‘Empowerment should BE USED AS A VERB’

Children who do not have any link with Naxals are being kidnapped and encountered by the police even before they reach the police station

Speaking on ‘Samanvay’, Bela Bhatia, a human right activist and social researcher working in the Bastar region of Chhattisgarh said, “At presents whatever happening in the Bastar region is the worst in the entire history of it. The proportion of the violence happened since 2005 is getting worst day by day.”

Bhatia was speaking on the first day of ‘Samanvay’, an annual Indian Language Festival (ILF) organised at India Habitat Centre in the national Capital. The topic of discussion had been ‘Conversing Conflict: The Chhattisgarh Experience’ and was attended by Ashutosh Bharadwaj, a journalist and fiction writer, and Kalpana Kannabiran, a sociologist, and writer among other panellists who shared their experience, which they went through while working in the Naxal-affected area of the country.

Bela Bhatia who has a long experience of working in the region as a human right activist said, “Though there are no Armed Forces (Special Power) Acts (AFSPA) in Bastar region, the rights given to police is no less than the official AFSPA.”

“Despite the positive order of Supreme Court to ban Salwa Judum (an anti-maoist vigilante group) in 2011, the government has been in direct contempt of order and has created many other anti-maoist vigilante groups such as District Reserve Group (DRG). 50 per cent of the DRG personnel comprises of surrendered Naxals. On one hand you are saying that you want to free the Maoists from the Naxal movement and bring them to normal life, but on the other hand, when he/she surrenders, you provide them with another weapon,” she added.

They also discussed how killing has increased in the Red Corridor because of the government arrogance. How the children who do not have any link with the Naxal are being kidnapped and encountered by the police even before they reach the police station or produced in courts.

While answering a question that what is the reason of Naxal Movement, Ashutosh Bharadwaj, who has won the Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in journalism on three occasions, said, “It has been more than fifty years since the emergence of the Naxal insurgencies and it is the longest insurgency in Indian history. And after the fifty years, if still, someone asked that what are the reasons of this insurgency? Then it is our collective failure that we are unable to understand it completely. The reason for this failure is being ignorant to the insurgency. There are very few people who are involved in the conversation with the Red Corridor. And amongst them are the rare ones, who have the guts to accept the reality.”

Earlier, ILF was inaugurated by renowned social activist Ela Bhatt, founder of SEWA on November 5. She explored the meaning of empowerment as a verb and its connotations in the lives of the marginalised women. “Empowerment is a loosely used word but it should be a verb. We cannot think of it as a gift. It is a struggle because to enable is to make one stronger and more confident. From Kashmir, people have come all the way to Ahmedabad and in time have learned Gujarati and that is a language of public action,” said Ela Bhatt reflecting on the journey of women towards empowerment.

The three-day annual event is the 6th edition of ILF, and it is a contemporary call to rediscover the genius of Indian languages to interlink and thus create a democratic cultural continuum. Themed ‘Language as Public Action’, it attempts to understand the nuances of the public aspects of language. It also seeks to create the middle ground of conversation while also focusing on different languages like Gujarati, Urdu, Santhali Telugu, Tripuri, and Khasi. The festival also witnessed a spectacular performance of the ‘Mahabharata’ in the form of puppetry. The founder of Katkatha, Anurupa Roy orchestrated the act for the ILF as it beautifully resonated the theme of the festival. The performance was a dynamic narrative that highlighted a contemporary conflict-ridden world. The festival will conclude on November 7 and is open to all.