The Course Of
Naxalism
By Manoranjan
Mohanty
22 September, 2005
Himal Magazine
After
an experiment with a ceasefire and abrogated talks, the ban on the Communist
Party of India-Maoists was reimposed by the government of Andhra
Pradesh on 17 August. This followed the killing two days earlier of
provincial lawmaker C Narsi Reddy, a septuagenarian leader of the ruling
Congress party, and eight others in Narayanpet in Mehboobnagar district.
The attackers arrived on motorcycles and showered bullets at a public
function, killing also the town's municipal commissioner and the Reddy's
son, among others. The ban was said to have had the concurrence of the
central government, even though its spokesman in Delhi described the
matter of law and order as a 'state subject' under the Indian Constitution.
Some might have welcomed this reference to the Constitution, however
opportunistically it might have been used. But the fact is that the
Centre has been closely coordinating anti-Naxalite operations throughout
the country, and Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil had assured all support
to related measures taken by the Andhra Chief Minister YS Rajashekhar
Reddy.
The Hyderabad government's
ban order under the AP Public Security Act of 1992 listed seven mass
organisations of workers, peasants, youth, students and writers associated
with the Maoist party. They include the Radical Youth League (RYL),
the Radical Students Union (RSU), the All India Revolutionary Students
Federation (AIRSF), the Rythu Coolie Sangham (agricultural workers'
organisation), the Singareni Karmika Sangham (a powerful trade union
in the collieries), the Viplava Karmika Sangham (another trade union),
and the Revolutionary Writers Association popularly known by its Telugu
acronym Virasam. More than the ban on the parent party, it is the outlawing
of the mass programmes of these affiliate organisations which will have
serious repercussions on the ground. These groups have widespread membership,
with regular programmes and publications.
The poet P Vara
Vara Rao and writer G Kalyan Rao, leaders of Virasam who together with
legendary poet-singer Gaddar were the Maoist party emissaries to the
peace negotiations, were arrested. They had quit their charge in April
2005, expressing futility of the role in view of the growing repression
by the state. Meanwhile, interestingly, the women's organisation affiliated
to the rebels was not banned. Similarly, the Jana Natya Mandali people's
theatre group led by Gaddar was not included in the list, though the
expectation is it might be entered subsequently.
The ban per se would
not have been all that significant because the CPI-Maoist, like its
former avatars, the People's War group (PWG) and the Maoist Communist
Centre (MCC), was already functioning as an underground party. The leaders
of CPI-Maoists and the CPI-ML Janashakthi who had come to Hyderabad
for the peace talks in October 2004 had emerged from the forests and
returned there after ten days of open presence, including four days
of peace talks. The 15 August killing was exceptional, but not altogether
unprecedented. Every time the police killed some important Maoist leader,
the rebels have declared their intention to take revenge.
However, the current
ban represents the start of a new phase in the confrontation between
the Naxalite movement and the Indian state. The outlawing came after
the chances of resumption of peace talks had effectively disappeared,
and the police had intensified its operations to kill Maoist leaders
and cadre, and to capture or harass sympathisers. The Maoists, too,
had resumed retaliatory action of kidnappings and killings. Above all,
the approaches by the mediators in the Committee of Concerned Citizens
(CCC) received little response in recent months. The civil society in
Andhra Pradesh had pinned great hope on the CCC's initiative to organise
a second round of talks so as to reverse the intensifying climate of
violence.
The re-imposition
of the ban indicated the determination of the Hyderabad government to
withstand civil society pressures and to resume its armed operations
to suppress the Naxalite movement. This decision condemned by most of
the political parties including the allies of the Congress, the TRS
(Telengana Rajya Samithi ), Mazlis, the CPI and the CPI-M. Only the
Telugu Desham Party and the BJP supported it, maintaining that it had
been mistaken on the part of the Congress government to have let the
ban lapse in July 2004 in the first place.
The new phase in
the confrontation was also indicated by the Union Home Ministry's initiative
to coordinate the anti-Naxalite operations. A 30 July 2005 meeting of
the chief ministers and the directors generals of police from the nine
Naxalite-impacted states agreed to set up a task force to launch joint
operations. A policy of "zero tolerance" towards the Maoists
was announced. The Tamil Nadu government had already banned the Maoist
Party on 12 July, and the Karnataka government had also earlier launched
joint operations with the Andhra police. That action had led to the
killing of many PWG leaders as well as Saketh Ranjan, editor of the
RSU's journal.
Paradoxically, the
resumption of the ban reflected an admission of failure by the Indian
state to tackle the challenge of the Naxalite movement over the past
38 years. The capacity of the movement to survive and to spread having
been made clear, the hope was that the authorities may at long last
look to address the root causes of the rebellion. There had also been
the hope that the new Congress-led government at the Centre and the
new Congress government in Andhra, which came to power after people
rejected Chandra Babu Naidu's repressive regime, would adopt a political
approach to the Maoists rather than treat them merely as perpetrators
of terrorist violence. But apparently nothing had changed, and here
was the government, once again resorting to prohibition, combing operations
in villages and forests, and encounter killings.
The Common Minimum
Programme (CMP) which the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) adopted
in May 2004 when it came to power at the Centre supported by the left
parties had an important perspective statement on the Naxalite challenge.
The relevant paragraph was listed under the section on Scheduled Castes
and Scheduled Tribes, thus emphasising that this movement was essentially
connected with the problems of the socially oppressed sections. It said:
"The UPA is concerned with the growth of extremist violence and
other forms of terrorist activity in different states. This is not merely
a law and order problem, but a deeper socio-economic issue which will
be addressed more meaningfully than has been the case so far. Fake encounters
will not be permitted."
This statement had
raised hopes for a new approach to be taken by the UPA, especially in
comparison to the earlier BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA)
government with L K Advani as Home Minister, and Chandra Babu Naidu
as chief minister in Andhra. Indeed, the reference in the CMP to the
deeper socio-economic issues was on target, for the Maoist movement
revolves around the issues of agrarian transformation, especially the
problems of the landless and the small peasants.
It was the peasant
resistance to landlords in Naxalbari in West Bengal in May 1967 under
the land-to-the-tiller slogan that provided a name to the Maoist phenomenon
in Indian politics Naxalism. The movement underwent much churning
in the succeeding decades, organisationally and politically, but the
focus on agrarian revolution has remained at the core. The very fact
that land reform as a state objective has disappeared from Indian policy-making
in the age of economic liberalisation has kept the Naxalite agenda alive.
The state's anti-poverty programmes such as the NDA's Food-for-Work
or the UPA's recently established Employment Guarantee Programme hardly
meet the basic demand for land rights in rural India. The rise of backward
castes to power in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and elsewhere, even though it
may have democratised certain aspects of the polity, has had the paradoxical
effect of freezing land relations.
The Naxalite movement
is mostly active in the tribal areas spreading from Bihar to Andhra
Pradesh and Maharastra, and also covering parts of Jharkhand, Madhya
Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. This spread
is linked only to the inaccessible hilly terrain of these regions, but
a conscious decision by the Naxalites to take up the issues affecting
the tribal people, who are among the most exploited in society. India's
development process has led to commercialisation of forest resources,
reducing the traditional access to forest produce. Alienation of tribal
land to non-tribals has been a steady trend despite legal strictures.
Mining-based industries and the construction of large dams have caused
extensive displacement of the tribals, besides destroying their natural
environment. A central Naxalite agenda is for tribal self-determination,
asserting the rights of the tribals over local resources.
The government programmes
of tribal development have ended up creating a new elite in the tribal
areas even as increased poverty leads to massive out-migration. The
recent bill for safeguarding land rights, introduced by the UPA, has
been a case of too little, too late. The extension of the Panchayati
Raj programme to tribal areas, giving greater power to the tribal village
assembly is a modest measure in the right direction, but unless structural
measures are undertaken to restore rights over land and forest, the
Panchayati Raj structures will continue to be manipulated by local elites.
The Andhra government's
decision to have a special tribal battalion of some 1,200 men, a 'Girijan
Greyhound" to fight the naxalites is indicative of the approach
guiding the present policy.
During the 1980s,
the Naxalites linked themselves with the nationality struggles in the
Indian Northeast, Jammu and Kashmir, Chhatisgarh, Jharkhand, Tamil Nadu
and elsewhere. This strategic decision had a significant impact on both,
the agrarian movement as well as the autonomy movements. Each was a
complex struggle involving class and nationality, as well as caste and
gender. The decision therefore involved making choices on supporting
autonomy movements led by the bourgeoisie, such as in case of Telugu
Desham in [Karnataka], the Asom Gana Parishad in Assam, the Akali Dal
in Punjab and the DMK in Tamil Nadu.
The formation of
the smaller states of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Uttaranchal was a
welcome step in terms of providing people with more say in their affairs,
but the new states were created keeping the overall power structure
intact. As a result, the nationality struggles in these areas continue
as integral parts of the agrarian and the broader democratic struggle.
Interestingly, the government understood this linking of the Naxalites
with other movements only in terms of a network among militants for
training, supply of weapons and coordination against state operations.
During the 1990s,
Indian politics and economy saw major upheavals linked to globalisation
on the one hand, and communal politics on the other. The Gujarat riots
of 2002 were symbolic of the magnitude of the latter trend. The processes
of privatisation of public enterprises and retrenchment of workers have
continued unabated in the recent years. While the ruling parties, the
BJP and the Congress, were fully committed to the agenda of globalisation,
the CPI and CPI-M tried to keep the critique alive on behalf of workers,
the lower middle classes and the rural poor who suffered tremendously
and largely silently under the process of economic reforms. But the
main resistance to globalisation was put forth by the Naxalites, which
has considered the stress on anti-imperialism paramount at a time of
growing collaboration between the government of India and the US government.
Overall, therefore,
the Naxalite challenge rests upon the issues of agrarian transformation,
tribal people's rights, the nationality movement and resisting imperialism
and globalisation. All this adds up to what they characterise as the
people's democratic revolution to change the very character of the Indian
state. Because of the issues they pursue, the Naxalites have a social
base which sustains them despite a variety of repressive measures pursued
by the state. In fact, over the past decade the movement has spread
to new areas such as southern districts of Orissa and West Bengal as
well as parts of Uttar Padesh and Rajasthan.
If the Naxalite
movement is seen as a coming together of many streams, then they can
be said to have a presence in all parts of the country. Of them the
two major streams are the CPI-ML (Liberation) which participates in
electoral politics and the CPI-Maoist which pursues armed struggle.
The former has a strong base in Bihar and it has had seven to ten Members
in the Legislative Assembly. It has an all-India organisation with state
units and an active trade union and a women's organisation. Its powerful
student wing, AISA has often won the leadership at the Jawaharlal Nehru
University, New Delhi.
The CPI-Maoist,
which emerged with the merger of the PWG and MCC in October 2004, had
earlier taken into its fold the Party Unity of Bihar region. Liberation
condemns the PWG as left adventurists pursuing squad actions which invite
further state repression. The Maoists dismiss the followers of the Liberation
line as revisionists taking the same path as the CPI-M, which has held
on to power in West Bengal since 1977. These two formations are so mutually
antagonistic that they rarely come together to fight any issue. Between
them are placed a number of other Naxalite groups such as Janashakti
which has worked together with the Maoist party in the peace talks in
Andhra, the CPI-ML (New Democracy) which has been active in Jharkhand
and Assam and lately in Punjab and Orissa on tribal and workers' issues,
and the CPI-ML (Provisional Committee) which is ostensibly trying to
bring the various groups together.
The pre-organisational
character of the Naxalite movement that was evident in the 1970s, the
subject of this writer's work Revolutionary Violence (1977), remains
to some extent. For this reason, the movement as a whole remains mainly
as an ideological force in Indian politics, whose appeal remains rooted
in the concrete condition of the people. Meanwhile, the two main formations
have emerged as organised parties, whose leaders are subjected to attack
by state agencies and they suffer substantial losses. Overall, the question
remains as to why the spiral of violence and counter-violence by the
Naxalites and the state agencies never seem to end in the heartland
of India.
The oft-repeated
plea that there is no place for violence in a democracy indicates a
desirable norm for seeking peaceful constitutional response to fulfil
a people's aspirations. But when the coercive power of the state is
used to defend the interest of the rich and the powerful or to eliminate
resistance to injustice, the same can sound like a hollow claim. Social
violence has grown in India with landlords' armies in Bihar, factional
murders in Andhra's Rayalseema, and upper caste atrocities on dalits
all over to mention but a few examples.
Democracy is indeed
meant for bringing about peaceful change through people's representatives.
But the fact is that existing power centres in society do not allow
that to easily happen. Groups fighting for democratic rights have been
pointing this out for over three decades now. The state response to
the Naxalite movement was to capture and kill activists them by staging
'false encounters'. Human rights groups which go under the acronyms
APCLC, PUDR and PUCL, have investigated many such incidents in Andhra,
Bihar and elsewhere. They have demanded that rule of law be applied
to all such cases, and all persons suspected should be tried according
to law rather than be eliminated. When the state itself violates the
constitutional obligations with impunity, then the violation of law
and civic norms becomes widespread.
When the talks between
the Maoists and the Hyderabad government took place in October 2004
following a three-year initiative and protracted negotiations by the
CCC (led by S R Sankaran, a respected former civil servant who had himself
been kidnapped by the PWG some years ago), two things were clear. One
was the acknowledgement by the state that the Naxalite movement was
not just a law and order problem, but had socio-economic roots that
could be discussed on the road to reducing violence. Second, it was
brought home to the Maoists to recognise that the realm of the present
Indian state did provide some space for socio-economic change despite
its class character, and that if the space indeed opened up, the need
for resort to armed struggle may be reviewed.
It was on the basis
of this understanding that there was a ceasefire in Andhra for more
than six months, when the common people were spared the dual pressures
of violence from the Naxalites as well as the police. The historic talks
that took place between the rebels and the government proved that dialogue
was an essential element of democracy through which each side was called
upon to recognise underlying truths. In these peace talks Indian democratic
opinion saw prospects of mutual appreciation of each other's positions
in the spirit of "truth and reconciliation". As in case of
the Naga peace talks, or those between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan government,
in this case too the hope was to proceed with the dialogue with the
hope of suspending armed action by the two sides. But there were elements
among the political circles and the police, both locally and nationally,
which considered the policy too 'soft', which would only strengthen
the Naxalites. In other words, the UPA government's statement as contained
in the Common Minimum Programme was not the only perspective guiding
state policy.
During the peace
talks and press conferences, the Maoists were confronted with many issues
raised by democratic rights groups in the recent years. Could the Maoists
be said to be respecting the norms of revolutionary violence when the
common people were subjected to killings and torture by them, or when
public property was destroyed? How did they explain individual annihilations
by their squads, and did this reflect the Maoist norm of 'mass line'?
On the issue of
armed struggle, the Naxalite movement remains sharply divided. The CPI-Maoists
have a People's Guerilla Liberation Army mostly armed with weapons seized
from the police, some of which are sophisticated weaponry such as the
AK-47 rifles. Their small formations confront the police and paramilitary
forces such as the Central Reserve Police Force and Indo-Tibetan Border
force, taking advantage support of the villagers as well as the jungle
terrain. How effective their armed resistance can be against the armed
strength of the Indian state remains the major question.
Did the Maoists
also reflect upper caste attitude and behaviour in their political practice?
How far are they concerned with the rights of dalits and other backward
classes? In the 1990s, after the upper castes opposed reservation for
backward classes, the Maoists spearheaded the campaign for dalit and
'other backward caste' rights in many parts of India. But the caste
issue is still not fully integrated with the class understanding of
politics. Similarly, feminists have pointed out the prevalence of patriarchal
values and behaviour in the Maoist parties. Moreover, the rebel women's
organisations have not been on the forefront of the variety of women's
struggles in contemporary India. One can legitimately raise the question
whether the Naxalites have dialectically integrated class, caste and
gender any better than the rest of the Indian communists, whose record
on this matter remains poor.
Human rights activists
have also challenged the Maoists, asking whether they practice democracy
and civil liberties within their movement, which should after all be
the embryo of their 'ideal society'. Factionalism and splits have famously
characterised the Naxalite movement, which is why there are over two
dozen groups in existence at any given time. And so the natural question,
are the comrades guilty of sectarian politics when they should be developing
a united front? There was a time the intolerance of divergent opinion
within the party was so stark that it led to killings a tendency
that seems to have subsided in recent years. The communist groups seem
to resort all too easily to the mechanical understanding of revisionism
and dogmatism. The revolutionary tradition of inner-party democracy
the minority accepting the decision of the majority while the
majority respects the point of view of the minority seems a fragile
heritage.
The common people
whose cause the Naxalites claim to represent confront day-to-day livelihood
issues of making a living out of agriculture and forestry, of
finding water for their fields, access to affordable credit, market
for their produce, and ways and means to access education and health.
Such ground-level issues do not seem to figure prominently in the Maoists'
formulation of political strategy. Many of these activities which concretely
help the poor are dismissed with terms such as 'reformism', 'welfare
work' or even 'ngo action'. The idea that cultural and educational work
form an integral part of revolutionary strategy, together with political
and military tasks, seems to have been relegated to the background.
In the recent years, the Naxalite leadership has indeed tried to respond
to these issues, but not entirely satisfactorily.
The issue of revolutionary
creativity the ability to assess the emerging national, local
and global environment and adjusting to the evolving while pursuing
one's ideological goals thus remains a challenge for the Naxalite
movement in India. It is important not only to learn from the Chinese
and Vietnamese revolutions, but also from the experience of the Philippines,
Nicaragua, Peru, Venezuela and Nepal.
Meanwhile, the Naxalite
movement continues to spread despite suffering losses in terms of fighters
as well as from time to time operational areas. The do
represent a powerful challenge to the existing political economy in
its phase of capitalist globalisation. To cope with this challenge the
democratic forces of India must pressure all states authorities which
are confronting Naxalites to return to political dialogue, and to stop
treating the rebellion as a law and order problem. In Andhra Pradesh,
the ground created by the peace talks of 2004 has now collapsed, and
the state government and Centre both now demand that the Maoists lay
down arms before resuming talks.
Indeed, the policy
makers, be it in Delhi or Hyderabad, are now guided by a unified understanding
of global terrorism. They are excitedly formulating a strategy of counter-terrorism
US software, Israeli hardware and some Indian brands added. This strategy
cannot see the difference between the CPI-Maoist operating in Andhra
and Bihar, from the CPN-Maoist currently fighting the autocratic monarchy
in Nepal. No doubt, they are revolutionary communists in solidarity
with one another, but they are fighting different battles in their own
countries. After all, these are Maoists who believed the great helmsman
when he said that the people of each country must formulate their own
strategy derived from their unique local conditions. Leaders of the
Indian state must try and comprehend the nature of the Maoist challenge
and address the socio-economic issues at its heart, so that another
spiral of intensified violence in India can be avoided and prospects
of peace and democracy enhanced.