Sukma massacre has exposed the nationalists and pseudo-Naxalites

Another ambush, another score or more of CRPF jawans die and, once again, the Indian trolls crawl out of the rotting woodwork to spew venom on mythical straw enemies and show pseudo empathy for the slain jawans, all in the guise of self-regarding nationalism.

Do they know the castes and classes of these jawans? Do they plan to contribute to their families now that their sons have died? No. But will they bleat on about how saddened they are and how much they love the nation. Perhaps the question to ask is: why don’t they join the Indian Army and replace those jawans?

A similar question might be asked of the Naxalite supporters in their posh south Delhi houses crouched behind their computers in air-conditioned rooms or fiddling with Facebook in their air-conditioned foreign cars on their way to their posh houses. If they really have the balls, why don’t they drop it all and join the Naxalites in the jungles?

Perhaps the bleeding heart, fence-sitting liberals sad about the losses on both sides might be asked a similar question. Apart from asking them why they do not weep in public as they are doing now when adivasis are killed everyday by the state and its paramilitary forces, perhaps they should also be asked to put their money where their mouths are and go join both sides in shows of solidarity and support?

People actually doing work there, like Bela Bhatia inform us that they are as critical of Naxalite as of state violence. Bhatia, in the recent Shahid Azmi Memorial Lecture held in Delhi’s Indian Law Institute, upset all the pseudo-Naxalites in the largely south Delhi audience by giving us graphic accounts of Naxalite violence on adivasis that matched state violence on the adivasis.

The adivasis are the only people here no one is talking about because they do not appear to matter to anyone. Many of them are Naxalites and their identity as adivasis is wiped out just as the lower caste, often adivasi, identities of the jawans are also wiped out in the production of them just as jawans.

In this black-and-white fight between jawans and Naxalites, the real villain of the piece who has set them up against each other, and often against themselves, which is the state, is left off the hook.

We are asked by the bhakts and the liberal trolls alike to mourn these jawans in the language of the state, as jawans, not as lower caste, adivasi Indians.

Bhatia offered her account from a position so few Indians have, from that of a committed human rights worker working in the field and reporting atrocities on all sides, none of which are excusable.

Hers was not a position of neutrality or humanitarian work as pseudo-anthropologists working in conflict regions have taken. Her politics is with the adivasis whom the land belongs to and who are being oppressed by all the forces involved. Bhatia tends to romanticise the tribals. It is a common trap to fall into.

But the more important critique which is missing from the social media brouhaha on the killings, a critique Bhatia does not lose sight of, is that of the state. Why is state violence on the tribals okay?

Why are rapes, abductions, kidnappings, stabbings and murders everyday okay (and her accounts of these were chillingly everyday)?

Why is there no liberal outrage everyday? Only because the media does not report it? Or because we all secretly love our fascist state?

Or, most importantly, the lives of tribals (as with lower castes) do not matter to us in the march to “development”?

Also read: Before addressing Sukma attack, fix North Block to do justice to CRPF martyrs

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