Balbir K. Punj

Nov.06 : Normally, we would have welcomed home minister P. Chidambaram's offer to the Maoists to discuss problems like land acquisition, forest rights of tribals, discrimination et cetera. However, our home minister - though quite intelligent and dynamic (especially when compared to his predecessor) - seems to have not read his full brief on the Maoists. He says that he is not asking them to give up arms but to only eschew violence as a means of redressing their grievances since the government is willing to talk to them.

Mr Chidambaram said at a press conference on October 30: "The Centre had never asked the Maoists to lay down arms since it was not a realistic expectation. We have always asked them to halt violence… They should come forward for talks if they consider themselves serious champions of the poor".

Such an approach presupposes that the Maoists are interested in solving the problems of the tribals and other neglected sections of society, and that they have taken up arms mainly because the democratic machinery refused to talk about these problems, much less solve them. But Mr Chidambaram errs. For all his tough talk and devising (at last) a national anti-Naxal strategy, he should be aware of what happened when the late Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy made a similar offer in 2004 and allowed Naxal leaders and cadres to go around freely, with their arms on display.

It is futile to ask the Maoists to give up their arms or engage them in talks. Maoists do not believe in dialogue. Lenin, who laid down the guidelines for the proletarian revolution, urged his cadres to use all types of deceit and arms to capture power. And once in power, they should eliminate their "class enemies", including other political parties. The state apparatus is to be used without mercy for this purpose. No other criteria for political morality exist in the Marxist-Maoist book.

The history of the Communist movement in the former Soviet Union, in China, in Vietnam, in Cambodia and elsewhere is replete with such instances. Lenin used violence, deception and treachery first to gain ascendance over the Mensheviks and then over his colleagues. Stalin used the state apparatus first to eliminate the Mensheviks and other Opposition political forces and then to finish his own colleagues one by one, starting with Trotsky. The Stalinist trials of the 1930s give a graphic insight into Communist tactics.

In eastern Europe just before the end of World War II, the Communists who were then in minority managed to come to power by collaborating with others. But soon they destroyed their allies from within, one by one, in a policy nicknamed "Salami tactics".

In China, Mao Zedong turned against his revolutionary colleague Liu Shao-chi and then Mao's wife formed the "Gang of Four" that sent several Communist leaders, including the most famous among them, Deng Xiaoping, packing to hard labour.

In Cambodia, the most gruesome killing spree in human history took place under a maniacal Communist leader. Poor peasants who found their land taken away for the collectivisation died in all these countries. India, either under the Maoists or Marxists, will have no different fate.

The ideological paradigm of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) and the Maoists is one. Look at the Marxists who are in power in West Bengal and Kerala. They are no different from the Maoists in dealing with their political opponents. Having state power in their hand, the Marxists threaten and blackmail to smother political dissent. How the Communists succeeded in entrenching themselves in West Bengal over 30 long years has been exposed. Their unions hold several top-level Bengali newspapers under their thumb, so it is not easy to carry anti-Marxist news stories in prominent newspapers and television channels. The fearless among Bengal's journalists have been publicly beaten up by Marxist goondas.

In Marxist-ruled Kerala complete dominance is not possible as the state has been governed by the Congress-led United Democratic Front and Communist-led Left Democratic Front with the non-Communist political forces also gaining strength. Yet the Marxists seek to make up for this weakness by targeting newspapers and journalists at every turn.

In effect, there is little to choose between the Marxists and the Maoists - the former use violence under the cover of the state government while the latter use armed violence in their attempt to seize power.

If the Marxists appear to be working within the constitutional framework, it is because they have tried and failed to seize the state apparatus through violence. Now they are working to wreck the system from within.

The Maoists are convinced that they can seize the state apparatus through armed attacks on the state. There is hardly any doubt that if the Maoists succeed, the bulk of the Communist cadre would shift their allegiance to the Maoist leadership.

Communists of all hues believe in a proletarian takeover of the state through whatever means available. Such a takeover, according to the Leninist-Maoist line, should be followed by imposing the dictatorship of the Communist Party and ruthless suppression of all dissent, even internal, among the Communist leadership.

In this framework of faith in violence and dictatorship, does it serve any purpose to ask the Maoists to give up violence and open talks with the government?

Balbir K. Punj can be contacted at punjbk@gmail.com

Balbir K. Punj