Seven Years Gone: Remembering Anuradha Ghandy

Anuradha Ghandy: The Rebel

She was born into privilege and could easily have chosen the easy life. But Anuradha Ghandy chose guns over roses to fight for the dispossessed.

On a muggy April evening in 2008, somewhere in Mumbai, a doctor was trying desperately to get in touch with his patient. The patient happened to be a woman in her early 50s, who had come that morning with high fever. The doctor had advised a few blood tests, and, as he saw the reports, he started making frantic calls to the phone number the patient had scribbled in her nearly illegible handwriting. The number, he soon realised, did not exist. He was restless. The reports indicated the presence of two deadly strains of malaria in the woman’s bloodstream—she had to be admitted to a hospital without delay. Time was racing by and there was no trace of her.

By the time the woman contacted the doctor again, a few days had passed. The doctor wanted her placed under intensive care immediately. But it was too late.

India Orders Colonized Naga Soldiers to Fight Revolutionary Maoists

[The Indian state’s war on tribal people (adivasis) and their Maoist champions is guided by the historic colonizer’s strategy book. When they order troops from colonized nations within India to fight people rising against Indian State terror, it is useful to remember …. this has been done, many times, before.

When hostages identify with their captors, it is called the “Stockholm Syndrome.”  As Malcolm X pointed out, when “House Negroes” see the Master’s house is on fire, they run for water to extinguish the flames, while “Field Negroes” get gasoline so the fire will burn more intense.  In this sense, as Steve Biko said, “The most potent weapon of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”  These “mental” weapons for the oppressors become material, when the oppressed take up arms for the oppressor.  The rejection of such colonized deployments is a critical part of every liberation and revolution.

When the French colonizers fought the British colonizers in North America, they manipulated indigenous people (“Indians”) to do their fighting for them. When, after the US Civil War, the Northern victors set out to conquer the native “Indians” in lands to the West, they deployed Black soldiers (“Buffalo Soldiers”) to carry through the colonization fight. When Europeans were facing uprisings across colonized Africa, they most commonly sent their native colonial troops to suppress the anti-colonial challengers.

Hundreds of such examples dot the pages of colonial history – and in some cases, like the San Patricio Battalion (Irish migrants who were deployed by the US in the “Mexican War” of the 1840’s), or Black troops deployed against the Filipino independence fighters in early 1900s, or US soldiers in Vietnam who became resisters and fraggers, the deployment of oppressed soldiers against other oppressed peoples was rejected and many refused to fight, and some joined the resistance of the colonized. This struggle to exorcise the influence of the oppressor, to de-colonize the minds of the oppressed, continues today in Nagaland, in Chhattisgargh, and everywhere oppression and resistance is found. — Frontlines ed.]

MCPM urges Nagas to resist deployment in Maoist areas

Correspondent IMPHAL, Nagaland Post, October 23, 2014

Major General R. K. Sharma, Additional Director General, NCC Directorate North Eastern Region Shillong on his visit to Ist Nagaland Girls Battalion, NCC Kohima on April 9. The ADG highlighted the NCC activities and various opportunities and incentives offered by NCC. He appreciated the state government for its support towards NCC activity in Nagaland. Patkai College has been selected by UGC to take up National Cadet Corps (NCC) as elective subject in the curriculum from the academic year 2013-14.

Maoists have put up posters at Kalimela Policestation area in Malkangiri districts of Orissa asking people to cooperate with them to make the PLGA week observation a success

The Manipur based underground group Maoist Communist Party Manipur (MCPM) has asked Naga Regiments not to allow themselves to be deployed in the Maoist stronghold areas of India, especially in Dandakaranya Revolutionary zone.
Publicity and propaganda secretary Comrade Nonglen Meitei of the outfit, in a statement dispatched to the local media, appealed to the Naga Regiment to oppose the implementation of this decision regarding their deployment.
It further appealed the regiment not to go to Chhattisgarh as “slaves” while urging to raise their voices against the forceful deployment and showed solidarity towards the revolutionary people of that region who are fighting for their very existence.

India pulls kids from school, makes them police

[A few years back, some Indian government people released a statement that “the Maoists” (which the government calls ay radical movement in tribal areas) have a lot of child soldiers.  To some extent, the government in saying this is reacting to and slandering the youthfulness of rebellion.  Because young people in India’s tribal areas become politically active and join political movements against the conditions they have been born and grown up in, the ranks of rebellious and revolutionary movements are filled with young people.  But the fact that the police force young people to leave school and work for the police, reveals what the police really think of children, as they have created an unschooled “child police” force which, one can only predict, will backfire in many ways. — Frontlines ed.]

For India’s child police, work trumps school
Children of officers killed on duty are given jobs to provide for families, but their studies take a backseat.
Shuriah Niazi, Al Jazeera, 14 Sep 2014

Rights activists say children’s education is put at risk by having to work at police stations [Shuriah Niazi/Al Jazeera]

Raipur, India – Children as young as five are being required to work for the police force in central India despite prohibitions on child labour in the country’s constitution.

At least 300 “child police” work in police departments across Chhattisgarh state in what officials insist is a compassionate policy to provide an income for the families of officers killed on duty.

India: The largest “democracy”? — or, a brazen — but false — electoralism?

[As Maoists in India denounce India’s claimed “democracy” as deceptive and fraudulent, the Indian state deploys nearly 150,000  troops, and moves hundreds of voting stations out of rebellious regions.  See the following two reports from the mainstream Indian press.  —  Frontlines ed.]

———————————————

Maoist posters calling for poll boycott found at bus stand

Business Standard, Tuesday, October 22,

Bottom of Form

Maoist posters calling for boycott of the upcoming Assembly polls were found pasted at a bus stand in the Kanker district in Chhattisgarh, where as many as 18 Maoist-affected constituencies will go to polls on November 11.

Three posters and two banners were found put up at the waiting hall of the bus stand under Pakhanjore police station limits last evening, a senior police official told PTI today.

Although, security personnel regularly visit villages to instill confidence in the people to vote, the rebels have appealed to villagers to kick both the BJP and Congress out of power, the police said, adding that a case has been registered in this connection.

Meanwhile, taking serious note of the Maoist threat, the Centre has sent additional 40,000 personnel of paramilitary forces to ensure peaceful polling, in addition to around 65,000 police personnel and 27,000 paramilitary troops already engaged in anti-Maoist operations in the state.

India: It’s people’s right to boycott elections: Maoist leader

Mohua Chatterjee, TNN | Oct 21, 2013

inSh

CPI (Maoist) Dandakaranya special zonal committee secretary Ramanna speaks on the party’s stand on the Chhattisgarh assembly elections.

CPI (Maoist) Dandakaranya special zonal committee secretary Ramanna speaks on the party’s stand on the Chhattisgarh assembly elections and justifies the May 25 attack on Congress leaders that killed Mahendra Karma and V C Shukla among others.

Q: Why have you appealed for election boycott? A: As usual, we have appealed to people to boycott the elections because they are a farce. Elections only renew five-year tenures of loot and torture by the elected representative in the present system. Our target is to change this system from the root and establish a people-centric society and that is not possible through elections.

Q: Will the poll boycott be violent this time too? A: This does not depend on our saying anything. Like always, this time too, the government has deployed a huge a number of security forces in the name of conducting free and fair elections, which are already exploiting and torturing people. Attacks on villages in the name of search operations, arrests, beating up people, fake encounters are consistently on. It is important to resist such acts. Therefore, I can only say that when the government tries to defuse our poll-boycott movement through crackdown on the people, then there will certainly be a counter to it.

“Bastar attack a punishment to Salwa Judum supporters”

[Here, a corporate media report on the discovery of Maoist banners about a recent armed conflict which eliminated the architect of the notoriously brutal anti-tribal Salwa Judum program (para-military violent squads organized and paid by the state).  The media, typically, expresses the police view, referring to the Maoists as “ultras,” thereby indicating their support of the Salwa Judum. — Frontlines ed.]

Zeenews.com, Friday, June 28, 2013

Gadchiroli: Maoists on Friday put up banners in remote parts of this district justifying the attack on the convoy of Congress leaders in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar area on May 25, in which 29 people were killed, as an act of punishment for “supporters of Salwa Judum”.

“How can punishing the supporters of Salwa Judum be an attack on the democratic values,” the ultras asked in the banners put up by Gadchiroli Divisional Committee of CPI (Maoists), at different places in Regdi, Kasansur, Ghot and other areas of the district.

“The death of Mahendra Karma and other Congress leaders is a punishment given by the people. It is a natural justice,” the banner further said.

Karma, who was the founder of Salwa Judum, the erstwhile anti-Naxalite movement, was killed in the brutal attack in Jiram valley of Darbha region in Bastar.

Former union minister VC Shukla, state Congress chief Nandkumar Patel, his son Dinesh and former legislator Uday Mudaliyar were also killed in the incident.

PTI

 

Chhattisgarh: Maoists Torch Road Construction Machines

Outlook India | Raipur | Jun 10, 2013

Maoists today torched two road construction machines and took away a tractor in the insurgency-hit Kanker district of Chhattisgarh.”Maoists torched a bulldozer and a JCB machine of the forest department, apart from taking away a tractor, engaged in road construction work in Mendra village,” Pakhanjore Sub-Divisional Officer of Police Anil Kumar Soni told PTI.

Maoists are observing Jan Pituri Week from June 5 to June 11 to commemorate their `martyrs’.

Vehicular traffic was thin at many places in south Bastar’s remote areas. People faced difficulty in reaching their destinations.

As the Railways have decided not to run the passenger train from Visakhapatnam to Kirandul beyond Jagdalpur fearing Naxal attacks during the week, passengers were forced to travel by bus from Jagdalpur to Kirandul.

Police said patrolling by paramilitary forces had been intensified in the Naxal-infested areas.

However, this time Maoists neither announced any relief for public transport system nor gave any call for bandh during the Jan Pituri week, contrary to their past practice.

Meanwhile, a Naxal was arrested from Mardapal police station area of Kodagaon district, police said. “Guddu Muriya, 25-year-old member of Usri Jan-militia, was arrested in Mulnar village on Sunday late night,” Additional Superintendent of Police Surjeet Atri said.

Maoist attacks are a counter violence of resistance against the state: Arundhati Roy

 

First Post, May 28, 2013

(First Post) Editors note: This interview was originally run in April 2010 by CNN-IBN. Given the context of the recent attack in Chhattisgarh on a Congress convoy, (First Post) has republished the interview as it resurfaces some interesting points of view. 

In that interview, Arundhati Roy says that the Maoists have no choice but to indulge in ‘counter-violence’. Here is Roy’s interview with CNN-IBN Deputy Editor Sagarika Ghosh:

Arundhati Roy. AFP

Sagarika Ghose: You wrote your article ‘Walking with the comrades’ in The Outlook before Dantewada happened. In the aftermath of the Dantewada (incident of 2010), do you still stand by the tone of sympathy that you had with the Maoist cause in that essay?

Arundhati Roy: Well, this is a odd way to frame before and after Dantewada happened, because actually you know this cycle of violence has been building on and on. This is not the first time that a large number of security personnel have been killed by the Maoists. I have written about it and the other attacks that took place between the years 2005-07. The way I look at is, people make it sound that, ‘oh, on this side are people, who are celebrating the killing of CRPF jawans, and that side of the people who are asking for the Maoists to be wiped out.’ This is not the case. I think that you got to look at the every death as a terrible tragedy in a system, in a war that’s been pushed on the people and that unfortunately is becoming a war of the rich against the poor. In which rich put forward the poorest of the poor to fight the poor. CRPF are terrible victims but they are not just victims of the Maoists. They are victims of a system of structural violence that is taking place, that sort to be drowned in this empty condemnation industry that goes on. This is entirely meaningless because most of the time people who condemn them have really no sympathy for them. They are just using them as pawns.

India–“Peals of Spring Thunder”: Oppressive System cannot control the struggle against oppression

[See two articles, below,  on India’s counter-revolutionary quandary.  —  Frontlines ed.]

May 27, 2013

The Naxalite Attacks at Sukma

by BINOY KAMPMARK, writing in CounterPunch

They have been considered one of India’s most pressing threats, and the recent attack by the Naxalites that ambushed a convoy of the Congress Party went that much further.  The ambush took place over the weekend in Sukma on the Maharashtra, Andra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh border. Reports suggest that there were as many as 200 Maoist rebels who inflicted heavy losses – 28 killed and 24 others wounded – before fleeing.

The attacks have shaken the establishment.  Among the dead were four state party leaders including Mahendra Karma of Chhattisgarh, and five police officers.  For BJP spokesperson Prakash Javadekar, “This new aggressive strategy of the Naxalities is a real threat to the Constitution and the rule of law. It is a challenge to sovereignty” (Times of India, May 26).  Former police chief of Punjab state KPS Gill is pessimistic about the new surge – the government of the day did not “have the political will and bureaucratic and police set-up to prevent such attacks” (Dhaka Tribune, May 26).

How the Naxalites have been treated has varied.  In 1967, when the movement first made its presence felt in the West Bengal village of Naxalbari, the Home Minister Y. B. Chavan treated the matter as a case of “lawlessness” in action.  The mistake was classic but fatal.  During the 1970s, the state authorities moved in on the movement hoping to crush it with repressive enthusiasm.  As usual with such measures, the quotient of extra-judicial killings and corrupt practices accompanied the operations.  Legislation was passed to enable various state authorities to take measures – the attempt, for example, by the N.T. Rama Rao government to free up arms licensing in Andra Pradesh in 1983 for individuals to protect themselves against the Naxals.

Indian state attacking villages, homes, schools and organizing centers in Chhattisgarh

[Note:  The “Janatana Sarkars” are collective forms of political and economic organization of the adivasis (India’s indigenous peoples) who have organized themselves under the leadership of the Maoists. — Frontlines ed.]

———————————————

Preliminary Report on the Fact Finding In Bijapur District, Chhattisgarh

Democratic Students’ Union, University of Delhi

(Released in a Press Conference at Women’s Press Corps on 15 March 2013)

In the three weeks from mid-January till the first week of February, several villages in the Bijapur District of Chhattisgarh experienced the terror of the armed forces of the Indian state. The CRPF, Chhattisgarh state police, erstwhile SPO’s of the Salwa Judum along with various coercive arms of the state orchestrated a systematic targeting of villages, burnt down hundreds of homes, ostensibly in random, further, burnt down the schools built by the people, picked up villagers, young and old, and physically tortured them while their homes burned to the ground. The affected villages are Pidia, Tomnaka, Singham, Lingham, Komati, Tomudum, and Kondapadu, and in each of these between eight and thirty homes were burnt down by the armed forces. In the village of Dodi-Tumnar, a school with hostel facility for about a hundred children, both girls and boys, run by the Janatana Sarkar was looted and then burnt down by the invading forces in the last week of January. Two battalions of about 1000 CRPF personnel each, besides Koya commandos and SPO’s arrived at the village school at 9 am on that day. They systematically proceeded to destroy the school after firing into the air twice. Even as the students and the schoolmaster fled into the forest, the armed forces caught an old man on his way to the field and chopped off his hand with his own sickle. Following this, the forces looted the storeroom and the kitchen of the school, poisoned the water well, and destroyed the roof, walls, and furniture of the school before finally burning it to the ground. They then marched to the nearby village of Pidia. This village, that houses approximately 265 homes, witnessed first hand the ruthlessness with which the armed force burn down the homes and livelihood of those who stand up for their right to life and liberty. Close to thirty homes were burnt down in one part of this village alone. The charred remains of the homes, cattle sheds, storerooms, utensils can be seen littered with empty bottles of beer and other brands of alcohol. It is clear that this planned attack is part of the routine of military life that participates in wanton destruction and celebrates the impunity they enjoy.

The burial of slain villagers

By burning schools and homes, looting sources of livelihood, and physically torturing hundreds of adivasis, the state attempted to legitimize the violence in the name of ‘development’. This methodical burning of homes and schools reveals the carnival of violence practiced by the forces to intimidate, brutalize and squash the spirit of those living in these parts without any concern for consequences. The villagers were forced to remain in the forest for three days as the force camped in the village as well as the hills surrounding the village. A few young men were picked up by the armed force and brutally beaten. Most of the men were released while one still remains in jail. They looted the means of livelihood and sustenance in the village. Before leaving, they burnt the leftover rations and supplies of the villagers that they had looted. Traces of the violence faced by the village can be seen in the charred remains of homes, shelters, and broken utensils and fences. Here, it is the Janatana Sarkar to whom the villagers turn to in times like these. The Janatana Sarkar provided medicines and food to the affected villagers. It is now also helping them rebuild the burnt homes. Even as the bare frames of the homes are being rebuilt pillar by pillar and brick by brick, the spirit of resistance is visible for all to see.

Forced labor in India — 37 bonded laborers rescued from Joura in Morena dist

The Times of India,  February 24, 2013

BHOPAL: The Morena district administration with the help on an NGO rescued 37 bonded labourers including women and children from a brick kiln in Joura tehsil.Sources in the district administration said, of these 21 labourers hail from Hathras district in Uttar Pradesh while other 16 are from Janjgir-Champa district of Chhattisgarh.

SDM Joura Prabhat Ranjan Upadhya told TOI, “16 labourers were rescued on February 21 and the remaining 21 were rescued on Saturday. The owners of the kiln Mahavir Tyagi and Rinku Tyagi have been booked under relevant labour laws”.

India: Maoist rebels attack Indian air force helicopter

	ASSOCIATED PRESS
	NEW DELHI, Jan 18: Police say suspected Maoist rebels have fired on an Indian Air Force helicopter, injuring one wireless operator on board while the aircraft was trying to evacuate wounded policemen from the Maoist stronghold.
	Indian Air Force Helicopter The helicopter was forced to land in Teliwara area in eastern Chhattisgarh state on Friday, a police officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters. Pranay Sahay, a paramilitary force officer, says the helicopter was trying to evacuate two state policemen wounded in fighting with Maoist rebels in the area. The rebels have been fighting the central government for more than four decades, demanding land and jobs for tenant farmers and the poor. About 2,000 people — including police, militants and civilians — have been killed in the past few years.
Published on 2013-01-18 21:12:51

India: Bhilai Steel Plant to ‘fund barracks’ for paramilitary forces to access iron ore

RAIPUR, November 7, 2012

by Suvojit Bagchi, The Hindu

CPI-Maoist have formed several committees to oppose the project

Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP), one of the main steel-producing units of Steel Authority of India (SAIL), ‘will fund construction of barracks’ for paramilitary forces to ensure security for the coming mining project at Raoghat in Kanker, central Chhatisgarh. The construction has been initiated, both Union Home Ministry and SAIL sources confirmed.

The BSP needs iron ore from the Raoghat mines, about 175 km south of Bhilai, as its existing nearby mines are fast depleting. The banned CPI-Maoist, which has a strong presence in Raoghat, has opposed the mining project.

The BSP is accessing iron ore from various captive mines in and around Dalli-Rajhara, 85 km south of Bhilai, for a few decades. However, those mines are depleting, according to SAIL officials.

The BSP needs to access iron ore from Raoghat, a hilly forested patch another 95 km south of Dalli-Rajhara. The BSP and Dalli-Rajhara are connected by rail to transport iron ore, unlike Bhilai and Raoghat. SAIL is keen to have a rail road to Raoghat from Dalli-Rajhara. However, strong Maoist presence and land acquisition issues are postponing the project, resulting in cost escalation.

In the recent meetings between Home Ministry officials and SAIL, it has been decided that four battalions, with more than 4,000 personnel, of elite paramilitary forces will be deployed to guard the railway construction site between Dalli-Rajhara and Raoghat. The Border Security Force and the Central Reserve Police Force will provide two battalions each. The BSP will ‘fund barracks’ of the paramilitary forces along the 95-km track.

Tribal weapons ban in Indian state of Chhattisgarh

[This article, though phrased as if tribal arms usage by revolutionary fighters has been newly discovered by state (and media) forces, actually confirms the long term preponderance of adivasis — tribal people — in the Maoist “Peoples Guerilla Liberation Army” and in the much larger people’s militias which have been rapidly growing in thousands of adivasi villages, according to recent reports. — Frontlines ed.]

————

14 August 2012 -By Salman Ravi, BBC News, Raipur –Tribal or indigenous people in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh are to be banned from carrying traditional weapons such as sickles, axes and bows and arrows, police say.

Naxalites are reportedly using traditional weapons of locals living on edge of Abujmadh forest

They say that the move is necessary because of increasing attacks on police and civilians by Maoist insurgents with tribal weapons in public places.

The move has drawn criticism from tribal bodies and political parties.

They argue that it curtails the rights of tribal people.

Maoists are active in more than a third of India’s 600-odd districts. They say they are fighting for the rights of poor peasants and labourers.

Chhattisgarh is one of the Indian states worst affected by Maoist violence.

Rebels in its Narayanpur district have established a “liberated zone” over an area of 4,000 sq km (2,485 sq miles).

Boards, written in Hindi and local dialects, have been erected by police throughout the state warning of “legal action” if anyone is found to be carrying traditional weapons in public places, especially in markets.

The Times of India: “Maoists run parallel govt in Andhra-Orissa border areas”

[An interesting report from the India bourgeois newspaper, The Time of India, on recent developments in the Andhra-Orissa Border region — (as yet unconfirmed by other sources). — Frontlines ed.]

—————————————-

Siva G, The Times of India (Hyderabad), TNN, August 8, 2012
VISAKHAPATNAM: In what could alarm the state police, Maoists are setting up parallel governments ‘janata sarkars’ in the interior pockets of Andhra-Orissa Border (AOB), buoyed by the success of a similar exercise in the Dandakaranya region of Chhattisgarh.

The Gumma area committee in the neighbouring district of Malkangiri in Odisha set up a janata sarkar in the interior villages of AOB on Sunday when the rebels distributed rice to 800 tribal families. The rice was reportedly collected from contractors and businessmen. They assured the tribals that they would construct cement concrete roads to the interior villages and appoint teachers to the schools with their own funds. They also assured the tribals that medical facilities in PHCs (public health centre) would be provided by them very soon.

Gumma area committee secretary Rukdhar, top leader Golla Ravi alias Madhav alias Sridhar along with five other key leaders were present at the rice distribution programme, sources said. The tribal welfare programmes would be implemented regularly, Maoist leader Rukdhar said. He said that education was a basic necessity to develop the tribal areas and stated that he would appoint doctors to provide necessary medicines to the tribals, who are susceptible to malaria and other water-borne diseases. “All these facilities are provided by us in the forests of Dantewada, Bijapur and Sukma districts in Chhattigarh,” he told the gathering.

Sources said the Maoists are set to take their sarkar concept deep into the tribal hamlets and mandals in the interior Agency areas on both sides of AOB. Senior police officials said the Maoists’ ploy to implement the pro-poor schemes was to win the hearts of the tribals. The Maoists had lost several cadres and sympathizers, besides militia members in arrests, surrenders and encounters in recent times. “They cannot risk more damage to the party and hence are wooing the tribals by distributing rice and other essential commodities,” a senior police official involved in anti-naxal operations told TOI.