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ashish kumar singh wrote:

How can we save democracy in democratic party?

ashish kumar singh

venkitesh wrote

One of the best articles I have read. On the state, media, tribals,
naxalits and pseudo human rights.


Whose democracy is this?

Speech at Berkeley by Mr.Sunil Kumar,Editor,Daily Chhattisgarh, Raipur India.

Bastar region of central India, the home of several primitive tribes,
is suffering a bloodbath since the last several decades, more in
recent years. While writing this, I am sure that I might repeat some
of the details which other speakers might have raised before I speak,
at the same time it would be so totally incomplete to skip the
context.

I will try to keep the reference to the minimum and reach to a level
where I could say what I personally feel very strongly. Naxalism in
Chhattisgarh and in several other states was started by urban leaders
who still call the shots largely from urban hide-outs. The governments
of the affected states and the center are totally governed by urban or
urbanized leaders and enforce an urban form of democracy. The fight
against Naxalism is designed and executed by urban leaders of security
forces.

The conflicts are covered, analyzed and highlighted by the media,
owned and run by another set of urban people. What is most shocking is
a huge casualty of people from the tribal communities, or as they
would be called here – indigenous people or natives. They are being
killed in hundreds in Bastar alone, every year. Most of them are just
caught in the cross-fire.

Their only fault was to remain a voiceless exploited community since
the inception of democracy in India. The height of their exploitation
was well documented even in the pre-independence period and more so
since then, by the writers of contemporary history, media and some of
the more sensitive people in the government machinery. They remained
badly exploited by corruption in the government, harassed by political
process, by democracy through its different forms, by outsiders
whocaptured their resources and by a state which relentlessly pursued
the principle of "eminent domain" to grab the forests over which they
had complete ownership.

It is for this reason Naxals found a fertile ground to enter and
flourish. This might sound an oversimplification of the scene, but as
far as the tribal communities are concerned, this was probably the
only fruit of democracy, or counter-democracy, they got to enjoy while
doing nothing to earn it. All they wanted from the urban rulers was
salt and a bit of kerosene, and now they get bullets, knives and
explosives; torture and terror. I feel very strongly that the tribal
communities had been adding everything to keep the urban life better
by saving the forests, adding nothing to carbon emissions, not causing
another hole in ozone layer, and asking for only the common salt from
urban society, the only commodity that linked urban communities with
the tribal people for centuries.

They were getting this essentially by barter of chicken or other more
precious forest produces. And the different forms and pillars of urban
democracy, and ideologies have now given them mass-deaths, uncertain
life, humiliation, human rights violation and a dangerous future. In
this new and small state of Chhattisgarh the parliamentary machinery
has failed politically to realize and highlight the plight of people
of Naxal and Salwa Judum affected areas. In Chhattisgarh, the two main
political parties, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and the main
opposition party, Congress, are partners in launching and promoting
Salwa Judum. The so called people's movement designed by these two
political forces under their urban or urbanized leaderships and with
over-enthusiastic senior officers.

Salwa Judum is like a Frankenstein of urban democracy. I consider it a
big failure or at least tragedy of democracy in this state that there
was no voice against Salwa Judum in the state assembly. A very
insignificant vocal protest by the left parties who have no presence
in a 90 seat assembly, a small, very small section of media, which had
no impact on the combined Herculean muscle power of both the main
political parties, could not stop Salwa Judum. Both the main political
parties are largely convinced that it is a war of tribals, and they
too have to fight it.

The political understanding of the state is that without the active
involvement of the tribals, the Naxals cannot be defeated. The huge
loss of innocent lives is considered an inevitable collateral damage!
To many people in America, this may be familiar as a George Bush
doctrine. But we have our own variant back home as well as you can
see. This blood is not urban, not elite, not of the ruling class and
has no voice. The names and faces don't matter to the urban society
and urban democracy, except as numbers in newspaper headlines.

The judiciary in India is almost necessarily made of urban society and
a few of the judges who come from deprived backgrounds, very quickly
get converted to an urban elite caste and become arrogant enough to
declare that no judge with self respect should declare their
properties which is compulsory for all public servants. Such an
arrogant elite urban caste is responsible to maintain the rule of law
and justice in this country. The judges who launch a suo moto legal
proceeding in their own courts when they get stuck in a traffic jam or
find a railway platform not clean enough for them, found nothing wrong
in the thousands of killings in Chhattisgarh within a few years.

Not a single case of public interest was initiated by the judiciary of
the state on its own, when news-pages were overflowing with blood. The
judges of the state high court were busy in all these years to get a
more expensive high court premises, a lavish and palatial luxury in a
state where more than fifty percent of the population lives below the
poverty line, and can eat twice a day only after a huge subsidy on
rice. Such a self centered judiciary is busy making its new paradise,
and unable to think of an intervention to soothe the bleeding wounds
of the tribals.

Another assault of urban democracy was from the media. Very few
newspapers and media organization could realize the complexities of
Salwa Judum, and related issues. No media organization of any
significance allotted even a month of any of its journalists to study
the state of affairs in Naxal and Salwa Judum areas. The media of the
state had very little concern, except the routine news reports of
killing of one side or the other, and usually the innocent unrelated
people. The so called mainstream media remained conveniently
noncommittal, noncommittal to such historical butchery.

But the media was not criticized by anyone, because media-watch has
died down in India. Owners, editors and journalists have almost no one
from the tribal community among them and so is the understanding of
tribal tragedies in the so called fourth column. When the political
bosses and the government repeatedly said that anyone who opposes
Salwa Judum, is with Naxals or supporting their cause, almost no one
in the state media commented on it. We repeatedly compared this with
the arrogant statement of Bush that whoever was not with the attack on
Saddam, was with Al Qaeda. But the liberal space for a difference of
opinion is lost on the political canvas of Chhattisgarh-politics.

This is the state of urban Indian democracy. I would also like to
mention that hardly anyone anywhere mentioned the horrible memories of
a similar movement like Salwa Judum in the early nineties. In a part
of Bastar a few political people and a few overenthusiastic police
officers had started and promoted a Mass Awareness Campaign against
the Naxals. When it died an early death, the police and political
leaders could not save a single participant of that Jan Jagaran
Abhiyan. It is a painful but well documented fact in the state
government's records that every one of the campaigners was taken out
of villages and killed by the Naxals, publicly, one by one.

There were hundreds of them who lost lives after calling off the
campaign. We repeatedly raised our fears that once Salwa Judum would
be called off, the government agencies and political powers could be
equally incapable of saving any one of Salwa Judum participants if
Naxals decided on mass murders. That part of history, which is only a
decade and a half old, is very conveniently forgotten by all urban
people. And now huge amount of money is flowing in to Salwa Judum or
the relief camps established to accommodate people displaced due to
this movement and Naxal-attacks on participants. Big pilferage in this
money has become another reason behind its continuation.

Now I would like to come down to the last pillar of democracy, which
is not officially considered a pillar so far. Social activists, human
rights organizations and non governmental organizations etc. In the
last five years we have witnessed a flood of them. They are active on
papers, in roadside demonstrations and run to courts with public
interest petitions, giving voice to voiceless people. In Chhattisgarh
the common perception of this sector is of Naxal-sympathizers.

This was generated with human rights organizations criticizing the
government for even the first information of the smallest human rights
violation, but did nothing when Naxals killed people, innocent people,
dozens in one explosion. And when contacted, several of them had to
say that it is their official agenda to fight only against state
atrocities. This was unacceptable to the little political
understanding of the people of Chhattisgarh. They could not make the
difference between violation by the state and by the Naxal.

The fine difference between the state and the other forces could be
accepted in some societies where these agendas are designed and
drafted, but not in an area like Chhattisgarh. Many years back, human
rights organizations lost complete respect in this state as a
judicious sector. Now their movements are largely like convincing the
converts. It is like religious chanting by the people of the same
faith. I feel that the loss of credibility of a sector, which is so
important to democracy, is a great loss. But I hardly see anyone
trying to change public perception. In a democracy, how can any
democratic institution function with such total disregard to public
sentiments?

People could be ignorant of the finer aspects of democracy and human
rights, but an insensitivity to their ignorance, sounds very
undemocratic. It is a great loss to the democracy that the civil
society movement is detached from the common people. Now most of the
people in Chhattisgarh don't differentiate between a human rights
activist and a naxal-sympathizer. Such loss of credibility was taken
to greater height, or depth, by several social activists of national
repute.

Chhattisgarh government was blamed for suppression of freedom of
expression when its agencies arrested an ex journalist with huge prima
facie evidence of his working for Naxals, along with his son. When I
tried to explain the truth to such campaign to the so called national
media carrying that, I didn't find a place in the 'letters to editor
column'. So the people in Chhattisgarh, which includes the media of
the state, are a witness to the false propaganda which is doing more
harm to democracy while shouting for saving it. Such celebrity
activists from Delhi have further destroyed a democratic space, which
was, and is, very much needed as a safe-guard.

I would also like to mention an endless criticism of the government
for its action or inaction on the Naxal front by social activists and
others, even when the government itself is a victim. It is not only
Chhattisgarh which is suffering Naxal violence; at least half a dozen
other states are also victims of this attack on Indian democracy. A
government of an Indian state is after all a democratically elected
government, answerable to the people, the judiciary, the Human Rights
Commissions and other institutions of democracy. They are a lot better
than kangaroo courts and landmines that are on offer from the Naxals
as a better substitute. Governments didn't start the fight with the
Naxals, and demoralizing them endlessly, needlessly, and even
baselessly at times, while it is losing its police personnel every
passing day in blasts, is like defeating the cause of democracy. This
Maoist war, fought largely with landmines is not a normal situation
for the police or the government.

The government could be bad, its agencies could be making a number of
mistakes, but at the same time this is the only democratic tool we
have, not the Maoist-violence. We recently carried an interview of Mr.
Kanu Sanyal, the old Maoist stalwart who had started Naxalbaree
movement from the state of West Bengal of India many decades back, and
he now condemns the Naxalism of today as pure terrorism. Naxals
cutting throats through endless kangaroo-courts are not taking the
country anywhere except to an age of darkness.

It was very shocking and painful to see Naxals demolishing electricity
towers and putting millions of people living in the jungles of Bastar,
in dark for more than a week, killing the workers who had gone there
to restore electricity. Probably none from the civil society movement
spoke against it, till the chief minister of the state pointed it out
publicly and condemned the otherwise hyper-vocal activists. How could
the people of Chhattisgarh have any respect for such people who select
dead bodies to pay respect? The common people in urban Chhattisgarh or
the people who are a bit far from the Naxal violence have almost no
concern for the war-zone, and a whole community being crushed for none
of its fault. We are very often told by many of our readers that no
one is interested in news reports of Naxal-violence or tribals getting
killed.

Civil society movement, which should have been doing some mass
political education of people, has become irrelevant and untrustworthy
to the majority of the people. I feel that such an indifference to a
great human tragedy among majority of common people is a great danger
to democracy. Urban people, who have a voice, are comfortable because
they feel that their turn would never come. In a nutshell, to close my
statement I would like to repeat that through Salwa Judum all players
of democracy in the state of Chhattisgarh have either created a buffer
of innocent tribals as a human shield to fight Naxals, or have allowed
this horrible thing to happen by being indifferent to it, by over
looking it while busy carving a new capital, or palatial high court
buildings. Some campaigners of democracy have also damaged the scene
by demolishing their own credibility.

The history of future might witness one day an apology by the people
who are in the positions of democratic powers today. It could be to
the future generations of the tribals slaughtered today, just the way
stolen generations of aborigines are getting an apology in Australia.
In India tribal children are being used as child soldiers in hundreds
by Naxals, and could be in a small numbers by security forces. But
most rulers of urban democracy would have preferred to have them as
bonded child laborers, so no big deal for the urban and powerful
society if tribal kids are laying landmines or carrying weapons.
Various kinds of failure in different areas of urban democracy, is
killing voiceless people in hundreds who were very happy and contended
without this urban tool to rule. I don't mean to say that they would
have been better without a democracy. But urban democracy and also the
urban Maoist violence have proved themselves totally insensitive to
this non-urban part of humanity. Could there be a greater urban-non
urban divide? I might sound cynical, but I would like to know, whose
democracy is this?

Sunil Kumar Editor Daily Chhattisgarh Raipur India
editor.chhattisgarh@gmail.com www.dailychhattisgarh.com