to you the destruction and apathy the ecology of the near by areas are facing. What if next night, once more a group of people come to your village with arms. But this time instead of asking you to move to camp or beating a group of people to coerce the whole village into fear of the inevitable, in case they chose not to obey the dictat of the 'government', they tell you that they are here to help you. They tell you that they have arms and that their 'motive' is to empower the poor and the helpless. They give you confidency that you can fight the police force, that now you also have guns at your disposal apart from the regular hunting arms like bows and arrows. What if you are told by these people that you actually have a right to live and that you. That right to life is something even the government cannot take away from you even if it wanted to because it was an international obligation for every government which was signatory to Geneva convention. Then you start wondering , is this really true? Then how come, your village folks are getting killed and tortured like animals for years and nothing is happening to the offenders, how come even the police are refusing to take up your complaint. By this time, amidst all the mylee, you have heard one word which is dreaded now even more than the government, police and the forest ranger. This one word has been reverberating across all the groups of people who have even visited the village, or you have come into contact with, to try and find out the reason for this mindless violence - Company. You have heard through various people that there is something called 'company' that wants to take away everything from you, your land , your forest gods, the mountains. The place where your forefathers have lived for many thousands of years is not going to belong to your children now. It is going to belong to 'Company'. What does the company want to do with it. No one was bothered for last 6000 years or so. Well, people from the village who have travelled to the 'cities' inform you that they want to dig the mountains, clear the forests. Would your head now be spinning, thinking are these people mad?? Why would someone want to defile the Mountain and forest 'God' like this. Why would anyone want to kill the very same thing which provides us food, shelter, house and everything that we need. And the answer you get is Ores. There is something in the land which is very costly for them. So now, the little logic that you have developed in the forests, tells you that only reason all this mayhem is going on is because of this thing called 'Ore' which is present under the land. So all this burning of villages and killings in mid night, the torture of men women and children and in your village, uprooting of 600 villages over last three years, is because they want to take away 'your' land and give it to 'company' which is going to bring down all the trees and dig all the mountains, and take this thing called Ore. Would this be enough to get you violent against the people who are coming to enforce this? Would you be ready to take help of the people with guns who offered you help against the people wearing same uniforms with guns who are going to come to kill you.
(To be Continued...)
0 comments:
Post a Comment