Marang Gomke - Supreme Leader

ICS, Indian Civil Service – But resigned from it

Captain of India’s first hockey team to win a gold medal in the 1928 Olympics in Amsterdam, Netherlands,

Principal incumbent of the Rajkumar College, Raipur

A Constituent Assembly member

Founder of the Adivasi Mahasabha in 1938

Four time Member of Parliament

Well, you wouldn’t have guessed who I am talking about, right.

Jaipal Singh Munda

Yes all of the above and more. An adivasi, born in a remote village, taken by the English principal of his school to England. One of India’s ablest and finest. Few know about him today. He was part of the Chhotanagpur Five who negotiated with Nehru, Sardar Patel, Sarojini Naidu, Abul Kalam Azad, Kaka Saheb Kalelkar  and others for a nation without a nation state for the adivasis and how development – as defined by India’s new post independence government would spell disaster for the adivasis.

Jaipal Singh Munda will be remembered for his character and flamboyance. He was also a brilliant orator. When Nehru moved a resolution in the Assembly proclaiming India a sovereign and democratic republic, Jaipal made a stirring speech interpreting the proclamation from his people’s point of view.

“As a jungli, as an adibasi,” said Jaipal, “I am not expected to understand the legal intricacies of the resolution. But my common sense tells me that every one of us should march in that road to freedom and fight together. Sir, if there is any group of Indian people that has been shabbily treated, it is my people. They have been disgracefully treated, neglected for the last 6,000 years. The history of the Indus Valley civilisation, a child of which I am, shows quite clearly that it is the newcomers—most of you here are intruders as far as I am concerned—it is the newcomers who have driven away my people from the Indus Valley to the jungle fastness.... The whole history of my people is one of continuous exploitation and dispossession by the non-aboriginals of India punctuated by rebellions and disorder, and yet I take Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru at his word. I take you all at your word that now we are going to start a new chapter, a new chapter of independent India where there is equality of opportunity, where no one would be neglected.”

We have sixty three years of democracy, but democracy is a funny word. Yes we have had democracy, but it has been largely parliamentary democracy and not social democracy. Parliamentary Democracy can succeed only when we can achieve social democracy.

Jaipal’s hopes for his people, the adivasis, have been dashed, 63 years later, as you and I have prospered and marvel at our almost-double-digit GDP growth, ever growing Forex reserves; millions of adivasis have been dispossessed of their land and suffered and continue to suffer.

It would be a tragedy that with all this growth, we as a society aren’t able to address the inequities.

Quoting from Ramchandra Guha,

In that last speech to the Constituent Assembly, Ambedkar asked, “What does social democracy mean?” He supplied this answer: “It means a way of life which recognises liberty, equality and fraternity as the principles of life. These principles of liberty, equality and fraternity are not to be treated as separate items in a trinity. They form a union of trinity in the sense that to divorce one from the other is to defeat the very purpose of democracy.... Without equality, liberty would produce the supremacy of the few over the many. Equality without liberty would kill individual initiative. Without fraternity, liberty and equality could not become a natural course of things.”

With the Ministry of Environment accepting the fact that it was a mistake to accord clearance to Anil Aggrwal owned Vedanta’s project in Orissa. Vedanta wants to mine the sacred mountain of the Dongria, who have become known as the ‘Avatar tribe’ due to the close parallels with the plight of the Na’vi of James Cameron’s film Avatar.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Vedanta-infringed-clearance-guidelines-/articleshow/5677811.cms

The Forest Rights Act referred to in my earlier post

http://ourtimes-yoursandmine.blogspot.com/2009/12/36garh-or-chhattisgarh-part-4-tribals.html

clearly has the teeth and can be effective if used properly to protect the rights of the adivasis.

It is great that the Largest Indian business paper (the Economic Times) sides with the Dongria Kondh and not Vedanta.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Opinion/Stop-the-Vedanta-Project-in-Orissa/articleshow/5692364.cms

Times are changing. We can and should do our bit.

Spare a few moments and join me today in remembering Jaipal Singh Munda, one of India’s greatest children on his 107th death anniversary.