Brutal Indifference, Indifferent Brutality

Reviewing Nandini Sundar's 'The Burning Forest: India's War in Bastar'

"This book is written because, in the absence of justice, at least the truth must be on record."

-Nandini Sundar, xiv

In a defiant commitment to the truth, Nandini Sundar's The Burning Forest tells a harrowing story of the State's attempt to annihilate a people and their way of life. Through extensive fieldwork, the study of government documents and court judgements, and a participatory role in the events she writes about, Sundar chronicles the Indian State's ongoing war in its heartland - in Bastar. The central question of the book is: what makes such barbaric violence both possible and invisible in a democracy? Her answer is a sharp indictment of Indian democracy and democratic institutions. Her main argument is that instead of restricting the violence unleashed by the State's counterinsurgency movements, democratic institutions facilitate them - first, through their own institutional weaknesses and second, through the official legitimation they provide to State actions. She substantiates her argument by examining the role of electoral democracy, free press, an independent judiciary, statutory bodies like the NHRC and civil society organisations in both invisibilizing and legitimising the violence perpetrated by State and State-supported actors.

The book is divided into three parts. The first, The Landscape of Resistance, includes four chapters which describe the beginnings of the resistance and locate the war in the context of the socio-economic exploitation of the people. The second, Civil War, comprises six chapters and details various forms of counterinsurgency mechanisms, Maoist responses to them and their impact on the lives of civilians in the villages. The third, Institutions on Trial, contains seven chapters and analyses the institutional weaknesses, failures and culpability of democratic institutions in the violence unleashed on India's tribal population. Together, the book covers the conflict from 2005 to 2016 and provides a detailed study of the ongoing crisis.

Sundar effectively explains the rise of Maoism in Chhattisgarh in the context of the absence of State resources, improper implementation of welfare schemes and the socio-economic exploitation of the people. She then analyses what the villagers perceive as advantages and disadvantages of living under a Maoist state. In highlighting the perception of the Maoists' presence as necessary to confront state neglect and exploitation, despite the violence perpetrated by them, Sundar moves away from the two dominant understandings of the conflict - one which aims to understand the Maoist movement in isolation of the State's failures and other, which celebrates the Maoists as being the true representatives of the people. This helps the reader understand the complex choices that the villagers have to make, and the inescapable violence that they have to live with, to simply ensure their survival.

If the rise of Maoism is seen as a failure of the State in investing meaningfully in the region, the book evocatively shows how the rise of State-supported vigilante groups such as Salwa Judum are an example of the State prioritizing its own corporatist aspirations over the security of its tribal population. After the liberalization of the mining policy in 2003, the State entered into a number of public-private partnerships to extract mineral resources from the region. However, as per the PESA Act, the State cannot sell or lease the land without due consultation with the villagers. The Maoists and the tribals were strongly opposed to mining, as it would have a detrimental impact on the environment, lead to their displacement, and endanger their livelihoods without accruing any benefits to them. Sundar effectively highlights the relationship between mining and militarization by illustrating that it is only when the de-facto Maoist control over the region became an obstacle to the State's project of land acquisition, mining and industrialization, that the Maoists were labelled as an 'internal security threat'. Such characterization provided grounds to the State to militarize the region, which was done through State security forces and the promotion of State-supported vigilante groups.

Through extensive fieldwork, she provides a deeply disturbing analysis of the lives of those caught in the crossfire of violence in the region and her research raises pertinent questions about the impact of counterinsurgency mechanisms on civilians. The Judum was responsible for burning villages seen as Maoist strongholds, which led to the deaths and displacement of hundreds of civilians. In an attempt to legitimize the emptying out of villages by the State-supported vigilante group, the government set up roadside 'relief camps' and put forth the propaganda that the camps were constructed to safeguard civilians from Maoists attacks. On studying the timing and geography of camps, Sundar notes they can only be explained by the sequence of Judum attacks on villages, rather than those by the Maoists. On one hand, the camps were like open-air prisons. Inmates were faced with constant State surveillance, severe hunger, physical violence, sexual slavery and several killings. On the other hand, those who refused to come to the camps were all labelled as Maoists. The State withheld ration supplies, healthcare and education as instruments of war and the villagers were systematically starved, mass arrested, violated and killed. It is clear that there was an active effort to annihilate the tribal population on both sides of the camp. As villagers suffered extreme brutality, the State and the corporations benefited from their forceful evacuation - in their absence, they could simply bypass PESA, take ownership of the land and extract resources. To the atrocities committed in the process of this evacuation, the State remained indifferent.

In studying what makes this kind of violence go unquestioned, her granular ethnography of Indian democracy through Bastar reveals much broader truths about the country's institutions. Her study of the submission of mainstream political parties to the private interests of corporations, the financial interests of media houses and legal risks faced by journalists, and the meaninglessness of the judiciary's verdict without the State's cooperation in its implementation - all reveal the structural weaknesses and dependencies of these institutions, which pan beyond Bastar, and them tools for legitimating the State's excesses rather than holding it accountable.

One such democratic institution is the political parties system. While studying their role, she notes that despite the atrocities committed by Salwa Judum, it remains one of the rare examples of inter-party collaboration between the BJP and Congress. On examining the Assembly discussions between 2005-15, she observes that there have hardly been any questions asked on human rights violations in the region. When raised, it is only to discuss Maoist attacks, leading to further militarization of the region without deliberating its consequences on the villagers. The lack of representation of their concerns in the Parliament urges one to rethink our electoral system. It reveals how electoral democracy has not only failed in securing substantial representation for marginalised communities, but has become a tool of legitimating their oppression.

The book also reveals broader truths about how the institutions which are meant to hold the State accountable, the media and the judiciary, are themselves structurally dependent on the State. The monetary dependence of media-houses on government advertisements and contracts, their own involvement in real-estate and mining businesses, and colonial laws like the CSPSA and UAPA handicap their ability to report on the failure of the State in defending its own citizens and State atrocities. With the ability to deem a journalists' work as threatening and arbitrarily arrest them, it is the State which outlines the contours within which it can be criticised by its 'watchdog'.

Her experience with litigation leads to a similar indictment of the judiciary. Even when the judiciary rules against the State, the judiciary's own abdication of responsibility, once the verdict is announced, implies that in the absence of State cooperation, a favourable verdict is merely a moral victory. In this case, the State continued arming civilians under the CAAPFO to combat Maoists, the very activity that had been ruled unconstitutional. None of the orders were implemented, and the investigation became another place for State and State-supported actors to identify and harass victims who agreed to testify. The judiciary's indifference to the implementation of its orders and ensuring the safety of witnesses makes it yet another tool of oppression rather than redressal.

The author Priavi Joshi is a fourth-year student of Political Science from the Ashoka University