Caught in the CrossFire

‘We die when we take sides and we die even when we decide to stay neutral’.

These are the exact words of a villager of Sindhesur village in Gadchiroli.

A massive police encounter followed by a Maoist counter attack had claimed the lives of two villagers apart from 4 Maoists and 1 cop. Not too long ago, a Maoist ambush had left several cops dead when a hidden IED or improvised explosive device had gone off. In that case, several villagers had complained that the cops were using them as shields. These aren’t isolated cases at all, as such allegations have been made about both Maoists and cops earlier as well, whether by villagers, cops or by’ neutral observers’. The security forces as well as Maoists exchange blames and the ordinary villagers, often from the lowest rungs of the social order, find themselves getting caught in the cross fire, quite literally.

So what is the solution? Who is really to blame?

 The answer to this question is not to be found in some superficial who did what sort of fact finding. Of course it is possible that in some cases the Maoists used some villagers as shields, although they have denied this allegation. It is quite possible that the rebels execute villagers too often merely on suspicion of being police informers. On the other hand, living in constant fear, not to mention abject poverty can really drive the poor villagers to sometimes take the sides of the cops. But none of this leads us to a satisfactory explanation of the situation.

 The reason is pretty straight forward , so far the analysis has only been skin deep. We haven’t yet brought into consideration socio economic and political reasons that led to the growth of the so called left wing extrimism in the first place. Take the case of what Neutral observations like Samarendra Das’sarticle and this blog, Moonchasing or even Red Sun: Travels in Naxalite Country: Sudeep Chakravarti. They are not overtly Maoist sympathizers, but they also acknowledge how the state machinery exploits using the police and paramilitary. If you look at the geographic distribution of naxalite infestation (that’s the way mainstream media puts it anyway) you will find they are in the poorest of eastern states in the country. Not only that, the rulers are more than willing to hand over the natural resources to big corporate houses even if it is at the cost of environmental damage and loss of natural habitat for the thousands of villagers, most of them adivasis.

 The adivasi and dalit struggle has been a long one, in the states of bihar, orissa, chattisgarh. If the state wouldn’t have pushed the inhabitants of the land to big companies like Vedanta and Tata, much to the detriment of the adivasis, with their sub machine gun armed goons terrorizing the villagers, then perhaps such “Extremism” would not have thrived!

 What happened in Chattisgarh in the name of countering the Maoist violence is well known. The SPOs or Special Police officers formed what is (in)famously known as Salwa Judum, which went so out of hand that human rights organizations like PUCL started to raise a hue and cry over it, and quite legitimately so. Women found themselves caught between the SPOs and Maoists in the worst ways possible, since rape was used as a tool of intimidation often.

Nandigram, Singur, Kudankulam, Jangalmahal, Kalinganagar, Niyamgiri Hills, Dantewada, Posco site all stand testimony among others to the monstrosity that the state machinery can unleash in the face of slightest opposition to their regressive decisions of forceful land acquisitions and harmful projects.

What we as citizens must realize is that for a genuine solution, the answer lies in not just finding faults with the rebels but actually understanding their predicament and working towards establishing a more just state of affairs.