Kanu Sanyal, the renowned Naxal leader who killed himself in 2010, once said in an interview, “This (the rise of special police officers, or SPOs) is a disturbing trend, as villages, truly, are our strongholds. If villagers are turning against the Naxals, it is a major cause of (sic) concern for the movement.”
In another interview documented in the book Red Sun, Sanyal admitted that the Naxalite movement in West Bengal failed because its leaders did not wait for the “tipping point” as suggested by Mao Zedong where the masses should take up arms voluntarily and not under pressure. He had never approved of the Naxal’s ways of torturing villagers into joining the movement. However, the reality remains that poor and innocent villagers in Naxal-hit areas of the country are caught between the devil and the deep blue sea — the fierce Naxalites and the ruthless State.
In the book Dudiya, written by Vishwas Patil and translated from Marathi by Nadeem Khan, one encounters the helpless existence of the tribals in Chhattisgarh whose lives have been incapacitated by the State and the rebels. The story of Dudiya, the protagonist who joins the movement but later becomes disillusioned, is the story of many nameless and faceless villagers in the state’s violence-hit zones.
India’s journey to development since its independence has come at the cost of forest-dwelling tribes. Extensive mining and displacement of the tribals from the forest created a vicious circle that engulfed the lives of these poor villagers. It was this high-handedness of the state that gave rise to the Naxalite movement.
Over the years, the fight for ‘jal, jangal and zamin’ (water, forest and land) has turned intense. But the State with its military power continues to be the superior force as the weaklings of society wither in front of weaponised politics.
That is not all. The State has enough power to render voiceless the otherwise vocal stakeholders of democracy (for instance, the media) and tune up new voices to dilute the cries for justice. A State that still carries the colonial legacy in dealing with its citizens will be inclined to divide and rule is no surprise. Breaking the united front against wily politicians and industrialists makes it an easy win. This modus operandi of the State birthed Salwa Judum, the militia that was nurtured by police and politicians to counter the Naxalites.
Prabhakar Sharma, the brave police officer in the novel, defends the rise of Salwa Judum by saying it was the result of the villagers’ frustration and rage against the torture of the Naxal cadres, who forced teenagers to give up mainstream education and join the movement. The cadres blew up school buildings and every piece of construction and infrastructure that reeked of development.
Salwa Judum was a spontaneous uprising of the villagers who wanted respite from the tormenting Naxals. The State supported them by arming civilians. It encouraged violence to suppress violence. This only resulted in the killing of more innocent people. Like the rebels, the Judum too turned into a ruthless force that was tamed after the Supreme Court, in 2011, declared Salwa Judum as illegal and unconstitutional.
The novel is told from the perspective of a civil servant, Dilip Pawar, who visits Chhattisgarh as an election observer. He makes an effort to understand the crisis in democracy through his interactions with the bureaucracy, the police, the foot soldiers of democracy, villagers and reformed Naxalites. Through Pawar, the author tries to present a balanced portrayal of the crisis. But he fails to do justice to those whose stories will never be told, to the hapless who barely understand democracy and to those whose forests are being encroached upon by none other than the protectors of democracy and the Constitution.
The book has anecdotes from the Naxalite crisis in Chhattisgarh and is an interesting read for those who are not so familiar with the time and history of events of the violent movement.
Book: Dudiya: In Your Burning Land (Translated from Marathi by Nadeem Khan); Author: Vishwas Patil; Publisher: Niyogi Books; Pages: 219
~ Team Meghalaya Monitor
