The multiple Naxal/Maoist groups that operate in India do not accept that the policies and programmes pursued by the Indian state are responsive to the needs of landless agricultural workers, urban labouring classes, tribals, Dalits and other marginal sections of society. If the state is considered fundamentally antagonist and anti-poor, it deserves to be replaced by a genuine People’s Democratic State of India. Today, these well-organised groups have extended their operations to nine states and more than 160 of the country’s 650 districts. Are they the “greatest threat to national security” or rebels with a genuine cause?
To answer this, author Rahul Pandita gives a vivid description of the realities and inner workings of these groups. The first three chapters – “Give Me Red”, “History’s Harvest” and “The Return of Spring Thunder” – focus on the formative period of this movement. It began in May 1967 in the Naxalbari area of West Bengal, when landless agricultural workers and tribals launched a guerrilla war against landlords and forcibly occupied cultivable land under the leadership of Charu Mazumdar. Indira Gandhi asked the army to deal with this fledgling revolutionary armed struggle. The story ended in Bengal and took birth in Srikakulum in Andhra Pradesh under the leadership of K S Seetharamaiah who claimed to have created a “Red Territory”.
During the 1980s the People’s War Group established a base in the Dandakaranya forests of which the largest portion was Bastar, where, the author says, “Hundreds of thousands of Adivasis continued to live in the Dark Ages”. In the chapter on Bhojpur, the author states that “caste is one major reason why Naxalism flourished in Bihar. And the crushing poverty”. One informative chapter provides details about the ideology, qualifications for membership, the sources of funding for the Maoists, the method of procuring weaponry including shopping from China, and the command system of the united CPI(ML) and the front organisations of radical students and cultural groups like that of legendary balladeer Gadar that propagated the message of the Maoists to the masses.
Interestingly, the author informs us, “the China factor played a big role in the failure of the Naxalbari struggle”, but at the same time, the Chinese have encouraged the Naxal movement in India. So much so that Maoist leaders came up with the slogan “China’s Chairman (Mao) is our Chairman”.
How does one locate the story of the Maoists in the context of 60 years of an Indian democratic state? The author has convincingly proved that the Maoist movement has succeeded in capturing social spaces in areas where millions of landless agricultural workers and the poorest of the poor tribal groups continued to be exploited by land-owning classes, castes and Mafia groups who have wrested complete control over forest wealth. The social soil in agrarian and tribal areas is such that the local population perceives Maoists, not state functionaries, as their protectors against the oppressive land-owning classes. It can’t be denied that land reforms in India have been undertaken hesitantly, which explains why a large army of ill-paid and ill-fed landless agricultural workers or share croppers have been left at the mercy of land-owning classes. Many sympathetic foreign critics of the Nehru phase of planned economic development model, including Gunnar Myrdal in his classic Asian Drama, drew attention to India’s gigantic failure in not undertaking the massive programme of agrarian restructuring. That does not mean the Indian state can eliminate the Maoist challenge by deploying more than 100,000 para-military personnel. Such forces cannot deal with the socio-economic issues confronting the masses.
The Maoists, however, have no relationship with the theory and praxis of Karl Marx, otherwise they would have, like Communist parties, undertaken a serious exercise of “self-criticism” and “self-correction” because of the limitations they face in their adventurist strategy of “kill and get killed”. Their inspiration from Mao is misplaced because Mao himself never undertook any “self-criticism” after the disastrous Cultural Revolution in China.
Also Read
Moreover, Maoist theorising about the nature of Indian state is flawed. How, for instance, can a Hindu communal party win an election in Chhattisgarh where Maoists claim to be very successful? The Maoists have to understand that India is not Mao’s China. Pandita in fact quotes one of their own leaders observing that “Caste consciousness supersedes national consciousness, identity, loyalty — everything”. If this is Indian reality, only gradual democratic change can bring succour to the deprived masses and democratic governments of India cannot ignore mass democratic pressures.
Why have Maoists failed to reach “urban” areas for support? Can there be any success story for a grand social transition without a united struggle of classes, castes, communities and women? Maoism in India has not succeeded because its theory and guerrilla warfare strategy cannot bring any benefit to the group on whose behalf Maoists claim to be fighting. In the end, social change can be brought about only by exercising democratic pressures on public functionaries.
HELLO, BASTAR
The Untold Story of India’s Maoist Movement
Rahul Pandita
Tranquebar 2011; 202 pages