Open Letter to Navin Jindal

[WRITTEN BY HIMANSHU KUMAR]

I just finished watching a few videos showing security forces mercilessly beating villagers in Orissa, along with some heart wrenching pictures of the attack. One of the pictures was of a year and a half old child with a broken foot, another of a seventy year old woman with her blood drenched face, and yet another of a tear stricken eighty year old man with blood oozing from his forehead. Another video shows a labourer lying on a hospital bed with his broken leg, moaning from an unbearable pain, and unable to work for next three months.

I was seized with uncontrollable anger and shame as I watched these videos. I was ashamed of myself that while all these atrocities were being perpetrated, I was powerless to stop them. And who was the target of my anger? This I will describe in this letter.

Mr Jindal, according to one survey, you are the richest person in this country. You make more than 66 crore rupees annually. That comes to more than 5 crore rupees per month. As per Government economists, any villager who earns more than Rs 28 per day is not considered poor. So according to the Government, your income is 66000 times the income of an average person above the poverty line.

I cannot believe that you are so much richer than a person earning Rs 28 a day because you work 66000 times harder. You acquired your ill-gotten wealth by robbing the indigents of this country of the resources hidden beneath their lands, and by selling them. Do you see any difference between a hood who knives and robs someone on the one hand, and you who rob the poor by shedding their blood, on the other? You may disagree, but the poor on whom you have unleashed such brutality with the help of police and local hoods, cannot see even an iota of difference.

The civilized urban dwellers of this country are awed by your patriotism because the Supreme Court of India, as per a case filed by you, passed a judgement according to which every citizen of this country can hoist the tricolour every day at his or her home. But do you think that people mercilessly beaten by your hoods would be enthused to hoist the tricolour when the police and the Government who swear by it forcibly acquire their lands, and anyone brave enough to ask for compensation is brutally beaten by your hoods, and the police stands by silently during this open and ferocious attack on the public ?

Mr Jindal, this tricolour is symbolic of the equality between you on the one hand, and the millions of poor people of this country, for whom you have nothing but contempt, on the other. You should be thankful that the indigents of this country are not aware of this powerful symbolism, or else they would have grabbed you by the collar, dragged you out from your palatial dwellings, beaten you and brought you to the police station where the station in charge would have thrown you in prison, had his oath to the tricolour been sincere. But, Mr Jindal, it is clear you insist on soaking this tricolour with the blood of innocent people. Don’t you dare to turn the tricolour red. Otherwise the poor will drench this tricolour in their own blood, fly it, and then stand you in a queue, where you will be forced to work all day like other poor people to earn a daily wage of Rs 28. You run a management college. Do your students know that a vast gulf separates what your college teaches, and the barbarism inherent in your own ‘management style’? Do the students of the Jindal Global Law School know how its founder routinely tramples upon and has complete contempt for Law and Constitution.

In order to intimidate and harass villagers demanding compensation, you entrap them in false cases in faraway provinces, so that no one would dare to raise their voice against you. Before every land grab, your hired goons brutally attack anyone who dares to raise their voice against you. You bribe the police who throw such activists in prison. Just a few days ago, the Chhattisgarh Hight Court filed a summons against you, but given the contempt your company has for the Law, it did not even accept the notice. How can they even dare to serve the court order, when it is your money that pays for all the police vehicles in the Raigadh district, and when it is your money that has built all the police stations? Do you also teach the Law students in your college such brilliant ways to circumvent the Law?

To facilitate land grab for your benefit, the Junglemahal region of West Bengal is now infested with Government troops*. These poor soldiers are now fighting against the poor people of the region resisting the armed might of the State. The poor are killing each other. When this brutal war is over, when the poor have killed each other to the last, and when you have seized their lands, you will sell the precious mineral wealth underneath these lands to foreign multinationals.
You may call this lawless looting business as usual. But your violent, brazen and shameless deeds are continuously stoking the anger of millions in this country. We will make every effort to channel this anger lest it dissipate, so that they can realize the ideals of equality, and social and economic justice which form the bedrock of our Constitution, and so that India becomes a real democracy rather than the pathetic caricature it has become, where the faux symbolism of the tricolour matters more than its meaning.

If, after reading this letter, you think that I am wrong, I am willing to engage in a public discussion with you on these issues.

By: Himanshu Kumar

[* The proposed steel plant in Salboni in the West Bengal Junglemahal is not being built by the Naveen Jindal group (Jindal Steel and Power) but by the Sajjan Jindal group (Jindal Steel Works). However, the nature of land-grabbing and dispossession of the peasants is the same, and even the laws pertaining to acquisition of adivasi land have been violated. – Ed]

‘Park Street Rape ‘ Inscident: Relevant Thoughts

After a woman was raped at midnight at Park Street of Kolkata on 5 February 2012, a ‘Blame the Victim’ theory had been going around over some state-sponsored news media. At first, the victim was harassed, offended and ill-treated by the police. Then on Wednesday (16 February, 2012) CM Mamata Banerjee said that the woman who had lodged the rape complaint with Park Street police station had “fabricated the story”. She said, “It was a fabricated story to malign the government.”

We can recall when Anita Dewan, an officer with the UNESCO, was brutally raped and murdered by a gang of CPI(M) goons at Bantala in the year 1990, then West Bengal’s former Chief Minister Jyoti Basu had remarked that such things occur so often.

There was also a denial about the involvement of CPI(M) ruffians in the rape and murder of Tapasi Malik at Singur. After the brutal rape and murder of Tapasi, CPI(M) state secretary Biman Bose and his party comrades blamed the victim and stated that “it was just a fabricated case against the CPI(M)”. Tapasi’s charred remains were recovered from the “Tata Nano factory site” in Singur on December 18, 2006. “We knew that both Suhrid Dutta and Debu Malik will get bail in Tapasi Malik murder case as the entire allegation was absolutely wrong. It was just a fabricated case against the CPI(M) duro to malign our image,” Biman Bose told reporters on February, 2009. (Surprisingly, that was quite similar to the statement of Mamata Banerjee on the Park street incident !).

But at that time, the opposition leader and TMC Chief Mamata told that the “CBI has been under pressure for some time now”. Has she forgotten that?

Even after so-called ‘Change’, regrettably Radharani Ari and other victims of Nandigram (allegedly raped and sexually abused) and many raped, injured and molested women have not got justice in Jangal Mahal, the location of the historic tribal movement and women’s resistance against the repression by the police, military and party cadres’ (both “Harmads” and “Bhairavs”).

Last year on 14th October, just one day before Mamata Banerjee made the speech in Jhargram, joint forces and police forces went to the house of Sushen Singha, a resident of village Shushnijobi, area Shimulpal under Belpahari PS to arrest him. At that time Shushen was not at home. The police and the joint forces found his wife Sibani Singha in the house and humiliated and raped her. Unable to bear such indignity, Shibani consumed poison to end her life. She was taken first to Belpahari Block health centre and then admitted to Jhargram hospital in an unconscious state. The Jhargram SP, Gaurav Sharma refused to hand over the medical report to the members of the victim’s family. Thanks to the efforts of the physicians, Shibani could regain her consciousness and on her complaints her family members registered an FIR at the Jhargram SP’s office when the Belpahari PS refused to do so on flimsy grounds.

Do we remember what Mamata Banerjee stated publicly then? She stated that “whenever the policemen entered into the villages for investigation, the charge of rape was leveled against them”. What did it imply? It implied that the state’s police forces can do whatever they like and that they would get protection from her side even if they molest or rape. Had she totally forgotten in the year 1998 she was dragged out of the Writers’ Buildings by the police forces under the previous left front regime for bringing the rape case of Champala Sardar to the fore?

Had she failed to recall what happened on 7 January 1993? Mamata Banerjee was then a Union Minister and youth Congress(I) leader in West Bengal. She went to the Writers’ Building with a hearing and speech-impaired girl, who had been raped and was pregnant. Mamata claimed that the rapist was a CPI(M) cadre. She led a 3 hour protest demonstration in front of the Chief Minister ’s chamber. Eventually she was violently thrown out and arrested, some members of the press manhandled, and the Press Corner demolished thereafter. Then Mamata Banerjee vowed she would never return to the Writers’ Building – And she returned only as Chief Minister, 18 years later. The rape victim gave birth to a child brought up in a Home.

On 12th January, 2012 Mamata Banerjee gave an award of Rs 500,000, named “Vivek Puroskar” in the name of Vivekananda, to 7 villages in Jangalmahal which according to her have “showed courage to resist the ‘Maoists’ and help the government bring back peace”. This was nothing but a direct attempt by the present government to encourage vigilantism of the “Salwa Judum” variety as these 7 villages are the places where the “Jana Jagaram Mancha” (locally called the Bhairab Bahini) organized by the TMC have established their strongest foothold. This organization that regularly terrorizes villagers by beatings, threats of false arrests and holding off access to developmental schemes, and forces them to act as informers for the security forces, has established itself in Jangalmahal with state patronage over the last 8 months. Interestingly, one of the villages in this list is Radhanagar, where the vigilante force was originally the CPI(M)’s harmad bahini, organized by the local CPI(M) leader Prasanta Das, who is one of the main accused in the Sonamukhi rapes. He is currently absconding. Remarkably, another village on the same list is Netai, where 9 villagers were killed by firing from another set of the same Harmads. It suggests that the TMC government has no problem in awarding both the ‘Harmads’ and the ‘victims of the Harmads’, as long as it dovetails with the states objective of bringing back “peace” to Jangalmahal. And Mamata has declared that there will be more such awards. We should remind ourselves that Salwa Judum also meant “peace hunt”.

This also reminds us that on Republic Day, Ankit Garg, a Chhattisgarh cadre police officer who is accused of sexually torturing Soni Sori, was awarded the Police Medal for Gallantry.

We can also remember, after Nandigram bloodbath, Lakshman Seth, CPI(M) MP said “We have broken the backbone of the inhabitants of Nandigram. There will be no further resistance there.” (Reported in Dainik Satesman, Kolkata, of April 27, 2008) Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee also showed no remorse over Nandigram carnage. On November 10, 2007 after another barbarous slaughter, when CPI(M) “liberated” the villages that were being controlled by the Bhoomi Uchhed Pratirodh Committee (BUPC) in Nandigram, Buddhadeb said in uncharacteristic defiance: “They (BUPC) have been paid back in their own coin.”

On April 5 2009, former CM Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee admitted on the floor of the Assembly that over 60,000 girls have been trafficked out of the state in just four short years (between January 1, 2005 and December 31, 2008). Out of this, 11,406 are minor girls and 18,681 are children, (i.e. below 10 years). But Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee refused to blame the police for this, and instead praised them for recovering 20,681 girls and children.

And now in spite of being the Chief Minister and the Home Minister of the State, without giving enough time for a thorough police investigation, Mamata Banerjee stated that the Park Street incident was contrived and intended to malign her government. The Minister of State for Transport and Sports, Mr. Madan Mitra, also made offensive public comments about the private lifestyle of the complainant and alleged that the complaint was fabricated to extort money. On 16th February, the present CM’s remark came minutes before police commissioner R K Pachnanda’s press conference where he said that police would “impartially” investigate the case.

Can we ever expect any “Impartial” investigation and “Impartial” judgment from such an atrocious, authoritarian, patriarchal and demonic state?

I am glad finally the victim girl won her battle after her commendable courageous and pertinacious fight for justice and the culprits involved in the Park Street rape case were found out and arrested.

But what about those rape victims and physically assaulted poor women in Jangal Mahal, Nandigram and Singur? Who will raise their voices of protest for protection of their women’s rights and dignity? When will those tortured and sexually abused women get justice? Why ‘Star Ananda’, ‘24 Ghanta’ and other news media who wholeheartedly supported the Anglo-Indian woman and pressurized the police and government to take legal actions are quite silent on rape and violence on poor women in Jangal Mahal? Who will protest against state’s war on people? Who will condemn the ongoing state terrorism in Jangal Mahal? Who will secure lives of those tribal and rural women?

The answer is blowin’ in the wind… …

By: Debashis
General Secretary, Rationalists’ and Humanists’ Forum of India