As Maoists make their last stand, what lies ahead for tribals?

They have already cordoned off the Karregutta Hills nestled in the deep interiors of Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur district. The top CPI(M) leadership suspected to be holed up there might be in for big trouble unless they have already made good their escape to safety.

Of course, the task is quite herculean even at this stage because the top leaders are under the protection of the most dreaded Battalion 1 of CPI(M)’s military wing. It is possible that the Maoists have ensured full safety of the hills by laying mines all around it, making it difficult for the security forces to launch the final push.

Security forces have turned the tide

The security forces have enough in them to clinch the battle in their favour. They have come a long way from being frequently proven sitting ducks against a determined Maoist force to being one-up on the insurgents. The massive turnaround they have brought about in the last three years in the anti-Naxal operations, particularly in the most formidable Maoist stronghold of Chhattisgarh, is enough for the expert Maoist watchers to bet on them to win the war this time round too.

The Maoists also appear shaken as is evident from the ceasefire offer, they have extended. It, however, seems least likely that the government will heed it, what with the security forces having come so close to putting an end to the Naxal movement.

And mind you, this is not a Congress government. The BJP under the leadership of Amit Shah wouldn't like to squander this opportunity to finish off the rebels. It adds as a handsome achievement to its credit.

Even otherwise, the Naxal record of ceasefire offer or its acceptance have proved tricky in the past, with the Maoists facing accusations of using ceasefire to regroup and spread their tentacles.

The roots of the current push go back to 2010 and ‘Operation Green Hunt’

Of course, the fact remains that this decisive battle against the Maoists was launched by the Congress-led UPA government in 2010 under the banner 'Operation Green Hunt'. It was the then Home Minister, P Chidambaram, who had steered this operation with the support of then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, who had described Maoists as the biggest internal security threat to India.

But the Congress-led governments had also, from time to time tried to appeal to the Maoist conscience to end the insurgency and come to the negotiating table.

The Maoists, however, are not mentally trained to abjure violence. In fact, they believe in the Maoist axiom of “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun”. And hence, any ceasefire coming from them could always be seen as a tactical ploy to actually reinvigorate the movement.

Ironically, a BJP government in Chhattisgarh led by then chief minister Raman Singh was responsible for the massive growth of the Maoist movement in Central India due to its ill-conceived and unconstitutional sponsoring of a vigilante movement called Salva Judum against the Maoists in 2006 (this writer was the first to report on it). It had armed tribal civilians to fight the Maoists, leading to a bloody fratricidal war.

This pitching of tribals versus tribals by the state government was a shameless delegation of its own responsibility to the tribal volunteers of Salva Judum.

As expected, this only lent legitimacy to the Maoist movement with hundreds of tribals, who had gotten evicted from their villages by the Judum activists, joining the Maoist ranks, thereby strengthening it.

Sadly enough, it was the Congress party in Chhattisgarh led by Mahendra Karma that had joined ranks with the Raman Singh government to support Salva Judum.

Half a century of destruction

Now the Maoists are paying heavily for their crimes committed over a long stretch of about 50 years. By unleashing guerrilla violence in the vast stretches of India beginning from the Nepal border to the southernmost tip of Kerala, popularly known as the ‘Red Corridor’, the Maoists had virtually pushed these areas into time warp, pushing the people there several decades behind the rest of the country. Not only that, the Maoist movement led to thousands of lives of security personnel as well as hapless tribals being lost for an illusory tribal self-rule, a state-within-state idea that was never to be a reality.

This is not to deny the fact that their presence did bring about a huge transformation in terms of the states’ outlook towards the tribals. They ensured fair price and labour rates for the tribals for their forest produce and also restrained the police from committing atrocities on them.

The enactment of Forest Rights Act of 2005 and the Panchayat Raj (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act (PESA) can also be attributed partly to the pressure created by Maoists for tribal rights.

What next?

But as the states’ fight against Maoist insurgency appears to be in the last lap, is this liberation from a violent movement going to be any better for the people on whose behalf both the sides claim to have been fighting?

The answer to this question, unfortunately, doesn't appear encouraging. The reason is that those at whose hands the Maoist movement might get its burial, are no better for the tribal people in these areas.

What we might witness in the aftermath of a possible Maoist decimation is the huge influx of right-wing forces into these areas, leading to not only vitiating a distinctively different tribal culture and make it subservient to the monochromatic Hindutva culture, but also an unchecked and unbridled exploitation of mineral resources in these areas.

Some indications of this possibility have already started coming from Jharkhand and Bastar where non-converted and Christian tribals are being pitched against each other, raising the specter of the fratricide that we witnessed during Salva Judum phase.

Gadchiroli in Maharashtra is also witnessing iron ore mining on a scale never before imagined.

It is nobody’s case that these areas should be left untouched by development, but looking to their distinct cultural practices, conventional ideas of development when extended to these areas are fraught with danger.

Clearly, development of tribal areas must be done with an entirely different perspective, one that will help them retain control over forest resources and one that is in sync with their lifestyle and cultural practices. Is the Modi government equipped to do it with the kind of nuanced understanding it requires? Its record doesn't inspire one to think positively about it.

The end to Maoism is much desired but it seems to be coming in an era and at the hands of those who are likely to take the situation for tribals from bad to worse.

If that happens, then it will only lend a posthumous legitimacy to the Maoist movement and many would be left wondering if they actually were the lesser evil.