March 07 : The detailed characterisation of the Maoist movement by Union home secretary G.K. Pillai at a seminar on Friday offers a perspective with which many will agree, but this is a view whose basic premise is under challenge from an
influential section of civil society. A wide measure of silent support for the government’s understanding of the issue can be said to derive from the increasing endorsement of the idea of “bourgeois democracy” in the country, even when it is seen to work miserably on the ground, leaving swathes of the country sunk in poverty. On the other hand, the minority opposition from some influential intellectuals rests in the belief that state violence is per se wrong and must be opposed. As such, any police action against the Naxalites must be resisted even when such action is undertaken to put down Naxalite violence against ordinary people.
It wasn’t always like this. For about a decade from the mid-Sixties when the Naxalite movement emerged, the poor peasantry-oriented revolutionaries — ironically they came from the urban middle classes — openly clashed with the state, ideologically and with arms. In the end, they were defeated. However, even their opponents looked upon them as idealistic but misguided youth who had given a part of their lives in the service of the poor. That is more than can be said of the present generation of Maoists which strategically aims to overthrow the state through violent means, but is ideologically amorphous; at any rate its actions do not appear to derive from the teachings of Mao, Lenin or Marx, favoured by the earlier Naxalites.
Although today’s lot also speaks in the name of the poor, it gives signs of being mixed up with terrorist outfits like the erstwhile LTTE and ISI-nourished “jihadist” elements, besides crime networks trading in drugs and weapons. That explains its stockpile of sophisticated weapons, equipment and military tactics that involve the use of explosives. The first generation Naxalites were not known to have criminal antecedents or associations. Those who have followed the story of the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan may find little to distinguish that narrative from that of today’s Maoists in India. Mr Pillai could be right. Right now, the Maoists don’t need peace talks because their armed cadres are intact, although in order to sound reasonable or to check the advance of the police and paramilitary forces they occasionally come up with the idea of a ceasefire as a tactical expedient. Indeed, the home secretary may even prove right when he says Naxalite violence may claim even more lives in the next couple of years. Essentially, this means the government needs two years or so to enable itself politically, tactically and in terms of resources, to be able to fully confront the Maoists. The Maoists invoke the poor. However, they don’t mobilise this section, preferring to dragoon it instead. The Taliban does the same. This is perhaps the most striking parallel between the Islamist militants and so-called revolutionaries who use the tribal poor as cannon fodder.
It cannot be gainsaid, however, that the Naxalite menace has arisen on account of ungoverned spaces, the bane of many developing societies. Much has been achieved in this country since Independence but large rural and forest tracts inhabited by the poor have been left wholly uncared for. There is no trace of government in these areas, no development, and no grounds for anticipation. The home secretary has been candid enough to acknowledge this even as he tells us how dangerous the Naxalites can get. If government does not go to the poor with structural help, criminality will continue to operate in the cloak of ideology.
