The Tribal Upraising

Conflicts over tribal rights and land acquisition for development projects are pitting communities against the government across central India. As elections approach, will tribal anger be mobilised at the polls?

- Rahul Noronha And Amitabh Srivastava

On June 19, five tribal women and three men, activists with a Christian NGO, were performing a street play against human trafficking at a school in Burudih Kochang village in Jharkhand’s Khunti district when six armed attackers interrupted the show and abducted them. In a forest a few kilometres away, the women were gang-raped, brutalised and beaten, while the kidnapped men were forced to consume urine.

According to the local police, the rape survivors were asked by the school principal, Father Alfonso Aien, and two nuns to hush up the matter, but one of them broke her silence the next day. While the Catholic priest and two suspects were arrested, Jharkhand’s additional director general of police R.K. Mallik announced that the suspected attackers were members of a Maoist splinter group, the People’s Liberation Front of India (PLFI), and supporters of a burgeoning tribal autonomy agitation, the ‘Pathalgadi movement’, which has been a thorn in the side of the state government, barring public servants from entering tribal villages.

“The crime was perpetrated to deter individuals opposing the Pathalgadi movement,” Mallik said, adding that “it appears that Johan Jonas Tidu, one of the movement’s top leaders in Khunti, masterminded the abduction and rape”. Meanwhile, Tidu himself told India today that the police claims were a set-up: “The Pathalgadi movement is uniting the tribal communities, [making] them aware of their rights. This is a conspiracy to defame us—we are also looking for the culprits and will punish them.”