CODE R E D

The barbaric beheading of a Jharkhand Special Police Officer by the CPI(Maoists) in the naxal infested state of Jharkhand , and the execrable massacre of 17 police personnel in Gadchiroli,Maharashtra only underscores the internal security threat that India faces in the wake of an unprecedented naxal menace. What is also unexampled until the recent times is the deployment of the elite forces to counter the rising “class struggle” , if one can call it so. The question to be asked, however, is what lies beneath such an armed rebellion and the ideology (or the lack of it ) that fuels it.

The Communist Party of India (Maoist) is an underground, non-parliamentary Maoist political party in India. It was founded on September 21, 2004, through the merger of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) People's War and the Maoist Communist Centre of India. The merger was announced to the public on October 14 the same year. The CPI (Maoist) are often referred to as Naxalites in reference to the Naxalbari insurrection by radical Maoists in West Bengal in 1967.It has since had several general secretaries at its line of command, operating under clandestine nom-de-guerres. Naxalites are violent left wing extremists , who defy parliamentary democracy, and who’ve vowed to rule the people (apparently for their greater good) through rampant dictatorship. Naxals claim to hold sway in about 180 districts across ten states of India, accounting for about 40 percent of India's geographical area and they are especially concentrated in an area known as " The Red Corridor", spanning Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal, where they control upto 92,000 square kilometers.

According to India's intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing(RAW), Naxalism and it’s growing influence is the most serious threat to India's national security, throwing towards, a larger issue to India’s political integrity than some of our ‘closest’ neighbours.

As it turns out then, our homework is right in place. Which brings India to the bigger question, Where and when did we go wrong? Why is a banned outfit, which is on the RAW’s radar ever since its inception striking terror at will? And what has led our politicians to fail to take stock of the horrific, most brutal and incessant killings of innocent men, women and children? Questions such as these and more, have been gaping at the people at the helm of our internal affairs but sadly, a satisfactory answer is still not in place. As anyone, who has lived in India long enough would agree , the problem lays elsewhere. The issue here is not wether our electorate and the elected lot know where the problem lies. Of course we know that there is a problem that is real and if left unattended could end up into a civil war and even secession, but the lassitude that our elected representatives contract once elected and while in office has let such anti-democratic forces to flourish in India.

It all dates back to 1967 in NaxalBari in West Bengal where a solo peasant was attacked by hired hands over a land dispute. And what resulted was a massive agitation against local landlords , led by one Charu Majumdar. The local population had already found their saviours in these self styled revolutionaries who were staunch supporters of Mao Zedong of China. Thus formed a new ideology in an India already fighting poverty and rampant corruption in every stratum of public life. An ideology that laid down the idea that the Indian State was a bourgeois institution and that the main Indian communist parties had embraced revisionism by agreeing to operate within the framework of the Constitution of India.

The Naxalites hence shunned all parliamentary processes in West Bengal and used violence to be heard, its victims often the innocent lot, already stressed under the problems of a developing nation , and who had no business following such an ideology. The naxal uprising in West Bengal could also have been an effect to another cause, the political occupation of the ruling CPI(M). The ruling left party in West Bengal had imitated the left wing politics of the erstwhile Soviet Union, which the naxals alleged had deviated from the basic Communist ideology. Hence began a so called “class struggle” in West Bengal which haunts it and other such naxal infested states even to this day.

So what is the Class Struggle in question? Who did the naxal movement benefit? Who was it for?

No one has an answer, and Mr. Majumdar, if he were alive today, would have been short of words too. Violence is no answer to the people’s suffering, and it can never be. Had Naxalism been about empowering the classes through education and enabling them to power through parliamentary means, It would have come as no surprise, if we had a naxal Prime Minister in the south block today. But Naxalism’s very roots were in the sands, its ideologies profusely against the State of India and its occupation solely directed against all democratic processes, which if succeeded would have left the nation to a dictator’s whims and fancies. The Naxalites who largely were acting to grasp power in West Bengal , turned to armed rebellions in other parts of the country, justifying the brutal killings as aligned to their single most important ideal of ending capitalism, and hence allowing power to trickle down to the under privileged. However, there was much more to such an ideology than what met the eye.

Incessant killings, barbaric murders and forced rebellions witnessed a receding support for the naxals in the hushed corners of intellectual calcutta. The depleting support for the naxals in Bengal led them to find props into rural India, primarily in the adjoining states of undivided Bihar, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh. They devised a strategy of misleading the rural youth who were largely unemployed , through provocative speeches, extremist literature and made up accounts of the nation state’s atrocities against them. The Maoists hence started to develop a strong foothold in the jungles of Bihar, Jharkhand and mastered the difficult terrains of the region which rendered the local police forces futile against them. Also, worth mentioning is the fact that these were the poorest states of India, and the rural lot as it is, was a victim of massive income disparities, health issues and social stigmas. The people hence found a respite in such extremist leaders who promised them something to cheer about.

At least apparently so.

Having found their base in the rural population in the so called ‘Red Corridor’ of India, the CPI(Maoist) leaders formalised parallel governments, holding fast track courts, corrupting young minds against the government and continued to make a mockery of democracy. The State governments in such naxal infested states perpetually turned a blind eye towards the atrocities engendered by these insurgents and in some cases as in Jharkhand and Bihar were hand in glove with these extremists , where the so called revolutionaries regularly ambushed the local population, the police and other vital public installations for extortion and meeting political ends for vested interests. There have been several cases of abductions, bombings, merciless beheadings and ‘levi’ extortions reported against the naxals, the victims paradoxically the same people they claim to represent. To make matters worse, if they were not already, in states like Jharkhand and Bihar, several anti-socials and petty criminals now operate under the veils of Naxalism. The uneducated and unemployed youth, who are the worst hit of the rural population in such states, end up losing everything, including their lives, in what they call a “class struggle” against the bourgeois. All this , while their so called ‘leaders’, who are nothing more than avaricious demagogues really, stock their backyards with filthy rapacity.

But that truly is just one side of the story. To blame naxalites squarely for doing what they’ve done to such states would be inequitable. There’s no denying the fact that the complete failure of public administration in states such as Jharkhand, Bihar , which are the epicenters of naxal violence , have long been the primary reasons attributing to such armed insurgencies. The lack of proper food, shelter, education to the rural youth are some of the real things that fuelled the naxal fire in these states. The state of Jharkhand which is arguably one of the richest in terms of mineral reserves in the country, often makes it to the morning headlines for all the wrong reasons. The rampant corruption prevalent in the state ever since its nascence, an occasional cabinet crammed up with dodgy politicians, and a large-and- uncared-for tribal population in the state offers the right kind of environment for such extremists to thrive. The lack of connect between the politicians in the state government with the rural folk authors a similar story. Consequently, the ‘under class’ of in these states, which is still to comprehend what good is a democracy for, turn towards militancy. Had the fruits of Indian democracy trickled down to the masses, such armed rebellions would’ve only adorned books of fiction.

The ceaseless killings in the recent past, such as the beheadings in Jharkhand and the massacre in Maharashtra, the abductions-cum-murders in Bihar, reflect the capability of the Maoists to strike at will. While it definitely requires a solid strategy from the respective state governments to counter such pseudo-terrorism, It also reflects the gross apathy of the Union government towards the naxal menace which until a few days ago had been shirking it as the states’ internal issue. The absence of a strategy to deal with these extremists is quite clear. The State governments which derive a considerable chunk of their rural votes through such naxal leaders are averse to the idea of using force against such groups citing a possible civil retaliation in the areas controlled by them. The Union government until in the wake of the recent massacres had largely turned a blind eye towards incidents such as these. While the state governments are opposed to the use of force against naxals, proposing to get such groups into mainstream India, such propositions only blot papers in the state offices. The underlying truth about such strategies only reveals just how much deeper the naxal Hand is into the government Gloves. While the Union government’s apathy towards the ‘internal’ issues of states (where the opposition is in power) is a trademark of Indian politics, the ghastly murders of harmless, innocent children and women drawing widespread flak from the global media, has put New Delhi into damage control. The south block, in a never-before step , has advocated the use of military and para-military forces to drive the naxals out of their hideouts . Such ‘combing’ operations , especially in a democracy such as ours poses a lot of challenges to the ruling lot, from issues ranging from Human Rights groups crying foul and alleging culpable genocide, to the more serious problem of a decline in the ruling party’s populist votes.

So, what is the road ahead?

While the impasse over ‘The Naxal Ideology’ , the ‘ Lal-Salaam’ and other such Maoist fellowships is one that is here to stay, one cannot help but acquiesce over the futile arrangement of such an institution in India . In a country like ours, which is young and passionate but at the same time congested and poor, such an extremist, left-of-center idea is a proven bane.It comes as little surprise then that the so called Red Corridor in India mostly consists of states that often find themselves at the lowest rungs of all development rankings and surveys. By the rule of thumb, almost all insurgencies are fruits of far-flung dissatisfaction and a gross lack of trust of who the insurgency is directed against. In India’s case, it’s the poor , the under privileged, and the unemployed who are taken for a ride everytime, at times by such extremist organizations and at other times by government itself. And an end to all this has only one road. Education.

Only if our governments uphold the basic right to education of every being in India, half the war against such anti-democratic processes is won. Only educating somebody can explain what democracy ensures. Only educating the youth, so that they find employment can make sure that they are not wasted into such pseudo- radicalism. We, that largely constitute the ‘mainstream’ in India, in our efforts to keep up with the gold rush have forgotten these people, who have been untouched, unfamiliar and immune of the much talked about Global India.

And all this has to start today, a day lost just means another extremist somewhere, who does not know what he’s fighting against. And while this would take an entirely different polity than what we have at hands, it’s definitely not impossible. Lets us all be a part of such an effort, in whatever little way possible, because the day we run for India’s glory again, it’ll be nice to have them by our side.