Celebrating

Peoples Resistances While Forging New Alliances

PSA GET TOGETHER OF ACTIVISTS, ACTION GROUPS & MOVEMENTS Gandhamardan ODISHA November 7 - 9, 2011

PHOTOGRAPHING HISTORY AND TRYING TO CHANGE IT

Xavier Dias1 When I think of PSA (Programme for Social Action), I think of the days of the Emergency promulgated by the Indian National Congress Party under the leadership of the then Prime Minister Smt. Indira Gandhi (25 June 1975 21 March 1977). When I think of the Emergency, I think of it recollecting the social, political and economic conditions the common people of India lived in. When I think of the situation during those decades, I think of the response of the common people: the thousand of workers strikes, the student militant movements, the Naxalbari movement, and the underground networking that perforce took place. Within that larger political spectrum, a small speck of social action emerged and grew to become the PSA fellowship, of which I am proud to belong and proud to be one among all of you at our gathering even though physically absent. What were those difficult times? One winter day in 1976 during the infamous Emergency I was at the Dongo Posi railway station, in Singhbhum District of then Bihar and now Jharkhand State. Dongo Posi is on the Tata Gua branch railway line, built essentially for the transport of iron ore and limestone from the big
1 reachxdias@gmail.com

mines in the World famous Saranda rain forest2 to the Steel plants in Jamshedpur, Durgapur. Today it serves not only Bokaro but also steel plants in Korea and China. It is the single highest earning line for the Indian Railways. On the day in 1976 when I stood there the Railways were receiving revenue of Rs. 7.5 million (75 lakhs) per day. On that day I boarded the rickety passenger train at Dongo Posi for Chaibasa, as it was picking up speed I saw a woman carrying a heavy basket of coal chased by the Railway Police. She tried to board the train but the policeman kept pulling her out; as a result she fell below and was cut into two by the wheels of the train. She was in the final stages of pregnancy. She did not have the six paise or one anna3 to bribe the police and so he was preventing her from boarding the train. She was an Oraon Adivasi from Marytola Chaibasa town living in a basti/shanty of Adivasis. For the purpose of this paper l call her Khunti Oraon Dongo Posi Railway Division was serving all the steam engines on that route. Which meant that not only were there dumps of coal all around, but the railway tracks were lined with half burnt bits of coal. Coal at that time was a very important source of fuel for Industry as well as domestic use. Together with Kerosene oil and firewood it was the only available fuel for domestic cooking. Firewood was what village people used, but people in small towns and cities like Jamshedpur depended on coal. The rich or better off used kerosene oil. The working classes and poor all used coal to cook their food. Since the government coal depots/shops rarely functioned, there was always a shortage. A shortage of any commodity means an underground or parallel market. The common term for this market is black-market but we should desist using this term black as then people of black colour too are considered as crooks. When there is a shortage of any essential household needs, the business community people see it as an opportunity for good business. For, they hoard the commodity and keep the prices high. While keeping the prices high they also will do all they can to get their stock from any place; mostly illegally. As coal dumps existed in Dongo Posi it became a good source for them to get free coal. The business community would gather the poorest of the poor, mostly women and children, send them to Dongo Posi in the night from where they would collect the coal along the tracks or steal it from the Railway dumps; then take it by the local train to the shops of the business community. From where do they find such cheap labour to do this risky work? It was not that difficult. After Independence 1947, the government introduced the Five Year Plans, under what Economist called a mixed economy. That was a Public as well as Private Sector operating side by side, both working for National Development. The Public Sector would build the projects that the Private Sector did not have the money for. Building Steel Plants and opening mines was a part of this Public Sector plan. Bokaro, Rourkela, Bhillai Steel Plants were all part of this five year plan. For these Steel plants they needed vast tracks of land, forest material, water, cheap labour. As iron
2 At that time the Saranda forest was the worlds largest Oak/Sal forest in the world. In just two

decades it has become the highest concentration of mining companies created moon craters with forest and all the flora and fauna completely destroyed.
3 100 paisa makes a Rupee. Anna was a lower measure of money between the paisa and the

Rupee

ore, limestone and coal were all found in the regions of Jharkhand, Odisha and Chhattisgarh this region was chosen for all these Steel Plants. Please note that the country chose the path of the mixed economy because the Private Sector did not have the money to build such big projects. So the Public Sector was created for this purpose. But the Public Sector too did not have that amount of money to put invest. How did they then manage? They build this Sector by stealing all the land from the people of these regions to build the plants, the townships, the mines, and the transportation systems. Which means the State spent a part of the cost the rest was the sacrifice of the Adivasi people. So the actual composition of mixed economy should be Public Sector Private Sector - Adivasi Sector. What this country has never acknowledged is that the Adivasis as a community, in terms of land, minerals, forest produce, almost no-cost labour, have been the single largest contributor to the National Development. While the House of Tatas are given credit for National Development the Adivasi contribution is never acknowledged or even comprehended. Similarly it is never talked about that the House of Tatas created their wealth by usurping and expropriating it from these Adivasi communities. Before the Tata Sons built the steel plant in Jamshedpur, they were labour suppliers to the British. Here too supplying Warli Adivasi labour to construct the Bombay Pune treacherous railway track. Besides labour suppliers they were supplies of Opium to the British who used it to drug the Chinese rulers and colonies Chinese trade. Millions of Adivasis were forcibly evicted and overnight thrown on the streets of our cities as refugees. After reaching the streets of the cities they were further exploited by the business communities who engaged them to do different jobs like pilfering the coal from the depots of Dongo Posi Railway station. These refugees in their own homeland were forced into such slave labour for if they did not do it they would starve to death. Remember this coal gathering work gave them enough to meet their food needs just to survive. Most of them any way died/die of curable illnesses or from slow starvation. Khunti Oraon was one among these forced refugees. She and her group of women and children would each collect about a basket of coal, wash it and then load it on the train. The money they received for this basket of coal was so little that they could not afford the railway ticket. Here is when the railway staff would come in to get their share of the loot. Thus they had to pay the Railway Police and the Ticket Collector money in order to travel without a ticket. Every day an Emergency day This ghastly incident though it happened during the Emergency was not because of the Emergency. Such criminal exploitation of the very poor was something very common; at least in that part of the world we call Jharkhand today. If the claim was true that all human beings are equal in a democracy then in the first place Kunti Oraon should not have been picking coal but having a better life in her ancestral village or a salaried life in one of the Steel plants, her family gave their land for. Not only was she denied this, but her family could not exercise their right to file a police case. If her family had even approached the law for justice you would be sure that her husband or father or any one arbitrating on their behalf would be punished if not bumped off by the same police. Khunti Oraon and her community were not starving or poor people. They were forced into poverty. From self-sufficient forest dwellers and family farmers they were thrown into begging and pilfering of coal just to get enough food for a half-life. So while on paper there was a law to protect them, in reality the State and the ruling classes denied them the access to that law. In

short but very true these people were born and continued to live in a State of perpetual Emergency. Thus the Adivasi peoples, the Dalit peoples and the toiling labouring classes had no excess to civil liberties even before the Emergency. This fact is often omitted when reporting or talking about the Emergency. I have given as an example of an individual Khunti Oraon. But it is important to note that the Adivasi peoples (and Dalit people in other parts of India) built organisations that resisted the plunder of their lands and forest. But these organisations too were denied the same right to association as working class and middle class organisations and therefore these organisations and associations too came under the draconian perpetual Emergency syndrome. It is interesting to note that when the ruling classes denies or limits civil liberties to certain sections of societies, it is not because they love them less. The ruling class is a very clever and cunning animal. From the sections of society that it has to extract the most, is gives to them the least (civil liberties). Since Adivasi peoples are owners of minerals, forest, other natural resources and since they constitute the bulk of very cheap labour they are consciously denied by the State their constitutional rights/civil liberties. We see this in the functioning of the present judiciary system right through all the courts. Take the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act. In the mineral exporting regions of this country the Act is not even accessible to the SC and ST victims. The ruling class follows the same line or logic as ancient feudal Indian societies from where the caste system emerged and from where Dalit peoples were treated as less human. In short what the ruling class is saying is that we will let you enjoy some of your rights as citizens if you let us increase what we are looting from you. Until then its an Emergency 365 degrees for you. The Dalit peoples and the Adivasi peoples constitute over 50%4 of the Indian population. Which meant that the State had/has the power to deny 50% of its population the benefits of law. The State could rule over them in the same way as slave-masters ruled over slaves. Having tasted such free welding power the State wanted more. It therefore sought more and more power over bigger and larger sections of its population that gave it the brilliant idea of extending the de facto Emergency existing on 50% of its population, to the next in the line, the working classes and the middle classes. By doing so during that period 25 June 1975 21 March 1977 of the Official Emergency, citizens and organisations or associations of the middle classes, all became Khunti Oraons in some way or the other. Under the tyranny of the Official Emergency, the middle classes now felt the pain of the same stick that beat and killed thousands of the deprived sections of our society. This in a way made some of the middle classes realise that neither were they the first nor were they alone in their oppression. In short this period gave the middle classes an opportunity to discover the Adivasi and the Dalit as fellow oppressed people. Even though it will take some more decades or could be even a century for the middle classes to realise the full caste and ethnic biases ingrained in their own culture and develop a better political consciousness about these biases. It was this realisation among us the middle classes that caused a few among us to go into the Dalit and Adivasi communities and identify and understand their problems. The world at that time was in a political ferment. The revolution in China and the Red book of Mao asking youth to go to the villages to learn from the peasantry. The Viet Nam War, a revolt
4 The accurate figure is much more than 50%

against a Dictator in Philippines, use of the Army and CIA to put down mass rebellions in almost all the Latin American countries, the Cuban revolution etc. etc. That period of the 1960s and the 1970s was very similar to what is happening today globally. While being similar there was also some differences. I would like to point out some of these differences so that at this PSA get-together you all can take note of them. If we do not recognise these similarities and differences then we may be forced to repeat our mistakes, which will be a colossal loss and set back to the revolutionary process. It is too big a topic to be covered in this paper but I will try to summarise it. While it was rampant poverty and exploitation that was the main driver of those movements the masses then rose up against the ruling classes not only for roti or bread but also for izzat (respect). They were able to identify the enemy punjipati (Capitalist) Tata-Birla America Samarajwad (US Imperialism). From Latin America to South Africa to Philippines the slogans were all one and identifiable. Secondly, their demands too were all one, identifiable and achievable. Punjawadi jayega aur Samajwadi ayega (Capitalism will go and Socialism will come). Today the debate on Socialism has been distorted and Socialism now is badnam (a bad word). First and foremost the fall of the USSR and all the East European Socialist countries was largely shown as proof of the failure of Socialism when in my opinion it was not. They fell because their variety of Socialism was wrong. Secondly the Socialist Republic of China gave up Socialism and took the Capitalist path to development. Today China is considered not only a capitalist State but also a State where Socialism failed and Capitalism has succeeded. In the above debate not a word was said about the failure of capitalism in its own Mecca the USA. Where there is more poverty in the USA than in Cuba. The result of the above faulty understanding of history created a badnam (bad name) for Socialism. The important study and analysis on the philosophy of Capitalism, where it is proved beyond doubt that for Capitalism to succeed in one place it needs to create poverty in another is just forgotten. For example for the cities like Mumbai, Delhi or London to develop we have to loot from Jharkhand and therefore it become essential that places like Jharkhand have got to be destroyed. Secondly it is proved beyond doubt that the aim of Capitalism is not the welfare of society or social relations but to make money or profit for a few. The full debate on Capitalism and Socialism has been switched off from our lives. Social activist in India are more eager to protect trees. Protecting trees and the environment is very important today. At a PSA workshop in Ranchi in 1992 we made an important statement that I would like to remind you of. The activist there asked a question. We are the Adivasi communities who have for centuries been protecting the forest and environment and are even now prepared to save it for tomorrows world. But remember our todays world is being destroyed by you and with it our society too is being destroyed. Therefore tell us What is the place we will have in your tomorrows world? Do we have a place in it? OR Do you want us to save our forest so that you will have assured timber for your cities and industries in the next century? This raises the important question: what kind of a political system are we wanting? Will it be a system where each human being has the same izzat/respect as the other?

Will it be a system that gives all life the same izzat? An Izzat where a small section of people do not loot from the larger section of people by denying them their civil liberties? Till then let us remember that for 50% of our population the Emergency continues. 2011: HAS THE EMERGENCY BEEN LIFTED? If you stand on Dongo Posi Railway station today you may probably not see coal pickers. The Railways now use only Diesel and Election traction. You would see a number of our Adivasi family members with cell phones, wearing the latest clothes from Fashion Street Mumbai. You will see plenty of private cars and hundreds of two wheelers. There is a Jan Shatabadi Super Fast train coming from Howrah running on this route each day. In the AC Chair compartment you will often see Chinese, Korean and other peoples of the world. In fact if you are a little watchful as the train halts on the Tatanagar Railway station in Jamshedpur, you will see a well dressed waiter enter the AC Chair car with packets of specially prepared Korean and Chinese food for those special passengers. So here comes the No1 Crorepati question: Has the life of the Adivasi and Dalit people improved since the day in 1976 when Khunti Oraon was killed? We have to be very careful in understanding this question. For if our answer to the question is NO then it means that Adivasis want or should be given more cell phones, fast trains, cars and washing machines. AND If our answer to it is YES it means that the permanent and perpetual Emergency that I talked about in the above paragraphs on the Adivasi people has been lifted, because we have decided to let them loot more and more from us. The most important point in this discussion is who has framed this question? Does this question reflect the correct aspirations of the Adivasi Peoples? The questions the Jharkhand Movement has been asking for decades are: 1. Stop looting our rotti kappada aur makkan (bread, shelter & cloathes). Has the State and the bourgeoisie respected this? 2. Jal jungle kaneej jamin hamara hai. ( Land, Forest, Water & Minerals are ours) Has this been realised? 3. Right to a distinct Culture, Identity, Economy and Homeland. Has this been realised? If Adivasis want more cars, fast trains, cell phones, washing machines then give up these above three demands and I am very sure they will give you not only more cell phones and washing machines but aeroplanes too. Without the minerals from Jharkhand not only India, but also the

economic growth of even China will be troubled. So what they are giving the people today in the form of gadgets and technology is actually a bait to extract more and more from the commons of these people. Concluding Point In the later part of this paper I have given the examples of the Adivasi peoples only. This is because the Adivasi Peoples of Jharkhand has been very clear in their demands from the movements of their ancestors 300+ years ago as well as today. Other sections of Indian society have got to learn from the experiences of the Adivasi peoples of Jharkhand. The other sections of Indian society especially the Dalit peoples, the toiling classes of India have got to rethink their main political ideological positions. Our movements if they want to make any political gains have got to develop clear aims and objectives. These aims and objectives have got to be explained within a political framework. They have got to create a mass-thinking people. For this they have got to network with one another and create alliances, relationships etc. I welcome the theme of this years PSA gathering and I hope it will forge the way. If we all realise that the ruling class has a plan, a very clear plan, to extract more and more from us. Be it our cheap labour, or natural resources or want us to become consumers of their products (Market). Their plan is to extract it in order to convert it into money/profit. We must realise this clearly that we the common people are not the aim of their plan. We are in fact the product they are selling. They are actually selling us along with all that we own. In 2007 the members of Jharkhand Mines Area Coordination Committee JMACC (www.firstpeoplesfirst.in) gave this slogan to their members:

THINK DEEPLY OR DIE SLOWLY

I think it is more relevant today as it was then. November 2011