Editorial, "MYTH AND REALITY," in LAW ANIMATED WORLD, 31 October 2020, Vol. 16, Part 2, No. 20 issue

 MYTH AND REALITY

That the Adivasi Gond martyr Komaram Bheem had organized a very big rebellion to overthrow the Nizam’s rule that was suppressed with much bloodshed and difficulty with great losses to the government forces is a myth. That he was a discontented, rebellious tribal with inspirational/ organizing capabilities and fought against the illegal, forcible evictions of himself and fellow-tribals from their longstanding podu (shifting cultivation) lands is true and in that course though he used his gun just once he did not injure any ‘enemy’ but in the cruel and excessive counter-firing by the Nizam’s forces he and 10 other Gonds were killed is the actual reality. The above assertion of this editor raked up much criticism but then this narration of the event by a famous Austrian anthropologist could be the only counter: “… [Kumra] Bhimu and his supporters had no revolutionary aims, and their demands were simply freedom from harassment and extortions by forest subordinates, and the right to live undisturbed in their ancestral homeland. Negotiations with Bhimu and his supporters by the district officers were clearly mismanaged, and were abortive ……. Bhimu refused to give himself up, and when a police party advanced into the hills, where he and his followers had gathered, Bhimu fired a shot without wounding anyone. Thereupon the police opened fire, killed Bhimu and ten other gonds on the spot, and wounded many more. The incident left the Gonds deeply resentful of the policy of government … particularly of the forest officials, who intensified their oppression and exploitation, using the example of Bhimu's fate as a threat whenever Gonds resisted their exactions. [von Fürer-Haimendorf, Christoph: Tribes of India: The Struggle for Survival, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982, http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ ft8r29p2r8/, pp. 91-93].” In contrast, the ruthless firings and killings of scores of tribals at Indravelli in the same district [on 20-04-1981] by the police forces in independent India were much gruesome and unequivocally true. But bitter truths are never palatable to the public hearts, which revel in weird imaginations like the filmy fictions of the Rajamouli like. Now for his RRR fiction, he is facing the furor of the extremist public. But what if to the incredible illusions of the public Rajamouli added another of Kumra Bhimu donning a Muslim guise and escaping? What discerning persons, and especially constitutional courts, should consider is as to whether spreading disinformation with completely untruthful narrations about legendary freedom fighters/social activists is permissible unless open disclaimers be made that the story is entirely fictional and not about any living/actually lived person. §§§