If Gandhi were alive today, he’d be in a jail in Dantewada: Himanshu Kumar

Gandhian Himanshu Kumar’s father lived with Mahatma Gandhi in Sewagram, and traveled across the country with Vinoba Bhave as part of the Bhoodan Movement. In 1992, at the age of 27, a young and newly married Kumar decided to follow Gandhi’s advice to the youth of independent India: go and live in the villages and work for the poor.

So he came to the remote adivasi district of Dantewada and set up the Vanvasi Chetna Ashram (VCA). The VCA offered elementary education, community health service, and advocacy for adivasi rights.

After the emergence of the Salwa Judum campaign against the Maoists in 2005, the VCA began offering legal aid to the adivasis. Till date Kumar has filed more than 600 cases against the state police and the state-backed Salwa Judum. In May last year, the Chhattisgarh government demolished his ashram.

This month, on the eve of the ‘first anniversary’ of the demolition
of his ashram, and in the light of the worsening conflict between the state and the Maoists, Himanshu Kumar, 45, spoke to DNA about why Gandhian activists like him should be allowed to work in Dantewada.

Can you tell us how and why you landed up in Dantewada?
My father is from Muzaffarnagar in UP. He participated in the Quit India Movement of 1942, and was actively corresponding with Gandhi. Gandhi called him to Sewagram, where he stayed for three years. Then Vinoba Bhave started the Bhoodan Movement, and my father joined that as a full-time activist and traveled across the country with Bhave. He believed that after independence, the youth should work in the country’s villages, to bring real independence — from poverty, from casteism, from famine — into the homes of the poorest of the poor. All these ideas I imbibed from him, and when I grew up I realised that this is my path in life. So in 1992, I went to Dantewada.

Why Dantewada?
In 1988, Gandhian activist and former MP, the late Nirmala Deshpande, my father, and I visited Dantewada, and toured the villages there for 15 days. We found this area to be one of the most neglected in the country, and I felt this is where our work is most required. Also, since a violent movement was taking root here, we thought, why not work here and really test the strength of nonviolence. So we decided to live with the people in the villages, as Gandhi had said, and help address the people’s issues by nonviolent means.

Today the adivasis have to contend with displacement and a war between the police and Maoists. What were the issues then?
Atrocities by the forest department and the police, cheating and extortion by the revenue officials. The government does not have a single welfare scheme there till date, and the police are the only face of Indian democracy that these people have seen.

As a Gandhian, what do you feel about the increasing violence of Maoists?
As a follower of Gandhi, truth and nonviolence form the foundation of my value system. With regard to what is happening in Dantewada today, my approach would be to understand it and get to know the truth about why this violence is taking place.

What happened to all the cases you are fighting in the Supreme Court?
The state has managed to ensure that the cases never come up for hearing. They keep on taking adjournment after adjournment. That’s my question: why should the state fear the truth?

Has any case seen any judgment?
Not one. Till date, I have not been able to get justice from our system for even a single adivasi. I have spent all these years, telling the adivasis, come, come to us, we will get you justice through democratic means, but I am not able to get them justice. And when the adivasis, with the help of the Maoists, manage to avenge the deaths of their kith and kin, they feel that Maoists have got them justice rather efficiently, while these so-called Gandhians and believers in democracy have not been able to give them anything from the system.

How do you think Gandhi would have acted in today’s situation?
Gandhi believed in two basic principles: one, nobody should endure injustice. Two, we should not remain silent when we see injustice being done to others. So Gandhi would definitely have spoken out. The British at least tolerated Gandhi. But today’s regime, which does not tolerate dissent at all — I was hounded out of Chhattisgarh for speaking out — would have sent him to jail. If Gandhi was alive today, he’d be in a jail in Dantewada, he’d be with the adivasis.

Home Minister P Chidambaram made a fresh offer for talks if the Maoists suspend violence for 72 hours, but they rejected the offer.
I wouldn’t be in a hurry to take Chidambaram’s statements literally. I met Chidambaram in November 2009, in his house in New Delhi. I was sitting in his drawing room, and also present was a journalist from a news magazine. I suggested to Chidambaram that he should visit Dantewada and talk to the people there. He asked me, how could he talk to the Maoists. So I told him, okay, don’t talk to the Maoists, talk to the people. You are the home minister of the country, talk to the children of Dantewada, talk to the teenagers of Dantewada, talk to the old people of Dantewada, and ask them: what is the problem? So he said, okay, I shall visit Dantewada. But he never came. I still have his text messages telling me that he will send me a formal letter about his visit the next day. But he never sent me any formal letter.