Chhattisgarh’s Samajik Ekta Manch was Salwa Judum reloaded

The dissolution of Samajik Ekta Manch, day after India Today special investigation team led by TVTN managing editor Rahul Kanwal showed senior policemen of Bastar flaunting on camera their close ties with the vigilante group, is certainly a piece of news to cheer for.

After months of harassment, intimidation and threats meted out to journalists, human rights activists and lawyers by the Manch members – a motley group of local youth leaders in cahoots with the state police – its formal disbanding will surely give temporary relief to those at the receiving end of the group.

For a local “theatre group” formed barely six months back in late 2015, Samajik Ekta Manch, until its “dissolution” today, has been the “local” face of the so-called “anti-Maoist” operations in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar region, which, as several reports suggest, have of late seen a sudden spike under SP Kalluri (Inspector General, Bastar Range).

Also read: You're a Maoist in Bastar if you dare to oppose the State

However, in the guise of hounding out Maoists, what the Manch really did was to harass and threaten journalists, activists and lawyers reporting on or protesting the rampant human rights violations by the state police or the big mining companies with an eye on the mineral-rich adivasi belts.

The most prominent name that faced constant intimidation from the Manch was Malini Subramaniam, former regional head of the humanitarian body Red Cross and a regular contributor for Scroll.in. Subramaniam was branded a Naxal sympathiser, threatened on WhatsApp, her car and house were damaged by heavy stone-pelting, and ultimately, was forced to leave Jagdalpur, the town in Bastar she had been living and reporting from for almost four years.

Also read: 5 reasons why Chhattisgarh is becoming a police state

Bela Bhatia, noted human rights activist and the partner of renowned economist Jean Dreze, was also harassed and asked to leave Bastar. Hindi language journalists – Prabhat Singh and Deepak Jaiswal, who were reporting on police atrocities in the region – were arrested on flimsy grounds in March this year. In 2015, Somaru Nag and Santosh Yadav were put behind bars in a similar manner because they were digging out inconvenient truths about how Bastar cops were faking Maoist surrenders by passing off adivasis and other locals as Naxals.

On February 22, activist and Aam Aadmi Party member Soni Sori was attacked with a grease-like corrosive substance that left severe chemical burns on her face and compromised her vision.

Behind it all, the names of Samajik Ekta Manch members cropped up every time. The similarities with the outlawed Salwa Judum, the Mahendra Karma-led militia aimed at “countering Naxal violence” just could not be ignored any more.

While reports have been trickling in underlining the police-vigilante circuit of mutual facilitation, it was not until the India Today exposé that senior policemen in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar, Jagdalpur, Sukma and Dantewada, were caught on camera boasting about their links to Samajik Ekta Manch.

D Shravan, superintendent of police, Sukma, said on record: "The police did not start the Samajik Ekta Manch but we facilitate the Samajik Ekta Manch. Earlier, we used to have a dance troupe which used to go around creating awareness.”

But the biggest and gravest confession came from Subbarao, the founder of Samajik Ekta Manch, who openly admitted that the Manch has pretty tried filling the void left by Salwa Judum’s dissolution.

“Earlier, there was the Salwa Judum. We don't know what kind of an organisation it was. We were not involved. We do not know if they did something wrong. But the Supreme Court decided to ban the Salwa Judum. So, we are now working on a new strategy. We have started not just one Samajik Ekta Manch but many other organisations too. In case one gets banned then we have the Mahila Ekta Manch, if that gets banned then we have the Adivasi Ekta Manch. Also, the Vikas Sangharsh Samiti and so on," he said to India Today’s special investigation team.

It is obvious from Subbarao’s admission that disbanding Samajik Ekta Manch alone wouldn’t suffice since its clones are being spawned in every district of the Chhattisgarh “red corridor”. Much like under Salwa Judum, whose deployment as part of anti-insurgency operations in 2006-11, until it was deemed illegal and unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of India, locals and adivasis are falling through the cracks between rogue vigilantism egged on by the police state and the hardcore, armed Maoists.

The upswing in anti-Naxal police operations under IG Kalluri has been criticised by human rights activists as a false parade of lining up many an innocent villager and adivasi of Bastar and Dantewada. Samajik Ekta Manch served as an informal political extension of that brutal police apparatus.

Now that it has been dissolved, the focus should rightfully shift to its identical twins.