Relatives and supporters accompany the body of Kishenji, a senior Maoist rebel leader killed in a gunbattle with security forces in eastern India, during his funeral procession at Peddapally village in Karimnagar District of Andhra Pradesh. (AP Photo)
In at least two instances over the past fortnight, tribal communities in Maoist strongholds on the east coast of India have stood up to rebel diktats. Security officials are interpreting these acts of defiance as a turning point in ongoing anti-Maoist operations, indicating dwindling tribal support for the rebels in the state of Odisha, known as Orissa until last month.
Odisha's southern districts have large tribal populations living in conditions of abysmal poverty. Koraput district's immense mineral wealth has impoverished tribal communities as mining companies have displaced thousands from their lands. Tribals in neighboring Malkangiri district have been repeatedly displaced by the Balimela hydroelectric power project.
Anger over widespread displacement, lack of basic amenities and poverty in southern Odisha has driven hundreds of tribal youth to join the Maoists, prompting security analysts to describe these districts and entire villages as "pro-Maoist". Several local government bodies in Nabarangpur district, which borders Koraput, and Bastar and Kanker districts in Chhattisgarh - the epicenter of India's Maoist conflict - are controlled by the Maoists and rarely have the locals defied the rebels.
But the Maoist hold over the region appears to be weakening. Recent by-elections in the tribal-dominated Umarkote constituency in Nabrangpur district saw voters turn up in large numbers in defiance of a Maoist call to boycott the poll. Over 72% of voters in Umarkote participated, a turnout far higher than the national average and particularly in insurgency-wracked areas. The by-election was necessitated by the assassination in September of Jagabandhu Majhi, a wheelchair-bound 39-year-old legislator representing Umarkote in the Odisha state assembly, by suspected Maoist assailants.
Around the same time as the vote, the Maoists had called for a bandh (shut-down strike) to protest the killing of their leader Kishenji in an alleged fake encounter in West Bengal's Jangalmahal area. It evoked a lukewarm response in Maoist areas in Odisha. According to a report in the Deccan Herald, a large number of tribal children in the Maoist stronghold of Malkangiri were seen walking to schools, defying the rebels' bandh call. In Nuapara, another district hit by Maoist violence, tribals were seen clearing tree branches that Maoists had placed across roads to block traffic.
"Never before have the tribals of the [Malkangiri] district sent their children to the schools during a Maoist bandh," the Deccan Herald observed, adding that this was the first time too that locals dared to remove by themselves a road blockade set up by the Maoists, rather than wait as in the past for the police to clear such blockades. "The recent defiance of the Maoists indicates a change in the local mood," an official in the Special Operations Group (SOG), a counter-insurgency force, told Asia Times Online. Tribal communities are fed up of the Maoists, their intimidation and violence. They resent their children being forced to join the Maoists, he said.
It is two years since the Indian government launched Operation Green Hunt, a massive, coordinated military operation to clear states in eastern India of Maoists. Operation Green Hunt has "succeeded in not only eliminating several Maoist leaders and fighters but also it has turned more and more villagers in former Maoist strongholds against the Maoists," the SOG official said. Villagers are coming to the security forces with information identifying Maoists and their hideouts.
The local population rejecting insurgents' demands suggests an important turning point in counter-insurgency operations. However, it might be a bit early for Indian security forces to start celebrating the changing tide. Operation Green Hunt may have weakened the Maoists militarily and eroded their support base somewhat but it has not translated into support for the government. Villagers have suffered grievously because of the military operations. Their huts have been burnt down and their children taken away by paramilitary personnel on suspicion of being Maoists or their sympathizers. It has deepened their anger with the state.
What has changed however is that they do not see the Maoists as their saviors as they did in the past. The Maoists melted into the forests when Operation Green Hunt was launched in a village, leaving the villagers to bear the brunt of the offensive. That appears to have dampened tribal sympathy for the Maoists. However, not everyone is convinced of the change in mood among the tribals. The high voter turnout in the Umarkote election was not down to new-found faith among tribals in the democratic process but the power of money, a social activist said. As Odishabarta's correspondent Basant Rath puts it, "Vitamin M", or money and muscle power "played a crucial role" in the entire election process. It is likely to have brought the voters to the polling booths in large numbers.
Those who see tribal assertion against the Maoists as a new development are wrong, the activist said, arguing that tribals have always spoken up when they needed to. Indeed, in February when the Maoists abducted Malkangiri district collector R Vineel Krishna and junior engineer Pabitra Mohan Majhi, tribals in Malkangiri and Koraput protested against the Maoists. Krishna, a young bureaucrat, had done commendable work for tribals in the Chitrakonda area.
The media and the government tends to frame the Maoist conflict in black and white, as though all tribals in Maoist strongholds are Maoists or sympathizers. They have failed to draw attention to the large number of tribals, indeed the majority, who are involved in non-violent mass agitation to articulate their grievances. To get back their land that has been illegally grabbed by non-tribal landlords or to resist the takeover of their lands by private and government-owned mining companies, thousands of tribals have come together in mass organizations such as the Niyamgiri Suraksha Samiti, the Mali Parbat Surakshya Samiti and the Malkangiri Zilla Adivasi Sangha (MZAS). Unlike the Maoists who are looking at capturing state power through armed struggle, these organizations have limited goals - they want an end to dispossession of tribals of their land.
The organizations have a complex relationship with the Maoists. They benefit from the backing the Maoists extend them as fear of the Maoists' guns compels their exploiters to take them more seriously. But they suffer too because of this as the police brand them as 'Maoist fronts' and crack down on their members. The Maoists extension of support to tribal causes, their issuing of threats to liquor mafias or moneylenders who exploit the tribals is tactical, prompted by a need for local tribal support to be able to function in the forests.
In contrast to the government's blanket branding of tribals as pro-Maoist, the co-existence of the two has not always been comfortable. There are sharp, even serious differences between tribal political activists and the Maoists, and neither is comfortable with the entry of the other into its turf. An MZAS leader in Tarlakota village in Malkangiri told Asia Times Online two years ago that the Maoist presence in the villages hinders work as it attracts the security forces, who then harass MZAS activists and other villagers. As for the Maoists, they do not want MZAS activists to work in rebel strongholds, he said.
Refusal to see the complexity of the tribal relationship with the Maoists has resulted in the security forces burning down entire villages in Maoist strongholds, rounding up all youth in these areas on the suspicion that they are Maoists. It is this refusal that will stand in the way of tribal weariness with Maoists evolving into support for the state.
Odisha's southern districts have large tribal populations living in conditions of abysmal poverty. Koraput district's immense mineral wealth has impoverished tribal communities as mining companies have displaced thousands from their lands. Tribals in neighboring Malkangiri district have been repeatedly displaced by the Balimela hydroelectric power project.
Anger over widespread displacement, lack of basic amenities and poverty in southern Odisha has driven hundreds of tribal youth to join the Maoists, prompting security analysts to describe these districts and entire villages as "pro-Maoist". Several local government bodies in Nabarangpur district, which borders Koraput, and Bastar and Kanker districts in Chhattisgarh - the epicenter of India's Maoist conflict - are controlled by the Maoists and rarely have the locals defied the rebels.
But the Maoist hold over the region appears to be weakening. Recent by-elections in the tribal-dominated Umarkote constituency in Nabrangpur district saw voters turn up in large numbers in defiance of a Maoist call to boycott the poll. Over 72% of voters in Umarkote participated, a turnout far higher than the national average and particularly in insurgency-wracked areas. The by-election was necessitated by the assassination in September of Jagabandhu Majhi, a wheelchair-bound 39-year-old legislator representing Umarkote in the Odisha state assembly, by suspected Maoist assailants.
Around the same time as the vote, the Maoists had called for a bandh (shut-down strike) to protest the killing of their leader Kishenji in an alleged fake encounter in West Bengal's Jangalmahal area. It evoked a lukewarm response in Maoist areas in Odisha. According to a report in the Deccan Herald, a large number of tribal children in the Maoist stronghold of Malkangiri were seen walking to schools, defying the rebels' bandh call. In Nuapara, another district hit by Maoist violence, tribals were seen clearing tree branches that Maoists had placed across roads to block traffic.
"Never before have the tribals of the [Malkangiri] district sent their children to the schools during a Maoist bandh," the Deccan Herald observed, adding that this was the first time too that locals dared to remove by themselves a road blockade set up by the Maoists, rather than wait as in the past for the police to clear such blockades. "The recent defiance of the Maoists indicates a change in the local mood," an official in the Special Operations Group (SOG), a counter-insurgency force, told Asia Times Online. Tribal communities are fed up of the Maoists, their intimidation and violence. They resent their children being forced to join the Maoists, he said.
It is two years since the Indian government launched Operation Green Hunt, a massive, coordinated military operation to clear states in eastern India of Maoists. Operation Green Hunt has "succeeded in not only eliminating several Maoist leaders and fighters but also it has turned more and more villagers in former Maoist strongholds against the Maoists," the SOG official said. Villagers are coming to the security forces with information identifying Maoists and their hideouts.
The local population rejecting insurgents' demands suggests an important turning point in counter-insurgency operations. However, it might be a bit early for Indian security forces to start celebrating the changing tide. Operation Green Hunt may have weakened the Maoists militarily and eroded their support base somewhat but it has not translated into support for the government. Villagers have suffered grievously because of the military operations. Their huts have been burnt down and their children taken away by paramilitary personnel on suspicion of being Maoists or their sympathizers. It has deepened their anger with the state.
What has changed however is that they do not see the Maoists as their saviors as they did in the past. The Maoists melted into the forests when Operation Green Hunt was launched in a village, leaving the villagers to bear the brunt of the offensive. That appears to have dampened tribal sympathy for the Maoists. However, not everyone is convinced of the change in mood among the tribals. The high voter turnout in the Umarkote election was not down to new-found faith among tribals in the democratic process but the power of money, a social activist said. As Odishabarta's correspondent Basant Rath puts it, "Vitamin M", or money and muscle power "played a crucial role" in the entire election process. It is likely to have brought the voters to the polling booths in large numbers.
Those who see tribal assertion against the Maoists as a new development are wrong, the activist said, arguing that tribals have always spoken up when they needed to. Indeed, in February when the Maoists abducted Malkangiri district collector R Vineel Krishna and junior engineer Pabitra Mohan Majhi, tribals in Malkangiri and Koraput protested against the Maoists. Krishna, a young bureaucrat, had done commendable work for tribals in the Chitrakonda area.
The media and the government tends to frame the Maoist conflict in black and white, as though all tribals in Maoist strongholds are Maoists or sympathizers. They have failed to draw attention to the large number of tribals, indeed the majority, who are involved in non-violent mass agitation to articulate their grievances. To get back their land that has been illegally grabbed by non-tribal landlords or to resist the takeover of their lands by private and government-owned mining companies, thousands of tribals have come together in mass organizations such as the Niyamgiri Suraksha Samiti, the Mali Parbat Surakshya Samiti and the Malkangiri Zilla Adivasi Sangha (MZAS). Unlike the Maoists who are looking at capturing state power through armed struggle, these organizations have limited goals - they want an end to dispossession of tribals of their land.
The organizations have a complex relationship with the Maoists. They benefit from the backing the Maoists extend them as fear of the Maoists' guns compels their exploiters to take them more seriously. But they suffer too because of this as the police brand them as 'Maoist fronts' and crack down on their members. The Maoists extension of support to tribal causes, their issuing of threats to liquor mafias or moneylenders who exploit the tribals is tactical, prompted by a need for local tribal support to be able to function in the forests.
In contrast to the government's blanket branding of tribals as pro-Maoist, the co-existence of the two has not always been comfortable. There are sharp, even serious differences between tribal political activists and the Maoists, and neither is comfortable with the entry of the other into its turf. An MZAS leader in Tarlakota village in Malkangiri told Asia Times Online two years ago that the Maoist presence in the villages hinders work as it attracts the security forces, who then harass MZAS activists and other villagers. As for the Maoists, they do not want MZAS activists to work in rebel strongholds, he said.
Refusal to see the complexity of the tribal relationship with the Maoists has resulted in the security forces burning down entire villages in Maoist strongholds, rounding up all youth in these areas on the suspicion that they are Maoists. It is this refusal that will stand in the way of tribal weariness with Maoists evolving into support for the state.
Sudha Ramachandran is an independent journalist/researcher based in Bangalore.
