The attack
in southern Chhattisgarh this past May 25 has again raised questions — and some
bogeys — about India’s internal conflicts and the place Maoist rebels occupy in
this universe. What’s the situation? And what is likely to happen? The short
answer is that over the past three to four years, Left-wing rebels led
primarily by Communist Party of India (Maoist) have been severely depleted by the
surrender, arrest or death of leaders and cadres. Pressured by the onslaught,
often knee-jerk, of both central and various state governments, the Maoists’
effective area of combat has shrunk to southern Chhattisgarh and adjacent areas
of western Maharashtra and southwest Odisha (known as Danda-karanya), Bihar, a
few pockets in Jhark-h-and, a sliver of Andhra Pradesh. While it is an emphatic
weakening, the area is still vast, and cadre numbers and abilities enough to
inflict severe damage in areas of strength. The Dandakaranya zone, where the
attack on May 25 took place, is both major Maoist sanctuary, and core
laboratory for administration, education, healthcare and way of community
living and economic activity run by the Janatana Sarkar, or people’s government.
This remains among the most inaccessible and forbidding policing and combat
terrains in the country. This is where top Maoist military leadership shelters.
This is where some of the most battlehardened cadres are.
Naturally,
this is also where most government forces combating Maoists are located. For
Maoists, this region is also quite different from the rough and tumble in Bihar
and Jharkhand where Maoist rebels have for long been less concerned with trying
to provide an alternate grassroots model; because of what can be called
‘objective conditions’ of rebellion, more engaged in retribution and survival.
The Maoists’ duress is manifold. Among other things, they appear to be
increasingly hard-pressed to communicate issues. There is a core
hard-Left-leaning pool in urban India that will continue to provide recruits
for on-ground action and eventual, ideological leadership. As ever this core is
driven by angry intellectualism, and can move easily, generationally, from farmers’
rightsrelated land issues prevalent in the 1960s and 1970s to, say,
land-related issues of tribal rights, and callous, often-corrupt land
acquisition for various projects.
History
The term
Naxalites comes from Naxalbari, a small village in West Bengal, where a section
of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM) led by Kanu Sanyal,and Jangal
Santhal initiated a violent uprising in 1967. On 18 May 1967, the Siliguri
Kishan Sabha, of which Jangal was the president, declared their support for the
movement initiated by Kanu Sanyal and readiness to adopt armed struggle to
redistribute land to the landless. The following week, a sharecropper near
Naxalbari village was attacked by the landlord’s men over a land dispute. On 24
May, when a police team arrived to arrest the peasant leaders, it was ambushed
by a group of tribals led by Jangal Santhal, and a police inspector was killed
in a hail of arrows. This event encouraged many Santhal tribals and other poor
people to join the movement and to start attacking local landlords. These
conflicts go back to the failure of implementing the 5th & 9th Schedules of
the Constitution of India. See Outlook India comment by E.N. Rammohan ‘Unleash
the Good Force’ - edition July 16, 2012. In theory these Schedules provide for
a limited form of tribal autonomy with regard to exploiting natural resources
on their lands, e.g. pharmaceutical & mining), and ‘land ceiling laws’,
limiting the land to be possessed by landlords and distribution of excess land
to landless farmers & labourers. The caste system is another important
social aspect of these conflicts.
Mao Zedong
provided ideological leadership for the Naxalbari movement, advocating that
Indian peasants and lower class tribals overthrow the government and upper
classes by force. A large number of urban elites were also attracted to the
ideology, which spread through Charu Majumdar’s writings, particularly the
‘Historic Eight Documents’ which formed the basis of Naxalite ideology. In
1967, Naxalites organized the All India Coordination Committee of Communist
Revolutionaries (AICCCR), and later broke away from CPM. Violent uprisings were
organized in several parts of the country. In 1969, the AICCCR gave birth to
the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) (CPI(ML)). Practically all
Naxalite groups trace their origin to the CPI(ML). A separate offshoot from the
beginning was the Maoist Communist Centre, which evolved out of the Dakshin
Desh group. The MCC later fused with the People’s War Group to form the
Communist Party of India (Maoist). A third offshoot was that of the Andhra
revolutionary communists, mainly represented by the UCCRI(ML), following the
mass line legacy of T. Nagi Reddy, which broke with the AICCCR at an early
stage. During the 1970s, the movement was fragmented into disputing factions.
By 1980, it was estimated that around 30 Naxalite groups were active, with a
combined membership of 30,000.
GROUPS.
The Naxalism
is spreading through following groups in the following names :-
(1) CPI
(ML): Communist Party of India.
(2) MCI:
Moist communist centre.
(3) PWG:
People war group fused to CPI(Moist)
(4) UCCRI
(ML): Termed as Andhra communist.
Target Of
Naxal To Raisenaxalism
They
basically cover:-
(a)
Landlords.
(b)
Teachers.
(c)
Businessmen.
(d)
University Teachers.
(e) Police
officers.
Cause Of
Naxalims
The causes
of the Maoist movement in India are structural. Economic, political and
cultural dimensions are closely linked. The first is the economic situation
which is exploited by Naxalites and their extreme left ideology. It seems much
like a catch-22 situation. The basic rise to the naxalism is the one and only
one reason of poverty. The Naxals do not consider themselves to well furnish in
nature, in terms of amenities, which should be provided by the state. They
consider themselves the weaker section of the society. Hence, to raise their
power, and to prove the society they are supreme, and independent in nature.
They started mobilising the poor, underprivileged, and discouraged and
marginalised in the rural areas of India. Futher to raise their power and
strength and to make their own government they started damaging the property,
and, the people who are against them.
On the one
hand, India has experienced relatively fast economic growth, which has led to
increased levels of national wealth. To facilitate and continue this
development, businesses need more land and natural resources such as minerals.
On the other hand, this economic growth has been uneven among regions, and has
widened the disparity between the rich and the poor. Proponents of these
businesses argue that these regions need economic development, if they are to
catch up with their richer counterparts.
The Indian
aboriginals, known as adivasis, live these richly forested lands, which are
wanted for development by businesses. The conflict between economic progress
and aboriginal land rights continues to fuel the Naxalite’s activities. Their
strongest bases are in the poorest areas of India. They are concentrated on the
tribal belt such as West Bengal, Orissa, and Andhra Pradesh where locals
experience forced acquisition of their land for developmental projects. Second,
the alienation that is being exploited by the Maoists has a social, communal
and regional dimension. The battle can also be described between India’s most
neglected people and the nation’s most powerful industrial businesses. The
adivasis make up about 8.4 percent of the population and live in severe
poverty. They live in remote areas where government administration is weak and
there is a lack of government services. These indigenous people have the lowest
literacy rates in the country and highest rates of infant mortality. Given this
socio- conomic alienation, it is easy to see how the Naxalite’s ideology is
popular among the rural poor and indigenous tribes, and why the adivasis view
the guerrillas as their “saviours”. The adivasis do not feel like they have any
political power to voice their grievances legitimately, and therefore the
alternative of subversive, illegal groups seem attractive.
Some argue
that Naxalites are not concerned about the social or economic welfare of these
people and are simply using them as a means to its end goal of seizing
political power. The spread of Naxalism reflects the widespread alienation and
discontentment felt by large parts of the country who are systematically
marginalised. Dr. Subramanian, a former Director- General of the National
Security Guard and Central Reserve Police Force notes that Naxalism exists in
these tribal areas because of the dissatisfaction of the people against the
government and big businesses, the terrain is suitable for guerrilla tactics,
and there is no existence of a proper and effective local administration
mechanism. In these areas, the conditions are conducive to warfare and
extremist ideologies. Even if Naxalites are simply exploiting the adivasis’
situation for their own ends, their popularity indicates the power of the root causes
to create such an environment for insecurity and violence.
Saket Singh
