[Reader-list] Reg: Set - 9

[Rakesh Iyer]

Article Theme: Terror in India and Pakistan

Source: Outlook

Date: 9th-16th July 2010

Link: http://outlookindia.com/article.aspx?266164

Article Content:

Opinion
A Last Note To A Neo-Colonialist
This is a rejoinder the slain CPI (Maoist) spokesperson had penned in
response to B.G. Verghese’s article in *Outlook*
 Chemkuri Azad Rajkumar<http://outlookindia.com/peoplefnl.aspx?pid=12911&author=Chemkuri+Azad+Rajkumar>

Reading B.G. Verghese’s article Daylight at the Thousand-Star
Hotel<http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?265171>in
*Outlook* (May 3), one is stunned by the abysmal poverty of thought and
colonial mindset of this renowned intellectual. How is it that the
illiterate, seemingly uncivilised, backward, half-naked adivasi thinks,
analyses and acts a lot better than an established, well-read, highly
qualified intellectual like Verghese?

The history of freedom in our country presents innumerable such contrasts:
of the highly educated white man, with his vast, in-depth knowledge of the
world and the natural and social sciences, glorifying the British raj as a
regime with a civilising mission; and the half-naked, illiterate Indian who
craved for freedom and independence. To justify the oppression of their
subjects in the colonies, the “educated” colonial intellectuals invented
phrases such as “white man’s burden”, “civilising mission” et al. The
freedom fighter, however, was not impressed by the ‘development’ the British
colonialists brought to India through their railways, roads, communication
networks, plantations, mines etc.

Verghese is a typical example of the self-proclaimed civilisers of
modern-day India, akin to the white ‘civilisers’ of yesteryear, who would
have been the pride of a Rudyard Kipling. He reveals this colonial mindset
by vehemently arguing in favour of the civilising mission of the corporate
sharks and the Indian State to transform the poor, backward adivasis from
savages into civilised people through a ‘development’ that destroys people’s
economy, social life, culture and all human values. Ironically, ignoramuses
like him imagine that adivasis are the casualties of non-development.

The corporate vultures and their police servants have said, through
Verghese, what they think of a dialogue with the Maoists. Citing from my
interview in *The Hindu*, Verghese gives his own interpretation to my
proposal for talks. He derides my statement that “talks will give some
respite to the people who are oppressed and suppressed under the jackboots
of the Indian State...” and interprets this as “respite for the oppressed
(cadres)”. Such is the wishful imagination, cynicism, trivialisation and
vulgarisation of a life-and-death question confronting millions of hapless
people!

Verghese also thinks that lifting the ban on our party, release of jailed
leaders for the purpose of participating in talks, and respite for the
oppressed are unreasonable preconditions. Would anyone, except Verghese and
other war-hungry hawks, imagine that the Maoists had placed respite as a
precondition? We had only explained why we think a ceasefire is necessary to
give respite to the oppressed and suppressed people in the war-torn zones.

In any war, there can be several periods of peace depending on many factors
such as natural calamities which affect a significant chunk of the
population and need relative peace for reconstruction and assistance to the
victims; war of aggression by another country which calls for the united
resistance of one and all; war fatigue among the people and even the
belligerents; chronic famine conditions for a sizeable proportion of the
people arising basically out of prolonged periods of war; the needs of
either side for a respite for various reasons, and so on. However, it is
only when both sides in the war feel the need for peace that a mutual
ceasefire and a situation for initiating a dialogue will arise.

Verghese does not speak like an impartial observer but betrays his conscious
motive of tarnishing the Maoists with his ideologically bankrupt rhetoric.
His inherent bias is clear from several of his remarks, such as his
accusation that the Maoists pose like “Robin Hoods but rule by fear and
authoritarian command over cowed camp-followers”. He further says: “Many
comrades have broken rank in disgust over the Maoists’ brutality and
hubris.” Can he cite any authentic source for his accusation, leaving out
the disinformation campaign unleashed by the reactionary rulers and their
police-intelligence wings? How many comrades have broken rank in disgust
over our “brutality and hubris”? We challenge him to furnish a list.




Even the church of England got out of Vedanta. The colonialists seem more
humane than the slavish intellectuals in former colonies.



For a common man who sees nothing but a culture of fear and authoritarianism
everywhere, in virtually every party led by one or two authoritarian
individuals whether it be Indira Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi, L.K. Advani, M.
Karunanidhi, Y.S.R. Reddy, Chandrababu Naidu, Jyoti Basu and so on, it is
difficult to imagine genuine democracy and mutual trust that is the hallmark
of a proletarian party like ours. Maoists have never considered themselves
Robin Hoods and have even undertaken deep reviews of how the cult of the
individual is part of the bourgeois culture, and how the people are the real
heroes. Besides a strong ideological-political unity, the Maoists are marked
by their conscious effort to promote collective functioning right from the
central committee to the mass organisation committees, which is one reason
why every attempt to split the party has failed right from the time of K.G.
Sathya Murthy and Kondapalli Seetharamayya in erstwhile PW or Bharath and
Badal in erstwhile MCCI.

One is also dumbstruck to hear Verghese chide Arundhati Roy saying: “Why
scoff at a cancer hospital built near Raipur by Vedanta, the aluminium
corporate, or the proposed Vedanta University in coastal Orissa? Are these
by definition all wicked enterprises?” He then goes on to repeat Ms Roy’s
observations on the pathetic health conditions and lack of any healthcare in
Dandakaranya and asks: “So where do we begin? By burning down the Vedanta
hospital?”

Should one think it is because of his innocence or because of his false
consciousness derived from the non-stop propaganda by the corporate sharks
that Verghese poses such a foolish question? Vedanta might appear as a
benevolent enterprise to Verghese, but life has taught the adivasis what it
stands for. Even as Verghese comes forth as an apologist for the worst
perpetrators of crimes against humanity, we find organisations like the
Church of England, and several shareholders in Vedanta exhibiting better
rationale by withdrawing their shares from Vedanta. Even the colonialists
seem more humane and rational than the slavish intellectuals in their former
colonies! Moreover, even the Supreme Court of India and the environment
ministry have raised objections to the proposed Vedanta University and
mining venture. Only a Chidambaram, who served as a member of its board of
directors until 2004, and Verghese, with his “compassionate” colonial
mindset of “civilising” the backward people, can stand up in support of
vultures like Vedanta, Tata, POSCO, Jindal....

Verghese’s colonial mindset is at its best when he says: “Yes, there will be
land acquisition and displacement—that is the story of civilisation; but
there will also be resettlement, compensation and training for new
vocations.” The adivasis and poor peasants in our country can never imagine
how people like Verghese can distort history so shamelessly. Ask the 60
million people who have been displaced by the land acquisition of the
“civilisers”. How and why such barbarism is called the story of
civilisation, only Verghese knows best. To convince the sceptics, he further
says: “Admittedly, this (resettlement, compensation) has not always been
done wisely or well. But times are changing. New legal frameworks, better
norms, closer monitoring, improved R&R and livelihood packages have
continuously been put in place.”

Verghese here comes out as an incarnation of the typical Indian bureaucrat,
like a G.K. Pillai. All intellectual pretence is shed here and he reveals
himself as a loyal servant of the Indian comprador sharks. So why is all
this hullabaloo about land acquisition and displacement being raked up by
people like Arundhati Roy and others?




Where in india is your constitution prevailing? in Dantewada? In Lalgarh,
Kashmir, Manipur? where was it hiding for 25 yrs after ’84?



Verghese states his imagined virtues of the corporates without a sense of
shame: “There is much virtue in translating Gandhi’s concept of trusteeship
in a new and evolving idiom of csr to which corporates, the state and courts
have variously given expression. The new deals being worked out by the
POSCOs, Vedantas, Tatas, Mittals and others are greatly in advance of what
was on offer even five years ago.” What Verghese is trying to say is let the
corporates enjoy the mineral wealth and loot the country at will as long as
they throw some crumbs as charity or ‘social responsibility’ to the poor,
helpless, wretched beings who are thrown out of their homes and lands. Why
doesn’t Verghese visit Balitutha, Dhinkia and Nuagaon in Jagatsinghpur
district of Orissa and convince the anti-POSCO agitators to understand the
new paradise that is being built for them by his corporate bosses? Or visit
Baligotha, Chandia and Baragadia in Kalinganagar to make the “backward”
adivasis protesting against the Tata Steel project see reason? After
centuries of rapacious plunder by capitalist gangs that has led to the
monopoly control of the world’s resources by a handful of corporations,
Verghese can actually call for a trusteeship by corporates!

Another interesting instance where Verghese distorts facts is in the growth
in tribal populations. In order to disprove Arundhati Roy’s apprehension
about the probable genocide of tribals due to the war waged by the Indian
State, Verghese asserts that “the tribal population of India was 19.1
million in 1951, rose to 84.3 mn according to the 2001 census and is
estimated to be just short of 100 mn (8.1 per cent of the population)
today.” Had he exerted a little effort, he would have known that the
seemingly huge growth in the population figures of scheduled tribes in India
is not because of an increase in the population of the tribes but due to the
inclusion of several hitherto non-tribals in the ST category.

Verghese’s attitude towards the occupation of schools by the security forces
is also criminally casual. He says: “Yes, schools in Naxal-affected areas
are often occupied by security forces, not to prevent education but because
schooling and other developmental activities, such as they are, have come to
a halt.” Even worse, he accuses the Maoists of opposing schools and of being
interested only in “agitprop centres to indoctrinate the young”. This
reveals the extent of indoctrination this intellectual mind has been
subjected to by the omnipotent imperialist media and the servile education
system he is a product of. He goes on to say, “Development and connectivity
threaten them. Hence they destroy roads, culverts, bridges. Hence the wanton
attacks on railway and highway projects that would, if completed, connect
and open up remote, backward areas. If education, health services, roads,
irrigation, markets and communications are provided and poverty rolled back,
the Maoists would be out of business.”

Throughout his article, Verghese acts as an apologist for the reactionary
deeds of the rulers; and at times his language is indistinguishable from
that of Chidambaram. For instance, Chidambaram too said at JNU recently:
“Maoists want to ensure the tribals were inaccessible and incommunicado
(from mainstream) by blowing up buildings, railway tracks and targeting
developmental projects. Are they trying to create an archaeological museum
in the tribal areas by keeping the tribals away from development?”

While one can understand Chidambaram, as a loyal representative of the
corporate sharks, uttering such trash, it’s really amusing to see
intellectuals like Verghese imagining such things and drawing fantastic and
subjective conclusions. On several occasions, we have clarified these
questions. We have explained why we are targeting roads, bridges etc. Let
alone opposing, our party has even led people’s struggles demanding the
setting up of schools, appointment of teachers, health services, markets,
irrigation and so on. In fact, seeing the utter apathy of the rulers, we
ourselves have set up schools, dug wells and tanks to develop irrigation and
increase productivity and yields of crops, organised cooperatives, trained
local doctors, built roads and bridges deep inside the forest.

Why would Maoists be threatened by development and connectivity? If Verghese
and his brand of intellectuals think that concrete roads are the barometer
of development, they are living in a fool’s paradise. He falls prey to the
ruling class scheme of development that displaces the adivasis and destroys
their lives, lands and cultures. He says roads and railways open up remote
backward areas. For whom? For the people or for a handful of mining and
industrial companies, forest contractors and police tormentors who make
adivasi lives a veritable hell?

Even more amusing is Verghese’s allegation that the Maoists are working only
among the adivasis and that they will be “out of business” once the adivasi
areas become developed. He does not even know the programme of the Maoists,
which is to mobilise the vast majority of the suffering people throughout
the country. Can the Maoists seize power and establish the “totalitarian
state” Verghese is talking of without organising the non-adivasi majority
living in the advanced regions of the country?

Verghese refers to the Salwa Judum as a savage blot but concludes that
“strategic hamleting” was confined to one district and prevented from being
extended to any other district, even in Chhattisgarh. But who prevented it
and how, he prefers to be silent on. It has been the heroic resistance,
armed and unarmed, by the adivasi masses led by the Maoists since the end of
2005 that has upset the devious plans of the reactionary rulers to uproot
the entire adivasi population. He doesn’t say that Salwa Judum was defeated
and prevented from creating havoc in newer areas because the Maoists and the
adivasi masses had dealt a death blow to this state-sponsored terrorist gang
by carrying out daring militant offensives such as in Ranibodili and
Errabore; that the rulers had never given up their fond wish to drive the
entire adivasi population into strategic hamlets; and that Salwa Judum Part
II unleashed by the Sonia-Manmohan-Chidambaram gang is precisely to achieve
that unfinished goal.

Lastly, Herr Verghese fondly hopes: “The Maoists will fade away, democratic
India and the Constitution will prevail, despite the time it takes and the
pain involved.” If the Maoists fade away by the superiority of your
development model, then why are the advocates of your development keen on
brutally suppressing the Maoists and the adivasis they are leading? In which
part of India is the Constitution prevailing, Mr Verghese? In Dantewada,
Bijapur, Kanker, Narayanpur, Rajnandgaon? In Jharkhand, Orissa? In Lalgarh,
Jangalmahal? In the Kashmir Valley? Manipur? Where was your Constitution
hiding for 25 long years after thousand of Sikhs where massacred? When
thousands of Muslims were decimated? When lakhs of peasants are compelled to
commit suicides? When thousands of people are murdered by state-sponsored
Salwa Judum gangs? When adivasi women are gangraped? When people are simply
abducted by uniformed goons? Your Constitution is a piece of paper that does
not even have the value of a toilet paper for the vast majority of the
Indian people.

Finally, this comment by Verghese—“People’s Tribunals keep mouthing
yesterday’s tired slogans.... They do not see tomorrow; maybe they fear
it”—applies more to people like him. He keeps mouthing yesterday’s outdated,
monotonous slogans like “end of history”, “there-is-no-alternative”, “demise
of Communism”, “totalitarian state”, and so on. He does not see tomorrow. He
even fears it. The spectre of Communism sends shivers down his spine.