-Jyoti
Punwani
``In our villages we come,
we will go with our axes,
big feet police, we will jump in Delhi,
with bows and arrows, we will jump in Delhi,
with these arrows, we will kill the police,
loot the government,
we will snatch weapons and bring them."
This
is an Adivasi song from Bastar quoted by freelance journalist Javed Iqbal,
writing for the Sunday Guardian on June 15, 2013. Three weeks earlier, Maoists had
killed Congress leader Mahendra Karma, founder of the anti-Maoist vigilante
movement Salwa Judum. Karma and 27 of his Congress colleagues were killed after
addressing an election rally in Sukma, the site of the latest killing of 25
CRPF jawans. The headlines at the time described how Karma was stabbed 78 times
and how his killers danced round his body.
In
an article titled `Death is Bastar’s Muse’, Iqbal, who has regularly reported
from Bastar on the Adivasi-State conflict there, wrote: ``Karma was stabbed 78
times. In 2006, in Matwada village of Bijapur, SPOs smashed stones into the eye
sockets of three Adivasi men. In 2004, Oonga Madkam of Kottacheru village, a
friend of many of the leaders of the yet to be formed Salwa Judum, was shot
dead on the road between Konta and Cherla, and the Maoists smashed his head,
already void of life, with a small boulder. In 2012, the CRPF would be accused
of setting Pudiyam Mada's genitals on fire in the Sukma police station.’’
These
juxtapositions of violence made by Iqbal were not a justification of Karma’s
killing, but were necessary to put his killing in perspective. The Salwa Judum
founded by Karma, and now sought to be revived by his son, was banned by the
Supreme Court in 2011 after Justices B. Sudershan Reddy and S.S. Nijjar
concluded, on the basis of evidence presented to them, that the situation in
Bastar reminded them of Joseph Conrad’s novel `The Heart of Darkness’, which
was about the European-dominated ivory trade in the Congo between 1890 and 1910.
The novel’s protagonist dies with the words: ``The horror, the horror!”
The
judges feared that the Chhattisgarh government’s Salwa Judum would force them
to exclaim the same. Iqbal admitted in his article that the song didn’t make
for pleasant listening. Yet, he felt it had to be presented to the readers, to
explain the state of affairs in Bastar.
The
graphic scenes of grief and mourning depicted on our TV screens in the days
following the killing of CRPF jawans on April 24 also had to be presented. The
recounting of every jawan’s story in the papers was necessary too: the father
who would have retired in a few weeks; the husband who was already ill but had
been refused leave… this was classic human interest reporting.
"But
where was the perspective in all this? Sukma is not some undiscovered remote
area making news for the first time."
But
where was the perspective in all this? Sukma is not some undiscovered remote
area making news for the first time. It has been the site of major killings of
CRPF jawans by Maoists since 2010, when 75 CRPF jawans were killed. It was also
home to the largest Salwa Judum camps, just as it was the arena where the UPA
government’s Operation Greenhunt played out starting from late 2009. It was
Sukma’s Collector who was abducted by the Maoists in 2012, with one demand
being an end to Greenhunt.
Sukma
is infamous for other reasons too. Probably because it was home to the Salwa
Judum, Sukma has a history of driving out outsiders who have tried to
investigate the brutal goings on which are routine there. Be it social
activists Swami Agnivesh or Medha Patkar, anthropologist Nandini Sundar or
historian Ramchandra Guha – every one of them has been threatened, if not
attacked by police and vigilantes. Gandhian Himanshu Kumar who set up an ashram
near Sukma had to flee overnight in 2009 after his ashram was razed as a result
of his efforts to get justice for Adivasis.
But
it’s been rare for TV viewers or readers of the English press to get a glimpse
of the grief and mourning that has become the lot of Sukma’s Adivasis since
2005 when the Salwa Judum was started. Given the number of officially reported
rapes, mutilations, killings and the forcible displacement, sometimes by
burning, of more than 400 villages, Bastar should have been a hotspot for
reporters.
Far
from being punished, these rape accused got government jobs as Special Police
Officers and constables, and their statues were put up by the police. At least
half as much attention should have been paid to the Adivasis whose daughters
were raped and sons killed by security forces, as was paid to the families of
the CRPF jawans this time.
"It’s
been rare for TV viewers or readers of the English press to get a glimpse of
the grief and mourning that has become the lot of Sukma’s Adivasis"
But
Bastar never became such a hotspot. The remoteness of the jungles and the class
and social profile of the victims are two reasons that come to mind
immediately. Do most national English newspapers have correspondents
there? A few names remain in the mind for their steady reporting from the
area when Salwa Judum and Operation Greenhunt were at their peak: Aman Sethi
and Suvojit Bagchi of The Hindu; Supriya Sharma of The Times of India; Tusha Mittal of Tehelka. Freelancers Javed Iqbal, Freny Manecksha and Chitrangada
Choudhury on their own decided to risk travelling all the way to the jungles to
report from what they knew would be hostile and even dangerous terrain.
Today,
things are not much different. Freelancers Chitrangada Choudhury and Freny
Manecksha continue to report on Bastar. The Hindu continues to have a reporter stationed in the
region - Pawan Dahat whose reports, sometimes as brief as three paragraphs,
invariably quote both sides, the Adivasi and the police and sometimes the
Maoists too. (The
Hindu carried the Maoists’ statement on the recent CRPF
killings in full.) This time, he was the only one to report on the fears of the villagers near the spot of the
jawans’ killings.
A
welcome addition is the Indian Express’ Ashutosh Bhardwaj. The most perceptive and sensitive piece on the latest killings was Bhardwaj’s `Staring down
the barrel in Sukma’ (April 28)
As
far as TV channels go, only NDTV has been sending reporters to the site, and
not just when security forces are killed. But remoteness and the social
profile of the population cannot explain the lack of coverage of a conflict
that is as important as the Kashmir conflict. But Kashmir is an international
issue, so whether the State likes it or not, it’s going to be in the news. Not
so Bastar, where the State definitely wants a news blackout - until security
forces get killed and spokespersons of the State can demand harsher measures
knowing most editors and anchors will support them.
An analysis in The Hoot June 8, 2013 by Aritra
Bhattacharya, of the way the media reported the Mahendra Karma killing, found
that most anchors and editors were rooting for the Maoists to be crushed. At
that time too, Bhardwaj’s reports were cited as having stood out.
Given
all this, it’s not surprising that media coverage of the latest killings of
CRPF jawans ran the familiar course, except that this time, on some news
channels, human right activists and JNU student leaders were also the target.
Except for an opinion piece by Harinder Baweja in the Hindustan Times on April 28 http://www.hindustantimes.com/analysis/to-avoid-another-sukma-be-fair-to-the-tribal , and Ashutosh Bhardwaj’s piece mentioned above,
there was little to explain the repeated targeting of the CRPF in Sukma. The
CPI’s Manish Kunjam has for years headed the Adivasi Mahasabha in Sukma. He
could have been at least interviewed on the phone, especially since Mahendra
Karma’s son was interviewed by more than one paper.
NDTV
did call two intellectuals known to oppose the State’s policy on dealing with
Maoists: E. M. Rammohan, former DG, BSF and author of `Maoist Insurgency and
India's Internal Security’, and Professor Nandini Sundar of Delhi University
whose focus of study has been Bastar’s Adivasis and who is the first petitioner
in the Supreme Court case against Salwa Judum. But both emerged as lone voices
in two panels dominated by BJP and security spokesmen. In one of the panels,
the anchor kept wanting a ``free hand’’ for the forces, as if they have been
acting under restraint until now!
"In
one of the panels, the anchor kept wanting a `free hand' for the forces, as if
they have been acting under restraint until now!"
If
in 2013, the multiple stabbing of Mahendra Karma’s body made headlines, this
time, the media reported that the jawans’ private parts had been mutilated. An
official denial ensued, with an official explaining on TV that sometimes
shrapnel piercing the body may give an impression of a cut having been
executed. But the damage was done.
That
report apparently emerged from the rescue team that reached the site, and in
the Hindustan Times, both the DIG of Dantewada as well as a senior COBRA (a
CRPF special battalion) official were quoted on it. The HT report claimed to
have a picture of a jawan whose private parts had been mutilated. One suspects
the official denial was promptly issued because the truth would have been out
once the bodies reached home.
This
time the media’s stand is surprising for two reasons. Firstly, over the last
one year, there has been more reporting from Bastar, especially on the second
round of evictions of ``trouble makers’’ that took place last year. Secondly,
journalists in Bastar have themselves been protesting against police
harassment. Two of them - Santosh Yadav and Somaru Nag - were arrested and
imprisoned under the draconian Chhattisgarh Public Security act and the
Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) for ``supporting Maoists’’.
To
be fair to the media, it must be pointed out that Bastar is the most
militarised region in the country today. It is not easy for any journalist to
report from there. In a region where judges attend meetings called by the
police (as recounted to this reporter by Sukma’s former Chief Judicial
Magistrate Prabhakar Gwal, who was dismissed last year), reporters are small
fry. To add to this, most local newspaper proprietors support the police.
Despite
all this, a few local journalists have tried to report, at risk to their lives.
Santosh Yadav, who was recently released from jail, even helped in the legal
defence of innocent Adivasis – and paid for it. Since 2011, four journalists
have been killed, at least one of them, Sai Reddy, by Maoists.
But
would the police intimidate reporters of national media houses? If that were
so, how would the reporters of The Hindu, Indian Express, and The Times of India mentioned above, have managed to file regular
reports which were by no means pro-police? So, is it that reporters are
unwilling to be posted there, or is it editors who don’t care to post them in
Bastar? Or is it the proprietors who don’t want impartial coverage of a region
where big business is waiting to make a killing, once the Maoists are decimated
by the security forces?
Interestingly,
apart from Bhardwaj and Dahat, some of the most detailed reports to emerge from
Bastar of late have been from non-journalists. Malini Subramaniam, a social
researcher who has worked with UNICEF and Oxfam in the region, and
Nandini Sundar, who has been writing regularly on Bastar for news
websites Scroll.in and The Wire.in. Tata Institute of Social Sciences’ scholar
Bela Bhatia wrote a long report for Outlook.
But
these writers are vulnerable in a way reporters from national newspapers may
not be. Subramaniam was forced to leave by vigilante groups last year. The
police have filed a case of murder against Sundar and Bhatia has faced threats.
The
Maoist statement on the killing of 24 CRPF jawans said: “These attacks should
be seen as retaliation against the sexual atrocities that are being committed
by the security forces against the tribal women and girls in the conflict
zone.’’
Journalists need not agree with this defence, but it is their job to
contextualise the attacks. Incidentally, these incidents of sexual violence
have been reported both on NDTV and in the mainstream English press. 
