The Camps October 2024

How the government converted tribal into refugees through Salwa Judum. An extract

Bela Bhatia

The camps were set up and run by the Salwa Judum with government support. At what can be assessed as the peak (late 2006), there were thirty-six camps in Konta and Bijapur tehsils of Dantewada district with more than 50,000 residents. However, the number of camps and their population have been fluctuating over time. The rationale given in defence of this aggressive grouping of people was to protect them from the Maoists. However, this façade barely concealed the true intention—evident on the ground—to control the people, to separate them from the Maoists and thereby, weaken the Maoist support base. As one Salwa Judum leader put it: ‘How can the fish survive without water?’

Thus, what we saw in Dantewada was a result of this odd hypothesis of the government that if people from villages of Maoist influence could be evicted, moved into government-run and monitored camps and confined there for an extended period, the Maoists would be ‘finished’. As we shall see, extreme measures were adopted to achieve this extreme objective.

Salwa Judum in Konta Tehsil

Konta tehsil has fifty-nine gram panchayats and 248 villages, administered through two revenue circles: Konta and Jagargonda. The Konta revenue circle covers thirty-two gram panchayats and sixty-four villages. In November 2006, there were 30,000 people from approximately ninety villages in four camps: Konta, Injaram, Errabore and Dornapal, all located close to the Hyderabad-Jagdalpur national highway on the 40 km stretch between Konta and Dornapal.

According to local residents, around four or five padyatras of Salwa Judum took place in Konta tehsil in early 2006. Typically, the routes these rallies took and the villages they covered corresponded to the villages that were found in the camps. From the descriptions I heard, there was a mass exodus of people from villages located within 10 km of the highway. Beyond this are thick forests for a further 50 km; the villages located in this stretch remained comparatively untouched by the ‘Judum’, as Salwa Judum is called locally.

In the second half of November 2006, I visited Konta and Injaram camps for the first time. I found that many people had joined the camps due to direct coercion by the security forces and Salwa Judum, others out of fear of them because they perceived it to be a government order. Some also joined the camps because they were being targeted by the Maoists a