[Reader-list] Building stone scarecrows

[anupam chakravartty]

*http://www.tehelka.com/story_main44.asp?filename=Ne240410building_stone.asp
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*Building Stone Scarecrows*

*NONVIOLENT RIGHTS ACTIVISTS IN GUJARAT ARE BEING BRANDED MAOISTS AND
JAILED, REPORTS **PARVAIZ BUKHARI*
 [image: image]  *‘Hinduisation’* The entire Dangs district is now dotted
with Hanuman temples
*PHOTOS:* TARUN SEHRAWAT

DANGS IS the smallest and perhaps the most scenic Adivasi district of
Gujarat. As you soak in the beauty and breathe the fresh air, Ashish Pawar,
a young Adivasi activist acting as a guide, struggles to explain why his
“god”, activist Avinash Kulkarni, who has been branded a Maoist by police,
was arrested. Fearing a similar fate for himself, he adds, “I don’t even
understand what Naxalism or Maoism means.”

In south Gujarat, police arrested at least nine “Maoists” in February and
March claiming they received information from the Orissa government that
Naxals were preparing for a violent movement in the state. But so far,
Gujarat Police have not produced any evidence — except alleged confessions
by those arrested — that they were involved in any armed, violent or anti-
State activity. Before this, police have not registered any Maoist activity
in the region since 1998.

In what appears to be a two-pronged strategy, activists like Kulkarni who
are working with tribals to ensure they get ownership of their forest land
are dubbed Maoist and arrested. At the same time, tribals are themselves
being divided along Hindu vs tribal lines and turned into Hindutva acolytes.

The recent arrests come at a time when the Adivasis of Dangs thought they
had learned to deal with the “tyranny” of forest authorities through legal
instruments like the Forest Rights Act (FRA). Among those arrested is
prominent Gandhian and forest rights activist Avinash Kulkarni, 55, whom the
tribals deeply respect. Kulkarni was arrested from the house of fellow
Adivasi activist Bharat Pawar on March 26 in the administrative headquarters
of Dangs. An MPhil in political science, Kulkarni has been charged with
“waging war against state” besides organising and participating in
“unlawful” assembly of people in Dangs and Surat. His associates say
Kulkarni has been arrested to “create a possibility of dividing” the Adivasi
Maha Sabha (AMS), a conglomerate of 40 tribal rights groups comprising some
30,000 tribals who are involved in a robust movement in Gujarat’s tribal
areas seeking the implementation of the FRA.

*[image: image]‘A Hindu ethos is being imposed on the tribals — whose
civilisational culture is far different from that of Hindus’*



*UTTAM PARMAR*
TRIBAL RIGHTS ACTIVIST

*[image: image]‘Avinashbhai taught us new methods to approach the government
for our legal rights. Now we fear we will also be caught’is far different
from that of Hindus’*

*ASHISH PAWAR
*CLOSE AIDE OF KULKARNI

*[image: image]‘For the Narendra Modi government, the Forest Rights Act is
like a gun in the hands of the tribals’*



*ROHIT PRAJAPATI
*VADODARA-BASED ACTIVIST

The arrest of Kulkarni, Bharat and Sulat Pawar has created such an
atmosphere of fear in Dangs that it threatens to halt the peaceful tribal
forest rights movement spearheaded by AMS in south Gujarat. AMS members say
they will carry on working for the tribal rights of *“jal, zameen *and
jungle (water, land and forest)” under the constitutional provisions of the
FRA. But police visits to their houses have left them frightened. “Earlier,
people would agitate against the forest authorities. Avinashbhai taught us
new legal methods to approach the government for our legal rights,” says
Ashish, 27, who has worked with Kulkarni in Dangs since 2005, when the FRA
was enacted. “Now we are scared that we will also be caught.” Ashish says
that after the arrests, his father, Gulab Bhai, a tribal elder, was told by
the Dangs DSP that he should not organise any protests or assemble people.
Tribals in the area say police visited several villages in the Dangs to
deliver similar messages.

Those connected with social and democratic movements in the south Gujarat
tribal belt are enraged by the arrests of the activists. “For Chief Minister
Narendra Modi’s government, the FRA is like a gun in the hands of the
tribals,” says Rohit Prajapati, a prominent Vadodara-based activist and AMS
member. There is a widespread impression among south Gujarat civil society
members that if the FRA is implemented properly it will create serious
problems for Modi because of “commitments” he has given to the paper,
tourism and mining industries in Dangs and other tribal areas of the state.
“Some forest areas will need to be leased to industry,” says Prajapati.
“Even the judiciary go along when national interest is invoked.”

A GROWING sense that “Naxalism” is being invented by the state to “scuttle”
the tribal rights movement and “neutralise” the AMS is spreading in
Gujarat’s tribal belt. On April 4, hundreds of tribals from Kim, Ulpad and
Mangrol Adivasi tehsils assembled in Surat to protest the “arrests in the
name of Naxalism”.

There are reasons to believe that the Naxal label has proved very useful for
Gujarat and that the state government is going slow in implementing the FRA.
In Dangs, not a single *“patta”* — legal papers for ownership of cultivation
land in the forest area — has been handed over to any tribal claimant so
far. “The Gujarat government does not like social justice movements. The
arrests are aimed at stopping the legal tribal rights movements,” says Uttam
Parmar, a Gandhian tribal rights activist who has been involved in justice
movements for years.

LOCALS ARE BEING DIVIDED ALONG HINDU VS TRIBAL LINES AND TURNED INTO
HINDUTVA ACOLYTES EVEN AS ACTIVISTS ARE BEING ARRESTED

PARMAR ALSO points to the second line of the Gujarat strategy: that the Modi
government has been actively encouraging — with official support — the
“Hinduisation” of tribal culture. “A Hindu ethos is being imposed on the
tribals — whose civilisational culture is far different from that of Hindu
culture,” Parmar adds. In 2007, the state government allowed the illegal
felling of 600 trees on the Chamak Dongar hill and built on it a temple for
Shabri, a devotee of Ram. A small pond in Subir village was renamed ‘Pampa
Sarovar’, the place where Ram supposedly met Shabri. The site was later used
by the VHP and RSS to establish a fifth Kumbh Mela (Shabri Kumbh). “An
imaginary history is being created to strip Adivasis of their identity and
rights to the forest,” Parmar says. Today, the entire Dangs’ hillocks are
dotted with Hanuman temples.

The Dangis say the BJP, the RSS and the VHP have no history of speaking up
for Adivasis and have instead created friction between them and Christian
missionaries working in the area. “They [the government] did not even ask us
before dismantling symbols of our deities here,” says Pawar, “The government
is simultaneously creating a communal emergency in the state.”
 [image: image]  *Swamped* Unlike Hindus, the Dang Adivasis have
traditionally worshipped nature and animals

Officials of the Rajpipla Social Service Society (RSSS), a legal aid NGO and
part of AMS in the tribal belt, are dismayed by the arrest of Kulkarni and
his associates. Kulkarni has worked with the RSSS for more than a decade and
was preparing for a Peoples’ Tribunal for Forest Rights in the coming
months. The organisation, parts of whose work has been funded by the Union
Ministry of Rural Development, claims it has provided legal assistance to
tribals in at least two lakh court cases over the last two decades. “AMS can
vouch that Avinash and Bharat [Pawar] are not involved in violent or illegal
activity,” says Xavier Manjooran, a senior RSSS office bearer and AMS
activist. “The Gujarat government was sorry that they didn’t have Naxals or
Maoists.”

Kulkarni’s lawyer, Kirit Panwala, says there is nothing illegal about his
current activities. “[Kulkarni] may get harassed because of his past,”
Panwala says. Manjooran adds that when Avinash came from Maharashtra to work
among the Dang tribals in 2002, he revealed that he was once a member of
CPI-ML Janashakti but had quit the party. The party is not banned. But
according to Surat police sources, Kulkarni has “confessed” that he is still
a member and participated in two recent party meetings in Surat.

‘THE GOVERNMENT DID NOT EVEN ASK US BEFORE DISMANTLING SYMBOLS OF OUR
DEITIES HERE. IT IS CREATING A COMMUNAL EMERGENCY,’ SAYS PARMAR

“The government has the right to deal with any violent movement in Gujarat.
But it is important that the government action does not jeopardise the lives
of people and activists who are working for the rights of Adivasis,” Panwala
says.

But Gujarat police suspect Kulkarni is involved in organising a Maoist
rebellion in the south of the state. Although officially police are
tight-lipped about details of what has come to light after interrogating six
alleged Maoists arrested outside Dangs, officials privately say that
Niranjan Mahapatra, arrested one week before Kulkarni, has identified him as
being involved in Maoist activity in Gujarat. Kulkarni now faces charges of
sedition.

The work that Kulkarni and his associates have been involved with in Dangs
for two decades points to a possible solution to the Naxal or Maoist problem
that has captured the country’s attention. Arresting the likes of him may
amount to taking away Adivasis’ legal means to secure their rights as
prescribed in the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution and the FRA. Could
Gujarat police be shooting the messenger?