[Reader-list] Today we have come out – Mass uprising of tribal people in West Bengal

[Amit Basole]

>From the Sanhati front page...
** <http://sanhati.com/front-page/1083/>*Today we have come out* – Mass
uprising of tribal people in West Bengal<http://sanhati.com/front-page/1083/>
http://sanhati.com/front-page/1083/

*Nov 13, 2008: Background of the movement*

By Partho Sarathi Ray, Sanhati.

The events that have been happening during the last one week in the adivasi
(tribal) belt of West Midnapur district in West Bengal are so unprecedented
that the authorities do not know how to respond to them, and the media
doesn't understand their significance.

Even the political parties and civil society are at a loss trying to come to
terms with what is happening. What had started off as protests against
police brutalities in Lalgarh have turned into a full scale uprising against
state oppression and dispossession. Nothing like this has been witnessed in
West Bengal in living memory.

The entire chain of events started after the 2nd November land mine
explosion<http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/world-news/buddha-paswan-escape-landmine-blast-in-west-bengal-lead_100114259.html>targeting
the convoy of West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee
and union steel and mines minister Ram Vilas Paswan as they were returning
from the inauguration of the Jindal Steel Works special economic
zone<http://sanhati.com/?s=salboni>(SEZ) in Salboni in West Midnapore
district.

Around 5000 acres of land have been acquired for this project, of which 4500
acres have been handed over by the government and 500 acres have been
purchased directly by Jindal from landowners. Reportedly, a large portion of
this land was vested with the government for distribution amongst landless
tribals as part of the land reforms program and also included tracts of
forests. Moreover, although the land was originally acquired for a "usual"
steel plant, last September Jindal got SEZ status for the project, with
active help from the state government, which dispensed with the requirement
for following most regulations for building and running the plant, including
crucial requirements such as doing an Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).
The government was, and is, not bothered about the setting up of an SEZ
having a polluting steel plant in the middle of a forested area,
dispossessing tribals from their land and endangering their means of
survival. Understandably, there were major grievances amongst the tribals
against this, although the mainstream media had constantly portrayed a very
rosy picture of the entire project.

The land mine explosion was blamed as usual on the Maoist insurgents
allegedly active for a long time in Salboni and the adjacent Lalgarh area.
According to press reports, the Maoist movement is active in twelve police
station areas in the three adjoining districts of West Midnapur, Bankura and
Purulia. Three junior-level policemen were suspended and show-cause notices
were served on a few senior officers for negligence of duty.

Usually, the police harass and arrest tribal villagers after every Maoist
attack; this time in order to hide their own failure in providing security
to its political masters, and to save their skin from the wrath of the
government, the police went on a rampage in the tribal villages. Having no
clue about the real perpetrators of the land mine explosion, they started
beating up and arresting people indiscriminately. Among the first to be
arrested were three teenage students, Aben Murmu, Gautam Patra and Buddhadeb
Patra, who were returning from a village festival during the night. They
were charged with sundry charges including waging war against the state,
conspiracy, attempt to murder, using dangerous weapons and obstructing
justice. Then during the day on 4th November, an armed police party arrested
Dipak Pratihar of Kantapahari village while he was buying medicine from a
chemist's shop in Lalgarh for his pregnant wife Lakshmi. In the process the
police brutally beat up Lakshmi and threw her to the ground. She had to be
subsequently hospitalized. Ten people were arrested during the police raids
and beaten up, including a retired teacher Khsamananda Mahato and a civil
contractor Shamsher Alam from Chotopeliya village, who was visiting the area
for a day for some construction work. Although these two people were
subsequently released, as the police could not formulate any charges against
them, the rest were kept in police custody.

The police and CRPF, led by the officer in charge of Lalgarh police station,
Sandeep Sinha Roy and the superintendent of police of West Midnapore
district, Rajesh Singh, unleashed a reign of terror in 35 villages
encompassing the entire tribal belt of Lalgarh. In raids throughout the
night of November 6th, women were brutally kicked and beaten up with lathis
and butts of guns. Among the injured, Chitamani Murmu, one of whose eyes was
hit by a gun butt, and Panamani Hansda, who was kicked on her chest and
suffered multiple fractures, had to hospitalized. Chitamani's lost her eye
because of the injury. Eight other women were badly wounded. These police
brutalities soon reached a point where the adivasis had no other option but
to rise up in revolt.

The adivasis of India are one of the most oppressed and downtrodden groups
of people in the country. Police oppression is nothing new to the Santhal
adivasis of the Bankura-Purulia-Midnapore area. But the unprecedented
atrocities inflicted by the police in the past week, especially the wanton
attack on women, wore out their patience. On the night of 6th November they
assembled near the Lalgarh police station and surrounded it, effectively
cutting it off, and the policemen inside, who had been rampaging in villages
the previous night but had now locked themselves inside the police station,
did not dare to venture out. Electricity to the police station was
disconnected and all the lights were broken.

What began as rumblings of protest took the shape of a spontaneous mass
uprising the next day. On 7th November, when the ruling CPI(Marxist) was
"observing" the anniversary of the Bolshevik revolution throughout West
Bengal, ten thousand Santhal men and women, armed with traditional weapons,
came out and obstructed the roads leading to Lalgarh, disconnecting it from
Midnapur and Bankura. Roads were dug up and tree trunks were placed on the
road to obstruct the entry of police vehicles, in the same way as it had
been done in Nandigram.

The police jeep and the CPI(M) motorcycle have long been symbols of
oppression and terror for villagers throughout West Bengal, so this digging
up of roads, besides actually inhibiting the movements of these agents of
oppression, have become a symbol of defiance and liberation. Towards the
night of 7th November, the people also disconnected telephone and
electricity lines, virtually converting a vast area into a liberated zone.
The apex social organization of the Santhals, the Bharat Jakat Majhi Madwa
Juan Gaonta took up the leadership of the struggle, although the leader of
the organization, the "Disham Majhi" Nityananda Hembram has himself admitted
that the organization has no control over the movement; rather the movement
is controlling the organization.

Smaller organizations of the tribals, such as the Kherwal Jumit Gaonta, that
have been playing active roles in the struggle have openly called for armed
resistance, stating that there is no other way for the survival of the
adivasis.

The demands of the adivasis were so "earthy" and original that the
administration did not know how to respond. The demands were that the
superintendent of police Rajesh Singh should publicly apologize by holding
his ears and doing sit-ups, a traditional way of punishing errant
youngsters, the guilty policemen should crawl on the streets of the villages
where they had tortured people, rubbing their noses on the ground, again
another traditional way of humiliating wrongdoers, and Rs 200,000
compensation for the injured and assaulted. The demands were marked by the
total reliance of the adivasis on their traditional systems of dispensing
justice, and not looking up to the formal judicial process which they have
realized is by nature weighted against the poor and marginalized. Although
these demands have since been modified to an unconditional oral apology from
the police superintendent and punishment for the policemen involved in the
raids, the administration has arrogantly refused to accept these demands,
although they have said that the demand of compensation can be considered.

However, the adivasis have been in no mood to accept this "offer" and the
upsurge has spread over an even wider area encompassing Dahijuri, Binpur,
Jhargram and Bandowan.

The administration has virtually disappeared from these areas. On 10th
November, adivasis led by the tribal social organizations set up new
roadblocks in the Dahijuri area. When the police lathicharged the assembled
people and arrested some of the leaders of the Gaontas, the situation turned
explosive. The tribals surrounded the police officials present and a crowd
of few thousand adivasis, armed with bows and arrows, axes and daggers, and
led by women wielding broomsticks, chased the police for four kilometers
along the road leading to Jhargram. The police were forced to retreat from
the area and release all the leaders of the social organizations they had
arrested.

The movement has been continually intensifying during the past week and
spreading over a larger area.

The slogans emanating from the movement have also been changing and now the
adivasis are demanding that the dispossession of tribals from their land,
forests and water in the name of development and industrialization has to
stop. The struggle against state oppression is turning into a bigger
struggle against dispossession and marginalization.

The state has been helpless in front of this upsurge and has been trying to
"negotiate" with the tribals. But what has been frustrating their efforts is
the essentially democratic nature of this upsurge. Although the
administration has been holding multiple all-party meetings with the
dominant political parties, CPI(M), Trinamool Congress, Congress and the
Jharkhand Party, the leaders of these parties have openly admitted to their
inability to exert any influence on the adivasis.

The adivasis are not letting any political leaders access to the movement,
including tribal leaders like Chunibala Hansda, the Jharkhand Party (Naren
faction) MLA from Binpur. They are demanding that any negotiations be
carried out in the open rather than behind closed doors. Even traditional
leaders like the "Disham Majhi" Nityananda Hembram and other "majhis" are
having to talk directly with the adivasis before talking to the
administration. Villagers of the ten villages in Lalgarh have formed ten
village committees with one coordinating committee to negotiate with the
administration. This democratic nature of the upsurge have frustrated all
attempts by the administration to "control" the movement till now, and have
forced the political parties like the local Trinamool Congress to come out
in support, although the state leadership of the party is strangely silent
about it.

The state and the CPI(M) have not dared to respond with overt violence yet,
although there are news that a motorbike-borne militia is being assembled
nearby by Sushanta Ghosh, the notorious CPI(M) minister and Dipak Sarkar,
the CPI(M) district secretary. The state has been forced to accede to the
bail of the three teenage students arrested by the police and have also send
Sandeep Sinha Roy, the notorious O.C of Lalgarh police station, on extended
leave. There are also reports that, being unable to quell the resistance,
the state government has requested the central government to send
paramilitary forces to help in their efforts.

What we are witnessing in the tribal belt of West Bengal is of historical
moment. A long oppressed people have risen up and are daring to confront
their oppressors and question the logic of "development" that destroys their
lives and livelihoods. It is interesting to observe that the nature of
confrontation with the state, exceptional in scale and intensity, seems to
be inspired by the popular resistance at Nandigram - thereby, providing some
sort of continuity to the possibilty of an emerging people's struggles
against state repression.

The West Bengal government has been alleging that the movement is being
organized and led by the Maoists, and that the Lalgarh area has become a
"liberated zone" for them. These are common ploys used by the CPI(M), the
government and its sympathisers to brand and delegitimize popular movements.
The mainstream media, a faithful ally of the state in such matters, has been
repeating the same allegations and lamenting that such acts, which are being
dubbed anarchic in nature, has resulted in the breakdown of civil authority.
In this manner, attempts are being made to dissociate the urban civil
society and intelligentsia from the movement, who have not yet been able to
formulate a response to the upsurge. Moreover, using such rhetoric, the
state is perhaps also trying to legitimize whatever steps it wishes to adopt
in overcoming the resistance.

It is quite expected that radical political forces would have been active
among the adivasis as the latter have been the most downtrodden people in
India and it is their land and resources which is being handed over for
corporate plunder. However the presence and participation of the Maoists or
similar forces in no way delegitimizes this seemingly spontaneous, and
democratic, expression of people's anger. This is amply expressed by what
Arati Murmu, a woman who had been assaulted by the police, and who had gone
to block the Lalgarh police station had to say:
*
"Whenever there is a Maoist attack the police raid our villages and torture
our women and children. For how long will we suffer this oppression by the
police? All of us are Maoists, let the police arrest us. Today we have come
out."*

Amit

-- 
Amit Basole
Department of Economics
Thompson Hall
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003
Phone: 413-665-2463
http://www.people.umass.edu/abasole/
blog: http://thenoondaysun.blogspot.com/