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In the grip of Maoism |
| Sultan Shahin | 08.02.2005 06:28 |
| The Maoist statement was signed by top rebel leaders, the CPI (Maoist) State Committee secretary, Ramakrishna, the North Telangana Special Zonal Committee secretary, Jampanna, the Andhra-Orissa Border Special Zonal Committee secretary, Sudhakar, the Janashakti State secretary, Amar, and senior leader, Riyaz. Four of these leaders had participated in the first round of peace talks held between October 15 and 18, 2004. They said they accepted the government's formal invitation for talks for finding a solution to problems facing the state, like restoration of democratic rights, land distribution, the World Bank's diktats and a separate Telangana state to be carved out of Andhra Pradesh. "But," they said, "the government did not conduct itself with responsibility during the talks." These developments, they said, proved that the ruling classes would not resolve people's issues through talks. They accused the government of trying to suppress the Maoist parties in the name of negotiations. ILPS Info Bureau wrote: De: "ILPS Info Bureau" À: "mr2004" , "ILPS Info Bureau List" Date: Sun, 23 Jan 2005 13:06:54 -0000 CC: Objet: [Info-Bureau] Fw: a report From: darshan pal South Asia Jan 22, 2005 In the grip of Maoism By Sultan Shahin NEW DELHI - The Communist Party of India (CPI Maoist) and Janashakti, the two main Maoist groups in the south Indian state of Andhra Pradesh on Wednesday pulled out from the three-month-old peace talks initiated by the state government, with the consent of the central government. The blame game has since ensued, with both the state government and the Maoists refusing to claim responsibility for the breakdown. A joint statement issued by leaders of the two Maoist outfits said the decision to pull out was in protest against the intensified combing operations by "Greyhounds", the elite force of the police, and the "encounter killings taking place on a daily basis". Denouncing the Congress Party-led coalition government's policies as anti-people, they issued a call to the people to wage a war for a new democratic society. The strongly-worded statement came barely two hours after a cabinet meeting chaired by chief minister Rajashekhara Reddy resolved to go in for the second round of talks with Maoist leaders and initiate other conciliatory measures, such as slowing down the combing operations and asking the police to observe restraint. Within hours of the announcement, however, state Home Minister K Jana Reddy appealed to the Naxalites - as Maoists are called in India, as the present phase of Maoist rebellion had started in a village called Naxalbari in West Bengal in 1967 - to reconsider their decision, as the government, he said, remained committed to continuing the peace talks. Talking to reporters, he urged them to view the recent police encounters as "unfortunate incidents". He assured them that there would neither be combing operations nor any repression. Asserting that the police had been instructed to avoid excesses, he said the Maoists should also see that there was no loss of life or destruction of property. They should also desist from carrying weapons while visiting villages. The minister assured them that he would consult political leaders and mediators in the talks to create a congenial atmosphere for holding the next round. He asked both sides to observe restraint as this process would take about a fortnight. The Maoist statement was signed by top rebel leaders, the CPI (Maoist) State Committee secretary, Ramakrishna, the North Telangana Special Zonal Committee secretary, Jampanna, the Andhra-Orissa Border Special Zonal Committee secretary, Sudhakar, the Janashakti State secretary, Amar, and senior leader, Riyaz. Four of these leaders had participated in the first round of peace talks held between October 15 and 18, 2004. They said they accepted the government's formal invitation for talks for finding a solution to problems facing the state, like restoration of democratic rights, land distribution, the World Bank's diktats and a separate Telangana state to be carved out of Andhra Pradesh. "But," they said, "the government did not conduct itself with responsibility during the talks." These developments, they said, proved that the ruling classes would not resolve people's issues through talks. They accused the government of trying to suppress the Maoist parties in the name of negotiations. These developments came after three consecutive days of encounter killings by police and reprisals by Maoists resulting in the death of 10 persons, including nine extremists and a village chief. Maoists burnt a bus and destroyed two liquor shops in Guntur district. A strike called by Janashakti evoked only partial response in several districts; though, it was quite successful in Warangal. Once again, with the Maoists vowing to avenge the killing of its cadre by the police in alleged encounters, the police department is moving a proposal to provide bullet-proof cars to the ministers from Telangana. The previous Chandrababu Naidu regime, too, had provided such facilities, though the chief minister himself had barely survived an assassination attempt. As many as 50 bullet proof vehicles had been bought to provide security to the ministers. In another quick response, the central government is backing the formation of state-level task forces that would be required to coordinate operations "on both sides of the border", as a top Home Ministry official put it on Wednesday, to curb the spread of Maoism. The Maoist threat is widespread in nine states and growing in at least six more states. The most affected are Bihar - the eastern state bordering Nepal - Orissa, West Bengal, Chhatisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh and now Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh. "These joint forces will be set up very soon," an official told reporters of the outcome of the second meeting of the special task force on Maoism held in Raipur on Tuesday. The center would foot the bill of kitting, training and modernizing the special police force meant to fight the Maoists for three years. In another desperate move, New Delhi on Tuesday announced it is increasing paramilitary forces recruitment from 10% to 40% in militancy-hit and border areas. The cabinet committee on security, which met in New Delhi under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, cleared the proposal to streamline recruitment into paramilitary forces in the special states. Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Defense Minister Pranab Mukherjee said that recruitment in the special states will depend on the population. He said that the states have been asked to prepare an action plan to fight the Naxalites. There is predictable gloating in the hardline-strategist circles at the failure of these talks, as they can again say "we told you so". Similar reactions had greeted the failure of talks initiated by the previous government. But whenever meetings of the Home Ministry's parliamentary committee are held, reports Kuldip Nayar, veteran journalist and former member of parliament and former high commissioner to London, the only solution suggested is to have "a serious dialogue". "Even when there are talks - as those that took place in Andhra a month ago," Nayar wrote recently, "the police dictate the rules. There is no generosity, not even an attitude of give-and-take. The Naxalites are treated as criminals, not rebels. The government tends to end peace talks abruptly because it believes that it can suppress such movements by force." Nayer thinks that the Maoists have come to symbolize hope, however fleeting and however distant. The establishment attitude is symbolized by M K Narayanan, the present officiating national security adviser and a special adviser to the prime minister on internal security. He is a former director of India's intelligence bureau famous in intelligence circles for having been a brilliant officer. Before rejoining the government, Narayanan wrote an article entitled "How to contain the extreme left". His concluding remarks would show the pious emptiness at the heart of the government: "With 'Bonapartism' riding roughshod over 'revolutionary' communism, talk of peaceful conflict resolution has its limitations. The frustrating experience of the aborted talks [2000-2002] between the Andhra Pradesh authorities and the Peoples War [or PW, with the Committee of Concerned Citizens acting as the mid-wife] - confirms this hypothesis. Moreover, revolutionary movements that do not believe in democracy, or so-called 'liberating movements' that do not endorse democratic and civil society norms, are unlikely to accept an agreement within a constitutional framework. Meanwhile, the fact that the PW is currently engaged in eliminating some of its erstwhile leaders, accusing them of having betrayed the struggle, does not provide much comfort about the future of peaceful negotiations." While accepting that "more than law and order issues are, hence, clearly involved", Narayanan is unable to come up with any clear strategy, except suggesting that human-rights groups should stop highlighting police brutalities. He goes on: "What is needed is a common strategy to deal with left wing extremism. As attacks on the state apparatus multiply, they could further damage the foundations of the democratic political system. A weakened state cannot possibly deal with this kind of challenge, and this is precisely what constant criticism and carping by human-rights watch groups tends to do. It is not merely a question of demoralizing those engaged in countering extremist violence, but of undermining the edifice itself." Independent observers find it difficult to understand how the Maoist problem would go away even if "constant criticism and carping by human-rights groups" were to cease. What is apparently required is an attempt to understand what makes the Maoists tick and formulate strategies accordingly. After all, they are running parallel governments in large parts of rural India. Nothing can happen in rural and small town Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh and parts of other states without Maoist permission. One example would suffice. The political strongman of Bihar, union railway minister and head of the ruling party in the second largest state in the country, Lalu Prasad Yadav, was not able to hold a rally in the state capital Patna recently, because, angered by his decision not to allow a Maoist rally, the latter did not permit him to organize a rally either. His party has been winning elections in Bihar for four consecutive terms only because he is able to make a deal with the Maoists before every election. If he fails to do so this time, there is no way he can win the forthcoming state elections in a few weeks from now. The same was true of Andhra Pradesh in last year's elections: the Congress-led coalition won because the Maoists decided not to enforce the election boycott they routinely pronounce in the areas where people were going to vote for the Congress and its allies. The Maoist phenomenon Asia Times Online made an effort to understand the Maoist phenomenon at the ground level earlier this month. This correspondent spent a week in the Maoist heartland of Bihar and Jharkhand, in the adjoining districts of Aurangabad and Palamau. As the overwhelming majority of the people in these states, as in other affected states, are just trying to eke out a living and could be counted as have-nots, they have no reason to fear the Maoists. Unlike in the big cities, where the middle classes have something to lose, people here are too poor to consider the Maoists a menace. Indeed, their own kith and kin are joining the red brigade in ever-growing numbers, as other employment opportunities are few and far between. Maoists look after these frustrated youths and give them something to do. In fact the moment it gets known that someone has turned Maoist, his stock in the family and the village rises. He becomes a person to be feared. The most shocking revelation for a city-dweller fed a daily media diet of stories that depict the Maoists as terrible criminals is the respect and awe in which these groups are held as providers of justice and equality to the rural social fabric. In conversations with the village folk, this correspondent asked repeatedly about the so-called kangaroo courts through which the Maoists are said to dispense summary justice. But people from different backgrounds and castes were unanimous that the punishments meted out were just and only to criminals who were known to have committed these crimes. There is very little kept private in the countryside. Everybody knows who is doing what. Justice for the exploited is hard to come by through the judicial system. Poor people accused of crimes for which the maximum punishment on conviction would be a month in prison are known to have languished in jails for as long as three decades and come out just because some human-rights group noticed them and filed a public-interest case in the supreme court. On the other hand, the influential and wealthy would either never go to jail or even if they do, they live a luxurious life even there: they simply put the jailers on their payroll. Also, India has always had a village judicial system called the panchayats. This system can sometimes be very cruel and very unjust. But it enjoys wide acceptability. The only difference between the Maoist courts and panchayats is that while the latter is mostly run by upper caste and influential Hindus, and usually perpetrate injustices to the lowly castes, the former are run by the deprived sections of society who mete out instant punishments to those who are known to have either raped a low caste woman or exploited a poor person in some way. While the upper castes and the wealthy will not hear a good word about Maoists, the local populace insists that Maoists do not engage in indiscriminate killings and that punishments meted out to individuals are well deserved. If it is illegal, it is only as illegal as the judicial decisions taken by upper-caste run panchayats that routinely order killing and the rape of lower caste men and women if they try to step out of line. A dalit (untouchable) boy seeking to marry a higher caste girl, for instance, would be routinely ordered by the panchayat to be killed by his own parents. In many cases parents of both the boy and the girl would themselves kill their children if ordered by the panchayats. Panchayats can even order women to be gang-raped if full view of the village if they have caused them some offence like refusing to work in the fields or in the household for free. But the power of such upper-caste panchayats lies highly diminished in areas where Maoists rule. Apart from being harsh toward the upper caste and wealthy in clear cases of rape, exploitation or other crimes, the Maoists are also unforgiving toward those who have the wherewithal but will not pay taxes to the parallel government, or would try to hide their incomes. No business or development activity can take place in these states unless the businessman or the contractor has paid 10% of his income to the Maoists. The road linking Daltonganj, the Palamau district headquarters to a sub-division town Garhwa, for instance, could not be repaired for years as the contractors was elusive and did not want to share his income with Maoists. Traveling on this road last fortnight, however, this correspondent found that the construction activity has started now and roadside villagers infer that some deal must have been made. Many agree that criminal elements have infiltrated the Maoist movement. As the movement has grown, it has inevitably become somewhat unwieldy. But Maoist supporters say that crimes are committed by criminal elements in the name of Maoism. Such criminals are, however, never spared by the movement. They are invariably found out and punished. It is only when the police commit crimes and ascribe them to Maoists that the latter are unable to counter as the police is a largely faceless force and its functionaries keep getting transferred from one area to another. It is difficult to carry out a vendetta against individual police officers. The continuing battle with the police is of course another matter. Only a fortnight ago a senior police officer and six of his colleagues were gunned down by Maoists in north Bihar. The Maoist phenomenon received a fillip from the lack of development in rural areas. But now it has itself started promoting underdevelopment. Modern communication facilities like telephone and expanding road networks, for instance, are inimical to the Maoist enterprise. Residents of an upper-caste and wealthy Brahmin village called Ketat, for instance, feel safe because they have telephones and are also situated on a road going to Garhwa Road which has a police station. They have never suffered a Maoist raid. Villagers of nearby Kamta say the same thing. Here the residents are Muslim and a couple of them perhaps prosperous enough to be paying small taxes to the Maoists; but again they are situated on the roadside and have telephone connections which could be used for calling the police; so they have remained safe so far. But what makes them afraid is the proximity of Kothilwa Mountain. Hills and mountains provide the best refuge and an impregnable defense to the Maoists. Maoist exploits and dare-devilry have become the stuff of legends in the area. With nothing better to do villagers and shopkeepers in small towns narrate detailed stories of how a certain person was gunned down by Maoists and for what reason. One prosperous Muslim resident of Chhatarpur, a roadside town on the Daltonganj-Aurangabad road, for instance, was killed because he would not surrender his licensed gun to the Maoists. But how the Maoists managed to eliminate him is a story with several spins. Some tales focus on the bravery of the Haji, who was finally killed while traveling in a jeep, some on the effectiveness of the espionage network run by the Maoists, from whose net few escape. As the overwhelming majority of people have nothing to lose, except by accident if caught in some rare crossfire, they seem to be enjoying the raging battle being fought between the Maoists on the one hand and the police or the upper-caste militias on the other. On the growing spread of Maoism, a resident of Nawa, a small township on the same road, said; "Virtually every family has a Maoist member. If you stay the night here, and walk on the road after nightfall, every passerby would greet you with the Maoist slogan "Laal Salaam" [Red Salute] and you might face difficulties if you don't greet the fellow back with a Laal Salaam yourself." One thing about Maoists that has caught the imagination of many in the areas this correspondent traveled thorough is their fierce secularism and opposition to discrimination on grounds of caste. Maoist, or for that matter other mainstream communist leaders, have traditionally come from the upper castes and wealthy classes. But they mix with the lowest of the low among India's numerous castes without showing the slightest sense of superiority. Maoist cadres come from all castes and communities, though it would be difficult to find upper caste people except at the leadership level. In a country where nearly all political parties have fixed vote banks among certain castes and communities, many common people find it admirable, indeed awe-inspiring. Everything in India boils down to caste, in the final analysis. Upper castes long for the time when the lower castes knew and were resigned to their lowly place in society. They are determined to perpetuate the millennia-old system of caste discrimination and appalling exploitation of the poor for as long as possible. They have created a whole host of militias to counter the Maoist onslaught. These militias engage in indiscriminate killings of lower caste villagers and display unspeakable brutality in killing women and children. A vicious cycle of retaliatory killings goes on. Thoughtful individuals in Bihar and Jharkhand's villages suffering from the Maoist threat say that the only way to counter Maoism would be to provide good governance, development and social justice. But now Maoism itself would come in the way. Like everybody else in the business of administering the country, Maoists, too, have developed a vested interest. A civil war can be quite profitable for some. Similarly, the police have a vested interest in the survival of Maoism. It is this ongoing struggle with Maoism that brings to them millions of dollars worth of arms and ammunition, part of which they can sell to the Maoists and boost their income. Maoists have now come to welcome encounters with the police as it is an easy way of snatching sophisticated weapons and ammunition. All the licensed guns in the countryside have either been taken back by the state or looted by the Maoists. The citizenry is entirely at the mercy of the two governments, one overt and the other covert, one rules by the day and the other by night. It is possible that M K Narayanan is right, after all, and the likes of Kuldip Nayar wrong. What is there to talk about with the Maoists? If good governance and social justice is impossible to provide, all that governments can do is deal with the consequences of ill governance, as best as they can and for as long as they can. Apparently, India is in for a long-drawn-out and even fiercer battle with the Maoists. If the government can draw together immense firepower for the battles ahead, the Maoists have the resources to either loot or buy the same firepower from the government forces themselves. Corruption and caste supremacy can hardly go together. Sultan Shahin is a New Delhi-based writer. > ATTACHMENT part 1.2 image/gif name=spacer15.gif _______________________________________________ info-bureau mailing list  info-bureau@lists.ilps-news.com  http://lists.ilps-news.com/listinfo/info-bureau  E-Mail: info-bureau@lists.ilps-news.com  Website: http://lists.ilps-news.com/listinfo/info-bureau |
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