Recently a journalist friend from New Delhi urged me to accompany
him to a Naxalites’ hideout. We befriended a Naxalite sympathiser
who took us to meet members of the People’s Guerrilla Liberation
Army in the fading light of the setting sun.
It was after hours of arduous journey through the hills capped with
thick forests we succeeded in meeting the CPI (Maoist) “armed
squad” members in a jungle village on the outskirts of Ranchi.
By then, night had enveloped the surroundings and fireflies in
the foliage were vying with the dazzling stars in the sky to keep
the ambience aglow.
Our journey eventually concluded at a small village. We were taken
to a school building, which the gun-wielding revolutionaries had converted
into their abode for that night. Two armed guerrillas frisked us thoroughly,
seizing our mobile phones before taking us to the commander dressed
in black uniform and armed with a AK-56 rifle.
“Why do you come to meet us? You don’t publish the reality.
You just publish what the police brief you people,” said the
commander in his stentorian voice. I confronted the commander asking
him what does he want us to publish. I also told him that we have
our way of doing our work, the way the Maoists have their way of doing
the things.
But then the commander reeled off names of “innocent” villagers
whose houses were raided by the paramilitary forces recently. He narrated
the story of how policemen barged into the house of a poor shopkeeper
looting his hens, chickens, eggs, hadia, rice and other belongings
and how they extorted Rs 3,000 from him. The “commander”
was extremely annoyed with the central paramilitary forces who have
descended on Jharkhand villages from Manipur, Nagaland and other northeast
states.
“You know, these forces, during raids, catch hold of our dogs,
kill and eat them. The dogs have vanished from many of our villages
because the forces on the prowl have hunted and eaten them.”
The “commander” and other members in his “section”
angrily asked: “Why do you describe us as extremists? Why don’t
you refer these CRPF men as extremists who
invade the poor villagers’ home at will, loot their belongings
and even molest the women? We have not come across any newspapers
describing the police’s act of
extremism with the poor people.”
Frankly speaking, I had no reason to differ with the commander for
many villagers we talked to reeled off stories of “police brutalities”
in what the administration describes as the “extremist-hit”
areas. Almost every home had one or two of its members in
police custody on one pretext or another. There was hardly a home
that had not been raided by these forces which has stepped up its
action in Jharkhand hinterland of late in the wake of growing incidents
of landmine explosions, killing of policemen and loot of police arms.
The commonality about the homes we visited was that the semi-starved
people owned them. Many families in the village go to sleep after
eating “fried maize” and drinking hadia. And none of the
villagers we came across that night had proper clothes on their body.
After meeting the “peoples’ army” and the residents
of the village I can tell with all confidence that the people are
at war with the system. They don’t hope the government to improve
their condition. And they have no faith in the police. The government
of late is wallowing in the “glory” MoUs worth thousands
of crores rupees it has been signing with the multinational companies
and going to town shouting how it is all set to make Jharkhand the
most developed state in the country.
But the people living in forest villages, not very far from Ranchi,
don’t harbour any hope from the government at all.
“Alienation” is the exact word to describe the state of
their mind.
