Barring the incessant whizz and whirr of crickets and cicada, a deathly silence hangs over Burkapal hamlet, a periphery of peripheries in Chhattisgarh’s Sukma district. The adivasi men and adolescent boys have fled this wretched outpost of poverty, leaving behind the womenfolk and infants after the 23 April attack by Maoist rebels on a posse of CRPF jawans, killing 26 of the troopers in a near one-sided exchange of fire.
Not a soul stirs amid the dry landscape as we meander through the narrow, dusty paths, on either side of which are neatly laid out mud-and-thatched-roof dwellings of the adivasis. The huts are set apart from each other by fine, dry bamboo strips that make for dainty fences. Rusty locks hang at the rickety doors to the huts. Some of the doors are barely held firm by sticks wedged into metal hooks.
Here and there swarthy pigs, wallowing in greenish pools of water, snort and fret, startled by the appearance of strangers. Country foul squawk and sprint across the smooth, mud-caked surface of the courtyards. A stray mongrel alternately whines and barks.
Suddenly, a shadow fleets past a hut on the fringes of the hamlet, only to emerge on the other side as a lithe woman, clutching a baby in the curve of her hip, as the bare-skinned child hangs on to the woman’s breasts. The bare-feet woman joins a few other womenfolk scurrying to take cover under the shade of a low-roofed hut.
This hut has become the assembly point of frightened adivasi women who speak only Gondi, a dialect typically used among the tribals of the Bastar region, of which Sukma is a part.
They nodded and wagged their heads in recognition of some Hindi words, chattering in unison in Gondi. The only response to questions was frightened looks and turning away of faces. But Markam Budri, sitting on her haunches under the shade of a nearby towering Mahua tree, smiled and directed us to another clutch of women and girls, indicating through mutually comprehensible sign language that one of the girls could help us with our enquiries as she spoke Hindi.
The girl, who identified herself as Sunita Nukpo, goes to Class X in a school some 15 kms away in Dornapal. Her friend Markam Mukki goes to Class IX in the same school.
“That afternoon (23 April), a few women were sipping mahua when suddenly there were reports of gunfire. Some of us were gathering tendu leaves or preparing lunch. The sound of gunfire came from the other side of the road, slightly inside the forested area,” Sunita recounted the deadly attack in Hindi.
We were so frightened that all the men, women and children took refuge in their respective huts.Sunita Nukpo, Student of Class X
No Respite for Adivasis From Maoists or Police
As Sunita and her friend animatedly explained the events that followed the fierce attack on the CRPF troopers, the poverty and powerlessness that envelops Burkapal became all too stark. Burkapal is between Chinthalgufa and Chinthalnar villages. Chinthalgufa has a couple of school buildings. After barely a few kilometres, beginning at Dornapal, there really is no road, but a snaking stretch of loose soil and granite chips.
On either side of this snaking, brown stretch is dense foliage. The forest cover on both sides is thick and behind the forests are tree-covered mountains. Trees uprooted by men and machines lie at skewed angles on the edges of the “road”.
Patches of vegetation have been burnt to make way for the perennial road construction. A few adivasi burial grounds, considered holy, stand vandalised because of the construction activity. There is little sign of human dwellings or population. CRPF camps, their outer peripheries wreathed in a camouflage of plastic sheets, dot the rugged landscape.
On Tuesday, police (as the CRPF is referred to in these parts) picked up 24-year-old Markam Bamun, who is a widower with two children. They suspected him to have collaborated with the Naxals, which is untrue. Nobody in the village knows what his fate is.Sunita
She added that the village folk are “caught between the Maoists and police.”
Four to five years ago, Sunita recalled, groups of armed Naxals would frequent Burkapal, Chinthalgufa and Chinthalnar when they traversed long distances on foot. “Their visitations have become rare since the police camps came up,” Sunita said, adding, however, that the patrolling by CRPF jawans is often followed by “harassment” and “sometimes severe beatings”.
As the adivasi womenfolk shed their shyness and gather courage to stand behind Sunita and Markam Mukki, a murmur of voices rise from among them. An infant in its mother’s lap picks grains of food, which Sunita said is a gruel of rice and tangerine. Besides fine earthenware, most huts in Burkapal have hollowed, dried gourds in which water is stored.
The Voiceless Adivasi Pushed to the Margins
The men and women usually gather tendu leaves or mahua flowers that earns them a meagre income in the punishing summer months. But after the first monsoon showers, members of both genders take to working on the paddy fields. The adivasis of Burkapal make do with little.
“Over the years, the adivasi has been pushed further to the margins. His voice is of no consequence for the state. And yet it is an imperative, now more than ever before, that the adivasis must be allowed to speak up. All that they seek is respect,” Subhrangshu Choudhury, a Raipur-based journalist-turned-educationist who works among Chhattisgarh’s indigenous population, said.
“Today, caught between the devil and deep sea, the adivasis have become the worst sufferers in the display and use of force by both the Maoists and the government,” Choudhury added.
There is near unanimity among Chhattisgarh’s civil society organisations that mere road-laying or constructing buildings that lie unused “cannot be considered development”. And yet in Burkapal, many worlds away from Raipur, Sunita and her friend Markam Mukki signal hope amidst the general distress and misery.
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