Mangalore, April 2: Vittala, a boy from the Malekudiya community, who was not willing to be driven away from his home in the forests, had been labelled a “naxalite” and jailed, the former chairperson of the Backward Classes Commission C.S. Dwarakanath said here on Saturday.
Delivering the valedictory address of a seminar on the impact of development on indigenous people organised by Mangalore University, Mr. Dwarakanath said that a company such as Vedanta was given as much land as it required by the Government and the adivasis who opposed it were called “naxalites” and jailed. One did not have to go far to find such an example.
A student of Mangalore University had also been branded a “naxal” and jailed, he said.
All that was found in his house were 250 grams of tea power, some sugar, and a book on Bhagat Singh, Mr. Dwarakanath said.
Mr. Dwarakanath gave several examples of what he called lack of connectivity between tribal and nomadic communities and the Government. During his tenure as chairperson of the Backward Classes Commission, he located members of a community called “Dhakkaliga” living 170 km from Bangalore in Chikkanayakanahalli. This community was considered untouchable for untouchables, Mr. Dwarakanath said.
The Dhakkaligas had told him that no one came to even ask them for votes, because it was considered the candidate would lose. “Even votes have acquired untouchability now,” Mr. Dwarakanath said. “The Government does not know that the Dhakkaligas exist and they don't know that the Government exists”.
A community called “Karadi Kalandar” worked with bears, he said. “They talk about their bears in the same way that they talk about their own families.”
However, when wildlife activists got the bears “rehabilitated” to forests “they knew nothing about, the bears died and the Karadi Kalandar people became destitute,” Mr. Dwarakanath added.
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