Indian Society, the Adivasi Uprising and Operation Green HuntReliable news about India has been difficult for people around the world to find. With a few exceptions, mainstream news reports are slanted to keep out of public view and discourse revealing information such as the fact that 77% of India’s people try to survive on US$.50 a day. Even more heavily shielded and banned from public discourse are the repressive actions of the Indian government, and the determined resistance that millions of adivasis (India’s indigenous peoples) have mounted to defend their land from open pit mining and industrial pollution.

Thousands of Indian and multinational corporations are forcibly asserting their right to carry out the biggest theft of indigenous people’s land since the Columbus invasion of the Americas.  In a new chapter of a long history of murderous  assaults by capitalist governments on the world’s indigenous peoples who refuse to give up resource-rich lands, the Indian government launched  a massive military operation  in November 2009 of over 200,000 paramilitaries and police. Code-named Operation Green Hunt, this offensive  is targeting tens of thousands of adivasi communities in seven states that  have organized themselves to defend the land they have lived on for thousands of years.

“Shining India”

Government officials, leaders of political parties and the capitalist media from India to the US claim that the “Shining India” of 2011 is on a path of rapid economic growth, technical progress, and assertion of economic and military power throughout South Asia. As evidence, they cite India’s 8% annual increase in Gross Domestic Product, and hundreds of new Silicon Valleys and industrial parks that ring major cities.  They also point to the existence of a large middle class that shops in air conditioned malls and drives imported cars. It is even asserted at times that this newly created wealth is actually flowing down to poverty-stricken villages and to the urban slums seen in Slumdog Millionaire.

The “Shining India” that these people are describing is actually a capitalist and semi-feudal India that shines brightly only on the owners of multi-billionaire families like the Tatas, Ambanis and Jindals, top executives

of multinational corporations, big landlords and money lenders in the countryside, high ranking government officials and military officers, and the top leaders of the governing and “opposition” political parties.

This oppressive system provides some economic and social benefits to 200-300 million middle class people living in India’s big cities. These benefits are already being eroded and taken away as the worldwide economic crisis deepens and pulls India down with it.

India’s cities are ringed by huge and rapidly growing urban slums. To take just one example, 70% of the population of Mumbai, a city of 12 million people, live in one-room “homes” made out of concrete or aluminum siding, and have no access to schools, health care and other city services.

More importantly, Mumbai, Kolkata and India’s other big cities are surrounded by the vast countryside where nearly a billion peasants, dalits, adivasis and other oppressed people live. This is the “Other India” that the well known political activist and writer Arundhati Roy has described so eloquently to Indian and international audiences.

To cite just a few figures: 63 years after the declaration of formal “independence” in 1947, 51% of Indians are illiterate and tens of millions of children have to leave school to support their families. 98 children out of every 1,000 between the ages of 1-5 die due to malnutrition and adequate health care.

“The Largest Democracy in the World”

Government leaders around the world and the global capitalist media think that if they repeat the claim that “India is the world's largest democracy”  enough times, it will be accepted as the truth.

However, democracy in India only exists for the rich and powerful. Leading members of India’s industrial and financial conglomerates, together with their political and military counterparts, decide on and strictly enforce the

many ways the Indian ruling class oppresses and exploits 1.2 billion people.

All but a handful of Indians are excluded from this system of democracy and state power for the ruling class, and poverty and state repression for the people. In the villages and slums where 90% of the people live, politicians are seen only at election time when they get out of their SUVs, make empty promises and give out a few rupees to buy votes.

As this paper’s descriptions of the brutal tactics employed by the  Indian military in Operation Green Hunt and in Salwa Judum in  Chhattisgarh will demonstrate, the Indian state is extremely repressive.  The Indian Army occupies the formerly independent nation of  Kashmir and several states in northeast India and rules them by martial law. As Amnesty International and other human rights groups have documented, Indian soldiers and police have  a long history of executing political opponents,, and claiming afterwards that  their victims were shot during armed “encounters” with the military.

The government has also passed laws that enable it to arrest, “interrogate” and keep political opponents in jail without trial for long periods of time. Taken together, the government’s suppression of political dissent has made India the country with the largest number of political prisoners in the world—over 100,000.

Thus, the Indian people are faced with a government whose anti-people laws and policies are enforced by over 1 million members of the Army, paramilitary forces and local police forces. For most of the Indian people, India is a police state.

How “Independent” is India?

The two principal architects of Operation Green Hunt, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Union Home Minister PC Chidambaram, are political agents for both the Indian ruling class and US imperialism. Singh spent most of his working life in the service of  foreign-owned financial

institutions, while Chidambaram was a director of British-based Vedanta. One of the biggest mining corporations in the world, Vedanta  operates a massive bauxite strip mine that threatens the ancestral land of many adivasi communities in Orissa.

Lured by high profits to be made from exploiting  India’s abundant natural resources, and employing  Indian workers who are paid 1/8 of what US workers are paid, direct investment in India by US and other multinational corporations and financial institutions have become a substantial part of the Indian economy. The most notorious of these American corporate bandits is Union Carbide, now owned by Dow Chemical, which was responsible for a massive  leak  of poisonous chemicals from its factory in Bhopal in 1984  that killed 35,000 people and maimed and disfigured at least 200,000 more for  the rest of their lives.

A large part of US direct investment is in high-tech industries that are powering the growth of India’s capitalist economy. Likewise, a horde of US military industrialists and arms dealers are maneuvering  to grab as big a share as possible of  the $50-80 billion in high-tech weapons that the Indian military is planning to buy over the next five years.

In another important commercial and strategic deal, India has agreed to buy nuclear fuel for its reactors from the US, thereby tying its civilian nuclear program to US imperialist interests. As a result of President Obama’s meetings with Prime Minister Singh and other government officials in the fall of 2010, barriers to US direct investment in India and to trade between India and the US  are being significantly reduced.

The “independence” that has been the mantra of every Indian government since 1947 exists only in the rhetoric that officials and leaders of political parties deploy in order  to shore up their legitimacy among the Indian people.  In reality, the Indian economy has for been thoroughly integrated  into the global capitalist economic system for centuries, and many of the most profitable and strategic sectors of the Indian economy are occupied today by US and other foreign-owned corporations and financial institutions.

India’s Diverse and Oppressive Society

Dalits

30% of the people of India are dalits (untouchables). They are on the bottom rung of the caste system. The founders of Hinduism created a religiously sanctioned system with the goal of locking all Indians into different social classes and types of work for life. Thus high caste Brahmins are the heads of corporate houses, banks and political parties, while dalits are confined to oppressive jobs such as garbage collectors in the cities and excrement haulers in the villages. Many dalits still live in communities that are separate from the villages where they work.  Maoist activists  live and work in dalit communities before they startup work in the villages. 

The most oppressed among the large dalit population in the Bihar, one of India’s poorest states, are the landless Musahars. Supported by Maoist activists, Bihar’s Musahars have organized and mobilized their communities to take possession of government land. In Bihar, the dalits face pervasive social oppression, including massacres perpetrated by right wing militias such as the Ranbir Sena that are organized and funded by high caste groups and the state government. These pogroms force dalit families to flee their villages and become internal refugees. Bihar’s state and local governments invariably do not provide protection to dalit communities from the Ranbar Sena or shelter and economic support to displaced dalits.

As a concession to powerful dalit movements based in the cities, the Indian government reserves a certain percentage of seats in government and universities for dalits. The Indian government uses this relatively privileged group of dalits as a buffer against more oppressed and more radical dalit forces, and points to it as a sign of “dalit progress.”  Meanwhile, the conditions of life for the vast majority of dalits in the countryside and slums remain unchanged or worse, deteriorate.

Peasants and Farmers

Peasants and farmers make up the majority of India’s population. One-third of the labourers in the countryside, or about 80 million people, are landless laborers. Peasants and farmers eke out a living on plots that average ½ to 5 hectares, depending on the state. This is hardly enough to support a family but enough to feed a layer of usurious bankers and moneylenders.

In most of India’s countryside, peasants  no longer work for zamindars, big landlords, but are exploited by money-lenders. In Punjab, a different system for  exploiting and suppressing peasants and farmers is controlled by arhtiyas, or money lenders. The arhtiyas lend money to farmers at exorbitant rates of interest.  Many farmers are forced to foreclose on their land because they cannot afford to repay their loans, or due to legal chicanery by the arhtiyas and corrupt government officials. When farmers organize and struggle against illegal land-grabs, the arhtiyas’ hired goons and police officials with illegal detentions, torture and custodial deaths.

According to an article published by Sanhati on October 15, 2010, “The arhtiyas in Punjab are a powerful exploitative class. They are an integral but useless part of the farm produce marketing system….A team of economists led by Dr Sukh Pal Singh of the Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) observed in a recent study that “The main source of income of the commission agents is not the commission charged on the sale/purchase of crops but the interest taken on the credit advanced to the farmers….The arhtiyas also control the fertilizer, pesticides and seeds market.’

“Taking advantage of the farmers’ illiteracy and financial dependence, they sell spurious fertilizers, pesticides and deeds to make big money. Resultantly the farmer is ruined. At many places, the arhtiyas under-weigh the farm produces to dupe the farmers. The main political parties – the Akalis, BJP, and Congress-- mostly support the arhtiyas, being their important source of election funds. They generally plead that the arhtiyas and the farmers have a deep and inseparable relationship like the Siamese twins.”

Anti-Displacement Struggles

Some of the most powerful struggles to erupt in the countryside in recent years have involved farmers and landless peasants threatened with displacement by the construction of big factories and mines, many of which are part of  over 500 Special Economic Zones. These are more accurately known as “Special Exploitation Zones.” They ban strikes and labor unions, and are run by specially designed corporations that are not bound by Indian law. 

At Nandigram in West Bengal in 2006, the land and livelihoods of 90,000 farmers and shopkeepers, both Hindus and Muslims, were threatened by the plans of Dow Chemical, notorious for supplying napalm to the US Air Force to drop on civilian communities during the Vietnam War, to build a massive petrochemical complex.  

In the course of two powerful uprisings, the people of Nandigram liberated their villages from widely hated local governments that were controlled by the Communist Party of India(Marxist)--CPM-- the ruling party in West Bengal. Thousands of people in Nandigram organized and armed themselves to defend their villages from relentless armed attacks by CPM goons (harmads).

Militant women were at the frontlines of struggle, using traditional weapons, household implements, condiments like chili powder, and signaling through conch shells to organize and mobilize the masses of people to press forward in the struggle. The CPM Chief Minister of West Bengal had no choice but to announce that the construction project would not go forward.

Today, tens of thousands of villagers in Jagatsingur, Orissa are fighting pitched battles against the police to stop the plans of POSCO, a US/South Korean steel corporation, to build a $12 billion steel plant and port that will displace more than 20,000 farmers from their villages and fertile, multi-crop lands.

In the Kalinganagar industrial area of Orissa, which the government has plans will become India’s second “steel city,” the plans of Tata Steel (Tata is one the biggest corporations in India) to build a massive plant have faced determined resistance from farmers and adivasis. When Tata's bulldozers tried to begin construction of the plant in early 2006, the Orissa police killed 12 adivasi protestors. Since then, a mass-based anti-displacement group has stopped Tata from moving forward with its plant by organizing and mobilizing thousands of people by means of road blockades and demonstrations against the police.

The breath and impact of this powerful anti-displacement movement is demonstrated by these remarks by Pandey Nath, a farmer from Kalinganagar. Nath says his land is not being acquired but he still opposes Tata. “Tomorrow they will have a factory near my land, pollute it and edge me out. No one wants to sell but they have all taken money now. No one

was taking initially, so they sent three or four people to jail to set an example. They did impersonation, faked papers and everything they could to show that compensation had been paid,” he says to the collective nods of 10 other farmers whose lands are being acquired.d

“Kamal Gajviye, a CPI [Communist Party of India] member and farmer, is also losing his land to the Tata project. “The collector has often accused me of being a Naxalite. I am not. But I will become one, if this continues. They will all become Naxalites.”’ (Express Buzz, 25 Oct 2009)

 Women and Patriarchal Oppression

According to Contemporary Anti-Displacement Struggles and Women’s Resistance, by Shoma Sen, Associate Professor at RTM Nagpur University,  “Women’s exclusion in the present model of development needs to be understood as inherent to a system that benefits from patriarchy. Seen as a reserve force of labour, women, excluded from economic activity, are valued for their unrecognized role in social reproduction.  The capitalist, patriarchal system that keeps the majority of women confined to domestic work and child rearing uses this as a way of keeping the wage rates low.

“The limited participation of women in economic activity is also an extension of their traditional gender roles (nursing, teaching or labour intensive jobs requiring patience and delicate skills) with wages based on gender discrimination. Largely part of the unorganized sector, deprived of the benefits of labour legislation, insecurity leads to sexual exploitation at the workplace. In the paradigm of globalization, these forms of exploitation, in export oriented industries, SEZs [Special Economic Zones] and the service sector have greatly increased.

In spite of 63 years of so-called independence, women’s presence is negligible in political bodies and reservations for the same have been strongly resisted in a patriarchal political system. Though at the lower levels, reservations have made a limited entry possible, the success stories are more exceptions than the rule. Social institutions, thriving on feudal patriarchal notions are disapproving of women’s participation in production and laud her reproductive roles; violence against women at the familial and societal level is given social sanction and women are confined to a dependent life within the domestic space.

Therefore, women’s access to economic and political activity itself is a first step to their participation in decision making processes rather than the symbolic steps towards their “empowerment” that are seen in this system. Women’s resistance to this imperialist backed model of development, therefore, must be seen as their attempt to find space and voice in a system which has not only neglected their communities but even their gender within it.

The present model of development in India has led to immense hardship for the common people and reaped benefits for a limited few. It has led to a tremendous agrarian crisis which has also affected the lives of rural women and children. As lakhs [one lakh= 100,000] of farmers commit suicide, they leave behind their wives and family members who have no recourse to mitigate their suffering. The agrarian crisis has led to large scale migration and trafficking in women and girls unskilled, low-paid jobs and towards sexual exploitation.

The various mining and industrial/development projects in the mineral rich hinterland have deprived women from their limited access to common property resources, their families and future generations from land. The processes of land acquisition have deprived them from decision making about their own lives and livelihood. The large-scale environmental degradation has had a devastating impact on their lives.

Rehabilitation has uprooted them from familiar, healthier environments to difficult, alien surroundings causing cultural and psychological problems. The breakdown of community life, family and means of livelihood have led to sexual exploitation of these women as traditionally mainstream society looks at tribal women as “sexually free”.

By their life experience women have understood that development is not for them but others, whether it be the Narmada waters [site of a mega-dam] for cities in Gujarat or the Balliadila iron for Japan, and destruction of life and livelihood is in their lot.

In states like Jammu and Kashmir and the Northeast, women have come to realize that the pattern of development in India is lopsided and there are areas that will be exploited for their mineral and energy resources, for tourism etc that benefits the central government and imperialist backed

industrial lobby; that the Indian government has forgotten the promises of autonomy made to them, and they are therefore fighting for secession.

As is always, in this pattern of democracy, dissent is suppressed not only by large-scale state repression but also by using rape as a political weapon to teach an ethnic or minority community a lesson and hundreds of women from these areas have faced such sexual violence from the army and para-military forces with the AFSPA firmly reinforced since 52 years to condone such crimes.

Whether Gandhian, socialist, dalit, nationality movements or Maoist movement, these are trajectories towards social equality and liberation for women and suppression of these movements means pushing women further into the morass of patriarchy and class exploitation, into caste and communal discrimination. If democracy and development are to be really meaningful to women in India, then ways must be evolved to include women in these processes and not simply make symbolic gestures for their empowerment.”

Workers

There are many different strata in India’s working class. To begin with, millions—even tens of millions-- of workers in India are being paid far below the already poverty-line minimum wage by their profit-hungry employers. This is a system of forced slavery. In one shocking example, the state of Rajasthan recently paid 99 workers in Tonk district one rupee a day after eleven days of work!

India’s substantial industrial production is concentrated in several regional “industrial belts.” Some of these regions are not far from the countryside, and many workers in these factories are migrant workers from poorer states or displaced peasants.

Ludhiania in Punjab is a good example of the big industrial cities in India. The main industries in Ludhiana are hosiery, bicycle, tyres, auto-parts, engineering etc. Most of the workers of Ludhiana are migrant workers coming from the states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. They are treated as aliens in their own country. These workers are subject to abject poverty and extreme exploitation. Despite toiling for 12-14 hours a day, most of the time they do not even receive the minimum wages fixed for a helper for 8 hours work (Rs 3400--less than $US 80 USD-- monthly).

In the case of the powerloom [textile] workers of Ludhiana, there has been no increment in their piece rates and wages for last 10-12 years, while the prices of all basic necessities like food, housing, medical care and travel have been skyrocketing. On the other hand there has been a manifold increase in the profit level of the factory owners.

The working conditions of these powerloom workers are so difficult and dangerous that they can at best be called inhuman. Serious injuries and deaths at workplaces are quite common in the industrial areas. Basic safety regulations are callously disregarded by the factory owners, and the government does not enforce labour laws, which exist only on paper.

In August 2010, in response to these oppressive conditions, strikes involving tens of thousands of powerloom workers broke out in 22 factories in Ludhiana. The strike wave quickly spread to 52 other powerloom factories in the city. The main demands of the workers were: A big hike in piece rates and wages, safety measures to protect the workers, and enforcing all labour laws in the factories. The bold, organised and determined fight of the workers forced the powerloom owners to relent and agree to the demands of the workers.

On 31st August the workers withdrew their strike after a written agreement was signed with the owners. It was a glorious victory of the workers after a long time. A remarkable aspect of this victory was that the powerloom owners were not only forced to hike the piece rates/wages but they also agreed to give half wages for the days of strike. It is very rare that the factory owners agree to pay for the days of strike

Muslims

With 160 million Muslims, India has the third largest population of Muslims in the world. Muslims are significantly poorer than Hindus. The majority of Muslims live in poor city neighborhoods  and all-Muslim villages where they are periodically attacked by right-wing Hindu organizations animated by the chauvinist ideology of “Hindutva.”

Named after their orange colored shirts and headbands, armed saffron groups instigated a pogrom in 1984 against Muslim communities in Gujurat that murdered hundreds of Muslims. In 1992 these “saffron terrorists” captured and demolished the holiest Muslim site in India, and have been

implicated in bomb explosions aimed at Muslims in Malegaon, Ajmer Sharif, and Mecca Masjid.

Christians

The majority of the small, scattered Christian communities in India are lower-caste Hindus who have converted to Christianity in order to escape the oppressive caste system. Like India’s Muslims,  Christians face religious discrimination by Hindus in all areas of life,  and persecution by Hindu supremacist organizations that  are intent on keeping Christians from providing a new faith for other lower-caste Hindus.

The People of Kashmir

At present, 800,000 soldiers of the Indian Army occupy the Muslim-majority state of Kashmir in northern India. When the British imperialists in 1947 partitioned their colony on the Indian subcontinent  into Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan, the formerly independent state of Kashmir was split up between India and Pakistan (and a small part to China). Today all of these reactionary governments oppose the right of the Kashmiri people their right to national self-determination

Beginning in the summer of 2010, the people of Kashmir, spearheaded by banded courageous youth, took to the streets against arrests, brutal treatment, torture and rapes committed by India’s “security forces.” Rallies and marches of tens of thousands of Kashmiris from all walks of life, youth throwing stones at Indian soldiers, and protests of Kashmiri journalists against military orders to shut down newspapers brought the brutal occupation of Kashmir by the Indian army and the demand for “azadi” (freedom) into view by people around the world for the first time in decades.

As a result of this Kashmiri intifada, named after two powerful uprisings of Palestinians against decades of Israeli military occupation, Indian intellectuals, students and social activists such as Arundhati Roy  have publicly stated that Kashmir has never been a part of India. Even in the face of sedition charges by the Indian government, they are calling on Indians who believe in justice and the right of all peoples to self-determination to  demand the withdrawal of the Indian army from Kashmir so that the Kashmiri people can decide whether they want an independent state or another political arrangement.

The Peoples of the Northeast States

The seven small states of northeast India--Assam, Manipur, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Mizoram, and Tripura--were independent countries before they were annexed by the Indian government after 1947. Over the course of decades, the peoples of these occupied nations have built political organizations and armed forces that have widespread popular support. As these organizations have intensified their struggle against military occupation and for national liberation, the Indian army has launched one counter-insurgency campaign after another aimed at suppressing the national liberation movements in these states.

Who are India’s Maoists (“Naxalites”)

Members of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) are often referred to as “Naxalites.” This term refers to an armed rebellion in 1969 of tea workers  in the area of Naxalbari, in northern West Bengal. The Naxalbari uprising began a complicated political process that led to the formation of the CPI(Maoist) in 2004.

What follows are extended excerpts from the Expert Group on Development Issues to Deal with Causes of Discontent, Unrest and Extremism:”

“The Expert Group noted that it is the craving for equity and justice, denied by a brutish State, that propels Maoist expansion. Its report suggests that if exploitative land relations were a trigger for Naxalbari, the massive displacements caused by mega projects, often with unfair compensation packages, is the trigger for the current phase of Naxal expansion. Some six crore people have been coercively displaced by mega projects since 1951, of whom not more than 20 per cent were properly rehabilitated.

“The Maoist-dominated areas in central India are coterminous with areas of massive forcible displacement. The expert group has clearly identified equity and justice issues relating to land, forced displacement and evictions, extreme poverty and social oppression, livelihood, malgovernance and police brutality as being behind Maoist expansion. More than development, this is also a question of rights. Ensure that they have it and people will accept these rights with both hands, dropping their arms, despite any ideological prodding.’ (Outlook, 31 Aug 2009)

“The unrest this report is concerned about is not reducible to dramatic incidents such as blowing up or blasting of police stations but encompasses mass participation in militant protest.

“Though no precise estimates are available, it is a fact that in some cases the Naxalite movement has succeeded in helping the landless to occupy a substantial extent of government land whether for homesteads or for cultivation. In Bihar all the Naxalite parties have attempted to assist, in their respective areas of influence, the landless Musahars, the lowest among the dalits, to take possession of a sizable extent of such land.

“In the case of forest land, occupation by the adivasis with the encouragement and assistance of the Naxalites has taken place on an extensive scale in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra, Orissa and Jharkhand. In fact much of it is not fresh occupation but reassertion of traditional usufructory rights declared by the law to be illegal. Properly conducted forest settlement proceedings should have protected at least the pre-existing rights, but much of forest settlement proceedings has taken place behind the back and over the head of the adivasi forest dwellers.

“The law and administration provides no succour to displaced people, and in fact often treats them with hostility since such internally displaced forest-dwellers tend to settle down again in some forest region, which is prohibited by the law. The Naxalite movement has come to the aid of such victims of enforced migration in the teeth of the law.

‘The Minimum Wages Act remains an act on paper in much of rural India. Naxalites are in any case not bothered whether or not there is a law governing the right they are espousing. They have intervened and determined fair wage rates in their perception in all labour processes in their areas of influence. This includes wages for washing clothes, making pots, tending cattle, repairing implements, etc.

‘Naxalites have secured increases in the rate of payment for the picking of tendu leaf which is used for rolling beedies, in the forest areas of Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Maharashtra, and Jharkhand. This was a very major source of exploitation of adivasi labour, and while the Government knowingly ignored it, the Naxalites put an effective end to it. The exploitation was so severe that the rates have over the years

increased up to fifty times what the tendu patta contractors used to pay before the Naxalites stepped in.

‘In Bihar there have been many instances where dalits suffering social oppression, and in recent times victims of massacres perpetrated by the caste senas [militias] such as Ranbir Sena, have had to flee their hamlets and settle elsewhere. Indeed, prevention of the depredations of the caste senas is the state’s duty in the first instance.

‘It has failed not only in that but also in providing protection to the victims so that they are not forced to migrate, or at least shelter and livelihood at the places where they have migrated to. The victims have received that help from the Naxalites. The trauma of displacement for which the state does not provide succour creates space for violent movement.

‘Besides taking up and resolving individual issues, the movement has given confidence to the oppressed to assert their equality and demand respect and dignity from the dominant castes and classes. The task of putting an end to social discrimination should not have required the threat of Naxalite-inspired militancy. The movement does provide protection to the weak against the powerful, and takes the security of, and justice for, the weak and the socially marginal seriously.’

A brief look inside adivasi communities organized by the Maoists

According to reports by Indian journalists who have visited adivasi communities organized by the Communist Party of India (Maoist), Maoist organizers have been working  in the adivasi communities of  central and eastern  India for over 25 years. In these communities, adivasis who have joined Maoist mass organizations and the party itself have set up people’s democratic committees that organize collective farming, agricultural research and development (replacing transient farming with multi-crop agriculture) and irrigation projects. These revolutionary committees have also built schools, health centers and roads with local materials. 

In Chhattisgarh, the Maoists have worked with the Gondh people to create a written language and publish books and literature that are now used in their schools. In order to defend the new democratic society they have built, the CPI (Maoist) has built a People’s Liberation Guerilla Army and much larger village militias. These Maoist-led military forces based in thousands of adivasi communities are made up of adivasi youth, 40% of whom are

women, who enlist to defend their communities and spread the revolutionary struggle to new areas.

The Work of Maoist Women’s Organizations

Led by the CPI (Maoist),  Krantikari Adivasi Mahila Sangathan (KAMS) is one of the largest women’s organizations existing in India today, though  it is “invisible” because  it is banned by the government. This is how KAMS describes its work:

“According to Maoist literature and the reports of journalists and researchers who have visited Dantewara [a district in southern Chhattisgarh], the work of KAMS activists has led to great changes in the lot of women.  In the process of land distribution, land is allotted in the name of women as well as men.. The construction of check dams and helping in agriculture have helped women solve the problem of domestic use of water   New agricultural methods and introduction of fruit and vegetable cultivation has given women more nutrition.

“It is an ironical but well known fact that only a few kilometers from the financial capital Mumbai, in Thane district, as well as in Melghat in Vidarbha [a district in Maharastra known for suicides among indebted farmers], hundreds of women and children die of malnutrition,. However, in Naxalite dominated Gadchiroli in  Maharashtra, there are no deaths due to malnutrition. Access to better health and education in the Maoist areas is the only way women are getting educated there today. Wage increases in tendu leaf collection have brought more economic equality into women’s lives. Setting up rice mills helps women avoid the strenuous processes of threshing.

“The KAMS has not only targeted external patriarchy (sexual exploitation by non-tribals}) but internal patriarchy as well. The practice of isolation of women during menstruation and unscientific practices after childbirth are being reformed.

“In Bihar and Jharkhand, the Nari Mukti Sangh (NMS) is a strong and popular women’s organization that is giving space to women’s voices and encouraging their participation in economic, political and social activity and decision making processes. Whether it be the replacing of the feudal patriarchal type dowry based marriages with democratic marriages, the punishing of perpetrators of sexual violence through people’s courts, or the

attempts at amicably settling family disputes, the NMS women’s teams move from village to village, not only affecting women’s lives with their interventions, but also involving women and children along with them.

“Thousands of women and girls have learnt to read and write and have been educated in the “Kranti ka Paathshaala” by organizations like KAMS and NMS. Picketing at health centres where there are no doctors, at schools where teachers are absent, fighting for equitable distribution of food grains, for better wages and better remunerative prices, and for equal wages for equal work between men and women, these tribal women’s organizations are democratizing the processes of women’s political, social and economic activities, thus making development and democracy more meaningful to them.

“Being aware of the impact of Globalization on women’s lives, how the beauty and fashion industry has been commoditizing women, these organizations, in the heart of India’s darkness, have held rallies against the Miss World Beauty Pageant and opposed George Bush’s visit to India.

“The leading activists of these organizations, hailing from indigenous background, have a higher level of political consciousness than many women degree holders in our cities.”

The Economic Stakes of Big Corporations and the Indian Government in Operation Green Hunt

An analysis of investments in Naxal-affected areas for Outlook magazine in 2009 revealed the business interests at play in the adivasi areas of India:

Arcelor, owned by Laksmi Mittal, planned to put $24 billion into two steel plants and iron ore mines in Jharkhand and Orissa to produce 24 million tonnes of steel when they come on stream. But ‘if the Maoist insurgency in central India continues to develop at its present speed, Mittal may never find the iron ore he needs to operate his plants.”

 “So what kind of money are we talking about? In their seminal, soon-to-be-published work, Out of This Earth, the authors say that the financial value of the bauxite deposits of Orissa alone is 2.27 trillion dollars. (This is more than twice India’s Gross Domestic Product). That was at 2004 prices. At today’s prices it would be about 4 trillion dollars.

“That’s just the story of the bauxite in Orissa. Expand the four trillion dollars to include the value of the millions of tonnes of high-quality iron ore in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand and the 28 other precious mineral resources, including uranium, limestone, dolomite, coal, tin, granite, marble, copper, diamond, gold, quartzite, corundum, beryl, alexandrite, silica, fluorite and garnet.

“Add to that the power plants, the dams, the highways, the steel and cement factories, the aluminum smelters, and all the other infrastructure projects that are part of the hundreds of MoUs—Memoranda of Understanding-- that have been signed. That gives us a rough outline of the scale of the operation and the desperation of the stakeholders.”

The Salwa Judum Scorched-Earth Campaign

In 2005, the Tata Group signed five MoUs with the Chhattisgarh state government to open up open pit mines and build large steel plants in the state.

The central government in New Delhi and the state government looked at the increasing level of resistance and organization of Chhattisgarh's adivasi communities, and they decided their Maoist-led organizations had to be crushed in order to force tens of thousands of adivasi communities off their land. A non-adivasi military force would be rejected by the people, so they set up a militia composed of young adivasi Special Police Officers (SPOs) organized, armed and given marching orders by the Indian military.  

In the course of the Salwa Judum ("Purification Hunt") the SPOs, joined by thousands of heavily-armed paramilitary forces, emptied 644 adivasi villages of their inhabitants on the suspicion that they “supported” the Maoists, and left their villages in smoking ruins. This brutal counter-insurgency campaign killed thousands of adivasis and drove 300,000 into forests and neighboring states. 

Salwa Judum’s militia rounded up 50,000 adivasis and forced them into squalid concentration camps, modeled on the strategic hamlets that the US set up in south Vietnam in an unsuccessful attempt to separate the people from the forces of National Liberation Front.

One organization in Chhattisgarh identified the Salwa Judum as a “vigilante force promoted by the state ostensibly against Naxal cadre backed by

traders, contractors and miners waiting for a successful result of their strategy. The first financiers of the Salwa Judum were Tata and the Essar.”

It goes on to note that “350,000 tribals, half the total population of Dantewada district were displaced, their womenfolk raped, their daughters killed, and their youth maimed. Those who could not escape into the jungle were herded together into refugee camps run and managed by the Salwa Judum. Others continue to hide in the forest or have migrated to the nearby tribal tracts in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa.”

The rampant killings and human rights abuses of Salwa Judum whipped up a firestorm of public condemnation from all sections of Indian society. A prominent part in this political mobilization against Salwa Judum was played by Himanshu Kumar, the leader of a non-violent Gandhian organization (Vanwasi Chetana Ashram, or VCA) in southern Chhattisgarh. Kumar worked among the adivasi refugees in the camps and publicized murders and abuses committed by the SPOs and paramilitaries.

In the villages of Chhattisgarh, Maoist armed units, with a broad base of support from local villagers, gradually rolled back the SPOs and paramilitaries from the villages they had captured in 2006. It was this unified political and military mobilization by the adivasis and their supporters that broke the back of the Salwa Judum.

Adivasi Uprising in Lalgarh in 2008

Starting in November 2008, tens of thousands of adivasis organized in the People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCAPA) rose up against a repressive and corrupt administration controlled the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM). The CPM is a misnamed capitalist party that  is the largest party in the West Bengal and is the dominant force in the “Left Front” government that has ruled West Bengal since 1977.

For decades, the police in Lalgarh controlled by the CPM brutalized adivasis with impunity, and CPM government officials and party cadre siphoned off development funds meant for adivasi communities. The arrest and brutal treatment of several adivasi youth by the police, based on suspicion they had “Maoist ties,” triggered an avalanche of mass meetings and protest marches led by PCAPA women.

As tens of thousands of PCAPA members swept into villages controlled by the CPM, they burned down CPM offices and drove thousands of CPM cadre and harmads (armed goons) out of the Lalgarh region. During this mass upsurge, armed units of the CPI(Maoist) defended PCAPA demonstrations and political meetings from attacks by CPM harmads and the  police.

In Lalgarh, West Bengal, when the PCAPA (committee against police atrocities) was set up, it was ensured that in each area 50% of committee members would be women. Even now, in spite of rapes, disappearances, murders, arrests and torture of women and men in that area, protest marches of women sometimes numbering up to 50,000 are being held. Draconian laws like the UAPA (Unlawful Activities Prevention) are being used to arrest and deny bail to women who are simple, uneducated villagers, who never heard of the word Maoist, or urban women professionals who are also not part of this movement, but oppose this exploitative pattern of development. Whether they are Gandhians, NGO workers or simply liberal intellectuals, no one is allowed from entering these struggle areas to interact with the people.

In the course of this people's uprising, the PCAPA built up a membership of tens of thousands of adivasis, and has gained widespread support in adivasi villages in  the western part of the state. To the  great dismay of the Indian government and military, the PCAPA has a friendly relationship with the Maoists. In some areas where CPM government officials and party leaders had been cleared out, PCAPA members and Maoist organizers worked together to build health centers, schools and irrigation systems in villages that had never received a dime in “development” funds from the Indian government.

According to The Telegraph Calcutta, a Maoist leaflet stated that “These reactionaries (CPM leaders and workers in Lalgarh) are anti-people. They have fled their villages because of the people’s movement. We will have to take possession of their land and property and distribute them among landless farmers and day labourers. If there is not much land, then farming should be done by forming co-operatives.” According to Ratan, a Maoist spokesman in Lalgarh, “We will turn the ponds belonging to the escaped CPM leaders into fisheries, which will be run by co-operatives.” He also said that while distributing land and other assets among the poor and the

landless, the Maoists  would “take into account their financial condition and daily earnings.”

Horrified at the beginning of genuine land reform in the Lalgarh area, the central and state governments counter-attacked several months later, blanketing Lalgarh and nearby villages with paramilitaries and police. This allowed some CPM officials and cadre to return to the villages they once controlled. In response, the PCAPA shifted the focus of its work to other adivasi villages in the region. The paramilitaries and police stationed there are suffering from dehydration and low morale as they go out on daily unsuccessful patrols to find the Maoists.

The Decision to Launch Operation Green Hunt

In late 2009, the Indian government and military looked at the situation they were in. All of their attempts to suppress the adivasis and their organizations had ended in failure. Salwa Judum had been defeated in 2007. A similar attempt to set a tribal militia in Bihar against the Maoists and their peasant support base had been unsuccessful. Even worse,  the government's  saturation of the Lalgarh region of West Bengal with paramilitary forces had only increased the PCAPA's popularity. Even more alarming to them, the PCAPA is a legal organization with support among millions of  adivasis in West Bengal, and it can't be attacked as a "front group" for the Maoists. 

The top leadership of India's government and army must have looked at the situation in the adivasi regions of east and central India and decided that they had to keep the "contagion" from the adivasi uprising in Lalgarh from spreading to other states.

For 30 years in places like Chhattisgarh, there have been Naxals. Why is the situation now being made to sound like there is this huge upsurge? The real fact is…that it is the Government that wants a war to clear out the forest areas because there is a huge backlog of MoUs in Jharkhand as well as Chhattisgarh that are not being activated. (Arundhati Roy, interview with CNN-IBN, October 21, 2009)

In November 2009, they decided to launch a massive multi-state military operation code-named "Operation Green Hunt." Over a six month period, the Indian government deployed  200,000 paramilitaries and police in the states of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Orissa, Bihar, Tamil Nadu

and Maharastra in order to crush all independent organizing and political mobilizations among adivasis. 

The greatest numbers of the government's armed forces, and the most intense confrontations between the military and the people, are taking place in the natural resource-rich state of Chhattisgarh.  It is here that highly organized and politically conscious adivasi communities and the Maoists' people's committees and guerilla forces are keeping Indian and foreign capitalists from starting up strip mines and toxic industrial operations that could make them billionaires many times over.

How the Indian Government is Waging its War against the People

One of the first targets of the Indian state in the period leading up to Operation Green Hunt was the Gandhian group, Vanwasi Chetana Ashram, in southern Chhattisgarh. In May 2009, heavily armed police demolished the VCA compound in the name of “fighting the Maoists.”

In September and October 2009, villages in the Dantewada area were attacked by security forces. “On both these days, security forces (paramilitaries, local police and SPOs) went on a rampage--stabbing and killing people, looting, burning houses and forcibly picking up young men. At least 45 villagers, several very old and very young, were killed, others tortured, harassed and driven out of their villages into the forests.

According to a detailed report issued by a coalition of national and state human rights groups after these events, ‘There is apprehension that a much larger number of people were killed on both days in other villages. The same is true for instances of torture, loot and detentions…. What is clear is that the operations conducted by security forces have compelled villagers to leave their villages, flee into the forests and/or take shelter with relatives in other villages…. Instead of rehabilitating people, the government, in the name of combating Maoism, is bent upon unleashing its lethal paramilitary forces and evicting people from their villages.”

Beginning in November 2009, successive waves of paramilitary batallions and police units were ordered into the adivasi regions of central and eastern India by Prime Minister Singh and Home Minister Chidambaram. The number of these forces, as of February 2011, is estimated at 250,000 soldiers.

News about the large-scale and ongoing military assaults on thousands of adivasi communities in Chhattisgarh and other states is extremely difficult to obtain because the whole region is off limits to the press. However, some information—the tip of the iceberg—has made it into major Indian newspapers and websites.

In a June 8, 2010 report in The Hindu, three teenaged girls from Mukram village in Dantewada district stated that they were brutally assaulted by soldiers of the 62nd Battalion of the CRPF (Central Reserve Police Force, the largest paramilitary organization in India). In September 2010, The Hindu published the testimony of two girls from Pachangi village in the Kanker district of Chhattisgarh, in which they accused personnel of the Border Security Force of sexual assault.

In another report in The Hindu in October 2010, “A young woman carries a torn blouse and an undergarment and a lock of her hair in a clear plastic bag that rarely leaves her side. Kunjami Mangli (name changed) of the Bade Bidme village in Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada district preserves these items as evidence of the events of the night of October 12.  

“Four uniformed policemen burst into my house at 2 a.m.,” said Mangli, speaking through a translator. “I was sleeping on the floor, one policeman put his foot on my head, pulled my hair and cut off a lock with a knife,” said Mangli. “The three others pulled up my petticoat and tried to rape me.” Mangli said her ordeal lasted about 15 minutes, even as her mother pleaded with the men to spare her daughter.

According to the Report of the Expert Group on Development Issues to Deal with Causes of Discontent, Unrest and Extremism: “Any agitation supported or encouraged by the Naxalites is brutally suppressed without regard to the justice of its demands. In such matters, it becomes more vital in the eyes of the administration to prevent the strengthening or growth of Naxalite influence than to answer the just aspiration. Often any individual who speaks out against the powerful is dubbed a Naxalite and jailed or otherwise silenced.

“The search for Naxalite cadre leads to severe harassment and torture of its supporters and sympathisers, and the kith and kin of the cadre. What is to be pointed out here is that the method chosen by the Government to deal with the Naxalite phenomenon has increased the people’s distrust of

the police and consequent unrest. Protest against police harassment is itself a major instance of unrest, frequently leading to further violence by the police, in the areas under Naxalite influence.”

The Maoist-led adivasi forces have fought to defend their communities from the brutal military operations of Operation Green Hunt. For example, on September 19, 2010, seven policemen were captured by the Maoists as they traveled in the forests of Bijapur district in southern Chhattisgarh. While the bodies of three policemen were found the next day, the fate of the remaining four remained uncertain until they arrived at a police camp in Dantewada district.

Police sources said one of the conditions set for the release of the 4 pollicemen was that all four men would resign from the police service. It is understood that four local television journalists escorted the men back to safety. Maoist posters recovered in Bijapur demanded that the police call off Operation Green Hunt, withdraw central paramilitary forces from Chhattisgarh, release unnamed Maoist leaders and stop police atrocities on the adivasis in Bijapur. The police said the “lack of specificity” made it impossible to meet these demands.

In November 2010 the Cabinet Committee announced a 137 billion rupee “Unified Action Plan” to “develop Naxal-affected areas”. They claim that the implementation of this plan--by providing basic amenities to poor adivasi districts where more than 50% of the population live below poverty line—will solve the “Naxal problem”. Meanwhile huge numbers of central paramilitary and police forces are occupying and terrorizing adivasi villages in Chhattisgarh, Orissa, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Andhra Prades and Mahrashtra.

There are also clear signs that the Indian army--with heavy weaponry and US and Israeli supplied air power—is getting ready to move into Chattisgarh and other states where the adivasi communities’ resistance is the strongest. One indication of this is that the Army has set up a “training camp” in southern Chhattisgarh close to where the paramilitaries and police are launching military operations against adivasi communities.

Political Repression  

Due to the widespread political influence of the CPI(Maoist), which is especially strong adivasi communities in the seven states where Operation

Green Hunt is being conducted, President Manmohan Singh has declared it to be “India’s greatest internal security threat.” In order to make it impossible for the CPI (Maoist) to do open political work, the Indian government has made it a crime, punishable by long prison sentences, to be a member of the CPI(Maoist).

The Centre and many states have also passed laws such as the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act of 2008, under which anyone accused of contact with the CPI(Maoist) can be kept in jail for 180 days without trial and bail. When they are held, defendants appear before secret courts with the identities of witnesses also kept secret. Laws like these have been a common feature of Indian “democracy” throughout the post-independence period.  

The UAPA is being applied widely in West Bengal today, especially targeting Kolkata intellectuals and rights activists. Some of them don't hesitate to say that they politically support the Maoists, while others are falsely charged with being "Maoist supporters." Chhatradhar Mahato, the founding president of the CPAPA in Lalgarh, has been imprisoned for over a year on the unsubstantiated charge that he had been acting under the political direction of the CPI(Maoist).

Due to decades of these and other “anti-terrorism” laws such as TADA and POTA, India’s prisons are filled with more than 100,000 political prisoners from Kashmir, the northeast states, Maoists from the adivasi areas, and Muslims who have opposed chauvinist Hindu groups  These political prisoners are forced to live under squalid conditions that lead to early death. Such conditions, including the denial of medical care, led  in 2009 to the first casualty of the UAPA in Kolkata, Swapan Dasgupta, the editor of the Bengali edition of People’s March magazine.

Building up India’s armed forces for counterinsurgency and to develop into a regional military power  

For decades the Indian government has deployed the bulk of its military forces on its long border with  Pakistan, which has been the site of several “hot wars” on the northern border. It has also deployed nearly a million soldiers to occupy Kashmir and the northeast states.

With the eruption and spread of the adivasi uprising with mass political mobilization and  Maoist-led armed resistance to defend adivasi

communities, the Indian government has increased its military budget  and stepped up training exercises for use in Operation Green Hunt’s military operations.

For immediate use in where the resistance of adivasi communities is strongest, the Indian military has purchased 10,000 Uzi rifles from the Israeli army, which has been using them for decades in military operations against the Palestinian people.

In an October 2010 article,  The Telegraph Calcutta reported, “The counter-Naxalite drive often called Operation Green Hunt has resulted in a huge demand for helicopters that two global majors, Bell Textron and  Eurocopters, are vying to capture for the millions of dollars on offer.

 “Bell Textron is best known for the  UH-1 “Huey” – a legendary flying-machine that the US used in the war against the communist guerrillas (role models for the Naxalites) in Vietnam in the early 1970s – and was quicker off the blocks having sold its first helicopter in India nearly 53 years ago.”

“Eurocopter India’s chief executive officer Marie-Agnes Veve said ,“We are looking only at the civilian and paramilitary markets,” she said. “We think we can sell 25 helicopters each year until 2015 because they are required in the (anti-) Naxalite operations and by private companies and as ambulances,” she added.

In order to develop new military tactics to use against  Maoist-led adivasi guerilla forces, the Army Central Command in Allahabad has been studying the tactics used by the Maoists in resisting Operation Green Hunt and equipping the paramilitary forces and police conducting counter-insurgency operations in adivasi areas with the most effective military resources.” 

For several years, members of the US Special Forces  have trained Indian paramilitary and police forces at a jungle warfare school in Kanker, Chhattisgarh, in close proximity to some of the most intense military operations of Operation Green Hunt.

In his recent trip to India, Obama gave a clear sign of the regional power role the US government and military expect India to play in the years ahead. “Obama spoke of India as an “indispensable” partner for the coming century. “In Asia and around the world, India is not simply emerging,” he said during his speech in Parliament. “India has emerged.”

In private discussions with Indian leaders, Obama and his advisers undoubtedly stated that  they expect that  India’s purchases of  over $50 billion worth of modern jet fighters, ships and missile systems  over the next five years are not to be mainly used by India to achieve military superiority over  Pakistan.  On his trip, Obama expected to reach an agreement that India’s rapid military buildup will turn it into a South Asian regional power that block the efforts  of the Chinese state capitalist regime to project  its military power into the Indian Ocean.

In recent years, the Chinese navy has reached agreements with Pakistan and Sri Lanka for its ships to dock at their ports, and Chinese state-owned corporations looking for new profit centers invested  $15 billion in Pakistan, India’s longstanding rival and sometimes enemy. These actions set off alarm bells in both New Delhi and Washington D.C.

In order to reward the Indian government for its agreement to form a de facto military aliliance with the U S, Obama agreed to push for India to get a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. According to a top US foreign policy adviser, Obama’s promotion of  India’s candidacy for the UN seat was “intended to send a strong message ‘in terms of how we see India on the world stage.’ ”

The Work of the International Campaign to Stop the War on the People in India

One set of myths portray the people of India as projects for Western charities who are not capable of standing up and fighting in their own interests. In fact, the Indian people have a long and proud history of struggle, including revolutionary struggle, against British colonial rule and the governments in New Delhi.

Today, and politically conscious and united adivasi communities are carrying forward this political legacy.  As they rise up to resist the 200,000 paramilitaries and police that are conducting  brutal counter-insurgency operations in their communities, the adivasis need support and solidarity from grassroots political groups and anti-imperialist organizations all around the world.

In India, the adivasis are not fighting alone. Their struggle is being joined by tens of millions of other oppressed people in India—dalits, peasants,

workers, women and others. They are rising up to to take their future into their own hands and toss the “fate” with which the rulers of Indian society have shackled them for millennia into the dustbin of history.

News about this uprising among the adivasis and other oppressed people in India must reach far beyond India’s borders. Hopefully, reading this paper will encourage you and organizations you may work with to join with the International Campaign to Support the War in India (ICAWPI) to build an international grassroots movement that extends its support and solidarity to this historic people’s uprising in the second largest country in the world.

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Below is more information about the work of the International Campaign to Stop the War on People in India:

ICAWPI was launched in January 2010 by activists from India, Europe, Brazil and the US to support the struggle of the people in India’s adivasi regions to stop Operation Green Hunt.   ICAWPI has been doing work in three areas:

(1) Political education:  The ICAWPI website (www.icawpi.org) has hundreds of articles about Operation Green Hunt and the people's opposition to it. These articles are categorized by News, Resistance, Analysis/Opinion and The Campaign. It is an essential resource for activists, educators, students and journalists. The ICAWPI website also posts articles about the powerful upsurge of the Kashmiri people against occupation by the Indian Army; forced displacement of adivasis and farmers from their land; attacks on civil and human rights by the Indian government; and violence and discrimination against women. 

(3) ICAWPI activists have organized educational forums and film showings to expose Operation Green Hunt’s massive assault on India’s adivasis and build support for the Indian people's struggle against it.

3) Political mobilizations in India and other countries: Students, intellectuals and human rights activists in Delhi, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Punjab, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and other states have organized marches, press conferences and forums to expose and build opposition to Operation Green Hunt. Most recently 29 organizations and

many individuals in West Bengal joined together to oppose Operation Green Hunt.

On February 5, 2010, political activists spearheaded by Turkish and Kurdish immigrants organized half a dozen demonstrations condemning Operation Green Hunt at Indian embassies and consulates in Europe.  On August 15, 2010, 250 Indians, Kashmirs, Nepalis, other immigrants and British people held a spirited demonstration against Operation Green Hunt on Indian “Independence” Day outside the Indian Embassy in London. On the same day, 50 people attended a demonstration called by Indian students to protest against Operation Green Hunt in front of the Indian Consulate in New York City.

In 2010, dozens of Brazilian peasants  traveled hundreds of miles to the capital city of Brasilia. They were joined by members of workers, students and lawyers groups to protest against Operation Green Hunt in front of the Indian embassy. It was unprecedented in Brazil for peasants to organize an action to demonstrate their solidarity with the struggle of other oppressed people halfway around the world. 

A similar action took place last year in Athens, Greece where a coalition of workers, students and leftist organizations turned out more than 100 people to demand an end to Operation Green Hunt in front of the Indian embassy.

What You Can DoGet the word out: Send this paper and a selection of articles from the ICAWPI website to organizations, friends and contacts in your city, country and around the world.  

Organize an educational forum and video showing. Write to us if you would like to invite an ICAWPI organizer or a knowledgeable person who lives in your area to speak. If you want to do it on your own, the ICAWPI website has what you need to make a solid presentation on Operation Green Hunt. The website can also supply your audience with reading material. If you hold a forum, send us a report so we know how the solidarity network for the Indian people's struggle is developing. 

Make your voice heard by as many people as possible: Write articles about Operation Green Hunt in/on the websites of student newspapers, community newsletters, academic journals, and op-ed pieces and letters to the editor.

Attend or organize a demonstration at an Indian embassy or consulate near you:: Protest against the brutal treatment of adivasis by the Indian military in Operation Green Hunt and show your support for the Indian people’s struggle to defend their land and their livelihoods. Get as much publicity as possible for your action, and let ICAWPI know about it so we can share news of your action with other groups and individuals who are part of the International Campaign.