Showing posts with label Maoists. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Maoists. Show all posts

Sunday 23 January 2011

Not One to Wage War


On 24 December, Dr Binayak Sen was sentenced to a life term on charges of waging war against the State, sedition, and for colluding with Maoists. I saw a very different man on my last visit to his house

I had called him a day in advance to check if anyone from his family would be in Raipur the next day. I knew his younger daughter Aparajita would be in Mumbai till the Christmas college vacation. “We three are in Raipur. We would love to see you,” Dr Binayak Sen had said, with a certain higher-pitch emphasis on ‘love’. I arrived in Raipur the next morning at 7 am, and hesitated to go to the Sens’ residence at such an early hour while the sun was still struggling to make itself visible through the fog. But the cold winds had attacked my spine through the night on the bus from Jashpur, and I desperately needed some warmth. On my way to the Sens’ on a cycle rickshaw, watching the capital city of Chhattisgarh straining to usher in the new day, I found myself cutting back and forth to memories of my acquaintance with the Sen family. I had first met Dr Sen’s elder daughter Pranhita—a 25-year-old budding filmmaker—in May 2009 to interview her. The interview was published, and my relationship with the Sens had dropped root. It had strengthened in the past 18 months.

I rang the bell and waited. A minute later, there stood the man at the door, in his vest and pyjamas, looking confused. Soon realising it wasn’t the milkman, he hurried to unlock the bolts. He waited for me to drop the bag off my shoulders, and then wrapped his arms around me in a long embrace. After the cold night, I was home and warm.

Dr Sen’s wife Ilina walked into the room and the warmth was superfluous. I apologised for arriving at such an early hour. “I was up at 5.30 am, and made tea for Ilina,” Dr Sen said, while Ilina looked at him lovingly. “Tea or coffee?” Dr Sen asked. I said anything would do. “But give me some indication which of the anything you want,” he requested.

Sipping coffee, we began to talk of the government’s undue attention on the family—Ilina had been called an ISI agent in the Raipur sessions court the previous week, during the course of Dr Sen’s trial. The family had been through much in the past three years; controversies seemed to litter their path like glass marbles. I joked only Rajinikanth could intervene, given his unusual powers to sway opinion. “Isn’t he the Tamil actor?” asked Ilina. Dr Sen and I exchanged a look of disbelief and laughed aloud.

Pranhita was up by now and soon we got into a girly banter. She wanted to see how much my hair had grown. I loosened my bun, exclaiming, “Now, there I look like a woman!” Dr Sen, who was making breakfast next door, peeped in as I let my hair dance. Pranhita and I screeched like adolescent schoolgirls caught talking about boys.

Sometime later, I spoke to Ilina about getting my bus ticket to Nagpur. Dr Sen, meanwhile, was dressed in his jeans and kurta, ready to go to court. The good doctor’s relationship with the courts and cops began in 2007, when he was arrested on charges of being a Maoist sympathiser. Now, as he paced about the house, he looked confused: “Who will buy the ticket? How will Ashwin buy it if he has to be with me in court? But he can’t buy it later at noon; tickets might not be available then, and it is already 10.30.” Ilina interjected to allay his doubts. He turned to me, “Won’t it be cold on the bus?” I assured him I would be fine. It was finally decided that Ashwin, a law student who has been helping the family with minute details of the case, would buy the ticket on the way to court.

We had a lunch of Bengali fish curry and rice grown on their own farm on the outskirts of the city, while watching an animation film on TV. The discussion among us women (with their dogs Safia and Dottle playing earnest listeners) veered to reality shows on TV, and the palpable surge in India of a generation devoid of soul.

Dr Sen returned from the court and got into a discussion with Ilina and another guest about the case. Meanwhile, I poked around the many bookshelves that house everything from Victorian to Bengali literature, to medical journals, to all manner of human rights reports. I remembered what Pranhita had told me when we first met in 2009, a few days before her father would be released on bail: “The Chhattisgarh police took my sister’s algebra notebook; they suspected it might contain Maoist code!”

The sun had set and the dogs were trying to find a comfortable warm corner. I prepared tea for Dr Sen and Ilina, while they began to arrange the papers for the court the next day. “You are staying tonight, right?” Dr Sen asked me suddenly. I managed a smile and shook my head. Ilina was on the internet, looking for citations to be used from a decades-old case. Fifteen minutes and a few phone calls later, she’d found what was needed. Dr Sen left the TV remote—he was trying to fight sleep while watching news updates on the latest developments in the 2G scam—and ran to see what Ilina had found. As I stood over and watched, Dr Sen put his hand on Ilina’s shoulder and said with a proud beam on his face, “Among other nice things, my wife is also an internet expert.”

Dinner followed, and I began to gather my stuff to catch the night bus. Ilina noticed I was sticking my nose into a book whenever I could, and asked me to just take it with me. Mother and daughter decided to drop me to the bus stand. “Bye, Baba. Take care of yourself,” I said, and he embraced me in a ring of safety and love, for one long moment. “When do I see you next?” I shrugged my shoulders.

“Come back soon or I will fall asleep and won’t be able to open the door,” he shouted out to Ilina as she descended the staircase. I looked back to see him one last time, not knowing that ten days later, he would be made to walk into jail once again. “They will be back in just ten minutes. Please don’t fall asleep,” I said. “I was just joking,” he chuckled.I hugged Ilina Ma and Pranhita as I walked towards the bus. The gush of cold wind was unbearable.

Monday 30 August 2010

'Maoists are not terrorists'


Once upon a time, there was a king who oppressed his subjects. A century and another king later, nothing changed. One young peasant decided to oppose the king's tyranny, but was killed by the king's men. The onlooking angry subjects began an armed revolt. Several decades of toil and oppression finally kicked off the throne. Democracy set in, and the people lived happily ever after. Almost.

This incomplete fairytale is that of Nepal, and portraying its colourful history since the time of Prithvi Narain Shah's rule in 1770, is Anand Swaroop Verma's documentary film Flames Of The Snow. The film depicts the chain of events and circumstances that led to the people's movement under the leadership of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). What's interesting is that unlike the gory images of ideological violence in our country that pepper the news channels' prime time, this film details the ideological basis of the revolution. It also includes an interview of Maoist supremo Prachanda, describing the genesis of the armed movement in 1996. As Verma puts it, "The revolution was under threat as there was enough international funding to douse the fire. There was only a distorted image of the struggle. Being a journalist who had covered the revolution since its inception in the 90s, I knew that there was a different truth which had to be shown to the world." Until last year, Verma was writing for the Hindi daily Jansatta.

Verma's book Rongpa Se Dolpa Tak was one of the first voices of the movement — it documented the genesis of the movement in Rongpa, and how it evolved by the time it reached Dolpa. Understandably, his name was not new for Nepalese households and the crew got access to shoot in the thickest jungles infested by Maoists.

Wouldn't it have been simpler for a filmmaker rather than a journalist to make this film? Director and editor Ashish Shrivastava presents a contemporary analogy: "The media sporadically gives us statistics about the growing number of farmer suicides, but does not delve deeper into the reasons. Verma was clear in his head about the reasons why the Maoist revolution had such a strong support base among the working class in Nepal. In fact, when we went there to shoot, everyone from the waiter to the hotel's bellboy was a Maoist. The essence of the film is the ideology, and not the violence." Both Verma and Shrivastava are sure that they may not be able to make a similar film about the current Red revolution in India.

It was at Shrivastava's behest that Verma scripted the film. Not surprisingly, interviews with historians and activists dot the 125-minute movie. But as Shrivastava puts it, "Not a single scene is longer that four seconds at a stretch. I was sure about Verma's thorough groundwork. My only concern was the narrative. The film had to look interesting. After all, we were dealing with a very interesting subject. And certain events have been dramatised." A unique feature of the revolution, which has been captured in the film, is that women comprised 40 per cent of Maoist cadres.

Filmed over a period of three years, Flames Of The Snow was banned by the Indian Censor Board in June this year.

Their reason? "Any justification or romanticisation of the Maoist ideology of extremism or of violence, coercion, intimidation in achieving its objectives would not be in the public interest, particularly keeping in view the recent Maoist violence in some parts of the country." Eventually, the ban was lifted last month by a Revising Committee of the Censor Board, without any deletions, but with a disclaimer added that the substance of the film had been compiled from various media publications.

Ironically, a scene from the film showing the burning of Israeli and American flags by Palestinians was deleted during its screening in Nepal, as the Nepal government's foreign policy is to maintain good relations with all nations.

The big question: Will Flames Of The Snow impact the revolution in India? "The Nepalese had to fight the monarchy. Indian Maoists are fighting the illegal grabbing of natural resources by MNCs. But it is tough to talk about the influence of the Nepal experiment in India," says Verma, choosing his words carefully. He knows that the film will be watched in India widely —if not among the masses, then surely among the IB, which keeps a tab on every person who may utter the 'red' word. Till then, Verma is confident that he will be able to reply to any query from any audience which has been taught to believe that Maoists are terrorists.

Flames Of The Snow will be screened on Aug 30 at Prithvi 
House at 6 pm and on Sept 1 at TISS (old campus) at 6.15 pm

Sunday 22 August 2010

God drives this Dantewada bus

(This article first appeared in The Crest Edition - The Times of India, on August 21, 2010) 


Ganesh Singh runs the only bus that traverses the dreaded Maoist route between Chintalnar and Dornapal in Dantewada. Bizarrely enough, this is the third time he has tried to make a living in a terror zone — in Assam during the Ulfa strife, in Punjab just after Op Blue Star, and now in Chhattisgarh


Around 7 am each day, the fragrance of incense sticks fills a white bus stationed in Chintalnar village in Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh. In the driver’s seat, Ganesh Singh, 60, softly chants a prayer and garlands a photograph of Hindu deities placed on a ledge below the windscreen.


"Each day, I just take God’s name and drive the bus out of Chintalnar. I never know if it will return in the evening," says Singh, the owner of the bus. For several years, he has been plying the only possible vehicle between Chintalnar and Dornapal town — a distance of 45 km. Even vehicles from the six CRPF camps which dot that stretch don’t dare hit the broken road. In Chintalnar, a savage death can come to anyone any moment.


The bus run by Singh and his three sons is the only mode of transport available to those going to Dornapal town. The distance isn’t much; it would perhaps take just an hour to traverse this even on a potholed Indian road. But this stretch takes four hours.


The road on which Singh makes a living is about five feet wide and has been dug up at several points, leaving huge boulders scattered around. Maoists often park fallen tree trunks on the stretch to obstruct passing vehicles. If a CRPF vehicle halts to remove the log, it gives the Maoists enough time to launch a full-scale attack. Worse, the road is layered with several hidden landmines that the Maoists can trigger at will. They have strategically positioned themselves in the deep jungles on either side of the road.


The bus leaves Chintalnar at 7 am and picks up passengers — mostly adivasis — along the way and reaches Dornapal by 11 am. It begins its journey back around 3 pm.


Interestingly, by some quirk of fate, this is the third time Singh has managed to land up in a troubled zone to earn a living. Originally from a village in Uttar Pradesh, he went to Assam as a young boy in search of a job in the tea gardens. What followed is a truly remarkable series of coincidences.


"A few years after I was in Assam, the Ulfa (United Liberation Front of Assam) launched its agitation against outsiders. There was no point going back home because repeated cycles of bad weather had made farming untenable for me. So I headed for Punjab. But then came Operation Blue Star. So I came to Chhattisgarh. I would buy vegetables from the adivasis living here and sell them in Dornapal. Now it seems to me that I’ll be thrown out of here too. But this time I guess the destination would be up there," Singh laughs, pointing to the sky as he sips mahua, the local alcoholic beverage.


The adivasis are not his only passengers. "Often, Maoists board our bus, dressed in fatigues. They introduce themselves in Hindi but don’t harm anyone. And we too don’t stop anyone from boarding the bus — why should we?" says Pavan, Singh's son.


The family has had to ferry other ‘passengers’ as well. On April 6, 2010, when 76 CRPF jawans were killed during a three-hour Maoist ambush, Singh was summoned to carry the bodies from the site, five km away from Chintalnar and the CRPF camp. The bodies were then taken away by choppers for identification and the last rites. There was no way any CRPF vehicle would venture out that day, especially after a bulletproof van on its way to the ambush site was blasted to bits by a landmine.


"We’d heard the gunshots around 6 am and I instantly knew that something was wrong," recalls Sajan, Singh’s second son. "A few hours later, we were asked by the CRPF to transport the bodies in our bus. While I was picking up one body I noticed a landmine next to my feet. I was very scared. The sight of all the bodies in our bus still haunts me."


A witness to the violence unleashed by both the Maoists as well as the CRPF, Singh is now tired of waiting for the day’s bad news. "Ever since Salwa Judum (the people’s militia) was launched five years ago by the state government, we have had no electricity here. The children haven't been to school since then either. The only school running here was occupied by the CRPF and it was then bombed by the Maoists. Moreover, only the elders in this village have voter ID cards; there is none for the youth. The elections are rigged. Where is democracy? We only have anger, and perhaps only the Maoists understand our anger," says Singh.


But his rage soon fades into the moonlight. In the morning, it metamorphoses into courage once again — the courage he needs to drive a white bus down a dangerous road.