In early 2005, on a visit to Chhattisgarh, people kept telling me, "Tata is coming, something strange is going to happen." It was not clear what exactly this obtuse prediction meant. But those vague murmurs turned to rumbles within just a few months. By June 2005, there was talk of a "spontaneous uprising" taking place against the Maoists. We were told that because the state's Maoists had banned the collection of tendu leaves, used in bidi production, the people were in the process of "revolting". It might have been an odd coincidence, but it was during that same month that two private companies, Tata and Essar, each signed memorandums of understanding with the Chhattisgarh government to set up massive steel projects in the state's iron-rich Bastar District.
According to newspaper reports, people were gathering and marching from village to village, in an attempt to garner support against the Maoists. Local media accounts called it the start of another jan jagran abhiyan, a people's-awakening movement. Despite the evidence of armed people taking part in these gatherings, newspapers were continuing to refer to what was taking place as a "peace movement". Chief Minister Raman Singh and 'supercop' K P S Gill, Chhattisgarh's former security adviser and the man who suppressed the Punjab insurgency, even went so far as to call the whole ordeal a Gandhian experiment.
Within days, the tone of the headlines had changed. While hearing about Maoist attacks on the Jan Jagran Abhiyan meetings, we suddenly also heard about villagers pouring into roadside camps that had been set up by the state – purportedly due to "fear of Maoist attacks". By December, more than 15,000 people were living in those camps. By that time, the 'movement' had also been rechristened salwa judum, and local Congress party leader Mahendra Karma had taken up its leadership. Karma claimed that Salwa Judum meant 'Peace March' in the dialect of the Gond Adivasis, though some academics have said that a more accurate translation would be 'Purification Hunt'.
That December, a report by the People's Union of Civil Liberties included a damning accusation: that the Salwa Judum was not a spontaneous movement at all, but rather a government-sponsored programme. A report by the Communist Party of India (CPI) also stated that the Salwa Judum had been torching houses and killing people who refused to join them. Nonetheless, the local newspapers continued to describe what was going on as a spontaneous, peaceful people's movement. Sitting in Delhi, it was certainly difficult to discern what was actually taking place.