The unending struggle of Bastar adivasis

Conflict and displacement in Bastar leads to deprivation and forest loss in neighbouring Khammam

Around 43 families from the villages of Millampalli, Simalpenta, Raygudem, Darba and Singaram in Dantewada district, lost their makeshift homes for the second time in three months in the Mothe Reserve Forest of Khammam district of Andhra Pradesh on March 26, when the forest department, mandated to protect the forests, evicted them using force.

A large number of families are internally displaced persons who’ve escaped the Salwa Judum-Maoist conflict of Dantewada and have lived in Khammam as informal labour.

Most originated from Millampalli, that was burnt down by the Salwa Judum in 2006 and Maoists have killed at least three people — Sodi Dola, Komaram Muthaiya and Madkam Jogaiya in the past 10 years. Another resident of Millampalli, Dusaru Sodi, used to be a member of the Maoist Sangam but would eventually become a special police officer who witnesses from Tadmentla and Morpalli alleged was present during the burnings of the villages or Tadmetla, Morpalli and Timmapuram in March 2011 by security forces. His name again reappeared in testimonies by rape victims, submitted to the National Commission of Women and the Supreme Court by anthropologist Nandini Sundar.
Madvi Samaiya and Madvi Muthaiya from the village of Raygudem were also killed by the Maoists. In Simalpenta, the Sarpanch’s brother Kurra Anda was killed by the Maoists in 2006.In Singaram, an alleged encounter that took place on January 9, 2009, where 19 adivasis were killed by security forces as alleged Maoists.

In Khammam, most of the IDPs/migrants have worked as informal labour during the mircchi cutting season, earning around Rs100/day and live off their savings in the summer season when there is no work, and little access to water to a majority of the settlements. The Muria from Chhattisgarh, or the Gotti Koya as they are known in Andhra along with Koyas from Chhattisgarh, have been in a struggle to appropriate the reserve forest land of Khammam for podu cultivation, often leading the forest department to evict them, aware that the entire forest cover is turning into a ‘honeycomb,’ as described by the DFO Shafiullah, who pointed out to satellite imagery of a pockmarked forest in Khammam, back in 2010.

The influx of migrants and displaced persons has even led to conflicts with local adivasi Koya tribes over land and resources, sometimes leading to deadly clashes, like an incident in Mamallivaye in Aswapuram Mandal where the local Koya burned down the homes of the Gotti Koya, or in Kamantome settlement in 2009 where one man would be killed as a Maoist by the police after an erroneous tip-off from the neighbouring village of migrants who had settled before the civil war.

Recently, the forest survey of India, forest and environment ministry, published a controversial report that almost exonerated mining and land acquisition, and yet claimed that over 367 sq km of forest has been lost since 2009, pushing Khammam district to one of the worst affected districts where 182 sq km of forest cover have been lost.

In a recorded conversation between an activist and home minister P Chidambaram during the first months of Operation Green Hunt in late 2009, when repeated combing operations in Dantewada/Bijapur led to further influx of IDPs into Andhra Pradesh, the activist Himanshu Kumar had urged P Chidambaram to look into the plight of the IDPs and the migrants, yet his claims were refuted by the home minister as an exaggeration.

Yet there have been many recent reports of IDPs from the previously independently estimated 203 settlements who have returned to their villages owing to a decline in the frequency of combing operations and violent actions in their villages in Chhattisgarh and further difficulty to settle in AP. After the villages of Nendra, Lingagiri and Basaguda block were rehabilitated with the help of NGOs and activists using Supreme Court orders, many others have simply moved back to their villages on their own accord, including those of Kistaram, Uskowaya, Kanaiguda, Mullempanda, Gompad and Gaganpalli, to mention a few. Both Gompad, and Gaganpalli have faced a large number of killings — nine people were killed in Gompad on October 1, 2009 by security forces, and in the village of Gaganpalli, from where one of the leaders of the Salwa Judum originates, 10 people were killed in 2006 during the burning of the village by the Salwa Judum.

While the forest survey of India report 2011 has put the blame on leftwing extremists for massive deforestation in Khammam, the villages of Millampalli repeatedly exhorted and listed all the violent actions by the Maoists in their villages in Chhattisgarh. In fact, one of the most educated villagers of the settlement, Komaram Rajesh, is the brother of an SPO and has repeatedly claimed that the Salwa Judum didn’t oppress his people, often denying that his village was burnt down by the Salwa Judum, when the rest of his neighbours said it was indeed the Salwa Judum.
Beyond conflict with the forest department, other tribes, the Salwa Judum and the Maoists, another conflict takes place within settlements themselves where a growing tendency to cut down a large number of the forests for podu cultivation has brought individuals in conflict with their own villagers who feel there should be more moderate felling of trees. Certain settlements cultivate rice without cutting larger trees while others have destroyed acres of forests.

‘If we cut the entire forest down, where will we live?’ A man from Kamantome once exhorted during a summer season when there was little access to food, or water for the settlement. Ironically, in Millampalli, one of the men killed by the Maoists, Kumaram Muthaiya, was killed in 2002 because he refused to share his 70 acres of land with other villagers.

A Shrinking Space
Land alienation for the all the adivasi tribes of Khammam isn’t a new phenomena, and was adequately studied by late civil servant JM Girglani, who had commented in his report that, ‘The most atrocious violation of the Land Transfer Regulation and regulation 1 of 70 is that all the lands in Bhadrachalam Municipal town and the peripheral urbanised and urbanisable area is occupied by non-tribals with commercial buildings, hotels, residential buildings, colleges including an engineering college. The market value of this land on an average is Rs4,000/sq yard. This was confirmed to me not only by local enquiry but also by responsible district officers. This would work out to about Rs5,000 crore worth of land, which should have been the property of the tribals. It is now the property of the non-tribals and is commercially used by them.’

Just two kilometres away from land that was meant to belong to the adivasis, is the latest Koya settlement that was destroyed by the forest department. ‘They (the forest department) destroyed our homes in January, and in February, and they came in March and even took away all the wood we used to make our homes. Now, we will rebuild our homes and if they come again and destroy them, we will rebuild them again,’ said Komaram Rajesh of the village of Millampalli.

Villagers alleged that forest guards held them down and beat them on the soles of their feet, asking them why they had settled in the forest, and who had pointed them out to this patch of the forest. One man embarrassingly recollected in humour as his neighbours laughed, that one of the gaurds threatened him saying, ‘Ghaand mein mirrchi ghusa doonga.’

Officials would arrive a day later to convince all the Koyas, to leave the reserve forest but the residents protested. When the tractor arrived to carry away all the timber that was being used to make their homes, the adivasis willingly piled the timber onto the seat of the tractor, threatening to burn it down but refrained.

‘Even if they don’t let us settle here, we will manage somehow,’ said Komaram Rajesh.

The writer is a journalist