Guns alone cannot end the Maoist insurgency

In the ongoing operations against Maoists, the security forces in Chhattisgarh have had several successes in eliminating their ranks and key leaders. While a considerable number of Maoists have lately surrendered, a key section of them in Chhattisgarh is seeking ceasefire. But the government wants an unconditional surrender. Even as the Home Minister has lauded those who have surrendered, he has also issued a warning to those still active.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has pinned the blame for the Maoist upsurge in the country to Congress policies over the past six decades, ie since Naxalbari village in Darjeeling, West Bengal, exploded in March-June 1967. He is right in referring to a long history of the Maoist movement in India, but the Congress is not responsible for its start. The persistence of the movement, though, is a complex issue.

The PM coined ‘urban naxal’ for indiscriminately accusing the left, left of centre and liberal intelligentsia et al for the emergence and persistence of naxalism/Maoism. Their faulting the government for extreme poverty, exploitation of peasants and tribals by local landowners, money lenders, contractors and power brokers does not go well with the PM.

The 1946 armed revolt by the Communist Party of India against the erstwhile Nizam of the Telangana region to free India from a ‘sham’ independence is the root. Its seeds flowered naturally and quickly amid extreme exploitation of the local peasants’ life and property by doras, local landlords.

The British rule bequeathed this ‘revolution’ to independent India, which had to be tackled amid numerous other problems prevailing in the region. Aside from the operations by the security forces, the initiation of the Bhoodan (gift of land) movement by Acharya Vinoba Bhave in 1951 weakened its principal rationale —’land’. And, the movement declined gradually.

Amid the ideological divide between Moscow and Peking from 1951 to 1967, ‘Spring Thunder’ descended on India in the east — peasants of Naxalbari village of Darjeeling district in West Bengal shot an arrow, killing a gun-wielding cop, as they tried to stop their granary from being looted under police protection. Their clash with the ‘jotedars’ (rich farmers) was similar. A ‘revolution’ was born! The resultant nomenclature — naxalism —has stuck since, even though the movement was crushed during 1972-75 amid land reforms and police repression.

Srikakulam, Telangana, Dantewada and several sites of conflict in West Bengal, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Bihar are various posts through which Maoism has travelled since. The ideological debates as well as the ‘revolutionary action’ carried out by a committed leadership since 1946 boast of several distinguished names — Charu Mazumdar, Kanu Sanyal, Kobad and Anuradha Gandhi, and, more lately, law graduate Gummadiveli Renuka in Chhattisgarh.

They moved from the comfort of their homes to jungles, raised cadres and carried on their ‘revolution’. Since they pursue the cult of violence, many a time indiscriminate, their ideological commitment is tough to appreciate.

The negatives of the movement include fratricide, brutal attacks on the unsympathetic populace and ambush of security forces. While on the one hand the coming together of most of their factions in the form of the CPI(Maoist) at the beginning of the millennium gave headaches to the government, on the other hand, they kept losing their cadres and leaders, including Azad, due to the pressures mounted by the successive regimes of the Indian state.

In the first decade of the millennium, the CPI(Maoist) dreamt of a Pashupati (Nepal)-to-Tirupati (Andhra Pradesh) red corridor. The spread of the Maoist violence to one-third of the districts in the affected states showed that the ‘red map’ had its expanse in the resource-rich regions, which were being exploited by the Indian state and its supporters.

Poverty and exploitation of both natural resources and populace in these areas created a fertile ground for the roots of the movement.

The government did try to understand the socio-economic roots of the problem and take measures to deal with it. An expert group constituted by the erstwhile Planning Commission prepared a report ‘Development Challenges in Extremist Affected Areas’ in 2008. Analysing poverty, exploitation and the mechanisms available with the government to deal with them, the expert group advised the government “to mount programmes on a scale equal to the dimensions of the problem."

Even the Supreme Court’s judgment on Salwa Judum (2007) in Chhattisgarh quoted contemporary research studies to stress that poverty needed to be reduced for Maoism to be eliminated. It said, “The same set of issues, particularly those related to land, continue to fuel protest politics, violent agitation politics, as well as armed rebellion….Are governments and political parties in India able to grasp the socio-economic dynamics encouraging these politics or are they stuck with a security-oriented approach that further fuels them?"

The Indian state furthered development programmes, successfully focussed on infrastructure to weaken their appeal and came down heavily on them. But the success was limited. With time, it became difficult for the Maoists to replenish their cadres and leadership. Repression continued in the meantime, eliminating prominent leaders and hundreds of their cadre. For example, on March 30, media reported the killing of 17 Maoists in Sukma, of which 11 were women. The surrender of Maoists was also reported. Recruitment and repression of Maoists are going on side by side.

But sustained programmes for economic and infrastructure development are needed. Only then will people not consider Maoism as an option to achieving their rights.

It is high time the government brought the Maoist leadership to the negotiating table and convinced it about the futility of violence.

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