COA Reply to Alpa Shah

7/29/2019 COA Reply to Alpa Shah

1/8

Critique of Anthropology

33(3) 361368

! The Author(s) 2013

Reprints and permissions:

sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.navDOI: 10.1177/0308275X13491040

coa.sagepub.com

Response

Reflections on Civil

Liberties, Citizenship,Adivasi Agency andMaoism: A Response toAlpa Shah

Nandini SundarDepartment of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, Delhi

University, India

If Alpa Shah had her way (Shah, 2013), civil liberties and democratic rights

platforms in India, currently speaking in the name of citizenship or the people

(e.g. Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP), Concerned Citizens Committee (CCC);

Peoples Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), Independent Peoples Tribunal for

Environmental and Human Rights (IPT)) would abandon their pretensions and

instead give themselves names such as Committee for the Recognition of MaoistLove and Marriage (CRMLR) or Union for the Promotion of the Sacral Parha

Polity (UPSPP), and be in a much better position to advance the cause of the

adivasis, in conjunction, of course, with suitably re-educated Maoists.

In her article (CofA 33:1:2013), Shah covers three broad themes: The first

pertains to the civil liberties movement in India; the second concerns villager sup-

port for Maoists, and the third bears on the way Maoists create political conscious-

ness and citizenship in their own areas. The first two are not original, though poor

citation gives this impression, while her comments on the third border on the

incoherent.With respect to the civil liberties movement, Shah argues, first, that public

understanding ofadivasi involvement with Maoists is too dependent on the writ-

ings of left leaning civil liberties activists and scholars. Second, these liberal

activists reduce villagers to helpless victims sandwiched between the Maoists

and the State; third, their writings portray adivasi support for the Maoists as

born out of state deficit; fourth, she asserts that the concept of citizenship that

civil liberties activists rely on is alien to the adivasis of central and eastern India,

and that this perspective is both limiting and may actually be inimical to adivasi

interests because it reduces the space for the Maoist political project.

Corresponding author:

Nandini Sundar, Delhi School of Economics, Delhi University.

Email: [email protected]


2/8

Instead, Shah claims that adivasi villagers are attracted to the Maoists because

of kinship ties and friendship, and that this discovery is one of the most significant

analytic departures from which one might understand the Maoist movement.

As for the Maoists, Shah says that they have few intellectual resources to help

them think through the relationship between indigeneity and class struggle, and

there is no serious scholarship devoted to these issues in adivasi areas to help

them do so. Consequently, the Maoist strategy of mobilizing to hold the state

accountable in order to show up its failures, is actually counterproductive since

it creates a desire for state action. Given that the Maoists want to establish their

own state, this betrays a limited imagination. Against this she suggests that the

Maoists look at the traditional parha system for models, in which (in theory),

traditional headmen settle disputes, redistribute land etc. on behalf of and at the

behest of an egalitarian, consensual village community. I shall address each of thesethemes, using Shahs sub-headings.

I have been conducting ethnographic research on adivasi India for the past

twenty three years, and have been working on the Maoist issue since 2005, when

the government started a counterinsurgency campaign (Salwa Judum) masquerad-

ing as a peoples movement in the region where I had conducted Phd research in

the early 1990s. Between 2005 and 2007, in the district of Dantewada (formerly part

of Bastar in Chhattisgarh) over 5000 homes were burnt and looted, thousands of

citizens were killed and hundreds raped during joint operations conducted by

police, security forces and civilian youth armed as special police officers. About50,000 people were forced into camps controlled by the Salwa Judum leaders and

police, while equal numbers fled to neighbouring states or into the forests near their

villages. About half the villages in the district were directly affected. Against the

drone of helicopters, patrolling by vigilantes and official paramilitaries, Maoist

retaliatory violence and general lawlessness, throughout the region the effects

were evident. In 2009, the Salwa Judum was replaced by a conventional COIN

campaign conducted through security forces and combing operations, widely

referred to as Operation Green Hunt, which is ongoing. The story would be famil-

iar to anyone who has worked on guerilla movements in Latin America, and is thebackground to the civil liberties activism Shah refers to.

Citizenship as invoked by civil liberties activists in India

Shah claims that it is in the context of the Indian Government-Maoist war that the

concept of citizenship has gained a particular currency; hence the prominent usage

of the term in the names of civil liberties groups. This is simply wrong: using the

language of citizenship is part of a more general history of peoples movements and

civil liberties in India, represented, for example, in the Nagrik Ekta Manch (CitizensUnity Platform) (formed in 1984 after the anti-Sikh massacres) and the Mumbai-

based Citizens for Justice and Peace (formed in the aftermath of the Gujarat

Muslim pogrom in 2002).

362 Critique of Anthropology 33(3)


3/8

The villagers of Chhattisgarh themselves invoke a keen sense of betrayed citi-

zenship. As the villagers of Korcholi wrote impassionedly in a letter in 2007 that

then became a part of the litigation records before the Indian Supreme Court:

Going to the police does not help as the officers do not listen to the villagers.

The frightened villagers of Gangaloor, Cherpal and Bijapur, seeing the Salwa

Judum, have fled into forests . . . . . Why is this happening in our country, why is

this happening in Chhattisgarh. Why has the Chhattisgarh administration been

running this? Has our Chief Minister been elected only for this?

Shahs particular target is the Independent Citizens Initiative (ICI), where, she

argues, the term Independent was adopted to define the activism as floating

above the interests of both the government in power, the revolutionaries, and the

people in the revolutionary zones. An endnote here tells us that her insights

(were) gained from spending time with. . .

. some of the activists whose positionsare addressed here.

As a member of the Independent Citizens Initiative, I do not know how Alpa

Shah came by this insight, but I can safely assert that the term Independent in this

case was chosen because all the previous fact-findings on the Salwa Judum were

associated with existing political organizations - like the Communist Party of India

(CPI), the Human Rights Forum (HRF), or PUCL and PUDR (Peoples Union for

Democratic Rights) - and we were a group of individuals, unaffiliated to any organ-

ization or to each other in any permanent sense. Having been part of the PUDR,

PUCL et al. fact-finding team which visited Dantewada in November 2005 (PUDRet al., 2006), I felt that what was happening in the region was so terrible that it

needed greater public visibility than provided by the civil liberties groups who are

often dismissed as Maoist fronts and the other ICI members readily agreed.

It is true, however, that groups such as the Concerned Citizens Committee

(CCC) or HRF in Andhra Pradesh (and by extension the temporary ICI) do see

themselves as autonomous of the state and the revolutionaries, though never of

the people in the revolutionary zones. For this, it is important to understand the

history of the civil liberties movement (see essays in Singh, 2009).

Currently, the human rights movement in India is divided into two broadcategories: in the first are the groups who define themselves explicitly as human

rights, civil liberties or democratic rights organisations, and in the second are left

political parties (which flag particular violations) and issue-based movements

centred on caste or gendered discrimination, land rights, etc. Within the first cat-

egory there are two further divisions: the funded NGOs like Human Rights Watch

and the much older voluntary civil liberties and democratic rights movement.

Within this last, there are further divisions, but the most relevant for the pur-

poses of this discussion concern differences about how to treat non-state violence,

especially of the Maoist variety. While this matter has riven many groups across thecountry, the clearest formulation of position comes from Andhra Pradesh where

the Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee (APCLC) originated as a front of

the Naxalites in the 1970s. In 1998, the Human Rights Forum (HRF) split from

Sundar 363


4/8

APCLC for reasons both of effectiveness (the need to be independent and be seen

as such) and morality (the need to recognize the violence of non-state actors),

even as it recognized the transformative power of the Maoists, and the sacrifice

of its leaders. The Concerned Citizens Committee (CCC), which was a grouping of

well-known and committed citizens in Andhra Pradesh, was not a human rights

group as such, but a pressure group aiming to create a democratic space for citizens

in the midst of state repression and insurgent counter-violence. It worked for over a

decade to bring about peace talks. The ICI, though part of this tendency, provided

a temporary and minimalist common platform; regardless of our individual

political views we were agreed that outsourcing law and order to vigilantes was

not constitutional.

Advancing the Maoist agenda was never the ICIs brief; just as it is not the

concern for the lawyers, including a former attorney general, who have been fight-ing the Salwa Judum case pro-bono in the Supreme Court for seven years. But the

Rule of Law and the Constitution are their concern. As the socialist thinker Ram

Manohar Lohia pointed out as far back as 1936, people who may not believe in a

particular cause may still believe in the need for civil liberties and fundamental

rights. And while radicals may be skeptical about their activities, the need for such

legal safeguards is greatest precisely when the status quo is under attack. (Lohia,

2009 (1936): 20910). Most importantly, in the context of Shahs article it is

pointless to counterpose civil liberties or legal narratives to an ethnographic per-

spective these are different genres, designed to express quite different functions.Even as one recognizes that public support lies with the insurgents, it is quite

possible and indeed absolutely necessary to argue for the immunity of civilians

in a civil war and to separate them from combatants (see the International Red

Cross advisory on what constitutes direct participation in hostilities).

Citizenship in Maoist areas? or The Sandwich theory

examined

The next matter to be discussed concerns the question of villagers autonomy fromthe Maoists and the state. Shahs critique of the notion that the villagers are

apolitical victims caught between these forces is hardly original. This has been

articulated as the sandwich theory, and to describe someone as a sandwich

theorist is a radical term of abuse in the internecine wars of left activists

(D Souza, 2010). If all villagers are solidly behind the Maoists, any questioning

of the Maoists can be portrayed as unjustified and reactionary, especially if it

comes from establishment figures like those in the ICI.

It is interesting that even as Shah holds the ICI and its members out as exemplars

of the sandwich view, she does not cite anything we have actually written. In myarticle on grouping in northeast India which clearly applied also to the Chhattisgarh

context (Sundar, 2011), I noted that At best, when governments or analysts want to

make a distinction between people and insurgents, they portray people as uncom-

mitted; and likely to support whichever side has more power. People may often



5/8

describe themselves as pawns caught in the conflict between two more powerful

forces, but this is often mere playing to the gaze of a human interest story

driven media or the depoliticised practices of humanitarian intervention.

What both of these do is deny people their rights as citizens or political beings

(the right to support any ideology they choose).

Shahs argument that the Maoist ability to develop long-term support. . . .is

because unlike the Indian state, the party is socially embedded is tautological to

say the least. To have long term support is to be socially embedded and gain local

cadre. The feeling that the insurgents are our own people is not unique to the

Maoists, but is a given in places such as Kashmir, Punjab, Sri Lanka or any situ-

ation where there is mass insurgency and not just terrorist action. This is precisely

why governments resort to propaganda about insurgency-as-isolated-terrorism

and why they practise strategic hamletting to wean away by force and collect-ive punishment the public support that insurgents enjoy, even if they may couch

it as winning hearts and minds. And further, this is precisely why grouping

often fails as a strategy: The basic premise that grouping would serve to separ-

ate the general population from the insurgents, was sociologically mindless, if

nothing else. The national workers or underground army were the husbands,

brothers, and sons of those in camp how could they not have helped them?

(Sundar, 2011).

What we need to illuminate as anthropologists is not simply the fact that the

Maoists are socially embedded through kinship ties, but how the movement ori-ginates, is sustained or dissipates under certain conditions. The Maoists are not a

social club, but a political party, however familial in some features of organization.

If kinship was explanation enough, how does one account for the fact that the

Maoists have undercut the parliamentary Communist Party of India (CPI) which is

the only party in Bastar to be led by adivasis themselves, and which is equally

locally embedded, with kinship ties to all sides? Before the Maoists enforced an

electoral boycott, all these areas voted for the CPI.

Kinship ties may explain why individuals join the Maoists now for personal as

against ideological reasons - but it does not explain why entire villages began sup-porting them initially in the 1980s. In Chhattisgarh, that explanation is based in

their role in distributing forest land, settling villages, raising tendu leaf prices, and

driving out the police and forest guards, using their guns. Nor does kinship stand

up to counterinsurgency it is not uncommon in Chhattisgarh to find one sibling

with the Maoists and the other working as a special police officer.

Shah gives us no sense of where her research was located in Jharkhand, the

number and nature of informants, etc. A nuanced analysis that seeks to explain the

strength of the Naxalite movement in any particular area needs to take into

account several factors. These include the specific socioeconomic context; thenature of stratification; the specific political history of the area (in terms of the

alternatives that exist in the form of parliamentary parties and social movements);

the issues of agency that explain why certain individuals join the Naxalites and

others do not; Maoist and state ideology, geographical factors such as the

Sundar 365


6/8

suitability of the terrain for guerilla struggle, as well as the logic of state repression,

and Maoist militarization.

Against the view that being sandwiched or being only on the insurgent side

exhausts the possibilities, my experience shows that people want both the

Maoists and the state but for different reasons. They need open parliamentary

parties and civil liberties groups who can help them when they get arrested, as

well as a party like the Maoists who can help them keep their land. There are also

differences between regions in terms of support. There are areas, for example,

where the Maoists long ago helped people occupy land, and others where they

have arrived more recently; they have more support among Gonds who form the

core of their cadre than among other more cautious communities. While they move

freely in interior villages, people in villages close to police stations are more cir-

cumspect in their support. Finally, peoples allegiances change over time, inresponse either to repression or new opportunities. People may consciously chose

to be neutral, or to portray themselves as such depending on the context - but this

is an active not a passive exercise of moral and strategic agency.

Above all, because the party is so embedded it is important to fight for peace and

talks, and for the un-banning of the Maoists. The alternative is to accept the

governments militarist approach which will mean large scale bloodshed for civil-

ians and the killing of Maoist leaders, many of whom have inspiring biographies of

struggle. To ask for peace when neither of the two armed sides wants it, is not

nave, but is the hopeless activity of those who see history repeating itself. SarojGiri, whom Shah quotes approvingly, writes that we need more Dantewadas,

more Lalgarhs, more Naxalbaris (Giri, 2010: 111). These are important moments

of resistance, but in Lalgarh today, the Maoist leader Kishenji is dead, and all the

local cadre have been arrested or joined the ruling Trinamool Congress to save

themselves.

Maoist notions of Citizenship

Of all sections in this article, it is the questionable treatment of adivasi political

practices and the Marxist notion of class versus community that makes one wonder

if Shah has understood anything about Maoist ideology or practice, or even the

implications of her own fieldwork. Based on the evidence in her own book, In the

Shadows of the State (Shah, 2010), the parha is hardly a sacral polity, but is deeply

implicated in a politics of self-interest, division, corruption, and is patriarchal to

boot. Moreover, the whole parha system in Jharkhand has been the subject of

intense debate among different shades of political activists, from indigenist

NGOs who have tried to revive it in its secular form, to the Hindu chauvinistRashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) which has tried to promote federations of

traditional headmen as bearers of an authentic adivasi culture as against a

Christianised elite. The Maoists themselves have dismissed it as vestiges of a

feudal structure (see Sundar, 2011, 2009).



7/8

In Bastar, a large part of the support base for the Salwa Judum came from

traditional headmen whom the Maoists had displaced through their local govern-

ments, and whose land they had redistributed. Further, the parganas in Bastar, like

those in Jharkhand, are not untouched remnants of some traditionaladivasipolity,

but have been codified and transformed by the colonial and post-colonial state

(see Sundar, 2007, 2009). Perhaps Shah does not think my work constitutes ser-

ious scholarship but one wonders about her own scholarship if she simply refuses

to engage with any of the other scholars, like Surajit Sinha, K. Balagopal, Kaushik

Ghosh, Archana Prasad to name just a few, who have worked on political systems,

class, agrarian structure and feudalism in adivasi India, or the debates among

Maoists themselves on class structure among the adivasis (in Bastar this debate

took place around 1987).

A final comment on citizenship. The terms commonly used to claim citizenshipare adhikar or haq (rights). No-one anywhere uses nagrik swatva. And people do

not have to use this language to be engaged in citizenship claims. In Jharkhand,

where there is a long history of involvement in politics from the Birsa rebellion

(1900) to Jaipal Singhs Adivasi Mahasabha (1940s) to more recent demands for

statehood, forest protection, mobilization against land acquisition and mining, it is

unlikely that people have no sense of larger democratic processes. Democracy is as

much about peoples struggles as electoral representation. Jharkhand has a long

history of integration into the world economy through migration to the Assam tea

gardens, mining and timber extraction, as well as, increasingly, recruitment to thearmy, and work as domestic labourers in Indias metropoles. As the essays in

Sundar 2009 showed, through an analysis of the colonial era land tenure acts

that govern Jharkhand, and which were co-shaped by popular resistance, these

are hardly stateless societies, though the predominant version of the state may

be brutal and callous. Alpa Shah will respond in the next issue.

References

DSouza R (2010) Sandwich Theory and Operation Green Hunt. In: Sanhati Selections.Kolkata: Sanhati, pp. 125136.

Independent Citizens Initiative (2006) War in the Heart of India. New Delhi: ICI.

Giri S (2010) The dangers are great, the possibilities immense: On the current political

struggle in India. In: Sanhati Selections. Kolkata: Sanhati, pp. 103124.

Lohia RM (2009 [1936]) The Concept of Civil Liberties. In: Singh UK (ed.) Human Rights

and Peace. New Delhi: Sage, pp. 203219.

PUDR, PUCl et al. (2006) When the State Makes War on its Own People. Delhi: PUDR.

Shah A (2010) In the Shadows of the State: Indigenous Politics, Environmentalism and

Insurgency in Jharkhand, India. Durham: Duke University Press.

Shah A (2013) The Tensions over Liberal Citizenship in a Marxist Revolutionary Situation.Critique of Anthropology 33(1): 91109.

Singh UK (ed.) (2009) Human Rights and Peace. New Delhi: Sage.

Sundar N (2007) Subalterns and Sovereigns: An Anthropological History of Bastar, 1854

2006, Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2nd edition.

Sundar 367


8/8

Sundar N (2009) Legal Grounds: Natural Resources, Identity and the Law in Jharkhand.

New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Sundar N (2011) Interning Insurgent Populations: The Buried Histories of Indian

Democracy. Economic and Political Weekly, February 5, 2011, XLVI No. 6, pp. 4757.Sundar N (2011) The Rule of Law and Citizenship in Central India: Post-colonial

Dilemmas. Citizenship Studies 15 (34) July 2011: 419432.

Authors Biography

Nandini Sundar is Professor of Sociology at the Delhi School of Economics, Delhi

University. Her published writings on the Maoist issue are available at

nandinisundar.blogspot.com


COA Reply to Alpa Shah

Documents

Transcript of COA Reply to Alpa Shah