Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
13.4.2010
by Felix Padel, based on M.N. Roy Memorial Lecture, at the Society of Radical
Humanists, Kolkata 27.3.2010
Causes of War
Social Anthropology has great potential for giving a holistic understanding of the
momentous processes unfolding in tribal areas: a resource too little drawn on. M.N.
Roy was one of India's most influential socialists. Socialism is hardly fashionable at
present, but social anthropology offers a view of situations that is intrinsically social,
and as such can be seen as socialist in the true sense of the word, in contrast to the
determinist models that tend to dominate policy decisions, derived from economics,
engineering, or politcal and legal theory, that function without a proper understanding
of social systems. Anthropologists rarely have much impact on policy however, and
tend to accept a very marginal role. E.g. World Bank anthropologists are removed
from decision-making departments, and their words tend to function as a 'Christmas-
tree decoration' of politically correct phrases to embellish projects that often cause
social and and environmental catastrophe (Mosse 2009, Padel & Das 2010).
This paper emerges out of seven years' work with Samarendra Das about the
aluminium industry and its impacts in Orissa/East India, that has revealed an immense
amount about the mining industry and its centrality to events in India's 'tribal' or Fifth
Schedule states, as well as to issues about climate change, the military industrial
complex, and the world economy as a whole, and its links with war.
The Maoist insurgency in tribal areas, and the war against the Maoists, often
referred to as 'Operation Green Hunt', follows certain patterns of the worldwide 'War
on Terror', despite the obvious difference that the war against Maoists/Naxalites
targets a 'communist' enemy, reminiscent of the cold war era, while the wider 'War on
Terror' is mostly against Islamist militants. The Turkish situation, where the war
against the PKK (fighting for basic self-determination by the Kurdish population) is
often made to fit the mould of a war against terrorists, offers a closer parallel to the
situation in central India – a parallel far too little known in India.
Central India's Maoist/Naxalite insurgency adds complexity to a situation
where a large number of essentially non-violent local movements of resistance to
enforced displacement, to make way for new mining and metal-factory projects.
These movements are of global significance for people's basic rights to life and
livelihood, and for their resistance to capitalist growth-oriented 'development'
projects. Often these movements have been falsely branded as Maoist.
When certain movements have received public support from the Maoists, this
has often been a 'kiss of death' to genuine, indigenous movements, by making a
response of massive attack on communities by security forces appear legitimate.
So it is necessary to spell out that most local movements are not in any way
Maoist-instigated: for example, the movements in Orissa to save Niyamgiri and the
Puri area from Vedanta's aluminium and university plans, and the movement against
giant new steel plants by Posco, Tata and others all arise locally, in solidarity. The
Kalinganagar movement by the Bisthapan Birodhi Jan Manch (People's Platform
Against Displacement) against a new Tata steel plant, is currently (since 27.3.2010)
under attack by hundreds of police in collusion with 'goondas' determined to mow
down opposition to Tata.1
Similarly an Obey the Law movement in Birbhum district of West Bengal,
organised by local Santal Adivasis along with Hindu and Muslim non-tribals, is trying
to stop several hundred illegal stone quarries that are making their life hell. The mine
owners, along with a section of the local administration and media have branded the
movement 'Maoist', when there is no Maoist presence at all.2
By contrast, certain other movements are essentially local, and non-Maoist,
even though Maoists have expressed support, resulting in a spiralling escalation of
security force attacks on tribal villages. This applies to the Committee Against Police
Atrocities organised by Santals in West Midnapore & neighbouring districts of West
Bengal, and the Chasi Mulia Adivasi Sangho in the Narayanpatna area of Koraput
district Orissa, where tribal villages are under attack by security forces, especially
since the Narayanpatna police station firing on 20 November 2009 that killed two
Adivasi leaders (Iqbal 24.12.09).
The causes of tribal militancy – i.e. the reason that in certain areas, such as
South Chhattisgarh, many tribal people have joined the Maoists - can be given as
follows:
1. The vast extent of exploitation which tribal communities face: a system of
endemic exploitation that works at many levels and has been extensively
documented, e.g. in Orissa by Kishen Pattnayak during his 1960s and 1980s
documentation of 'starvation deaths' and by Gopinath Mohanty, P. Sainath,
and others.3 This exploitation is compounded by the invasion of mining
companies into tribal areas, and frequent suppression of local people's non-
violent movements, standing up for the most basic of rights.
2. The increasing scale of dispossession/displacement. A long-term process of
displacement of Adivasis through moneylending and extensive purchases of
tribal land that contravene the Fifth Schedule constitutional guarantees, is
accelerating through numerous industrial projects that raise exponentially the
number of tribal people being dispossessed. An estimated 60 million village
people have been displaced by industries and dams since 1950, about half of
these Adivasis and a quarter Dalits, 3 million in Orissa alone.4 This
displacement process has also been vastly accelerated through war and conflict
– especially the 'Salwa Judum' war against Naxalites/Maoists in Dantewara
district in south Chhattisgarh, where at least 200,000 tribal people have been
driven out of their homes since 2005; and the 'ethnic cleansing of Christians'
that has displaced an estimated 50,000 people from Kandhamahal district of
Orissa in 2007-8.
3. Atrocities committed with impunity by security forces/Salwa Judum,
hiding behind the AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Powers Act), the special
Chhattisgarh Security Act, etc. Javed Iqbal's and many other articles (e.g.
Iqbal 15.11.09, 5.3.10) and several human rights reports have made clear a
definite pattern of atrocities committed by SJ and security forces during
attacks on tribal villages in south Chhattisgarh, involving killings, rape, torture
and burning of houses on a horrific scale. It is clear (e.g. from Arundhati Roy
29.3.10 documenting numerous frank talks with Adivasi Maoists in south
Chhattisgarh) that these attacks are a motivating force for thousands of
Adivasis who join the Maoists. In other words, a main cause for militancy is
quite simply injustice – the impossibility of redress for these outrages
through the courts. Atrocities are fuelled by a widespread disrespect for
tribal culture and norms. E.g.Santal elders at the start of the West Midnapore
disturbances (end of 2008) demanded that senior policemen should make a
proper apology for widespread outrages, in the local tribal idiom. When such
an apology was not forthcoming, the militancy spread, and the police atrocities
increased.
4. Polarization into two sides who believe in war. Everywhere, attacks on
tribal communities are starting to resemble an attack on tribal society itself (as
B.D. Sharma warned in 1990, when he was Commissioner for Scheduled
Castes and Tribes) - in effect, 'Operation Tribal Hunt' (Iqbal 15.11.09). The
war against Maoists and/or tribal people has the character of a war between
rich and poor, and specifically a war of state-facilitated mining companies
against tribal people in order to get hold of their land and resources. But where
the Maoist leadership exactly mirrors the mainstream military is in its belief in
war, and in the necessity of mass-scale sacrifice of human life. Maoist attacks
that kill police tend to instigate a huge retaliation of security force attacks on
tribal villages. Behind these attacks is the military-industrial complex, and its
thirst for minerals, and a mentality in which displacement of tribal people to
make way for industry seems a matter of course, and the model for dealing
with a Maoist threat is offered by the Sri Lankan army's holocaust-massacres
against Tamil Tiger rebels, or the US/UK-led war against Taliban/Al Qaeda in
Afghanistan.
5. Taking these factors together, Operation Green Hunt – the war against the
Maoists – is itself the main cause of tribal militancy – a similar situation to
the worldwide war on terror, where attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan have
killed, maimed and humiliated so many thousands of people, that a 'terrorist'
cause with very limited appeal has grown exponentially, as in the Greek myth
of the Hydra – every 'arm' the hero cuts off the Hydra is replaced by 1,000
new arms. 'Terrorism' is essentially a creation of the 'War on Terror' – not least
because the use of terror by security forces far outweighs the use of terror by
'terrorists'. This applies very clearly to the situation in tribal areas, where both
sides use terror (Iqbal 5.3.2010), but the main terror unleashed in tribal
villages is by security forces, not by Maoists. In other words, Terror tactics
by the security forces are a main cause of the spread of tribal militancy,
alongside repression of genuine, non-violent movements against enforced
displacement.
Notes
1. E.g. The Hindu, 3 April 2010. 'Tension continues in Kalinganagar,' at
http://www.hindu.com/2010/04/03/stories/2010040351970300.htm, and see
Prasanta Pattanaik's article of 11th April (below).
2. This is spelt out in an unpublished letter to the Times of India, March 2010.
3. Dash 1998, Pattnayak 2004, Mohanty 1945/1987, Sainath 1996.
4. Fernandes 2006, Padel & Das 2008.
5. CSE 2008, Kalshian 2007, Padel & Das 2010 chapter 7.
6. Ritthoff et al 2002, Padel & Das 2010.
7. Padel and Das 2010: 384-5.
8. Fernandes 2006: 109, Padel & Das 2010: 72-77.
9. CMPDI 2006: 18-20, Padel & Das 2010: 165.
10. Padel & Das 2010: 189-90.
11. Fenelon 1998, Padel & Das 2008, 2010.
12. Caufield 1998, Padel & Das 2010, chapters 15, 17.
13. Padel 1995/Jan. 2010, Prasad 2003.
14. Liedloff 1986, Padel 1998, Padel & Das 2010 chapters 3, 21.
15. Gelder 2004, Padel & Das 2010: 222-225 and 453, quoting Sampson 2004 on
the 'Big Four'.
16. Padel & Das 2010: 306-9, Hildyard 2008, Moody 2005, Morrison 2007.
17. Padel & Das 2010 chapter 17 on the WB, Gray 1998, Harvey 2005 and Klein
2007 on the worldwide imposition of neoliberal reforms, and Prayas et al 2003
on the woes of Orissa's electricity privatisation.
18. Ross 1999, CSE 2008.
19. On the Salwa Judum war, see PUDR 2006, CPJC 2007, Padel 2007 & 2008,
Iqbal articles 2009-10 and Postscript to Sundar 2007.
20. http://www.ptinews.com/news/605887_-IAF-use-to-fight-Naxals-must-avoid-
collateral-damage-
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