THUS SPAKE THEIR LORDSHIPS: SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE RECENT SUPREME COURT ORDER ON NIYAMGIRI AND BEYOND

THUS SPAKE THEIR LORDSHIPS:
SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE RECENT SUPREME COURT ORDER ON NIYAMGIRI AND BEYOND

[Note: This was written after the Supreme Court judgment awarding Sterlite company to mine bauxite in Niyamgiri hills was pronounced in the first week of August 2008. Even after the judgment, the Dongria Kondhs have put up a stiff resistance against bauxite mining in Niyamgiri hills (District Kalahandi, Orissa.)

Asit Das

As a post-graduate student, a poetry poster in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU, Delhi), shook my entire understanding of the Judiciary including the Supreme Court. The poem was "Unhika seher wahi muddai, wahi munsif, hame yakin tha ki kusur hamara hi niklega", by Dushyant Kumar. Translated into English, it means “Their town, their complainant, their judge; I was convinced that the fault will be mine”. The recent Supreme Court judgment on “Niyamgiri” has reinforced my belief in the above poem. All of us grew up taking the lessons of our higher-secondary civics tutorials that the court is independent of the society and government to dispense justice. However, our experience of the working of the judiciary of the Post-Independent India is just the opposite.

Is the Indian State and its apparatuses, including the Judiciary, becoming more and more neoliberal with every passing day? This is happening during the worst agrarian crisis in Indian history where more than two lakh farmers have committed suicide in the past decade in India. According to Arundhati Roy, more than 40 million people, including marginal peasants, artisans and landless peasants, have been thrown out of their habitats, so also the commons. Where finance capital is dominating, the most stark symptom is jobless growth unemployment, which is increasing in phenomenal magnitude. There are wild fluctuations of speculative capital in the money market. Hot money flow of trillions of dollars happens in a day at the push of a button. In this era of forcible evictions of farmers, including Adivasis, the worst symptoms are mass poverty with its morbidity pattern in the social sector. The number of people living in poverty has actually increased by 100 millions; an estimated 2,801 billion living on less than two dollars a day in 1998. This happens in sharp inequalities. An average American earns 5,500% more than an Ethiopian, a gap that will double in a century-and-a-half at the current trend. The world’s three richest men have a combined wealth of 1 trillion dollars, equal to the income of the poorest 47% of earth's population - some 2.5 billion people. The Arjun Sengupta Committee on unorganized sector says more than 70% Indians subsist on Rs. 20 a day and majority of them are farmers, agricultural laborers and Adivasis.

The Supreme Court order on the Sterlite case will devastate and pauperize thousands of Dongria Kondhs by forcibly displacing them from their habitats, livelihood and commons. It will be a cultural genocide. The Court order states that a Special Purpose Vehicle be constituted and 5% of the profit be given to the Dongria Kondhs. But the Kondhs, who lead a non-commodified sustainable life, consider the Niyamgiri hills as sacred, which cannot be measured by money. An analogy can be done with the United States of America - while the settlers and American government were killing the native Americans and annexing their land, the then native American Chief of Seattle wrote to the President of America, whom he called the great white chief. In that letter the Chief of Seattle wrote, “How can you buy air, land and water”. It is needless to say that the entire capitalist civilization of Australia, Latin America, North America and New Zealand were founded on ruthless genocide and ethnic cleansing for mines, lands and factories. Niyamgiri will be brutally evacuated by the Supreme Court order for mining of bauxite. The million-dollar question is that if diamond mines are found under Parliament House and Rashtrapati Bhawan, will the government demolish them for excavation?

Niyamgiri Land and People

Niyamgiri is situated in the Lanjigarh area of Kalahandi district of Orissa in the Eastern Ghat range. The mountain system comprises irregular and undulating lofty hills ranging from 400 – 1,516 meters above MSL, extending along Kalahandi and Raygada districts. The 250 km stretch of pristine forests, comprising of a prosperous biodiversity, is on the brink of danger from the proposed open cast mining at the hill top Niyam Donger (1,150 meters). The trees will be cut down for making roads for conveyors and mining; mammals, birds and snakes will be driven out to perish, and the earth will be wrecked in the name of development. Niyamgiri hills are the source of Bansdhara River as well as the major tributaries of Nagabali River. It also has some of the most pristine forests of Orissa, and is home to a number of vulnerable wildlife species, including leopards, sloth bears, pangolins, palm civets, giant squirrels, mice, deers, langurs, sambars, etc. The Niyamgiri hill range abounds in a number of streams. More than 100 streams flow from Niyamgiri hills and most of the streams are perennial. Niyamgiri hills have been receiving high rainfall since centuries, and drought is unheard of in this area. Some of the major streams originated from Niyamgiri, including Bansdhara, Nagabali, Sakta Nallah, Barha Nall, etc.


The People and Culture

Niyamgiri is better known as the Dongria Kondh country. The Dongria Kondhs have derived their name from Dongar, i.e., manning agricultural land on hill slopes. Dongria Kondhs are one of the primitive tribes of the state and enjoy a critical and symbiotic relation with Niyamgiri forests. The census for 2001 reveals that the total population of this tribe is limited to only 7,987 which includes 3,458 males and 4,529 females, an exemplary sex ratio in the era of female feticides. Niyamgiri, the land of Dongria (for the Kondh tribe living in dongros and practicing shifting cultivation) is another evocative name in the area. The Dongrias are a rare and indigenous tribe and they believe that the hill country belongs to Niyam Raja Penu, a male deity represented by a sword and worshipped during Dussehra and Jura Parab. They claim themselves to be descendants of Niyam Raja. The Dongrias have a distinguished heritage, because of the dress style, mode of living, indigenous skills, cultural pattern and social system interlinked with nature and forests.

The Dongria Kondhs’ economy and their major sources of livelihood are directly related with Niyamgiri forests. Around 40 to 50% of their annual income is derived by selling forest products like siali leaves, myrobalans amla and other minor forest produce. They grow fruit crops like pineapple in the thick forests. Dongria Kondhs are not at all known for hunting, rather they have a symbiotic relationship with nature and forests. This area has rare flora and fauna, hence a sensitive ecological zone.


Niyamgiri, Dongria Kondhs, Global Warming and Climate Change

Today, when the entire world is talking about climate change and ecological disaster, the Dongria Kondhs, with their egalitarian and democratic community life, eco-friendly, harmonious and sustainable relation with nature, show a ray of hope and model for the world.

Climate change and global warming, including a severe ecological crisis, are not to be taken lightly. The U.N. bodies, governments, political forces and social movements are seriously discussing a way out - we have reached the edge of the precipice.

John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark and Richard York in their article Ecology - The Moment of Truth say, "It is impossible to exaggerate the environmental problem facing humanity in the twenty-first century. Nearly fifteen years ago one of us observed: ‘We have only four decades left in which to gain control over our major environmental problems if we are to avoid irreversible ecological decline.’ Today, with a quarter-century still remaining in this projected time line, it appears to have been too optimistic. Available evidence now strongly suggests that under a regime of business as usual, we could be facing an irrevocable "tipping point" with respect to climate change within a mere decade.

Other crises such as species extinction (percentage of bird, mammal and fish species “vulnerable or in immediate danger of extinction” are “now measured in double digits”); the rapid depletion of the oceans’ bounty; desertification; deforestation; air pollution; water shortages/pollution; soil degradation; the imminent peaking of world oil production (creating new geopolitical tensions); and a chronic world food crisis - all point to the fact that the planet as we know it and its ecosystems are stretched to the breaking point. The moment of truth for the earth and human civilization has arrived.” (See John Bellamy Foster et al., "Ecology – The Moment of Truth", Monthly Review, July-August 2008).

Writing on "Nature as Accumulation Strategy”, Neil Smith says, 'The production of Nature under capitalism generates its own Ideologies'. On the one hand, the radical objectification of nature in the process of industrial production both generates and reaffirms the positing of nature as an external reality vis-a-vis society, humanity, the social-nature is broadly conceived as a repository of biological, chemical, physical and other processes that are outside the realm of human causation or creation, and the repository too of identifiable objects-subatomic and molecular, specific organisms and species, terrestrial bodies and so forth. Modern science serves up such objects conceptually as discrete targets of social labor and simultaneously ratifies this purview of an external exploitable natural world. On the face of it, of course, nature wholly beyond and different from society is an untenable idea, quite literally absurd, and the externalist conception fostered its own alter ego: nature may indeed be external to society but is simultaneously universal. That is, the entire world, human and non-human - is subject to natural events and processes. The contradiction between these externalist and universalistic conceptions has grown into a hallmark of capitalist Ideologies of Nature (see “Nature as Accumulation Strategy” by Neil Smith, in “Coming to Terms with Nature”, Socialist Register, 2007).

The Economics and Social & Environmental Costs of the Project


If Niyamgiri is mined, the environmental cost at the present value of forest loss alone would be 448 crore rupees. That is without accounting for the loss of valuable plant species, wildlife, and abundant water resources. The cost of carbon dioxide emissions from this project will set India back 653 crore rupees. The incalculable religious and cultural values preserved by the Dongrias for millennia have not been, and cannot be, accounted for this cost benefit analysis. Mining in Niyamgiri is akin to sacrilege for the tribe. Dongrias are still accorded with colonial construct primitive, yet they preserve a rich civilization and their ethos far beyond any financial calculations. Vedanta/Sterlite will pay only Rs.160.00 per ton of bauxite whereas the market price is nearly Rs. 200 per ton. After investing some 3,200 crore rupees, Vedanta/Sterlite will be availed a subsidy of over 6,132 crore rupees at the cost of people's money on the market price of alumina, which would have fetched 7,300 crore rupees to the government. Now, the state will get only 467.2 crores. Moreover, considering the entire cycle - from extracting bauxite to production of aluminum, the value of aluminum extracted from Niyamgiri at the present value is going to be a whopping 156,000 crore rupees. All this after paupersing and displacing the Dongria Kondhs.

It is to be noted that Sterlite is a frontal company of the tainted company Vedanta, which was blacklisted by Norway. The Norwegian Government withdrew its pension fund invested in Vedanta.

In a letter to the Chief Minster of Orissa and Directors of Vedanta, social activists and researchers like Mamta Dash and Felix Padel et al., wrote: when the question first arose and a deal was signed in 1988 with Balco, the area on Niyam Dongar (the mountain whose summit forms the lease area) was about to be declared a wildlife sanctuary and should have been none of the other bauxite capped mountains of Orissa which have this unique quality of a forest on top, which is the best in the Niyamgiri range and centered on one of the largest stands of unspoilt forests remaining in Orissa, stretching away towards Karlpat. This is why so may environmental and conservationist groups are so strongly opposed to this project.

No forest management or reforestation plan, however much money is spent, can even begin to compensate for what will be lost if mining happens here. These are likely to disappear soon if the project goes ahead. In every mining project in India unfortunately, the timber mafia and hunting mafia enter alongside the mining contractors using the roads that are constructed. Already a leopard photographed for down to earth magazine in 2007 was shot last winter. As for the timber mafia, it is already entering the Niyamgiri range simultaneously with Sterlite. In some places, Dongria villagers have managed to stop trailer-loads of trees from being taken out at night because the damage being done is already extensive and needs to be stopped at once.

As the Wildlife Institute report said, 80% of Niyam Dongars’ summit is covered by the saal forest that has never been cut. Sterlite’s environmental impact assessment incorrectly states that there is almost no forest up there, and the trees are stunted. Situated at 4,000 feet, they are smaller than the trees in the valley and mountainsides, but the saal forest at this altitude is extremely rare and has a unique value. The local Adivasis understand the role of the forest as something highly sacred because it conserves moisture in the soil up there, and makes this summit the source of fertility for miles around, through perennial streams that are rich in mineral nutrients.

The reason why this forest still exists is the Dongria Kondhs and their religion, which blends spiritual with material values in a way that is extremely highly developed. Their lifestyle is sustainable in the true sense of the world, in that they have lived in these hills for centuries, without destroying their environment. The summits - and especially the summit of Niyam Dongar, are sacred to Niyam Raja and, therefore, taboo for cutting and hunting. Niyam Raja is their conception of a supreme deity - King of law, in a sense very similar to the concept of Dharma. Hence, it is deeply ironic that the ancient spiritual name Vedanta is now involved in undermining the ecosystem of a people who have a lot to teach the modern world about real sustainability and a sense of upholding the law. The whole history of mining projects worldwide shows that if you go ahead and mine the incredible biodiversity, which the Dongrias have preserved, it will be destroyed forever, along with their culture.

To Adivasis, the project demonstrates a disrespect which they meet constantly nowadays. Mainstream society has a very jaundiced stereotyped view of the tribal society in general, still seeing it primitive when the reality is that tribal societies are extremely highly developed, but in a different direction from the mainstream Hindu society. This is why the mainstream idea of development imposed top down is not development at all for tribals.

Most Dongria Kondhs see money offered as tribal development and compensation as a bribe designed to destroy their culture. In fact, this will lead to culture genocide.

Dongria Kondhs’ attachment to their land and village is something much sacred for non-tribal people to comprehend. It is linked to their gods and memories of their ancestors. They will be divested of their habitat and pauperized once they are removed and exposed to sadistic market fundamentalism, which will turn them into beggars and destitutes.

The central empowered committee appointed by the Supreme Court has categorically recommended scrapping of the mining project in Niyamgiri for its ecological importance. The Wildlife Institute at Dehradun has also recommended scrapping the project due to the presence of endangered animals. The Sterlite bauxite mining project makes a total mockery of the Environment Protection Act and the Forest Conservation Act.

The Orissa government on Nov 24, 2004 wrote to the Central Environment and Forests Ministry that the Vedanta Alumina for its refinery and captive power, out of 723.34 hectares of land 58.94 hectares is reserved forestland, blatantly contravening the Forest Conservation Act. The CEC appointed by the Supreme Court filed a report in September 2005 recommending revocation of the environmental clearance to the refinery, as it wrote about the state’s casual manner, lackadaisical approach and undue haste in sanctioning clearance. The CEC fact-finding team sent in December 2004 confirmed that the forestland was cleared in violation of the Forest Conservation Act, 1980 and raised a crucial question as to why environmental clearance was granted before grant of forest clearance to the project. The CEC also stated in the report that the MoEF had approved Vedanta's application with regard to forestland at an unusual speed. The application was sent by the Government of Orissa on a Sunday, and the MoEF approved it the very next day.

The CEC has also strongly recommended against mining in Niyamgiri citing immense ecological damage and devastation to the tribal population. The Wildlife Institute of India also submitted a report stating that mining in Niyamgiri would cause irrevocable damage to the existing biodiversity, water resources and lives of the tribal. These two reports comprised enough evidence to have the case wrapped up there. However, the three-judge forest bench directed the CEC to submit another report, in which the latter reiterated its observations clearly stating that permitting mining in Niyamgiri would amount to sacrilege. After that, the forest bench decided to widen the scope of the petition in September 2007 and directed MoEF to file a report on the impact on forests and tribals, if mining takes place.

Moreover, despite the CEC recommendations, Vedanta continued its work on the refinery with full knowledge of the state government and had already completed it by the time the issue came up for hearing in May 2007 in utter disregard to the country's judicial process. However, strangely, the Supreme Court had nothing to say about it. More to one's surprise, none of the petitioners was allowed to speak before the judges during the hearing (see Subrat Kumar Sahu: A requiem for the Dongria Kondhs).

The recent Supreme Court order handing over Niyamgiri to Sterlite says, "a special purpose vehicle to be created and giving 5% of the profit for local development”. This is like throwing crumbs to a self-reliant proud people who don't require anything from the exploitative system. While Sterlite will be extracting thousands of crore rupees, it will give some chicken feed to the local people turning them into undignified beggars. This Supreme Court order has sounded the death knell for the Dongria Kondhs.

The recent order is a cruel paradox of our judicial system. In the Sterlite judgment, the Supreme Court presided over many contraventions and violation of many acts and constitutional provisions. This judgment violates the letter and spirit of 89th Constitutional Amendment known as Pesa Act, which categorically says that in the 5th schedule area in which Niyamgiri lies, the Gramsabha has to be consulted and its consent sought to implement any project. This was not done in the Sterlite case. Right to life and livelihood guaranteed under Article 21 is also violated in Niyamgiri case. The Sterlite order violates the Environmental Protection Act, the Forest Conservation Act and the Forestland Rights Act, in which the Adivasis should get the title deed of the land under occupation. The Supreme Court in its judgment in the year 2000 in the Narmada case gave the verdict to go ahead with building the dam, violating the provisions of the Narmada water disputes tribunal constituted under the Interstate River Disputes Act, 1956. This same Supreme Court refused granting of bail for Dr. Binayak Sen who was illegally imprisoned by the Chattisgarh Government. This same Supreme Court silently watches as the private army called Salwajudum kills, maims and displaces thousands of Adivasis in Chattisgarh. The same Supreme Court is silent on the illegal Jati Panchayats giving death verdicts, Dalit women being paraded naked, killing of Dalits all over the county, custodial rapes and deaths, thousands of fake encounters, it is silent on thousands of youth who disappeared in Punjab and Kashmir, the genocide and atrocities in northeast - the list is endless. In the Niyamgiri case, serious miscarriage of justice was done when Justice Kapadia, a member of the three-member bench openly declared that he holds shares in Sterlite. Judicial callousness reached its height when Justice Pasayat, another member of the same bench, denied Advocate Sanjay Parikh to argue for Niyamgiri Adivasis.


The Neoliberal State

The way in which the Supreme Court behaved in the Niyamgiri case is a serious pointer to what is happening to important organs of state, the judiciary, and the executive who go out of their way to oblige the national and international big business. The state is supposed to be a neutral apparatus standing above the society and enforcing the rules of the game. But under the neoliberal regime, it has become a slave of the corporate sector. Writing about the role of the state in the neoliberal era, eminent social scientist David Harvey says, "Neo liberalism is in the first instance a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human wellbeing can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets and the trade. The role of the state is to create and preserve an institutional framework appropriate to such practices. The state has to guarantee, for example, the quality and integrity of money. State interventions in market must be kept to a bare minimum because, according to the theory, the state cannot possibly possess enough information to second-guess market signals (prices) and because powerful interest groups will inevitably distort and bias state interventions for their own benefits”. (See “Introduction: A Brief History of Neoliberalism”, by David Harvey, Oxford University Press, London).

There has everywhere been an emphatic turn towards neoliberalism in political-economic practices and thinking since the 1980s. Deregulation, privatisation and withdrawal of the state from many areas of social provision have been all too common.

This, however, does not mean that the state has weakened; infact the state has emerged much stronger and intensified to facilitate capital accumulation. The globalization theory postulates decline of the nation state and national capitalist classes, the transfer of sovereignty from state to the organs of some kind of unified transnational capital; however, nothing like this has happened and seems unlikely to ever happen. Instead, the transnationalization of capital's original political forms, the national state, and this state is more universal today than ever before. Again, as globalization has it, an inverse relation exists between the inter-nationalization of the economy and the power of the state. Instead, globalization presupposed the state and while the state may have lost some of its traditional functions, it has gained many more new ones, especially as the main conduit through which national and multinational capital is inserted into the global market. Far from being rendered irrelevant, the state is today the main agent of globalization with its penetration of the capitalist logic deeper into societies of advanced capitalism and spatially throughout the world. The neoliberal state plays a central role as capital is channelised into the global market, as the creator of the right environment for capitals accumulation, and as the capital's main line of defense against internal disorder. As the main agent of globalization, states are becoming more and more attuned to accommodating and fostering capital accumulation on a world scale. They do so by creating and sustaining global markets. It is they who are making the necessary changes in the rules governing capital movements, investment currency exchange, trade and forcible acquisition of land for capital accumulation. (For details, see “Globalization in Marxism, Socialism, Indian Politics - A View from the Left”, by Randhir Singh, Aakar Books, New Delhi).


Accumulation through Dispossession Contextualizing Niyamgiri in Global Capitalism in the Neoliberal Era

What we are seeing today is history repeating itself as a tragedy. Horrors of Dickensian Capitalism are being re-enacted through ruthless global enclosures where millions of peasants and Adivasis are thrown out of their habitats, livelihood and commons in a bloodthirsty primitive accumulation of Global Capitalism. All over the third world, including India, millions of peasants are thrown out of their land for mines, factories, townships, ports, luxury villas, golf courses, entertainment parks, highways, etc. Iraq was devastated and decimated for oil. Through the connivance of the neoliberal state, national and international big business swallow up natural resources and commons. These are the bloody symptoms of the present era of accumulation through violent dispossession. The present epoch is brilliantly explained by Samir Amin in a review article in Social Scientist “The centre/periphery contrast is inherent to the global expansion of the actually existing capitalism at every stage of its development since its inception”. Imperialism as an outcome of capitalism assumed naturally diverse and successive forms in close relation with specific characteristics of successive phases of capitalist accumulation. Mercantilism (1500-1800), classical industrial capitalism (1899-1945), post-Second World War (1945-1990), and the ongoing project of globalization beyond the particularity of each these phases, the actually existing capitalism has always been synonymous to the world conquest by its dominant sites. We will, therefore, not be surprised that colonialist dimension would entail an important element in the formation of political culture of the countries concerned. Nevertheless, articulation of this colonialist dimension in other aspects of political culture is specific to each of the regions and countries in question. For Europe colonialism was external, in America it was internal. A difference worth noting (see Samir Amin, review article page 79, Social Scientist No. 420-421, New Delhi).

Taking a cue from the above logic, one can safely infer that places like Niyamgiri have become new internal colonies. Internal colonies like Niyamgiri are the logical outcome of the present structural logic of neocolonial plunder by the core capitalist countries of the third world. The great teacher of the working class, socialist thinker and exemplary revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg taught us that Capitalist cores create dependant exploited colonial peripheries. According to her, "one concern is that commodity market and the place where surplus value is produced is the factory, the mine, the agricultural estate”. Regarded in this light, accumulation is a purely economic process, with its most important phase a transaction between the Capitalist and the wage laborer... Here, in form at any rate, peace, property and equality prevail, and the keen dialectics of scientific analysis were required to reveal how the right of ownership changes in the course of accumulation into appropriation of other people’s property, how commodity exchange turns into exploitation, and equality becomes class rule. The other aspect of the accumulation of capital concerns the relations between capitalism and the non-capitalist mode of production which start making their appearance on the international stage. Its predominant methods are colonial policy, an international loan system - a policy of spheres of interest and war force, fraud, oppression and looting are openly displayed without any attempt at concealment, and it requires an effort to discover within this tangle of political violence and contests of power the stern law of the economic process. These two aspects of accumulation are organically linked. The historical career of capitalism can only be appreciated by taking them together (see Rosa Luxemburg, "The Accumulation of Capital”, Monthly Review Press, New York).

Niyamgiri, Neoliberalism, Globalisation and Imperialism of Our Times

Niyamgiri should be seen in the context of the present neoliberal regime, popularly known as Globalisation.

In the early 1970s, after the oil shock and end of the post-war boom, advanced capitalist countries entered into recession and then they imposed neoliberalism all over the world to bail out the crisis ridden global capitalism.

The Neoliberal Order

Neoliberalism asserted that intervention into the market by government only triggered inflation while it slowed growth and fostered unemployment. On the contrary, market forces free of government regulation would create jobs and spark strong economic growth. Based on these principles or ideology, neoliberalism helped to justify a sweeping revival of the economic and political power of the capitalist class in the United States and the rest of the world in the following two decades. Under the neoliberal regime, economic growth and profits recovered in the first world but to a level well below the golden age. More seriously, weaker average growth and the decline of the states’ economic role were accompanied by rapidly increasing inequality and declining levels of public welfare. Under the aegis of neoliberalism, the fate of the third world was much worse. Overwhelmed by debt, most of the countries of Latin America and Africa were forced to surrender control of their economies to western banks and international financial agencies controlled by western governments. As a condition for loan bailouts, such countries had to raise interest rates, lower tariffs, and open their economies and massively reduce social health and education spending in an effort to clean up their financial balance sheets. Such neoliberal prescriptions were designed to restore economic equilibrium and stimulate growth and exports. In only a few cases did they do so? Rather than growth, most underdeveloped countries suffered massive economic regression. Wages fell while unemployment, poverty and social inequality grew. Major new capital investment was evident in Asia. But in the rest of the developing world, the US and European capitalists generated profits instead by taking over land, or publicly or locally owned manufacturing capacity, and through the privatization of financial resources such as pension funds, accumulation occurred through dispossession rather than investment. Everywhere the wealthy enhance their position by simply appropriating a greater share of existing wealth at the expense of the rest of the society.

(For details, see The Neoliberal Order in Henry Heller – “The Cold War and the New Imperialism - A Global History, 1945-2005”, Monthly Review Press, New York.)

The general capitalist accumulation which governs the dynamics of capitalism and generates increasing wealth and affluence at one pole of society and growing poverty and degradation at the opposite pole does so not only within nations but as a global or world system, among nations as well, leading necessarily to the polarization of the world into centre and periphery nations between rich and poor nations, and between rich and poor within a nation. This double process of polarization is imminent in capitalism - its permanent and basic feature, a product of structural logic of capitalism. Contemporary globalization is no exception, in relation to third world it is imperialism all over again. Thus, we have to see Niyamgiri in the context of imperialism today, or imperialism of our times. Aijaz Ahmad, writing on “Imperialism of Our Time” says, "The fundamental novelty of the imperialism of our time is that it comes after the dissolution of the two great rivalries that had punctuated the global politics of the twentieth century, namely, what Lenin called inter-imperialist rivalry of the first half of the century as well as what we might, for lack of better word, call the intersystemic rivalry between US and USSR, lasted for some seventy years. The end of those rivalries concludes the era of politics inaugurated by the First World War and it is logical that the sole victor, the United States, would set out most aggressively to grab all possible spoils of victory and to undo the gains that the oppressed nations of the world had been able to achieve during that period. This new face of imperialism arises not only after the dissolutions of the great colonial empires but also the definitive demise of the nationalism of the national bourgeoisie in much of the third world. Far from being an imperialism caught in the coil of inter-imperialist rivalries, it is the imperialism of the era in which (a) National Capitals have interpenetrated in such a manner that the capital active in any given territorial state is comprised, in varying proportions, of national and transnational capital, (b) Finance Capital is dominant over productive capital to an extent never visualized even in Lenin's export of capital theories or Keynes warnings about the rapaciousness of the rentier, and (c) everything from commodity markets to movements of finance has been thoroughly globalised that the rise of a global state, with demonstrably globalised military capability, is an objective requirement of the system itself, quite aside from the national ambitions of the US rulers, so as to impose structures and disciplines over this whole complex with its tremendous potential for fissures and breakdowns.”
(See Aijaz Ahmad, "Imperialism of Our Time", Socialist Register, 2004).

Niyamgiri and Resistance to Imperialism Today

Imperialism today has produced its own contradictions and fault lines. The occupation in Iraq is far from over - the brave Iraqis having put up stiff resistance to occupying US troops. In India, massive peasant resistance to forcible acquisition of land is going on in Singur, Nandigram, Raigad, Kalinganagar, Narmada Valley, Kakinada, etc. Niyamagiri has emerged as an advanced outpost of the struggle against imperialism. Therefore, it is imperative that all patriotic, progressive and democratic forces rally behind the Adivasis in their struggle against Sterlite and Vedanta.

The Niyamgiri struggle has also added its contribution to the forms of popular struggle, like liberation theology in Latin America. The Dongria Kondhs have made their religion into a formidable instrument of struggle. In March this year, thousands of Dongria Kondhs assembled in Niyamgiri hills to preserve its sacredness, making it a festival of resistance.

In dark times when communal fascists of the Sangh Parivar are carrying out hate campaigns against minorities in Orissa, Karnataka and Gujarat, the Dongaria Kondhs’ creative use of religion as an instrument of resistance is inspiring.

Concet Note on adivasi question

Towards (Trans) Locating The Adivasis In The Information Superhighway Junk Spaces(Malls)Globalized(Post) Modern World of Junk Spaces(Malls)
Asit Das
If we look at the media headlines today, the following spectacles and phenomena dominate the information barrage:
-Bullish stock exchanges-Crowded McDonalds and swarming beach resorts-Swinging discotheques-The sparkling Queen's necklace (Marine Drive)-Malls, multiplexes, software parks, 'smart cities', swanky emporias, towers with all their glass and glitter.
Against this backdrop we have the sweeping gentrification of slums, burgeoning suburbia with their pools, golf courses, custom built vehicles, luxury condominiums and so on. The banner headlines bombard us with the news of India's arrival as an economic superpower with a phenomenal 8-9% growth of the GDP.
Before we point out the impact of this much-flaunted economic achievement on vulnerable segments like women, Dalits, ethnic and religious minorities, Adivasis, peasants and workers etc, we would like to deconstruct the myth of 8% growth and the stock exchange boom. This economic turning point is a bloody pointer of early 21st century imperialism -with a century-long bloodthirsty trajectory of eliminating the peasantry from the face of the earth, extermination of the indigenous people from most parts of the globe- is the long tiring story of capital's insatiable hunger for profit. This 8% growth has been achieved after the ruling classes of India and their political parties ruthlessly administered the shock therapy known as structural adjustments- liberalisation packaged in the neoliberal paradigm, whose master narrative is known as 'Globalisation'.
Globalisation -which was capital's response to it's own contradictions and cyclical structural crises after the end of the post-war boom, after the “Petroleum crisis”, global economic recession, the Vietnam war and so on, the world economic relations were restructured according to the neoliberal ideology. Dollar was de-linked from the gold, and then “social democracy”, “Keynesian demand management” and the chimera of the “welfare state”, “import substitution” were given up. Washington consensus was adopted to bail out global capitalism in the late 70s and early 80s. The comprador rulers of the third world gave up their shallow rhetoric of socialism, self-reliance, and the whole discourse of decolonisation was reduced to the desensitized moribund terrain of history textbooks and development studies.
In the 80s, as a direct fallout of the debt crisis, structural adjustment policies of globalisation were ruthlessly imposed by the Brettonwoods institutions, at the behest of the imperialist masters- especially American imperialism on Latin America (which it considered its own fiefdom). These policies devastated and pauperised the entire working masses and indigenous people of Latin America -while the local elites and the multinational corporations made money there was 'boom'. A radical economist of Latin America had then remarked "The economy is doing fine, but the people are not." Then there was the crash, now the word globalisation invites a hostile reaction from the common people of Latin America, and this situation led to the formation of popularly elected left-wing governments. China and India are having the present economic boom because capital has found new virgin areas to exploit. Most of the Sensex leaps are results of foreign institutional investment of speculative finance capital coming in to make a fast buck, and will withdraw at the first signs of the crisis. Then the entire edifice of aspiring Asian economic super-powers will collapse like a house of cards. One should not forget the meltdown of the economy of the so-called 'Tigers of South-east Asia'. On one side the depoliticized academia, and the culture-vultures who romanticize tribal culture and their way of life, the governments objectify and museumize them, and the government of India showcases tribal culture in state-sponsored official APNAUTSAVS in London and Paris, while on the other hand. Shocking news of starvation deaths of Adivasis pours in from different parts of the country every day.
Adivasis -native people, indigenous people- were condescendingly called 'Tribals' by the colonial masters, while the anthropologists made lucrative academic careers by objectifying them through their studies, as if they are a different species to be showcased in the museums. There was decimation in the name of the white man's burden, arrogantly portrayed as the civilizing mission of the imperialist west. Human beings without private property or power hierarchies had existed for millennia, time immemorial. We started our journey from the caves, hunting, gathering, and struggling to save ourselves from the forces of nature. We were originally a part of the nature, coexisting with it in a mutually liberating symphony- without polluting and devastating the environment like the present day multi-national corporations, in their relentless drive for profit maximization and commodification.After learning agriculture, class societies emerged with enslavement of women, and feudalism became the dominant social structure based on exploitative agrarian relations between the 'Lord of the manor' and the peasants. Many parts were still left out, and there were the remnants of democracy and collectivism known as Adivasis or indigenous people, with their sustainable lifestyles and production process. At this point, the historical watershed called capitalism emerged from the intersteces of feudalism. This new economy and social relation wanted colonies for raw materials and natives as slaves. This is the ruthless story of global capitalism. Continents were colonized in search of raw materials and markets. This story of primitive accumulation or forced imposition of capitalist relations, violently dispossessing and displacing peasants and Adivasis was repeated in India by British colonialism through the East India Company. India was a multi-ethnic, diverse society. It contained rich natural resources, hundreds of languages, castes, different Adivasi people were sucked into global capitalism by the guns of British Imperial invaders. Adivasis who were 8.08% of Indian population, are classified into 500 scheduled communities. Administrators, law-makers, anthropologists and constitution give various definitions of the Adivasis. The constitution lists these communities to be that:
a) A traditional occupation in a definite geographical areab) A distinctive culture which includes the whole spectrum of a tribal way of life, that is language, customs, traditions, religious beliefs, arts and crafts, etc.c) Primitive traits depicted in their occupational pattern, economy, etcd) Lack of educational and technological development (Rahul Sen, Tribal movements during the colonial period, 1770-1947, pp206)
On the other hand, anthropologists in India are still to come to an agreement on a definition of the term. G.S. Ghurge made a distinction between tribals and non-tribals on the basis of religion, occupation and radical elements (1962). Desai elaborated on this by listing the following general
Characteristics:
a) They live in unapproachable places, away from civilised people.b) They belong to one of the following groups-Negroito Austriloid or Mongloids.c) They use a tribal language.d) They follow a primitive religion, which is based on principles of animism.e) Their economy is of a primitive nature, such as collection, hunting, etc.f) They are mostly non-vegetarian.g) They have nomadic habits and have a special interest in dance and wine.(Rahul Sen)
According to S.C. Dube, a tribe is:
"an ethnic category defined by real or putative descent, characterized by a corporate self-identity and a wide range of commonly shared traits of culture... they believe they have a common descent, consciously hold a collective self-image, and possess a distinctive cultural ethos, many elements of which are shared by the collectivity"
(See S.C. Dube- Tribal heritage in India vol.1 -Ethnicity, Identity and Interaction. Vikas Publishing House, Delhi 1977).
Majumdar, in his definition of a tribe, incorporated such traits as territorial affiliation, endogamous, ruled by tribal officers, common language or dialect, following tribal traditions, beliefs and customs etc (See D.N. Majumdar and Madan, an introduction to social anthropology, Asia publishing house, Bombay 1956).The legendary Dutch anthropologist Haimendorf, who sympathetically studied the Adivasis' communities in India, especially in Andhra Pradesh for more than four decades defined Adivasis as: "authochtonous societies which persisted until recently in an archaic and in many respects primitive lifestyle", characterized as hunters and gatherers or rudimentary agriculturalists, using the slash-and burn method of cultivation, and distinguished by their isolation in hills and forests and their separation from the wider civilization of India. (See C Von Furer-Haimendorf- Aboriginal rebellions in the Deccan 'Man in India' (Rebellion number) Vol. 25: 208-18)
That none of these definitions, including the constitutional one, fit all communities identified as tribal is well recognised (Hardiman, 1987:11-14; Beteille, 1896). Both Hardiman and Beteille have emphasized the trait-listing nature of all these definitions as their main shortcoming, and argued for a more historical and ethnic basis for identifying a tribal community. Yet, both have failed to propose a convincing historical definition themselves. (D.Hardiman, coming of Devi: Adivasi assertion in Colonial India, Delhi: Oxford University press. A Betelle- The concept of tribe with special reference to India- European Journal of Sociology Vol. 27:297-318 as quoted by Rahul Sen.)
In view of the multiple definitions, one can safely concur with Rahul Sen that 'tribals' are those communities that historically possessed a communal social and corporate order and lacked any concept of individual and private property ownership. This is coupled with the fact that these communities were the original inhabitants of the land they lived on, which they made habitable, before being disposed by aliens through conquests and assimilation at later times (R.Sen-Structure and History: The Mundwari Synthesis. Unpublished M Phil dissertation submitted to deptt. of Anthropology, Delhi University 1991- as quoted in 'Tribal movements during the colonial period')
The Adivasis were the original inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent, with their sustainable agriculture, fairly gender-just democratic egalitarian social order with equality and collectivism as principles governing social life. They reared animals, had subsistence agriculture and were dependent on the forest for fuel, fodder, medicines and other products known today as 'minor forest produce'. Commodification of the commons, and forests were unknown concepts for the Adivasis, until the advent of class society known as the caste Hindu social structure with graded inequality and vertical power structure as its constitutive principles, which is otherwise known as Indian feudalism.
As the exemplary revolutionary and socialist thinker Rosa Luxembourg had taught us years ago, global capitalism needs a core and a periphery for extraction of raw materials, and colonialism is a natural corollary for capital's greed. (See Rosa Luxembourg- Accumulation of capital, Rosa Luxembourg reader monthly review books, New York)
Colonies like India were the jewel in the crown for the growth of British capitalism, and the ushering in of bourgeois modernity in British politics and social life. Indian agriculture had to be restructured to supply cotton for the cotton mills of Manchester. Forests and tribal habitats (including their commons) were commodified for the insatiable hunger of British industrial capitalism. Large scale commercial fellings of forest were undertaken by the British rulers to build sleepers for the railways, to extract cheap raw materials, minerals and other natural resources -most of which were in the tribal areas. For a permanent reserve, colonial industrial growth, draconian acts like the Indian forest act and the land acquisition act were enacted by the British rulers to grab the forests, mines, commons and other natural resources. Adivasis were further pauperised, criminalized, marginalized and pushed to the fringes by the imperialists. The permanent settlement, Ryotbari and other forms of land tenure created a legal structure for the Britishers to maintain a complex, exploitative order vis-a-vis the Adivasis. Their customary rights were infringed upon. This predatory encroachment on their habitat and livelihood created widespread discontent amongst the Adivasis -there were rebellions all over the country, which are one of the most glorious chapters of the anti-colonial struggles of India and the third world.
The eminent tribal historian and anthropologist K.S. Singh captures the mood of the time in his work on the Santhal rebellion, other tribal uprisings explains that:“Vested with such revolutionary intent, all these movements, inspite of their diverse context, territory and actions, possessed one unitary objective-the re-establishment of the indigenous order with the concurrent rolling-back of the alien system. The essence of these movements is clearly delineated by Singh in his description of the Birsa Ulgulan as "...agrarian in root... and in its end. Birsa in his speeches, emphasized the agrarian factor and sought a political solution to the problems facing his people i.e. the establishment of a Birsaite Raj..." (see K.S. Singh- The Dust-Storm and the Hanging Mist: A study of Birsa Munda and his movement in Chotanagpur)
According to Rahul Sen, "The indigenous communal social order of the tribes was in conflict with the private proprietary land tenurial system introduced by the colonial administration. This was the root cause of the repeated insurrection by the tribals. Consequently, the political solution invariably arrived at by the insurgents was reversion to the indigenous system, whether through rebellion or revivalism."
(Rahul Sen, Tribal movements during the colonial period: 1770-1947)
There were hundreds of revolts and uprisings against the British all over India-where the tribal concentration was more there were protracted battles. K.S. Singhbroadly outlines three regions of India where these struggles went on. They are:
1) Chotanagpur- Santhal Pargana and the adjoining areas of West Bengal and Orissa, peopled by Chotanagpur tribals;2) Bhil-Koli-Ramoshi belt of South Rajasthan, North Gujurat, West Madhya-Pradesh and North Maharashtra; and3) South Orissa-Andhra-Bastar region
One of the main historical reasons for the tribal uprising in Chotanagpur was explained by Rahul Sen as follows:
In 1765, the then Mughal Emperor, Shah Alam II, granted the diwani of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa to the East India company. With this, Chotanagpur, a part of the subah of Bihar, passed into the hands of company administration.
Although Chotanagpur came under company administration in 1765 itself, company officers first entered this region in 1770, when a troop of soldiers led by Captain Camac came to Chotanagpur to suppress some local Zamindars who were fighting each other. Captain Camac, thereupon, went on to reduce both Palamau and Chotanagpur Raj to tributaries of the company. As mentioned earlier, the administration of the region during this period was left in the hands of the Raja and his zamindars under under a military collectorate set up in 1771 and later under the supervision of a joint Judge-Magistrate-Collector, with the constitution of the Ramgarh Regulation District in 1780.
The Mundas, Hos, Oraons, Santhals, Mal Pahariyas (Malers) were some of the tribal groups who lived in this region. (Rahul Sen - Tribal movements during the colonial period, 1770-1947)
The other important tribal rebellions of this region were: Maler Revolt, Ho rebellion, the great Kol insurrection, the Santhal Hul, the Kharwar movement, the Sardar larai, the Birsa ulgulan, the Tana Bhagat movement.
The tribal uprisings in the South-west Orissa-Andhra-Bastar region were: the Kandh rebellion of Western Orissa, Gond rebellion of Adilabad, etc.
The tribal movements in Rajasthan- Gujarat- Maharashtra region were: Bhil revolts of Rajasthan, the armed uprisings in Khandesh, Bhil revolts in Western Madhya Pradesh, the struggle of Gond in central Madhya Pradesh and present day Chattisgarh, the Devi movement of Surat, and so on.
These uprisings produced inspiring martyrs like Birsa Munda, Sidhu and Kano, Rani Durgavati, Tantya Bhil, Khajya Nayak, Motia Bhil, Chhitu Kirad and many others.
This fierce resistance of the Adivasis from Rajmahal hills in the east to Khandesh in the west against the predatory encroachment of their habitat and the commons led to various compromises of the British colonial administration. To strike up different compromising arrangements with them including some nascent tribal land protection acts. Various administrative arrangements like 'The light areas act' and agency area administration in Andhra Pradesh were the results of tribal revolt against colonial depradations.
When the power was transferred formally from the British imperialists to the Indian rulers, almost all the colonial laws were kept intact. Draconian acts like the Indian forest act, the Land acquisition act, etc, stayed on in the statute book. The Indian constitution recognized the pretentious autonomy conferred by the British by incorporating them into the fifth and sixth schedule of the constitution, and acts like 'Chotanagpur Santhal Paragana land protection act' and Agency Area acts continued in post-colonial India. This was the contradiction of the new Indian rulers commitment to the marginalized social and ethnic groups.
The biggest betrayal of the 20th century was the shameless burial of the democratic aspirations of national liberation movement by the third world rulers at the behest of world imperialism, led by the Britishers, and now succeeded by the USA, which is the current leader of the imperialist camp. Decolonization was the biggest joke of the 20th century. Under the structural relations of the neocolonial arrangements, presided over by the Brettonwood institutions like the World Bank and the IMF to perpetuate the imperialist order. This was necessary for the continued exploitation of natural resources of the third world by the core capitalist countries.
Export of primary commodities like cheap minerals and agricultural products were the main income of the newly liberated countries in the post-WWII world. This was the material basis for the continuation of the colonial laws like the Indian forest act and the Land Acquisition act in post-colonial India, and this suited the imperialist masters and their agents in the third world. This neo-colonial arrangement was necessary for the continuation of global capitalism. This betrayal led to the renewed struggle of the oppressed masses in the third world, in the much talked-about, post-colonial era.
The Adivasis who faced this new exploitative structure and continued intrusion into their customary social and natural rights continued their struggle against the new Indian ruling classes for political autonomy rights over natural resources, commodification of commons and so on. While the rulers kept on subverting the autonomy provisions of fifth and sixth schedules of the constitution.
As a result of the cold-war polarization, Indian rulers maneuvered their way through the super power rivalry to build what can be called 'India-specific capitalism'. To divert the subalteran masses' discontent against this post-colonial exploitative order, the Indian ruling classes used various populist socialist rhetorics while giving half-hearted concessions to the struggling masses, including the Adivasis.
Jawharlal Nehru formulated the famous Panchsheel policies of non-interference for the tribal masses, which were shamelessly subverted by the post-colonial political class and the beaurocratic apparatus. Schemes like the 'Integrated tribal development programme' and various land protection acts were used to co-opt the political aspirations of the Adivasis. Due to the structural logic and beaurocratic apathy of the Indian state, all these pretentious, ameliorative measures were a total failure.
Reservations in the legislature, academia and the bureaucracy were used cleverly to indoctrinate and co-opt the emerging post-colonial tribal leadership, to get assimilated and support the new colonial order and the semi-feudal social structure. However, this doesn't mean the whole-sale rejection of the idea of reservation. In a semi-feudal society where democratic tasks are incomplete, the progressive and democratic forces should support all the struggles for reservation and positive affirmation. In a brahminical order, where the Adivasis, Dalits and majorities of OBC's are left out, the struggle for reservation has a democratic content and has to be supported while demanding to fill up all the backlog of the SC/ST posts. The reservations and other rights didn't come as a charity from the so-called liberal capitalist order of the West or Third World regimes. They were achieved after what Ralph Milliband had written that these are the products of centuries of unremitting struggles of the underdogs against the ruling classes. (For a detailed theoretical analysis of various peasant and other subaltern revolts in Medieval England and India see 'Customs and common' and 'Whigs and hunters' by E.P. Thompson and 'Elementary aspects of peasant insurgency in colonial India', by Ranajit Guha in Subaltern studies Volume 1- Oxford University press, New Delhi) Construction of this neo-colonial and semi-feudal socio-economic order is one of the main causes of tribal land alienation and commodification of Adivasi culture and ways of life. Most of the Adivasis were pauperised, driven into debt and bondage due to ruthless usury, rackrenting, cheating, were used by money lenders, dishonest merchants and landlords to usurp tribal land with active connivance of the corrupt politician beaurocracy, police and forest officers nexus. All this happened in spite of the land protection laws, constitutional provisions of autonomy, and pro-tribal rhetoric of the post-colonial state and the political class.The developmental trajectory of the post-colonial state was nothing too different from their colonial masters. Tribal habitats were considered lucrative sites for natural resources, commercial forestry, cheap labour for the new capitalist path of development, masquerading as the development path of a welfare state. This neocolonial order further reinforced the extractive economy, squeezing the tribal areas of their lifeblood.
This path of capitalist development displaced millions of Adivasis by megadams, factories, mines, industrial townships and so on. Millions were displaced by national parks, sanctuaries and reserve forests. A substantial number of displaced tribals are forced to migrate due to the loss of livelihood, and ruthlessly cut off from their cultural moorings and sense of security and become part of the urban underclass squeezed into the slums, swelling the ranks of the urban unemployed and underemployed, totally brutalized and dehumanized existence and treated like shit by the depoliticized right wing metropolitan elite. This process leads to a precarious existence -to be ruthlessly displaced again through the gentrification drive of municipal corporations and the builder mafia. (Sympathetic scholars like Dr Walter Fernandez, Enaksi Ganguli Thukral and others have meticulously documented the displacement and other effects on Adivasis from different mega-projects.) There are more than forty million people, including vast majorities of Adivasis and Dalits displaced by megadams and mines, and other industrial projects (see the report of the World Commission on Dams, and Greater Common Good by Arundhati Roy.)
As a reaction to this usurption of habitat and livelihood, and the shrinkage of their commons, tribal peoples have been offering resistance in the Narmada valley, Koael Karo, Kashipur, Kalinganagar, Hosangabad, Western MP and all over tribal areas in India. The tribal resistance movements of post-colonial India is also phenomenal. In the early decades after independence, tribal mobilisations and uprisings`took off in several parts of India. One of the prominent movements was the struggle of the Adivasis in Dahanu and other areas of Thane district of Maharashtra. Here the Adivasis built up a strong resistance against local money-lenders, merchants and landlords against usury and other forms of bondage. The eminent radical leader of Maharashtra, the late Godavari Parulekar played a prominent part in the tribal movements of Thane.
All these movements were met by heavy police brutalities. This unleashment of state terror lead to the death of thousands of tribal activists by police firing- thousands were put behind bars. The state oppression of tribal movements is a daily experience in post-colonial India. There has been massive and gross human rights violations of Adivasis and other ethnic communities from the North-East, Jammu and Kashmir to other struggling tribal communities. The Indian state has been enacting draconian repressive laws like 'Armed-forces special power act', 'National security act', and a host of other black laws to trample the democratic aspirations of the indigenous people and ethnic minorities all over the country. There have been thousands of fake-encounter deaths, torture, rape and custodial death by the army and the paramilitary forces and the local police. There is a thriving human rights movement in the North-East, resisting state terror and further repeal of black laws like the Armed forces special power act. Sharmila Irom's great hunger strike is a signal event in the human rights struggle of the oppressed ethnic cultural/religious minorities within India. The massacre of adivasis by police firing in Kashipur, Dewas, Kalinganagar, are serious pointers of the state of human rights in tribal areas. We call upon all the progressive and democratic forces to struggle for abolition of all the anti-people black laws. We appeal to all the radical and democratic movements to unanimously demand immediate with drawal of absolutely barbaric mediaval white terror called SALWA JUDUM by the Hindu Fascist Govt of Chhatishgarh. And supported by the Congress.The rulers did all this under the pretence of upholding liberal discourse of political modernity, while medieval, inhuman exploitation of the tribal areas was intact. (The Indian state is signatory to the UN and international covenants and charters, including the ILO declaration on the rights of indigenous people, and other human rights charters.) In this context we would like to expose the pseudo-liberal rhetoric of the Indian state, ruling-class political parties, and establishment intellectuals.At the time of writing this note the news of the Gory incidents in Nandigram poured in as one of the bloodiest marker of human right voilation in India in the name of Industrialization and growth. This bloody trail from Kalinganagar to Nandigram explains the elimination war of Indian state and the State Governments against the Adivasis and peasants on behalf of International and Indian big business. We call upon all the progressive and democratic forces to protest against the state sponsored carnage in Nandigram. The cold blooded massacre of farmers in Nandigram by West Bengal Police is a stark indicator of State terror and the State which is the sole repository of violence and has monopolised violence both judicial and extra judicial, it is the ugly symbol of organized violence for ruthless perusal of Capitalist development on behalf of its imperialist masters. We appeal to all the progressive and democratic forces to rise up unitedely against state violence and abolition all the laws which makes the state as the sole repository and of all powers with monopoly inflicting violence and murder.
The betrayal of the Indian rulers of the democratic and political aspiration of Adivasis and other ethnic groups of large tracts of the country led to the movements of separate states and autonomous regions in the tribal dominated area. Some of the important movements are the Jharkhand movement, the Gorkha land movement, struggle for Gondwana state, Karbi Anglog, Bodoland and many others. The Tribals are playing important role in the Struggles led by different organized left parties and movements, without forgetting their heroic role in the Historic Telengana uprising which will inspire generations. We call upon all the progressive and democratic movements to support the Adivasi people's struggle for a separate state, political power and autonomy to decide their own path of development and social structure. There are many autonomous tribal movements like the Kastakari Sanghatana, Adivasi Mukti Sanghatan, Shoshit San Andolan, Kisan Adivasi Sanghatan, the Khedut Mazdoor, Chetna Sangath, the Waynad tribal struggle for land, the Jagrit Dalit Adivasi Sanghatan, Ekta Parishad, Prakrutik Sampada, Parishad Kashipur, Bisthapan Bhirodi Janmanch in Kalinagar, and many others. These struggles are for the rights of the land, forest, natural resources and commons. Against eviction from dams, mines and sanctuaries- now the Special Economic Zones and Special Tourist Zones.
The Indian state conceded some of the demands to legitimize itself to maintain an inclusive democratic facade. It half-heartedly enacted some acts like the PESA act (under the 89th amendment of the constitution) and the recent bill on the tribal forest land rights. All these acts were mostly watered down versions of the various charters of demands presented by the tribal movements. A renewed battle on this front is necessary to make these laws effective. The most horrifying aspect of the Adivasi social life in modern India is the saffronisation of tribals of Gujarat and other places, especially Western M.P. The participation of tribals in the ghastly communal carnage under the direction of the Sangh Parivar in Gujarat in the year 2002 is the most disturbing factor for democratic politics. The fascist Sangh Parivar and the other revivalist organisations through liberal funding for the VHP by equally right-wing communal NRI's from abroad, have worked over time to communalize the Adivasis through various programmes like the Hindu Sangam. These funds for saffronisation of the Adivasis is channeled through equally shady NGO's like Banvasi Kalyan Kendra. (For the retrograde role of state-sponsored apolitical NGO's in indiginous communities, see the chapter "NGO's in service of imperialism" in The globalisation unmasked – Imperialism in 21st century by James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer madhyam books New Delhi. And the funding of Hindu fascist NGO's in India by IDRF, published by Communalism combat, Bombay.) The Adivasis of all of India are struggling to preserve their way of life, and cultural identity. During the 1991 census a vast majority of Adivasis in the present day Jharkand registered themselves as followers of 'SARNA religion'. This was an important method of struggle against offensive fascist homogenizing designs of the Hindu right. In the age of late Imperial culture, manifested through the 'Disneyfication' and 'McDonaldisation' of thrid world societies, we call upon the progressive and democratic forces to firmly support the struggle for assertion of cultural identities by the Adivasi people, which is an important site of resistance against the culture of globalization and revivalist cultural offensive of the fascist Sangh Parivar.
Under the rubric of globalisation, when neo-liberal offensive is devastating the culture and commons of the indigenous people of India, thousands of acres of the land from Adivasis and farmers are taken away for attracting foreign direct investment and forcibly acquiring cheap lands for the Indian big business. The accelerated phase of neo-liberal economic policies is the present phase of forcible acquisition of land from both farmers and Adivasis for SEZ's. What we are witnessing today in the SEZ’s is the ruthless early 21st Century primitive accumulation through violent dispossession and intense commodification of the commons. The sez’s and those deemed to be foreign territories where no laws of the land will apply, this shameless surrender of sovereignty is nothing else but recolonisation of Indian territories for super profits making mockery of all the claims of being the largest independent democracy in the world. Sez’s are grim reminders of the primitive accumulation process which happened during the consolidation of Industrial capitalism in the colonial era, the creation of sez’s are similar to the dispossession of the peasantry, decimation of the indigenous people and grabbing of the resources of the third world, so vividly described by marx in Vol.-1 of capital which in the Marxist discourse is known as primitive accumulation. (See Hobbswam, Maurice Dobb, Robert Brenner, Polyani and Marx Vol.1 Chapter 26 capital now lucidely explained in John Bellany Foster’s “Naked imperialism the US pursuit of Global Dominance, Aakar Books New Delhi)
In the proposed sez’s in India the various state governments propose to acquire around 1.35 lakh acres of land with a total revenue loss of around 1 lakhs crore in tax concessions as said by the finance minister. All the pro labour laws which were achieved after relentless battles of the working class will no longer apply in sez’s. This shrinkage of arable land, apart from seriously jeopardizing the country’s food security will severly pollute the environment. This forced depeasantisation will drastically swell the growing number of the unemployed creating a huge reserve army of labour for capital who can be exploited as cheap labour. All these are results of sez’s where land is being forcibly acquired through violence and sexual assault on women for the private profit of multinational corporation and Indian big business ostensibly in the name of public interest as mentioned in the land acquisition act. When the Indian state is boasting of transparency through the right to information act, the million dollar question is where is the Public Interest in the sez’s. This is absolutely and patently an act of fraudulence by the Indian state. There is a resistance going on by the local Adivasis and farmers against the forcible acquisition of their lands have led to struggles in Bajera Khurd, Singur, Nandigram, Pen Tehsil in Maharashtra. These are the frontier battle lines and important sites of resistance against imperialism and Indian big business. We call upon all the radical democratic forces to rally behind these struggles. The grim episodes of State sponsored massacre and violence at Nandigram mandates for the creation of an all India joint struggle by all the Adivasi, progressive and democratic movements for scrapping the sez Act and halting all the process of land acquisition for sez’s all over India.
The recent incidents of violence in Nandigram is the symptom of the sharpening contradiction between in the peasants and world imperialism, where on behalf the salim group of Indonesia the West Bengal Police massacred the resisting peasants, this was a shameless act of violence on toiling peasantry by a state govt. to forcibly acquire land for a foreign multinational corporation by a state govt. led by the left front forces us to sit up and rethink the meaning of the word “left”. This sheer capitulation to Imperialist interests shamelessly exposes the contradictions of the discourse of left parties running the West Bengal Govt., who protest against Globalisation and sez at the centre. The violence unleashed by the West Bengal Police on the resisting people of Nandigram is a stark indicator of class violence where the state forces massacre the peasantry on behalf of a foreign multination company, this exposes the class character of the left front govt. of West Bengal which declares it self to be the guardian of workers and peasants. This Govt. Murders and disposses the same rural under class whose interest it is suppose to safeguard. This shows the betrayal of the interests of the bargadars and the peasants by the left front Govt. WE call upon all the progressive and democratic forces to firmly rally behind the struggling peasantry of Nandigram. We should also expose the hypocrisy and class character of the ruling classes parties like the Congress, B.J.P., Trinalmool Congress and Samajvadi Party who are disposseing the peasantry in the Govts led by them in the center and state. The time has come for all of us to seriously formulate strategy for a noninvasive participatory and democratic industralisation process.
Not withstanding the pro-Adivasi rhetoric of the post-colonial Indian state for six decades, the socio-economic indices and the Morbidity pattern of Adivasis is quite depressing. The Adivasis are the most dispossessed, exploited, and marginalized social groups in India. More than 75% of Adivasis are below the official poverty line, with lowest per capita income, which is less than a dollar per day. The infant mortality rate and pre- and post-natal deaths are highest in tribal areas, with lowest life expectancy and literacy rate. Every year thousands die from diseases like gastro-enteritis in the monsoon. The incidence of Tuberculosis, Polio and blindness is quite high. Thousands migrate to the cities due to displacement caused by mega-projects, famines, drought, indebtedness, etc. Official schemes like the ITDP, Antyodaya and public distribution systems are total failures due to lack of political will and beaurocratic apathy. After a long struggle by the Adivasi movements and the left and democratic movements, the government was forced to enact the employment guarantee act which is quite inadequate seeing the high incidence of unemployment and underemployment. The tribal and other democratic movements should continue the struggle for the transparent, sincere implementation and social audit of the present employment guarantee act, the struggle has to go on for the enactment of an employment guarantee act for the whole year- 365 days covering all the districts of India. We should Demand that an expenditure of 20% of the GDP to be spent on the social sectors like socialized medicine & community health care, education, maternal and infant care, Pensions housing and the provision of entertainment infrastructures healthy and clean landscape and other forms of social wage. The struggle for forests and land rights, Usury money landing, slavery bondage and different forms of feudal exploitations, radical land reforms, political autonomy, resistance to Imperialist and Hindu fascist attack on Adivasi cultural identity and way of life, against human right violation, diplacement, and rolling-back of the neoliberal offensive should be strengthened with renewed vigour.
In the post-Iraq world, under the hegemony of the frightening political project of "Pax Americana", in an era where under the neoliberal economic regime the contradictions between the world imperialism led by the USA and the oppressed masses and nations of the third world is sharpening, we appeal to all the Adivasi movements to firmly ally with the struggles of the other oppressed entities and identities like workers, peasants, Dalits, women, unemployed youth, and oppressed ethnic, national, religious and sexual minorities and take concrete steps for the formation of a broadest possible left and democratic united front, to struggle against imperialism, feudalism, and patriarchy. Our ultimate objective should be the creation of a society without the exploitation of man by man, by man of woman, and human beings of nature. We should all strive for a radical democratic social order, where the associated producers decide their own destiny, where the development of each is the condition for the development of all.Long live the struggle for human emancipation.