C.K. Janu, who led a historic struggle of Adivasis for their promised land in Kerala two decades ago, feels that “the fate of the fisherfolk in Vizhinjam will be the same as ours, they too will be betrayed”.
The 143-day-old agitation over fears linked to the ecological impact of the Vizhinjam International Seaport, being built by the Adanis in partnership with the Kerala government, on the coastal region was called off recently following talks and a backlash triggered by violence in which a police station was attacked.
While the CPM-led state government has claimed that six out of the seven demands of the agitators have been met, the Vizhinjam Action Council, led by the Latin Archdiocese of Thiruvananthapuram, has denied that all their demands were met.
Janu, whose autobiography is being serialised in a Malayalam web publication, said it was a pity that a Left government had taken a position against the fisherfolk and in favour of a billionaire businessman. “During our struggle, we were branded as LTTE/Tamil terrorists. The current government says the fisherfolk is led by terrorists, anti-nationals and urban Naxals. You had seen what had happened during the farmers’ agitation in Delhi. There is no difference between the Pinarayi (Vijayan) government and the Modi government. Only the colour of the flag is different,” said Janu, who in the past had aligned both with the CPM and the BJP.
The government will never honour the commitments, and the fisherfolk will continue to be in the same boat, she added. Janu said she could not join forces with the fisherfolk because of her ill health and some other domestic issues.
She intends to go to Vizhinjam in January. The struggle of the Adivasis had begun in 2001 after the death of 30 Adivais for want of food. Thousands of Adivasis had then put up huts in front of the chief minister’s office in Thiruvananthapuram.
A ministry led by the Congress and headed by A.K. Antony was in power then. The protesters agreed to disperse after 43 days following an assurance from the government that every landless Adivasi would be provided with a minimum of one acre of cultivable land. The government never cared to fulfil its promise although it claimed that some land was allotted.
In 2003, Janu, under the banner of the Adivasi Gothra Maha Sabha (AGMS), had led thousands of Adivasis into the Muthanga Wildlife Sanctuary in Karala’s Wayanad and set up camps there. They demanded the one acre promised to each of them by the then Antony government. As the Adivasis started cultivating the land there, the government sent its forces to evict them. In the ensuing clashes, one Adivasi protester and a policeman were killed. The Adivasis had said 16 of their supporters were gunned down by the police then.
“On February 18, 2003, the police surrounded Muthanga. At 8 in the morning more than a thousand armed policemen, foresters and hired thugs rushed in with lathis and clubs and started beating us.... Instead of arresting the activists, the police brutally beat them with lathis and shot them,” Janu writes in her autobiography which is scheduled to be published as a book this January. The agitation was followed by Nilppu Samaram (Standing Agitation) in front of the state secretariat in Thiruvananthapuram in 2014, demanding compensation for the families and rehabilitation of children affected by the Muthanga agitation.
They demanded the state government distribute the 19,600 acres allotted by the central government. At the end of 162 days, Janu and her supporters called off their standing agitation following an assurance from the government on most of their demands. But the demands of Adivasis in the state have not been met and they remain landless to this day. Janu later floated her own political party, the Janathipathya Rashtriya Sabha.
