Naxalism: Terror or Crusade or something else?

"SINCE 2006, when Manmohan Singh described the Maoist insurgency as the “single biggest internal-security challenge” India had ever faced, it has spread rapidly. Maoist guerrillas are now active in over a third of India’s 626 districts, with 90 seeing “consistent violence”. Last year the conflict claimed 998 lives. This month alone the Maoists—or Naxalites, as they are known— slaughtered 24 policemen in West Bengal and 12 villagers in Bihar. "

"Boasting an estimated 14,000 full-time guerrillas, and many more semi-trained sympathisers, they loosely control tracts of Jharkhand, Orissa and Chhattisgarh. They have also overrun a smaller, but spreading, area of West Bengal, where the Maoist struggle began in 1967—in the village of Naxalbari, from which the guerrillas, or Naxalites, take their name."

-Economist (Ending The red Terror | India's Naxalite Insurgency )

Terrorists or Crusaders or someone else?

This is the origin of many disagreements over the whole issue. We have gifted and compelling writers like Arundhati Roy who not only believe that the Maoist insurgents have come from a section of the people who have been sinned against more than sinning -

" If the tribals have taken up arms, they have done so because a government which has given them nothing but violence and neglect now wants to snatch away the last thing they have – their land. Clearly, they do not believe the government when it says it only wants to "develop" their region. Clearly, they do not believe that the roads as wide and flat as aircraft runways that are being built through their forests in Dantewada by the National Mineral Development Corporation are being built for them to walk their children to school on. They believe that if they do not fight for their land, they will be annihilated. That is why they have taken up arms."

but also that government is hell-bent on launching a genocide without any offer of reconciliation -

"In order to keep its better-off citizens absolutely safe from these dangerous people, the government has declared war on them. A war, which it tells us, may take between three and five years to win. Odd, isn't it, that even after the Mumbai attacks of 26/11, the government was prepared to talk with Pakistan? It's prepared to talk to China. But when it comes to waging war against the poor, it's playing hard.

(This obviously is false as time and again the govt has called upon the Naxalites to talk, the latest attempt being only a week ago.)

While Arundhati Roy is nowhere close to being a credible spokesperson on this issue, and not without reasons, her argument about the origin of the conflict is echoed by other more credible people who work in the areas affected by the insurgence. One of them is Dr. Binayak Sen, a noted human rights activist and public health specialist who interprets the Maoist struggle as a 'resistance against dispossession, as a fight for justice, as an attempt to resist genocide' though he unequivocally decries violence as a means to conduct this resistance.

"It’s a response to chronic poverty of which malnutrition is only a part. These communities, which are suffering from this chronic famine that is abroad in this land, have thus far survived because of a fragile and tenuous equilibrium that they have established with their ecosystem and which they are able to maintain because of their access to common property resources like land, water and forests... their fragile existence is threatened to the point where conditions are being created which would fall well within the ambit of the United Nations definitions of genocide."

A number of government reports and independent observations have affirmed that the regions in which the Maoists operate are those that have seen the least development in terms of education, health or employment. Also the claims about exploitation of natural resources of these regions to the detriment of the natives solely to line the pockets of the corporates are not ill-founded either. (Vedanta ruining lives in Orissa, alleges new Amnesty report; Church of England, Trust sells stake in Vedanta).

Hence it can hardly be disputed that a large section of people have been wronged by the government and corporates. The nature of wrongs on the part of government is both of omission and commission.

So we do have a just cause but does having a just cause justify using mindless violence to achieve that. No. But may be they have been driven up hard against the wall. May be they no longer have any faith in the dilly-dallying government and have resorted to violence. So is it justified in that case? Before we take that up lets turn to another related question.

Do the insurgents really represent the people and cause they claim to represent?

This, in my opinion, is an even more important question than the origin of the conflict. A cover story in the Tehelka Magazine observes about the people in Lalgarh, an epicentre of Naxal activities a while ago,

"There are layers: there are the Maoists, the PCAPA, the party workers – CPI(M) cadre, the TMC supporters and Jharkhand Party members. The fourth layer is the ordinary people of Lalgarh – rice and potato farmers dependent on the rains, migrant labourers, shop owners. The PCAPA’s support base comes from them.
And then there are the adivasis – the easiest prey. They are not Maoist supporters – many haven’t heard of Kishenji. They are not PCAPA members or the ordinary people who attended PCAPA rallies. They do not have the luxury of being ordinary. They are at the absolute bottom of the food chain, human algae. Many don’t even speak Bengali, and they are far removed from any political churning."

Also, if Maoists really represent the cause of the down-trodden why is it that they attack and kill hapless villagers that refuse to support them. Their recent attacks belie their purported objective of fighting for the opresssed have-nots. Even amongst themselves, they act like an absolute militia- dissenters are dispensed with speedily.

If they really did represent 'their people', they can secure their interests democratically by contesting in elections but this is not what they chose to do. Instead they chose to engage all those who support them, including their women and youth, in a protracted conflict fought in chronic inhumane conditions.

So what has really happened out there and who are the various parties involved?

It is a difficult question especially since there are so many versions of the incidents that happen down there but what seems plausible is that the cause of the masses has been hijacked by a few people who are pursuing their own political aspirations within their society and subsequently at a larger level. They have been successful because of the near total failure of the State to provide respite or inspire faith in the people. This can also explain why the Maoists thwart efforts of the government to further development in the hinterland. The ones at the organisational helm are as far removed from seeking the development of the region and its people as the States and corporates have been.

Aruna Roy says in an interview to Wall Street Journal, India,

"The ideological struggle is for the Maoists. For the people it's different; they are fighting for succor. The people have taken to this ideology because there is no alternative, or they see it as their best alternative. If you give them a better alternative, the people will go there. I would like to quote the Bolivian prime minister Evo Morales here who said, there is the Left and there is the Right, but we are the people."

The Face of the State

Tusha Mittal writes for Tehelka -

" Of this we can be certain – inside the battlefields of Lalgarh, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Bihar, the face of the State is more brutal than any other stakeholder. The State is the least attractive option."

Further she points out that -

'In 2008, in a damning judgement, a sessions court judge said: “It is found that from different parts of West Bengal, other chargesheeted, accused persons were arrested and tagged (in this case) only on the ground that the police suspected they belonged to the People’s War Group. [People’s War Group and Maoist Communist Centre later merged to become CPI (Maoist)]. The police tagged these 54 persons in different cases so that they cannot be granted bail and shall be kept in custody for long years. The police falsely arrested them without any evidence. False chargesheets have been submitted against them. The investigation by the police in this case was not apolitical. The conduct of the entire police administration of West Midnapore is always in a partisan manner and politically motivated, which is proved in this case. It is found that people at large are revolting against the police for maltreatment towards the public.” '

In the minds of the non-partisan villagers, the police and central forces evoke the same fear, if not more, as the whimsical Maoists.

Operation Greenhunt?

Valid questions have been raised on the nature and conequences of waging an all out war - operation Greenhunt- against the Maoists.

'How will the security forces be able to distinguish a Maoist from an ordinary person who is running terrified through the jungle? Will adivasis carrying the bows and arrows they have carried for centuries now count as Maoists too? Are non-combatant Maoist sympathisers valid targets?'

Some describe it as operation Blindhunt -

'Imagine a blind hunter at the edge of a jungle. He does not know what his prey looks like, or where it lives, except that it resides somewhere in the deep. Imagine prey that cannot be identified. The State is on a wild chase, firing in the dark. What is killed is on the periphery, not inside the jungle. What has never been inside the jungle is now scurrying towards it for cover.'

The State will only be pushing its own people towards further extremism.

'In a blind hunt to combat those that don’t believe in the Indian Constitution, the government is actually isolating those that do...Decades of armed presence have not yet won “the hearts and minds of the people” in Kashmir, in Manipur. There is no reason to believe they will be successful elsewhere. In the haze of India’s uncertainties, it is not easy to identify who a Maoist is, but it is easy to identify who a Maoist is not. If the war rages on, that last line of certainty will blur.'

But in wake of the recent incidents of Maoists attacking police forces and civilians at will, even when the Home Minister had an offer of negotiations outstanding, it would be tantamount to abdication of the most salient duty of the State of protecting its citizens if it doesnot act to rein in the insurgents pro-actively. With the current attitude of Maoists, a large-scale military response from the State though very unfortunate, seems inevitable. And it will be for almost nothing as most probably it will end in a temporary truce, similar to what existed some time back, but only after hundreds more of casualties and enormous collateral damage.

Flaws in Current Approaches to the problem

The most glaring flaw in the current approach of the government (and apparently of the Maoists as well) is its George Bush-like attitude of 'You are either with us or against us'. Both the State and Maoists are wrong and have been wronged. So if someone like Dr. Binayak Sen or Mrs. Aruna Roy says that the State is guilty of atrocities committed on the people of the so-called Red Corridor it should not and cannot be taken to mean that they are Maoists or support their violent insurgence. By doing so the State is distancing itself from precious interlocutors who can help us to overcome the 'nation's single biggest internal-security challenge'.

The second flaw concerns with the lack of understanding of what it is that the tribals want. We simply assume that they want 'development' in our sense of the word. Education and health-care are certainly desirable but apart from that, when you come to think of it, why would they want to convert their green habitat into something which is as polluted and unfriendly as our cities.

Sanjeev Sanyal, President of Sustainable Planet Initiative, makes a rare but astute observation-

"...take the Naxalite insurrection in eastern India. Conventional wisdom is that this is due to the lack of jobs and the so-called “development”. In reality, it is about property rights and the exploitation of the region’s natural resources with the active connivance of the state.They merely did not want to sell their land to a government that was arbitrarily using its powers of eminent domain."

The whole issue of land rights has been absent from the public debate. The tribals are attached to their surroundings not only agriculturally but also culturally and emotionally.

"So, while for the adivasis the mountain is still a living deity, the fountainhead of life and faith, the keystone of the ecological health of the region ... From the corporation's point of view, the bauxite will have to come out of the mountain."

So what's the solution?

The solution obviously cannot be simple. The government will have to follow a multi-pronged strategy with a paradigm-shift if it hopes to resolve the menace.

The Economist notes,

"The right approach is to focus on improving both policing and general administration. Better policing would protect poor people from Naxalite bandits and extortionists. Better local administration, providing roads, water, schools and health care, would give a stake in the Indian state to people who at present have none. It would be a huge task anywhere in India, and especially in areas plagued by Naxalites. Yet the alternative is a potentially endless conflict that causes untold human suffering, further marginalises millions of India’s poorest citizens and deters investment in some of its most mineral-rich areas. "

And as for the paradigm-shift, as long as the process of utilization of land does not have the approval of the inhabitants it is bound to cause resentment. And if someone doubts on the ability of the natives to take care of their eco-system and natural resources, he only needs to look at the adivasi or tribal village of Mendha (or Mendha Lekha), in Gadchiroli district, Maharashtra, which in December 2009 became the first village in the country to get a legal record of rights to manage its forests, water and forest produce under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest-Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act 2006.

"The manner in which the village has managed its affairs over the years lends credence to the belief that forest-dwelling communities, given the right inputs, can best manage their environment as they depend on it for their long-term survival."

Also,

"While it is true that the country needs minerals for infrastructure development, it is equally true that over-consumption by one section of society is destroying the livelihoods and environments of another section, which is at the receiving end of mining. Decades of mining have not contributed much to the economic betterment of local populations and this is particularly true of marginalised groups such as the adivasis. Poor development and marginalisation create conditions for social tensions. Mining is an activity that needs to be strictly controlled at all stages. Above all, people living in mining areas should have the capacity to take fully-informed decisions on allowing mining in their territories or decide on how to carry out the activity and ensure environmental conservation and social justice. The new National Mineral Policy (2008) needs to examine these issues with a sense of urgency. The policy itself needs to be brought to centrestage and widely discussed."

References:

1. Economist : India's Naxalite Insurgency
2. Economist : Ending The Red Terror
3. Arundhati Roy [Guardian] : The Heart of India is under Attack
4. Binayak Sen with Karan Thapar on Devil's Advocate
5. Tehelka Cover Story : Operation Blind Hunt
6. Aruna Roy @ Wall Street Journal, India Edition
7. Vedanta Ruining lives in Orissa: Amnesty Report
8. Tribal Village first to get right to manage its forest resources
9. New Mineral Policy will usher in gloom for Adivasis
10. Sanjeev Sanyal : At 60 - Rethinking the Indian State