Appeal for talks with broader section of people's struggles in the forest and mineral belt

Aditya Nigam, Dilip Simeon, Jairus Banaji, Nivedita Menon, Rohini Hensman, Satya Sivaraman, Sumit Sarkar, Tanika Sarkar

In the light of the recent demands raised by sections of the intelligentsia urging the government to heed the CPI (Maoist) “offer of talks”, we insist that “civil society” should, rather, put pressure on the government to initiate talks with representatives of all struggling popular and adivasi organizations. The CPI (Maoist) cannot be treated as the sole spokesperson of all the people in the forest and mineral belt, convenient though this may be for the state and for that party. Does the government believe that violent insurgents are the only deserving interlocutors?

There is a common pattern to the emergence of Maoist violence in many areas. First a non-violent mass organisation like the PCAPA in West Bengal or Chasi Muliya Adivasi Sangh (CMAS) in Orissa arises in response to marginalisation, displacement or violence against tribals by the police and paramilitaries. Then the Maoists step in, attempting to take over the movement and giving it a violent turn. The state responds with even more violence, which is directed not only against the Maoists but also against unaffiliated adivasis. At this point, some adivasis join the Maoists in self-defence, their leaders like Chhatradhar Mahato, Lalmohan Tudu, Singanna are either arrested or gunned down in fake encounters and large numbers of unaffiliated adivasis are branded Maoists or Maoist sympathisers and arrested, killed or terrorised by the state. Clearly, Maoist violence in these cases obtains legitimacy because of the unbridled use of force by security forces and violations of the fundamental rights of the local people. On the other hand, the unilateral and doctrinal use of the language of warfare by one armed group obscures the political agency of the ordinary people who have had no say in this declaration.  It also tramples on the human rights of the often desperately poor people who are obliged to seek a livelihood in organizations of the state. Furthermore, it is not clear that the CPI (Maoist) actually shares the rejection of this kind of “development” by the people of the area, or whether it only wants to wrest control of this process from the Indian state.

Avatar: A Parable About the Encounter Between Capitalism and Indigenous Peoples

I should clarify from the beginning that this is not a film review of Avatar, more a comment on its politics, and on other commentaries on its politics.

The plot is simple. In the year 2154, a colony of humans has been set up by RDA corporation, headed by Parker Selfridge, on the distant planet Pandora, with the intention of mining its reserves of the incredibly valuable mineral unobtanium. But the indigenous inhabitants, the Na’vi, are an obstacle to this goal, since the unobtanium lies beneath the forest they inhabit, with the biggest deposit beneath their ancestral Hometree. Dr Grace Augustine heads the Avatar programme, which blends the DNA of individual human beings with that of the Na’vi to create Na’vi avatars which can be controlled by the mind of the human. Through this, they can establish contact with the Na’vi, find out about them and their habitat, and hopefully persuade them to cooperate with the company. But should they fail, the military wing under Colonel Miles Quaritch is poised to remove them by force.

Jake, a paraplegic ex-marine, gets involved in the avatar programme because his twin brother, a scientist originally involved in it, was killed in a mugging. But as the mission proceeds, Jake, like his colleagues Grace and Norm, comes to appreciate the culture of the Na’vi even as he provides strategic information about them in his debriefing sessions; moreover, he falls in love with Neytiri, a Na’vi female, and she falls in love with him. Selfridge and Quaritch get impatient and give Grace and Jake just one hour to convince the Na’vi to vacate their habitat, failing which the military will swing into action. In attempting to carry out this mission, Grace and Jake have to reveal their part in the mission, upon which the Na’vi accuse them of betrayal and tie them up, but at this point the onslaught on Hometree, in which many Na’vi are killed, begins. The human avatars of Grace, Norm and Jake are held captive by Quaritch for treason, but Trudy, a security force pilot disgusted by all this violence, flies them out, along with their laboratory, to the jungle. In the crucial battle, these four as well as another scientist, Dr Max Patel, fight on the side of the Na’vi, and Grace and Trudy are killed by the security forces, along with hundreds of Na’vi. But the attack is finally repelled, and the invaders sent back to their depleted planet earth. Jake, Norm and Max remain with the Na’vi.

Democracy as the Solution to Sri Lanka's Ethnic Crisis

The political Right and Left seem to concur in linking democracy to bourgeois rule; the two concepts have even been hyphenated in the adjective ‘bourgeois-democratic’. Yet history gives us no reason to believe that there is a necessary connection between the two. It is true that when the bourgeoisie is fighting against feudal power to establish its rule, it seeks the support of the plebeian masses, and in the process allows them to fight for their own demands: hence the famous slogan of the French Revolution, ‘Liberty, Equality and Fraternity’. Yet once their rule is established, they are quite capable of turning on their erstwhile allies, repressing or even slaughtering them. This is not to say that capitalism is incompatible with democratic rights and freedoms either, but to emphasise that the latter will prevail only if working people fight to establish and defend them. Even in advanced capitalist countries, long-established rights can quickly be demolished. Social-Democracy in Germany was followed by fascism, and even today, democratic rights are under attack in the heartlands of capitalism.

In the former colonies, there was likewise a popular movement for liberation from imperialism, often followed by a sense of disappointment when independence was won but the working masses remained in much the same condition as before. Again, the illusion that democracy is the free gift of the bourgeoise, or a necessary condition of their rule, is responsible for this disappointment. Alternatively, there has been a tendency, shared by both Maoists and Trotskyists, to deny that a bourgeois revolution has taken place or that capitalism is developing. A more realistic view would be to recognise that for the working class, independence from colonialism is only the first of many battles for democracy.

Journey Without a Destination: Is there a solution for Sri Lankan refugees? (Chapters 4 and 5)

Chapter 4: ‘How can we live like this?’

    The condition of Tamil refugees in Britain leaves much to be desired; but the state of those remaining in Sri Lanka is incomparably worse. I did not visit Tamil refugee camps in the North and East, and therefore did not see the worst; but what I saw was quite bad enough. Refugees were herded into large halls, their mats spread side by side along the walls and down the middle, all their belongings crammed into that small strip of space which, for the time being, they could call their own. Or crowded into small cadjan [coconut palm leaf] huts, several families in one room.

    Facilities were minimal: about four water taps and the same number of toilets shared between about 1,500 people; in some camps, people stayed up all night, waiting to use the toilets. Rations – mainly rice and bread – were provided by the government. Conditions had deteriorated between my visits in October 1990 and September 1991, with more and more refugees coming in. Unregistered inmates outnumbered registered ones by about three to one, and since the government provided rations only for those who were registered, the shortfall was made good partly by donations from voluntary organisations, partly by watering down and stretching out whatever food was available, making the monotonous diet even less nutritious and more unappetising. Lacking employment and therefore money, most of the refugees spent their time in forced inactivity, although efforts made by voluntary groups had secured school places for children of school-going age, and later on, classes for pre-school children as well.

Journey Without a Destination:Is there a solution for Sri Lankan refugees? (Chapter 2)

 

Chapter 2: Flight 

    When the refugee problem first began to take on serious proportions after the 1983 riots, there was a more or less uniform cause of flight: government-sponsored violence in the form of pogroms, reprisals against civilians, and torture and extra-judicial executions facilitated by the Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA) 1979. This Act provided for a person to be detained incommunicado for up to 18 months without being charged or brought before a magistrate, and had no provision for legal remedies for detention or torture.

    By mid-1989, the situation had become far more complicated; the refugees might be fleeing the Sri Lankan security forces, the Indian army, the EPRLF, the Tigers, some combination of these forces, or the crossfire between them, in a ‘dirty’ war in which all sides engaged in atrocities against civilians, including little children.

    We turn now to the experiences which led to their decision to leave – or, in some cases, to their relatives’ decision to make them leave. The accounts which follow are all compatible with reports published by Amnesty International and other human rights organisations, as well as published accounts by Sri Lankan writers and analysts; there seems to be no reason for doubting their authenticity. Yet only those marked with an ‘R’ at the end of their statements had been given refugee status; none had received political asylum.