In the decade-long Left-wing insurgency in Chhattisgarh’s Naxal stronghold of Bastar, what has gone unnoticed was the red-saffron conflict that has so far claimed lives of over two dozen Sangh members.
The rebels had begun targeting the Sangh in the Red zone of Bastar in 2000 by forcing the closure of RSS-run eakal vidyalayas (one-teacher schools) in the remote tribal villages in the region, one after another. Many Sangh members, who defied the Naxal dictates, were produced before the kangaroo courts and then brutally executed.
“Nagesh Rao, a Sangh member, who was running one such school in Basaguda in Bijapur district, was abducted by the Naxals in February 2003. He was then produced before a jan adalat, which handed him down a gory death. The executors went on cutting every part of his body with razors till he bled to death,” Nitin Patel, a local RSS leader, who was witness to the horrific sight, told this newspaper Monday. Mr Patel was also produced before the same kangaroo court, but was let off with a warning. He later fled his village to Raipur and was yet to return.
“We are not scared of khakis (policemen), but of the half-pant wearing people (RSS men). You leave our area or get killed,” Mr Patel quoted the militants as saying during the hearing in the jan adalat.
A senior RSS leader, functioning in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand in 2000-05, said local tribal youth, who had volunteered to teach in these schools, were either killed by the Naxals or forced to flee their villages.
“We had lost over two dozen members who were running the schools in over 300 villages under Basaguda, Awapalli, Usur, Murdad, Nabi, Palampalli and Bhopalpatnam areas in Bijapur district and Gondapalli, Jagargunda, Arapalli and Konta areas in undivided Dantewada districts in the past one decade,” a Sangh leader said.