‘Tribal has to fight since he has been locked up for so long’ 21 September 2014, Dantewada, Parakram Rautela

It is almost one in the afternoon by the time she walks into the Dantewada district and sessions court – the court starts at 11 – where she is fighting the last of the seven cases that have so far been slapped against her.

Soni Sori starts her day by reporting to the nearest police station. Which is why it is almost one in the afternoon by the time she walks into the Dantewada district and sessions court – the court starts at 11 – where she is fighting the last of the seven cases that have so far been slapped against her.

She is, this time, accused of being on the verge of accepting a payoff by the Indian MNC Essar and ferrying it to the Maoists. (Soni has been acquitted in all of the other six cases.)

Before she became a member of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Sori has been a government school teacher-turned-tribal activist. She fought the 2014 Lok Sabha elections from Bastar, but lost. Somewhat more cynically, Soni is sometimes referred to as a ‘cause célèbre in liberal drawing rooms.’ While that might technically be true, it is also just as true that according to a report (by NRS Medical Medical College and Hospital in Kolkata) submitted to the Supreme Court, stones were inserted into Sori’s vagina and rectum while she was in police custody. And that – this is not part of the report – her husband suffered a stroke under mysterious circumstances while in jail, which reportedly led to his death.

But those are the perils of living in a conflict zone, and Sori’s life is in many ways emblematic of those dangers.

“Bahut danger hai,” she says when you ask her if it is dangerous to live in a conflict zone, where you’re stuck between the police on the one side and the Naxals on the other. ‘You have to listen to both sides – they’re both armed. In a conflict zone, the power of the police tends to get amplified.’ And that you’re never quite certain which side will fire the next salvo. Soni says for example that when her nephew Lingaram Kodopi was ‘picked up.’ She kept asking the men taking him away whether they were police or Naxals. But no answer was forthcoming.

Soni says that even turning into a “cause célèbre” did not necessarily make her life easier. Threats and intimidation continued. And that what finally did make a difference was the AAP nomination. That it was only the threat of her turning into a member of parliament that finally made local officialdom back off.

Soni recounts a conversation she had with a senior police official on her return to Chhattisgarh earlier this year after the Supreme Court gave her bail. The cop said to her: “You will say there is no need for outsiders to come into Chhattisgarh. We can solve our own problems. You will denounce these outsiders.” Soni’s answer was a ‘no’. That if she had got any help, fighting the charges against her and getting bail, it was because of outsiders.  The cop said: “Outsiders will not come to your house. You will not meet with them there.”  Soni’s answer again was no. That whosoever wished to come to her home was welcome to. That she is now a member of the Aam Aadmi Party, and the police cannot tell her who she can and cannot meet.  How did the cop react? “He kept quiet,” says Soni. 

Even today, most policemen tend not to want to talk about Soni Sori. “She is not a benchmark, and an acquittal does not mean a crime was not committed,” said a senior police official, without wishing to be named.

According to Shalini Gera, Soni’s lawyer, Soni is the way she is because “she has a strong sense of justice. And that she doesn’t easily back down.”  Other battles lie ahead. Soni speaks of the other tribals she met while in jail, people who had spent as many as six years in jail as undertrials without getting bail – a distressingly familiar trope that you hear again and again in Chhattisgarh. “It is always the tribals who are stuck in jail, mostly on Naxal-related charges and you don’t get bail in those cases,” says Soni.

She adds that it is a difficult battle to fight. “Today, I will tell a tribal to fight the state because he has been locked up for so long, and he might agree. But tomorrow, the police will tell him to drop the case, and he will agree to that too. The tribal is usually a simple man, worried about jal, jungle, jameen, not rules and regulations.”

But Soni believes that an opportunity has presented itself with the recent arrest of Virendra Pratap Singh, a government school teacher like herself, who has been arrested for allegedly aiding the Maoists and is currently being held in Dantewada jail. “He’s a teacher like me. He’s not a tribal. He should want to fight. And it will be a good way to get word about the problem out.”

Soni says she went to the jail to meet him but that she was not allowed to because she was not family. And that she has been able to speak to his family over the phone but – she claims – that they’re scared, that they’re being pressurised to stay away from her. “I can understand,” says Soni. “They did the same thing with me.” http://www.millenniumpost.in/NewsContent.aspx?NID=69797

Why not Aam Aurat Party?

BY KALPANA SHARMA
December 21, 2013

Gender plays a role in politics. Which is why women as candidates, and as voters, make the difference.

Even as Arvind Kejriwal cogitated about whether he should accept the challenge of forming a government in Delhi, I wondered whether he would consider adding another word to the name of his party, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP). How about renaming it the Aam Aurat Aadmi Party (AAAP)? I don’t mean to be facile or to brush aside the party’s spectacular performance in Delhi. But given the fact that AAP is projecting itself as a party with a difference, surely it should recognise that even something as mundane as the name of a party should reflect that difference.

Of course, people argue that just because AAP does not specifically mention “aurat” does not mean it is insensitive to gender. Possibly. Some also insist that the term “men” or “aadmi” includes all genders. That is questionable. If that were the case, the middle A in AAP could also be “aurat”. This can become a circular argument but the simple point is this: the words we use do matter. For centuries, the language we use has made women invisible, or at least taken for granted. That must change in visible ways, through our words and our actions.

Even if the AAP does not add another word to its name, we still have to see whether the women in its ranks are equal and relevant players as the male faces we see all the time in the media. Where are the women? We know they are in the party. But why do we not see them, with the exception of Shazia Ilmi (who seems to have temporarily disappeared after losing her election by a very narrow margin)?

It is not unreasonable to ask these questions of a fledgling party that is decidedly attempting to change the tone and content of Indian politics. Gender balance and sensitivity must be a crucial part of the difference and this must be visible. More so as women voters are now becoming a factor in elections. Although their decision to vote for a party like the AAP will not necessarily be affected by the number of women in leadership positions, it could make a critical difference.

In the recently concluded Assembly elections, there was a fractional difference between male and female voters in Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan. In both states, the increase in the percentage of women voting has been remarkable. For instance, in Chhattisgarh, the percentage of women voters was 67.9 per cent in 2003. This year, just a decade later, it was 77.27 per cent. Similarly in Rajasthan in 1998, the percentage of women voters was 58.88 per cent, but this year it jumped to an impressive 75.33 per cent, marginally higher than the percentage of men voting, 75.03 per cent. In Delhi, the rise in women voters is even more dramatic — from a low 46.41 per cent in 1998 to 64.69 per cent in 2013.

Clearly, something is happening that is making more women step out and vote. This does not necessarily mean that there is something called a “women’s vote”. Women are not an undifferentiated mass. Apart from gender, they are also marked by class, caste and creed. These factors affect women’s voting choices as much as they do those of men. Also, there is little empirical evidence to indicate how women vote, whether they make up their own minds, whether they look at candidates or parties, and whether the response of political parties or individual candidates to their concerns affects their choice.

Yet, the very fact that more women are voting is something that needs to be noted. In my own experience as a reporter, I have found that, increasingly in urban areas, poor women are fairly articulate about their choice of candidate. It is possible that they are following the men in their families. But there is sufficient anecdotal evidence to the contrary, of women making up their own minds.

Often what dictates the choice is not so much the party as the individual. For instance, women living on the pavements of central Mumbai justified to me their choice of voting for a known criminal in the municipal elections because he had ensured that they got water. In another instance, Muslim women in a part of Dharavi decided to support a Shiv Sena candidate in the municipal elections after the 1992-93 communal riots because he was the only one who built a public toilet for them. These could be exceptions. But it is an aspect of politics and voting choices that require much closer scrutiny.

In the run-up to the 2014 general election, all political parties will be strategising how to persuade this growing number of women voters to vote for them. It will be interesting to watch how this gender angle of the election game is played out.

sharma.kalpana@yahoo.com

http://www.thehindu.com/features/magazine/why-not-aam-aurat-party/article5478551.ece