Poor people don’t make news. Even when they die in great numbers, or rather, are killed in great numbers. More than 1 lakh farmers have committed suicide in the last ten years, but how many front page headlines have they made? Over 2 lakh tribals are being forcefully removed from their land to build the Polavaram dam in AP. A human calamity of genocidal proportions, how many seconds of tv time has been devoted to it? The brutal and heartless systemic violence goes unreported. Great suffering, for a great number of people doesn’t have much news value.
The poor don’t make news. Except when they say that enough is enough. They only make it to the headlines when they refuse to suffer in silence, and fight against exploitation. For land, for dignity, for their rights and resources. Then they become news. They also become a ‘law and order problem’. An impediment to ‘development’. A ‘security threat’. This is the key to understanding the way media, parliamentary political parties and big business react to naxalite movement. It explains why we only hear of decontextualised ‘violence’, that doesn’t tell us what the issues at stake are. What are the demands? Who benefits if these demands are achieved? Who stands to lose? If it is only a ragtag group of ‘anarchist’ bandits, then why does the Indian ruling class consider it the single biggest ‘Internal Security threat’? Despite the best efforts by the state, spending millions of rupees on policing and military hardware, why is the movement spreading across the length and the breadth of agrarian India?
In practice no other political formation in India has taken up the cause of the rural poor with such single-minded zeal. Maoists enjoy a large mass following, particularly among tribal, dalit and backward caste peasants and agricultural labourers. The reason it is not visible to the world beyond their core areas is because their constituency lives in media darkness, bypassed by real ‘development’. One other reason is that Maoist party and sympathetic mass organisations have been banned, and are unable to openly organise any propaganda or agitation on popular demands.
During the talks with AP govt., when the Naxalites were briefly and grudgingly allowed legality, even the notoriously anti-naxalite media reported huge rural meetings and three massive rallies at Warangal, Hyderabad and Guntur attended by lakhs, despite police efforts to prevent them. There was a flood of people visiting the Maoist representatives with their grievances, so much so, that the guest house they were staying in turned into a parallel secretariat. Much to the embarrassment of govt. top brass, even the police rank and file lined up in the queue. Even today, in AP, braving police harassment, tens of thousands poor come to pay homage to martyred revolutionaries.
What were the Maoists demanding in the talks? Land distribution, the right of tribals over forest land, scrapping of World Bank dictated policies that are causing mass retrenchment of workers and draining out people’s resources, formation of Telengana state – to give just a few examples. And what had been the response of the Indian state and the ruling classes to these demands? The party was banned gain, a large number of activists killed in fake encounters; the struggling poor terrorized by the combined attacks of landlords, state-sponsored vigilante groups and police. The issues remain unsolved, violence on the poor goes on. Naturally, the struggle continues. While the ban on Naxalites is an attack on people’s movements, it is also in a way is a symbol of its efficacy, a testament to the fear it generates in the ruling elite. The rural poor says, “If the naxalites go away, the poor cannot survive”, reports K. Balagopal, an important human rights activist from AP, who doesn’t profess to hold any Maoist sympathies.
Let us be scrupulously fair. Forget for a moment what the Maoists are saying. Let us look at what the critics of the struggle are saying. First, let us take prime minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, who is hardly a Maoist sympathiser.
Addressing a meeting of chief ministers of six ‘naxalite affected’ states last year, Singh argued that the factors such as exploitation, artificially depressed wages (particularly in the countryside), unjust socio-political circumstances, inadequate employment opportunities, lack of access to resources, underdeveloped agriculture, geographical isolation and lack of land reforms are contributing to the growth of the naxalite movement (The Hindu, 14.4.07). Indeed, these are the issues the Maoist movement is addressing. The fact that in the same speech, the good doctor prescribed more police, special forces and more militarisation as the cure for people’s resistance against these for these socio-economic problems, is really symptomatic of the state’s approach.
Sociologist Bela Bhatia, who has significant differences with Maoists, writes: “Naxalites, including many exceptionally fine human beings who have lost their lives at the altar of revolution, have been an inspiring example of idealism, sacrifice and commitment. Politically the movement has raised important questions regarding India’s democracy and underlined the need to bring about a ‘people’s democracy’. There have also been significant achievements in curbing feudal practices and social oppression; confiscation and redistribution of ceiling surplus land; more equitable access to village commons, higher agricultural wages, elimination of the stranglehold of the landlords, moneylenders and contractors; protection from harassment by forest officials and police, heightened consciousness and empowerment of the poor; amongst others.”(EPW, 22.7.06)
Balagopal, despite his differing political views, admits: “The fact is that in much of this area the first time the common people experienced anything resembling justice was when the Naxalite movement spread there and taught the people to not to take injustice lying down. ... the oppressors of local society, whether upper caste landlords or insensitive public officials, started dreading the wrath, initially of the awakened masses, and later of armed squads composed of cadre born and brought up in poor families of the very same villages.” (EPW, 22.7.06)
The most visible contribution of the Naxalite movement is that it has kept alive the demands of the rural poor through persistent ground level struggles. Even the occasional official lip-service to land reforms or welfare measures would not have come but for their initiatives. While all parliamentary parties, without exception, are busy implementing the liberalization policy, the Maoists are leading the struggle in some of the most economically backward regions where adivasi’s suffer in the hands of forest official-trader-contractor-moneylender nexus or the predominantly dalit and backward class agricultural labourers and poor peasants are exploited by big landowners and rich farmers. Regions where local powerl cliques backed by police and govt. officials often respond with naked violence to even the most innocuous and lawful demands of the powerless poor. The Maoists’ insistence on resistance, armed if necessary, to counter the violence of the oppressors has appealed to a large section of the oppressed. Rallying behind the Naxalites, the rural poor in Bihar or Telengana fight both class exploitation and caste oppression.
While the movement has spread to 12 states, it remains the strongest in AP, Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa and Chattisgarh. The struggles in Dandakaranya and Jharkhand combine class demands against both business-state nexus and the regressive traditional authority in villages, with that of self-identity, dignity and autonomy for the marginalised minority nationalities. The emergence of adivasi peasantry, and dalit & backward castes labouring classes as an independent and powerful political force, freed from the influence of affluent landowning classes is a great step forward in truly democratising Indian society. In Chattisgarh, Maoist led alternate development practices are transforming the lives of tribal poor by changing oppressive land relations, developing agriculture, forestry and horticulture, building check dams and irrigation canal and establishing people’s right over forests and ensuring fair wages and prices from contractors and traders. The movement has succeeded in developing a truly democratic and inclusive form of self-government, an embryonic form of a new people’s power – the Janatana Sarkar. It is fighting to preserve indigenous tribal culture & languages, and opposing patriarchal practices like exclusion of women from certain agricultural activities, forced marriage & exploitation by traditional authority figures. It is resisting state’s efforts to implement at gunpoint projects by Tata and Essar, which would displace thousands. It is standing against the looting of iron ore by Japanese imperialism at Bailadilla mines, and supporting the 400 odd indigenous rolling mills facing closure due to govt policy.
Violence or counter violence? We need to ask ourselves, is the alternate model proposed by the Maoists violent? Or is it a far more humane and peaceable alternative to the cannibal capitalism conjoined with semi-feudal structures of oppression. Yet, a people-centric model of development invariably meets with an armed response from the ruling classes. Systemic, ‘developmental’ violence is enforced on the people through violent means; when the people resist that, more violence is unleashed to crush struggles. Violence also operates at policy level – killing through hunger & malnutrition, through indebtedness or forcible eviction from land, or by denying a health infrastructure. So who is at fault here? The state that wants to perpetuate inequalities through violent means? Or the people, struggling for equality and dignity, forced to take up arms to resist this violent exploitation? It is not coincidental that each and every parliamentary party today, who condemns the Naxalite movement, also stands in support of this cannibalistic ‘development’ and routinely condones the systemic violence. Including the Official Left (as testified by Singur and Nandigram). Even CPI-ML Liberation, the renegade pseudo-naxalites, who in a desperate bid to join the ruling elite in the parliament is trying to build national level alliances with big brothers CPI & CPM; or in Bihar joining hands with Nitish Kumar’s Samata party or Paswan’s LJP, formations that are part and parcel of this system of violent exploitation.
Look at the early days of Naxal movement in Andhra. The legal, peaceful movements in Karimnagar and Adilabad brought on brutal attacks from the ruling classes. There was absolutely no armed activity when the Disturbed Areas act was imposed by the Chenna Reddy govt, in ’78. Vested interests routinely condemns Naxalite resistance by portraying state-sponsored armed vigilante groups like Salwa Judum or Sandra as ‘civilians’, notorious landlords, contractors and state officials as ‘innocents’. Yet, the state is aware of the principled stand of Maoists to avoid violence wherever possible. In Naxal strongholds, police use public transport, using the masses as human shield because they know that Naxalites won’t risk civilian lives. Recently, the home minister and DGP of Andhra admitted that they had deliberately not given rifles in 500 police outposts because they are sure that Maoists won’t attack unarmed policemen.
Naxalbari ek hi raasta is an expression of the uncompromising revolutionary core of the Naxalite movement – that there is no other path before the Indian working class and peasantry, before the masses oppressed by Imperialism, casteism and patriarchy. Naxalbari struggle wasn’t just a courageous peasant rebellion; it drew the decisive dividing line between Official Left, a part of the exploitative system, and the revolutionary Left. It is not surprising that AISA has disowned the slogan; it’s just too powerful to be neatly packed into the box of parliamentary, vote-bank politics. The road is long, hard and dangerous, but as long as there is exploitation, the Indian masses will continue to walk it.
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