By Shazia Cheema
India is imploding from within as oppressed groups have started contesting the writ of the State and now attacking oppressors with full available force.
The latest example of this emerging phenomenon is that Naxalite Movement has reemerged, resulting in a new wave of guerrilla activities in troubled areas.
Twenty-two soldiers were killed and 31 were injured on April 3, 2021, in an encounter with Naxals in Chattisgarh. Security forces in Chhattisgarh had launched an operation along the Sukma-Bikapur border. This led to an intense face-off with Maoist forces.
The Naxalites operate in 60 districts in India, mainly in the states of Odisha (5 affected districts), Jharkhand (14 affected districts), Bihar (5 affected districts), Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh (ten affected districts), Madhya Pradesh (8 affected districts), Maharashtra (2 affected districts) and West Bengal (8 affected district). In West Bengal areas west of Howrah are affected by the insurgency.
Chhattisgarh is the epicenter of the conflict. The Naxalite–Maoist insurgency is an ongoing conflict between Maoist groups known as Naxalites or Naxals and the Indian government. As many as 12,000 persons had been killed in the last two decades including 2,700 Indian soldiers because rape is always being used as a weapon for subjugation of Naxalites by Indian Armed Forces and at least four reports released by Human Rights activists of India indicate that the Indian Army and security forces sexually abuse girls and women in troubled areas where Naxalites operate.
Related Link: A trail of Sexual abuses by Indian Army from Manipur to Kashmir
Manipur is infamous for victims of rapes by Indian soldiers who by misusing the Indian Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) can rape any woman and no case can be registered against them. One should remember that 12 old mothers of Imphal, Manipur jolted the entire country to undress in the crowd in the year 2004 by stating: What is the use of clothes? You strip us. You can strip me, but how can you clothe me again? Are you a man?, said one of the naked women who stood against the Union State of India nakedly. This horrible incident took place on July 15, 2004.
Leaving behind their petticoats, blouses, and fear, 12 old women exposed the real face of the Indian Army when it is posted in Special Areas. The video footage of the incident exposed that they didn’t shudder or hide. Everybody was shocked to see them naked but no one was speaking—a complete silence was all around. But in a few moments, the air was ringing with slogans, like a chant. ‘Rape us, kill us! Rape us, kill us!’ First a few weak voices, and then a chorus of sharp and strong committed slogans. ‘Indian Army, rape us! Kill us!’ The video footage of the incident also shows one of the women protestors shouting, ‘We are all Manorama’s mothers, come, rape us, you b–ds!’.
“The Maoist movement that started with a peasant uprising in a small tea garden in West Bengal state is getting popularity in last six years. More women are joining the movement because desperate conditions prevailing in India’s countryside: Displacement of locals from their lands due to big business projects, grinding poverty and fear of atrocities by security forces and state-backed,” commented Rajishvi while giving an interview to Eurasia News. She is a local activist in Manipur.
Another Report titled “Andhra Adivasi women struggle for justice against anti-Naxal force accused of rape” indicates that 11 women from the Kondh tribe in Vakapalli, an Adivasi hamlet in Visakhapatnam district of Andhra Pradesh, were allegedly raped by personnel of the state’s elite anti-Naxal force, the Greyhounds, on August 10, 2007. So far, the women have faced an uphill battle to get justice. Two of them have died since, but the trial has not even started. The police personnel contested the rape allegations against them even as the women battled social stigma at home – as part of a local custom of purification, they were separated from their husbands and children.
Sexual abuse as a weapon is also used by the Indian Army in the Indian Occupied Kashmir two reports prepared by Indian Human Rights activates exposed that Indian soldiers are involved in raping young boys and women in Indian Occupied Kashmir.
Report says:
They torture the private parts of a boy so he becomes impotent for the whole of his life. They put boiling eggs in —– (censored) of young boys and let them cry. They also use sticks oiled with Taramira oil or jamba oil (a seed oil, pressed from the seeds of the arugula—Eruca sativa) and enter into —–(censored) of boys. We know death is far better than this what we are facing. We want death. Please tell them to kill us. We tell them please kills us but do not torture us in such a way and abuse us sexually but they smile at us and usually tell “Jao ab Azadi Lay lu” (Go and find your freedom)”. They take married women, aged women as well as young girls away from their homes or from markets and do gang rapes and leave them to undress and walk away.
India is facing serve crises of disintegration of society and hatred against State is registered from Kashmir to Indian Punjab. Kisan Morcha has nakedly uncovered Indian so-called secularism and democracy.
Modi government is dividing Indian society into ethnic, religious, and class groups and this division is helping the narrative of separatists like Naxalites who always say that New Delhi protects only Braham Hindus. In the last four years, separatist movements are getting the support of the common people.
The new world has new dynamics and new rules, division on the basis of hatred and discrimination can create tunnels for self-space, if people are out of space in their own land they definitely inhabitant underground and those inhabitants while living underground create fault lines which are meant to be irrupting sooner or later. Modi government plays the role of catalyst on it, it triggered the slow process of hate-driven vengeance and now everything seems burning.
BJP came into power with the firm belief in “divide and rule”. They might have thought it the most trial and tested method throughout history so let’s play conventionally. So the plan would have been how to divide further an already divided population and the road map could be grasped by witnessing the aftermath of the BJP regime.
Kashmir has always been an all-time favorite rat lab for India. BJP agenda of the divide, crush, and rule provides us havoc of this century, from rape to castration, body mutilation you name it, and Kashmiris have experienced that.
Moving from Kashmir to Punjab, we are watching the drift created by Corporate Agri Bills. The fight between food providers and Hindutva has reached its ultimate survival point. Sikhs still did not get held from the mass disappearance of their youth in the post-Indra Gandhi Turmoil they get another chance to morn yet again when Indian Punjab was systematically getting induces with drugs. Almost entire youth got affected and is suffering from the worst setback of history while fighting to keep their youth in scenes they got attacked again and this time their land their recognition, their survival is in utter danger.
Dalits are suffering and a record number of rape and sodomy cases came to the surface against Dalits.
Citizen Amendment Act is no news anymore which has questioned the very existence of Indian citizens, how come they will prove after living in India for generations either they still are Indians or not.
Lydia Maria Child who was an American abolitionist, women’s rights activist, Native American rights activist, novelist, journalist, and opponent of American expansionism said:
“We first crush people to the earth, and then claim the right of trampling on them forever, because they are prostrate.”
History shows that any society that brings injustice to people cannot survive for long and India is not an exception.
Note: The writer Shazia Cheema is an analyst writing for national and international media outlets including the Nation, Pakistan Today, Pakistan Observer, Eurasia Diary, InSight, and Mina News Agency. She heads the Thought Center of Dispatch News Desk (DND). She did her MA in Cognitive Semiotics from Aarhus University Denmark and is currently registered as a Ph.D. Scholar of Semiotics and Philosophy of Communication at Charles University Prague. She can be reached at her: Twitter @ShaziaAnwerCh Email: shaziaanwer@yahoo.com
