It was summers of 2013. Three-years-old Radha Salam, a resident of Narayanpur district in the Bastar division of Chhattisgarh was going to Anganwadi with her five-years-old brother Ramu Salam. On their way, under a tamarind tree, they found an abandoned kettle. The curious minds didn’t know what was awaiting them. The moment they picked up the kettle, there was a blast. Neither Radha, nor Ramu could understand what was happening. In a blink of eye, they fell apart- far away from each other. They were screaming relentlessly. Their parents were nearby. They rushed and picked them up. Radha was taken to a hospital in Raipur. Treatment went on for seven months. But Radha lost her one eye. Till now, at her teenage, she struggles to see.
Radha is not the only one, 55 residents from Bastar region of Chhattisgarh today gathered at Constitution club of Delhi sharing their stories of sufferings from what they call ‘naxal attacks’. At least 17 of them lost their organs and turned disabled due to such attacks. “For the last 40 years, people of Bastar have been witnessing the naxal attacks. Many of them lost their lives, and rest of them have become incapacitated. We won’t let it happen anymore. We want peace,” says Jairam Das, one of the conveners of Bastar Shanti Samiti, an organisation that has taken the pledge to ‘break the silence of Bastar’.
The victims of the attacks organised a silent sit-in protest at Jantar Mantar on September 19 and thereafter met Home Minister Amit Shah. Shah assured them that Naxalism would be a matter of past in the next one or two years. It is to be noted that recently Shah during a press conference said that Naxalism in Chhattisgarh would be eradicated by 2026. He also asked the Naxals to lay down their arms or face action.
Bastar Shanti Samiti circulated a leaflet where they point out that between 1999 to 2019, Naxals have killed 8,216 villagers and took hostage of 1,608 people. It also mentions that in the last 24 years there have been 329 IED blasts due to which 91 people died.
However, their leaflet starts with the greeting ‘Ram, Ram! Johar!’ This is quite unusual given the intensity of Adivasi movement demanding separate religious identity in the census. In 2020, Jharkhand government passed the Sarna code bill and asked the centre to place it within the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution to avoid judicial scrutiny. The leaflet also notes that the Naxalites don’t let them worship their gods and ask them to revere Lenin, Karl Marx and Mao Tse-Tung.
On October 9, 2022, Siyaram Ramtheke, a farmer in his 40s from Bastar region was on his way to his farm land when a few Naxalites allegedly fired at him thrice. While he lay on the ground soaked in blood, they came and hurled stones at him till they felt that he had died. Ramtheke can’t walk now without support. Appealing to the people of Delhi and the media, he says, “We want the end of Naxalism. We have suffered enough.”
Interestingly, the documentary that was being played alongside emphasised how the Naxals have stalled the developmental works in the region. Das says, “For so many decades, there have been no development. They destroy schools and hospitals. And whenever the students want to go to schools, Naxals issue notification barring them from going.” This statement, nonetheless, echoes BJP’s stance on Maoism.
In 2010, through a press release, BJP said, “The Maoist Movement is aimed at the over-throw of India’s Parliamentary Democracy through the use of violence. Maoists survive and gain in an environment of poverty and backwardness. The Maoists through subversion are preventing development of the backward regions. Almost 200 districts of the country have a sizeable Maoist presence. The Maoist extort money from the people.”
