Nandini Sundar

January 20, 2023

Dear Mr Gandhi,

First, I would like to congratulate you as you complete what has so far been a very successful yatra. The message of love, unity and harmony that the yatra is centred around is a singularly important one in India today. Several friends who have participated in the yatra have also praised your personal stamina and commitment. I trust that this will be the beginning of a productive 2023 in which the Congress can recover some of the past principles it stood for during the freedom struggle, and which are embodied in the Preamble to the constitution.

I would have liked to join the yatra. However, the attitude of the Congress government in Chhattisgarh towards peaceful yatras and dharnas by other parties and organisations has been so atrocious that it would seem like betrayal or hypocrisy for anyone concerned with Chhattisgarh to do so. One wonders whether the messaging and spirit of the Bharat Jodo Yatra stops at the boundaries of the state of Chhattisgarh.

In September 2022, the Congress government refused the Communist Party of India permission to take out a padayatra from Silger to Sukma, a mere 108 kilometres through one district. This was the second time the yatra was refused permission. The district administration allowed a rally at Sukma from 12-4 pm on the condition that only people within the city municipality limits would take part, which would also have excluded the organisers who live in villages outside the city. The yatra eventually went ahead because people decided they would not be stopped from asserting their fundamental right to freedom of movement, but this was no thanks to the Congress government.

The yatra was meant to bring public attention to the local anger over security camps. In 2022 alone, the state government has set up 18 new security camps. This is in addition to the camps that already existed. There are now camps every 2-3 km and the whole of Bastar division has become one large cantonment. Many of these camps come up overnight, on land that villagers have been cultivating for years, and involve the destruction of forests. The presence of the security forces makes women uncomfortable as they go about their everyday activities in the forest, including bathing, etc. The camps are a severe cause of disturbance to the local peace and security. The villagers are never asked if they want camps, as is mandatory under the Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas) [PESA] Act.

The Silger to Sukma yatra was important because, since May 2021, villagers have been protesting against a camp that came up at Silger village. Four unarmed Adivasis were killed by the CRPF, but there has been no compensation and no prosecution.

Since then, across the region, dharnas have sprung up against these camps. At last count, there were some 13-14 such peaceful protests, several of which have been going on for more than a year. They are led by Adivasi youth united under the banner of the Moolvasi Bachao Manch.

You and others in your yatra rightfully supported the Punjab farmers in their year-long protest against the farm laws. The Bastar youth are no less peaceful and constitutional. They are also as organised as the Punjab farmers, but with practically no money and no outside support. In Burji, where people had been protesting since October 8, 2021, the young women who ran the camp showed me the vegetable patch they had been cultivating, and the chickens and the pigs they were rearing. This year, they had also grown 40 quintals of rice on land that the villagers had kept aside for them. The Moolvasi members rotate between camps, helping out on their family fields. Work is divided among them – mess, communications, song and dance team, etc. These are the 21st century youngsters who type up press releases and posters on their phones and print them out on printers powered by solar energy.

Even if we assume, as the government reflexively does, that these are all fronts of the Maoists, isn’t it a victory for the constitution that the youngsters in these movements engage with their elected representatives and invoke PESA? One of their ambitions is to start a ‘constitution school’ to teach the villagers about their rights.

Yet, rather than applauding these brave youngsters, the police have repeatedly attacked them. On the night of December 9, a camp forcibly came up at Vechapal. On December 15 and 16, the police beat up the Burji protesters and destroyed the stocks of rice and all the other camp materials they had so carefully and painfully gathered. Again, as of a few days ago, there are reports of women being assaulted in Pusnar.

In January 2023, after the police and District Reserve Guard attacked Kunded village – where people were protesting against yet another camp coming up – the police prevented CPI leader Manish Kunjam and others from visiting the village. The Congress government in the state is behaving exactly like the BJP government. In 2011, the then BJP government stopped Congress MLA Kawasi Lakhma and others from reaching Tadmetla village after it had been burned.

I am writing this letter to you because, in a press conference in Punjab, you promised that after the yatra ended, you would personally visit Chhattisgarh and see its problems for yourself.

The Adivasis of Bastar are also part of Bharat. There are many serious concerns regarding their fundamental rights, which await your attention. I look forward to your intervention.

With best wishes for a successful end to the Bharat Jodo Yatra.

Nandini Sundar

(Nandini Sundar is a sociologist. Courtesy: The Wire.)

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Civil Rights Fact-Finding Team Seeking Probe in Aerial Bombing Detained in Chhattisgarh

Counterview Desk

February 03, 2023: In a sharply worded statement, the civil rights group Forum Against Corporatization and Militarization (FACAM), New Delhi, has objected to the fact finding team of the Coordination of Democratic Rights Organisations (CDRO) comprising of 25 members from Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh and Delhi being stopped at Dobbatota town in Sukma District of Chhattisgarh at midday 1st Feb, 2023.

Claiming that the team members were “continuously harassed and denied access to villages of Sukma”, the statement says it was only a team on a fact finding mission into the cases of aerial bombings in the region, state repression on anti-camp movements and matters of illegal forceful land acquisition to build roads and camp.

The statement says, they were stopped and made to stay in a tin-shed under heavy cordon of CRPF, DRG and Chhattisgarh police. To devoid them of any relief, the police administration shut the town and refused to provide them proper food and such facilities since. The team was forced to cancel its fact-finding mission.

Text of Statement:

A fact finding team of the Coordination of Democratic Rights Organisations (CDRO) comprising of 25 members from Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh and Delhi were stopped at a camp checkpoint in Dubbatota town in Sukma District of Chhattisgarh at mid day 1st Feb, 2023. They were constantly harassed by the state personnel and were not allowed to proceed further.

Shops in the area were forcefully shut down and they were denied food. Moreover, they were not permitted to proceed to nearby ‘Panchayat Bhavan’ to take proper shelter. Instead, they were kept in a tin-shed waiting area without sufficient resting arrangements and were made to spend the night there. On 2nd of Feb at around 10 am, they were finally let go by the local camp commander, only to be stopped at another camp check-point not more than 3 km ahead.

It is pertinent to mention that this team was on a ‘Fact Finding Mission’ to investigate the cases of Aerial Bombings in various villages of Bijapur and Sukma on the Telangana-Chhattisgarh border; State repression on Anti Camp movements in Burji and elsewhere; and matters of illegal forced land acquisition to build roads and camps by violating provisions of seeking “consent of Gramsabha”, as mandated under the Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas (PESA) Act. Despite meeting and informing the Superintendent of Police and District Collector of Sukma as well as the DSP of Burkapal, they were illegally detained and made to stay under a tin-shed amid a heavy cordon of CRPF, DRG and Chhattisgarh Police. When told by the team about the said intimation to authorities, the Central Reserve Police Force officials flatly refused to accept it and said “we are central forces, we don’t take orders from state government authorities”, informed a team member.

Due to constant pressure and continuous harassment by not allowing transportation and other necessary means, the fact finding team had to cancel its above said inquiry after going through hours of ordeal at the hands of state forces. It is important to understand that these kinds of restraints on outside observers, the journalists, activists and human rights defenders, is an attempt by state forces to create a war without witnesses to carry on their genocidal acts without any scrutiny from civil society and larger masses of the country. This information suppression which started with Operation Green-Hunt has intensified multifold under Operation Samadhan-Prahar, with camps at every 3-4 km distance, denying passage to Democratic forces apart from wreaking havoc on the people of Bastar in the interest of Corporate loot.

Forum Against Corporatization And Militarization (FACAM) condemns in harshest tone the denial of passage to CDRO Fact-Finding team, harassment of team members and subsequent suppression of truth from reaching the people of the country. We also ask the Central Government, State Govt. of Chhattisgarh and IG of Bastar Range, who claim in unison that no aerial strike is being conducted in Chhattisgarh, why are they afraid and denying passage to Fact-Finding missions to conduct an inquiry, if what they claim is at all true? What truth are they trying to conceal and keep buried? The answer is known: it’s the genocidal war waged by the state under Operation Samadhan-Prahar on aboriginal people of the country.

We demand the following:

• Conduction of Fact-Finding into the above mentioned incidents by a team comprising of Democratic rights activists under direction of NHRC or Supreme Court.
• Grant unhindered passage to Democratic, civil and human rights activists and journalists from visiting the war-zone.
• Stop suppressing information about the incidences in the region.
• Stop state repression on people fighting against corporate loot in the garb of fighting the Maoist movement.
• Stop Operation Samadhan-Prahar

(Statement courtesy: Counterview, a newsblog that publishes news and views based on information obtained from alternative sources, which may or may not be available in public domain, allowing readers to make independent conclusions.)