[Reader-list] The Naxalites overreached

Thu Apr 8 12:20:44 IST 2010

Dear Asit ,

While as the nation has condemned whatever you have written , it still
does not justify the Naxalites and their barbaric acts.

I understand your support to them as your E-Mail ID is quite obvious -
Asit red salute ....lal salaam.

I am sharing you a piece on this 'civil war' by my favorite blogger :- GreatBong

http://greatbong.net/2010/04/08/the-invisible-civil-war/

We have been in the middle of an invisible civil war for many years
now. Civil war because it is an armed struggle by a section of the
people against the democratic administration of the country, a war
that has spiraled so out of control that representatives of law
enforcement accept that there are large swathes of country where they
cannot enter. Invisible because it rarely captures national attention,
confined as it is to largely rural backward areas for which it is
pushed to the rear of the news by other things more important to our
national life—like IPL, Shoaib-Sania and Kites.

That is unless more than seventy-six CRPF personnel are brutally
massacred at which point of time we are forced to deal with the issue.
At least for a few news cycles.

For those of us who do care, at least perfunctorily, and who havent
drunk the “It’s all India’s fault” cool-aid it is tempting to angrily
shout out “Ms Roy, happy now?” , in the context of her frothing
diatribe against the Indian government, Hindutva, corporations
(basically all of her enemies) and her rapturous glorification of the
violence of Maoists in the execrable piece of garbage recently
published in Outlook.  But analyzing or rebutting a fanatic
fundamentalist like Ms. Roy is as futile as deconstructing a Payal
Rohatgi movie and once you realize that she is essentially a Rakhi
Sawant with a laptop and a Booker, with the only difference that she
uses Maoists instead of Mika to get attention, the uselessness of the
exercise is even more evident.

What however is worth looking at are her rhetorical tools, principally
because they are re-used by many people who share Ms. Roy’s agenda,
from your unshaven friend at JNU to the slacker cousin of yours who
leaves cigarette ash on your carpet. One of it is in presenting random
pictures of Maoist rebels, women or young men, and saying “India’s
Biggest Threats” as if the incongruity between their innocent visages
and the phrase “India’s Biggest Threat” should show how ridiculous a
liar the Indian government is. Of course, Ms. Roy the point is not the
bholi soorat that you so lovingly present but that AK47 slung on her
shoulder. That is the problem. Villains rarely look like Dr. Dong and
do a Shaam-O-Sasha dance and even Osama would look like a poet had not
we known his other activities.

The second is in humanizing terrorist organizations by saying “Look at
the kind of development work they have done.”  Well even the
Mujahideen in Kashmir did earthquake relief and it is well known that
terrorists do public outreach programs to win hearts and minds. Just
like big industrial houses. However people like Ms. Roy will sneer at
the altruism of big business and glorify that of terrorists. Not
surprising.

The third is of course making wild accusations of government excesses
and then obviating the necessity of providing supporting evidence by
saying “The corporate press suppressed the news.” This is an old game,
a game played by radicals across the political spectrum. Get some wild
bit of news, either from “alternative media” or from unimpeachable
sources like Maoists with a gun and say “There is no proof for this
assertion of mine because there can never be.” This is not to say that
government excesses do not take place (italicized for the benefit of
those rushing to comment with a “On so-and-so day the government did
this and this was reported in Newspaper so-and-so) but much of the
accusations are just that. Accusations with nothing to back them up.
Accusations so often repeated that they become fact.

And what is worth touching upon is the Big Lie that people like Ms.
Roy perpetuate. That somehow we are seeing another Santhal Rebellion
with the oppressive British being replaced by the oppressive Indian
(Hindu) state. During the British era, Santhals using bows and arrows
went up against British guns and cannons. Today’s Maoist “tribals”
have AK47s and ultra-modern weaponry and commando-like training, which
obviously some agency has supplied to them. In that respect this is
not a “spontaneous” rising of the dispossessed but a carefully
engineered insurrection with the fighting fuel being supplied by our
“good neighbors”  and the propaganda lungs (since propaganda is a
vital part of Communist struggle) being supplied by “We know who”.

However what is true is that fighting footsoldiers of the Maoist
movement are coming from the ranks of tribals and it is important we
try to understand, even imperfectly since a full understanding of such
a difficult problem requires much study which we are unable to do
between two KKR matches, what is going on. What our Maoists in the
press would tell us is a very simple story. One one side are the good
people—the tribals, monstrously poor, sitting on minerals, being
exploited and taken advantage of. On on the other side are the bad
people—-big industrial houses, the Indian government, police, army and
Hindutva (Yes the last word people like Ms. Roy put in every piece
almost as if padding a piece for Google Adwords purpose). And that the
tribals, the good guys, are launching a justified armed struggle
against the bad guys.

The truth is slightly different. The tribals are not a monlithic
entity. A few of them have, over the generations, taken advantage of
quotas and the other special privileges provided to them by the
Constitution as well as economic liberalization to improve their lot.
Some of them have become middlemen, some of them small businessmen
like brick kiln owners. A few of them, over generations, have risen in
ranks even further becoming powerhouses like a Madhu Koda or Shibu
Soren. But there are others who have stayed behind rolling kendu
leaves and essentially doing the same things that their ancestors did.
Now when big mining companies moved in, it was those “advanced”
tribals who saw an opportunity to make more money by becoming
land-brokers. Needless to say, they were coming up against their
socially immobile brethren who naturally resented the comparative
wealth and influence of their fellow-tribals. And then “people”
started putting AK47s in the hands of those pissed off telling them
“Grab what you dont have. We can make our own laws.”

Soon government-supported, pro-development “tribals” (Salwa
Judum—–Mahendra Karma the founder of Salwa Judum is an ethnic Adivasi
himself who had made it “big”) and the dispossessed but armed tribals
were fighting each other,  in an increasing spiral of violence. And
despite what the “liberals” would have you believe,  these
“dispossessed” tribals forming the Maoists are not Robin Hoods. They
go about terrorizing villages, collecting extortion and protection
money and organizing people’s courts for punishing “informers” i.e.
those who were trying to get into the gang of the “advanced” tribals.
So yes this isnt a battle between good and evil but a massive gang war
being played out in the backwoods with no heroes and no villains. Only
victims.

A solution is difficult to find here. And I wont be presumptuous to
say I have any idea what should be done. However I feel that part of
the solution would be to have tribals brought into the mainstream. For
too long I have seen people, usually city folks and academics,
glorifying tribal life as the last surviving vestige of a simple,
ancient way of living. But a tribal life, of subsisting on hunting and
rolling kendu leaves, is a life that is medieval and there is a reason
why people in most parts of the country abandoned this lifestyle many
centuries ago (After all we all were tribals once). As mentioned
before, the tension underlying the Maoist struggle is between those
who have forsaken their old life for “capitalist pleasures” which in
turn has led to an understanding of how they can leverage their
possession of natural reserves for their own benefit,  and those who
have not.

While glorying Maoists, Ms. Roy says that they have gotten tribals
organized and have won victories like getting a better price for kendu
leaves. However it should be noted that poor and exploited people in
other parts of the country did not need guns and terrorists to get
organized. They formed cooperatives like Gujarat Co-operative Milk
Marketing Federation Ltd (Amul) and changed their futures peacefully.
So community organization, as Ms. Roy hints, does not need Maoists. As
a matter of fact, Maoists prevent aid and assistance from reaching
those that need it (being a kind of mafia themselves) and the
perpetuation of the Maoist movement, as strategized by its handlers
who are anything but tribals, depends critically on people being angry
at the government. Hence lack of real development, as done by the
government, serves them well because then they can show themselves to
be an alternative.

In conclusion, I sometimes wonder what would happen to people like Ms.
Roy should the Maoists actually succeed in overthrowing the Indian
state in a few decades, a publicly stated aim. Well based on the
glorious example of Chairman Mao and his attitude towards
“intellectuals” during the Cultural Revolution and of his disciple Pol
Pot, who made them work in the fields till they died, the fate of
champagne liberals like Ms. Roy would not be all that great. But
somehow I think she wouldnt stay around in the country to find out.

Pawan

On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 11:53 AM, Asit asitreds <asitredsalute at gmail.com> wrote:
>  i was not talking about maoists i was just saying why you people were not
> outraged when thousands were killed and raped in gujrat riots when babri
> masjid was  was raged, when hundreds of honour killings takes place in and
> around delhi, when dalit women are paraded naked in the country, when
> peaceful democratic mass movements are ruthless supressed for the super
> profits of a few corporations, when thousands of farmers are forced out of
> their land for sezs, mines and factories for the profits of national and
> international big business, when rural poor in kalahandi sell their
> daughters in dire poverty the list is endless, im surprised you people are
> not at all bothered about the starvation deaths and the acute agrian crisis
> where more than two lakh farmers have commited suicide dont you think their
> lives are also imortant
> asit
>
> On Wed, Apr 7, 2010 at 11:11 PM, A.K. Malik <akmalik45 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> Dear Durani Sahib,
>>                  I fully agree with you. However, the record of the
>> current governance in the country is dismal.They may say they will deal with
>> it firmly but ultimately the Govt buckles under pressure from various
>> quarters including the supporters. No one can justify what is being done by
>> the Maoists. I don't know in what way Asit is trying to justify the same.
>> Regards,
>>
>> (A.K.MALIK)
>>
>>
>> --- On Wed, 4/7/10, Pawan Durani <pawan.durani at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > From: Pawan Durani <pawan.durani at gmail.com>
>> > Subject: Re: [Reader-list] The Naxalites overreached
>> > To: "Asit asitreds" <asitredsalute at gmail.com>
>> > Cc: "reader-list" <reader-list at sarai.net>
>> > Date: Wednesday, April 7, 2010, 2:22 PM
>> > It's high time that not only Maosists
>> > , but their supporters are
>> > handled with iron fist.
>> >
>> > Regards
>> >
>> > Pawan
>> >
>> >
>> > On Wed, Apr 7, 2010 at 1:55 PM, Asit asitreds <asitredsalute at gmail.com>
>> > wrote:
>> > > what about the voilence in gujrat bhagalpur etc which
>> > have killed hundred
>> > > times more people than in dantewada
>> > >  what about tens of thousands of noncobatant civilan
>> > population killed by
>> > > security forces in northeast kashmir and punjab
>> > > asit
>> > >
>> > >
>> > > On 4/6/10, Pawan Durani <pawan.durani at gmail.com>
>> > wrote:
>> > >>
>> > >> …and committed a strategic mistake at Dantewada
>> > >>
>> > >>
>> > >> The reason why Naxalites have been able to sustain
>> > their insurgency
>> > >> for so long is due to three main reasons: the
>> > absence or failure of
>> > >> governance; the romanticism and propaganda of
>> > their overground
>> > >> sympathisers; and, finally, due to the relatively
>> > subliminal nature of
>> > >> their violence.
>> > >>
>> > >> To the extent that their violence was distributed
>> > in space and time
>> > >> they could slip in and out of the public mind,
>> > pursue on-and-off talks
>> > >> with state governments and generally avoid
>> > provoking the government
>> > >> into hitting back hard. Over the last five years
>> > Naxalites have
>> > >> violently expanded the geographical spread of
>> > their extortion and
>> > >> protection rackets—yet, the violence in any
>> > given place and time has
>> > >> been below a certain threshold. That threshold
>> > itself is high for a
>> > >> number of reasons, including efforts by their
>> > sympathisers to
>> > >> romanticise their violence, spectacular terrorist
>> > attacks by jihadi
>> > >> groups and due to the remoteness of the areas of
>> > their operations.
>> > >> This allowed Naxalites to get away with murder. A
>> > lot of times. In a
>> > >> lot of places. Literally.
>> > >>
>> > >> But killing 73 out of 80 (or 120) CRPF and police
>> > personnel in a short
>> > >> span of time in a single battle is no longer
>> > subliminal violence. In
>> > >> all likelihood the Naxalites have crossed a
>> > threshold—this incident is
>> > >> likely to stay much longer in the public mind and
>> > increase the
>> > >> pressure on politicians to tackle the Naxalite
>> > threat with greater
>> > >> resolve. Also, given that it has also become an
>> > issue of P
>> > >> Chidambaram’s—and hence the UPA
>> > government’s—reputation, the gloves
>> > >> are likely to come off in the coming weeks.
>> > >>
>> > >> There’s a chance that India’s psychological
>> > threshold is even higher.
>> > >> But it is more likely that the Naxalites have
>> > overreached. Perhaps
>> > >> their leadership has calculated that they are in
>> > the next stage of
>> > >> their revolutionary war. If so, that would neither
>> > the first nor the
>> > >> only delusion in their minds.
>> > >>
>> > >>
>> > >> http://acorn.nationalinterest.in/2010/04/06/the-naxalites-overreached/
>> > >> _________________________________________
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>>
>>
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