SHE FAILS to suppress her emotions while recalling
that horrific night. She wept like a child when her
husband spoke of the way she and three other women
were abducted and brutally raped inside the godown of
a plantation company they had agitated against.
Sharada is one among the hundreds of activists of
Sadhujana Vimochana Samyuktha Vedi, an organisation of
landless dalits and adivasis involved in the agitation
for cultivable land at Chengara in Pathanamthitta
district of South Kerala. The agitation is now being
adjudged as the biggest-ever dalit uprising in the
history of Kerala as it involves over 5,000 landless
families. But the ruling CPM-led Left Front Government
(LDF) in the state is not ready to recognise it as a
struggle for a just cause. Instead, it abets organised
violence orchestrated by the plantation company which,
in fact, has no legal right over the land and the
company's labour force.
Making the situation worse, Sharada and the other
three dalit women allege that their abductor-rapists
were plantation employees who are CPM members. She
says they were kidnapped in the early hours of August
7 and taken to the godown of Harrisson Malayalam
Plantations, where they were raped. They were let off
after three hours.
According to activist Laha Gopalan, the women went out
of the plantation to fetch food after they were
informed that the CPMmen, who had been laying siege to
the area, had dispersed. The CPMcadres and the police,
Laha Gopalan alleges, were trying to starve the
activists.
The women were standing in front of a shop that was
open at midnight when a group of men forced them into
a jeep and sped away. Out of fear and unsure of
getting justice, the women have not registered a
complaint with the police so far. Civil society
organisations have taken it up as an issue all over
the state. ``In the beginning, their husbands too did
not know. Only now are we getting the courage to speak
of it openly,'' Gopalan said.
Gopalan said that the women came out into the open
only after two activists were found battered at the
godown a few days later. ``This practice of taking our
activists to the godown and beating them up has become
a regular feature. Congress and BJP activists are
involved in the labour force and so they remain silent
over the atrocities of CPM workers,'' he alleged.
If the words of these dalits, the local people and
civil society organisations are to be believed, the
CPM, the owners of Harrison Malayalam Ltd and goons
have unleashed terror in Chengara with the support of
the police. The agitators are not being allowed to
move out of the area. Nobody is allowed from outside.
They are not able to buy rice and other necessary
items and medicines. Children are not able to go to
school.
"The CPM wants to break the struggle by any means. The
neo-liberals and revisionists in the party who
constitute the majority have common cause with the
estate management. They believe escalating tension is
the best way to crush the struggle. But to their
disappointment, dalits are getting more and more
determined by each passing day,'' says social activist
CR Neelakantan.
The agitators have stopped all attempts to forcibly
evict them. Women and children keep kerosene cans
nearby while sleeping. Whenever the police come, they
threaten self-immolation.
``It is Kerala's own Nandigram. CPM is using the same
strategies of rape and laying siege here too. But we
are determined to fight their might till the end,''
says Gopalan. According to him, fresh attacks against
the dalits began at the end of July when three
activists from outside reached Chengara to express
solidarity with the agitators on the first anniversary
of the struggle. They were stopped by a group of CPM
men who claimed to be plantation workers. They
manhandled the three and also damaged their vehicles.
``All this happened in the presence and under the
patronage of the police. At the request of the police,
the organisers had to shift the venue of the public
meeting, planned for the next day, to another
location,'' says Neelakantan, who took the activists
to Chengara.
THE VIOLENCE in Chengara was planned. Even the police
do not say there was any provocation from agitators.
``The CPM is worried by the overwhelming support for
the intensifying land struggle in Chengara where
landless dalits and adivasis are raising the demand
for redistribution of agricultural land, exposing the
hollowness of land reforms implemented by the
CPI-Congress coalition in the early 1970s. To protect
the interests of the estate owners, the neo-liberal
revisionists in CPM in Kerala have apparently taken a
position that land redistribution is no longer a
substantive political agenda,'' says land issue expert
Dr. T.T. Sreekumar.
According to the dalits, it is a fight to reclaim
ownership of land that has been part of a
long-standing promise of the government. To this end,
about 5,000 families from different parts of the
region have moved on to the plantation, building tents
with poles and plastic sheets to establish last year.
The impugned land was a part of a leasehold to
Harrison Malayalam Ltd, which expired in 1985 and no
rent has been paid to the state since. So, dalits say,
the plantation group has no ownership of the land.
According to Neelakantan, the fight is against illegal
encroachment of land that belongs to the people by a
corporate entity for commercial purposes with the
support of state machinery.
``A complete blockade of food, medicines and other
essentials is the biggest challenge before the
agitating dalits. Such a situation is leading to
starvation and the prevalence of diseases in the
camps. Now tactics include sexual harassment of women
and physical intimidation of the protesters and
solidarity supporters,'' says dalit leader Sreeraman
Koyyon.
``What unites them all is landlessness. The government
has a duty to solve this problem. A Left government
has greater responsibility since it was the Left that
raised the slogan `Land for the Tiller','' says
activist BRP Bhaskar.
Dalits and adivasis in Kerala have traditionally stood
with the Left. A party congress, held at Coimbatore,
acknowledged that they were moving away from the CPIM
and decided that steps should be taken to bring them
closer to the party. But the state party unit and the
government seem to be blind to the erosion of the CPM base.

 

 

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Regards,

Vijayan MJ


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"Beware of the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry, [who] infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How will I know? For this I have done. And I am Julius Caesar."
William Shakespere