Author: Freny Manecksha

The Hasdeo Bachao Movement: How Adivasis are Challenging Paradigms of ‘Vikas’

The movement has found support from various groups including farmers. ‘It is our duty to protect jal, jangal, jameen,’ say tribal communities.

Raipur: On February 7, noisy scenes erupted in the Chhattisgarh assembly. Congress legislators protested the felling of 15,000 trees on December 21, 2023 in the Hasdeo-Arand forests to clear the way for a coal mining project. It was an example, not just of a political tussle between two parties but, of the way a peoples’ movement – the Hasdeo Aranya Bachao Sangharsh Samiti – has exerted power and gained momentum.

Led by Adivasis in the Hasdeo-Arand forest of Chhattisgarh against coal mining by Adani Enterprises Limited, the movement has been ongoing for some 13 years. The latest trigger was logging – cutting, processing, and moving trees – conducted over 137 hectares for phase two of coal mining in the Parsa East and Kete Basan coal blocks. Allocated to the power generating company Rajasthan Rajya Vidyut Utpadan Nigam, the Adani Group was awarded the contract as ‘mine developer and operator’. 

The tree felling occurred with the support of a massive police force and Adivasi villagers were detained for the day. Protests erupted and on January 7, 2024, barricades were erected in Raipur, Bilaspur and elsewhere to prevent hundreds from participating in the rallies. Nonetheless support has been pouring in well beyond the local level. The cry of “Hasdeo Bachao” has found resonance in neighbouring Bastar, and has transcended state boundaries, finding echoes in Madhya Pradesh too.  

Alok Shukla, one of the founding members of the struggle and convenor of the Chhattisgarh Bachao Andolan, an umbrella body for movements across Chhattisgarh, points out how despite repression, the movement has garnered solidarity from a vast cross section of society. These include farmers’ organisations, mine workers, environmentalists, and movements against iron ore mining, among others. It attracted the urban-centric population of Chhattisgarh. Shukla spoke of doctors trying to cross the barricade at Raipur during the protest. As a mark of how widespread the protest has been, he also highlighted the situation of a “gau rakshak” or cow protector who doesn’t subscribe to the politics of Hindutva but is concerned that cattle will suffer if the forest disappears.

Alok Shukla is one of the founding members of the struggle. Photo: Freny Manecksha

Such widespread support, Shukla said, comes because of the powerful Adivasi articulation of beliefs and culture which resonates with wider issues. 

“It is not about trees being cut in one particular village or about opposing one project. Emphasis is on the forest as a whole, whereby felling of trees or the dying river reflects destruction of a rich ecosystem and crucial wider environmental impact. Climate change and the survival of the planet – these are issues the whole world is talking about,” he said.

Stretching across 170,000 hectares, the Hasdeo-Arand is one of India’s most pristine and contiguous tracts of forest. It houses Gond Adivasis and is home to several plant and animal species, many of which are endangered. It is the catchment area for the perennial Hasdeo river that flows into the Mahanadi and provides water to the Surguja district. 

The forest contains a coalfield of over a billion metric tonnes of coal located close to the surface and easy to mine. These coal blocks have become the flash point despite it once having been declared a ‘no-go’ zone by the government.

Political party lines have blurred when it comes to taking a stand on the mining and tree felling. Both the Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party trade charges over which government first allowed it. Shukla points out that what is remarkable, though, is how it was the movement’s dogged determination which brought about the unanimous resolution passed on July 26, 2022, in the assembly. Both the BJP and the Congress which was then in power, asked the Union government to ensure that no mining activities would be carried out in Hasdeo.

It is significant, he adds, how Adivasis up against powerful forces have been able to counter arguments on development and put out their own narratives based on their vision and ethics.  

Also read: Hasdeo Arand Deforestation Raises Questions of Adivasi Justice for Chhattisgarh’s First Tribal CM

As Arunopol Seal, a senior development consultant on desirable change, wrote in Sahapedia, Adivasis have a symbiotic relationship with the forest, and see it as a living being. Forests provide livelihood and sustenance. Adivasis have so far kept away from seeing them as circuits of capital. They envisage themselves as guardians protecting the environment.  

Exemplifying this holistic view of the forest, Sunita Porte, a fiery young woman from Fatehpur village, spoke to me of how the rivulet that flows across their region feeds the Hasdeo river. “There is water all year round. Our opposition to mining protects this river that provides water for the farmers. Korba, with its numerous power plants, is dependent on that plentiful water. What will happen if the river dries up with tree felling and mining?”

Significantly, farmers of the region were among those who attempted to take out a rally in support on January 7. At the national level, Bhartiya Kisan Sangh leader Rakesh Tikait spoke out strongly and vowed support for the struggle. 

Sunita also voiced concern for wildlife, and for the man-animal conflict. In typical Adivasi narration, akin to that of a fable, she said, “It is not only us whose homes will be uprooted if the mining continues but wildlife too. Where will the birds and others go?”

She spoke of a small herd of elephants coming out of the forest, of a lone elephant separated from the herd, roaming close to people’s homes after the trees were cut. “We heard they damaged some houses. People say the houses were those of agents of the company.” ‘Company’ is the word commonly used for the Adani Group in these areas.

Another anecdote – that of a bear giving birth to cubs near someone’s home because it had to flee the forest – was narrated not just by Sunita but has become something of folklore, gaining currency on X, formerly Twitter, to bolster the meta-narrative of displacement. 

It was concern for this wildlife which spurred Adivasi youth Yogesh Markam to cycle across neighbouring Bastar district to raise awareness of Hasdeo, as his act of solidarity. A local daily featured his journey. 

The local daily in Bastar carried a photograph of Adivasi youth Yogesh Markam who was on a cycle trip rallying support for the Hasdeo struggle.

Such smaller stories are indicative of the manner in which the movement is spurring Adivasi youth to tell their own stories, in their individualistic ways. “They are leading the campaigns in social media. It is their voices that are being amplified,” said Shukla.

Jacinta Kerketta, acclaimed Adivasi poet and activist, arrived at the dharna site where protesters have been sitting in, in a relay, for over 700 days, to show her support. Since her visit, she has posted on social media as well.


In Kanker, North Bastar, Rubjee Salaam, an Adivasi law student, took time out between studying for his impending exams to lead a small rally and hand a memorandum to the Collector.

Disputing the popular notions of  development, he told me, “Why are Adivasis who lived in isolation and without any government intervention, coming out on the streets? Why do we oppose road building? It is because we know it is land acquisition for mining that is at the core, not vikas [development] or any yojana [public scheme] agenda.”

Hasdeo, he said, is a fight for all of Chhattisgarh, for central India and the nation. “Saving it is our collective responsibility.”

Dual strategy

Another notable feature of the Hasdeo movement is the way it has adopted a dual strategy. Beside civil disobedience through protests, rallies, padayatras, and dharnas it has sought to challenge the state and the Adani Group through the assertion of rights and guarantees for Adivasis under the constitution. It is also a struggle where women have been very forceful and displayed their capabilities.

Prasaddobai Porte, in her sixties, whose son Jainandan Porte is the sarpanch of  Ghatbharra, one of the project-affected villages, spoke in Chhattisgarhi of this legal route. She traced the journey from days of a determined “Ni chhaiyet, ni diyat (Don’t want compensation, won’t give land)” to the assertion of “Hamri jameen (the forest is our land).” It is an example of how simple determination was later buttressed by information and political consciousness. This includes being familiar with the Forest Rights Act and the Panchayats Extension to Scheduled Area (PESA) Act which gives some degree of self-governance to people in certain areas. Gram Sabhas or village councils need to give written consent for mining or any other project to be undertaken.

Legal activist Shalini Gera explains how an attempt to deploy the Forest Rights Act, a landmark legislation, was made. 

“People have been living in forests for years and because of jhum cultivation they sometimes moved from one area to another but there was no question of pattas or formal titles. In the 1900s the British brought the notion that forests belonged to the sovereign, nationalizing it so to speak, and prohibiting shifting agriculture and collection of forest produce. People who lived in forests were seen as encroachers.”

This continued after independence. Adivasis’ activities were seen as criminal even though their lives revolved around the forest. They were at the mercy of the forest department.

In 2006 the Forest Rights Act was passed. It, said Gera, acknowledged that “forest dwellers” who had access to the forests till December 2005 already possessed the rights to the forests. Authorities created in the Act would record these rights that already existed. It was also path-breaking legislation, she adds, because of the concept of community rights. People could stake claim on the forest that they had been accessing till the cut-off date.  

The Act was notified in January 2008 and whilst people were familiar with individual rights it was only around 2013 onwards, said Gera, that community forest rights came to be understood and claims made.

“Ghatbarra in Hasdeo forest, slated for mining, was probably the first village in Chhattisgarh to make the claim of community forest resource rights (CFRR). The CFRR title, giving the Gram Sabha the right to manage the forest within its traditional boundary, was given in September 2013. Villagers opposed to the mining were now asserting to the Adani firm when it came to do surveys that the forest land belonged to them and not the company.”

The mining site which has ravaged the land. Efforts to begin phase two are on with the latest round of tree felling by the newly elected BJP government despite a joint resolution in the assembly on July 26, 2022, asking the Centre to desist from mining. Photo: Freny Manecksha

On January 8, 2016, the village received a notice from the district collector, divisional forest officer and assistant commissioner of tribal development that their CFRR had been cancelled. The Adani Group had complained that they received forest clearance for mining before the villagers staked their claim.

Legal experts in forest rights opine that the law is very clear that the rights are vested in the people from the very day the Act came into being and not when they received the title. 

It has also been argued the district collector did not bother to check or clarify the company’s pretext of having received forest clearance.

In fact, forest clearance had been set aside by the National Green Tribunal (NGT) in 2014 and whilst the Supreme Court in its partial stay of the NGT order allowed mining, it did not stay the part related to forest clearance. Gera, who is representing the villagers in the case in the high court says this leaves one in a very grey zone, where mining is allowed despite there being no valid forest clearance order.

The matter of community forest rights has been in the high court since 2016 but no finding has yet been recorded.

Duping

The other charge by the villagers increasingly being reiterated is that of fake Gram Sabha proceedings. Villagers have charged that the mandatory written assents under PESA for Hariharpur, Salhi and Fatehpur are fake. Ghatbharra in 2011, and again in 2021, had passed a resolution in its Gram Sabha proceedings opposing mining.  

In 2018 when people came to learn that fake signatures had been collected, complaints were filed in the police station and also with the collector but no action was taken.

In October 2021, hundreds of villagers from Hasdeo made a 300-km foot march over 10 days to Raipur to demand a probe into the way land acquisition and forest clearances went ahead despite their complaints of false dealings and fake Gram Sabha proceedings. 

They met Bhupesh Baghel, then chief minister, and Governor Anusuiya Uikey who assured them a probe would be ordered. But nothing was done.

Says Sunita, “We have met whoever we could from the administration. Collector, tehsildar. We have knocked on every possible door of justice. They hear us out silently and do nothing. We met T.S. Singh Deo [former minister of energy and later deputy CM in the Congress-led government] who assured us there would be no more tree felling. But then the BJP formed the government and just days later, it has begun.”

Nandai Kumari Portai is a feisty member of the movement from its earliest days. Photo: Freny Manecksha

Also participating in the padayatra of 2021 was Nandai Kumari Porte of Ghatbarra, a feisty old lady, possibly in her late sixties. She was eager to share her vibrant memories of the struggle. Whilst she was fuzzy on exact dates she did convey vividly the emotions and anecdotes of a people in protest.

“I remember when the Company first arrived in the village. The administration set up a tent, gave us chai biskoot which we refused and tried to talk to us.”

She credits the late Hira Singh Markam, Adivasi leader of the Gondwana Gantantra Party, with arousing political consciousness and educating them on the effects of mining and the market value of their lands. Thereafter she helped mobilize others and attended many rallies affirming they would not give up their land. They sat in dharna in Fatehpur and again at Hariharpur.

She says when they met former chief minister Baghel she complained about how hundreds of their trees were cut. In unequivocal tones she told him the Company had to go. “Company baandhe apna boriya bistar, loha lakkad. Chale jai apna des…Nahi jayega toh kaatenge usske pahiyae. Hum hai Adivasi, Maarange chhar lathi.”

(The Company should pack up all its belongings and materials and go back to its own lands. Otherwise, we will cut off its wheels and wield our lathis. We are Adivasis!)

She dismisses the Company’s plans for re settlement at Basan in the small one-bedroom house kitchen colony that has been constructed. “Nobody stays there and nobody knows where the people of Kete went after they were displaced.”   

At the dharna site just a short distance from the mine, where men and women have sat in relay for over two years, the men talked of the extreme repression they faced on December 21, 2022 before the tree felling operations began.

Protesters have been sitting in dharna at a particular site in the forest, close to the mining area, for over 700 days. They take it in turns to come and sit and it is the venue at which all other supporters and media persons come. Photo: Freny Manecksha

Ramlal Porte narrated how around 5 am, a policeman in uniform and some others in plainclothes forced their way into his house. Holding him by the hand they announced he was being taken to the police station to meet with a senior officer. 

“I asked them, ‘Why at this hour?’. When my wife tried to make a video on the phone they stopped her. Seven of us were detained including two sarpanchs and two deputies. They treated us as if we were hardened criminals, not even allowing us to wear chappals or put on clothes at that hour of the morning.”

A tight cordon was thrown around the villages with blockades to prevent the villagers from accessing the tree felling site on December 21. “They were not allowing us to come out of our houses,” said Sunita. “Those who tried to get there were beaten. We have been peaceful, followed the law and they have taken advantage of that.”

A small banner at the dharna site carries the message of the Adivasis. Photo: Freny Manecksha

In the latest effort to keep up the momentum, protestors formed a human chain during Rahul Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra that passed through Surguja district of Chhattisgarh on February 13. The protesters met and interacted with him briefly.  

I asked them at the protest site how they would continue to resist the combined clout of the state and the Adani conglomerate.

One of them replied, “When your very existence is in peril you don’t wait to see how much power they have or not. You see them as looters. Fighting back is our duty.” 

As I left, I could see above the makeshift shelter a small poster fluttering in the breeze. It said: 

“Jal, jungle, jameen ka raksha kaun karega. Hum karenge. Hum karenge.” 

Who will protect the waters, the jungle and the lands? We will, we will.

Freny Manecksha is an independent journalist from Mumbai who is interested in human rights and development issues. 

Kashmir: Jailed Human Rights Defender Khurram Parvez Forged Solidarities in Suffering

The programme director of the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society has championed various causes in conflict-ridden Kashmir for decades, with a nuanced understanding of ground-level complexities and sensitivity.

It was a cold November day way back in 2011. Smoke rose from the braziers of chestnut sellers and mingled with the fine rain as I walked the stretch from Lal Chowk, Srinagar, seeking directions for the office of the “human rights walleh“. Near Amira Kadal, the curved bridge that spans the Jhelum, I was directed to an old, rather precarious-looking building. Gingerly, I walked up a steep staircase that over the years I would keep negotiating, seeking, like so many journalists, to bolster my reporting with statistics and meticulous, painstaking documentation that the office provided.

The Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS), as it is known, is a nonprofit federation of human rights’ organisations and helmed by lawyer Parvez Imroz (hereafter Imroz) and programme director Khurram Parvez (hereafter Parvez). Parvez was arrested on November 22 under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).

Also read: India Dismisses UN Human Rights Office’s Concerns About Khurram Parvez Arrest, Use of UAPA

The JKCCS’s sterling record in monitoring, investigating and reporting human rights violations has been recognised globally by many human rights bodies and activists.

Acclaim for its seminal report and fieldwork on torture has come from Juan E. Mendez, former UN Special Rapporteur on Torture. Jostein Hole Kobbeltvedt, director of the Rafto Foundation for Human Rights in Oslo, which honoured Imroze and noted activist Parveena Ahangar in 2017, has appealed to India “to immediately release Mr. Parvez”. The statement says,

“We observe with regret that the Indian government intimidates citizens working to secure the values and norms enshrined in the Constitution of India and in international treaties ratified by the government itself. ” The arrest of Parvez has also drawn sharp criticism from several human right activists and bodies including Mary Lawlor UN Special Rapporteur of Human Rights Defenders who tweeted, “He’s not a terrorist, he’s a human rights defender.”

The All India Lawyers Association for Justice and People’s Union for Civil Liberties has also condemned Parvez’s arrest.

‘Enforced disappearances’ 

My first visit to the JKCCS office in 2011 came about after reading a report that said there were at least  2,000 corpses in dozens of unmarked and unknown graves in north Kashmir. This report by a 11-member team of the State Human Rights Commission (SHRC) under the senior superintendent of police, Bashir Ahmed Ittoo, had admitted that those corpses could be the remains of civilians who had gone “missing”.

Ittoo, whom I also met later, had said it was crucial to maintain proper identification of anyone killed, whether it was a militant or an innocent killed during cross-firing. But, he also candidly admitted,  “Local police did not keep any identification profiles.” No photographs of those killed in encounters were kept or circulated. The complete absence of standard operating procedures and consequent lawlessness meant that security forces could simply hand over bodies to police for burial without identification and without entry of the dead in the public domain.

“There is every possibility that these unidentified dead bodies buried in various unmarked graves at 38 places in North Kashmir may contain the bodies of enforced disappearances,” the report stated.

The term “enforced disappearance”, I learnt, was used for those people who had been picked up by security forces ostensibly for interrogation and who never returned. Men who thus left their homes were never seen again. There were an estimated 8,000 people who had disappeared in Kashmir in the 1990s during the height of the armed conflict. The government, for its part, had dismissed the missing complaints as those of youths who had crossed the border or joined militancy.

Also read: ‘We Are Sure They Have Him’: Enforced Disappearances Continue to Haunt Families in Kashmir

Now here was the official validation of enforced disappearances, concerns which Parvez and Imroz had been raising for years, as founders and members of the Association for Parents of Disappeared Persons (APDP).

A report by APDP, Buried Evidence and Facts Under Ground, had meticulously tabulated the presence of unknown, unmarked and mass graves in North Kashmir. It observed how the creation of such graves and the often mutilated bodies that the gravediggers and caregivers handled were “a chronicle of violence and violations”. They told a chilling story of extrajudicial killings and torture. Bodies of the nameless dead would be handed over by security forces, some with faces badly burnt, or others with visible signs of torture to villagers or grave diggers.

Impunity and lack of culpability were the questions that both Imroz and Parvez and other human rights defenders were raising. This, they said, was the reason for the creation of unknown graves and clandestine graveyards that kept springing up. Many of them were in open spaces or public parks adjoining police stations or adjoining army/paramilitary camps.

The report dealt with findings in North Kashmir, but Parvez urged me and another colleague to do our own fieldwork and gather accounts from people in other parts of Kashmir as well.

Khurram Parvez with families affected by ‘enforced disapperances’ of family members. Photo: Association for Parents of Disappeared Persons.

Our trips in South Kashmir and interactions with villagers confirmed how graveyards sprang up almost overnight. People in a village near Harwan told us how they were kept confined to their homes during a cordon-and-search operation. When the cordon was lifted, they found three fresh graves in the local graveyard. Others spoke of seeing dead bodies with no known identity, flung in the streets or fields – eyes gouged out and visible signs of torture. It was my introduction to the grave human rights abuses perpetrated in Kashmir.

For the families of the disappeared, the uncertainty of not knowing what had happened to their loved ones and the inability to mourn or bring about closure created a special agony. This was especially so for the women whose husbands had disappeared.

Known as ‘half widows’ in Kashmir’s lexicon, they spent their lives in limbo since their husbands had not been officially declared dead. They were not sure if they could return to their maternal home with the children, or be dependent on in-laws, or could legally re-marry, or then struggle to take on the role of bread earners.

APDP, which was set up by Imroz and Parvez, pressed not just for resolving socio-economic issues and survival in a patriarchal society but also to seek political accountability.

“Where are you?” That poignant question hangs as a poster in a room of the JKCCS office; it demonstrates the respect of the right not to be disappeared. It is the keystone in seeking justice from the state and the JKCCS campaign. The families filed habeas corpus cases and through the cases and other forms of litigation they fought back against the state’s denial and bids at erasure of collective memory.

Litigation, however, did not bring prosecution of a single person because the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) stipulates sanctions must be sought from the Union home ministry or defence ministry. In all these decades, no sanction has been given to prosecute even a single person.

Parvez Imroz. Photo: Shome Basu

Khurram Parvez’s approach to human rights

In his articulation of what human rights are all about, Parvez has stressed that it is not about securing justice for one individual or family but of a collective struggle for families of enforced disappearances everywhere. He has demonstrated such solidarity by taking up work in international campaigns as well.

As the chairman of the Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD), he raised concerns about disappearances in the Philippines, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. In recognition of this work, he received the Rebok Human Rights Award in 2006, given to anyone who fights for human rights through nonviolent means.

Parvez has also worked closely on campaigns for landmine removal: he himself sustained serious injuries in a landmine in 2004 while travelling in a car during a fact-finding visit to monitor elections. His leg had to be amputated and his co-passengers Aasiya Jeelani, a young woman working with JKCCS, and the driver of the car Ghulam Nabi Sheikh died in the incident.

Imroz described the ordeal of that day as the “longest” one he had undergone. Shuttling between the Shri Maharaj Harisingh Hospital and the Sher-e-Kashmir Hospital where Parvez and some of the other injured were admitted, the day ended with Aasiya being lowered into a grave.

Parvez spoke to me of the utter devastation at the death of their young colleague. “We lost a colleague. A close friend and someone with whom we had plans to make a non-violent resistance movement for the youth.”

In my conversations with Parvez, I have been struck by the manner in which he is able to reflect and offer a comprehensive understanding of the meaning of human rights and yet be so rooted to the ground that he recalls particular details of every case, of the suffering. This ability, and his sensitivity towards gendered nuances were revealed when I began looking at cases of sexual violence during my visits in 2013.

Parvez’s understanding of complexities

I had read of a particular case in the JKCCS report Alleged Perpetrator: Stories of Impunity in Jammu and Kashmir which had documented a case of enforced disappearance but one that had much wider ramifications.

I went with friends to Reshpora in South Kashmir to learn a little more about this case. The woman complainant and her son recalled the horrors of the night of January 2-3, 1997 when an army officer with a retinue of soldiers had come into her house. Her son, then a young boy, told us he remembered clearly how his grandfather was attacked, how his head hit the floor and he was then dragged away, perhaps already dead. The light bulbs were then smashed, and in the cover of darkness, the woman and her 14-year-old sister were pounced upon and sexually assaulted. The woman later filed a police complaint and also appealed to the SHRC.

Permission for the prosecution was sought but refused on the grounds that there was no prima facie evidence against the army officer and that the woman was the wife of a “dreadful Hizbul-ul-Mujahideen militant”. It was said that “she was forced to file false allegations by anti-national elements who wished to malign the image of the forces”.

In her story to us, the woman did not speak of the sexual violence perpetrated on her, even though it was there in the police complaint. She only spoke of her sister.

I was puzzled until Parvez later explained the gendered nuances of the case. He spoke of what he termed as the double zulm or oppression of violence perpetrated by the state and then by patriarchal norms.

Also read: How UAPA Abuse Is Affecting Women’s Aspirations in Kashmir

The woman’s husband was a Hizbul Mujahideen militant, who had a second wife. She had sought divorce from her husband. She had repeatedly gone to the army camp authorities and told them she had no links with her husband and they should stop harassing her and the family. Not only had she been abandoned by her husband, but she and her family were targeted horrifically by the army official;  her father was abducted and killed. She and her young sister were sexually assaulted. When she sought justice she was dismissed as a militant’s wife whose story was suspect.

She fought against the social stigma of rape and suffered guilt because of what had happened to her young sister. The young woman continued to suffer recurrent nightmares years later. But in a closed society, it was easier to pass such trauma off as being possessed by a djinn.

I was offered many such gender-sensitive and nuanced understandings by Parvez of women survivors of the Kunan-Poshpora rape cases and other cases of sexual violence like the Handwara girl’s case.

It helped me realise how stories must be heard with all the complexities of a society ravaged and splintered by militarisation and of the huge challenges and difficulties in documenting and asking for justice.

In today’s milieu, the challenges have been heightened. Civil society is now under attack. Human rights are not a given, but a subject actually up for debate. It is perhaps time to proclaim what human rights are all about and to reiterate the globally accepted norms of how governments must behave towards all persons under their jurisdiction.

In his message for UN Human Rights on Article 30, which declares that human rights are indivisible, Parvez in 2018 spoke of what impelled him to become a human rights defender. He spoke of the responsibility of protecting the lives of everyone and anyone and not inciting violence. He spoke of solidarity.

“We have seen oppressive states. One of the biggest tools which they use is they fragment the societies. They take away solidarities and make them completely dehumanised. Our responsibility becomes exactly the opposite. Forging the solidarities,” he had said.

Freny Manecksha is an independent journalist from Mumbai who is interested in human rights and development issues. 

‘Indian Matchmaking’, the Calcutta Way

We are raised to be ‘paraya dhan’ and are told that if we make mistakes, or are seen to exercise agency, it could damage our chances for the future.

There’s this bit in Netflix’s Indian Matchmaking, where Akshay’s mom is sitting with her kitty party friends and they’re all nodding in agreement at her distress over not finding an appropriate daughter-in-law. They ask her what her options are.

First, she says, she wants only “business family” girls because those are good girls. Then she lists her options: one prospective daughter-in-law is from Udaipur, one is from Delhi, and a third is from Calcutta.

One of the other ladies expresses her approval: “Calcutta girls are good.”

They all agree. Calcutta girls are good.

In many ways, the story of the Calcutta business family girls is also the story of where I come from. We’re raised to be paraya dhan, good looking and obliging. We’re constantly watched, judged and chaperoned, and told that if we make mistakes, or are seen to exercise agency, it could damage our chances for the future. We are raised to make Diwali gift bags and plan baby showers and then toe the family line. The lucky among us are given a few years of freedom, years we spend studying abroad. But the moment we’re back, we’re expected to go back to our sanskari ways.

For a bit of perspective, I married someone my family disapproved of for entirely predictable reasons. The price I paid for it has been that I was given nothing by my parents. This is typically the strategy of Calcutta and other business families – ‘stridhan’, or wealth in gold and diamonds, is given only to good girls who abide by their families’ choices for them. Obedience is rewarded in diamonds. Lack thereof is punished in lack thereof.

Mine was a choice I was happy to make. In retrospect, it feels less like a choice and more of an inevitability – but it was difficult. To date, my dad maintains that his greatest mistake was giving me too much freedom. It made me “defiant” and “independent”, bad words for a girl where I come from. I’d argue it was his rebellious genes and the fact that I had access to more books and libraries than I could handle. Either way, I am widely considered a testament to his failure in parenting.

Also read:Why Some of Us Can’t Even Hate-Watch Netflix’s ‘Indian Matchmaking’

I’m not the only only one who struggled against this system. Some of us died by suicide before we could reach 23. Some of us made peace with husbands who “accepted us for our pasts”, which is to say the boy was okay with the girl not being a virgin. Some of us were happy to marry into families that didn’t allow a woman to work for someone else. Some of us have been bullied into anorexia. Some of us got married into violent homes and were told to stay there. Some of us were shamed into staying with partners we did not love anymore.

And it’s not just the women who suffered. Young boys were dumped the night before they saw engagement photographs of their freshly-minted exes on social media. Others were manipulated into saying things like, “My parents know my preferences better than I do.”

Here’s something else that happened among the Calcutta business families in the years I was growing up. A girl from a prominent business family married her Muslim Aptech teacher. Within weeks, the man she married was found dead on railway tracks. There was no doubt in anybody’s mind as to who did it.

The question on everyone’s mind was something else. What would you do, Calcutta’s business patriarchs asked each other, if your daughter married a lower class Muslim? Would you have him killed?

Yes, most of them said. What’s a few days in jail compared to the ignominy of having a daughter marry a lower class Muslim.

That’s the Calcutta Akshay’s mom was talking about.

You can imagine why the show was incredibly triggering for me. Even I hadn’t confronted the truth of where I come from in this lurid detail.

So here I was, wallowing in despair over how nothing’s changed. And then I read something truly incredible.

Also read: ‘Indian Matchmaking’: A Regressive and Cringeworthy Ode to Arranged Marriages

A study in Mint surveying young people with internet access found that women today are as ambitious about their careers as men. The similarities between what men and women want are staggering – 20% of men want to have their own business or be an independent consultant, and 20% of women want the same. In all, 8% of men want to work in finance and 8% of women want the same. Men and women in India today want the exact same things out of their careers.

Where the differences lay made my jaw drop. Women wanted to marry later than men – if at all. Fewer women than men are open to an arranged marriage. Women wanted to have fewer children than men. Women are more likely to have friends and relationships outside their caste than men.

The researchers went on to argue that there would soon be an existential crisis among men in India because men will struggle to find the worth they bring to the table. As Incel culture grows, this is going to be a problem of the future.

The castles of sand we see in Indian Matchmaking are already starting to entropy. The ground on which Akshay’s mom and other prospective mothers-in-law stand is already starting to shake. There is a revolution underway, led by women, and Indian matchmaking is going to look very different, very soon.

This article was originally published on Sneha Vakharia’s blog. Read the original here.

Featured image credit: Netflix

The Bra Debate: Ladies, You’ve Been Scammed

I have not worn a bra for three years now. Here’s a little story about how I got here.

I have not worn a bra for three years now. When I tell women this, they inevitably ask me about the logistics of living life without a bra. How do I contain my boobies?

I don’t. I do what men do: I put on a shirt.

Here’s a little story about how I got here, why this is not revolutionary at all, and why we have all been scammed.

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The women in my family are quite petite; you know, the kind who did “I must I must increase my bust” exercises in school. I was not like them. By very early puberty it became apparent to my litany of body-shaming aunts that I was an early-developer. This was a source of tension between my mom and me.

My first memory of this is when I was 11. My brand new breasts had emerged over the summer, and I was dragged off a tennis court by her because I’d “forgotten” to wear a bra. (I hadn’t forgotten, I was pretending. I think she knew this.) I remember not understanding why.

The next memory I have is of watching Bend it Like Beckham, and Keira Knightly fighting with her mom about the kinds of bras she wants to wear (sports, while her mum encourages her towards the push-up section). And in another scene where they’re getting their wedding clothes stitched, and tailor wants to make Jasbinder’s “mosquito-bites look like juicy-juicy mangoes”.

It occurred to me then that bra-wearing is an oppression that mothers and aunties pass onto the next generation by humiliating them, coercing them, and disrespecting their agency. Just like patriarchy. For the bra to survive generation after generation it requires obedience, shame and deference.

This tension with the bra would continue for many years. I went through high school wearing Jockey’s training bras as an uneasy compromise. In college tried Uniqlo’s unwired bras, Marks and Spencers unwired bras, Joe Boxer’s unwired bras, and they all felt some version of bad. When I became an adult I thought it was time to begin wearing lady-like bras once and for all, become a woman like everyone else. And so I did. The big beautiful ones with the wiring from hell.

Also read: Fast and Furious Hair Growth: Learning to Be Kind to Myself During Lockdown

Till I felt sick. And I was forced to look at the things in my life that were aggravating my pain. I began to see that some days wearing a bra would make things worse, not wearing ones would make things better. As I studied further, I learned that the muscles that curry the burden of the bra, the ones that connect your neck to your shoulder, are also the muscles worst affected by spondylitis. And then when I began yoga, I learned that one major key to wellness is the ability to expand the rib cage, puff out the chest and allow the lungs all the space it can get.

And guess what, here again, bras betray us. They make our rib cages smaller, they cripple our posture by drawing us in. Men are taught to puff their chests, women are told to wear these majestically designed instruments to cage their organs.

So I learnt that bras are unambiguously bad if you have any kind of disease of the joints, or spine. But is there any meaningful way in which they are good?

I’ve done the research. And there is no conclusive proof that there is any benefit to wearing a bra. It doesn’t keep your breasts from sagging, it doesn’t protect the integrity of your boobies. It does deform your skeletal structure.

In short, there are no conclusive pros, but a number of damning cons.

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In human history we’ve had all kinds of containment devices for women’s bodies to make them smaller. Like that thing they did where the broke women’s feet and bound them in China. And that other thing where they forced women to wear corsets that deformed their bodies in Europe.

Also read: Putting On Makeup Feels Like Going to War With My Flaws (And Myself)

Here’s a fun fact: bras were designed from corsets. In 1898, a woman in France designed the “half-corsette”, and she called it a brasierre. Yes! Your bra is the young, modern daughter of the garment that doesn’t let you breathe!

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We managed hundreds of thousands of years of human civilisation without the bra. And yet, woman after woman I talk to asks me how I manage without one.

I think if I scratch the surface of the question what I find is the politics of shame. Human females are the only species in all of life on Earth that retain their breasts through their life. They’re the only species on this magical planet have breasts even when they’re not milking. Anthropologists guess that it’s because our breasts evolved to be a sexual organ. And like with everything else, female sexual exteriors are shamed and told to hide away from plain sight. Go inside you sexual honey traps you!

So when my friends ask me how I manage, I think what they’re asking is how I deal with the shame of my breasts, their overt sexual nature. My breasts that jingle and jangle, and react to cold and warmth, and are alive and a part of me, and on occasion reveal a silhouette from under my clothes.

Here’s what I tell them: I’m a 36 D, and yet, nobody notices and nobody cares. Except my rib cage, spine, shoulders and sense of self which only expand with happiness and pride. Because my body is sovereign and powerful, and I will not voluntarily, obediently, day after day, cripple it.

This article was originally published on Sneha Vakharia’s blog. Read the original here.

Featured image credit: Kristaps Grundsteins/Unsplash

In Kashmir, the Justice System Is in Limbo

Even two months after the decision to dilute Article 370, Kashmiris are finding it hard to access courts.

A few days after repressive measures were imposed in Kashmir in the wake of the dilution of Article 370, a distraught woman banged on the doors of the home of Shopian-based lawyer Habeel Iqbal. She had just learnt her young son – detained in a police station – had been whisked away to a prison outside the state. In the absence of basic communication facilities – even landlines were not functioning – and severe restrictions on movement, it was not possible to help her access justice on that day.

Iqbal could only attend the Shopian district and sessions court 20 days after August 5 and found scarcely any activity there. He learnt that among the hundreds held in detention was someone from the legal fraternity in Shopian. Advocate Zubair Ahmad Bhatt and his father, a former MLA from the People’s Democratic Party, had been detained.

In September, child rights activists – alarmed by mass arrests, many of whom were underage – filed a petition in the Supreme Court expressing concern over the rights of Kashmiris to access the justice system. Hearing the petition, Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi declared he was ready, if necessary, to go to Srinagar to ascertain the situation.

On October 3, nearly two months after the restrictions were imposed, I accompanied Iqbal to the J&K high court to try and gauge the impact of the lockdown on the judicial system and the consequent effect on people’s lives.

In the court’s complex, Rehana, a woman from Shopian, recognised Iqbal and approached him in visible distress. Despite the lack of public transport system, she had travelled to Srinagar to seek an update on the case slapped on her son Faisal Mir. He had been charged under the Public Safety Act (PSA) a year-and-half ago and she had learnt that his lawyer, Mian Abdul Qayoom, had himself been put behind bars.

Also Read: Kashmiri Lawyer, Who Encouraged People to Vote, Detained to Prevent Protests

Ironically, Qayoom, the longest serving president of the Bar Association of Kashmir, along with Nazir Ahmed Ronga, former president of the Bar and Abdul Salam Rather of Baramulla, District Bar Association, have all been charged under this same draconian PSA, labelled by Amnesty as “the lawless law”.

Nazir Ahmed Ronga. Photo: Facebook

The PSA permits the custody of a person for a period up to two years to prevent him or her from acting in any manner that is prejudicial to the security of the state or the maintenance of public order. Not only has the PSA been applied for decades with reckless abandon by the police, serial detention is also a common phenomenon in Kashmir. This means slapping fresh PSAs on a person almost immediately after a PSA order is quashed under a habeas corpus plea.

Faisal’s mother would now need to engage another lawyer to continue her struggle for his release. The process was trickier than usual because most members of the 1,050 strong Bar Association are on unofficial strike against the arrests of their office bearers. A notice on the board appealed to them to “abstain from work.” The Bar Association has, however, designated around seven lawyers of the high court to take up pending bail and PSA cases whenever victims’ families come to the court and also to take up and advise families of the additional 300-odd PSA detenues since August 5.

A lawyer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said many lawyers were now hesitant to handle “too many” PSA cases because they feared the state’s iron hand and vendetta politics. Many were also outraged at how Qayoom and others were treated. The state had tried to move an application staying an order that would allow Qayoom’s family members from meeting him in Agra jail. It is believed that the judge who had allowed this order to visit was removed from the roster and not given any further habeas corpus cases. (Eventually, the family was allowed to visit him.)

The hartal or unofficial strike has added to the logjam in the hearing of PSA cases. There is also a severe shortage of judges and only two have been hearing these cases. An estimated 500 habeas corpus cases are pending for 2019. Around 300 of them were filed after August 5.

Lawyer Shah Faisal, who has been assigned six PSA cases after August 5, says that one of the detenues is from Pampore. He owns a pharmacy and has been allegedly accused of selling drugs but that no First Information Reports (FIR) were filed under the Narcotics Drug and Psychotropic Substance Act or other sections of the Criminal Code. Instead, the police resorted to charging him under the PSA.

In another case, a youth from Nowhatta, Srinagar, has his age in the dossier shown as 26- years-old. But the detention order states: “You have a long history of having affiliated with various activities which are prejudicial to the maintenance of Public Order. In early nineties you remained affiliated with various subversive activities……(sic)”

Order of detention for a 26-year-old claiming he has been in subversive activities since the nineties. Photo: Freny Manecksha

Detention orders have to pass scrutiny by the district magistrate or divisional commissioner and such a glaring discrepancy only buttresses the suspicion that it has not undergone proper examination. A lawyer from Shopian says he wonders if district magistrates were even going to the courts.

Another advocate from Handwara, who stays just outside the main town, says that the heavy restrictions on movement for the first 20 days after the dilution of Article 370 would not have made it possible for people to leave their houses. He doubts if magistrates were in their proper stations and if remands were taken in the days after August 5.

Besides PSA and arrests, another significant case brought to the court after August 5 was that of a 32-year-old woman named Fehmeeda from Behmina who died on August 9 en route to Sher-e-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences. She had been cooking in her own home whilst clashes occurred in the neighbourhood. The heavy use of tear gas shells and pepper bombs caused a build-up of toxic gas that she inhaled. She died before she received medical treatment. Her medical certificate states she developed an allergy to toxic gas inhalation which was then followed by cardio-pulmonary arrest.

Also Read: Jammu Lawyers Go on Indefinite Strike to Protest Administrative Council’s Move

The state denied civilian protests and killings and the police refused to file an FIR. After her husband approached the courts, it is believed that the CJM then issued notices against the chief prosecution officer to file objections and to confirm the status of the case and whether an FIR was then lodged.

Detention of minors

Tracking down Mir Urfi, a criminal lawyer, who has been handling PSAs and many of the juvenile detention cases for some years, without a functioning mobile phone, was something of a challenge. But, at the entrance to the sessions and district court, helpful lawyers told me to simply head for a particular sofa in the corridor. She and other lawyers designated to help would, at some stage appear, to meet with clients’ families and others.

When she did appear a half-hour later, Urfi, who works in the office of noted PSA lawyer Mir Shafakat Hussain, said that in at least four cases after August 5, the state revoked the PSA after the family made an intervention through the court, stating the person was a minor.

Nusrat Sidiq of the Kashmir Reader reported how the detention order of a boy from Shopian district was revoked after an inquiry by the registrar judicial of the high court revealed that he was around 14 years old. The court of Justice Sanjeev Kumar had given the state one day to explain its position regarding the detention.

The family had sought intervention, through lawyer Mir Shafakat Hussain, charging police with illegal detention of the boy on August 9. He had been shifted to Srinagar’s Central Jail.

The dossier related to this case accused the 14-year-old of being a “hardcore Over Ground Worker” of the Hizbul militant organisation. It added that he harbours “deep hatred for the Indian union and law enforcement agencies.”

Section 107 deployed for preventive detention

Mir Urfi added that a new trend in the post-August 5 arrests was the increasing numbers being detained under Section 107 of the Criminal Procedure Code. This bit of legislation is a colonial hand-down often used to detain habitual offenders. It allows for preventive detention on the grounds of an executive magistrate receiving information that any person “is likely to commit a breach of the peace or disturb the public tranquillity or to do any wrongful act that may probably occasion a breach of peace or disturb the public tranquillity.”

Proceedings under this section require the person to be taken before the executive magistrate or concerned tehsildar who will ask why show cause should not be ordered to execute a bond with or without sureties for keeping the peace for such period, not exceeding one year, as the magistrate thinks fit.

But, in many of the recent arrests, said Mir Urfi, the procedures requiring the person to be brought before the tehsildar or executive magistrate are omitted and the person remains in custody for as long as the police wish. Families are warned that if they insist on a bond, a PSA with its more stringent measures could be slapped on the person concerned.

Also Read: ‘In Kashmir, Army Relays Tortures on Loudspeakers, Slaps UAPA on Stone-Pelters’

Many people I spoke with in Habak, Srinagar and many parts of South Kashmir complained that such lawless practices furthered opportunities for extortion and corruption. One youth from Habak claimed that before Friday and its attendant protests, four or five youths would be picked up from the neighbourhood, asked to give names of some more youths and then released. The cost of each release, he alleged, was Rs 20,000. He referred to these arrests and releases as police gaining more customers.

Lawyers have revealed that in many cases the police have simply done no paperwork, making it difficult for the families and lawyers to access the court. Also, families were reluctant to go to lawyers over illegal detentions because of the fear psychosis. Threats have been issued that detenues will be sent away to faraway jails with the name of the Andaman Islands being thrown in, should families approach the law.

Jammu and Kashmir high court. Photo: PTI

Routine functioning disrupted

The restrictions on movement and phone and internet ban along with the lawyers’ hartal had seriously affected even the most routine functions of the court. In the early days, hardly anyone came to court. The few lawyers who did had to bring water and food from home. One lawyer in the high court joked, “I can’t even offer you a cup of tea unless I holler really loud from my window for a canteen staff to hear me.”

When cases started being heard, there were not sufficient police and staff to bring the under trials to court. Police who issue summons had been deployed elsewhere. Trials have been held up for over two months.

A lawyer in the high court explained how routine proceedings like serving notices were hampered because the postal services have been totally disrupted. Notices could not be served until the court passed an order saying delivery by hand was permissible. Another lawyer pointed out that there was no way of knowing whether he had missed a date as he could not even check online.

Initially, cases were adjourned but, a disturbing trend currently is the way many PSA cases were being dismissed on grounds of non-production of petitioners or lawyers.

One of the court orders in Urdu saying there could be no proceedings because of the halaat (condition) was later contested with the declaration that one could not say the halaat was not good!

Advocate Aquib Javaid from Shopian, who handles many Unlawful Activites (Prevention) Act (UAPA) cases found that five bail applications under TADA, POTA and UAPA had been dismissed on the day he did manage to get to court. The cases had lingered for so many years and are now further stymied he added.

Significantly, UAPA is increasingly being deployed in Kashmir. The manner in which unlawful activities are being defined is chilling. Javaid said in one case, the owner of an orchard where an encounter had raged in the winter months was accused of harbouring terrorists. He lives far away from the orchard and would not have known who was there when it was covered so deep in snow that nobody ventures out.

Mir Urfi also spoke of how boys had been arrested recently for celebrating the win of New Zealand over India in the cricket world cup. What message, she wondered, does that send out? That cheering for a match is “illegal”?

The paralysis of the court has seen many crucial issues pushed to the back burner. One of them is the usage of pellet guns and the Bar Association’s plea to ban it, dating back to 2016. The J&K high court rejected it through an interim order, saying the Centre had already constituted a committee of experts. The Bar then approached the Supreme Court, which on July 22 asked the J&K high court to decide within six weeks.

But with everything in limbo, there has been no progress and the pellet guns are being deployed with lethal intent as before. Many lawyers confided on condition of anonymity that with the dilution of Article 370, it was now a very difficult time to believe and practice the law.

One of them who did speak out was advocate Parvez Imroz, president of the Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society, who has been in the human rights field for thirty years. He said it was one of the most trying periods for Kashmiris since 1931, the year when Kashmiris had risen in revolt against the Dogras.

Imroz said that whilst there had been turmoil in 2008, 2010 and 2016, it was different this time because the state did not even wait for people to respond to its action. It was a pre-emptive siege, planned and well executed. Intense fear psychosis was created by the huge number of armed troops and the institutionalised manner in which it was caused. Whilst a small section of Indian civil society had lent their voices to the Kashmiris and dared to speak the truth, the state was keeping up a façade that everything was stable. But there was simmering discontent and one cannot say what shape it will take.

This government, he added, had quoted the Newtonian law in defence of the Gujarat violence but seemed to be convinced that in Kashmir, they can change the law of physics. However, there is bound to be a Bastille Day in Kashmir in the days to come, Imroz said.

Freny Manecksha is an independent journalist from Mumbai who is interested in human rights and development issues.

The Edesmetta Inquiry, and Adivasis’ Odyssey to Justice in Chhattisgarh

In their testimonies to the judicial commission looking into the Edesmetta encounter, Adivasis have attempted to deconstruct narratives given by the state.

There was that moment of epiphany in the room. Karam Manglu was being cross-examined at the commissioner’s office during the proceedings of the Justice V.K. Agrawal judicial commission inquiring into the Edesmetta encounter of May 17, 2013, in which eight Adivasis were gunned down in the Bijapur district of Chhattisgarh.

He was asked the age of his nephew Badru, who was among those killed, and chose to answer by raising his hand up to the level of his chest. A simple gesture to indicate the boy was a minor, and an admission that he, an Adivasi, does not keep count of age according to the Gregorian calendar. Yet this witness had just been subjected to intense scrutiny by counsels for the state of Chhattisgarh, the Central Reserve Police (CRPF) and the police, on whether he knew the exact date and year that the incident had occurred. They also asked for a detailed timeframe of his trip to the village of Matenar in 2017, where at a public meeting he learnt of the commission and expressed his desire to be a part of the process.

Another such moment occurred when Karam Somli, the mother of young Karam Masa, another minor killed, was quizzed by CRPF counsel Rajkumar Gupta about what time she left Matenar for Dantewada, where she affixed her thumbprint on her affidavit.

Asked the question through a Gondi interpreter, Karam Somli, her diminutive figure barely visible above the railing of the witness stand, remained silent but inclined her head towards what would be the position of the sun at 12 noon. This, again, was an eloquent assertion of how Adivasis often measure time – with the cycle of the sun – and of how difficult it was to answer subsequent technical questions such as how long it took to reach Dantewada.

The hearings on March 10 and 11, during which six villagers were cross-examined, were a revelatory exercise on the challenges Adivasis face in accessing and engaging with the judicial system, the hurdles posed by differences of language and culture, and their expectations of justice and long odyssey in search of it.

Celebrations turned to terror

What happened on the night of May 17, 2013, in the remote hamlet of Edesmetta, where the said ‘encounter’ occurred? The villagers’ narrative can be pieced together through their affidavits, accounts recorded by activists and a report by the Human Rights Forum called ‘The Terrible Cost of an Inhuman Counter Insurgency‘.

Occurring about a year after the Sarkeguda incident in the same region, these killings took place on the night of the Beej Pandum, a ritual sowing festival just before the rains. Significantly, whilst the witnesses at the commission’s hearings could not recall the date and year of the incident, all of them categorically stated that the attack took place on this important festival day, before the rains started. As is customary, the women were at home. Male members of the families – men and young boys – perhaps around 80, gathered inside and outside the Gamam Mandir in an open field for a puja during which seeds and agricultural implements are blessed. There was singing and dancing, a bonfire had been lit, chicken had been slaughtered and preparations were on for the meal. Three men – Punem Sukku, Karam Budru and Karam Lakko – had gone to fetch water when they were surrounded and caught by CoBRA (Commando Battalion for Resolute Action) personnel, a special anti-Naxalite force of the CRPF, who were out on a combing operation. The three men managed to run away towards another hamlet, but Budru injured his arm.

Subsequently, according to the villagers, bursts of gunfire ripped through the dancing and celebrations. Men ran helter-skelter even as people fell to the ground dead. The women, who were awoken by commotion, ran towards the sounds. Seven villagers died that night: Karam Pandu (the pujari), Karam Somlu, Punem Somu and four minors – Karam Guddu, Punem Lakku, Karam Badru  and Karam Masa. CRPF constable Dev Prakash’s body was found next to that of Karam Masa. According to villagers, he died in the same burst of gunfire. It is said that after the firing stopped, Karam Jogga, who was grievously injured, was heard pleading for water, but died thereafter. The number of those died rose to eight after another villager succumbed to his injuries.

The constable’s body and that of Karam Masa were taken away by the forces to Gangalur police station, a journey that entails a two-hour walk over hillocks. Three villagers – Karam Aiytoo, Karam Mangu and Karam Lachchu – were also rounded up on the night of the incident, tied together and forcibly taken away. According to their affidavits, they were beaten severely and interrogated at the police station. When they complained of hunger they were given biscuits, but no water to drink. (During the commission hearings on March 11, Aiytoo affirmed, in a question raised by police counsel Sanjay Shukla, that he had been taken to the police station for interrogation and then fed biscuits. The question, however, made no reference to the beatings.)

Edesmetta villagers with bodies of the deceased outside the Gangalur police station. Credit: Human Rights Forum report

Edesmetta villagers with bodies of the deceased outside the Gangalur police station. Credit: Human Rights Forum report

Those who had been injured in the attack were also taken away to the police station, where they were kept overnight and made to sleep on the floor. They were taken the next day to a hospital in Jagdalpur and given cash for medical treatment.

Back at the hamlet, the women, who had rushed to the firing spot, came upon bodies lying near the temple with visible marks of injuries. Punem Bori, a widow, in her affidavit states that she found her young son Punem Lakku with a bullet wound in the waist. The bullet had exited through the abdomen. The women carried the bodies – except that of Karam Masa, which had been taken by the police – back home.

The next evening, another contingent of CRPF personnel came to Edesmetta and insisted on taking the corpses away for a post mortem in the community health centre, Gangalur. Angry women and relatives followed the troops carrying their dead kin, also demanding demand the release of the three men in custody. Post mortems were conducted on May 19. The manner in which they were conducted is reflected in the affidavit of Karam Sukki, whose husband Pandu and son Guddu were both killed.

“The bodies had been ripped from the chest to the abdomen. I asked how can I take them back in this condition. I had bought thread for them to be sutured up but all they did was to tie the bodies in gamchas and return them to us.”

Villagers deny official account

The enraged women then pelted stones at the Gangalur police station. The police filed an FIR stating that the deaths were caused because of an armed encounter between the security forces and Naxalites. It said that under hostile fire, the troops managed to kill one person (Karam Masa) and apprehend three suspects, and only the next day, on the discovery of more bodies, did they take them away for post mortem.

Media reports quoted ADG of police, Naxal operations R.K. Vij as saying that the villagers died because they were used as human shields by Naxalites.

But the villagers remained adamant that there was no exchange of fire that day.

The Chhatisgarh government announced an inquiry under retired high court judge V.K. Agarwal, who is also inquiring into the Sarkeguda incident.

During the cross-examination on March 10 and 11, the witnesses stated categorically that their village was not inhabited or visited by Naxals. During his lengthy questioning, Karam Lakko also denied the statement posited to him that Punem Soni, one of those killed, used to provide medicines and functioned as a medical aide in the village on behalf of Naxals.

Politics of compensation

Most of the questions were of a technical nature and appeared to insinuate that the villagers did not understand what had been written in the affidavits, that they were making tutored statements on being instigated by others. They were asked repeatedly whether they had earlier taken the initiative to go to a police station to file a complaint. Questions were also raised about whether they had taken the compensation of around Rs 1 lakh that had been declared by the state. Whilst those who were injured and hospitalised in Jagdalpur accepted the Rs 20,000 given for medical expenses, they refused to take the additional Rs 80,000 offered by the collector.

One of the wounded, Karam Dengal, in the earlier round of cross-examinations conducted on January 20, denied that he had refused the money because of pressure from Naxalites. He said, “We refused because it would appear as if we have sold men for money (Aadmi ko beche jaisa lagega, iss karan hum logon neh yeh rakam nahi liya).”

This sentiment was echoed by many others in their affidavits. They declared that it is justice they want.

It has been seen several times that because of the due to feelings of alienation, Adivasis of Bastar seldom approach the court for redressal in civil matters, preferring to settle things at the community level. They approach the police only when grave violation has taken place, at the hands of state agencies. In the case of Edesmetta, it was the wives and mothers of the victims who went to the thana to demand that the bodies be returned and the men held released.

The police also haven’t helped matters, as police stations in this region are often hostile to Adivasis, with barbed wire, high walls and checks by hostile staff.

Procedures in court are no less intimidating, where difficulties of language and culture pose serious challenges. Even with the best Gondi translators, there are several instances of misinterpretation, especially when the questions do not proceed in a systematic manner and there are injunctions like “Look in front”, “Speak louder” and so on that can be unnerving.

Then, as a legal activist explains, there is often power play at work and a total lack of sensitivity towards the Adivasis’ unfamiliarity with court practices. A lawyer revealed how one day in a court, an Adivasi was asked to fix his thumbprint on a testimony. He refused because of his mistrust of officialdom. The judge, instead of explaining legal practices, was infuriated and said that he would send him to the lock up, in total contempt of the law. He kept asking him, “Do you know who I am?”

For Adivasis to actually prosecute the state for crimes such as rape or murder is comes with a number of hurdles. But what about their engagement with commissions of inquiry? Do Adivasis, perhaps, seek an acknowledgment of the grievous violence done to them? It is a matter of seizing an opportunity to be heard even as the state and most of the media constructs its own distorted narratives, one lawyer suggested.

More importantly, for Adivasis in Chhattisgarh, it is not about which soldier or officer pulled the trigger, or which particular battalion of the CRPF or police was involved, but about systemic violence they face. Their long odyssey for justice will be a reflection of the nature of the relationship between a state and its people.

Freny Manecksha is an independent journalist from Mumbai who is interested in human rights and development issues.

In Kashmir, Despair Looms Large as Civilians Continue to Face ‘Targeted Killings’

Locals claim that contrary to official statements, the deaths near encounter sites are not necessarily a result of cross firing or “collateral damage”, but are “targeted killings” that occur a considerable distance away.

Locals claim that contrary to official statements, the deaths near encounter sites are not necessarily a result of cross firing or “collateral damage”, but are “targeted killings” that occur a considerable distance away.

A demonstrator holds a placard during a protest in Srinagar, Kashmir. Credit: Reuters

A demonstrator holds a placard during a protest in Srinagar, Kashmir. Credit: Reuters

The year has begun on an ominous note in Kashmir with more killings of unarmed civilians. On January 28, at a time when Shopian district was under a shutdown, the Jammu and Kashmir police announced that an FIR for murder and attempt to murder had been lodged against Major Aditya of 10 Garhwal Regiment and his unit for the killings of two youths, Javed Ahmad Bhat and Suhail Lone, at Ganowpora a day before.

Whilst the army claims it fired in self-defence, the villagers allege that the army targeted those “resisting army’s efforts to remove banners” from the grave of a militant killed in an encounter. The state government has also ordered a magisterial probe.

These latest civilian killings come on the heels of a bloody 2017. Four days before this incident, in a reply to a written question, chief minister Mehbooba Mufti informed the House that in 2017, 20 civilians were killed in “law and order” problems and 48 others died in “militancy relegated” incidents. What is significant is the way the state government has chosen to make this distinction between killings near encounter sites or in cross-firing, and those of “law and order” related to protests and crowds.

Such a distinction comes in the wake of what has now become commonplace. Swathes of the local population, especially the youth, begin protests in the villages as soon as troop convoys begin moving in towards the site of an encounter. There have been cases of stone-pelting to try and help the holed-up militants escape.

In February 2017, General Bipin Rawat, chief of the Indian army, warned of tough action and “zero tolerance” towards those he claimed were creating hurdles in the army’s operations, as did top police officials. The army’s statements made it clear that such people, though not armed combatants, could be viewed as legitimate targets.

A policeman stands guard during a protest in Srinagar against the civilian killing in Panzgam, in Kashmir's Kupwara district, April 28, 2017. Credit: Reuters

A policeman stands guard during a protest in Srinagar against the civilian killing in Panzgam, in Kashmir’s Kupwara district, April 28, 2017. Credit: Reuters

However, many Kashmiris vociferously state that contrary to official statements and initial media reports, the deaths in the vicinity of the encounter site are not necessarily a result of cross-firing or “collateral damage” but are “targeted killings” that occur a considerable distance away from the cordoned site.

What are the applicable laws? What is legitimate force? How does one fight for justice when, overwhelmingly, the police depends on the state-driven version?

Targeted killings?

Although Human Rights Watch specifies that “targeted killings” is not a technical legal term, it notes that the words can be used to refer to “a deliberately lethal attack by government forces against a specific individual not in custody under the colour of law”.

It adds that according to humanitarian laws, for a specific attack on a military objective to be lawful, it “must discriminate between combatants and civilians, and the expected loss of civilian life or property cannot be disproportionate to the anticipated military gain of the attack”.

Under the international humanitarian law, such civilian killings are problematic because those targeted are geographically far removed from hostilities and/or not necessarily directly participating in hostilities at the times they are targeted.

Also read: A Never-Ending Nightmare in Kashmir

Several villagers and media persons have argued that the site of an encounter is cordoned off in concentric circles and the outermost circle is manned by police and the CRPF who keep protesters away. Thus, the claim that the people killed were “interfering” or participating in hostilities is being viewed with scepticism.

Habeel Iqbal, a lawyer practising in Shopian, points out how even in dispersing crowds during protests or near encounter sites, excessive force is deployed. The intention, he says, is not to dispel but to shoot to kill.

Another crippling challenge to justice is the continuous internet shutdowns, lack of mobility and inaccessibility to these sites which are responsible for sketchy accounts of what actually transpired and the resultant media coverage.

In November 2017, along with a field researcher, I visited Kakpora in Pulwama district (described as a “hotbed of militancy”). We met with families of three victims, who categorically stated that the security forces had deliberately targeted them with intent to kill. Their narratives were distinctly different from state-driven ones or as those reported by the media.

We first met with the family of 18-year-old Owais Shafi Dar who died due to pellet injuries on August 13, during an extremely volatile period. All one could glean from the newspapers was that Owais suffered pellet injuries, sustained, according to security forces, when “dealing with a mob.” Mohammed Shafi Dar, the father, disputed this version and said there was no mob on that particular day.

Owais Shafi Dar died due to pellet injuries on August 13. Credit: Facebook

Owais Shafi Dar died due to pellet injuries on August 13. Credit: Facebook

He said that on August 13, the day of his son’s killing, there were no protesting crowds. “An encounter had taken place at Awneera in Shopian district, some 13 kilometres away in the preceding night during which two soldiers were killed. In the evening, at least seven CRPF vehicles went through the town, returning from the site. There must have been some jeering and booing along the way and possibly the mood was belligerent because of the killings of the soldiers. When a particular CRPF vehicle neared Kakpora bridge, close to the market, they came upon my son returning from the Jamia Masjid. He was alone and they targeted him with their pellet guns at very close quarters. An entire cartridge was lodged in the right side of his chest.”

Several shopkeepers, including Fayaz Ahmad Dar, were witness to this and ran to the aid of the youth. First taken to the Primary Health Centre, he was later rushed to the SMHS hospital in Srinagar on medical advice. But as the family was arranging for blood, Owais died in the operating theatre.

The body was brought back and an uncle, Noor Mohammed Shafi, approached the police to file an FIR against the CRPF. He was verbally assured of the same, however, the next morning, even as the funeral was taking place in the local graveyard, the police arrived in three vehicles. One vehicle entered the graveyard and police opened tear gas on the mourners, according to Mohammed Shafi and other relatives. The rites had to be rushed even as protests began and two more youths were injured in the tear gassing and use of pellet guns.

As a youth remarked later, it seems as if they do not even have the right to mourn.

Some five days later, the police came to Shafi’s home and took his statement, assuring him that the FIR would be lodged. The police also noted the statement of the shopkeepers who witnessed the incident. However, it took the intervention of the deputy commissioner for the FIR to be finally lodged, a copy of which had still not been given to the bereaved family.

Mohammed Shafi charges the police with delay tactics. He says they know the CRPF is involved, and if there weren’t any eyewitnesses, the police may well have tried to hide or even doctor the facts.

Grieving over the death of his son, who used to help him in handling the business, Shafi is clear that what occurred that day was “murder.”

§

Just a few kilometres away from Shafi’s home is the residence of 26-year-old Firdous Ahmad Khan, a vegetable seller who was shot dead in Hakripora on August 1 – the same day Lashkar-e-Taiba commander Abu Dujana was gunned down.

Local media reports and accounts of Firdous’s killing are ambiguous. In the national media, which had devoted its front pages to the killing of Dujana, the ‘escape artiste’, there is just a line or two on the civilian killing.

Outlook carried a small paragraph saying that “the police are concerned about the killings of civilians near encounter sites” but proffered nothing more than the police version that Firdous was killed in the firing against stone pelters.

When we visited three months later, the kitchen was crowded with women. Firdous’s pregnant wife, a two-year-old daughter in her lap, and mother Khatija gave us an account of what they believe had transpired.

“Firdous had left that morning on foot to collect vegetables which he would then transport to Jammu. The encounter with Dujana had got over in the early hours of the mornings and protests had begun. Firdous was later found lying on the ground in Hakripora, a considerable distance away from the site, with blood gushing out from a wound in the abdomen. Villagers rushed him to the district hospital in Pulwama where he was declared dead on arrival. Since Firdous was not from the village it was only his identity card that made it possible for our family to be traced and informed about his death.”

This killing led to widespread anger with hundreds attending Firdous’s funeral.

Representative image. Credit: Reuters

Representative image. Credit: Reuters

The women of the house said that after the funeral, late at night, the house was attacked and window panes smashed by armed personnel, who ordered them to pull down the black banners draped around the house as a visible sign of protest.

There have been no witnesses to the killing of Firdous and a number of agencies – the Special Operations Group, the army and CRPF were all present at the site. However, the family is clear he was targeted by one of them. “They had every intention of killing him even though he was not a stone pelter. He was out trying to earn a livelihood,” they said.

The family would like to file an FIR but don’t even have a death certificate since the hospital did not issue one, saying there was no admission card. The people who had rushed him there had not sought one in their urgency. The tyranny of bureaucracy also aids impunity.

§

It was at the tip-off given by the villagers that we then visited Begumbagh to speak with the family of 14-year-old Amir Nazir Wani, killed on March 9 at Golipora, at least two kilometres from Padgampora, where an encounter was underway.

Bilal Ahmed, the elder brother, narrated the sequence of events since his mother is still unable to talk about it.

“We thought Amir had left for school as usual and I was in college. At around 11 am we learnt that my young brother was among the crowd who was protesting and that the Special Task Force and police brought in from Awantipora had opened fire on them. A number of boys were injured. Amir was shot through the neck and he fell to the ground. Other protesters took him to the PHC where he was declared dead on arrival.”

Fourteen-year-old Amir Nazir. Courtesy: Freny Manecksha

Fourteen-year-old Amir Nazir. Courtesy: Freny Manecksha

Five months later, the father Nazir Ahmed and Bilal, were summoned to give their statements before the Awantipora police station. They learnt that an FIR had been filed under section 307 of the Ranbir Penal Code. The FIR was the young boy but, curiously in October, Nazir was summoned to the station yet again. This time he was told that a case was being prepared to forward the case for ex gratia to the DC.

“It is mind-boggling that my dead brother is an accused and at the same time the police say it is recommending ex gratia,” said Bilal, who wondered why it was necessary to use such lethal force against an unarmed young boy. “Was it necessary to shoot him in the neck at close range? The whole village was aghast when his body was brought home with a bullet in the neck that had exited through the chest.”

A Srinagar lawyer, commenting on this civilian killing, said that the practice of turning the victim into the accused, is common in Kashmir, especially during periods of turmoil and protests, as is the police assumption that the force unleashed on the victim was legitimate.

What is problematic, he explained, was the way police relied solely on the version given by the army or other security forces when filing the FIR and its refusal to record, leave alone investigate, information brought in by other people.

Under the criminal justice system, the crux is that there must be a genuine investigation but, when victims’ families come in with their statements and often rival versions, it seldom makes its way in the FIR, thereby effectively scuttling attempts at justice.

In fact, added the lawyer, a Supreme Court decision (Babubhai Versus State of Gujarat) has shown it is permissible to have recordings of two FIRs especially when there are two separate versions or incidents.

Also read: Why a Nine-Year-Old Kashmiri Boy Half Blinded by Pellets Doesn’t Want to Grow Up

In such a case “the court has to examine the facts and circumstances giving rise to both the FIRs and the test of sameness is to be applied to find out whether both the FIRs relate to the same incident in respect of the same occurrence or are in regard to the incidents which are two or more parts of the same transaction. If the answer is affirmative, the second FIR is liable to be quashed.”

“However, in case, the contrary is proved, where the version in the second FIR is different and they are in respect of the two different incidents/crimes, the second FIR is permissible. In case in respect of the same incident the accused in the first FIR comes forward with a different version or counterclaim, investigation on both the FIRs has to be conducted.”

But this lacuna on the part of the police makes accountability and the struggle for justice daunting. It is perhaps for this reason that the family of 14-year-old Amir says it has no plans to fight for justice. “People of Kashmir know the existing system makes justice an impossibility.”

Habeel Iqbal, Shopian lawyer, also dismisses any expectations of justice with the FIR filed against the army and announcement of the magisterial probe in the latest incident. “Shopian is a striking example of tired déjà vu. There was a probe ordered for the killings and rapes of Neelofar and Asiya. One probe said something and the CBI probe nullified that.”

He also gives the example of the report submitted by retired high court judge M. L. Koul on the killings of three youths by CRPF just before the concert by Zubin Mehta in September 2013. Upon learning that the report indicated the CRPF, the father of Tauseef Ahmad Bhatt, one of the victims, approached the chief minister and home department for a copy but was not given one. Nothing has happened since then.

“If the report of a high court judge does not lead to justice, why would one by a magistrate make any difference?”

Freny Manecksha is an independent journalist from Mumbai who is interested in human rights and development issues.

Kashmir Man Who Lost His Legs to Torture in 1990s Keeps Up Fight for Justice

Having exhausted all domestic means in his quest for justice, Qalandar Khatana now wants the UN to look into allegations of gross human rights violations in J&K.

Having exhausted all domestic means of protest, Qalandar Khatana now wants the UN to look into allegations of gross human rights violations in J&K.

Qalandar Khatana. Credit: worldwithouttorture.org

Srinagar: On a recent May morning, Qalandar Khatana stepped out of his home in Kothiya village, located near the border, after carefully strapping on his prosthetic legs. He picked up his crude wooden crutches, slung a small makeshift backpack over his shoulder and proceeded painfully on foot to Halkamori – the closest roadhead some four kilometres away.

From there he found some transport to Kalaroos. He then took a shared Sumo service to Kupwara and onward to Srinagar, his arduous journey reflecting his commitment to an informal group called ‘Survivors for Truth and Justice’.

Khatana, who lost both his legs after enduring torture, allegedly at the hands of the security forces, is a member of this group, which also comprises victims of sexual assault and families who’ve faced enforced disappearances and civilian killings in Kashmir. He joined the group on May 10 to make an appeal to the international community, pleading for the UN to look into allegations of gross human rights violations in the state.

These victims claim they have exhausted all domestic means of protest in their struggle for justice. They have carried out demonstrations in parks and other public spaces, have doggedly pursued their cases with the State Human Rights Commission (SHRC), a quasi-judicial human rights body formed in 1997, in the local courts, in the Jammu and Kashmir high court and even in the Supreme Court of India. However, not even a single case has been resolved and the denial of justice has left them dispirited.

Qalandar Khatana (centre), a victim of severe torture, with two other members of the group ‘Survivors for Truth and Justice’, who are appealing to the international community as they have exhausted all available means of peaceful struggle for justice. Credit: Freny Manecksha

Khatana’s ordeal

For Khatana, who underwent multiple incidents of torture for four years, the ordeal began in the 1990s, shortly after militancy erupted in Kashmir. A member of the Gujjar community, his home is located in one of the five villages in the remote highlands near the Line of Control. The conflict has had an especially adverse impact on the life of residents of the region.

Khatana says he and other villagers were often accused of crossing the border by Border Security Force (BSF) personnel but, up until the 1990s, the borders had been permeable and fluid.

“We used to roam with our livestock freely and could go into the forests. There was no one telling us where we could go or not go. Then they fenced off a portion of our own lands and began calling it the border and clamped down on us ferociously.”

One night in 1992, there was a knock on his door and Khatana was dragged away by BSF personnel to their camp at Mori. He was then accused of being a guide who had helped militants across the border.

“They kept interrogating me, beating me, even hanging me upside down,” Khatana said.

Torture by the security forces

In the months that followed, he claims he was taken from one camp to another, where he was tortured by the BSF and Special Task Force personnel. He claims they would take him atop a mountain and roll him down the slope. He was forced to do hard labour and even held in solitary confinement.

Six months later, he was brought to Srinagar’s Papa II, an interrogation and torture centre. He claims that the flesh from his waist and elsewhere was sliced with a blade, and that he was then forced to eat bits of it.

One day, a crude attempt was made to hack off his legs.

“I passed out and when I regained consciousness, I found my blood-stained limbs had been tied with strips of cloth. I learnt fellow inmates at the torture centre had torn off the sleeves of their shirts and had tried to stop the bleeding.”

He was then sent to the Kot Balwal jail in Jammu where he stayed for about four years. His wounds had gotten infected with maggots and eventually his legs had to be amputated. He was then released and received treatment at the Bone and Joints Hospital in Barzulla in 1996.

Devastated by his experiences, and lacking education and any other means of support, he returned home, too frightened to approach the police or file any complaint.

“I was terrified. It was almost as if it had been drummed into me that I had no right to life. I wasn’t sure if I would be allowed to live even after my release.”

Anthropologist Mohamad Junaid, who also grew up in Kashmir in the 1990s, observes that security force personnel use torture not so much to extract information but to send out a message through the broken and defiled bodies, and to break the people’s will and determination.

“This [is] psychosomatic warfare,” he adds.

Khatana’s worries were further intensified after he learnt that his wife too had been tortured. Being kicked violently in the chest left her with broken ribs that did not heal properly. She remained confined to her bed until her death a few years later, leaving Khatana to provide for and look after their three children – two girls and a boy.

Unwilling to be obligated to any organisation, Khatana believed his only option was to beg. People would hoist him on their shoulders and he would sit outside various mosques appealing for alms.

It was outside one such mosque that human rights activists came upon him and helped him file a plea with the SHRC.

After an inquiry, the panel concluded that he had been severely tortured and that his case was only one among a bunch where similar amputations had to be carried out because of the hacking methods used.

Khatana has also been featured in the Channel Four film Kashmir’s Torture Trail directed by Jezza Neumann.

Freny Manecksha is an independent journalist from Mumbai who is interested in human rights and development issues.

Deconstructing the State’s Narrative in a Bastar Fake Encounter Case

Over the course of a judicial inquiry into a 2012 incident that left 17 people dead, villagers in Bastar have come together to question the role security forces’ played.

Over the course of a judicial inquiry into a 2012 incident that left 17 people dead, villagers in Bastar have come together to question the role security forces’ played.

Representative image. Credit: PTI

Representative image. Credit: PTI

Over the next few months, security forces in Bastar will be presenting their final arguments before a judicial inquiry commission in an alleged fake encounter case from 2012. Villagers have put across their version of events, despite the fear of facing consequences. During the course of the inquiry, multiple discrepancies have come up that thoroughly weaken the state’s narrative of events. But will those in power be granted impunity once again?

A night of many narratives

On June 29, 2012, several TV channels and newspapers reported that security forces from the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), the Commando Battalion for Resolute Action (CoBRA) and the Chhattisgarh police had ventured into the Silger forests, an “uncharted Maoist zone,” and killed 18 Naxalites in two separate operations at Bijapur and Sukma districts of Bastar, Chhattisgarh.

CNN-IBN (now News18) quoted then home minister P. Chidambaram as saying the operation was “a planned one,” but the Maoists opened fire first. He praised the troops for dealing with the ambush with “great courage and skills”.

A Times of India report, while conceding that among those killed was a 16-year-old, went on to add that “allegations of fake encounter notwithstanding, the two gun battles marked a moment of triumph for police in the battle of attrition against Maoists”.

But the triumph evaporated on July 2, 2012, when Kowasi Lakma, Congress MLA from Chhattisgarh, flatly contradicted Chidambaram and the government’s narrative. Lakma pointed out that in the incident in Bijapur, among those killed were seven minors and women. He upheld the claim made by protesting villagers that those killed were not Naxalites but a group from Sarkeguda, Kottaguda and Rajpeta villages who had been holding a meeting in a clearing to discuss preparations for Beej Padum, a sowing festival.

The villagers said that a little after 10 pm on the night of June 28, they were fired upon even though some of them kept calling out and identifying themselves as villagers. Fifteen of them died that night, including 12-year-old Saraswati Kaka. Another victim, 14-year-old Irpa Suresh, was taken to the hospital where he succumbed to his injuries.

Irpa Ramesh, who had climbed a tree to escape the shooting, was shot and killed the next morning in a space between two houses, allegedly by the forces, and his face bludgeoned with a brick.

The villagers also alleged that the forces beat them using the butt of their guns when they rushed to the site and that some women were molested. Many of the bodies bore evidence of such injuries.

Besides the state Congress fact-finding team that said the incident was most certainly a fake encounter, the Communist Party of India, under Adivasi leader Manish Kunjum, conducted its own inquiry. Another team that met with the villagers consisted of Jayprakash Rao Polsani, Nandini Sundar and Kopa Kunjum. There was also a team sent by the Coordination of Democratic Rights Organisation.

Faced with a barrage of protests, with even then tribal affairs minister K.C. Deo expressing his displeasure, the Chhattisgarh government announced a single-member judicial inquiry commission under Justice V.K. Agrawal, retired judge of the Madhya Pradesh high court.

Holes in the state’s case

The commission’s mandate was to ascertain whether an encounter happened, when and how the incident occurred, how many people died and who they were, and the circumstances under which the security forces opened fire.

On Saturday, March 25, 2017, the commission heard final arguments of the villagers represented by the Jagdalpur Legal Aid group (JagLag) and argued by advocate Yug Choudhary of the Bombay high court.

Choudhary observed how it was significant that while the villagers had spoken in one voice, two radically different versions regarding the incident emerged from the state and the CRPF.

According to the CRPF version, two teams comprising a mix of the three forces were making their way towards Basaguda. One team was under Commander S. Elango and one under Commandant Anand Singh, which left about half an hour earlier and was walking parallel to Elango’s team.

According to Elango’s statement and testimonies from other members, his team suddenly heard voices. Then there were cries of “Police police, kill, kill” and they were ambushed. They came under fire from the right and then left, and fired back in self-defence. The firing went on for some 45 minutes and was so intense they were unable to flank and surround the enemy. Elango, who has 25 years of experience in counter insurgency, served in the UN peacekeeping force and is familiar with standard operating procedure, explained before the commission that Naxal ambushes are planned in advance and executed with care.

But in the state’s version, narrated by “surrendered” Naxals Irpa Ganesh and Punem Mangu, a meeting had been ordered that night by the Naxals to plan for encroaching the land of villagers who had joined the police forces. These witnesses claimed that the village meeting was underway when the Naxals suddenly spotted the police force close to them, took advantage of the opportunity and opened fire. As opposed to the CRPF version, this was a chance meeting, a surprise encounter.

Strengthening their arguments with detailed information on ballistics, forensics and the statements from the CRPF and the police, the legal team for the villagers contested the security force’s claim that provocation had led to controlled firing.

Elango had said parabombs (light flares) are commonly used by the troops for illuminating an area in the dark. But he admitted that even though he was aware that the teams would be passing through the vicinity of certain villages during the route, no parabomb was used when they heard voices in the dark and were fired upon. Parabombs, he said, were used only after the firing to illuminate the area and provide care to the injured.

During cross examination, Elango claimed the reason they did not use parabombs earlier was because they wanted to retain “the advantage of element of surprise”. But this was contradictory to his affidavit, which said that when the ambush occurred it was the troops that were taken by absolute surprise. There were no answers as to why the troops did not use the night vision equipment they possessed to identify the direction of the attack and the attackers.

Asked why they did not resort to mortar when they were under attack, Elango said that mortar cannot be effectively employed in a forest. But his own GPS quadrants show that he was in a clearing, something he too has admitted to. Elango also had no explanation to offer for the fact that the deceased people had bullet injuries on their backs and that injuries on the deceased people show they were in kneeling or supine positions.

Chaudhary asserted that the troops did not bother to use fire bombs, night vision equipment or mortar that night because they were not under fire. Who, then, was the aggressor? The village legal team also pointed to disparities between medico-legal statements and conflicting testimonies by some of the security troops on the nature of injuries suffered by them.

An illustration was provided by Arnav Ghosh’s medical examination, which states that he received a bullet injury wound on the left big toe. He reiterated this when he gave his statement to the police in 2012. But his affidavit to the commission says it was his right big toe that was injured­­­ – a claim he repeated in person during his cross examination. Furthermore, in written documents, he claimed that once he was hit on his toe, he fell down. But before the commission, he made the oral claim that he was lying belly down in order to fire at targets when he was hit. So how did he fall? This also raises the question of how he was shot in the big toe, left or right, if he was lying down facing the target.

Questions were raised about the seizures allegedly made from the site. Among them were three Bharmar guns, found near the dead bodies. The State Forensic Science laboratory reported that two of them were not in working order. Furthermore, Bharmars are muzzle loaders that require rags or paper for wadding. The guns also require rods to pack the ammunition tightly. However, there are no records of this wadding or rods found at the site. It was also pointed out that these guns, normally used to kill prey like rabbits, are of low velocity and need to be reloaded. It was argued that the injuries sustained by the troops could be because of the ricocheting bullets of their own fire or the result of “friendly fire” – cross firing among the troops.

One of the noteworthy issues raised during the commission’s hearings was the way the state arbitrarily uses the label of Naxals.

After the dead were identified at the police station by their relatives, an FIR was filed claiming that the villagers had confirmed that all the dead and injured, barring two dead minors and three injured, were Jan Militia members (locally-armed squads of village defence committees of the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army). But this claim is not supported by any of the villagers’ testimonies.

Irpa Kamala, sarpanch of Kotaguda, in her affidavit states that when she was at the Basaguda thana on June 29, the police were threatening and forcing villagers to write that Naxals had come to the meeting. She adds that several days later, at the collector’s office, she reiterated that there had been no Naxals present at the gathering and that people were being coerced to make false statements.

The police also claimed there were a number of cases pending against those killed but no one was convicted and it is not clear whether the people even knew there were cases against them.

During final arguments, Chaudhary asked how it is that anyone who charges the state with a crime can suddenly be termed a Naxal. He referred to the case of Sarke Pullaiya, a villager who runs a ration shop. Pullaiya was among the injured who initially refused to go to a hospital out of fear, but was later taken by journalists. During his cross examination it was suggested that Pullaiya did not receive any injuries during the shooting incident but was shot later by Naxals. Chaudhary wondered how it was possible for a person to be told he is a Naxal, then told his injury was caused by a Naxal and also receive compensation from the state for injury caused by a Naxal.

He also discredited the claim of police witness Ganesh, said to be a surrendered Naxal, who had a “change of heart” in 2014 because he was influenced by the government’s policies and schemes. During cross examination, Ganesh admitted he did not know the meaning of words like class war and class consciousness. Nor had he heard of the politburo.

The CRPF and then the police are to present their final arguments over the next few months, after which the commission will present its report. But it is evident that one of the most important features of the Sarkheguda incident and the hearings is the spirited manner in which the villagers have been able to successfully challenge and then deconstruct the state’s narrative.

Says Shalini Gera of JagLag, “It was the villagers who took the lead from the very beginning, with protests held at Bijapur on June 30. They have been very vocal and steadfast.” Their resolute stand is especially commendable, notes Gera, because it was these very villagers who had fled because of the repression by the Salwa Judum and had been persuaded to return in 2010. This time around, they have decided to stay on and fight.

Women at the forefront

A salient feature of this fight is the way the women have taken the lead. Kamla Kaka, a mitanin prerak (health trainer) whose nephew Rahul Kaka was killed, and Madkam Ratna, sister of 15-year-old Ram Vilas who aspired to be a lawyer before he was gunned down, went to the sub-divisional magistrate when they learnt a magisterial inquiry was to be held and gave oral statements.

Later, when they learnt that the magistrate had said no one had turned up for the inquiry, they went all the way to Delhi to meet with then home minister Sushil Kumar Shinde. They also met with then chief minister Raman Singh in Raipur. These were women who until then had not ventured out of their region. Rita Kaka, another woman who gave an affidavit, filed a complaint at the NHRC of police harassment even though she was extremely nervous about the consequences.

It is their push that has emboldened others to keep up the momentum in the struggle for justice.

Gera points out how gender roles have been reversed in the increasingly repressive atmosphere of Bastar. The men do not venture into weekly markets or haats, or to gather firewood in the forests for fear of being picked up. Many are fleeing to Andhra and it is not uncommon for villages to be populated largely by women and elderly men. It is the women then who are leading the resistance.

Freny Manecksha is an independent journalist from Mumbai who is interested in human rights and development issues.

A Tribute to ‘The Mothers of Manipur’

Teresa Rehman’s book documents 12 narratives of Manipuri women activists who so radically sited their bodies for struggle and pushed the envelope to give a whole new meaning to the word “mother” in patriarchal structures.

Teresa Rehman’s book documents 12 narratives of Manipuri women activists who so radically sited their bodies for struggle and pushed the envelope to give a whole new meaning to the word “mother” in patriarchal structures.

The Mothers of Manipur.

The Mothers of Manipur.

On the morning of July 15, 2004, a Manipuri woman, Laishram Gyaneshwari, got up early, took her bath, offered her prayers, touched her husband’s feet and then left home. She joined her compatriots near Kangla Fort – a well-known landmark of Imphal and headquarters of the Assam Rifles of the Indian Army. At a given signal, these women, many in their sixties and seventies, began pulling off their enaphi (upper garment of traditional Manipuri attire) and the phanke (the lower garment). After stripping, they screamed, “Indian army rape us. Come take our flesh”, banged on the doors of the fort and stood naked even as crowds began to swell.

This protest by a group of elderly women from a socially conservative society against sexual violence became an iconic image in feminism and protest politics. It shattered the way people tend to pigeon-hole women into neat mindsets and labels.

The immediate impetus for this protest was the brutal killing of 34-year-old Thangjam Manorama, who was picked up by troops of the 17th Assam Rifles and whose bullet-ridden body, with horrific injuries even to her genitals, was found five days earlier. The savage assault on Manorama was viewed as a violation of the rights of all the women of Manipur. It was this extension of maternal grief to encompass the entire community that enabled the women to make a striking statement of solidarity. “We are the mothers of Manorama,” was one of the slogans raised at Kangla Fort.

Teresa Rehman’s book, The Mothers of Manipur, documents 12 narratives of these Meira Paibis (women torch bearers of Manipur), who so radically sited their bodies for struggle and pushed the envelope to give a whole new meaning to the word ‘mother’ in patriarchal structures.

She weaves her interviews with the Imas (mothers) along with vignettes of Manipur’s society and culture. In her perceptive introduction, Pamela Philipose contextualises the protest against the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) that affords impunity to the perpetrators of the violence on Manorama and others; the equally iconic struggle by Irom Sharmila against AFSPA and the way she too used her body as a means of protest by going on a hunger strike for 16 years which meant being confined to a hospital and force-fed with a nasal tube under state orders; and finally the willingness to break the silence on sexual violence by courageous women that empowered the Meira Paibis to make this public articulation.

What emerges is a series of fascinating portraits of Manipuri women, negotiating for spaces to accommodate their various shades of activism in a very traditional society.

Some like Ramani Devi began as social reformers, having participated in the movement against alcoholism (nishabandh) and drug abuse, AIDS awareness, corruption and so on. Others like Ima Nganbi and Gyaneshwari expressed a greater sense of political consciousness and conveyed their solidarities with the fight for sovereignty and questions of identity.

Teresa RehmanThe Mother's of Manipur: Twelve Women Who Made HistoryZubaan, 2017

Teresa Rehman
The Mother’s of Manipur: Twelve Women Who Made History
Zubaan, 2017

Nganbi, who remembered celebrating India’s independence day as a child and feeling inspired by stories of Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, said she no longer wants to sing the national anthem, or stand up, when it is played. She has joined in protests against the Manipur merger agreement by which the Maharaja of Manipur was coerced to sign the Instrument of Accession on August 11, 1947.

Then there is Ima Taruni, who appears to have an innate sense of justice that compels her to rush in whenever there is news of a killing or an illegal detention. She was jailed for her actions, but that did not break her resolve. During her imprisonment she staged a hunger strike against the poor quality of food served. On another occasion, during a relay hunger strike (out of prison), she confronted the commandos brought in to break up the strike by saying they could go ahead and kill her after she had finished counting up to three. As they tried to leave, she stood in front of the vehicle shouting they could run her down and claim it was an accident.

It is also interesting to see complexities of nature and seeming contradictions. Gyaneshwari, the woman who touched her husband’s feet because she felt guilty she had not confided in him, is nevertheless the one who expresses a perfect understanding of the nature of their “nude” protest and how sexual violence is a weapon deployed by the state to supress people’s rebellions. She says that the stories of sexual violence and abductions brought home the realisation that the women were, in a sense, already naked. “We could easily be molested or raped. Why then should we not walk in the streets naked?”

Another interesting factor is the way many of these Imas have not allowed personal tragedies – like the death of a husband or child, great poverty, and so on – to overwhelm them. And also, could it be that the sense of community that the Meira Paibei fostered empowers them to shake off the sometimes constricting bonds of familial duties? Jamini says “Once we are out of the house and are with women we don’t care about our family and mundane affairs.”

The simple and straightforward reporting style that Rehman adopts does not allow for analysis or detailed history but questions do arise whether this historic form of protest had any meaningful impact?  It becomes especially relevant to question ways of protest with the current debate on Irom Sharmila’s failure to get more than 90 votes.

Teresa Rehman. Credit: Twitter

Teresa Rehman. Credit: Twitter

In the introduction, Philipose attempts a small critique from the gender perspective, pointing out how the Imas were silent when it was the underground groups that were accused of sexual violence. She also notes how they were unable to support Sharmila’s switch from martyr to revolutionary and her decision to give up her fast.

Could it also be that moral imperatives and idealism notwithstanding, a limited understanding of politics hindered them from realising that their struggle  could not be just about lifting AFSPA? That there has to be a much larger discourse on militarisation, the way Indian neo colonialism operates and the vicious forms of ethnic and gender centric violence that Philipose mentions.

Can one, nevertheless, see a glimmer of hope in the legacy of heroism that these women leave behind for their children and grand-children? It is amply demonstrated by Akhu, whose story has been woven into a lyric for the rock  band Imphal Talkies. Resistance sings out aloud.

Freny Manecksha is an independent journalist from Mumbai who is interested in human rights and development issues.

Disclosure: Pamela Philipose is the public editor at The Wire She was not consulted or informed about this review before it went to print.

Note: This review was edited on March 16, 2018 to delete an incorrect reference to Akhu being the son of Ima Momon and to his having been jailed for his music.