JAVED IQBAL - The Surrealism of Surrender in Malkangiri
Malkangiri: Recent news reports from Malkangiri,
Odisha have often revealed sensational news of hundreds of Naxalites and
Naxalite supporters surrendering to the police at both BSF and COBRA camps at
Mathili block: from 244 from the villages of Jhadadrasi, Ektaguda and Chamundrasi,
to 281 from Sanaguma/Bara, to 117 from Bara alone, to 150 from Temurupalli, Pujariguda and Kukurkunda; whole villages,
with women, children and old folk congregate for meetings outside police camps,
as local reporters take photo-ops with police personnel giving speeches and
distributing shirts and saris.
Most recently, ‘59 Maoists surrendered’ on May 4 at the Border
Security Force camp at Kiang, out of which 25 were children, most below the age
of ten, staring aimlessly into space and “waging war” against the state by
almost drooling on the tarpaulin. The superintendent of police, Malkangiri,
himself says that the media is misrepresenting.
“People are not
surrendering. The militia, Revolutionary People’s Committee, village committee
members and Chetna Natya Mandali are surrendering. Others are victims
of Maoist violence. They have come to us to tell their tales of hardship and
demand development in their area,” says Mitrabhanu Mahapatra, superintendent of
police, 2010 batch.
The short history of
this goes back to textbook counterinsurgency operations, from the creation of a
network of informants by the police, a process made easier by the CPI Maoist’s
weaknesses in the area, extenuated by their brutality against adivasi
dissensions and that network itself.
Mathili block holds
high strategic importance as it is directly connected to Darbha valley in
the Sukma district of Chhattisgarh. The block is heavily forested and inhabited
by Koya, Bhunjia, Paroja and Dharua adivasis. There is no massive threat yet of
land grab by private corporations and while many non-tribals have grabbed
adivasi lands closer to the town of Mathili, it is relatively insulated from
them further in the forests. The villages closer to the roads have just
recently been electrified and the main roads are just beginning to be turned
from single lane to double lane roads (by the IVRCL company, now infamous for
the Kolkata flyover collapse). Phone services are intermittent,
with Cellone and BSNL signals found comparably deeper into the forests, helping
the police immensely in gathering information from their informants.
According to a
Ministry of Home Affairs document on the Left-Wing Extremism (LWE) division,
“The Cabinet, in a meeting held on 20.08.2014, has approved mobile towers at
2199 locations, identified by the MHA in consultation with BSNL/state
governments in the 10 LWE affected states. Out of 2199 approved projects,
932 mobile towers put on air as on 31.12.2015.”
Most of the Maoist
leaders who function in Mathili from the Darbha Divisional Committee are Telugu
and Koya than they are Odiya. In the past year, most of the area commanders in
Mathili: Sunadhar, Vinod and Laxman have been killed (there are conflicting
stories about whether Binod is alive or not). In Silakota, thirteen Maoists
from ‘Kalimela Dalam’ were gunned down in 2013, most presumably in their sleep,
the then-SP has gone on record to say, “There was no option of asking them
to surrender. Even if I had asked them, do you think they would have? They
would have shot back at me and we would have suffered casualties. It’s jungle
warfare.”
The story then begins
with the dalam commander who survived: Erma Kowaisi.
The man someone
always wants to kill
Erma s/o Bhima, is a
32 year old Koya adivasi from Goliaguda, in Mathili block, who joined the
Maoist village sangam in 2008 and then the armed squad, the dalam in 2012.
Today he is one of the
highest-ranked surrenders in Mathili block in Malkangiri and is often seen in
every ‘surrender’ meeting in the villages, speaking in Koya, translating for
BSF, COBRA and local police. It is his role and knowledge of years of Maoist
activities in the block that is helping to identify villages that have started
to ‘surrender’ to the police.
Erma never speaks
alone, he’s always surrounded by a cohort of BSF commanders who joke about the
times they were after him, though all their other interactions are
affable. Erma claims to have left the Maoist party for personal reasons, “Mera
pitaji bahut gaali diya, tumhara kheti karo, aur biwi ke saath koi nahi tha” (My
father abused me a lot, telling me to farm, and there was nobody with my wife). And,
he adds, “The Maoists were killing innocent people.”
He claims that he had
never fired his weapon and was only present when his commanders Sunadar and
Binod were killing informants. One incident concerns Tonasudra Bhunjia
(Udaigiri village) and Doblu Naik (Kopra village) from Kartanpalli Panchayat
who were killed by a squad Erma was a part of. This happened in 2013. ‘There
was no interrogation, no questioning, they just cut their throats and then shot
them.’ Said Erma.
Tonasudra and Dobli
had a public altercation with a sangam member: they had asked the sangam member
why they should refuse government welfare when it helps people. This led to a
physical altercation where the sangam member was beaten up by the villagers. The
squad in response killed Tonasudra and Dobli. So much for the right to free
association.
When I asked if the
Maoists carried out any development in his area, on ‘jal, jungle,
jameen’ (water, forest, land), he quickly responds that they did
not. The Naxalites in the area never had full support of the villagers, with
half in favour of the police and the other half with them. “Koi ekjoot nahi
tha” (There was no unity).
Yet across Mathili
block, the soft-spoken and warm Erma was someone everyone seemed to dread. The villagers of
Kartapalli who ‘surrendered’ on the May 4 would openly say that they feared
both Binod and Sunadar. “They used to say, ‘If you don’t come for the Maoist
meetings, you should leave your villages and go. After they were encountered,
even Erma was like this. Meeting mein nahi aayega toh goan chodd ke
jaoo” (If you won’t come for the meeting, leave the village).
In the village of
Kartapalli, there are 35 Bhunjia adivasi homes and seven Koya homes. The
entire village was empty, except for one man who did not go to ‘surrender’ as
he had a headache but sent his wife and children, and another old Koya woman
who just didn’t seem to care. The villagers all returned back from the police
camp after lunch (dalma and rice), without any police escort. They then claimed
they went to the police as they did not want to live in fear.
It was Erma, they
said, who had first organised their village and created a sangam. If there was
no Erma, their village would never had any connection to the Maoist party. Did the Naxalites do
any development work for their village? Barely, they say.
This is evidenced by
the labour rates in the region. For Tendu patta, which is 120-140 rupees in
Mathili, the rate is 150-170 rupees in Bastar. For Mahua, which across Mathili
is 20-30 rupees per kilo, in Jagdalpur, Chhattisgarh, the rates are 42-45
rupees, and in Dantewada, the rate is Rs. 50. In the village of Kartapalli,
three ‘marwaris’ come from Chhattisgarh and buy produce at lower
rates. The Maoists write in their pamphlets that the rates should be increased,
the villagers say, but then laugh when asked how three contractors come from
across the border and pay such low rates.
Did a protest turn
‘surrender’?
Bondku Kolar is a
farmer who also drives a tempo in the village of Barha in Mathili block, closer
to the Darbha forests. On September 26, 2015, he was called by the police for a
trivial matter concerning his vehicle. He voluntarily turned himself over to
the police but would soon realise that it wasn’t a matter of registration, “alag
maamle ke liye rakha mujhe” (I was kept for some other matter).
According to him, the
police wanted him to turn informant, so they kept him in the superintendent of
police’s quarters for five days. He denied any form of emotional or physical
torture, as the police asked him everything from who is rich and who is really
poor in his village, to showing him photographs of known Naxalites and even
Google Map images of the village. When he refused to cooperate, they finally
arrested him on October 1, 2015, for being part of the Maoist team that blew up
an Airtel tower.
After he was released on December 9, on a bail bond of 50,000
rupees, he was re-arrested a few metres from Malkangiri jail for blowing up the
gram panchayat building in Kiang. He was only just released on the May 2, on a
bail bond of 40,000 rupees. Bondku was also one of the eleven people including
panchayat samiti members who were taken away by the Maoists in 2015 for a praja
court for supporting the police, but they were all let go. Bondku is actually a
supporter of the ruling Biju Janta Dal and when other local adivasis of the BJD
had gone to complain about his arrest, they were asked if the Maoists sent
them. In this context,
a COBRA team from Kiang reached the village at five in the morning on March 13,
2016.
Maga Sodi was sleeping
when a soldier asked him to wake up and pulled the sheet off him. Maga Sodi just
grumbled and wrapped himself back in his blanket and went back to sleep. The soldier then got
rough – tied him up and ransacked his house. “They tore some of my
children’s books,” he said later. “I told them to let my hands loose, where
would I go?” At the end of the
operation, three adivasi boys were taken away by the COBRA forces. A few
hours later, the villagers decided to protest by surrounding the BSF camp at
Kiang, demanding the release of those taken away, including Bondku. They spent all
night at the camp, and the next day, were party to the reports of how ‘117
Maoist supporters had surrendered’.
In the morning, Erma
ensured that the three who were taken away were released as they had absolutely
no links with the Maoists. Meanwhile, the
superintendent of police denies the use of any force, and has said that they
had to be taken away in a such a manner so it did not look like they were
voluntarily surrendering.
Reason in the age
of fear
When sarpanch
of a village (name withheld on request) saw the photo of Erma I had taken, he
reacted with sharp, abusive language against the man. “Iske darr se log
Naxali meeting mein jaate the, aur abhi iske dar se log police ko surrender kar
rahe hai.” (They were afraid of him so they went to Maoist meetings
and now they’re afraid of him so they go surrender to the police.) He continued, “90% yaha
ke log jo surrender kiya bahut simple hai” (90% of the people who
surrendered from here are very simple).
The sarpanch also
lists how the Maoists have killed two of his friends in the village. They were
taken away to the mountains, interrogated, murdered and their bodies were left
in the village overnight. He claims they have killed dozens of adivasis across
the block: three in Kiang, one in Salmi, three in Mahupadar, one in
Tentilugoma, two in Kartampalli, to name a few. They were all killed on the
accusation of being informants.
At the same time, the
police had asked another sarpanch to cooperate with them but he refused. He
claims that normal villagers are taken away and detained by the police
regularly, across the Mathili block, but no one has ever complained, “Complain
karega toh kaun sunega (Who will listen is we complain)? If we say
anything, they will put cases on us.”
“In March 2014, at
Kadapada village, two women and two men were kept with the police for five-six
days,” he added. “Aur abhi Tulsi pahad ke upar Gugapadar gaon mein Naxali
goanwalle ko poocha, kaun bola surrender karne ke liye? Aur 10-15 log ko maara
woh log.” (And on the Tulsi mountains, the Naxalites confronted the
villagers of Gugapadar and asked them, who asked you to surrender? And they
beat 10-15 people).
Yet one sarpanch,
Maheshwar Samrat of Temurupalli, a Halbi Adivasi, has no fear of reprisal by
the Maoists, or is just a fatalist. He has been actively involved in
‘surrenders’ in his panchayat and claims he is on the Maoist hitlist. “If
tomorrow they decide to kill me, the police will not be here, they will come
only after I am dead.”
“So why did you decide
to support the police when there is no security for you?” I ask. “Uppar walle ka
adesh hai (It is what God
wants me to do),” he says as he laughs incredulously, raising his hands in the
air. “Naxali jal, jungle, jameen bolte hai, lekin iska kuch kaam nahi hota. (Naxalites
talk of water, forest, land, but no work happens towards it). He
adds that they don’t let the gram sabha meetings take place and instead only
want their meetings to happen.
“Do you think they
will change?” “They have to
understand themselves first what is wrong with them. The Naxals have to realise
that they are human and even the person they want to kill is human. Otherwise
how will they change? They must forgo the conflict (himsa). After
saying jal, jungle, jameen, how can you harm adivasis?”
Similarly, sarpanch B
said:, “Naxal ka niyam thoda theek hai, lekin jo maar deta hai logo ko, woh
bahut bekaar hai. Lekin Naxal bhi nahi rehne se, police aadmi se bhi khatra
hai” (Naxalite policies are a alright but when they kill people, it’s
not good. But if the Naxals are not there, the police have a free hand.
Development
and education as agenda
In a meeting with the
BSF and adivasis from Kartapalli, a BSF commander from Uttarakhand said, “The
next time I meet you, I hope to be speaking Koya. Wait, what language do they
speak? Halbi? Okay. You have come to our camp to join with us, yeh hi
hamara adesh hai (that is our order). It is important that
we trust one another. It would be wonderful if you leave the Naxalites and come
towards us, in the long run it will benefit you. That’s all I will say now, the
next time I hope to be speaking to you in your own language.”
A BSF commander
from Bihar added, “First when we used to come into your villages, you used to
run away from us. In the last four-five months, we did operations there, and
you know the Naxalites have stopped coming… are they still coming? That you are
coming towards us, it is what we are grateful for. Let there be development in
your villages, let your children study. Is there a road coming in the village?
Your children will study and go to Kiang, Govindpalli and Malkangiri.”
When I asked the
villagers of Kartapalli if they have a school, they responded that they do and
that their teacher Sushanto Behera comes everyday. They don’t have a road yet
and they have one boy who has completed class 12. In Kiang, where there is a
BSF camp as well as a COBRA camp, the teacher has not come for six months.
“When it comes to development, from the BDO, the collector to those in the
education department, I have sent complaints about our absent teacher but no
one is responding,” says Somaru Naik, an LLB graduate and the sarpanch of
Kiang.
At the same time,
Haldar Poojari, who is the state president of the Adivasi Mahasabha questioned
state promises of development. “They got all these people to surrender to the
‘mainstream’, so they can get development. What development? This area does not
have irrigation, we depend on rains. So irrigate us, there was the Sapthadhar
project, now do it. Give us our pattas (land titles), so many
of us don’t have our pattas.”
“Many adivasis here
are not even called adivasis here by the state,” he continues. “The Dhurwa and the
Kondareddis near Chitrakonda, they are called adivasis elsewhere but not in
this state. So they don’t get ST certificates to study.”
Yet Rajesh Madari of
the village of Temurupalli, who is a BA in Arts graduate, only found himself a
job in the panchayat gram sabha, earning 1,000 rupees per month. He detailed
how most of the adivasis who graduated with him are now SPO’s. Maheshwar
Samrat, his sarpanch added how educated Bhunjia youth do not see their
aspirations in the CPI Maoist movement.
“There are no other
jobs for adivasis here except SPO’s.’ Even Somaru Naik added: “Three-four
years ago the rules changed where a lot of people who are graduates from
Bhubaneshwar are getting jobs in services here. Not adivasis from here.” They only work when
unirrigated lands receive rains and farming can continue. Meanwhile, the
villagers of Katapalli laugh as they say how Erma taught them songs of the
Naxalites, “aur phir bhaag gaya (and then ran away).”
Postscript
The question arises
that if the CPI Maoist is incapable of maintaining a mass base in the area
directly adjacent to their bases in Bastar, then how are they capable of
containing this senseless violent insurgency and keep up the ambitious
claim of capturing state power? Mathili is a region where they do not even
speak to all adivasi tribes, let alone the millions of oppressed: the Bhunjia’s
repeatedly claimed that the Koyas would predominately go to them, their squads
spoke in Koya or Hindi, not Halbi. Most villagers even claimed that most of the
people who are going to the police to ‘surrender’ are Bhunjias and not Koyas.
In twelve years the
CPI Maoist of Mathili have seemed to have alienated the Bhunjia population that
had to face state repression. And from across the region, the police would
create informants through force, carrot, stick, noose and manipulation and the
Naxalites would kill them. In 2010 in Chitrakonda, I met the adivasi leader of
the Malkangiri Cut Off Area Tribal Union, Komalu Anakum, who was living in fear of the police because
his mass agitations for basic amenities were being misconstrued as Maoist
activities. Today he’s a ghost, murdered by the Maoists in 2013 because they
thought he was an informant.
The Maoists can claim
they do this to protect their leadership, but the state will keep on making
informants; the state will do what a state does. No matter what pretences they
can keep up in different areas, counterinsurgency, to them, is not compatible
with human rights; habeas corpus ki maa ki jai, and to them, no
Supreme Court order, no international covenant on human rights which India is a
party to and no legal recourse can ever interfere with their intelligence
gathering. This is why they despise human rights activists.
Intelligence is their
dogma. And the war is fought on the grounds of intelligence, details from the
MHA reveal it: from the years 2011-2016(as of March) across the states, 494 LWE
cadres were killed (this doesn’t count the innocent people killed or how many
are killed in fake encounters), 541 security personnel killed, yet 679
‘informants’ or those deemed ‘informants’ have also been killed.
And what would be the
Maoist response to reclaim this block, if they wanted to? The killing of those
who helped set up the surrenders? Is the only response to state violence, more
violence against the population in the form of the killing of informants and
dissenters? How many Ermas have to live in fear by repressing an entire
population, hoping for the annihilation of the CPI Maoist? Has the killing
of informants become so casual? Is one man’s atrocity different from another’s
atrocity?
In 2010, there was a
large red stupa for slain Maoists Sudhakar Reddy and Comrade Venkataih built
overlooking the cut-off area. Today, there is a BSF camp behind it, and the
stupa is coloured Tiranga. When this all ends, if
it ever does, will there be a stupa for the Komalus of Dandakaranya? Who will
build it?
See also
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