In Bhagalpur, a boy is tied to a bike and dragged, while in Chhattisgarh, a new tribal army has displaced thousands. The law has given way to a new form of justice "" blind, brutal, unforgiving. |
When a boy in Bhagalpur snatched a gold chain, the people did not spare him. Though they never bothered to help when he and his sister, both orphans, grew up on hungry stomachs. |
Justice was done by tying him to a bike and dragging him on the streets. Last week, a school teacher, accused of pimping in a "suspect" sting operation by a TV channel, was beaten up by another mob in Delhi. |
That is mob justice, something that was done in the dark ages, say when people cried for the blood of Christ or Socrates. |
They are still doing it in Chhattisgarh's Bastar region, which is about as large as Kerala, and has dense forests and a population of less than eight lakh tribals. |
Tribals are fleeing the frenzy of the mob armies of Salwa Judum, the peace army that has emerged from the tribals themselves, with full backing of the government and the opposition. |
The Salwa Judum armies, armed with bows and arrows, and backed by Naga and Mizo troops along with the armed police recruits called special police officers, are Gandhian (according to Chief Minister Raman Singh) as they carry out their peace march (Salwa Judum) from village to village, rescuing tribals from Naxalites by taking them along. |
They follow the philosophy that if you are not with them, you are a Naxalite. Houses are burnt, livestock killed and eaten, women raped and their hair cut, men killed...these are the allegations by many of the villagers who have dared to come to New Delhi with social activists. |
The Bhagalpur chain snatcher's destiny is meted out to every single villager in the Dantewada and Bijapur districts who is not willing to join the Salwa Judum militia. |
About 50,000 tribals from 644 villages have been shifted to the relief camps through Salwa Judum-style rescue operations. About two lakh villagers from these areas are in hiding. |
The victims of such operations have been branded as Naxalites and are also in hiding. The Chhattisgarh government has washed its hands off these villages saying they are inaccessible. The other 700-odd villages of Dantewada that have been branded Naxal-hit have no communication with the outside world. People can't move out for the fear of being killed, either by Naxalites or by Salwa Judum. |
However, no one in the country is losing sleep over this suspension of human rights, though details like what an arrested film star had for dinner on his first day in jail is the lead story of the news bulletins. |
BD Sharma, who was the collector of the Dantewada district in 1968, says the governor of Chhattisgarh could easily use his power under the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution to report to the president. But Sharma, who is now part of a committee on Naxalites in the Planning Commission, says not a single governor since Independence has bothered to use this power. |
While political parties are ready to bring down the government over the nuclear deal for compromising the sovereignty of the nation, what use is such sovereignty if the most vulnerable people of this country have to hide in jungles and live on berries and burnt rice left over in their burnt houses raided in turns by Salwa Judum and Naxalites? Nuclear technology will at least give some electric power. |
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