The Hindu : Adivasis and the genocide

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Apr 24, 2002

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

Adivasis and the genocide

By Kalpana Kannabiran

The situation in Gujarat foregrounds the urgency of forging a broad-based alliance that brings together all marginalised groups.

THE VIOLENCE in the rural areas of Gujarat took on a very different form from that in the cities, especially Ahmedabad. In eastern Gujarat, the violence — looting and arson — was largely carried out by Adivasis against Muslims.

Chhotaudepur town is surrounded by 48 villages that have been directly affected by the violence, of which we visited two and met people from several other villages. There are 2,300 people in the relief camp, all of whom moved here over a month ago from villages where Adivasis constituted a numerical majority.

Panwad village has a population of about 11,000 of which Muslims number about 1000. There are Muslims, Adivasis, Baniyas, Lohars and Prajapatis in the village, Adivasis being in a majority. Muslims were engaged in vehicle businesses — renting trucks, tempos, jeeps etc. — brick business and a few families were engaged in agriculture. Around Panvad there were several villages with two or three Muslim families. As the trouble began on February 28, these families started coming to Panwad for shelter. At 2.30 p.m. on March 10, Adivasis from neighbouring villages began gathering in Panwad. Then the attacks began. Local leaders — all non-Adivasis — were issuing orders. The police offered no protection to the Muslim families. Two trucks and six jeeps were parked in the police station compound for safe custody while five vehicles were stationed in front of the police station even before the trouble began. All these vehicles were burnt even as the police watched. Panwad's Muslims were forced to leave the village that day. When we visited the village on April 3, the devastation was shocking. The houses were all burnt and reduced to rubble after being looted. In the soot on what remained of the walls were slogans declaring "Hindustan" to be the land of the Hindus in abusive language. We were told that there were instructions from Kiritbhai Shah that nobody should take photographs without his consent and that there should be a written permit to do so. All the Hindu houses in Panwad had a small picture frame of Radha and Krishna possibly to identify them as Hindu houses.

Fifty-five houses were destroyed in Kadwal. The village mosque was razed to the ground and the books in it were burnt. "Jai Siya Ram" was inscribed on the ground among the debris. We met the Mukhia of Kadwal and some women from the village at the relief camp in Chhotaudepur. One woman said: "After the Sabarmati Express was burnt, we didn't sleep one night. Adivasis had been given money to do this eight days earlier. What do they know of the difference between a mandir and a masjid."

Kawant village has a population of approximately 10,000, of which 1,200 are Muslims. Although there was no trouble there initially, every day the pressure on the Adivasis of the village mounted with one or two families being attacked. On March 11, the police told the Muslim families that they must move to a safe place if they wanted protection and sent 900 of them to Bodeli town, 40 km away, with escort. The 300 Muslims who remained in the village were shifted to Baroda, 115 km away, on March 12. The looting went on for four days. The village mukhia (headman) told us that the police in Bodeli put pressure on them to leave because they felt they were creating problems. So 900 of them took off in different directions.

An Adivasi schoolteacher in Joj said: "Adivasis are innocent. They were given liquor and money and forced to participate in the arson. We later spoke to the Adivasis who took part. They said they had been used. There were young boys and men. No women. The women stood and wept silently, watching the destruction. One woman from the blacksmith community asked the rioters to stop the violence. Her house was also burnt down." Some of the Muslim families asked to leave had lived in the village for 38 years. The village sarpanch is an Adivasi member of the BJP. While we did find that Adivasis had in fact been involved in the looting and arson in large numbers, the people affected by the riots did not hold the Adivasis responsible for the violence. They also recognised that the Adivasis did not really have the choice of refusing and were threatened and coerced into participating in the arson by VHP activists supported actively by the police. Where in the country is it possible for Adivasis to muster up gallons of petrol, set fire to vehicles in the presence of the police and get away?

In the village hierarchy in this entire region, the Adivasis were the most disadvantaged and were to a great extent economically dependent on the Muslims, largely money lenders and traders. The goodwill between the two groups was largely one between patron and client and had an economic base that went back several decades. This, together with the traditional positioning of the Adivasi communities, leads us to clear patterns in the violence in the tribal areas. With one exception, no Muslim was killed in the violence in the region. The involvement of Adivasis was limited to economic crimes — looting and arson. No rape or assault on women were reported from these areas. Muslims in the relief camps were emphatic in their assertion that the Adivasis did not touch them. In the case of a woman named Bilkis, an Adivasi family offered shelter and gave her clothes to wear, while Hindus of her village allegedly raped and killed all the women in her family. In Panwad, while the Adivasis were responsible for arson, the affected people in the relief camp in Chhotaudepur named three non-Adivasi Hindus who gave orders during the looting. This was further borne out during our visit to the village when we were told quite menacingly that Kiritbhai (one of the three) had said that no photographs should be taken of the village. The person who accompanied us to the village and showed us the aftermath of the violence was an Adivasi activist from the village.

Against this history, the reasons for the turnabout by the Adivasis could have two facets. One, the relationship of economic dependence is a class relation that has the clear potential of being exploitative. And here the community identity of the person with economic power is largely irrelevant — the baniya and the Muslim moneylender fulfil identical needs in the village economy in an identical manner. This potential conflict can then be channelled in any direction. A very important trend in the mobilisation strategies of the Sangh Parivar that is critical to understanding the violence in Gujarat is the mobilisation of Dalits and Adivasis against Muslims and their recruitment into one or other of the organisations of the Sangh Parivar at the lowest level, paid and mobilised to attack Muslims in village after village.

That we have even allowed this poison to penetrate this deep is a matter of serious reflection for all democratic forces in the country. The situation in Gujarat foregrounds the urgency of forging a broad-based alliance that brings together all marginalised groups and the progressive political formations that mobilise these groups into Gujarat, because we need now, more than ever before, to find strength in numbers.

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