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. §§§
