Volume 5, No. 1, January 2004

On 17 November 2003 following the Idu encounter in which two of our beloved comrades Parvathi and Hajima were killed, the Home Minister M Mallikarjuna Kharge revealed that the state government had finalized an eviction-rehabilitation scheme of the people residing in the Kuduremukha National Park (KNP) area and surrounding Wildlife Sanctuaries and Reserve Forests. The "high level" meeting was chaired by the Chief Minister SM Krishna.

The police minister said the government would evict adivasis and peasants inhabiting the forests and relocate them in 10 camps outside the forest area over a three-year period at a cost of Rs 60 crores.

In the same breath he also announced the formation of an elite Rapid Action Force (RAF) to suppress the Naxalite movement that has taken root in the Karavali-Malnad Perspective Area of the four districts of Chikmagalur, Shimoga, Udupi and Dakshina Kannada.

In 1998 the state government issued final notification to the hundreds of residents of the KNP to pack up and leave. It planned to convert the KNP into an enclave for foreign and high-income tourists and to provide imperialist and comprador bio-technology companies a free hand to undertake research, extract and patent genetic source material—all in the name of ecological conservation.

This evoked widespread protests from the Gowdlu/Male Kudiya adivasis and other inhabitants. The anti-comprador anti-imperialist struggle earned wide support and solidarity. The government hesitated to immediately evict the people.

Now on the very day of the encounter with the Netravathi Squad of the CPI (ML) (People’s War) party, the government has mustered the courage to announce a new eviction package.

This is a dangerous proposal. The State Committee of the CPI (ML) (PW) opposes it for the following immediate reasons:

1. It is a proposal that will sell away our rich natural resources to imperialist and comprador interests.

2. It will eliminate the identity of the Gowdlu/Male Kudiya adivasis. They are a small ethnic community whose social and economic life is indivisibly integrated with their environment. The scheme will tear apart and thus endanger the future of an entire forest-dwelling community.

3. The Home Minister has been awkwardly vague on the eviction proposal. He has not specified the forest areas it will be confined to. We fear that it includes not just the KNP region but also the Someshwara and Mookambika Wildlife Sanctuaries as well as some of the adjoining Reserve Forests. Latest Management Plans of these two Wildlife Sanctuaries prepared by the Forest Department clearly specifies the villages that will face eviction.

In other words it is part of a larger programme for depopulating the forests of Karnataka.

This is not an exaggerated fear. It is borne out by the track record of the State Government in the Bhadra Wildlife Sanctuary. Two years ago it evicted 60 families from this area stating that was all the relocation that was needed. But it did not mark the end. Instead it was the beginning. Recently it issued notices to several more families to quit.

In Nagarahole it continues to pursue its eviction drive after sanitizing and consolidating the "core" area first.

In October this year the state government razed to the ground the houses of several poor and landless peasants in a reserve forest of Mudigere taluk of Chikmagalur district although they had been staying there for several decades.

4. The allocation of Rs 60 crores is a large amount going by State Government standards for the relocation of an oppressed and poor population of a few hundred people of the KNP area. This raises doubts about the existence of a larger programme of evictions than what meets the eye.

Mr Kharge’s announcement of evictions did not refer to the long standing attempt of the state government to displace the people of the area and the opposition it had invited from the broad masses. Instead he tried to show it as an exclusive measure to deal with the Naxal "menace" in Malnad. This is a clever way of telling the people that they have to be evicted because of the presence of Naxalites in their midst. And hence all blame for the government’s pro-imperialist evictions are passed on to the armed squads of the party.

This only means that the state government has decided to adopt the foolish policy of draining the ocean to catch the fish.

In fact the announcement of evictions and relocation were made as part of a strategic military package of unleashing low intensity warfare by the formation of a police crack force equipped to implement counter-insurgency tactics.

The state government has obviously taken a leaf from Vietnam. Unable to quell the people’s war, US imperialists relocated thousands of peasants residing in Vietnamese forests in barbed "strategic hamlets" in order to drain the ocean to catch the fish. But the American strategy of Low Intensity Conflict (LIC) ended in failure. Vietnam’s revolutionaries finally swam to victory.

Naxalite revolutionaries operate on the goodwill and support of the oppressed peasant and adivasi masses. We are, as Mao Tsetung said, like fish in water. We shall, like units of the People’s Guerrilla Army (PGA) elsewhere in the country, fight to conserve and spread our mass base by mobilizing the people on their day-to-day demands and on their fundamental demands of land and liberation. We shall oppose the government’s strategy of eviction and relocation with all the strength we possess. We shall rely on the masses to fight the District Armed Reserve (DAR) and RAF in the days to come. We are absolutely confident that our armed struggle will gather more support and gain the involvement of the masses if the government implements this foolish new scheme.

The State Committee welcomes the opposition of some organizations and individuals to the government’s new plan of evictions. It anticipates that many more organizations will oppose it in the coming days. It calls upon the people of the Kuduremukha, Someshwara and Mookambika forest areas to reject the Home Minister’s proposals to evict them. It calls upon units of the Karnataka Raitha Coolie Sangha (KRCS), Adivasi Raitha Coolie Sangha (ARCS), Mahila Vimukthi (MV) and Krantikari Adivasi Mahila Sanghatane (KAMS) to rally in large numbers to defeat these fascist measures of the state government.

Let us imbibe the fighting determination of Comrades Parvathi and Hajima. Let us unite with all those forces opposed to evictions in Malnad.

60 crores or 600, we shall stand our ground!

DAR and RAF will be shown around!

For Karnataka State Committee

CPI (ML) (People’s War)

23 November 2003

<Top>