Liberationists and Maoists: Acquitted for lack of evidence?

Liberationists and Maoists: Acquitted for lack of evidence?

The separatists in tribal areas are now sporting a new mask; in fact the mask is already old and well used but its scary canines are increasingly becoming obvious. India’s peculiarity is in her diversity. Finding cleavages in this diversity, and widening them has been the strategy of the missionaries and their European-American mentors. Their current formula is ‘not conversion, but perversion’. Once cut from the roots that unify the tribes with the Indian mainstream, it becomes much easier not only to convert, but also to enslave. The success of this strategy in Nagaland and Mizoram gave a big boost to the missionary business. The clever strategists made some timely improvements in their packaging. That gave birth to hundreds of organizations like ‘Adivasi Ekta Parishad’, ‘Shramik Mukti Sanghtana’, ‘Jharkhand Mukti Morcha’, ‘Tripura Liberation Tigers’ and so on. It has become so common that whenever one notices the word ‘liberation’ or ‘Mukti’ (which also means liberation) in the name of an organization, it is surely a sign of neo-colonialism. Each organization has some separate words, but the principle is one: Mukti, liberation from India!

“Shurpanakha (a female demon from Ramayana) was a tribal woman. To insult the her tribal beauty, Ram and Lakshman — the Aryans — cut her nose and ears.” This is what the liberationists– notably the Adivasi Ekta Parishad– campaign in the tribal areas. Tribals traditionally say ‘Ram Ram’ as a greeting. But the Ekta Parishad brainwashes that ‘you should stop saying Ram-Ram. Say Ravan-Ravan (the demon) instead. For he was your ancestor… Hanuman was a tribal man, the Aryan invader Ram enslaved him and forced him to sit by his feet’. These are the public speeches of AEP leaders. That is exactly what the missionaries want: insulting and degrading local faith. This is what they achieved in Nagaland; the Nagas learnt to call themselves ‘spiritually blind pagans’. Nagas were forced to forget that they had a religion. That’s what Ekta Parishad is doing in central India (Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, and Maharashtra): destroying the local faith and paving way for the Christian missionaries.

Hanuman (the so-called Monkey god) from Ramayana was not a monkey. He was a minister to the tribal king Sugreeva. The tribe was called Vaanar (which means monkey) and had the tradition of wearing animal-tails as a body decoration. Hanuman, the intelligent minister engineered a pact of friendship between Ram and his king Sugreeva. Ram always called Hanuman his friend. That was Hanuman’s status. But the Ekta Parishad has declared him a slave of Ram. Ekta Parishad fails to explain why Ram — if he was an “Aryan invader”– did not come with an Aryan army. Ravan is projected as a non-Aryan indigenous king. This is another lie. ‘Arya’ is not the name of a race. The word Arya means ‘cultured’. Ravan’s ministers — as depicted in Ramayana — call him ‘Arya’ to give him respect. His wife calls him ‘Aryaputra’ (Son of Arya). If Ravan were anti-Aryan, non-Aryan, it would not have been so. But Ekta Parishad likes to project Ram-Ravan war as an Aryan vs. indigenous war. Ramayana was written by a great sage who himself was a forest-dwelling tribal. All this does not make any difference to the great speakers of Ekta Parishad for their intention is creating divisions and widening them. It is quite a joke because Ekta means unity, and the Ekta Parishad is never able to see anything that unites India.

“Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram and the RSS are forcibly converting us the Adivasis (indigenous peoples) to Hinduism. Their brahminism must be crushed. If their (RSS’s) ex-students contest elections, break their legs and kick them out…” This was said in a speech at Ekta Parishad mass-convention in the Thane district of Maharashtra in November 2001. Ekta Parishad strains its vocal cords so much to bash what they call ‘forcible Hinduization and invasion on Adivasi culture’, but it never even mentions the Christian conversions. They exhaust their energy in protesting against the alleged atrocities on ‘Christian tribals’ and blaming Hindutva for that.

They never even by mistake say ‘Hindu Adivasis’, because they insist that ‘Adivasis’ is a different culture, they don’t have a religion, they are not Hindus. But they have no problem harping ‘Christian Adivasis’. They shed tears for the rights of Christian Adivasis and the protection of those rights and the fight for that. If Adivasis were really different peoples, why does the Ekta Parishad not protect them from both: Hindus and Christians? This behavior of the Adivasi Ekta Parishad is not surprising at all, for a dog never barks at its master, and the Ekta Parishad is a well-trained dog.

For those who are unaware, this is a brief backgrounder. This idea of a separate Adivasi culture and the concept Adivasi — which means indigenous people — are both foreign sponsored lies. British rulers paid Max Mueller to create a myth of Aryan invasion. Aryans were depicted as white invaders coming from the northwest to India. (There is no proof of this; it is a blatant lie. But one can still find it in some school textbooks in India.) The intention was double-edged: to teach Indians that they were always slaves, and to create a divide of indigenous-extraneous within the Hindu population. If one goes through census records since 1871, it becomes obvious how this divide was created. The British enlisted some tribes under a schedule and forced census officers to count them as ‘animists’. Census officers complained that it was difficult to distinguish between Hindus and animists. But they were forced to separate the tribes from the Hindu mainstream. In next few censuses, the tribes were termed ‘aborigines’ or Adivasi. The famous Indian anthropologist G. S. Ghurye exposed the British myths and proved this division wrong in his book “The Scheduled Tribes”. He insisted that the tribes are Hindus and that if one needs to categorize them separately, they can be called ‘backward Hindus’. (I am trying to be brief on this. Refer to Ghurye’s book and to “Aryan invasion and Indian nationalism” by Shrikant Talgeri for more.)

Anti-national intentions

Ekta Parishad claims that it represents the tribals. Their speeches offend and are deliberately hurting to non-tribal population. Quite logically the non-tribal or urban population is not going to give donations to Ekta Parishad. Their leaders are supposedly dedicated, which officially means that they are not amassing riches. Yet they go on foreign tours. They attend international conventions of the Alliance of Indigenous peoples and they sign anti-India pacts. Who sponsors all this? It is worth investigation as to who fathers the Adivasi Ekta Parishad.

If one goes to — and this writer has done so — any tribal village in the Maharashtra-Madhya Pradesh border area, and asks a lay-villager as to what does the Ekta Parishad do. The villagers have one answer: Ekta Parishad convenes mass meetings. They arrange free transport on trucks to take villagers to towns for mass-meetings and villagers even get a bottle of liquor as an incentive. What welfare of tribals is Ekta Parishad achieving by only arranging mass-meetings? Their single-minded clear purpose is brainwashing the tribal people to believe that they are not Hindus and that they are a separate people, so that they can be cut from the national mainstream.

The Naga Christians are themselves saying that they were pagans, never had a religion, worshipped spirits and it was conversion to Christianity that showed them the light. They are ashamed of their own culture and history. That has denationalized them. The missionaries achieved this by decades of brainwashing. The Ekta Parishad ‘s bubbles about ‘Ravan being the tribals’ ancestor’ are a beginning of such brainwashing. Confuse the tribals about their religion. Make them believe that they don’t have a religion, that their faith is blind and fake. Force them to shed off their old faith. The vacuum of faith then created can readily be filled by the missionaries. The same old game, the difference is they are playing new cards.

The Ekta Parishad is affiliated with International Alliance of Indigenous Peoples (IAIP). The ‘Charter of Indigenous Peoples’ rights’ made by the IAIP is signed by the Ekta Parishad. This charter has demanded ‘sovereignty’ for indigenous people. Recognizing indigenous populations as ‘peoples’ is accepting their separateness. The government of India has consistently opposed the term ‘peoples’ and has always used ‘populations’. The charter signed by Ekta Parishad leaders has many anti-national provisions; e.g. If an International institution (like the World Bank) wants to implement development project, it will be through a tri-partite agreement between the national government, World Bank, and the tribal organization.

Divisive designs

Ekta Parishad and their brotherhood ‘Mukti’ organizations had planned a ‘Bhilkhand’ movement demanding a separate Bhil tribal state by breaking up territory from Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh. Many volunteers and activists quit this movement when they understood the real intention: to divide and denationalize the Bhil group of tribes. The activists who walked out rang a red alert. Social organizations and governments took quick action and the Bhilkhand movement never caught any momentum. Bhilkhand was intended to be a remake of the Jharkhand movement. Jharkhand agitation had demanded “Jharkhand for Christians” right in 1947. But the leaders of Jharkhand Party were fortunately corrupt and were bought by the ruling party at the center. This always hampered the progress of Jharkhand movement. After the Jharkhand ‘Mukti’ Morcha was founded, non-Christian leaders like Shibu Soren were projected. They too were sold out and the dream of offering an independent Jharkhand to Christ could never be fulfilled. On the contrary infidels of the BJP are ruling the state.

Tribal majority belt starts from the Thane district of Maharashtra and Selvassa south of Gujarat (both close to west coast) and stretches diagonally upwards to the northeast. It is a continuous belt covering the Dangs (Gujarat) and Nandurbar (Maharashtra), Narmada valley, southern districts of Madhya Pradesh and covering almost the entire states of Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Assam and the rest of Northeast. The illegal term Adivasi is used quite often to indicate the tribal people in this belt. If this belt is cut into another country/countries, India will be partitioned into at least four parts. The part to the south of this belt will become Dravidistan. This tribal belt will be called Philistan (Palestine); northeast will be divided into many countries, and whatever remains in the north will be Hindustan! This vision becomes quite clear if one works at grassroots level in the affected areas. There are random web-sites like dalitistan.org that even project the maps of those partitions. That is the dream of liberationists; and Maoists are hand in hand with them.

Each are in this west-to-northeast belt — or the would-be Philistan — is facing some kind of disruptive movements. Wherever law and order is almost absent and the jungle is deep, the gun-power of the Naxalites (the Maoist terrorists) is ruling. The Naxalites of the MCC (Maoist Communist Center) from Jharkhand are spreading their wings to the adjacent northern areas of Chhattisgarh. The Naxalites of the PWG (People’s War Group) from the southern state of Andhra Pradesh are infiltrating in the southern districts of Chhattisgarh. The Naxalites from Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra — though in small numbers — are entering the western areas of Chhattisgarh. While writing this article, the alliance between these three — MCC, PWG and the Maharashtra unit of PWG — was almost final.

It is true that the tribal youth angered — by the atrocities of Government officials and their partnership with the exploiting capitalists and landlords — takes up arms and becomes a Naxalite. But who instigates the tribal youth to take up guns? While the tribals live in extreme poverty and in dearth of basic necessities, who supplies them costly guns and expensive ammunition? Rising in rebellion against injustice, fighting for rights is always justified. Godavari Parulekar — later famous as the queen of Warlis — was also a communist and led a successful Warli revolt. She led the Warli tribals to acquire their rights, but never taught them to take guns.

Naxalites are Maoists and their organizations have mushroomed in many places forming a chain from Mao’s country to Andhra Pradesh. Starting from Maoists in Nepals and linking those in Bihar, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, and Andhra Pradesh — it is a continuous chain. When this linking becomes clear, it becomes clearer how poor tribal youth can afford the expensive AK47s when they turn naxalites.

There are still some weak links in this Maoist Chain. North Bengal (the small part of the state of West Bengal situated to the north of Bangladesh) was one such link. It is now filled up by the Mukti-ists of Kamtapur Liberation Organization (KLO). They demand Kamtapur or North Bengal as a separate state. In this recent military action by the Bhutanese army, the terrorist training camps of KLO within Bhutan were destroyed. The other weak link is the area of Narmada valley that borders Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. Adivasi Ekta Parishad is doing its best in this area — especially in the districts of Alirajpur and Nandurbar. In 2001, Naxalites too attempted a beginning in this area. This writer has seen posters for birth-centenary celebrations of Charu Mazumdar — the founder of Naxalite movement — in the Dhadgaon-Molgi area of Narmada valley. Police took a quick action and the celebrations were foiled.

Maoists and Liberationists both are growing. Foreign writers or eminent researchers have not written any major book on them. The movements are not old enough for big historians to take note of them. They are not enough famous yet, for the Parliament to take cognizance or for the army to act. Except the Jharkhand-Maharashtra-Andhra forest belt, their terror is not enough to run parallel governments like the Naga terrorists. Government has not appointed any Enquiry commission to investigate. Witnesses and evidences are not collected yet. So shall we assume that these separatists do not exist? The information in this article is visible and obvious if one travels in the tribal areas of the country. Can we still turn a blind eye and acquit Maoists and Liberationists as innocent for lack of evidence?

— Milind Thatte (09 May, 2004)

OROGINAL AT – http://geocities.com/thattemilind/partitions.html?20071#ch1

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