In the face of the latest determined belligerence of the government, the Maoists have displayed sufficient resolve. They have rejected both the propositions-their laying down arms as well as coming to the negotiating table. In fact, their response has been reflected in various violent incidents in Bihar, Jharkhand and Maharashtra. Despite a veil of doubt on whether Jharkhand Special Branch Inspector Induwar was murdered by the Maoists and the Bihar violence was their handiwork or part of the State's caste conundrum, the escalation of Naxal violence in the country since the general elections has indeed gone up.
That the complex enigma of Maoism in India demands immediate resolution is unexceptionable. The resolve on both the sides points to a bitter battle. Whether or not the government is able to put an end to this phenomenon, which in fact never died since the Telangana movement, a massive collateral damage, that is being sternly accepted as an unavoidable price, is indeed on the cards. That 'security action first and everything else later' argument would surely come in the way of a holistic look at a number of issues and leave the paradoxes where they are, as they have been left unattended with some cosmetic actions in the past, should concern every right thinking citizen of India. The latest example of such a paradox is the massacre of the Musahars (a mahadalit caste in Bihar), which some say is a caste feud rather than a Naxal action, has been highlighted by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar disregarding the D. Bandyopadhyay Committee Report on Land Reforms that he had commissioned. Obviously, a more constructive engagement is called for to treat this festering sore on India's body politic.
Recent Context
The recent arrests of Maoists Kobad Ghandy and Chhatradhar Mahato and the 'successes' of the security forces mark the latest triumph of the government in dealing with Naxalism. Brutal retaliations by the Maoists following these arrests in Jharkhand, where they beheaded a Police Inspector of the Special Branch, and in Maharashtra, where they ambushed a police party killing seventeen of them, reflect the bind in which the Maoists have put themselves. Indeed, doubts have been raised if the Maoists are behind this and other related incidents in Jharkhand and Bihar. For, according to the human rights groups, most of the recent news relating to the Naxals in the media has been police handouts. Given the low credibility of the police in the country, doubts have been raised on the emanating information. However, that the Maoists over the past decade, or more, have tended to use brute force against real or suspected dissidents too is a disturbing reality that has led to paradoxes of various kinds. Therefore, whether a particular piece of news is beyond the pale of doubt does not hide their violent and brutal ways.
Lately, the Union Home Ministry also appears to have turned its face away from the report of the Planning Commission's expert group on 'Development Challenges in Extremist Affected Areas', an initiative purported to have been aimed at a humane approach to resolving the peculiar challenge that Naxalism poses to the Indian society and polity. This much discussed and celebrated report found roots of social support in the Naxal affected areas in prevailing economic inequity and such social maladies as untouchability, deplorable condition and exploitative location of the tribals, status of women, the unresolved (since independence) land question, politician-bureaucratic-contractor control over forest resources ignoring the rights of the forest dwellers, displacement-rehabilitation problem, and so on.
Recent advertisements in the national media highlighting brutal violence against innocent people by the Naxals is unexceptionable and a reminder to all peace-loving Indians of the bestiality and futility of the politics of violence, whosoever carries it out in whatever fashion wherever; but particularly in India where the democratic culture is still seeping in. Several scholars, commentators and analysts have criticised the Naxals for democratic deficit and violence, including activities that would be branded criminal even if the utopia of a Maoist state was realised in India. However, given the spread of the Maoist violence in India since the mid-1980s, its expansion in different degrees in more than half the Indian States and its concentration in resource-rich but impoverished regions of such States as Jharkhand, West Bengal, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka and so on, is an indication of the Indian state's inability to solve the land question and bridge the development deficit and intervene in social sectors, retreat of the Indian state, consequent acceptance by people (willingly or out of situational constraint) of the logic of violent revolutionary politics and the intricacy that this phenomenon represents. The complexity is not merely about a group of motivated 'revolutionaries' pursuing an ideology that collapsed as the world was looking forward to the dawn of a new millennium and its irrelevance in the People's Republic of China. It is also about various levels of intricately interwoven nexus it operates in and thrives on.
The State's Logic
The Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, chose to speak on his government's resolve to deal sternly with this 'greatest internal security threat' the country faces at an unlikely place the National Centre for Performing Arts in Mumbai. He also did mention the need for looking at the root causes that lead to the alienation of communities such as the tribals.
P Chidambaram too has repeated the development catchphrase. However, a strong message of dealing emergently with the Maoist violence with force has clearly been conveyed by the government. Along with most political parties and State governments, the CPM and the government it leads in West Bengal too have pledged support to the 'strategy of force' formulated by the Union Home Ministry.
Mohan Bhagwat, the new Sarsanghchalak of the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, in his first Vijayadashami speech to the RSS swayamsevaks indicated a five-pronged strategy to deal with Maoism. He prescribed elimination of terrorist activities through simultaneous tough action by the government and the administration; strengthening the security forces by modernisation and empowerment; enhancing the capability of intelligence agencies; extensive training and awareness programme for the entire population on security of individual and society; and freeing the society from unemployment, exploitation and corruption. Obviously, given the traditional umbilical ties between the RSS and BJP and the post-2009 elections BJP's dependence on the RSS, it is likely that BJP's position would not be any different.
This brings in a rainbow political consensus on how to tackle the Maoist challenge. Since the Naxals have gathered credible arsenal and maximise its use by carefully planned guerilla attacks on the security forces, public officials and establishments with little concern for collateral damage and they even target the perceived hostile civilian population, the logic of 'force' being advanced by the Indian state is naturally accepted. The inspiration is being drawn from 'Operation Steeplechase' in 1971 that crushed the Naxalbari movement, though not Maoism, with a clandestine help from the Army. The present blueprint plans to deploy the CRPF and its Commando Battalion for Resolute Action (CoBRA) force in order to capture back the Naxal dominated areas. The police would be backing them up in the respective States. The media reports suggest that a similar operation planned now would have an equally furtive role for the defence forces. The possibility of the IAF firing at the Naxals in self-defence has been under discussion and perhaps the Army too would form the back-up force, which indeed is likely to be covert. For, though the MHA has ruled out large scale deployment of regular Army units in anti-Maoist operations, Home Minister P. Chidambaram stated recently that small teams of the special units of the Army could be used for 'surgical operations', a term pregnant with innumerable possibilities if this is likely to follow the 1971 model. It must be remembered that the Army's help in commando training for forces specially raised for this purpose is already being taken.
The Revolutionary Vicious Circle
India woke up to 'life and freedom' with revolutionary politics in full swing in the Telangana region, then part of the Nizam's Hyderabad state. The movement spearheaded by the Communist Party of India (CPI) folded up in five years. By the time it was withdrawn by the CPI on Stalin's personal advice in 1951, it had become feeble due to the onslaught of the Indian state. However, it did make significant contribution in redistributive justice as far as land was concerned. It is a moot point whether it would have been withdrawn had Stalin not advised the Indian Communist leaders, but the force of the Indian state had weakened it.
Yet, the idea of revolution travelled to another context and State within a decade and intensified after the split in the CPI in 1964. The eventual eruption of the Naxalbari movement in West Bengal in March 1967 brought out the prevailing socio-economic contradictions conducive to revolutionary politics. Another split in 1969 brought a final break between the parliamentary and revolutionary communist movements in India. The significant fact, however, is that Naxalbari movement that gave India's Maoist movement a name in perpetuity, was weakened by land reforms carried out by the State Government and eventually use of force with covert support from the Army.
But even on this occasion neither the context nor the idea died. Even as the Indian state patted itself for putting an end to the 'Naxal menace' by 1972, it sprouted in Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh. The context again was exploitation and landlessness of the tribal population there. It remained rather dormant during the 1970s, but picked up in the 1980s and consolidated since the 1990s. The Indian state has used force from time to time, but aside from objective conditions providing a rationale for Maoism, the rusted internal security structure, corrupt administration and opportunistic political leaders of the country have ended up ceding physical, social and political space to the revolutionary movement.
Force certainly has not proved to be the panacea to eliminate the violent Maoist movement, which has increasingly become brutal. The prevailing situation is even more complex than what was there in the 1940s and 1960s, even in the 1980s and 1990s. Land reforms have not been carried out in full measure. The farmer's suicides indicate that the immiserisation of the peasantry continues. The economic boom since 1991 has widened the income disparity in the country. The displacement-resettlement hiatus continues. The tribal situation would take its time to improve with the Forest-dwellers' Rights Bill. The liberalisation - globalisation dynamics has created new structures of exploitation with the emerging nexus of administration-politician-contractor-entrepreneur, at times with overlapping roles.
It is, therefore, not surprising that the Maoist movement has never been short of groundswell of support. The leaders never had problems in mobilising the poor to struggle against exploitation. Interestingly, however, the movement always had ideologues and top rung activists of a very high intellectual calibre. The recent catches show that this trend continues. Just to concentrate on the recent ones, Kobad Gandhy and Anuradha, Vernon Gonsalves, Saketh Rajan, Sridhar Shriniwasan, Sabyasachi Panda, Ravi Sarma and B. Anuradha, all are well-educated and have left behind their comfortable lives to struggle for the poor and the exploited out of commitment. While the logic of the state and government does end up blaming the intelligentsia for their sympathies for the Naxalite movement, the outrage on the neglect of the poor and their victimisation, many a time of the innocents that is considered unavoidable collateral damage in anti-Naxal operations, leads some passionate amongst well-educated to struggle for them. Indeed, situations that lead to such logic deserve to be constructively engaged. Unfortunately, the situations and thought processes that have led such persons to the revolutionary ideology have not been unraveled as yet.
A Difficult Chase
The complexification of the politics and anti-politics of the Naxal phenomenon in India needs to be understood in order anticipate the problems that may arise in the course of likely anti-Naxal operations. First, it is nobody's case that this security-development vicious circle has to be broken without a high collateral damage. Second, some among the most glaring contradictions that emerged in recent years found expressions in the eruptions in Kalinganagar (Orissa), Singur and Nandigram (both in West Bengal) as well as disquiet elsewhere in the country wherever plans to acquire land to establish industrial projects or SEZs were being implemented. These signs of popular ire emanating from the people's distrust of the government's intentions and efficacy about resettlement, for the past record of the Indian state does not inspire confidence, may be lying dormant now, but are not dead. Moreover, aside from the compensation amount, the high technology projects being set up in the acquired land have little space for the uprooted. Naturally, with the people apprehensive of being overwhelmed by the forces of globalisation, which is the new context of 'development', the seeds of 'revolution' take root.
These also bring out, what has been known for a long time, the nexus between mainstream politics and ultra- Left politics. Three recent cases of popular upsurge backed by the Maoists clearly brought out this nexus. Earlier, in Andhra Pradesh both N.T. Rama Rao and Channa Reddy had sought the help of the PWG to improve their electoral fortunes. This dichotomy has given rise to all kinds of political incongruities over the years, which still persist. The All India Trinamool Congress led by Mamata Banerjee, now a part of the ruling UPA, was accused of taking Naxal help in the famous Singur and Nandigram movements. The CPM is still accusing her of such a nexus. Whether there are other undeclared links is difficult to say. And, whether such undeclared links would come in the way of operations being planned is also difficult to say.
Surely, the Indian security establishment, minus the State Police, must have made a fair assessment of the ground situation as it is preparing to launch the offensive. The likely weaker role of the state police, which is not up to the challenge, is certainly going to be the Achilles' heel of this operation. That a Special Branch police officer in Jharkhand, who was not paid salary for six months, was beheaded, that the junior officers in the affected States seek security at the level of their seniors, show the state of terror that the Naxals have been able to strike. If the State Police are sitting duck for ambushes and get terrorised to seek security, what kind of security can they provide to the people?
Conclusion
The situation is indeed a complex one that deserves caution. Despite the ferocity of the Naxal violence, it would be advisable for the government to minimise collateral damage and human rights controversy for its own credibility. For, a tough win by losing faith of the people would not do any credit to the government, whether or not the human rights community criticises the incident. Besides, this would be strengthening dominant groups and structures of dominance which would continue with their exploitation regime.
It is not besides the point that none of the concerned policiesbased on The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, the Land Acquisition Act and The Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, 2007that are supposed to obviate the alienation of the population targeted by the Naxals, have inspired confidence. Obviously, the contentious issues of land, forest produce and rehabilitation and resettlement of the displaced, which have remained tardy since the 1950s will have to be taken out of the chicken-egg dilemma and the government must show visible efforts.
Police reform, central to any issue of internal security, has been deliberately delayed by the government. Though some of the State Police have special units to deal with what is considered as Naxal terror, there is no replacement to the State Police. They are and continue to be the first line of defence on any security issue in the country. Even though it would be foolhardy to recommend waiting for Godot of police reforms before an action is taken on Maoism, the government should visibly be seen to be doing something to be believed.
By Ajay K Mehra
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