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The riot of red flags
India’s Naxalite movement
– to which contemporary Indian Maoists directly trace their lineage
– emerged as a wildfire insurrection in 1967 in the Naxalbari area of
North Bengal. After a few years of dramatic violence, however, that
movement was comprehensively suppressed by 1973, with the entire top
leadership of what was then the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist),
either jailed or dead. What little remained of its splintered survivor
organisations was destroyed during Indira Gandhi’s Emergency of 1975.
It was with the formation in 1980 of the People’s War Group (PWG) –
under the leadership of Kondapalli Seetharamaiah, an erstwhile Central
Organising Committee member of the CPI (ML), in the Telengana region
of Andhra Pradesh – and the reorganisation of the Maoist Communist Centre
(MCC) in Bihar in the mid-1980s, that the movement resurfaced in some
strength.
Initial successes were,
again, rapid, and by the mid-1980s, 31 districts in seven states were
experiencing Naxalite violence. By the early 1990s, however, the problem
had been eliminated from at least 16 of these districts, bringing the
total number of affected districts to just 15 in four states. Thereafter,
the reconstruction of the Naxalites was initially more systematic, with
wider areas being targeted and consolidated. In recent years, however,
the growth of the movement has been exponential. Thus, at the meeting
of what is known as the Central Coordination Committee of states affected
by the Naxalite movement, on 21 November 2003, then-Union Home Secretary
N Gopalaswami disclosed that a total of 55 districts in nine states
were affected by varying degrees of Naxalite violence. Just ten months
later, on 21 September 2004, an official note circulated at the meeting
of chief ministers of states experiencing Naxalite violence, indicating
that this number had gone up to as many as 156 districts in 13 states.
By August 2007, the official number had risen to 194 districts in 18
states.
Not all of these districts
and states were, of course, seething with Maoist violence. Just 62 of
these were categorised as ‘highly affected’, reflecting significant
levels of violence. Another 53 districts were categorised as ‘moderately
affected’, indicating high levels of political mobilisation and some
violence. Meanwhile, 79 districts fell into the ‘marginally affected’
category, in which preliminary political mobilisation was detected.
Sources indicate that intelligence estimates now put at least 220 districts
in 22 states into the sphere of varying degrees of Maoist influence
and activity.
It is important to recognise
that the phase when there is violence, which is ordinarily the point
at which the state takes cognisance of the problem, actually comes at
the tail end of the process of mass mobilisation. This is the stage
when neutralising the threat will require considerable, if not massive,
use of force. From the all-important preventive perspective, then, it
is useful to chart not merely the current expanse of visible Maoist
mobilisation and militancy, but also to understand the extent of their
current intentions, ambitions and agenda.
‘Protecting’ Adivasis
The Maoist rampage has
been enormously accelerated by the unification, in September 2004, of
the two principal parties, the PWG and the MCC, which had long dominated
– and contested control over – the purported ‘Red Corridor’, running
from Andhra Pradesh to the borders of Nepal. With the PWG and the Communist
Party of India (Party Unity) having merged in August 1998, this consolidation
of the most significant Maoist formations in the country resulted in
augmented capacities to intensify the ‘people’s war’ in the country.
Significantly, the CPI
(Maoist) has established regional bureaus that are responsible for nearly
two-thirds of the country, further sub-divided into multiple lower-level
jurisdictions in which the process of mobilisation has been assigned
to local leaders. There are at least five regional bureaus, 13 state
committees, two special area committees and three special zonal committees
in the country. There is also evidence of preliminary activity for the
extension of operations to new areas, including Gujarat, Rajasthan,
Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir and Meghalaya. Moreover, in 2004
the Maoists articulated a new strategy to target urban centres in their
"Urban Perspective" document, which offered guidelines for
"working in towns and cities", and for the revival of a mobilisation
targeting students and the urban unemployed. Two principal ‘industrial
belts’ were also identified as targets for urban mobilisation: Bhilai-Ranchi-Dhanbad-Calcutta
and Bombay-Pune-Surat-Ahmedabad.
The Maoist enterprise has
secured ground in the administrative and political vacuum that extends
over vast areas of India, where the state has systematically and chronically
failed to provide the public goods and services as it is required to
– including security of life and property, criminal justice, and opportunities
for social and economic growth. In such circumstances, it is inevitable
that another entity would step in to fill the vacuum. It is also inevitable
that, in most such cases, such an entity would not be constrained by
the limits of law or established procedure in its activism among local
populations; as a consequence, such activism will tend to be violent.
The unfortunate reality
is that the mechanism of rural administration in areas experiencing
Naxalite activity has been made ineffective, wherever it may have evolved
beyond the primitive structures of colonial governance. Elsewhere, the
Naxalites became active where, due to state incompetence, corruption
and criminalisation of the political leadership, the rural administration
has deteriorated to the point of paralysis. The problem is compounded
manifold in Adivasi and forest areas by an ill-conceived policy of isolation
that, under the influence of well-intentioned European social-anthropologists,
was adopted throughout the country shortly after Independence, with
the intention of ‘protecting’ the culture and interests of the Adivasi
population.
Such an isolationist policy
has been a total failure. It has kept the Adivasis poor and outside
the ambit of development, has been unable to protect them from exploitation
and abuse, and has deepened economic deprivation through an increasing
alienation of indigenous rights over forest produce and wealth. As such,
this approach is now long overdue for a re-examination. The vulnerabilities
of the Indian state have been compounded further by decades of misgovernance
in ever-widening areas of the country, along with the steady erosion
of the integrity and efficacy of established institutions of administration
and justice. Over the past decade and a half, processes of liberalisation
and globalisation have also unleashed a new and fractious dynamic, provoking
or intensifying conflict between the beneficiaries of the new economics
and those who have been further marginalised by them.
These structural vulnerabilities
of the Indian system have helped the Maoists secure tremendous and cumulative
successes – despite the occasional reverses, as presently in Andhra
Pradesh. These successes are underpinned by the extraordinary strategic
and tactical coherence of their movement, which remains little understood
within the echelons of political and administrative power in India,
and within a large proportion of the security establishment itself.
No effective response to the Maoist challenge in India is possible unless
this strategic and tactical ‘understructure’ is fully documented and
understood.
Weapons and people
In critical need of recognition
is the point that extreme violence is an integral element of the Maoist
ideology, and not a mere tactical expedient. "Political power",
as Mao Tse-tung put it, "grows out of the barrel of a gun."
And extreme violence is at the heart of this formulation. "To put
it bluntly," Mao noted,
it is necessary to create
terror for a while in every rural area, or otherwise it would be impossible
to suppress the activities of the counter-revolutionaries in the countryside
or overthrow the authority of the gentry. Proper limits have to be exceeded
in order to right a wrong, or else the wrong cannot be righted.
India’s Maoists are explicit
in their insistence that violence is the only instrument through which
their revolution can be realised. CPI (Maoist) General-Secretary Muppala
Laxmana Rao (aka ‘Ganapathy’) argues,
the question of armed struggle
… is independent of one’s will. It is a law borne out by all historical
experience. It is a fact of history that nowhere in the world, nowhere
in historical development of the class society, had the reactionary
ruling classes given up power without resorting to violent suppression
of the mass protests … until they are thrown out by force.
Another commentator in
People’s March, the CPI (Maoist) party journal, contends, "The
question is not of violence vs non-violence, but whether it is just
to take up arms against a most violent and brutal state … The Maoists
say it is just to take up arms as part of the overall process to change
a brutal and violent system."
Many in the mainstream
Indian political leadership have articulated the hope that the decision
of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) to join the democratic process
could serve as a future model for their Indian ideological brethren,
tempting them away from their current commitment to violent insurrection.
Such hopes are entirely misplaced. For one thing, the Indian Maoists
have explicitly rejected the Nepali Maoists’ ‘present tactics’ – those
of joining with the mainstream political system. They warn that these
could set in motion "an irreversible process of losing all the
revolutionary gains achieved till now". The Indian Maoists also
contemptuously reject any suggestion that they could choose, at any
point in the future, to participate in what their spokesman, ‘Azad’,
described as "the parliamentary pig-sty in India".
India’s Maoists are, of
course, yet to decide whether the Nepali Maoists’ engagement with democracy
is a ‘betrayal’ or a tactical innovation leading to an eventual and
total seizure of power. If it is the former, the CPN (Maoist) will be
seen simply to have joined the ranks of the many ‘revisionists’ and
‘right opportunists’ that are thought to have corrupted the movement
through its history. If it is the latter, this new stratagem will be
studied with care, in order to determine its utility and the conditions
in which it would apply. Such an approach, however, holds little promise
of any early abandonment of violence by the CPI (Maoist). If its Nepali
counterpart is, in fact, able to secure an absolute seizure of power
through it ‘present tactics’, it will only be because the Maoists of
Nepal had already created a situation of extraordinary disruptive dominance
across wide – indeed overwhelming – geographical areas in the country.
The Nepali Maoist’s ‘present tactics’ can only be relevant to India
in some future situation in which the Indian Maoists have already secured
comparable disruptive dominance, and the existing political and administrative
order has been pushed to comparable conditions of decay and disintegration
– a still-distant possibility in India.
Securing these conditions
of decay and disintegration is, in fact, the objective of the Naxalite
‘people’s war’, and its principal instrumentality is the strategy of
protracted warfare. As the "Programme and Constitution" of
the PWG’s People’s Guerrilla Army (PGA) declared, "The line of
protracted people’s war is our military strategy," and further,
"The PGA firmly opposes the pure military outlook which is divorced
from the masses, and adventurism. It will function adhering to the mass
line." The ‘mass line’ rejects the ‘left adventurism’ often attributed
to the earlier Naxalite movement of the 1967-73 phase, and insists that
the military aspects of the revolution are contingent on mass mobilisation.
Mao, in "On Protracted War", notes, "We see not only
weapons but also people. Weapons are an important factor in war, but
not the decisive factor; it is people, not things, that are decisive."
The idea of protracted
war clearly recognises the strengths and superiority of the state’s
present forces and alignments, but recognises, equally, its vulnerabilities.
Mao declares,
The enemy is strong and
we are weak, and the danger of subjugation is there. But in other respects
the enemy has shortcomings and we have advantages. The enemy’s advantage
can be reduced and his shortcomings aggravated by our efforts. On the
other hand, our advantages can be enhanced and our shortcoming remedied
by our efforts.
Thus, the CPI (Maoist)
document on "Strategy & Tactics" likewise notes,
However strong the enemy’s
military power may be and however weak the people’s military power,
by basing ourselves in the vast backward countryside – the weakest position
of the enemy – and relying on the vast masses of the peasantry, eager
for agrarian revolution, and creatively following the flexible strategy
and tactics of guerrilla struggle and the protracted people’s war …
and following the policy and tactics of sudden attack and annihilation,
it is absolutely possible to defeat the enemy forces and achieve victory
for the people in single battles.
Front organisations
The Maoists believe that
there is, at present, an "excellent revolutionary situation in
India", and have clearly declared that "the seizure of state
power should be the goal of all our activity". After their 9th
‘Unity’ Congress in January-February 2007, they outlined an inventory
of "immediate tasks", to include, among others, the following:
• Coordinate the people’s
war with the ongoing armed struggles of the various oppressed nationalities
in Kashmir, Assam, Nagaland, Manipur and other parts of the Northeast.
• Build a broad UF [United
Front] of all secular forces and persecuted religious minorities such
as Muslims, Christians and Sikhs …
• Build a secret party
apparatus which is impregnable to the enemy’s attacks …
• Build open and secret
mass organisations amongst the workers, peasants, youth, students, women
and other sections of the people …
• Build the people’s militia
in all the villages in the guerrilla zones as the base force of the
PGA [People’s Guerrilla Army]. Also build armed self-defence units in
other areas of class struggle, as well as in the urban areas.
The Maoist strategy is
clearly to fish in every troubled Indian water, and to exploit every
potential issue and grievance, in order to generate a campaign of protest
and agitation. The principal vehicles for these ‘partial struggles’
are ‘front’ or ‘cover’ organisations of the Maoists themselves, on the
one hand; and, on the other, a range of individuals and organisations
best described, in a phrase often (incorrectly) attributed to Lenin,
as ‘useful idiots’ – well-intentioned persons who are unaware of the
broader strategy and agenda they are unwittingly promoting through their
support to unquestionably admirable causes. As the "Political and
Organisational Review" of the erstwhile PWG noted,
Cover organisations are
indispensable in areas where our mass organisations are not allowed
to function openly … There are two types of cover organisations: one,
those which are formed on a broad basis by ourselves; and two, those
organisations led by other forces which we utilise by working from within
without getting exposed.
This strategy has already
contributed to abrupt and unexpected violence in a number of cases in
the recent past, with the role of Maoist provocateurs often discovered
much after the event. The impeccable causes embraced in this cynical
strategy include caste conflict, and the escalating tensions over the
displacement and attempted imposition of special economic zones in West
Bengal and Orissa. During September 2006 in Khairlanji, in Bhandara
District of Maharashtra, a Dalit family of four was murdered following
the rape of two women. Protest demonstrations abruptly escalated into
violence with the intervention of Maoist fronts and activists. A subsequent
Maoist "Resolution against Dalit Killings in Khairlanji" declared,
"The Dalit masses knew that Maoists have always stood with the
oppressed. The masses took inspiration from this and intensified their
agitation."
While protests against
the special economic zones were initiated by various other parties and
non-governmental groups, the Maoist involvement was progressively visible.
This was eventually acknowledged by Ganapathy, who observed, "One
should only be surprised if we are not involved in such life-and-death
issues of the masses … Struggles against the SEZs acquiring fertile
farmland of the peasants and also huge projects are turning more and
more militant … As for our role in such movements, we shall definitely
make all efforts to be in the forefront and lead the movement in the
correct direction."
Indeed, current Maoist
debates and documents condemn the "second wave of economic reforms"
as a "violent assault on the right to life and livelihood of the
masses", and call for "an uncompromising opposition to the
present model and all the policies that are coming up". Internal
debates on the issue have further underlined the "need to build
a huge movement against displacement and the very model of development
itself", and to unite all "genuine democratic and anti-imperialist
forces … to create a tornado of dissent that forces the rulers to stop
this juggernaut." The issues at stake envisaged for potential mobilisation
focus on "development driven through big dams, super highways and
other infrastructural projects … gigantic mining projects, Special Economic
Zones (SEZs), urban renewal and beautification".
Within the same pattern,
the "Political and Organisational Review" of the PWG noted,
in March 2001, that united fronts and joint action committees have prioritised
"burning issues of the peasantry such as for water, power, remunerative
prices for agricultural produce, against exploitation by traders, against
suicides by the peasantry, against the WTO [World Trade Organisation],
and on worker, student, women, Adivasi and Dalit issues." Thus,
further, "issue-based temporary joint activity with other forces
has been the general form of UF [United Front] undertaken by our Party
at various levels." Suitable issues are not picked up randomly
or opportunistically, but are based on extensive ‘investigations’ into
‘social conditions and tactics’, and are meticulously reconciled with
the broader Maoist strategy and agenda.
As noted previously, these
various causes are laudable, and no one can be faulted for extending
support to demands for greater equity, justice and access in these spheres.
For the Maoists, however, these campaigns are an integral component
of their strategy of political consolidation, necessarily leading to
military mobilisation. In Maoist doctrine, these ‘partial struggles’
are no more than a tactical element in the protracted war, and they
have no intrinsic value of their own. These ‘struggles’ create the networks
and recruitment base for the Maoist militia and armed cadres. Where
partial struggles thrive, an army is being raised. These ‘peaceful’
or sporadically violent movements are eventually and inevitably intended
to yield to armed warfare. The objective is to "isolate the enemy
by organising the people into various cover organisations and build
joint fronts in order to mobilise the masses into struggles to defeat
the enemy offensive". Army formation, the Maoists insist, "is
the precondition for the new political power", and "all this
activity should serve to intensify and extend our armed struggle. Any
joint activity or tactical alliances which does not serve the cause
of the peoples’ war will be a futile exercise."
The "Urban Perspective"
document envisages the formation of ‘Open Self Defence Teams’ and armed
‘Secret Self Defence Squads’ in urban areas. For the latter, the document
notes, "One significant form of activity is to participate along
with the masses and give them the confidence to undertake militant mass
action. Other tasks are to secretly hit particular targets who are obstacles
in the advance of the mass movement."
The Maoists are – and have
long been – working in accordance with a plan. This gives their movement
great strength; but to the extent that this design is well known, it
also makes the Maoists enormously vulnerable. Regrettably, while there
is a handful of officers in the security and intelligence establishment
who are aware of the details of this design, the general grasp in the
security and political leadership at the state level and at the Centre
remains weak. There is, moreover, the added constraint that the Maoist
strategy exploits the vulnerabilities of constitutional governance and
its freedoms, and the security apparatus has only limited instrumentalities
of containment available in the initial stages of subversion and mass
mobilisation. The response of the Indian state remains trapped in an
‘emergency response paradigm’ that has little relevance in dealing with
the protracted war strategies of the Maoists.
(Published in Himal
South Asian, Kathmandu, Vol. 21 No. 9, September 2008)
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