Mining and Movements - Causes of Tribal Militancy - Indian Social ...

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222SOCIAL ACTION VOL. 60 JULY – SEPTEMBER 2010mostly against Islamist militants. The Turkish situation, where the waragainst the Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan (PKK), (fighting for basic selfdeterminationby the Kurdish population) is often made to fit the mouldof a war against terrorists, offers a closer parallel to the situation incentral India – a parallel too little known in India.Central India’s Maoist/Naxalite insurgency adds complexity to a complextapestry of countless local movements against enforced displacement –movements that are essentially non-violent. “Displacement projects” isa fitting name for the new mining and metal factory “developmentprojects”, considering the number of people threatened with removalfrom their land and communities. The movements are of globalsignificance for their assertion of people’s basic rights to life andlivelihood, and for resistance to capitalist growth-oriented devouring ofresources and wrecking of environment. Often these movements havebeen falsely branded as Maoist.When certain movements have received public support from the Maoists,this has often been a “kiss of death” to genuine, indigenous movements,by making a response of massive attack on communities by securityforces appear legitimate.So it is necessary to spell out that most local movements are not in anyway Maoist-instigated. For example, the movements in Orissa to saveNiyamgiri and the Puri area from Vedanta’s aluminium and universityplans, and the movement against giant new steel plants by Posco, theTatas and others all arise locally, in solidarity. The Kalinganagarmovement by the Bisthapan Birodhi Jan Manch (People’s PlatformAgainst Displacement) against a new Tata steel plant, is currently(since 27.3.2010) under attack by hundreds of police in collusion with‘goondas’ determined to mow down opposition to the Tatas.Similarly an Obey the Law movement in Birbhum district of WestBengal, organised by local Santal Adivasis along with Hindu and Muslimnon-tribals, is trying to stop several hundred illegal stone quarries thatare making their life hell. The mine owners, along with a section of thelocal administration and the media, have falsely branded the movement‘Maoist’.By contrast, certain other movements are essentially local, and non-Maoist, even though Maoists have expressed support, resulting in a
MINING AND MOVEMENTS – CAUSES OF TRIBAL MILITANCY 223spiralling escalation of attacks on tribal villages by the security forces.This applies to the Committee Against Police Atrocities organised bySantals in West Midnapore and neighbouring districts of West Bengal,and the Chasi Mulia Adivasi Sangho in the Narayanpatna area ofKoraput district in south Orissa, where tribal villages are under attackby security forces, especially since the Narayanpatna police stationfiring on 20 November 2009 that killed two Adivasi leaders.The causes of tribal militancy – i.e. the reason that in certain areas,such as South Chhattisgarh, many tribal people have joined the Maoists– can be given as follows:1. The vast extent of exploitation which tribal communities face: asystem of endemic exploitation that works at many levels and hasbeen extensively documented, e.g. in Orissa by Kishen Pattnayakduring his 1960s and 1980s campaigns against “starvation deaths”and by Gopinath Mohanty, P. Sainath, and others. This exploitationis compounded by the invasion of mining companies into tribalareas, and frequent suppression of local people’s non-violentmovements, standing up for the most basic of rights.2. The increasing scale of dispossession/displacement. A longtermprocess of displacement of Adivasis through money lendingand extensive purchases of tribal land that contravene the FifthSchedule constitutional guarantees, is accelerating through numerousindustrial projects that raise exponentially the number of tribalpeople being dispossessed. An estimated 60 million village peoplehave been displaced by industries and dams in India since 1950,about half of these Adivasis and a quarter Dalits, 3 million inOrissa alone. This displacement process has also been vastlyaccelerated through war and conflict – especially the “SalwaJudum” war against Naxalites/Maoists in Dantewara district insouth Chhattisgarh, where at least 200,000 tribal people have beendriven out of their homes since 2005; and the “ethnic cleansing ofChristians” that has displaced an estimated 50,000 people fromKandhamal district of Orissa in 2007-08 and 2008-2009.3. Atrocities committed with impunity by security forces/SalwaJudum, (SJ) Hiding behind the Armed Forces Special PowersAct (AFSPA), the special Chhattisgarh Security Act, etc. JavedIqbal’s and many other articles and several human rights reports
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