The End of Naxalism: The End of Accountability

https://thewire.in/rights/the-end-of-naxalism-the-end-of-accountability 

In conversation with Kunal Kamra on Adivasi rights

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6DeNNqzvl6M&t=185s

Will Modi Sarkar listen to the adivasis of Bastar now that the Maoist insurgency is nearing its end?

 Shalini Gera, advocate, and I had a conversation with Ajoy Ashirwad of The Wire 30 May 2025

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIWfCGXCMpE

Peace talks between Government and Maoists must include Affected Citizens

My article in The Wire Hindi on need for peace talks

https://thewirehindi.com/301638/peace-talks-between-government-and-maoists-must-include-affected-citizens/

And a slightly updated version in the English Wire.in

https://thewire.in/rights/chhattisgarh-union-govt-must-declare-ceasefire-with-maoists-affected-citizens-must-get-a-voice

Umar Khalid, the Historian

Muslims in India, somewhat like Adivasis, are always being told to ‘integrate’ and to join the ‘mainstream’. The difference with Muslims and Adivasis is that the former are seen as unwilling to be ‘mainstreamed’ and the latter as incapable of it. The assumption is always that the ‘main-stream’ is an upper-caste Hindu river, singularly flowing without any input from minority streams.  At the same time, when Muslims, Dalits and Adivasis fill the jails disproportionately and are denied bail when others get it for the same offence, then there is no admission of how the mainstream has excluded them. 

When a Muslim like Umar Khalid crosses boundaries, there is a further panic attack. A young articulate Muslim man who does not wear a skull cap, who is an atheist, who did his Phd from JNU in history on Adivasis in Singbhum is seen as an anomaly in the segregated world the RSS wants to create. The attempt is then to reduce him to just one aspect of his identity – so that whatever else he does or says or writes, in the end he must be seen merely as a Muslim, and by extension, violent, anti-national and a threat to the “Indian mainstream.” So dangerous that he has been in jail for three years without bail. It is not surprising that so many of the young people who were arrested for the anti-CAA protests were Muslim students at India’s leading universities. 

In Bastar's 'Shaheen Bagh', a Youth-Led Movement Quietly Perseveres

In Bastar's 'Shaheen Bagh', a Youth-Led Movement Quietly Perseveres

How Chhattisgarh has stalled a historic judgment

Ten years ago, on July 5, 2011, Justices B. Sudershan Reddy and S.S. Nijjar delivered a historic judgment banning Salwa Judum, a vigilante movement started in in 2005 and sponsored by the Chhattisgarh and Central government, ostensibly to fight against the Maoists. The judges also ruled that the use of surrendered Maoists and untrained villagers in frontline counter-insurgency operations as Special Police Officers (SPOs) was unconstitutional. It directed that the existing SPOs be redeployed in traffic management or other such safe duties. Other matters, especially prosecution of security forces and others involved in human rights violations, and rehabilitation of villagers who had suffered violence, were left pending, since the State had been asked to submit comprehensive plans for this.

Ten years on, nothing has been done to implement the judgment. Instead, the State government has merely renamed the SPOs. They are now known as the District Reserve Guard (DRG). Conversations with DRG members have revealed that most of them are captured or surrendered Maoists and are given automatic weaponry as soon as they join the police force. Some of them get one-three months of training, and some not even that. They commit the most excesses against their former fellow villagers, suffer the most casualties in any operation, and are paid much less than the regular constabulary, all the reasons the judges had outlawed their use. A contempt petition filed in 2012 is still awaiting hearing. Although ‘final hearings’ commenced in December 2018 before another bench of Justice Madan Lokur and Justice Deepak Gupta, the judges retired soon thereafter and there has been no hearing since.

Press Release, 6th August 2020: NHRC Orders Chhattisgarh Government to Compensate Human Rights Defenders Rs 1 lakh each “for Mental Agony and Violation of Human Rights” caused by false charges and arrests

The National Human Rights Commission has directed the Chhattisgarh State Government to compensate human rights defenders Rs 1 lakh each for false cases filed against them, with compliance within six weeks.

 

On 5^th November 2016, the Chhattisgarh police lodged an FIR against us under various sections of the IPC, Arms Act, and UAPA for the alleged murder of one Shamnath Baghel of Nama village, Sukma District. The case was supposedly filed on the written complaint of Shyamnath Baghel’s widow, Vimla Baghel. However, she is on record saying she did not name anyone. On 15th November 2016, the Supreme Court gave us protection from arrest. In 2018, since the Chhattisgarh police had not taken any steps to investigate or close the matter, we filed a petition in the Supreme Court. Following Court directions, the Chhattisgarh government investigated, and finding there was no case against us, dropped the charges in February 2019. The NHRC had also taken up this matter in 2016, along with the police burning our effigies and IG Kalluri threatening to stone us if we entered Bastar.

 

In February 2020, taking note of the Chhattisgarh Police admission that there was no case against us, the NHRC noted:

 

 “In our considered opinion, these persons would have certainly suffered a great mental pain and agony as a result of registration of false FIRs against them by the police, which is a violation of their human rights and for this the State Government should compensate them. Therefore we recommend and direct the Government of Chhattisgarh through its Chief Secretary to pay a sum of Rs One Lakh each as monetary compensations to the six persons namely Prof Nandini Sundar, Ms. Archana Prasad, Shri Vineet Tiwari, Shri Sanjay Parate, Ms. Manju and Shri Mangla Ram Karma, whose human rights were gravely violated by the Chhattisgarh police.”

 

Why India Needs Scheduled Tribes to Educate Future Judges

https://thewire.in/rights/why-india-needs-scheduled-tribes-to-educate-future-judges

Which are the Wars Worth Fighting?

As India wages a war on coronavirus, it is important for the country to sort out its priorities.  The only other war that must accompany the lockdown is the war on hunger, and all other operations must be suspended. When the Supreme Court has asked the states to see if undertrials can be released, there is little logic in arresting more people. When the government’s first priority must be to save lives, it cannot afford to lose more lives.

The recent death of 17 jawans or 19 if one were to believe a recent Maoist press release, the wounding of some 14 others, as well as the death of some 3 Maoists once again underlines the futility of the war in Chhattisgarh.

Seeking Truth and Reconciliation in Chhattisgarh

The Indian government claims it is slowly but surely winning the war against Maoist guerillas in India’s resource rich forested regions, and has consistently dismissed widespread accusations of human rights violations as propaganda by Maoists or their urban supporters. It has also acted to preempt future accusations by jailing human rights activists and lawyers working in these areas. But as a recent report by a government appointed enquiry commission shows, these accusations are credible and need to be addressed.

Why the Forest Rights Act is not only Constitutional but essential for Conservation

A Mahagatbandhan in the Forests is the need of the Hour

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In the brave new world that defines India today, if your biometrics fail to match those in the Aadhaar database, you don’t get your rations, and could even die.[1] Similarly, if the government fails to recognise your claims on forest land, not only do you not get the title to the land you have been cultivating for generations, but you even stand the risk of being evicted. Again and again, we see that it is the most poor and vulnerable who are at risk of being penalised for government failures.

When the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act 2006, generally referred to as the Forest Rights Act (FRA) was passed, there was hope that it would at last usher in some change in the undeclared civil war that has existed between the forest department and forest dwellers over the last century or more. The Act aimed to redress the ‘historical injustice to the forest dwelling Scheduled Tribes’ by recognising their property rights to land, as well as non-timber forest produce, and the community right of control and management which was appropriated by the forest department. However, recent events show that there is little likelihood of that, with the looming threat of Supreme Court mandated evictions and a highly problematic 2019 Forest Act that is proposed to replace the 1927 Indian Forest Act.

Pathalgadi is Nothing But Constitutional Messianism So Why is the BJP Afraid Of It?

Across the country, the engagement of citizens with the Constitution appears to be in direct proportion to the administration’s abandonment of it. That is why the government is trying to criminalise the belief that it will deliver anything more than it is doing already.

(Jharkhand): On the freshly tarred road from Ranchi to Ulihatu, where Birsa Munda lived and which is now a prominent CRPF camp, several villages sport newly painted green stone slabs at the entrance, covered with constitutional provisions carved in white lettering. Protected by bamboo enclosures, these stones – symbols of the Pathalgadi movement – are anywhere between 8 and 15 feet high. In the past year and a half, this movement has spread rapidly across Jharkhand and the continguous areas of Chhattisgarh and Odisha. And the state governments concerned are not pleased.

The preamble to the Indian constitution asserts that “We The People of India.. Adopt, Enact and Give to Ourselves This Constitution.” If the people gave rise to the constitution, it stands to reason that they also gave themselves the right to interpret, analyse and propagate its contents in any form they want to so long as this is done peacefully.

Nothing stops citizens from asserting their fundamental rights by way of speeches or written pamphlets, or in stone pillars outside our homes. There are thousands of statues across the country of Ambedkar holding the constitution which serve not just as a reminder of his role in drafting it, but as a symbolic assertion of the document itself – that it is meaningful in people’s lives and it is they who give meaning to it.

Yet the Pathalgadi movement’s deep engagement with the constitution has state governments panicked, perhaps because it raises questions that they are finding hard to answer.

From Kathua and Unnao to Chintagufa

Prime Minister Narendra Modi recently provided the media with another photo-op by helping an Adivasi woman in Bijapur wear her new slippers. But like much else in his government, the gesture is tokenistic – only one person per family of tendu leaf collectors gets the grand gift of slippers. In the meantime, not one person has been compensated for their houses and all their belongings – including slippers –  being burnt during the time of the Salwa Judum.

Saying ‘Jai Bhim’ in Chhattisgarh counts for little if one cannot implement Babasaheb’s vision in practice. Would Ambedkar have been happy to see the constitution subverted by a government that cannot protect its young daughters, a party whose MLAs are accused of rape and whose ministers support rapists? The day the adivasis of Bastar who have been gangraped, whose relatives have been killed and whose houses have been burnt get justice is the day the government’s demand that the Maoists lay down arms will have some chance of being heard.

This is a story from exactly a year ago, April 2017, when security forces in Chintagufa village of Sukma district allegedly raped a minor girl. On April 2, at around 4 am, the girl and her mother were sleeping in the courtyard of their house when CRPF personnel came looking for her elder brother, who was supposedly a sangham member, or a village-level Maoist sympathiser. Her brother wasn’t there. Three men dragged her to a distance, and two of them took turns raping her, she said later. The other police/CRPF personnel stayed back, beat her mother and pushed her younger sisters inside the house and locked it. The victim was injured on the neck during the rape as photos taken at the time reveal. Due to the darkness, she could not identify the men who raped her.

The matter was first reported by a villager on April 3 last year and published in Nai Duniya on April 4 morning. That same article quoted the DIG, P. Sunder Raj, saying the allegations were false, mala fide and intended by ‘white-collar Naxals’ to tarnish the image of the police. All this before any police investigation, even though at first reporting, the reported rape clearly came under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offcences (POCSO) Act.. Instead, the journalist who reported the matter was questioned.

Why Podiyam Panda needs another hearing in court

PRESS STATEMENT

22^nd May 2017

The Podiyam Panda ‘surrender’ is the first one being challenged before a court. The entire experience shows the questionable legality of the surrender process in Chhatisgarh.

In the habeas case filed by his wife, Muiye Panda, Podiyam Panda came and went before the High Court under police guard. What value does such a production have? The Supreme Court has held in several judgments that a statement made before a magistrate by someone who is in police custody and thinks they will go back to police custody cannot be relied upon. This applies to the Panda case too.

How the Chhattisgarh Police Turned a Well-Regarded Sarpanch Into a Fugitive, and Now Captive

Since the April 24 Maoist attack in Bastar which 25 CRPF personnel were killed, experts have talked of how the road from Dornapal to Jagargunda has been under construction for some five years, and lamented the fact that so many jawans have lost their lives trying to provide protection for road building.

But there was a time before 2006-7 and before Salwa Judum destroyed this area, when this was a thriving road by Bastar standards, with at least three important weekly markets located on it – Chintagufa, Chintalnar and Jagargunda. Even now, despite the devastation in the villages around, there is a weekly market at Chintagufa, a school, a fair price shop (PDS) and a health centre (however erratically it functions) – and the credit for this must go entirely to its former sarpanch, Podiyam Panda.

No end in sight for India's bloody Maoist conflict

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2017/05/sight-india-bloody-maoist-conflict-170508120738882.html

On 24 April, 2017, 25 men from the paramilitary central reserve police force, India’s main counterinsurgency force in the central Indian war theatre, were killed in a Maoist ambush.  Predictably, the media outrage, the solutions offered by security pundits and the statement issued by the Maoists had a strong sense of déjà vu. 76 men from another battalion of the CRPF had been ambushed and killed in this very stretch of Sukma district near Tadmetla in Chhattisgarh on April 6, 2010.

In the seven years between then and now, there have been other CRPF deaths – for instance, 12 CRPF men were killed barely a month previously on 11 March 2017; there have been unmarked deaths of Maoist cadres, and above all, there has been a relentless assault on the human rights of adivasi or indigenous villagers across the region.

The Burning Forest: India's War in Bastar

--> The Indian Government has repeatedly described Maoist guerrillas as 'the biggest security threat to the country’ and Bastar in central India as their headquarters. This book chronicles how the armed conflict between the government and the Maoists has devastated the lives of some of India's poorest, most vulnerable citizens, starting from 2005 when a government- sponsored vigilante movement killed hundreds and drove thousands of villagers into camps, to the present day when it is the most militarized region in the country. It is not a coincidence that Bastar has some of India’s biggest mineral reserves. 
Based on extensive field visits, court testimonies, government documents and an active participant role in the events she writes about,  Sundar also tracks the responses of political parties, the media, human rights activists and the judiciary to the ongoing crisis.

In Bastar, it looks as if the failed Salwa Judum idea is being given a fresh lease of life

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toi-edit-page/in-bastar-it-looks-as-if-the-failed-salwa-judum-idea-is-getting-a-fresh-lease-of-life/

The security establishment never tires of claiming that human rights activists are partisan, and only blame the state. But when they do expose Maoist crimes, the police is not interested. One wonders if the establishment’s problem is really the Maoists – in whose name the state is spending several thousand crores on militarisation – or rights activists and the idea of democracy they uphold.   

Last week, four of us, including a colleague from JNU, visited Bastar division. The press release we issued upon our return is unequivocal in blaming both the Maoists and the police for the current vulnerabilities of villagers. However, the police have drummed up a campaign vilifying us, claiming, ridiculously, that we threatened villagers with Maoist retaliation and instigated them against the police. The Bastar collector, Amit Kataria, has added to this by circulating fake complaints on social media, fuelling the ongoing anti-JNU hysteria.

Theatre of the absurd Chhattisgarh style

The horrific sexual violence in Bijapur in October 2015 shows what a culture of impunity has developed in Chhattisgarh. Despite the Supreme Court’s directions in 2011 that the state must register FIRs on complaints against security forces, this is perhaps the first time in a decade that the police have registered an FIR on a complaint by a women’s fact-finding group. But this is only the beginning of a long and hopeless battle in which trying to get justice becomes a means to torture the victims.