After the fire

The Salwa Judum is almost dead — it was gasping for life even before its top leader Mahendra Karma was gunned down last month. But Debaashish Bhattacharya finds that the embers of the militia group's fire are still glowing in a remote camp in Chhattisgarh

DOWN BUT NOT OUT: (Clockwise from far left) Dantewada's former special police officers, most of whom are auxiliary police constables now; Salwa Judum leader Chaitram Atami; orphans of Naxalite violence; an APC at the Kasoli camp Chaitram Atami braces himself every time he steps out of Kasoli, a heavily guarded and sprawling camp of displaced tribals in a remote corner of Chhattisgarh. For, he says, there is "no guarantee" he will come back alive — not even from the weekly market in a nearby village where he sometimes goes under police escort for provisions. Atami — a leader of a controversial anti-Naxalite movement called Salwa Judum — is high on the Maoist hit list. The Naxalites, after killing former Congress minister Mahendra Karma, the public face of Salwa Judum, in an ambush on May 25 in Bastar which left a total of 30 Chhattisgarh Congress leaders and their police guards dead, have vowed to kill all those associated with the movement. Paradoxically, Salwa Judum, having run out of steam, is now virtually dead. The only signs of the once violent movement are the Judum camps, strewn across three of the seven districts in Chhattisgarh's Bastar region, the epicentre of the bloody Maoist campaigns against the Indian state. "There is no Salwa Judum any more in Bastar," says Chhattisgarh director-general of police Ramniwas (he uses only one name). "We are guarding those camps because the people living there feel threatened by the Maoists." Kasoli appears secure. It is ringed by a razor-wire fence and guarded by some 100 policemen and a squad of 50 Judum activist-turned-auxiliary constables, all with automatic rifles. The 50-acre camp, with its 700-odd inhabitants, is an island in a sea of forests and hills in the Bastar district of Dantewada. "We are somehow surviving here," says Atami, 37, who lives in the camp with his wife, Mallika. "We are the main targets." Salwa Judum — "peace movement" in a local tribal dialect — was born eight years ago out of a deep resentment against Naxalites who banned the collection of tenduleaves that the tribals of Bastar had sold to local bidi makers for a living. When Maoist cadres tried to break up a meeting — at Ambeli village in Bastar's Bijapur district on June 5, 2005 — the villagers caught a few of the rebels and handed them over to the police. The Naxalites attacked two tribal villages in retaliation, leaving six dead and causing an exodus as families fled in panic and took refuge in areas near police stations or security camps. Mahendra Karma, who'd opposed the Naxalites for long in neighbouring Dantewada, moved in and started gathering the tribals under a banner that became known as Salwa Judum. The state opened "relief" camps — Salwa Judum to the locals — as more and more people fled the villages fearing Maoist reprisals. The movement turned controversial when the Bharatiya Janata Party government started recruiting tribal youths as special police officers (SPOs), training them for barely three months and handing them chiefly vintage 12-bore rifles to hunt down Naxalites and guard the Judum camps where they lived. But in less than four years, the movement lost its momentum amid reports of excesses by the armed SPOs. Tribals turned against Judum activists after they tried to force them to leave their villages for the camps. "It was a criminal movement and a state-sponsored counter-insurgency campaign," says social anthropologist Nandini Sundar, a teacher at Delhi University who moved the Supreme Court in 2007 against the Salwa Judum with a few others following a fact-finding mission in Bastar. "These SPOs went around the villages, looting and burning tribal homes, raping women and destroying the social fabric." In July 2011, the apex court virtually disbanded the SPOs, terming the deployment of the poorly trained tribesmen in anti-Naxalite operations unconstitutional. "It's a complete abdication of the state's responsibility. No government could simply arm civilians, ask them to fight the heavily armed Naxalites and get them killed in the process," says Ajai Sahni, executive director, Institute for Conflict Management, New Delhi. The Chhattisgarh government, however, has enacted an auxiliary armed force act and recruited some 3,500 of the 4,000-odd SPOs as auxiliary constables, a notch below police constables in terms of pay and rank. They are now trained for nine months, given a monthly salary of Rs 8,000 and armed with automatic rifles. "They are better trained and armed and help us hunt down the Naxalites in a big way since they are tough and know the difficult terrains," says Bastar district superintendent of police Ajay Yadav. Chhattisgarh officials mourn the death of the Judum. Former Dantewada superintendent of police Ankit Garg believes that it gave the administration a "footing for the first time in the Naxalite zone where we essentially fought for our own survival". But those in the Kasoli camp still cling to Salwa Judum and what it once stood for — a "non-violent resistance" to Maoist diktats. "Janandolan (people's movement) ceased a long time ago but we still believe in Salwa Judum," says Atami, who is from the Mudia tribe like most of the 184 families in the camp. "Before us, no one had dared take on the Maoists." For all its flaws, many see Salwa Judum as the first organised local challenge to the Naxalites. "It was a spontaneous movement against the Maoists who unleashed terror in Bastar and elsewhere in Chhattisgarh," says former state director-general of police Vishwa Ranjan. DOWN BUT NOT OUT: (From top) Dantewada's former special police officers, most of whom are auxiliary police constables now; Salwa Judum leader Chaitram Atami; orphans of Naxalite violence; an APC at the Kasoli camp The retired IPS officer, credited with formulating Chhattisgarh's anti-Naxalite strategies between 2007 and 2011, says the death of the movement has only bolstered the Naxalites, helping them spread their influence across Bastar. "They were so shaken by the Salwa Judum that they are now trying to kill all its leaders," he says, adding that several SPOs were charged with committing excess and subsequently "thrown out" during his tenure. The Chhattisgarh government —which once fed and clothed the people living in the 23 Salwa Judum camps in Bijapur, Sukma and Dantewada districts — has now provided Kasoli residents with ration cards. Each family gets 35 kilos of rice and five kilos of chana a month at Re 1 a kilo, besides sugar and kerosene oil from a ration shop in the camp. "The government is not funding any camps. But we make sure that government schemes meant for Scheduled Tribes reach these camps," says director of public relations Om Prakash Choudhary, who was earlier Dantewada collector. The government also runs a residential school for boys up to Class VIII. "We provide everything for the students, from free meals and books to clothes," assistant school warden Virendra Pawar stresses. Most camp inhabitants now call Kasoli their home. "We have nowhere to go. If we return to our villages, the Naxalites will kill us," says Manglu Mandavi, a 22-year-old man who like most others in the camp works as a labourer in nearby villages. Most of the camp dwellers came from Abujhmad — a vast swathe of hilly forested land on the other side of the Indravati river, seven kilometres from Kasoli. The remote villages there are held entirely by the Naxalites, with no government officials ever setting foot there, not even for a population census. "We ran from our village and came here in 2005 because Naxalites were forcing the youths to join them at gun point," Mandavi adds. With many residents fearing a Naxalite attempt to overrun the camp in the wake of the May 25 Bastar carnage, feelings run high in Kasoli. With his finger on the trigger of his self-loading rifle, SPO-turned-auxiliary constable Maniram Atami, a camp dweller, is ready for any eventuality. "Let them come. Not a single bullet will be wasted," says the short and stocky guard in Gondi, a local dialect. Elsewhere it may have died, but in Kasoli, the Salwa Judum lives on. DEATH OF A STRUGGLE Chief minister Raman Singh on the Salwa Judum It was a public movement, essentially a reaction to Naxalite violence. It should not be mistaken as an organised political movement. It came up on its own and went down on its own. The movement seems to have died a natural death, like many public movements. It was never a question of the government supporting the Salwa Judum. It was our duty to give shelter to people fleeing Naxalite violence or threats. We have provided security because it is our duty to protect the people from Naxalite attacks. People's voices often get muffled under a blanket of fear and violence. This is why public movements are so important, particularly when Naxalites are totally opposed to democratic processes.  To counter Maoist threats in Bastar and elsewhere in Chhattisgarh, we have devised a comprehensive strategy in which development work will run alongside security measures. We are focusing on education, health and the public distribution system (PDS). We will open more polytechnics, industrial training institutes and colleges for vocational trainings. The youths need jobs. We are also bolstering the healthcare system and will have more mobile hospitals that will go to the weekly haats in tribal areas and treat people. Lastly, we are opening PDS or ration shops at panchayat levels so that the poor benefit from them. As told to D.B.  http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130609/jsp/7days/story_16987475.jsp#.UbSdeOeBlA0