Mass Tribal Uprising in West Bengal

Novem­ber 18, 2008

What we are wit­ness­ing in the trib­al belt of West Ben­gal is [an] his­tor­i­cal moment. A long oppressed peo­ple have risen up and are dar­ing to con­front their oppres­sors and ques­tion the log­ic of “devel­op­ment” that destroys their lives and liveli­hoods.”

Novem­ber 18, 2008

What we are wit­ness­ing in the trib­al belt of West Ben­gal is [an] his­tor­i­cal moment. A long oppressed peo­ple have risen up and are dar­ing to con­front their oppres­sors and ques­tion the log­ic of “devel­op­ment” that destroys their lives and liveli­hoods.”

In what start­ed out as a protest against police bru­tal­i­ty, on Novem­ber 7 more than ten thou­sand San­thal men and women con­verged in the Indi­an state of West Ben­gal to demand the end to state oppres­sion and the con­stant dis­pos­ses­sion of their lands.

It is an his­toric moment for the trib­al peo­ples in the region — and one so unprece­dent­ed that author­i­ties are not even sure what to do about it.

“Even the polit­i­cal par­ties and civ­il soci­ety are at a loss try­ing to come to terms with what is hap­pen­ing,” says Partho Sarathi Ray, in Sanhati.com. “Noth­ing like this has been wit­nessed in West Ben­gal in liv­ing mem­o­ry.”

The upris­ing report­ed­ly began fol­low­ing a land mine explo­sion on Novem­ber 2, which tar­get­ed the state’s chief min­is­ter as well as the union steel and mines min­is­ter.

The two men were return­ing from the inau­gu­ra­tion of the Jin­dal Steel Works (JSW) spe­cial eco­nom­ic zone (SEZ) in West Mid­na­pore dis­trict. Approx­i­mate­ly 5000 acres of land had been acquired for JSW, the vast major­i­ty of which was sup­posed to be dis­trib­uted amongst the land­less Adi­va­sis (indige­nous peo­ple) in the region. The gov­ern­ment hand­ed it over to the com­pa­ny instead.

The explo­sion was prompt­ly blamed on the Maoist guer­ril­las — how­ev­er, in what has become a com­mon prac­tice in West Ben­gal, the police turned all of their atten­tion to the local indige­nous pop­u­la­tion for being “com­plic­it” in the attack.

Over the next few days, the police set out on a cam­paign to assault, harass and ran­dom­ly arrest any trib­al per­son they want­ed.

But it just wasn’t enough for the police, who hadn’t the slight­est clue who was behind the explo­sion. So, on Novem­ber 6 the police “… led by the offi­cer in charge of Lal­garh police sta­tion… unleashed a reign of ter­ror in 35 vil­lages encom­pass­ing the entire trib­al belt of Lal­garh,” explains Ray. “In raids through­out the night of Novem­ber 6th, women were bru­tal­ly kicked and beat­en up with lath­is and butts of guns. Among the injured, Chi­ta­mani Mur­mu, one of whose eyes was hit by a gun butt, and Pana­mani Hans­da, who was kicked on her chest and suf­fered mul­ti­ple frac­tures, had to [be] hos­pi­tal­ized. Chitamani’s lost her eye because of the injury. Eight oth­er women were bad­ly wound­ed. These police bru­tal­i­ties soon reached a point where the adi­va­sis had no oth­er option but to rise up in revolt,” Ray con­tin­ues.

The next day, “what began as rum­blings of protest took the shape of a spon­ta­neous mass upris­ing [of] ten thou­sand San­thal men and women, armed with tra­di­tion­al weapons, [who] came out and obstruct­ed the roads lead­ing to Lal­garh, dis­con­nect­ing it from Mid­na­pur and Banku­ra. Roads were dug up and tree trunks were placed on the road to obstruct the entry of police vehi­cles, in the same way as it had been done in Nandi­gram.”

Dur­ing the night, “peo­ple also dis­con­nect­ed tele­phone and elec­tric­i­ty lines, vir­tu­al­ly con­vert­ing a vast area into a lib­er­at­ed zone. The apex social orga­ni­za­tion of the San­thals, the Bharat Jakat Majhi Mad­wa Juan Gaon­ta took up the lead­er­ship of the strug­gle, although the leader of the orga­ni­za­tion, the “Disham Majhi” Nityanan­da Hem­bram has him­self admit­ted that the orga­ni­za­tion has no con­trol over the move­ment; rather the move­ment is con­trol­ling the orga­ni­za­tion.”

As for the gov­ern­ment, which has “not dared to respond with overt vio­lence yet”, is help­less in the face of this upsurge. They’ve been try­ing to nego­ti­ate, but the effort has so far been fruit­less due to the demo­c­ra­t­ic and decen­tral­ized nature of the upris­ing. They sim­ply can’t exert any influ­ence over the indige­nous peo­ple.

They way things look right now, the gov­ern­ment may have no choice but to con­cede.

Reports on Sanhati

Mainstream Reports