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New Delhi, July 5: The Supreme Court today barred the Chhattisgarh government from arming tribals to fight Maoists and pulled up the Centre for looking the other way as the state raised a private militia for counter-insurgency operations.
“The young tribals have literally become cannon fodder in the killing fields of Dantewada and other districts of Chhattisgarh,” it said, coming down heavily on the practice of treating Naxalism as a law and order problem rather than a socio-economic issue.
By arming unskilled, illiterate and frustrated tribal youths to take on the vastly superior Maoists for a pitiable honorarium, the state had violated Articles 14 and 21 of the Constitution that promise all citizens the right to equality and the right to life, a two-judge bench said.
“The training that the state claims it is providing those youngsters with… against one of the longest lasting insurgencies mounted internally, and indeed may also be the bloodiest, is clearly insufficient,” the court said, noting that the fatality rates among them were higher than those among security forces.
The court was hearing a petition filed by academic Nandini Sundar, historian Ramachandra Guha, social activist Swami Agnivesh and former bureaucrat E.A.S. Sarma.
Guha and Sundar had accused the Naxalites and the Salwa Judum — the force raised by arming tribals — of gross rights violations. They had demanded that the court disband Salwa Judum.
Chhattisgarh reacted by changing the private militia’s name to special police officers (SPOs). The Centre has claimed its role was confined to sanctioning their numbers as it funded an honorarium between Rs 1,500 and Rs 3,000 for each SPO recruited.
The court today barred Chhattisgarh from using the SPOs for anything but routine police work and directed it to recall the arms issued to them.
It ordered a CBI probe into allegations of violence in three villages during a trip by Agnivesh in March to provide humanitarian aid. The probe will be completed in six months.
“Modern counter-insurgency requires use of sophisticated analytical tools, analysis of data, surveillance etc…. Maoists have been preparing themselves on more scientific lines, and gained access to sophisticated weaponry,” the bench noted.
“That Chhattisgarh claims that these youngsters, with little or no formal education, are expected to learn the requisite range of analytical skills, legal concepts and other sophisticated aspects of knowledge, within a span of two months, and that such a training is sufficient for them to take part in counter-insurgency against the Maoists, is shocking.”
Quoting from a recent book, The Dark Side of Globalisation, the bench blamed the problem in Chhattisgarh on the “amoral political economy that the state endorses, and the resultant revolutionary politics that it necessarily spawns”.
That violent agitator politics and armed rebellion in many pockets of India have intimate linkages to socio-economic circumstances, endemic inequalities, and a corrupt social and state order has been well recognised, it said.
The Centre has been repeatedly warned of the linkages, the court added, quoting from a recent report by a Planning Commission expert group.
Yet the powers-that-be in India are propagating the view that obsession with economic growth is our only path, and that the costs borne by the poor and the deprived are necessary costs, Justices B. Sudershan Reddy and S.S. Nijjar said.
To pursue policies whereby guns are distributed among poor and barely literate youths would be tantamount to sowing suicide pills that could divide and destroy society, the court said. “Our Constitution is most certainly not a ‘pact for national suicide’.”
“The fight against terrorism and/or extremism cannot be effectuated by constitutional democracies by whatever means that are deemed to be efficient. Efficiency is not the sole arbiter of all values,” the judges said.
The court regretted that the Centre had not seen it fit to evaluate the capacities of tribal youths in counter-insurgency activities, the dangers they will confront, and their other service conditions.
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