It is essential that all pertinent departments of the government coordinate closely with one another to find out how the terrible tragedy of the overturning of the Howrah-Kurla Gyaneswari Express came to pass in the small hours of Friday in the Jhargram area of West Bengal, where the Maoists have been extremely active for some years.
But let us be clear. This will only be a necessary formality. At heart all concerned know that the Maoists are at it again, without the least compunction about taking innocent lives in a cold, calculated manner, or destroying public property which are the assets of the people of India built against great odds. As it happens, the so-called People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCPA), a front organisation of the Maoists with a brutal record that is as long as its pretentious name, has claimed responsibility for the mass murder by leaving behind a poster. Well over a hundred passengers have been killed and the toll is likely to mount. But there has not been a word of remorse from the Maoist front. Nor for that matter has there been an adequate expression of grief from railway minister Mamata Banerjee.
It wouldn’t do any more for the likes of Ms Banerjee to seek to play games that imply that the West Bengal state government is in some ways at fault. PCPA elements have been old political associates of Ms Banerjee’s party, and she has been conspicuously hesitant to blame them in any manner for the crimes they have committed against ordinary people in the past year or so. This does not redound to the credit of a seasoned and successful politician who has higher sights in view. This is the second major incident in just about six months in roughly the same sector of the Indian Railways. The railway authorities might have been expected to be more conscious of their responsibilities in a terrain in which the Maoists have been running amok. Indeed, since the railways are a soft target, it would have been in keeping with the duties of the railway minister to seek to mobilise public opinion against the depredations of the Naxalite elements, considering that she is a major politician from a state that is in the throes of Maoist violence. Official figures suggest that in 2009 there were 58 cases of attacks by Maoists on the railways and train passengers, and in the first five months of the present year, 32 cases have already been recorded. The signs are indeed ominous. For political reasons, Ms Banerjee is at liberty to choose her political foes. But the list can hardly exclude the Maoists operating in her state.
We have got inured in India to dealing with terrorist violence unleashed by groups acting in the name of one or another religion. It is time the reluctance was dropped to include in the category of terrorism extremist secular outfits. This is crucial at the political and ideological level, for the fight of a democratic state against all those who seek to undermine it of necessity embraces the task of mobilising public opinion against all anti-people actions. For far too long have Naxalites been permitted to get away with the Robin Hood aura. A submission of the Chhattisgarh government to the Supreme Court suggests that Maoist actions in the last four years have killed upward of four hundred civilians. Thus, the attack on Friday on the railways is by no means suggestive of a new trend of Maoist violence. It is well to remember that right through its bloody career, the Maoist movement in the country has targeted civilians. Civil rights groups and government entities need to contend with this.