By targeting Justice Reddy over his 2011 Salwa Judum ruling, Shah ignores how the BJP’s vigilante experiment backfired and actually strengthened the Naxalites
Union Home Minister Amit Shah has predictably muddied the Vice-Presidential election waters by accusing joint Opposition nominee, B Sudershan Reddy, a former Supreme Court judge, of supporting Naxalism by ruling in 2011 against the appointment of Special Police Officers (SPOs) during the so-called Salwa Judum anti-Naxal movement between 2007 and 2011.
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Reddy was part of the SC bench that had delegitimised the practice of arming tribal youths to fight a vigilante war against Naxals by the then BJP government led by Raman Singh. The SC ruling had come on a petition by activist Nandini Sundar against Salwa Judum.
Flawed attack on Reddy
Shah’s accusation is indecent and crude insofar as he resorts to a completely wrong premise to target Reddy. Reddy's judgment as an SC judge cannot be used as a weapon to castigate him in the context of the Vice-Presidential election because it wasn’t his personal opinion. It was the outcome of the facts that came up before him during the hearing in the case.
But the BJP does not believe in observing scruples in anything that concerns politics and can always be expected to stoop to any low possible. What Shah claims is not only unscrupulous but also turns the facts on their head.
The facts were exactly to the contrary: it was the illegal Salwa Judum vigilante movement, sponsored by the then BJP government, that had helped strengthen the Naxalite movement in Chhattisgarh’s thickly wooded Bastar region, the fabled headquarters and virtual liberated zone of Maoist insurgents, generally reckoned as Naxalites.
Judum’s war on tribals
It was the Salwa Judum that had led to an unprecedented fratricidal war among tribals, resulting in the massive displacement of affected villages. Hundreds of security personnel, as well as innocent tribals, were killed in the Naxal-Judum crossfire, generating widespread resentment against Judum leaders and henchmen masquerading as activists and SPOs.
It was this writer who had chronicled the internecine tribal strife during the Judum days as a reporter for The Indian Express.
The scenes were straight out of a war zone, where thousands of ordinary tribals had to flee their villages. They were mostly pushed into life as detainees in their own land and had to suffer in silence in new, heavily guarded colonies called Judum camps that were set up along roads approachable for security forces.
Villages wore deserted looks, with only stray cattle huddling together in chaupals and a handful of older men and women staying back to fend for themselves.
Exploiting tribal fault lines
The underlying story of Salwa Judum was actually one of fratricide, triggered and sponsored by a state government that had abdicated its own responsibility to take on the Naxals and instead put poor tribals in harm’s way by pitting them against each other.
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Tribal society already had a latent fault line: the traditionally powerful tribes were resentful of the Naxals, who had virtually ended their traditional supremacy. Called Muriyas, the upper-crust tribals were quick to join the Judum ranks.
No wonder the Raman Singh government had found unlikely support then from the Opposition Congress, whose firebrand leader, Mahendra Karma, a Muriya tribal himself, was a vocal and active supporter of Judum.
Congress at the receiving end
As fate would have it, it was the Congress, not the BJP, that paid the heaviest price, with its entire top leadership, including Leader of Opposition Karma, former Chief Minister Vidyacharan Shukla, and state Congress president Nandkumar Patel, losing their lives in the infamous Jheeram Ghati massacre by Naxals who ambushed a party election convoy in May 2013.
And it was the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre, headed by Manmohan Singh with P Chidambaram as Home Minister, that had aided Judum by funding the SPO appointments.
The SC bench comprising Justice B Sudershan Reddy, after evaluating all the facts before it, had rightly ordered a halt to SPO appointments and the disbanding of vigilante violence in the name of the Salwa Judum movement.
How fraught the entire so-called movement was became clear with evidence from internal Naxal documents and intelligence reports, which revealed that the social disturbance created by Judum had prompted hundreds of tribal youths to join the Naxal ranks. Documents then put the number at about 500, giving Naxals a massive leg-up and pushing the entire anti-Naxal operations back by many years.
Different approach under Modi
The Modi government has since taken the fight seriously and used legitimate security apparatus, not vigilantism, to corner the Naxals and has succeeded in decisively crippling the movement.
They did draft tribal youths into the fight against Maoist rebels, but by following a strict legal regimen and not in the arbitrary manner resorted to during the Judum days.
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Bastar Fighters is one such elite force comprising youths, mainly tribals, which has made life hell for Naxals and pushed them into a corner where survival now seems difficult.
The Federal has highlighted in a series of ground reports the recent big successes of anti-Naxal operations in Bastar.
Shah needs to be told that the fight against Naxals could have succeeded earlier had his party restrained its penchant for unleashing vigilantism as a tool of governance.
It was the BJP’s ill-conceived Salwa Judum idea that delayed success against the Naxalites, not the SC judgement delivered by Reddy.
(The Federal seeks to present views and opinions from all sides of the spectrum. The information, ideas or opinions in the articles are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Federal.)
