Massacre in the Forest: A Wake Up Call for Delhi

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Mountains are the great levelers when it comes to warfare, even in the 21st century.  Small, poorly armed forces can hold governments in possession of nuclear weapons at bay.  Witness Pakistan trying to gain the upper hand in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.  Witness India reluctantly coming to terms with a Maoist insurgency that’s spreading like a cancer through its most underdeveloped areas.

The latest incident was an ambush in the Dantewada region bordering Chattisgarh and Orissa.  At least 75 government troops were gunned down.  The picture shows the coffins of six jawans coming home to Bihar.  The sketch shows the plan of battle.  Worse, if that's possible, there'd been a previous ambush at the same place.   The government's strategists need to take the Maoists more seriously. 

All in all, it is to be hoped that India’s leaders are also doing a little soul searching as they contemplate this major military disaster in the eastern ghats or mountains.  The loss was particularly embarrassing because the government had declared  all out war against the Maoists insurgents which have established a presence not only in Orissa, but in West Bengal, Chattisgarh, Bihar, Andra Pradesh and Jharkhand, with nodes doing damage as far away as Rajasthan.

A hint for American readers, especially: when I say “mountains,” think more of the Appalachians than the Rockies for two reasons.  One: profile and elevation.  These are forested uplands in which people can live.  Two: people do in fact live here.  Like the people of Appalachia, their economic status is lamentable, and they are not highly regarded by those who live elsewhere. 

However, the demographic differences are more significant.  The people who inhabit the well worn mountain chain that arises in Bengal and peters out in Andra Pradesh are, essentially, aboriginals, descendants of those who inhabited India when it was overrun by presumably technologically superior—chariots especially—invaders from the northwest.  These ancient peoples, some with languages related to those who made it prehistorically to what is now Australia, headed for the hills where they could defend themselves from the newcomers.  There they still are, still alien, still beset. 

And nobody cared, for millenia, until our times, when it appeared that those hills, which are so niggardly and almost valueless from the agricultural point of view, are repositories of coal and other mineral requisites for the modern economy.  Outsiders now want that land.  By hook and by crook, often with the connivance of corrupt government officials, they have been grabbing it.

More considerations: the tribes who occupy these hills are cut off in two ways.  First of all, they retreated, way back then, to protect themselves.  But purely defensive tactics can be self-defeating in the long run.  Such societies tend to stagnate, which means they fall further and further behind those who beat them back in the first place.  In modern India the benefits of the surrounding state largely do not penetrate tribal areas.  Mineral extraction is no substitute for industrialization, and the poor everywhere have minimal claim on any education, let alone advanced educational opportunities.    So that’s it, since education is the key to success and bureaucratic self-defense  in modern society.  Finally, to the extent that tribals never had and still don’t have a  recognized niche in Hindu society, they're not just excluded, they are socially non-existent, even in modern times.  Although the caste system is officially defunct, it’s really not dead. 

This brings us to a recent survey issued as a report on “Human Development in India: Challenges for a Society in Transition.” It found many inequalities in Indian society today, but those who suffer most, it seems, are those who are systematically deprived of education, the dalits or untouchables and the tribals.

Here are some comments:  

The first aspect is that much of the inequality is caused by differential access to livelihoods. Salaried jobs, which account for higher earnings, elude Dalits and tribal people who have no choice but to settle for agricultural labour. They mostly live in rural areas and do not have the necessary education to seek more lucrative jobs. The salaried jobs tend to go to people from upper castes and religious minorities other than Muslims. To quote from The Hindu report: “… more than three out of 10 forward caste and [non-Muslim] minority religion men have salaried jobs, compared with about two out of 10 Muslim, OBC and Dalit men, and even fewer Adivasi men.” Another disadvantage that makes Dalits and tribal people more vulnerable is their landlessness. Even if a small proportion of them manage to possess some land, they find that this land is less productive.

 The second major aspect of the group disparities brought out by the survey is that... “future generations seem doomed to replicate these inequalities because of the continuing differences in education — both in quality and quantity … social inequalities begin early in primary schools. Thus, affirmative action remedies are too little and too late by the time students reach the higher secondary level.” 

In short, in India as elsewhere these days, no education, no hope.

But some things have changed.  I don’t refer to the formation of new states intended to satisfy the ethnic aspirations of disaffected minorities, including tribals.  Why?  Because those new states, like Jharkand and Chattisgarh, have not offered improved governance to the people.  People’s hopes in that direction have been dashed.  I mean that there are militant, well armed forces ready to mobilize those frustrations and angers toward the goal of undermining the constitutional order that came into existence sixty years ago with India’s independence from Great Britain. 

The Maoists are back and more powerful than ever.  They blow up trains.  They give ultimata to state office holders.  Join, resign or die.  That’s what they told some state legislators recently.  And the legislators resigned!  They also attack rural police posts, to show villagers that the government is impotent.  And then they extract protection money from villagers.  Oh yes, they threaten to destroy the "information network," too.   Some decades ago a Maoist insurgency known as the Naxilites after its primary locale in West Bengal was, with difficulty, suppressed.  Now another Maoist movement has presented itself as a serious threat to the existing order.  The central government needs to be more professional when it moves militarily.

I’m reminded here of Pakistan.  So long as Pakistan refused to send crack army troops to reverse the Taliban takeover of Swat and South Waziristan, the insurgents had a field day.  When the government finally, reluctantly, sent in an army that knew what it was doing, the Taliban were put on the run.

The same is true for India.  Although state governments jealous of their prerogatives in a federal system are nervous when Delhi wants to send the army in, it’s clear that the militias and paramilitary forces relied on so far have not been up to the job. Bungled operations kill hopes as well as fighters. 

But the main problem is not military.  It’s neglect.  It's exploitation.  It’s inequality.  Armies can’t solve those problems.  As one observer puts it, "as the bodies mount, there might be some in the corridors of power who question whether the use of an iron fist addresses the socio-economic problems that fuel the insurgency."