People's Democracy

BJP Govt’s Repression On Tribals In Madhya Pradesh

Suneet Chopra

MADHYA Pradesh after Rajasthan is the second BJP ruled state that is likely to be rocked by a mass peasant movement because of its anti-farmers policies. If in Rajasthan it was the failure to honour an agreement with the farmers of Ganganagar to provide a certain quantity of water, in Madhya Pradesh it is a failure to honour the promise not to evict tribal people from forests where they have been settled from 1989.  This breach of faith is nothing new for the BJP. But now, in Madhya Pradesh, as in Rajasthan, it may find its complacency badly jolted.

While paying lip-service to an avowed policy of allowing tribal people to remain wherever they were settled even as late as 1990 and pretending that committees exist to monitor miscarriages of justice wherever they might occur, in reality the government of Madhya Pradesh is using the savage brute force of the forest department who enter villages like marauders, carrying guns, and looting, destroying and burning village after village almost daily and driving the people deeper into the jungle to survive. At the same time the local police force refuses to register their complaints and committees are non-existent. I had the occasion to see this destruction in three villages that I toured in Khandwa district with the CPI(M) MP, Lakshman Seth. All the three villages – Kharkhari, Amba Khera and Singot – fall under Pandhana police station. In Kharkhari that the forest officials raided on April 2, some 61 houses were destroyed. The people have been living there since 1970. They have ration cards. They have voter identity cards. There was a government school in the village and a number of government financed hand-pumps. Despite these, they were not saved from the onslaught of forest officials. On the contrary, they were threatened by a cavalcade of 10 to 12 vehicles that tore down their houses and drove the people away at gun-point. When we went to the Pandhana police station we were informed by the SHO, Abdul Hamid Khan, that the government had ordered an inquiry! It is curious that the collection of evidence is the first casualty when a government inquiry is ordered. This is not surprising as the chief minister prides himself in his authoritarian acts and in known as the “bull-dozer CM.”  

The condition of Amba Khera and Singot was even worse. They are even more remote than Kharkhari, so the forest officials had a field day. They not only looted the coarse grain and forest products stored in the homes of these tribal farmers but also carried away their cattle, goats and chickens. Now, almost even three weeks after the event, we find them barely able to restore their livelihood in make-shift shelters.

What is shocking is that these three villages are not the only ones, hundreds of villages can be listed all over the state where such atrocities have place. But while we only got promises from the higher authorities that action would be taken, the people themselves have taken to the path of struggle.

The Adivasi Ekta Sangathan called for a joint action on April 26, at Nepanagar which was responded to by thousands of Bhilala, Barela and Tadari tribal people. Hundreds of women too were present. The message was clear. Atrocities would not be taken lying down. They would be resisted and resisted firmly. The rally was addressed by Sunilam, MLA and Samajvadi Party all India secretary, Arun Chauhan, AIKS state secretary, Vijay Nikunj of the Sangathan, Gaind Ram and by me, among others.

Introducing our approach, I pointed out that progress was for the people so it could not be achieved at their cost. The Adivasis, contrary to the NDA government order of May 3, 200, were neither merely banavasis’ (denizens of the forests), they were the original inhabitants of India and their land rights had not been recognised by the colonial administration as they had fought them consistently. This called for redressal, not evictions. The government of India, which by legislation had taken over some 20 per cent of all land as forest, had not surveyed how much of it was already inhabited. Clearly, the right of Adivasis had been overlooked. Now they had to be recognised; but in their hurry to seize the assets of the rural small producers and hand them over to Indian and multinational corporates, unprecedented savagery was being resorted to dispossess the tribal people even of land they had titles to; or where they had ration cards and voter identity cards. This would not be tolerated. It would be fought.

Speaking at the rally, Sunilam, SP MLA,  exposed how while the forest authorities were conducting a campaign of terror against the tribal people, the state assembly speaker denied in the House that anything of the sort had happened. Worse, he gave the House the false impression that committees had been constituted to deal with the problem and objections were being recorded. None of this was true and the lies of the BJP administration in the face of the repression it had let loose on the tribal people would be met with stiff resistance. He called for a third front to emerge out of such common struggles on the ground level. Spelling out the need for a broad-based and consistent struggle to ensure Adivasi rights and push back the neo-liberal policies of the BJP government of Madhya Pradesh, Arun Chauhan outlined the programme of struggle to be launched by the AIKS and AIAWU from April 24 to May 19, on the basic demands of ending repression against tribal people and dalits, for electricity, water and other pressing demands of agricultural labour. The rally expressed the growing anger of the people against the repression let loose against them by the BJP government of Madhya Pradesh and the will to fight them till they were defeated. The mood of struggle is now evident in many parts of the state. The people are coming forward to resist and those who are their genuine representatives must come forward and lead them as was done in the peasant struggle in Rajasthan, to victory.