Flawed verdict on Salwa Judum
Chandan Mitra
India's battle against Maoist predators has been undermined by the Supreme Court order on Chhattisgarh's innovative scheme to mobilise tribals against Red Terror
Judicial activism is a double-edged sword. While one of its ends is dangling menacingly over the heads of the corrupt, the other threatens many who have courageously confronted anti-national elements. My reference is to the hapless SPOs and others in Chhattisgarh who braved Maoist depredations to try and bring back law and order, peace and prosperity to the troubled State. No doubt, the higher judiciary has intervened effectively to tighten the noose on venal politicians and their bureaucratic acolytes in the 2G spectrum and CWG scams but for which the culprits would have got away. The UPA Government, which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh rightly admitted is being widely called the “most corrupt Government in India’s history”, did everything in its power to protect the guilty in the succession of scams that have rocked India recently. Had the Supreme Court not arrogated to itself the authority to supervise CBI investigations into these, those mind-boggling swindles may well have gone unpunished. Further, its unrelenting pressure on enforcement agencies to probe black money stashed abroad has finally lent a sense of urgency to the hitherto half-hearted investigations.
These steps have enhanced the prestige of the judiciary as the one pillar of the state that can be depended upon to preserve and protect the principle of accountability in Government. Of all the estates of democracy, the judiciary and to some extent the media are seen as instruments of popular will that won’t succumb to temptations of power and pelf. The credibility of the courts is at an all-time high among the opinion-making middle class, although the corruptibility of the lower judiciary is an admitted fact; even Supreme Court judges frankly acknowledge this. As a general principle, responsibility must accompany credibility. The more people repose their trust in an institution, the greater is the burden on that institution to act in an infallible way. But the flawed judgement of the apex court in the Salwa Judum case last week only reinforces BJP leader Arun Jaitley’s recent observation that despite being the final word on an issue, the Supreme Court is not infallible.
It is not necessary to furnish statistics to underline the seriousness of the Maoist threat to freedom and democracy, particularly in thickly forested, tribal-dominated parts of India. Nearly 160 districts out of 602 have been officially categorised as “Naxalite infested” and over the last decade almost as many security personnel have been butchered by the bloodthirsty terrorists. Of course, needless to add, more innocent civilians have been slain than the combined tally of terrorists and policemen. Maoists, whose declared objective is to overthrow the Indian state and establish a tyrannical, single-party regime, have wreaked havoc on the heart of India, especially remote districts in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, with peripheral activities in Odisha, West Bengal, Bihar and Maharashtra. Unfortunately for the country, these butchers enjoy a degree of legitimacy thanks to their over-ground urban propagandists, a group that includes JNU intellectuals, mediapersons, academics, cultural activists and other so-called civil society celebrities. Hard-core terrorist backers like Binayak Sen have become their cause celebre and, presumably influenced by the high-decible campaign, the courts have now let him out only to be grabbed by an opportunistic Government, which has bestowed a Planning Commission role upon the doctor.
The same high-decibel campaign against the innovative and successful Salwa Judum construct in Chhattisgarh appears to have played a role in the Supreme Court’s bewildering classification of the movement as “unconstitutional”. Tribal communities of Chhattisgarh’s Bastar region, driven to desperation by Maoist demands on their produce, hospitality, young men, women and everything else they held dear, bonded together to seek official protection. They also vowed to combat the merciless merchants of mass murder and sought arms from the Government. Mr Mahendra Karma, a Congress leader of Bastar, himself of tribal origin, initiated the move, which the BJP State Government headed by Mr Raman Singh decided to back. Tribal people were asked to move into protected clusters, guarded by their own youth and accompanied by security forces to their fields during the day so they could carry on their farming activities. Naxalite depredations, however, did not stop. The terrorists realised soon enough that if the voluntary movement gained more popularity, their safe havens would get liquidated. So they mounted a counter-offensive to demonise Salwa Judum in print, on TV, in courts and with European Union jholawallahs.
It is not my intention to suggest that their Lordships acted out of ignorance in declaring this mass movement “unconstitutional” and harangued the State Government for converting innocent tribals into armed vigilantes, but I do wish the judges had travelled to Bastar to acquaint themselves with the ground reality before passing this draconian order. By instructing the Chhattisgarh Government to “cease and desist” recruiting volunteers and, in effect, disbanding the cadre of Special Police Officers who are paid a stipend of Rs 3,000 per month, the apex court has pushed tribal SPOs to the brink of penury and starvation. Worse, the disarmed SPOs now face a frightful future for they will be picked up one by one by the vengeful Maoists and probably hacked to death before terrorised village assemblies. The State’s security forces will lose their main conduit of information about the movement of Maoist guerrillas; massacres like the one involving 73 CRPF personnel last year will surely multiply.
Miscomprehension of the Salwa Judum project and the success it registered in mobilising large sections of tribal people against Maoists may have led the learned judges of the apex court to reach conclusions not quite warranted by the ground reality. Their lordships have also commented adversely on what they call “neo-liberal” economic policies of the Government, blaming this for the growth of Maoist ideas. While entitled to their opinion, I must respectfully submit that the Government’s choice of economic policy, neo-liberal or otherwise, does not come within the judiciary’s domain. Even former Attorney-General Soli Sorabjee, while defending judicial activism, made a similar observation during a TV discussion last Thursday.
The directive to the CBI to probe the alleged attack on Swami Agnivesh, whose record in championing various causes leaves much to be desired, is also peculiar. If angry tribal people objected to the Arya Samaj leader’s visit because they feared it would embolden Maoists, they were within their rights to do so although recourse to violence was not justified. But such protests are routine in India and it is surprising that the Supreme Court thought it fit to take the matter so seriously, while it did not spare a thought for the hundreds of innocent civilians and security forces personnel who have been done to death by persons guilty of waging war against the lawfully constituted state of India. I can only recall what former Prime Minister Narasimha Rao once said in utter dismay: “It seems in India only terrorists have human rights”. My Lords, I rest my case.
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