The Maoist menace
by
S.Madhusudhana Rao |
It’s the gravest internal security threat to India
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s acknowledgment that the government has not achieved much success in containing leftist extremism is admitting the country’s failure to check the gravest internal security threat. Dr Singh’s worrisome statement at the conclave of police chiefs of state governments last week comes amidst an escalation of violence by leftist extremists, popularly known as Naxalites or Maoists, across the country.
Started as a protest movement by landless labourers against rich farmers in a remote village of Naxalbari in left-ruled West Bengal State in 1967, it started spreading to other areas within the state and outside of it.
The movement’s followers derive their name Naxalites from the uprising’s birthplace and their avowed political philosophy from Chinese strongman Mao Zedong who professed that political power flow from the barrel of a gun. He would be smiling in his grave that his thoughts, buried with him in his home country, have spawned a violent movement in neighbouring India.
Although Mao passed into history books and his brand of Communism got a go-by in the hands of his successors, Maoism continues to influence a section of Indian rural masses who still believe that one day they will march on New Delhi, a la the Long March, and unfurl the Tricolour on the Parliament building. The target year for Maoists capturing power is 2050, according to confidential papers seized by the Indian intelligence. Such a hope in a democratic country like India with a long history of pluralism looks outlandish. But the fact of the matter is 17 of 28 states have Maoist presence and 90 per cent of the violence in the country is attributed to leftist militant activities.
Until now this year, nearly 500 people were killed, 40 per cent of them security personnel, in Maoist violence across the country. Their favourite targets are those where money and arms are there such as police stations, security personnel, wealthy landlords and banks, mostly in rural areas. These are fertile grounds for their operations because they face little resistance from local people and authorities and the remote areas lack proper roads and communication facilities. The money they rob is spent on buying arms and ammunition and recruiting youths from rural communities. Sometimes they make their forays into towns and cities to avenge the deaths of their comrades in so-called police encounters, a euphemism for what is believed to be blatant killings by security personnel. The Maoist hunters in the security forces, government ministers and officials who fall foul of the rebels will be on the extremists’ hit list.
Earlier, Maoists had many groups, each one working independent of others, in many Indian states. But in the last few years consistent campaigns by Maoist-infested provincial governments against these guerrilla groups have proved difficult for them to operate in isolation as their cadres were increasingly getting killed in police combing operations or deserting in favour of a civilian life. Though there is no single leader representing all the Maoist factions in the country even now, they seem to be in touch with each other through their own informers and couriers to coordinate their activities and execute their deadly plans.
That what worries the federal and state governments in India. Maoists have started moving out of their jungle hideouts to establish ‘cells’ in urban centres. They have established a red corridor —the hilly tribal belt extending from the foothills of the Himalayas in Nepal to Andhra and parts of Maharashtra and Karnataka states through Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, Chhatisgarh and Madhya Pradesh provinces — to expand their footprint. This is the Maoist territory where their writ runs large. In some areas, they collect taxes and dispense justice at kangaroo courts.
Maoists would not have penetrated into the country deep down south all the way from a forsaken village Naxalbari had the governments checked on their movements and activities from time to time. It had never been done because under the Indian constitution, state governments are responsible for law and order and any federal government’s intervention in that matter will invite states’ wrath.
For more than three decades, provincial governments had treated the Maoist menace with kid gloves and political ambivalence without realising the gravity of the problem.
In some cases, the party in power had used Maoists overtly or covertly to win votes in far-off areas, thus giving them ample opportunities to make inroads into remote areas as well as into the inhabitants’ lives there.
Nothing was more disastrous than using militants for political gains. For the oppressed, neglected and often ill-treated and poverty-stricken tribals and villagers in isolated areas, the Maoists were saviours from the tyranny of local landlords and protectors of their lands. Their faith in Maoists continued until the militants revealed their true colours and ambitions.
With improvements in living standards and developments trickling down to the hamlet level, rural folks started feeling the heat of leftist extremism. So is the officialdom. Attempts to blow up vehicles carrying government officials through landmines, extortions, raids on police stations for arms and ammunition, collection of ‘taxes’ from areas under their control and kidnappings for ransom have rung alarm bells in the corridors of power and opened the governments’ eyes to the red tide sweeping parts of India.
As it has become increasingly clear that the state governments alone can’t tackle the Maoist menace and it’s no longer a regional problem, New Delhi has swung into action. It has started giving financial aid, equipment, special training to police personnel to track down Maoists and monitor their movements. Recent terrorist events in the country have turned the heat on home-grown militant outfits and extremist organisations such as the Communist Party of India-Maoist.
The leftist extremist outfits and their cadres, though scattered, pose the biggest internal threat to the country. They become a potent force to destabilise India if they join hands with other militant organisations within the country and outside. The success of Maoist struggle in neighbouring Nepal, where the centuries-old monarchy was dethroned and a leftist-led government came to power, has given a new hope to CPI-M to replicate it in India.
India is not Nepal. But if we go by the number of violent incidents and their pressure or terrorist tactics, there is every reason to believe that they are out to create chaos in civil society. That is the basic principle of leftist ideology: Order evolves out of disorder. To create social unrest, they go to any length to befriend other organisations with sinister motives.
It is high time the federal government and Maoist-infested state governments chalk out a joint action plan to tackle the menace. First, they need to win hearts and minds of the civilian population which is in the grip of Maoists through administrative reforms and economic aid and then hunt down the hard-core extremists. As long as the governments fail to address the basic problems of the poorest of the poor, Maoists continue to have a sway over them and spread their ideology of violence.
Oman Tribune
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