Over the last few years, India has made much news on the global stage for its impressive economic growth rates and its “shining democracy” (a campaign slogan from the 1990s that sits well among ruling classes and a shrinking middle-class even today). However, like all shining images, this one too wears thin quickly when one is able to discern the growth of inequality, the fact that India ranks 94 / 119 on the Global hunger Index (of 2009) and has 27% of the world’s undernourished population while boasting of billionaires every year added to the list.

The following is a statement of appeal to the Government of India put out by a progressive group in the US, Sanhati that is a deeply concerned and superbly informed document offering a glimpse into the realities of India. The kind of violence that is unleashed by the Indian state on the pretext of quelling mass uprisings that have themselves become armed movements over time reminds me of Bishop Dom Helder Camara’s powerful insights in 1970s from northeast Brazil on the Spiral of Violence — where he spoke of three violences — violence of poverty and dependent development (Violence 1), armed violence of resistance of the poor and those acting on their behalf (Violence 2) and the crushing violence of the state to suppress this resistance (Violence 3). Not surprisingly, India’s aboriginal population of more than 75 million is at the receiving end of this state violence that brings the state and capital directly into conflict with the welfare of citizens.

Please view the Sanhati “Statement Against Government of India’s Planned Military Offensive in Adivasi populated regions” and share with your friends.

Peace

Murli

Editor’s Note: I would urge anyone who is interested in India or democracy to read the document Murli links to here. I had no idea about it at all. When we decided to feature this as one of the posts of the week, we thought it worth adding some quotes from the Sanhati document to whet your appetite for reading it in full:

It has been widely reported in the press that the Indian government is planning an unprecedented military offensive against alleged Maoist rebels, using paramilitary and counter-insurgency forces, possibly the Indian Armed Forces and even the Indian Air Force. This military operation is going to be carried out in the forested and semi-forested rural areas of the states of Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand,West Bengal and Maharashtra, populated mainly by the tribal (indigenous) people of India. Reportedly, the offensive has been planned in consultation with US counter-insurgency agencies….

The proposed armed offensive will not only aggravate the poverty, hunger, humiliation and insecurity of the adivasi people, but also spread it over a larger region. Grinding poverty and abysmal living conditions that has been the lot of India’s adivasi population has been complemented by increasing state violence since the neoliberal turn in the policy framework of the Indian state in the early 1990s. Whatever little access the poor had to forests, land, rivers, common pastures, village tanks and other common property resources has come under increasing attack by the Indian state in the guise of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) and other “development” projects related to mining, industrial development, Information Technology parks, etc….

We feel that it would deliver a crippling blow to Indian democracy if the government tries to subjugate its own people militarily without addressing their grievances.