India’s Maoists Movement

India’s Maoists Movement

Introducation

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The communist political movement in India started in 1920s as an anti=colonial struggle when the country was still ruled by Britain .But the seeds of the first radical Marxist movement were sown in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh shortly after India gained independence in 1947.The first armed uprising was launched in 1967 in the remote Naxalbari village in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal. The uprising, which began after a farmer was stopped from tilling his own land, was put down by force after 72 days. But that inspired other revolutionaries across the country. By 1972, the first phase of what the government called Left-Wing Extremism, popularly called Naxalism - deriving its name from the Naxalbari village - was stamped down. For the next two decades, armed movement remained subdued and localised until the government started granting mining licenses to private and multinational corporations as part of the liberalization and privatization of the economy in the early 1990s.

The Naxalite–Maoist insurgency is an ongoing conflict between Maoist groups, known as Naxalites or Naxals, and the Indian government. The conflict in its present form began after the 2004 formation of the CPI (Maoist), a rebel group composed of the PWG (People's War Group) and the MCC (Maoist Communist Centre). In January 2005 talks between the Andhra Pradesh state government and the CPI-Maoists broke down and the rebels accused authorities of not addressing their demands for a written truce, release of prisoners and redistribution of land. The ongoing conflict has taken place over a vast territory (around half of India's 29 states) with hundreds of people being killed annually in clashes between the CPI-Maoists and the government every year since 2005. The armed wing of the Naxalite–Maoists is called the PLGA (Peoples Liberation Guerrilla Army) and is estimated to have between 6,500 and 9,500 cadres, mostly armed with small arms.

The Naxalites control territory throughout Bihar, Jharkhand and Andhra Pradesh states and claim to be supported by the poorest of the rural population, especially the Adivasis.  According to a study of the newspaper The Times of India, 58% of people surveyed in the state of Andhra Pradesh, have a positive perception of the guerrilla, against only 19 % against it. The Naxalites have frequently targeted tribal, police and government workers in what they say is a fight for improved land rights and more jobs for neglected agricultural labourers and the poor. The Naxalites claim that they are following a strategy of rural rebellion similar to a protracted people's war against the government

The Maoists have won the sympathy of many leading Indian intellectuals, including the writer and activist Arundhati Roy, who have been accused of ignoring the more unsavory aspects of the Maoist campaigns, such as the kangaroo courts, killings of alleged "informers", and the civilian casualties. Critics also say the Maoists do not physically attack the businesses they accuse of unfairly exploiting mineral resources but extort money from them instead.

Resource War

The fight in Naxalbari in 1967 was about who had the right to farm produce. The Maoists say the essence of their people’s war remains the same – only farm produce has been replaced with minerals and the landlord with mining corporations.

“The war persists because the conditions that create the war do,” said Gautam Navlakha. Navlakha,  . Taking a potshot at the slogan of “development” he says: “There has been no development for the tribal. The land, the forests, the rivers have been exploited for resources and the tribal women have been exploited for sex.”

While the ranks of civil rights activists and Maoist watchers in India are divided over the Maoists’ choice of using violent means, there is almost no disagreement that their cause is rooted in the pushback against unscrupulous exploitation of forest lands and the displacement of tribal populations for the sake of mineral ore.

The economies of China and India have, in the past three decades, become insatiable metal hungry monsters and feeding them has become a multi-billion dollar industry. According to a report by the Centre for Science and Environment (India):  “Globally, the mining industry is in boom time. World prices of minerals, ores and metals have soared to record levels, a trend that began in 2002 with unprecedented demand from China. In 2006 alone, global prices of all minerals skyrocketed up 48%.”

India’s mining industry has, in fact, been rife with systemic corruption. With little to no government oversight or regulation, regional satraps and families with political clout have pilfered ore at prices below international market rates and above legal quotas and faced no legal action.

The effects of this are borne out by the fact that despite the boom in mineral excavation and sales in India, the mining industry’s contribution to the economy has been lackluster and its share in the GDP has stagnated at 2.2-2.5 percent for more than a decade. Moreover, India has been experiencing jobless growth for a long time and when it comes to unemployment and low wages, the regions in the Maoist conflict zone are some of the worst affected. The Indian authorities, however, have turned a blind eye to this exploitation and chosen to pursue a purely military approach to the situation.

Tribal Identity vs. Development

“The challenge to the Maoists comes as much, if not more, from satellite television and mobile telephony as it does from the Indian armed forces,” Siddharth Mitra, a New York-based human rights activist and Maoist politics watcher, says.

Like elsewhere in the country, rising aspirations for urban life among the younger generations of the tribal people has rendered older methods of public outreach by the Maoists ineffective. And this has in turn catalyzed the shedding of past cultures in favor of the more homogenized, pan-Indian one.

“Besides, one has to be nuanced about what the term tribal culture means,” Mitra explains further. “The tribal from Bastar (Chhattisgarh) is not the same as the tribal from Chandrapur (Maharashtra) or Dandakaranya (Orissa). So, when a Maoist guerrilla from Warangal (Andhra Pradesh) comes and talks to a tribal… in Bastar, the Maoist is as alien or as close to the tribal as the paramilitary soldier.” 

In May 2014, the Manmohan Singh-led Congress Party was voted out and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Narendra Modi took over the prime minister’s office. Buoyed by an absolute majority in the lower house of the parliament, Modi and his cabinet have pursued a hardline Hindu nationalist agenda. Critics say Modi has leaned on Hindu supremacist politics and the muzzling of dissent.

This has led the opposition to grow closer and begin coordinating among them. Centrists, liberals, communists, Dalits, Muslims, feminists and a sweeping brush of the political-ideological spectrum on the Left have come together to push back against what many see as an onslaught of the Right.

“Gauri’s murder shows this like no other,” says Navlakha, referring to the recent shooting of independent journalist Gauri Lankesh. “This fascist government might just bring the Left closer.”

Lankesh was the Bangalore-based editor of a Kannada-language daily that had good readership among the working class and took a strident anti-Right line. Lankesh spoke out against Modi and his politics from multiple public platforms and had been openly threatened by Modi’s supporters. Shot dead at the gate of her home by “unknown” assailants, her death was openly celebrated on social media by supporters and followers of Modi.

“They tried to pin her murder on the Maoists – calling it infighting,” Navlakha explained. “But no sooner had they done that, the Maoists gave a statement flatly denying the charge. And the charge was rejected by all parties in the opposition.”

Less than a year ago, right after a similar public execution of a Modi-critic in Maharashtra, firebrand Dalit leader Prakash Ambedkar said, “the Right needs to know that if they have goons, we have the Maoists.”

Irrespective of what opinion one holds of the Indian Maoists and their approach to politics, or what one makes of their mixed bag of setbacks and successes, the Indian government can’t wish away their existence – neither their military might nor their political raison d’être. Steeped in a history as old as the Indian polity itself and after half a century of warring, the Indian Maoists remain a force in the country.

Main groups

 

The People's War Group (PWG) was established in 1976 and was active in Andhra Pradesh, while Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) held meetings away in the eastern state of Bihar.The Communist Party of India-Marxist Leninist-Janashakti was formed in 1992. It has presence in three states - Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra. They command a cadre of about 250 to 300.

The current phase of Maoist rebellion began in 2004, when PWG merged with the MCC to form the Communist Party of India (Maoist) or CPI (Maoist). The group is banned in India. The Tritiya Prastuti Committee (TPC) is a splinter group of the CPI (Maoist) and is based in Jharkhand - a mineral-rich state. It has about 500 cadres.  The CPI (Maoist) aims to capture the state power through people's war. The rebels' military strategy is loosely based on the Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong."The immediate aim of the party is to accomplish the New Democratic Revolution in India by overthrowing imperialism, feudalism and comprador bureaucratic capitalism only through the Protracted People’s War ... The ultimate aim of the party is to bring about communism," says a party statement.

People's Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA) is the armed wing of the CPI (Maoists), or Naxals, as they are popularly called in India. A number of Marxist armed groups are active in other states with Maoist presence. Their exact numbers are not known but various estimates put PLGA strength between 8,000 and 10,000. The total of Maoist cadres across the country varies from 10,000 to 15,000, even as high as 25,000. But the government figure is much lower.

"As per available reports, the estimated armed cadre strength of the left-wing extremist groups is around 8,500. However, their support base is in larger numbers," Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju told parliament.

India's central and eastern parts, home to about 84 million adivasi, or indigenous people, is rich in mineral resources. Renewed mining activity pose a threat to their livelihoods. Most of them are subsistence farmers or landless, mainly living in extreme poverty.There is lack of basic facilities such as roads, healthcare, education and drinking water in the region. Thousands fear displacement as the government moved to exploit the hidden treasures located mainly in the states of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Odisha.

Maoists from Andhra Pradesh helped organise tribals in Chhattisgarh over the issue of land rights and displacement during the 1980s. The state has emerged as the stronghold of the Maoists in recent decades since 2000 when mining was initiated. "They [Maoists] helped the tribals in keeping the forest guard and redistribution of land. So a lot of local people joined them," said Nandini Sundar, professor and author of The Burning Forest: India's War in Bastar."About 80 to 90 percent of their cadre comes from local tribals. They are deeply embedded in the villages. At the same time, it is not that everybody supports them."

Regions

The Maoist control in what is euphemistically called the "Red Corridor" - spread across the states of Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Jharkhand, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh - has been dwindling as the government has sent tens of thousands of paramilitary forces into the affected states.

Their presence has considerably gone down from nearly 200 districts across 20 states until a decade ago to 106 districts across 10 states. The states of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa and Bihar are considered severely affected. Maoists are also present in the states of West Bengal, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh.

India's former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called the Maoists' rebellion the biggest "internal security threat". His government launched a security operation in 2009, which was dubbed by the media as the "Operation Green Hunt".Since the counterinsurgency was launched eight years ago, violence has escalated and a growing numbers of casualties, particularly civilians, have been reported. More than 100 people have been killed in the violence across the country this year. Last year, nearly 500 people were killed. More than 20,000 people, the vast majority of them civilians, have been killed since 1980.

The Naxalites operate in 60 districts in India, mainly in the states of Odisha (5 affected districts), Jharkhand (14 affected districts), Bihar(5 affected districts), Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh (ten affected districts), Madhya Pradesh (8 affected districts), Maharashtra(2 affected districts) and West Bengal (8 affected district). in West Bengal areas west of Howrah are affected by the insurgency. Chhattisgarh is the epicenter of the conflict (2007).

Areas governed by the elected Communist Party of India (Marxist) in India such as West Bengal, specifically those of Jangalmahal and Lalgarh, are some of the worst affected by anti-state violence by Maoist groups who cite the accumulation of unaccounted-for wealth in the hands of CPI-M leaders and specific failure to counter problems they were elected to address such as caste discrimination and poverty.     .^[53]

Accusations of abuse

The adivasis have been caught in the middle of a conflict that has pitted the Maoists against government forces.Security forces have been accused of committing mass sexual and rights abuses, and extrajudicial killings of innocent adivasis. Human rights activists and journalists have been targeted for reporting the abuse and unlawful killings.

Maoists recruit villagers for their operation and the latter become vulnerable to arrest and torture by government forces. Maoists have also been accused of killing and torturing villagers after accusing them of being police informers. In many cases, they have resorted to kidnapping for ransom.

The Chhattisgarh state has backed vigilante groups, which have harassed innocent civilians for being Maoist sympathisers. One such vigilante group, Salwa Judum, was accused of killings and rapes. It was finally outlawed by the Supreme Court in 2011.

In recent years, a number of vigilante groups have surfaced with the backing of government, targeting activists and lawyers."A situation of civil war still prevails in the Bastar district in Chhattisgarh state but the Indian government refuses to declare this 'internal armed conflict', perhaps to avoid monitoring by the UN," said Dr Lakhan Singh, president of the People's Union for Civil Liberties.

The government has deployed more than 100,000 troops - a third of them paramilitary forces - to root out the five-decade-old armed rebellion in Chhattisgarh. More than 2,000 people have been killed in the state since 1995."In the Bastar region alone, there are 36,000 security forces, which means one soldier for 55 people. In Afghanistan, there is one soldier for about 150 people," Singh said. 

In Bihar, the Ranvir Sena, a caste-supremacist paramilitary of the upper-caste landlords and proscribed terrorist organisation by the Indian government, has been known to kill Dalit civilians in retaliation for Naxalite activity. In Odisha, the number of districts affected by Maoist activities has been reduced from 17 to 9, as claimed by the Director General of Police (DGP), Prakash Mishra on December 30, 2012.

Similar paramilitary groups have emerged in Andhra Pradesh during the last decade. Some of these groups are Fear Vikas, Green Tigers, Nalladandu, Red Tigers, Tirumala Tigers, Palnadu Tigers, Kakatiya Cobras, Narsa Cobras, Nallamalla Nallatrachu (Cobras) and Kranthi Sena. Civil liberties activists were murdered by the Nayeem gang in 1998 and 2000.^[54]On 24 August 2005, members of the Narsi Cobras killed an individual rights activist and schoolteacher in Mahbubnagar district.

Urban Maoist bogey

                                                                                                                                

Since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) took the reins of power in New Delhi in 2014, assaults on public intellectuals, humanists, rationalists and secular forces have reached a feverish pitch. By the time the BJP completed its fourth year in office, prominent public figures such as scholar Govind Pansare, academic MM Kalburgi and journalist Gauri Lankesh were murdered by "unidentified assailants".

 Maharashtra Police made five fresh arrests of rights activists, including the veteran Telugu poet Varavara Rao, and raided the homes of journalists and scholars across India. In June 2018 alone, five Dalit rights activists, including a lawyer and a professor were arrested for allegedly inciting violence against the very Dalit community ("untouchable" castes) they represent. These arrests were made under the draconian Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), which enables the prosecution of Indian citizens merely on the basis of their ideology and thoughts, not necessarily for any actual crimes they might have committed.

In addition to this legalised persecution, dozens of Muslims and Dalits were subject to live burnings and public lynching by the so-called "cow protection" vigilante groups, most notably in the BJP-ruled states of Maharashtra, Haryana and Gujarat.But perhaps the most astonishing case of all would be the arrest and life imprisonment of the wheelchair-bound professor, GN Saibaba, for his alleged connections with Maoist revolutionaries. 

The 827-page verdict delivered by the Gadchiroli  is, riddled with senseless details about how five hard disks, 30 CDs and DVDs, and three pen drives recovered from Saibaba's home were labelled, stored and transported by various investigative authorities, with barely a legible sentence on the actual crime committed by the accused. ".

And the only crime committed by GN Saibaba is the possession of the above-mentioned "digital devices", which consisted of some "Maoist literature and documents" and, by association, were adequate enough to prove his "digital" links to the Maoist revolutionaries operating in the remote jungles of East and Central India. Yet, on the basis of this "literary" evidence alone, the Sessions judge came to the unmistakable conclusion that Saibaba is a "member" of the Community Party of India (Maoist).

Not only do these charges have little or no factual basis, but they render themselves impossible to any logical or rational substance given that Maoists are banned revolutionaries who operate discretely and anonymously, often using aliases and longhand notes to communicate internally.

They rarely use mobile phones or other "digital devices" and it is highly doubtful that they have equipped themselves with a printing facility in the jungle to produce membership cards and go about distributing them like marketing vouchers.

A "membership" with such a closed organisation, especially for an outsider, is a highly subjective, self-pronounced association based on one's political views and ideological proclivities. But even if we assume that Saibaba is a "member" of the Maoist party, as the Kerala High Court has reasserted in an erstwhile case in 2015, it is not a crime in itself, unless the activities of the "member" in question are unlawful.

The Supreme Court of India went even further to censure the law enforcement authorities for randomly arresting people for possessing Maoist material, issuing a directive that owning Maoist literature does not make one a Maoist, no more than owning a copy of Gandhi's autobiography makes one a Gandhian! 

Be that as it may, if Saibaba's crime is worth life imprisonment in solitary confinement, then we need to go no further than the fraternity of Bollywood stars and Indian politicians to get a glimpse into the Janus-faced justice system in India.

Maya Kodnani, a cabinet minister of Gujarat in 2004, was convicted in 2012 for orchestrating the massacre of 97 Muslims, including 36 women and 35 children in Naroda Gam and Naroda Patiya in February 2002.

Ironically, Kodnani was the Minister for Women and Child Development at the time of these killings, and was seen by the witnesses at the crime scene distributing swords to the Hindu mobs. For the brutal killing of 97 people, some of whom were butchered, mutilated, and even burned alive, she received a generous 28 years of imprisonment by a lower court. In April 2018, the Gujarat high court overturned the sentence. Kodnani walks free. While other cases were dragged on for years, Saibaba's case was wrapped up in a record time of three years. And luckily, these important personalities were not in possession of objects as lethal as "Maoist literature", but just swords, AK-56s, explosives, and SUVs that roll themselves over innocent bystanders.  But for a man whose sole crime was to own "digital devices", even if he is 90 percent disabled, suffering from some nineteen other diagnosed illnesses, the same justice system shows little compassion to grant a bail.

Reiterating these concerns, the United Nations Human Rights Office of the Commissioner issued an unequivocal statement: "We would like to remind India that any denial of reasonable accommodation for people with disabilities in detention is not only discriminatory but may well amount to ill-treatment or even torture". 

Efforts to put Saibaba behind bars started in 2013 when the Maharashtra police approached the Aheri Judicial Magistrate to obtain a "search warrant" to see whether some "stolen property" from their state could be found in Saibaba's house in another state in New Delhi.

The alleged property theft had occurred some 760 miles away from where Saibaba lived. On September 12, 2013, 50 police personnel and intelligence officials raided Saibaba's house on the University of Delhi campus.

Under the pretext of recovering "stolen property", they confiscated Saibaba's laptop, hard disks, pen drives, CDs and mobile phones. During his interrogation, Saibaba fully cooperated with the police authorities, even providing them passwords to all his personal electronic devices.But little did the professor know that his research material, teaching notes and political writings would be used as evidence for his alleged links with the Maoists. On May 9, 2014, when Saibaba was returning home from his office, policemen in civilian clothes obstructed his car just 200 metres away from his house and detained him. 

Since then, the state agencies have launched a systemic media campaign against Saibaba, painting him as the face of the so-called "urban Maoists" - an utterly senseless label given that there is no such thing as "rural Maoists", even if the latter appear to be the state's preferred enemy, to say nothing of the "jungle Maoists", "slum Maoists" or "suburban Maoists".

If that is not enough, referring to the five Dalit Rights activists arrested on June 6, 2018, India's Finance Minister Arun Jaitley came up with an even more creative label, "half-Maoists":

Willingly or otherwise, they become the over-ground face of the underground. They are a part of the democratic system. They masquerade as activist; they speak the language of democracy; they have captured the human rights movement in several parts of the country but always lend support to the Maoist cause.

If speaking the language of democracy or "capturing" human rights movements automatically translates into lending support to the Maoist cause, then the authors of this opinion piece should be called "quarter-Maoists", "non-resident Maoists", if not "cosmopolitan Maoists".

But such endless streaming of prefixes to Indian Maoism by the state-sponsored Indian media has all but a single-minded, foregone agenda: to cast out anyone who questions state atrocities against Adivasis (India's tribal people) - be they academics, environmentalists or Dalit activists - as "urban Maoists". 

Like the "polluted" Dalits who were ostracised from the village proper to preserve the "purity" of the Brahminical castes, Maoists have become the new untouchables of India, whose very ideological proximity to one's pedestrian views or private thoughts is enough to label him/her as their card-carrying member. 

In Chattisgarh alone, this ostracising campaign has reached such contagious proportions that when 10 tribal men, alleged sympathisers of Naxals - a vernacular term for Maoists - were killed by the state police in 2010, a bench of Supreme Court judges went on recordto say that: "First, you say that operations are conducted against Naxals, then Naxal sympathisers and then sympathisers of such sympathisers. What is all this?"

GN Saibaba is a glaring victim of this systemic campaign to outcast Maoism from the civic and public spheres of debate, discussion and dissent. How else could we explain his incredible transformation from a child of illiterate peasants to a force so fearful and lethal that a small-scale army of "2000 police persons, 100 vehicles, and 20 land-mining clearance machines" was mobilised just to escort him from police station to court? What was his crime? What are the weapons of his choice? 

The mineral wealth upon which some 20 million Adivasis have settled from time immemorial is the major bone of contention. Their capital worth, as speculated by the Indian corporate elite, is $1 trillion. The easiest way to acquire this treasure trove is by bulldozing the Adivasis.

GN Saibaba came into the media limelight in early 2010 when he began to speak against the notorious military offensive Operation Green Hunt launched by the Indian state in November 2009. Its aim was to crush the Maoists, but the prize of it would have been the 55,000 hectares of mineral-rich Adivasi land, known variedly in the paramilitary's shorthand as "Pakistan" or "Red Corridor".

But it is not that GN Saibaba became an overnight sensation. He had a long history of championing issues of social justice and civil coalition movements. In 1997, he became the General Secretary of the All India People's Resistance Forum. In 2004, he co-organised the Mumbai Resistance, which showcased alternative forms of civil society resistance to the World Social Forum. 

But why was Saibaba drawn to issues of civil and social justice in the first place? Is it so inconceivable that someone born into a "backward caste" family, who lost every inch of their three acres of farmland to the moneylenders, added with the burden of physical impairment, is drawn to the struggles and suffering of Dalits and Adivasis?

Is it so intolerable that Saibaba, a professor at a publicly funded university, chose to teach, speak and research on civil rights movements, tribal resistance and Maoist revolution?

Spare a thought for his colleagues at Delhi University, who risked their own careers to launch a sustained campaign against Saibaba's imprisonment, some of whom indeed became the targets of repeated harassment, various disciplinary actions and suspensions by the university administration. And the process of outcasting many members of Saibaba's Defence Committee as "urban Maoists" is already under way.

Not because these members sympathise with Maoism, but simply because they sympathise with someone who is allegedly sympathetic to Maoist views. The Brahminical logic triumphs yet again: one becomes "polluted" not only because one comes in direct contact with an "untouchable" person, but also because one touches someone who has allegedly touched an "untouchable" Dalit!

When the Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen spoke in support of Binayak Sen - a physician and a civil rights activist, who is currently facing life imprisonment under the same sedition law which was used to silence Saibaba -, the Indian intellectuals in the West applauded his courage for questioning the shirking democratic values in India.

But the same intellectuals who offered the world various intellectual optics of postcolonial theory and subaltern studies, built on the histories and struggles of peasants, tribals and Dalits, have remained eerily silent about the persecution of a disabled public intellectual who literally crawled his way from a remote south Indian village to the elite educational institutions in India because he couldn't even afford a wheelchair.

The figure of Saibaba is indeed one of a crawling creature whose dignity is being incrementally stripped away by the prison authorities who refuse him access to a special-needs toilet, medical treatment and spousal visits and haul him in and out of police vehicles like a piece of baggage.

Saibaba now sits in Nagpur Central Jail, in the solitary confinement of the notorious Anda (egg-shaped) cell with 360-degree surveillance, disabled from below the waist, enabled by his only functioning hand, and doing what he knows best -putting his pen to work:

The closure of my voice within me exploded my crippled body from each of my organs. One after the other, my organs started bursting. The silence within me explodes into shooting pain. My vocal cords acquired lesion making my voice a thin and inaudible shrill. My heart broke with Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy. My brain has started having blackouts with a condition called syncope. My kidneys are silted with pebbles; gallbladder gathered stones and pancreas grew a tail of pain called pancreatitis. Nerve lines in my left shoulder broke under the conditions of my arrest, named as brachial plexopathy. More and more organs of silence replaced the original. I have been living with explosive and shooting pain day in and day out. I am living on the margins of life.

 Present Status

While the group has been weakened significantly, their ongoing war over the past 50 years has taken a toll on security forces India’s Maoist insurgents have suffered some setbacks recently, but remain a significant security problem, especially in the country’s tribal heartland, according to the Indian website South Asia Intelligence Review (SATP). At least 15 insurgents from the Communist Party of India (Maoist) (CPI [M]) were killed and four captured alive in Sukma district in the state of Chhattisgarh, a major Maoist stronghold, on Aug. 6. 2018

Among those arrested in the encounter was Madkami Deva, a local Maoist leader who carried a bounty of 500,000 Indian rupeees (US$7,200) on his head. Police also seized rifles, pistols and explosives from the insurgents. Since Sukma district was formed in 2012, a total of 118 Maoists have been killed while the Maoists killed 140 security forces personnel in the area during the same period. The CPI(M) is believed to have several thousand fighters, mainly in Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Telangana and parts of West Bengal.

Their main support base is among tribal people in those states who have long been neglected by state and central authorities. A protracted war between various bands of Maoists and India’s security forces has been running for the past 50 years. The Maoists are sometimes referred to as “Naxalites” after Naxalbari, a village in northern West Bengal, where local peasants staged a Maoist-inspired uprising in May 1967.

Although the CPI(M), which was formed in 2004 through a merger of two older Maoist groups, does not threaten any urban centers and are weaker now than they were a decade ago, when then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh referred to them as “the single biggest internal security challenge” for India, they are, as the recent encounter shows, still a major problem.

According to the SATP, the Maoists have been able to “establish a disruptive dominance” in remote parts of central India where “they continue to demonstrate capacities to inflict significant harm on SF (the Security Forces) and civilians alike.”  

·          

UPDATE

 Extract from book “book “Nightmarch Among India’s Revolutionary Guerrillas ” by Alpa Shah  and from her interview .

 I think the situation is quite different in relation to the Indian Maoists. I didn’t come across anyone – let alone children – being forced by the Naxalites to join them

While responding to a question about Kohlia, a kid who has voluntarily joined the Naxalite movement, the author asserts, “the leader was reluctant to have Kohli because he knew Kohli’s father would be upset as his son was needed at home to work in the family tea shop. But, like many other Adivasi youth, Kohli ran away from home to spend time with the Naxalite armies as, over the years   I found the reality to be much more complicated than such simple models and it was those nuances and contradictions that I wanted to draw attention to in Nightmarch. 

  The situation is quite different in relation to the Indian Maoists. I didn’t come across anyone – let alone children – being forced by the Naxalites to join them. In fact, youth like Kohliare interesting not only because he himself asked to join the guerrillas but also because the Naxalite Zonal Commander of the area initially did not accept him. The leader was reluctant to have Kohli because he knew Kohli’s father would be upset as his sonwas needed at home to work in the family tea shop. But, like many other Adivasi youth, Kohli ran away from home to spend time with the Naxalite armies as, over the years, they had become like another home for the Adivasis. His elder cousin was already with the guerrillas, his sister and younger cousin followed. If there was a problem at home, youth often sought refuge with the insurgents. Many youth learned to read and write in the guerrilla armies, they learned how to operate technology – mobile phones, cameras, guns – and they learned about a world beyond the confines of their village lives. In some parts of the country – such as in the Dandakaranya region of Chhattisgarh – when the vigilante groups burned down the houses of villagers, many Adivasis did not have a choice but to either go to resettlement camps which were like prison compounds or to the guerrilla armies. But as far as I know, the Naxalites never coerced people to join by force.

   (Vikas), the woman who comes to resent the guerrillas (Somwari).Nightmarch therefore became an allegorical nonfictional book about these different people; the hopes and tragedies of the Maoist present, past and future;but also the conflict and tensions of inequality, oppression and injustice right at the heart of contemporary India.

 , the Naxalites have historically attracted some of India’s most marginalized people. In the plains, it was the Dalit groups (those who were previously called‘untouchable’). And in the hills and forests, it is now the Adivasis, India’s tribal populations. They attracted those who had been discriminated because the Naxalites actively sought to fight against caste and tribe oppression and exploitation. In many villages of the plains, Dalits were not allowed to take water from the wells used by upper-castes as they were thought to pollute everything they touched. They were not allowed to cross the upper-caste parts of the village without removing their shoes, or even look an upper-caste person in the eye. Some were treated like agricultural slaves over generations. The Adivasis were considered jungli – wild, savage and barbaric – and for centuries their forests and lands were forcibly taken away from them by the colonial state and upper-caste outsiders.

Many of the Naxalite leaders were also upper-caste and they came from well-to-do middle class backgrounds but as part of joining the movement, they tried to cut all ties with their past, and sought to “decaste” and “declass” themselves. Their aim was to create a casteless and classless society. So in the Naxalite armies you would find actions that it was hard to find anywhere else in India. For example high-caste and low-caste people shared rice from the same plate, something which would be considered polluting for the high-castes anywhere else. But despite all these active measures to get rid of caste and class, it was difficult to remove all the baggage of their past

 , in Adivasi villages patriarchy was much more muted and women were treated much more equally. This is not to say that Adivasi society was egalitarian but that in comparison to the caste societies of the plains, it was much more equal. Adivasi women worked alongside men, did not veil themselves, and even drunk home-made alcohol alongside men (something that was unheard of in other parts of India). Premarital and postmarital affairs for men and women were not reprimanded in the way they were in other parts of Indian society and, if a woman wanted was unhappy in marriage, she could leave a husband without becoming socially ostracized. Women were not as trapped within patriarchal family structures as they were elsewhere in India and that meant that they were treated with much more respect, dignity and equality than the women of the caste societies of the plains.

  Women came to the guerrillas for all kinds of reasons. Some were running away from a fight they had in their families, others had fallen in love with fighters in the guerrilla armies, still others wanted to experience a different world. But yes, within the movement, there were strict norms about marriage and children. If there was any sign of an amorous relationship, a couple was married off. But having children was not allowed in the Naxalite armies. Their argument was that during the course of the war, it was not possible for the guerrillas to look after children. This meant that when women got pregnant, they usually left the guerrilla armies as very few wanted to give their child up to hostels or to other people to look after. I also argue in Nightmarch that although the Maoists consider themselves to be egalitarian, patriarchal attitudes were rife within their armies. Senior women leaders like AnuradhaGhandy, who is now dead, therefore used to argue that it is important to fight the patriarchy from within the movement as ‘Women need revolution and the revolution needs women’. But when I realized that the Naxalite armies were more patriarchal than the surrounding Adivasis society, I ended up questioning whether Adivasi women needed the Naxalites to liberate them.  

A: Well I really began thinking about the continuities between these different forms of liberation when I met some of the upper-caste middle-class Naxalite leaders. They seemed to live in the jungles almost like ascetics or sadhus. They had given up everything – all their personal belongings and their families – for the cause of liberation. In some ways, they were very similar to Hindu renouncers or Jain monks. In fact, when Gyanji was young he used to go to the banks of the Ganges and meditate in the hope of one day reaching Nirvana. He was so religious that he could not step on an ant without chanting Hindu mantras. It was only when he went to university and met like-minded teachers and students that he realized he was on the wrong path of renunciation and joined them to distribute pamphlets on the ‘Death of God’ and become a communist revolutionary. The big difference of course is that whereas the religious renouncer seeks liberation only for himself or herself and wants to go to another world of equality, the communist revolutionary is seeking liberation for the whole of society and trying to create an egalitarian world in the present.

  Well, I am afraid that on the whole the government has had a very detrimental role in this conflict. For decades Adivasis have been neglected by the government (in the villages where I lived there was no running water, no electricity, no sanitation and this is despite seventy years of independence and the fact that the number of dollar billionaires in India were rising rapidly to more than a hundred). Then suddenly, in the new millennium, there was a big interest in their forests and lands and the government began treating the Naxalites and the Adivasis who they lived amidst as ‘terrorists’ and therefore as a security threat to be eliminated.

Brutal counterinsurgency measures were begun from 2010 and hundreds of thousands of security forces were sent to surround the guerrilla strongholds. They came with their bulletproof vehicles and tanks and were trained in jungle warfare to fight the guerrillas with their own tactics. In Chhattisgarh, a state-sponsored vigilante group called the “SalwaJudum”, literally meaning “purification hunt” in the local Gondi language, went about burning villages. Many people were killed, women raped and some say more than 350,000 people displaced. Today the prisons of central and eastern India are full of Adivasi prisoners charged as Naxals who will probably languish in jail for years, grow old there, as no one will fight their cases. Their trials, if they take place at all, will take years. In Jharkhand alone, the state where I lived, more than 4000 Adivasis are in prison as alleged Naxalites.

Human rights activists say that behind these security operations is the aim of clearing the region of people for the easy extraction of mineral resources. Under the Adivasi forests of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Telengana, Orissa, north Andhra Pradesh, lie some of India’s most lucrative mineral reserves and mining companies have been promised entry. The problem is that historic laws which the Adivasis fought for in colonial times make it difficult for the land to be taken from them. So you can see why some argue that the security operations are in fact a way to remove people forcibly from their land.

It’s a very dangerous situation as now a lot of money is being pumped into defence and counterinsurgency and those who are benefiting from that will continue to want those resources even if the Naxalites don’t present much of a threat. Meanwhile, life for the Adivasis in the hills and forests of central and eastern India has become brutally unpleasant. It does feel like a slow purging of the people, a slow clearing of the ground. The tragedy is at many levels and in some ways; it is a global tragedy as we are also witnessing the destruction of the lives and cultures of the Adivasis from whom people all over the world have a lot to learn.

Update. Jan., 14, 2019: Extract from Alpa Shah’s: Nigthtmarch

The Naxalites have persistently sought to mobilise the most marginalised communities but poor, exploited and oppressed people are found everywhere across India. So, the main reason the movement is based in the forested heartlands of the country today is because of their choice of tactics. In the eighties and nineties, faced with increased state repression in the agricultural plains which offered cover only when the crop was tall, reading Che Guevara and Mao Zedong, the Naxalites went in search of better geographical terrain for guerrilla warfare. They found this in the undulating forest cover of the central and eastern parts of the country. Which is why they focused their energies on trying to build guerrilla bases there and which is why we find them there today. it is indeed a tragic story. I think many of the leaders, who have been underground since the 1970s or 80s, thought that revolution was just around the corner when they first joined; that it would take only a few years, five at the most. But several decades later, they arestill leading an incredibly tough life underground, with almost no possessions or comforts, wanting no recognition or fame, all in the hope of working for the wider common good to bring about a more equal world. Whether or not we agree with their methods and aims, they have provided a rare commitment to an alternative way of life and vision of a future – the idea of a more equal world– fighting against the spirit of individualism, accumulation and competition that prevails everywhere. Nightmarch unveils how these noble goals of the Naxalites are undermined, unravelled and subverted not just by the repression against them but also unwittingly by themselves.

As Nightmarch shows, clearly the Naxalites need to address and rethink many issues – their analysis of the Indian economy, the place of violence, the question of caste and tribe, the patriarchy and corruption within. History, though, is never a straight line. Alongside all the doom, problems and lives lost, there have also been some emancipatory side-effects even if they are not the ones the Naxalites would want. For instance, the Naxalites have expanded the aspirations for real democracy among those who have been left on its margins, stimulating Dalit, Adivasi and women’s’ movements who are fighting their oppression and exploitation, demanding to be treated on equal terms alongside the dominant classes and castes. there are many former Naxalites, like the character I call Madhusudanji in the book, who are now fighting for seats in electoral politics and this is not only in states like Bihar and Jharkhand but also in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. But at a collective level, when it comes to the CPI (Maoist) as a whole, I think that the recent history of response to them has been so brutal and crushing that itis hard to imagine negotiations ensuring their entry into mainstream party politics. For instance, towards the end of my stay in the guerrilla zones in 2010, there were some efforts towards a ‘peace process’.But the Naxalite spokesperson appointed to negotiate with the government –Cherukuri Rajkumar, otherwise known as Azad – was killed. The police claimed it was in a forest battle but fact-finding missions probed holes into their story,and the Maoists believe that it was another one of India’s infamous ‘fake encounters’,an extra-judicial murder by the police. Azad’s death then ended any hope of‘peace talks’. What happened to Azad repeats an earlier process of the 2004 peace negotiations in Andhra Pradesh, when the Naxalites argued that the state used the period to get information about their networks and top leaders (many of who came out of the forests for the first time in decades) and then followed with intense targeted state repression to kill them and destroy the movement.Given this recent history, I don’t see how the Maoists could be convinced that any efforts at negotiations are serious/genuine/trustworthy, until we have a very different approach to them. So it is probably unlikely that the Maoists will change their position on participation in mainstream party politics unless perhaps, for some reason, they think that is the only way to save what little they have left.

As long as we have governments that support and exacerbate inequalities (which in India only seem to be growing despite economic growth), rebel movements like that of the Naxalites will find supporters who see their cause as legitimate and moral, who will join them or help them, even if the state considers their actions illicit and criminal and bans them.  This ‘urban naxal’ branding of India’s scholars, human rights activists and lawyers, who question the government or support human right causes, in fact might end up giving the Naxalite cause greater credibility.Some of India’s most respected intellectuals (such as the historian Professor Ramchandra Guha or Dalit scholars Professor Anand Teltumbde and Professor KSatyanarayan) or human rights workers and lawyers (such as Sudha Bhardwaj or Gautam Navlakha) have lost their jobs, had their houses raided or been arrestedas ‘urban naxals’. When people who have worked with integrity, often for the most marginalised communities, and for a more democratic India, are targeted in this manner, then it is hardly surprising that we have seen a public outcry, including tens of thousands of social media users saying ‘#MeTooUrbanNaxal’, in their defence. To me, it seems that the overall effect is that rather than demonising the Naxalite cause, it moves attention away from the forest wars and brings it back to basic questions of democracy, equality, the right to dissent and freedom of speech. Ironically, the effect then is revival of the legitimacy and urgency of the Naxalite ideals at the very moment when the guerrillas in the forests are being choked.Since Salwa Judum, though, clearly the Naxalites have suffered great losses and have been driven into small pockets of forests. In the guerrilla strongholds which are the focus of Nightmarch, when I lived there, the security forces would only dare to climb the hills when they were in a force of 500 or more, and would rarely stay more than a couple of nights. Now, children go to schools against the backdrop of a permanent security barrack at the same place.What is curious about Indian history, though, is that despite intense state repression in the past – when it was thought that the embers of rebellion have been finally snuffed out – the Naxalites have revived themselves, again and again, like a phoenix rising from the ashes. The Adivasis were often fighting for very different reasons than the abstract ideals of communism and egalitarianism that drove some of the high-caste middle-class leadership. On a wider level, I have argued that theirs is a struggle for tribal autonomy against a state that they see as repressive, brutal, and prejudiced. But for any individual Adivasi, their reasons for joining the Maoists were often more personal. Take, for example, Kohli, the gentle, sensitive, 16-year-old Adivasi youth with radiant dark skinand a coy smile, whose rifle was nearly as tall as himself, who was assigned as my bodyguard on the 250-kilometre march from Bihar to Jharkhand that frames Nightmarch. He had run away to live with the guerrillas after a trivial fight with his father about a glass of spilled milk while working in his tea shop.

Rather than breaking with their pasts as the upper caste leadership did, the Adivasi youth found in the guerrilla armies a home away from home, and often moved in and out of them as though they were visiting an uncle or aunt. Over time, they may become educated in the movement’s ideology and fight for ‘higher’ ideals but they may also come to have more ordinary dreams – of building a brick house in the city, driving a four-wheel drive vehicle, or sending their children to good English medium private schools. This is what happened to Vikas, the Adivasi platoon commander I marched with, who eventually came to betray the guerrillas by forming a gang to eliminate them.

So, as you see, there are many reasons for Adivasis joining the movement and they also change over time. What interests me, and is the focus of Nightmarch, is how people come together, despite the differences, the contradictions and how these reflect the wider history of the movement and even the history of the country., over the last decade or so, the government approach has been so military-centric that it can be counterproductive and generate more sympathisers for the Naxalite cause unless there is a dramatic change insecurity and development policy. Indeed, the Maoists claim that the most tragic counter-insurgency campaigns in Chhattisgarh – which came in the form of Salwa Judum – only served to increase the strength of their guerrilla armies. Since Salwa Judum, though, clearly the Naxalites have suffered great losses and have been driven into small pockets of forests. In the guerrilla strongholds which are the focus of Nightmarch, when I lived there, the security forces would only dare to climb the hills when they were in a force of 500 or more, and would rarely stay more than a couple of nights. Now, children go to schools against the backdrop of a permanent security barrack at the same place.What is curious about Indian history, though, is that despite intense state repression in the past – when it was thought that the embers of rebellion have been finally snuffed out – the Naxalites have revived themselves, again and again, like a phoenix rising from the ashes.

Maoists of India: Update: Jan.,26,2019:

India’s record in dealing with internal armed conflict (insurgencies and terrorism, sometimes also referred to as low intensity conflict), has been a mixed one. It has never allowed the situation to escalate to a level of civil war, and it has never lost a counter insurgency campaign. However, the nation has successfully resolved conflict in only three of its counter insurgency campaigns—Mizoram, Tripura and Punjab. In all other cases, the insurgencies though contained, continue to persist, such as in Nagaland, Manipur, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, J&K and in LWE affected districts, popularly called the Red Corridor. This indicates that while India has been successful at ‘conflict management,’ its record in ‘conflict resolution’ has not been of the same order, which in turn condemns its security forces to containing insurgencies and terrorism indefinitely, at great human and financial cost.

The Communist Party of India (CPI), which came into existence on 17 October 1920 in Tashkent, had by the time of India’s independence, achieved salience in West Bengal and the Telangana region of the erstwhile Hyderabad state. The actions of the CPI were centered around mass mobilization to achieve land reforms. In Telangana, the movement became an armed struggle which the Indian Army quelled by October 1951. In West Bengal, an essentially agrarian movement became an armed struggle, following the death of nine adults and two children in police firing in a small hamlet called Bengai Jote near Naxalbari village in the Naxalbari Block in Siliguri district on 25 May 1967.^[4] This gave rise to the terms Naxalism.

in the eighties, the Peoples War (PW) and Maoist Communist Centre of India (MCCI) shifted their base to the densely forested and hilly tracts of Andhra Pradesh and Orissa. Later, they shifted to the jungle areas of Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. In September 2004, the MCCI merged with PW to form the CPI (Maoist). The press statement released to mark the merger stated… ‘Armed struggle will remain as the highest and main form of struggle and the army as the main form of organisation of this revolution.’ The statement also declared that… ‘The two guerrilla armies of the CPI(ML)[PW] and MCCI—the PGA and the PLGA— had been merged into the unified PLGA (Peoples’ Liberation Guerrilla Army) and that hereafter… ‘the most urgent task of the party was to develop the unified PLGA into a full- fledged People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and transform the existing Guerrilla Zones into Base Areas, thereby advancing wave upon wave towards completing the New Democratic Revolution’

Naxal violence has shown a consistency which till date has belied hopes of an early end to conflict. Since 2004, violence levels escalated all across the affected areas, peaking in 2010 when LWE claimed 1180 lives, of which 626 were civilians and 277 were security forces personnel. During this period, 277 terrorists from various outfits, mostly from the CPI (Maoist) were eliminated. In 2011, violence levels came down to half of the 2010 figures and these were halved once again in 2012, but since then, there has been a remarkable resilience and tenacity on the part of various Maoist outfits to continue to inflict casualties on the security forces and to unarmed civilians, albeit on a smaller scale than in the period 2004-2012.

The geographical spread of areas affected by Maoist violence has however shrunk, with some of the earlier affected states like West Bengal, Kerala and Madhya Pradesh reporting zero incidents of violence in their affected districts. There has also been a dramatic decline in violence levels in the affected districts of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Bihar and Maharashtra, which together had but four SF fatalities and 28 civilian fatalities related to Maoist violence in 2018 (Jan-Sep). During this period, in the above districts, terrorist casualties were reported as 62

Some of the major attacks that have been carried out by the Maoists against the security forces in 2018 are as under:

24 January: 4 SF personnel killed in Narayanpur district, Chhattisgarh.

13 March: 9 SF personnel of the Chhattisgarh Cobra Force killed in a land mine blast in Sukma district, Chhattisgarh.

20 May: 7 SF personnel killed in Dantewada district, Chhattisgarh.

26 June: 6 Jharkhand Jaguar Force personnel killed in land mine blast in the Chinjo area of Garhwa district.

11 July: CRPF constable killed in an attack in East Singhbhum district of Jharkhand.

27 October: 5 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel killed and one injured after Maoists blew up their bulletproof bunker vehicle in Bijapur district, Chhattisgarh.

30 October: Doordarshan staffer and two SF personnel killed in a Maoist attack in Dantewada district, Chhattisgarh.

8 November: A soldier of the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) and four civilians were killed when an improvised explosive device tore through a private bus in Dantewada district.

11 November: Maoists trigger 6 IED blasts in Kanker and attack a BSF patrol in Bijapur, killing a BSF sub inspector.

The above attacks make it clear that the Maoists retain the ability to strike in their chosen areas against the police forces operating against them. The 27 October attack by the Maoists in Chhattisgarh which were followed by a few more attacks in November was an attempt to enforce a boycott of the polls. Despite threats of violence, the people came out and voted in large numbers in both phases of the polls on 12 and 20 November, which augurs well for the state and indicates that the support which the Maoists expected from the masses is not forthcoming. Earlier, on 7 October, Home Minister Rajnath Singh, while addressing troops of the Rapid Action Force on their 26th anniversary in Lucknow, stated that the number of districts affected by Naxal violence has reduced to 10-12 districts from the earlier 126 affected districts and expressed optimism that Naxalism will be wiped out within three years. While one can laud the optimism of the Home Minister, the ground situation as of now does not point to an early end to conflict. It may take a decade or more to restore normalcy, depending on whether the respective states and the Centre muster the requisite will to deal with the Naxalite leadership, especially their urban support base with a firm hand and at the same time, improve governance and justice delivery mechanisms, to restore confidence within the public to wean them away from the clutches of the terrorists.

https://www.newsintervention.com/revisiting-the-maoist-threat-in-india/

Maoists: Feb., 9, 2019: Sundar’s Nandini Sundar’s book, (The Burning Forest) evocative book is about “India’s war in Bastar,” and it takes a close look at Salwa Judum, the militia put together by the Indian government to counter the Maoist forces it could not defeat. Books like The Burning Forest and Nightmarch have convinced me that in many parts of the country, our state behaves like a Roving Bandit. The rule of law is absent. The people, and their resources, exist only to be exploited. “Neither the British Raj nor the Indian state,” writes Shah in Nightmarch, “made substantive attempts to develop basic infrastructure for the people who lived in these regions.” Education, healthcare, even the police are often absent. The adivasis, especially, are treated so brutally that they become a breeding ground of resentment, which Maoists then feed into enabled by the alternating absence. The Maoists, noting the absence of the state, would sometimes try to slip into the role of the Stationary Bandit. They would open schools, provide rule of law, even take over exploitive rent-seeking functions, trying to be the state. The ideological underpinnings of the movement became irrelevant. Maoism in India, as lived by the foot soldiers, is a dual battle for survival and power. This is a battle between two Roving Bandits, the Maoists and the Indian state, with innocent people caught in the crossfire.

Update: Feb., 10,2019: In the intervening night of February 1 and 2, 2019, two villagers, identified as Nirmal Goswami and Samru Kosmi, were shot dead by the Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) cadres, over suspicion of being ‘Police informers’, near Markegaon village in Dhanora Tehsil (revenue unit) in Gadchiroli District. On January 30, 2019, a villager, identified as Wale VanjaKudyami, who was abducted by CPI-Maoist cadres over suspicion of being a ‘Police informer’, was found dead at Pengunda Phata under Bhamragad taluka (revenue sub-division) in Gadchiroli District. On January 27, 2019, another villager, identified as SansayTanuBeig (32), who was abducted by a group of CPI-Maoist cadres over suspicion of being a ‘Police informer’, was also found dead in Jaravandi village under Etapalli Tehsil in Gadchiroli District.

On January 22, 2019, three villagers were shot dead by CPI-Maoist cadres on suspicion that they had passed on tip-offs to the Police that led to a massive anti-Maoist operation in which 40 rebels were killed in 2018, in Gadchiroli District. A group of around 150 armed Maoists from Chhattisgarh, who entered Kasansoor village near KosfundiPhata in the Bhamragad taluka of the District, abducted six villagers. Later, their bodies were thrown near the Kosfundi diversion on the Tadgaon-Bhamragarh Road.

The spurt in civilian killings is an indicator of growing unrest amidst the Maoists. The third hotspot is in Tripura. On January 29, 2019, the Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT), a Tripura based tribal political party, an ally of the ruling Bharatiya Janta Party (BJP), along with another ten political parties of the Northeast, met in Guwahati, the capital of neighbouring Assam, to announce their opposition to the Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB).

CAB was approved by the Lok Sabha (Lower House of India’s Parliament) on January 8, 2019. The bill is yet to be passed in the Rajya Sabha (Upper House of Parliament). On January 27, 2019, the head of the erstwhile royal dynasty of Tripura, Pradyot Kishore Manikya Debbarma, criticised the Government over CAB. Debbarma was speaking at a protest CAB, organized by the Tripura United Indigenous People’s Council (TUIPC), a joint body of 48 formerly militant organisations’, who had given up violence and whose cadres had surrendered over the past several years.

On January 22, 2019, TUIPC had also announced a series of joint movements in coordination with Tripura-based tribal parties and organisations, to be initiated from January 26, against CAB. Earlier, on January 8, 2019, at least six Tripura Students Federation (TSF) activists were wounded in a clash with the Police during an anti-CAB demonstration at Madhav Bari in the Jirania area of West Tripura District. On the same day, the State Government suspended mobile internet and SMS services in the entire State for two days, following the clashes. Later, on January 8, the Indigenous Nationalist Party of Tripura (INPT), a Tripura-based tribal political party, along with four other tribal parties, including IPFT-Tipraha group, Twipra State Party (TSP), National Conference of Tripura (NCT), and Tripura People’s Party (TPP), called for a general shutdown on January 12 to protest the incident.

Another issue which plagues the State is the renewed demand by indigenous tribals for a separate state ‘Twipraland’. IPFT, one of the three tribal based political parties in Tripura [the others being the Indigenous Nationalist Party of Tripura (INPT) and National Conference of Tripura (NCT)], which is an ally of the BJP led State Government, had called for a dawn to dusk general shutdown in the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council (TTAADC) area on December 5, 2018, demanding separate statehood for the tribal areas and withdrawal of CAB.

The main impetus of the insurgency in Tripura was the influx of refugees from East Pakistan (present day Bangladesh), which reduced the indigenous population to a minority in the State. The local population’s ire over CAB must be seen in this light, and any destabilizing impact of this hasty legislation could result in a resurgence of violence in the State. Mizoram and Nagaland are also simmering. India will have to take cognizance of the demands of the separatists.

Movie: Feb., 12, 2019: Udita Bhargava’s Dust, which is being screened at the New German Cinema category, is set against the backdrop of the Maoist insurgency. Featuring Danish actor Morten Holst, Vinay Pathak and Kalyanee Mulay,Dust follows David (Holst), a young German who visits Indore after the death of his Indian photojournalist girlfriend Mumtaz (Amrita Bagchi) and “embarks on a journey to the troubled heart of India”, according to the synopsis. As he tries to retrace her steps before her death, he digs deep into Mumtaz’s documentation of the Maoist uprising in Indore.

Bomb Attack: Feb., 12, 2019: The bomb attacked yesterday night is the first such incident in New Year and the third in three months in Kangpokpi District of Manipur after the twin blast at Kangpokpi District Headquarters last year on October 19 and November 3 suspected to have a connection with monetary demand.

Update:

Byapari : Feb.,22,2109: A Dalit rickshaw-puller, an ex-Naxalite, a Bangladeshi refugee -Byapari, who is now a popular Bengali writer and a social activist, recently won the Hindu Prize for his autobiography, Interrogating My Chandal Life: An Autobiography of a Dalit (Itibritte Chandal Jivan). Life has changed radically for Byapari ever since he began to write. Today, he is not only one of the most revered voices of Dalit Literature but also a toast of literary festivals  Byapari has written about a hundred short stories, and over a dozen novels in his relatively short career as a writer .  Byapari's early life can make for an apt script of a tragic Satyajit Ray film. The writer's sister died of starvation, he didn't have money to provide his father with medical treatment, because of which he too passed away. The author spent his childhood in refugee camps, never went to school, and didn't even know how to read and write, until he was imprisoned in the Alipur jail, Kolkata on charges of alleged murder and rioting during the Naxalbari agitation, of which he was a part of.  In jail, Byapari found a mentor — a kind teacher — who educated him. After Byapari was released on bail, he took the job of a rickshaw-puller, but by then he was already a bona fide bookworm. He devoured Bengali Literature regularly as he waited to ferry people from one destination to another. As luck would have it, one day, he ferried renowned author, Mahasweta Devi, from her home to Jadavpur University on his rickshaw. During the trip, Byapari asked Devi the meaning of a difficult Bengali word jijibisha (a craving for being alive), and Devi inquired how he had come across this word. When Byapari confessed his love for reading to Devi, she immediately asked him to write a column for her. The first column that Byapari ever wrote for the author of Mother of 1084, Mahasweta Devi, was about his life as a rickshaw-puller. "When Mahasweta Devi first published my article, various newspapers did stories on me." said the author."University professors came to see me. They would be amazed that I could write. Editors came with writing requests. When I said I had lived in a refugee camp, I was asked to write about them. When I told them I was part of a revolution, they asked me to write about it. Slowly, people began to know me. I thought it was amazing, it means I can write. But, to write, one must read first. As I began to read more, I realized that my perception of the world around us is slightly different from other authors. So, I decided to show my readers the world through my eyes.".Devi not only gave Byapari his first break but also inspired him through her writings. "I love Mahasweta Devi's anger. Like the sun, it's the inextinguishable fire that she carried in her chest. I also want that fire of anger in me. And, that kind of anger can only grow in your heart if you love the hardworking working class people." said Byapari. Apart from Devi, Byapari also admires Samaresh Basu, Shrilal Shukla and Jajabar. "Samaresh Babu is so much heart, you can feel his characters from the inside, the way he portrays them. He creates his characters with such love and care. Jajabor's way with words is something I aspire for. It's like he weaves a wreath with his carefully picked words. And, I want Shrilal Shukla's eyes. his eyes are like an arrow, precise and to the point." he added
Byapari joined the Naxal movement in his youth and was an active part of it until he saw a close friend of his, who wasn't from the upper class, being killed by the Naxals. In his recent book, There's Gunpowder In The Air, the author recreates with imagination and from memory those days of the revolution when Bengal was in a state of upheaval. 'Dark and comic, it is a searing investigation into what deprivation and isolation can do to human idealism'
While the Naxal movement has died down in most parts of India, the author pointed out that the only place where it is still continuing is Chhattisgarh. "Now if you see, the Naxal movement or the Maoist movement is at its peak in Chhattisgarh. The Naxals from Chhattisgarh have put up a fight and managed to survive for the last 40 years. If you analyze why the Naxal movement slowly vanished from all parts of India except that one place, then I feel we can reach near some truth." said the author
"If you ask those Adivasis where is Bhopal or Raipur, they won't be able to tell you. Ask them, 'have you ever heard of Mao Tse Tung?' and you will meet with blank stares. Then how can they do a national movement? Any national movement also has a huge political aspect, and it is impossible for a simple adivasi to comprehend that when they don't even know where Delhi is. For someone who has never seen a railway track in his entire life, how will he fight this battle? Therefore, the people who are calling them 'anti-national elements', and addressing them as 'people who have waged a war against the state,' are not telling the truth. "

The author pointed out that those Adivasis are only fighting to protect their water, forest, and lands. If they back out of this fight today, they stand to lose everything they have. So, it is merely their struggle for survival
"Those people cannot even fathom the strength of the state. They cannot imagine the devastation one bombing device can cause... it can burn many of their villages to the grounds. With their pikes and jungli guns, it is an impossible task to fight against such a powerful state. But, if you think of it, they aren't fighting the state, they don't even understand what the government is! They are only fighting against small players -- like the Tahsildars, the forest department, the local cops who are coming and ruining their lives. They are fighting against the hired goons of rich corporates so that they can protect their water, forests, and land."

The author said that political parties, for their vested interest term them Maoists, call them cop killers, and anti-nationalists. He said that if cops are dying, one should also ask what are cops doing in their area? "Why is police in their area inflicting atrocities? They do not come to the cities to kill people. They don't come to your area, they stay in their forests, then why do you have to go in their forests and attack them?" asked the author.

"There are many real issues that these Adivasis are facing -- they don't have food, shelter, or healthcare. But, instead of addressing these issues, the political parties want to divert the attention of the public, by calling these Adivasis 'anti-nationalists'. This is just their trick." added Byapari 
"One cannot expect sympathy or pity from the state," said Byapari. "You are lucky that if they put you in jail, and don't shoot you. They can do that as well. When you protest against wrongdoings, then whatever atrocities the wrongdoer inflicts on you, you'll have to be ready to face that. If you cannot tolerate that, then do not write. You will write against them, and they will show you mercy, that's impossible. One much decides whether or not to raise his/her voice in dissent after fully understanding this fact." he added.

Chhattisgarh: Feb.,22,2109: Three security personnel were injured in two separate encounters with Naxals in Bastar region of Chhattisgarh on Thursday While a jawan of the CRPF's commando unit CoBRA was injured in Bijapur district, two District Reserve Guard (DRG) jawans sustained injuries in Sukma district,  

Update: Mar, 2, 2019:

India, in an attempt to neutralise secessionist movements on its soil, has drastically failed in complying with democratic norms and has been flagrantly disregarding human rights in it its different states, including occupied Kashmir. The country has also supplemented its violent approach by introducing the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), which allows security forces an almost free hand in arresting or shooting anyone during insurgency.  AFSPA was first introduced in 1966 by then PM Indira Gandhi to suppress the Mizo’s movement for right to determination. Decades have gone by, but the Act remains in force, and is enforced in Jammu and Kashmir (JK) and some other parts of northeastern India. India’s history is stained by its suppressive policies exercised on its own soil. The worst was the two-decade long Mizo rebellion from 1966 to 1986, Mizo’s identity conflict, in which the Mizo National Front (MNF) fought to establish an independent country while the Indian government used violent tactics including airstrikes against its own citizens to suppress their right to determination.

Talking about the atrocities he had experienced at the hands of the Indian state, a former Mizo militant named C. Zama wrote in his book Untold Atrocity how the Indian government used its “grouping” policy, under which villages in what is now Mizoram state, were burned and civilians relocated to guarded centers called Protected and Progressive Villages. Zama in his book endorsed that the Indian government has kept the trend of that massacre alive in Kashmir. All that has changed is that male members are being picked up, tortured, arrested, and killed while women are grouped outside and abused. An additional assault included in the law is the Public Safety Act, which denies people the right to protest and allows the government to put a person behind bars for six months without a trial. Obviously, such moves will leave deep psychological scars in the minds of Kashmiris. This trauma will not be forgotten even if someday they are given their right to self-determination.

The Mizos lost their struggle as their movement was crushed by Indian state machinery, however they still mourn the loss of their identity by singing “Khawkhawm Hla” or “Grouping Song”. The tune emerged during the period between 1966-1986. The song was composed by the Mizo rebels, who rose in revolt against the Indian government. Even today, Indian historians, journalists, and human rights activists will admit that in 1968, when the grieving song of revolution Khaw Sawihawm Hlawas aired for the first time on radio, it made the listeners openly weep as the song transmits the agony of villagers, who were typically given a day’s notice to prepare for such groupings. Resultantly, in the space of twenty four hours, they had to leave their homes, their fields, their domestic animals, and everything that had given them a sense of security and identity.

Today Kashmiris are being subject to the same treatment, while India accuses Pakistan of exporting terrorism to India. Supposing there is some truth to this allegation, shouldn’t the accusers reflect on their own actions as well? What is going on in the states of Assam, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Mizoram and Nagaland? Those rebellions are certainly not being instigated by Pakistan.

In the same way, the Jharkhand Liberation Tigers (JLT) was formed idealising the legendry comrade Birsa Munda as its spiritual commander while two Naxalite outfits, Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) and The People’s War Group (PWG) and the Peoples’ Liberation Front of India (PLFI) was not being operated in Jharkhand by any Pakistani but was established to fight for the rights of the common people. Similarly, Paresh Barua of the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) was not trained by any Pakistani, but was leading the movement for an independent state.

Finally, the founder of Naxalist movement, Charu Majumdar and Kanu Sanyal were also products of the Indian caste system. Sikhs too, can never ever bury the Golden temple carnage, an act of cold-blooded genocide carried out by the so-called secular and democratic Indian government.

It will not be surprising if someday Dalits or the scheduled castes and Adivasis or Aborigines, who make up 8.6 percent of India’s population, rise to the occasion as well. If this happens, then the movement will tear apart the so-called brand of modern, secular, and democratic India into fractions beyond a single political state.

As per India’s geographical terror and unrest statistics, there were thousands of communal riots during the past 70 years, right from Kashmir to Kanya Kumari. It is India’s policies that have repeatedly compelled the Indian masses to revolt against or seek a separate state within the state. In fact, insurgencies are affecting 220 districts, constituting about 40 percent of physical India, which is about 92,000 square kilometres. It will be unwise if I don’t mention the anti-Muslim hostilities fashioned by the far-right nationalists as well.

India continues to tag the Kashmiris liberation movement as separatist rebellion, which actually is an active freedom movement for their right to determination. The current situation in Kashmir underscores a need for Pakistan to generate global opinion in favour of the Kashmiri  

Update: Mar.,19,2019: 

In Chhattisgarh, a CRPF jawan was killed and five others  injured in a series of IED blasts in Dantewada district of Bastar division today. the Maoists triggered the blasts targeting a CRPF team in Aranpur area, which was on a search operation. The Maoists ambushed the security personnel who retaliated the fire. After a gun battle, Maoists fled into forests.The CRPF team belonged to 231 battalion, deployed in anti-Maoist operations in tribal Bastar region. The injured  jawans have been airlifted to the state capital, Raipur for treatment. The condition of two injured jawans is reported to be critical.

India’s Maoist insurrection began with the Naxalite rebellion of 1967, one of the major regional explosions of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. While that earlier conflagration was for the most part extinguished in the early 1970s by a harsh state response, splinters of the original movement fought on. The Indian government currently claims that 20 of the country’s 28 states are affected by the Maoist insurgency, which it has called “the biggest internal security challenge facing our country”. This war owes its survival to Maoist groups’ readiness to attack some of India’s socioeconomic enormities, such as the hierarchical violence of the caste system and the racist exploitation suffered by the poorest tribal peoples. In the new millennium, the Maoists have gained further traction by linking their cause to environmental protests. After 2003, the Indian state – ambitious to increase revenues – began granting lucrative mining contracts to multinational corporations, especially in mineral-rich Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. Maoist insurgents organised locals into resisting state and corporate efforts to empty land ready for industrial development.

Update: Mar, 2, 2019:

India, in an attempt to neutralise secessionist movements on its soil, has drastically failed in complying with democratic norms and has been flagrantly disregarding human rights in it its different states, including occupied Kashmir. The country has also supplemented its violent approach by introducing the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA), which allows security forces an almost free hand in arresting or shooting anyone during insurgency.  AFSPA was first introduced in 1966 by then PM Indira Gandhi to suppress the Mizo’s movement for right to determination. Decades have gone by, but the Act remains in force, and is enforced in Jammu and Kashmir (JK) and some other parts of northeastern India. India’s history is stained by its suppressive policies exercised on its own soil. The worst was the two-decade long Mizo rebellion from 1966 to 1986, Mizo’s identity conflict, in which the Mizo National Front (MNF) fought to establish an independent country while the Indian government used violent tactics including airstrikes against its own citizens to suppress their right to determination.

Talking about the atrocities he had experienced at the hands of the Indian state, a former Mizo militant named C. Zama wrote in his book Untold Atrocity how the Indian government used its “grouping” policy, under which villages in what is now Mizoram state, were burned and civilians relocated to guarded centers called Protected and Progressive Villages. Zama in his book endorsed that the Indian government has kept the trend of that massacre alive in Kashmir. All that has changed is that male members are being picked up, tortured, arrested, and killed while women are grouped outside and abused. An additional assault included in the law is the Public Safety Act, which denies people the right to protest and allows the government to put a person behind bars for six months without a trial. Obviously, such moves will leave deep psychological scars in the minds of Kashmiris. This trauma will not be forgotten even if someday they are given their right to self-determination.

The Mizos lost their struggle as their movement was crushed by Indian state machinery, however they still mourn the loss of their identity by singing “Khawkhawm Hla” or “Grouping Song”. The tune emerged during the period between 1966-1986. The song was composed by the Mizo rebels, who rose in revolt against the Indian government. Even today, Indian historians, journalists, and human rights activists will admit that in 1968, when the grieving song of revolution Khaw Sawihawm Hlawas aired for the first time on radio, it made the listeners openly weep as the song transmits the agony of villagers, who were typically given a day’s notice to prepare for such groupings. Resultantly, in the space of twenty four hours, they had to leave their homes, their fields, their domestic animals, and everything that had given them a sense of security and identity.

Today Kashmiris are being subject to the same treatment, while India accuses Pakistan of exporting terrorism to India. Supposing there is some truth to this allegation, shouldn’t the accusers reflect on their own actions as well? What is going on in the states of Assam, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Mizoram and Nagaland? Those rebellions are certainly not being instigated by Pakistan.

In the same way, the Jharkhand Liberation Tigers (JLT) was formed idealising the legendry comrade Birsa Munda as its spiritual commander while two Naxalite outfits, Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) and The People’s War Group (PWG) and the Peoples’ Liberation Front of India (PLFI) was not being operated in Jharkhand by any Pakistani but was established to fight for the rights of the common people. Similarly, Paresh Barua of the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) was not trained by any Pakistani, but was leading the movement for an independent state.

Finally, the founder of Naxalist movement, Charu Majumdar and Kanu Sanyal were also products of the Indian caste system. Sikhs too, can never ever bury the Golden temple carnage, an act of cold-blooded genocide carried out by the so-called secular and democratic Indian government.

It will not be surprising if someday Dalits or the scheduled castes and Adivasis or Aborigines, who make up 8.6 percent of India’s population, rise to the occasion as well. If this happens, then the movement will tear apart the so-called brand of modern, secular, and democratic India into fractions beyond a single political state.

As per India’s geographical terror and unrest statistics, there were thousands of communal riots during the past 70 years, right from Kashmir to Kanya Kumari. It is India’s policies that have repeatedly compelled the Indian masses to revolt against or seek a separate state within the state. In fact, insurgencies are affecting 220 districts, constituting about 40 percent of physical India, which is about 92,000 square kilometres. It will be unwise if I don’t mention the anti-Muslim hostilities fashioned by the far-right nationalists as well.

India continues to tag the Kashmiris liberation movement as separatist rebellion, which actually is an active freedom movement for their right to determination. The current situation in Kashmir underscores a need for Pakistan to generate global opinion in favour of the Kashmiri  

Update Mar.,21,2019:

At least nine people, including five women and a child, were injured after Maoists blew up a SUV by triggering Improvised Explosive Device (IED) blast in Bijapur district of Bastar region on Wednesday evening.

Police said that the blast took place at around 8 pm on Peddakodepal and Naimed villages under Naimed police station. The passengers of SUV were travelling Danetwada when the incident took place.

BSF losses: Apr., 5, 2019: At least four Border Security Force (BSF) jawans were killed and two others injured on Thursday after an encounter with Maoists in Kanker district in Chhattisgarh. A joint team of BSF's 114th battalion and the district force of police were out on an 'area domination' operation around noon in a dense forest near Mahla village when they were attacked, Deputy Inspector General of Police (anti-Naxal operations) Sundarraj P told news agency PTI. The deceased were identified as BSF's Assistant Sub- Inspector Bipul Borah, who hailed from Assam, constables Silam Ramkrishna from Andhra Pradesh, Ishrar Khan from Jharkhand, and Tumeshwar from Dongargaon in Chhattisgarh. BSF's Assistant Commandant Gopu Kumar and Inspector Gopal Rang sustained injuries in the exchange of fire.  

Election casualties: Apr., 10, 2019: At least seven people including a state legislator for India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) were killed in two separate attacks on Tuesday. Five people including BJP lawmaker Bheema Mandavi were killed in the eastern state of Chhattisgarh after Maoist militants detonated a bomb as Mandavi and his entourage was driving back from a campaign appearance. 

Maoist Attack: May. 1, 2019: At least 16 people, including 15 security personnel, were killed in an IED blast triggered by Naxals in Gadchiroli district on Wednesday. Those killed were members of the Quick Response Team (QRT) of Gadchiroli police, which was on way to inspect a fleet of torched vehicles belonging to a road construction contractor, police said. The Naxals triggered an improvised explosive device (IED) to blow up the police vehicle on Wednesday on the Kurkheda-Korchi road in Gadchiroli. The vehicle, which was targetted by the Naxals, was carrying 16 security personnel from the Kurkheda Quick Response Team of Gadchiroli police.

Maoist Movement status quo: May, 5, 2019:

Exposing the Modi government’s bombastic claims that the terrorism challenge has been confined to the disputed Kashmir Valley, Maoist insurgents detonated an improvised explosive device (IED) in Maharashtra’s Gadchiroli district on May 1, killing more than 15 security personnel engaged in anti-Naxalite operations. Gadchiroli, which borders Chhattisgarh state, another Maoist stronghold, has witnessed increased violent activity in last few days; the Naxalite insurgents have been targeting the ongoing parliamentary elections.

Naxalism, like many other leftist revolutionary movements around the world, draws its ideological inspiration from Marxism and Maoism. The Maoist guerrillas seek to capture state power through a so-called people’s war, and their military strategy is somewhat based on the teachings of Mao Zedong. India’s southern state of Andhra Pradesh witnessed the first seeds of the radical Marxist movement being sown just after India’s independence. In 1967, the first armed uprising took place in the remote Naxalbari village in the Indian state of West Bengal. The uprising was suppressed soon after, but not before it inspired other Maoist revolutionaries across India – and gave Naxalism its name.

Identified a decade ago by then-Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as the biggest threat to India’s internal security, the Naxalite-Maoist insurgency has been continuously evolving its tactics to maintain its previous relevance. It is safe to argue that the periodic Naxal violence in India’s tribal belt – euphemistically called the “Red Corridor,” which is spread across the states of Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Jharkhand, Bihar, and Andhra Pradesh – may be compared to the flicker of a flame before it completely dies. Sustained counterinsurgency operations have translated into a remarkable shrinkage in the capabilities and space of the Naxal insurgents. The activities of their cadres, both overground and underground, have also decreased. But this has also resulted in large ambushes. The Maoists seem to have perfected hit and run tactics and IED blasts, which have allowed them to avoid direct and prolonged confrontation with Indian security forces.  

How did the intelligence agencies fail to anticipate that a trap might have been laid for the quick response team (QRT) of the state police when the Maoist guerrillas had set on fire around 30 vehicles? This is what the Maoists have been doing in their asymmetrical fight against security forces: attracting their attention by increased activity and then ambushing with IEDs. And why did the intelligence agencies not a get a whiff of something massive that was about to happen in the midst of parliamentary elections in a volatile region, which has long witnessed a deadly insurgency?

There are strong reasons that seem to have prevented the intelligence agencies from getting actionable intelligence on insurgent attacks in Maoist-affected regions, including the recent one in Gadchiroli. The local tribes have often found themselves caught in the middle of a conflict between the Maoists and the security forces; security forces are routinely accused of committing human rights abuses and extrajudicial killings of tribals, and on the other hand Maoists are also guilty of killing and torturing tribal villagers after accusing them of being police informers. The tense relationship between the tribals and the security forces has been the biggest hindrance in feeding intelligence inputs to the security forces. Most important, because of the extremely difficult terrain, with dense forest cover and great distances from communication facilities, security forces have faced several challenges in mounting effective counterattacks. These operational constraints have allowed the Maoists to target the reinforcing columns of security forces through IED attacks.

These tactics provide the Maoists with a huge advantage; they can cause large-scale casualties to security forces in a single incident. This is what happened in Gadchiroli. It is true that the number of casualties due to IED blasts has gone substantially down with the enhanced recovery of the explosives, but the Modi government has not been successful in ensuring that security forces remain ahead in this cat-and-mouse game with the Naxals.

Very rich in mineral resources, the central and eastern regions of India are mostly home to the tribal population, who are primarily dependent on land for their livelihoods. They are mostly subsistence farmers, and live in abject poverty. They view mining activity, and its environmental fallout, as posing a severe challenge to their existence. It is therefore pertinent to mention that mining and conflict zones coexist in the central and eastern parts of India, making them particularly prone to Naxalism.

It is important to note that the Maoist insurgents have been strange partners with predatory local government functionaries in these regions to extort money from miners; corrupt politicians have also found it convenient to vilify the corporate houses for votes but have shamelessly bribed voters with money from the coffers of same companies. On the other hand, not long ago, many mining companies used to pay huge amounts to elements in the insurgency to cleanse the precious land of its tribal populations. How much of this dynamic has changed? And what has been done to ensure that the Maoists are not able to loot huge cache of explosives in areas where mining is underway?

The widespread sentiment persists that, regardless of the government in power, critical decisions on internal security have been arbitrary. The top political functionaries of the Modi government want the electorate to believe that past practices have not guided India’s security policy since 2014. But in the absence of the government’s explicit successes, serious flaws in both threat assessment and threat management strategies are severely challenging India’s approach to counterinsurgency in the Naxal-affected areas. .

Maoist movement, new tactics: May, 12, 2019:

On May 1, 2019, at least 15 Security Force (SF) personnel of the Quick Response Team (QRT) and a civilian driver, were killed in an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) explosion triggered by Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) cadres on Dadapur Road near Lendali Nullah in Jamburkheda village under the Kurkheda Police Station limits in the Gadchiroli District of Maharashtra. The QRT team had set out in a private vehicle to reach a construction site at Dadapur, where the Maoists had set ablaze at least 36 vehicles belonging to a private road construction firm, earlier in the day. The firm was involved in the construction of a 36 kilometres-long tar road between Purada and Yerkad, passing through Dadapur. 

On April 9, 2019, five persons, including the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislator from Bastar region, Bhima Mandavi (40) and his four security personnel, were killed as CPI-Maoist cadres targeted the convoy in which the BJP leader was travelling, by triggering an IED blast in a forested patch near Nakulnar Village under Kuwakonda Tehsil (revenue unit) in Dantewada District of Chhattisgarh. The Maoists blew up the vehicle of the Dantewada MLA with an IED and opened fire at the occupants at Shyamagiri Hills, when the MLA’s convoy was heading towards Kuwakonda from Bacheli area in Dantewada.

On March 18, 2019, CPI-Maoist cadres ambushed a Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) patrol party, killing a trooper and injuring another six in the Kondapara Forest region under Aranpur Police Station limits in the Dantewada District of Chhattisgarh. A team from 231 Battalion was conducting a search operation in the Aranpur area when Maoists ambushed them with an IED blast followed by firing.

 Maoists have already used IED device on at least 19 occasions killing 26 persons, including three civilians, 21 SF personnel, and two Naxalites,(Left Wing Extremists, LWEs), in the current year (data till May 5, 2019). During the corresponding period the Maoists had triggered 15 IED explosions, resulting in 18 fatalities (three civilians, and 15 SF personnel). Through 2018, there were 38 incidents of IED explosions resulting in 48 deaths (eight civilians, and 40 SF personnel). The number of IED explosions-related  fatalities stood at 25 (nine civilians, 14 SF personnel, and two Naxalites) from 54 such incidents in 2017; 47 (six civilians, 34 SF personnel, and seven Naxalites) from 60 incidents in 2016; 17 (one civilian, 13 SF personnel, and three Naxalites) from 45 incidents in 2015; 41 (17 civilians, 23 SF personnel, and one Naxalite) from 55 incidents in 2014; 37 (three civilians, 28 SF personnel, and six Naxalites) from 34 incidents in 2013; 40 (three civilians, and 37 SF personnel) from 40 incidents in 2012; 82 (22 civilians, and 60 SF personnel) from 84 incidents in 2011; and 399 (231 civilians, 165 SF personnel, and three Naxalites) from 183 such incidents in 2010.

A total of at least 762 persons, including 303 civilians, 435 SF personnel and 24 Naxalites, have been killed, while 879 have received injuries, in 612 incidents of IED explosion carried out by the Maoists across 75 Districts in nine States, since 2010. Out of the 612 incidents of landmine explosions, 63 were major incidents (each involving three or more fatalities). 

The Maoists have most often resorted to the use of IEDs to inflict high casualties on SF personnel on patrol. Small SF contingents passing through inhabited areas are targeted with these devices, sometimes hidden underground or in bushes, on national highways, important State roads and near the SF camps. The use of mines allows the Maoists the avoid the dangers of engaging in any direct confrontation with SFs. When they take on large contingents of SFs deeper in the forest, however, IEDs are used to administer a first shock, before the extremists engage the troops in exchanges of fire.

The Maoists had used IEDs in the worst ever attack targeting SFs on April 6, 2010, in which 75 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel and a State Police trooper were killed in an ambush in the thick Mukrana Forests of Dantewada District in Chhattisgarh. The Maoists were aware of the CRPF unit’s movement and executed the attack with fierce precision. They first blew up the SF’s anti-landmine vehicle and then began firing indiscriminately.

Evidently, the Maoists over years have been effectively using IEDs as a potent tool against SFs and a March 31, 2019, media report speaks of the 32-page Maoist ‘Central Military Commission (CMC) circular’, dated July 25, 2018, where the Maoists claim, that, over the years, strategies have been developed on IED drill, ambush, raids, fire and movement, unarmed combat, a military manual, company drills, booby traps, snipers, mine warfare and setting up camps. It declares that “useful lessons have been learnt” from “negative engagements. The ‘CMC circular’ also states,

A May 1, 2019, report quoted an unnamed senior Police officer noting,

IED blasts cause damage when they hit forces travelling together. For instance, in Maoist areas, forces are encouraged to travel on foot — and when they are travelling by road, a separate road opening party sanitises the area first. If a place has to be reached quickly, motorcycles being ridden by two people, with a gap between two bikes, is the standard procedure adopted to minimise the effect of an IED attack. In a private vehicle by contrast, the men are sitting ducks for IEDs.

The replacement of Muppala Lakshmana Rao aka Ganapathy, the 71-year-old ‘general secretary’ of the CPI-Maoist, on November 5, 2018, with his ‘second-in-command’ Nambala Keshava Rao aka Basavaraj (63), will also impact on the Maoists use of IEDs. Basavaraj was the head of the CPI-Maoist’s ‘military-wing’, PLGA (People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army), since its inception, and is an expert in explosives and military techniques and has a good network with arms traders. He is also believed to be more easily inclined to violence and ‘military operations’, including the use of IEDs.

Indeed, a May 2, 2019, report quoted an unnamed Police officer posted in South Bastar, as saying that there has been a change in Maoist strategy after elevation of Basavaraj:

The Maoists have changed their strategy after Rao took charge. They are focusing on IEDs and not engaging themselves in gunfights. Since last year, every major attack was carried out using IEDs because they are safe and we have no strategy to contain them. The only way to stop IED blasts is to follow the rules of the road in the jungle, which was not followed in Gadchiroli’s case.

Significantly, after Basavaraj assumed the top post on November 5, 2018, 24 incidents of IED explosion have been carried out by the Maoists, resulting in at least 26 fatalities, including three civilians, 21 SF personnel and two Naxalites over a period of six months (data till May 5, 2019). During the preceding six months, 20 such incidents were recorded, with 18 fatalities, including three civilians, and 15 SF personnel.

As the Maoists suffer major reverses, the IED will emerge as their weapon of choice, minimizing risks to their cadres, and maximizing impact on SFs. With no effective counter available, SFs can only adhere as closely as possible to Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) laid down to minimize loss of life, and continue with their battle against Left Wing Extremism in its shrinking heartland.

MLA and others killed : May, 22,2019:  Guwahti:   Tirong Aboh a  state legislator ans some family members, in the northeastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh and at least six others were killed Tuesday in an attack by suspected separatist militants killed when insurgents opened fire on their sports utility vehicle in Tirap district of the state. One senior police official said the death toll could be much higher up to eleven. A local separatist group, the United Liberation Front of Asom, claimed responsibility. Aboh represented the Khonsa constituency for the National People's Party (NPP), which allied to PM Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party and was standing for a new term.  

Maoist movement: May, 30, 2019: On May 1, 2019, Maoists killed 15 security forces belonging to the commandos of elite C-60 force of the Maharashtra police and a civilian, with an improvised explosive device (IED) in Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra. Earlier, in another incident, Maoists attacked the convoy of a sitting MLA, Bhima Mandavi, belonging to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in Chhattisgarh on April 9, killing him two days before the first phase of the general elections. In this case too, the Maoists used IED to target the MLA’s convoy.   democracy.

The protest against democracy by calling for boycotting elections and attacking polling booths, has been a permanent feature of Maoist politics. However, by killing an elected representative during the election period, the Maoists have reasserted their stand against democracy, as well as exposed critical vulnerabilities in the state machinery.  The Maoist messaging through the killing of security forces in Gadchiroli district is even stronger. The incident, which came at a time when Maoists were observing the death anniversary of cadres killed by security forces a year ago, can be seen as an act of vengeance. The coordinated tactics through which they trapped the security forces and then killed them highlight the negligence of the state machinery and the vastly improved guerrilla tactics of the Maoists.

This single act contradicts the position on the diminishing capabilities of the Maoists that successive governments have been keen to propagate in the last few years. Against this official position of the state, Maoists have, time and again, demonstrated their capabilities in carrying out major attacks, especially against security forces. Of late, Maoists seem to have made a critical tactical shift in terms of targeting big numbers and major figures. It is this tactical shift that has prompted attacks on security convoys and major political figures.

Repeated Maoist attacks and the killing of security forces can be seen as consequences of the government’s delinquency. Two critical positions on the Maoist movement explain the government’s repeated mistakes. First, the government claims it has been successful in containing the Maoists to a great extent. The accuracy of the claim comes only from fatality statistics. The success and failure of the Maoist movement, which has the stated objective of seizing political power through protracted violence, is unfortunately being determined only by the number of violent incidents. Using this approach, the state overlooks an important aspect of the movement, that is, the protracted nature of violent activities that the Maoists believe in.

 Secondly, a fundamental mistake in the government’s position has been to dominantly look at the Maoists through the prism of security framework. An over-emphasis on military response limits the possibilities of exploring negotiations with the Maoists to a significant degree. Hence, the government’s responses against the Maoists seem to be overtly reactive in nature. It has not helped in reaching a solution to a violent conflict that has been going on for more than five decades. 

Maoist : June ,6,2019:  One jawan of the Sashastra Seema Bal  was killed and four others injured when a squad of CPI (Maoist) ambushed them in Kathaliya forests in Dumka district   then deceased was shot in his right chest and died on the spot

Assessment : June, 19,2019: On May 31,2019, an Army trooper, Amit Chaturvedi, was killed in an encounter with suspected United Liberation Front of Asom-Independent (ULFA-I) militants at an unspecified location in Arunachal Pradesh.On May 21, 2019, suspected Naga militants killed 11 people including the National People’s Party (NPP) Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA), Tirong Aboh and his son at the 12^th milestone on the Khonsa-Deomali Road in the Tirap District of Arunachal. The fatalities included two Personal Security Officers (PSO’s). No organisation has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, nor is the motive behind the attack is known. According to reports, the State Government has decided to hand over the investigation to the National Investigation Agency (NIA).  a total of 14 fatalities (11 civilians and three Security Force (SF) personnel have been recorded in the State in 2019 (data till June 14), demonstrating a rise in the numbers as compared to the corresponding period in 2018, when seven fatalities (one civilian one SF and five militants) were recorded. In total, 14 fatalities (one civilian, two SF personnel and 11 militants) were recorded in 2018. The total civilian fatalities in 2019 (data till June 16) is the highest since 2001, when 40 civilians were killed through the entire year. Apart from the May 21, 2019 ambush in which nine civilians were killed, another two civilian fatalities were recorded.

On March 30, 2019, a former District Council member, identified as Seliam Wangsa, who was campaigning for Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate Honchun Ngandam, was killed by suspected NSCN (faction not known) militants in Nginu village in the Longding District. Seliam Wangsa was a surrendered Nationalist Socialist Council of Nagaland-Isak Muivah (NSCN-IM) militant.  n March 29, 2019, a suspected militant of the NSCN-IM shot dead, Jaley Anna, the supporter of the NPP candidate, Tirong Aboh contesting from the Khonsa West Assembly Seat, at Kheti village in Tirap District.

No militant fatality has been recorded in the State so far. The last incident of militant fatality was recorded on November 18, 2018, when SFs, in three separate encounters, killed three NSCN (faction not known) militants near the Borduria and Laptang villages in Tirap District.

Further, insurgency linked fatality incidents were recorded in two Districts (Tirap and Longding) out of the 25 in the State. During the corresponding period of 2018, incidents of insurgency-related fatalities were recorded in four Districts (Tirap, Changlang, Longding and Namsai). The spillover of militancy from the neighbouring States of Assam and Nagaland is especially prominent in the Districts of Longding, Changlang and Tirap, which also saddle the Indo-Myanmar border. Between January 1, 2000, and June 16, 2019, these three Districts have accounted for 116 fatalities: Tirap 81 (13 civilians, 10 SF personnel and 58 militants); Changlang, 20 (three civilians, three SF personnel and 14 militants); and Longding 15 (one civilian, one SF trooper and 13 militants). Tirap, Longding and Changlang are also claimed by the NSCN-IM as part of Nagalim (‘Greater Nagaland’). Neighbouring Myanmar’s Sagiang region is exploited by Indian Insurgent Groups (IIGs) as their base to carry out ambushes into Indian territory.

The continued militant activity has led to the routine extension of the Armed Forces Special Forces Act (AFSPA) in parts of the State. On March 31, 2019, Union Ministry of Home Affairs (UMHA) decided to continue AFSPA in the three District of Tirap, Changlang and Longding, as well as areas falling under the jurisdiction of four Police Stations, declared as “Disturbed areas” for another six months (till September 30). The four Police Stations that will continue to be classified as “disturbed areas” are Namsai and Mahadevpur in Namsai District; Roing in Lower Dibang Valley District, and Sunpura Police Station in Lohit District. Significantly, the notification excludes another four Police Stations, Balemu and Balukpong in West Kameng District, Seijosa in East Kameng District and Balijan in Papumpare District. There are also reports of imposition of ‘taxes’ by militants in the Tirap, Longding and Changlang Districts.  The illegal drug trade also benefits the militant groups operating in Arunachal Pradesh. According to a May 8, 2019 report, a local Police official admitted, on conditions of anonymity, that “There is lots of military intelligence about the chain of finance leading to the militants, especially in Tirap and Changlang, but no operation (against them) is possible yet.” Arunachal Pradesh is situated near the ‘Golden Triangle’, comprising border areas of Laos, Thailand and Myanmar, known for opium and heroin production and trade.  Two Incidents of abduction and one incident of extortion were recorded in 2019 (a majority of such incidents go unreported, as victim families seek a ‘private’ settlement with abductors). One incident of abduction was reported in the State during the corresponding period of 2018. In the latest incident on April 17, 2019, two workers of NPP were allegedly abducted by NSCN-Khaplang (NSCN-K) militants in Longding District. The abductees were identified as Apong Wangsu and Yatun Wangsa. They were later released on the same day. Arunachal Pradesh Police records show that there were 128 abductions and 64 extortion cases reported in 2018. This data does not maintain a distinction between insurgency-linked and other cases.

SFs continue to act against militants and have arrested 31 in 2019 (Data till June 16): 10 of the Arunachal Pradesh Deprived People’s Front (APPDPF); nine of NSCN-Reformation (NSCN-R); four of ULFA-I; two each from Kanglei Yowel Kanna Lup (KYKL), NSCN-IM and NSCN-Khaplang (NSCN-K); and one each of the Kangleipak Communist Party (KCP) and National Democratic Front of Bodoland-Saoraigwra (NDFB-S). In the latest incident of arrest on May 5, 2019, SFs arrested a NSCN-K militant, ‘sergeant major’ Kijen Rangwang, from Chinghan village in Tirap District. One militant has also surrendered in 2019.

Further, news reports suggest that, following operations by Tatmadaw (the Myanmar Army), the IIGs based in Myanmar have now moved to Pangmi and Konyak Naga dominated regions of Myanmar, adjoining Changlang District in Arunachal Pradesh and Mon District in Nagaland.  Besides militancy, there are other flashpoints in the State, especially related to the strained inter-tribal relations and the presence of refugees.

The divide in tribal society came to fore when three people were killed and more than 35 (including at least 24 Police personnel) were injured during three days of protests (February 22 -24, 2019), after a Joint High Power Committee (JHPC), constituted on May 1, 2018, submitted a recommendation to the State Government for Permanent Resident Certificates (PRC) to be provided to six non-Arunachal Pradesh Scheduled Tribe (Non-APSTs). The violent opposition forced the Government to back down. The six communities which were to be given PRC were the Deori, Sonowal Kachari, Moran, Adivasi, Gorkha and Mishing, concentrated in the Namsai and Changlang Districts. The APSTs believe that giving the PRC to non-tribal communities will lead to land alienation and cultural marginalization of the APSTs.

The presence of more than 54,000 Chakma and Hajong refugees (forced to migrate to India from the East Pakistan in the 1960s), is another source of tension. These people are settled in Arunachal Pradesh [the then North East Frontier Agency (NEFA)]. The move to grant them citizenship is strongly opposed, particularly by the influential students’ body, All Arunachal Pradesh Students’ Union (AAPSU), which rigidly maintains the stand that granting Citizenship to the refugees is ‘unacceptable’. Further, with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the dominant party of ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) Government at the Centre, having won the recent elections with even a bigger mandate, there is a greater possibility of the BJP bringing the proposed Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) back on its agenda. CAB will help six minority communities, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians, from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, who have migrated to India without valid documents, to get Indian citizenship after six years of stay in the country.

Earlier, local organizations, mainly led by AAPSU, had vehemently opposed the passing of the now lapsed CAB (2016) in thebLok Sabha (Lower House of Parliament) that would have enabled Chakmas and Hajongs to apply for citizenship. AAPSU president Hawa Bagang stated on January 7, 2019, “If the Bill is passed, we will be left with no option but to take up arms to protect our indigenous population.” CAB was passed in the Lok Sabha January 8, 2019, provoking protests across the Northeast. The Bill was later allowed to lapse by not introducing it in the Rajya Sabha (Upper House of Parliament), and General Elections were announced, heralding the dissolution of thenLok Sabha. Any move by the ruling party to bring back the CAB will certainly ignite resentment in the State and the wider Northeast.

July, 29,2019:  “Nightmarch”: by Alpa Shah   

She spent eighteen months in Lalgaon, deep in the forests of Jharkhand among the Adivasis, who form the core of the support base of the Maoists. In the process she learnt their language, ate, slept and lived like them. Such an extended stay, she believed, would help her get a more nuanced understanding of the Adivasis and why they reposed faith in an armed rebel movement which many averred was fighting a losing battle against the might of the Indian State.

The Central Committee leader she was to meet was the soft spoken and urbane Gyanji (name changed), a much-wanted man on the police list. He was typically once part of the privileged educated upper caste who in their youth renounced the comfort of their homes and pledged to become “professional revolutionaries” in the mould of the Marxist-Leninist rebels to wage an armed struggle against oppression, injustice and inequality in society.

Shah had run into Gyanji — a mathematics major who recited Percy Bysshe Shelley and quoted at will from George Bernard Shaw — a year earlier in Lalgaon and subsequently met him briefly on a few occasions. But the meeting in the jungles of Bihar would be one that would be an extended one. However, it turned out to be more than an interview when after two days at the guerrilla camp Shah learnt that Gyanji would be marching with a platoon back to Lalgaon to attend a state-level meeting of Maoists there. Shah wondered if she could accompany him on the march-an arduous trek of 250 kms through dense jungles undertaken at night to avoid the scrutiny of the security forces and the police.

The eager researcher had her way. Disguised as a male guerrilla she joined Gyanji and the platoon and set off on an adventure that would take all of seven nights. Nightmarch: A Journey into India’s Naxal Heartlands, is on the face of it a diary that records events as it unfolded from day one to day seven. But the book is much more than that because Shah weaves into the narrative information that she collated during her earlier research. As a result, what emerges is a vivid portrayal of the Maoists as well as the Adivasi community they profess to serve and what it means to survive in a conflict zone where the state often targets its own citizens.

It is obvious that Shah’s sympathies are with the Adivasis, “some of the most marginalised people in the world”. She had observed first-hand how they were exploited by the local elites who siphoned off development funds meant for them. How management consultants of multinational corporations schemed with the government to acquire land from the Adivasis to set up mining projects. She saw the virtually non-functional health and education infrastructure provided for the community and the hardships Adivasis faced once they were ousted from the forests that they traditionally inhabited.

As for the Maoists, Shah manages to see their human side. But there is no attempt to romanticise their narrative. She does not hesitate to bring out the contradictions that riddle the movement. Thus, the writer notes that the Maoist attempt to create an egalitarian society essentially involves demolishing existing capitalistic structures that create inequality. But to sustain and fund the movement involves exploiting the very economic system that the Maoists wish to demolish. This, she says, has led to tenuous relationships with mining corporations and other vested business interests. It has also led to corruption in the ranks with many lured by their desire to amass wealth and prestige in a society that they supposedly renounced and are fighting against.

Similarly, while Shah sees merit in mobilising marginalised communities to fight inequality and injustice, she sees little merit in the use of arms and violence towards this end. The conclusion she draws is that in an armed struggle the use of weapons and assembling bombs becomes the primary focus and the creation of an equitable society and addressing issues of the people becomes secondary. Moreover, battling the state in India had become an uneven and protracted struggle in which the government forces have inflicted considerable damage on innocent communities that the Naxals live amidst.

Last but not the least, Shah brings out gender discrimination. She notes that the casteless, classless movement where women are treated as equals is dominated by men from upper class or elite backgrounds. This is rather ironic since the societies that the Adivasis come from are more equal and gender-sensitive than the structures set up by the Maoists.

One fascinating revelation that emerges from Shah’s study explains what drew the Adivasis to the Maoists. According to her, it was the “ideology of egalitarianism which guided their humanness” that endeared Maoists to the people. The Naxalites were careful about how they spoke and the tone of voice they adopted while addressing people. They paid attention to little things like leaving their footwear outside before entering a home, sitting on the floor, sharing food and drink and respecting tribal customs. It was these “little things” that earned trust and respect.

As for Adivasi youth joining the Maoists, there were varied reasons: “a fight with a parent or sibling, a love affair forbidden in the villages but accepted in the Naxalite armies, a desire to leave home and see another world”. Some would join, leave and re-join. As Shah puts it: “Moving in and out of the squads seemed like the most natural thing to do for the Adivasi and lower-caste youths who joined the guerrilla armies.”

Some critics might say that Nightmarch is a simplistic analysis written with the western audience in mind. Such an assessment would be unfair given that most Indians have limited access to information on the Maoists movement and its current status. Most published work either see Naxalites through the perspective of the state as enemies or glorify them as revolutionaries. In that context, Shah’s work is a balanced look at the Naxal heartland with the social, historic and economic perspectives kept in context.

In conclusion it would be injustice to the writer if we do not quote a line from her disclaimer at the beginning of an un put down able book — “This is a work of non-fiction.”

Road Construction: Oct., 10, 2019:

On September 26, 2019, Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) cadres set ablaze a JCB machine and a dumper truck engaged in road construction in Bhainsadohar village under Chakarbandha Police Station limits in the Gaya District of Bihar. On September 15, 2019, CPI-Maoist cadres set ablaze one tractor and a JCB machine of a company engaged in road construction in Kutipi village under the Sonua Block (administrative unit) in the West Singhbhum District of Jharkhand. Some posters opposing the road construction were recovered from the spot.,  According to partial data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP, at least 28 such incidents have been reported from across the country since the beginning of 2019 (data till October 6, 2019). Since March 6, 2000, when SATP started compiling data, at least 254 such incidents have been recorded in the country (data till October 6, 2019). Road construction enables SFs to penetrate deep into the Maoists’ erstwhile ‘safe areas’, even as it allows Government to reach out with improved civil governance and developmental services. It constitutes a complex and potentially terminal threat to Maoist influence in these areas, and will be vigorously resisted. These are precisely the reasons why it is imperative that these projects continue at an even more accelerated pace.. https://www.eurasiareview.com/08102019-india-maoists-disrupting-road-networks-analysis/ #MaoistsOfIndia

Will There Be Reunification of Communist Movement in India?

Sunday 3 May 2020 

by Tikaram Sharma

After the massive victory of Right Reaction and blow to the left and democratic forces, particularly to Communists in the 2019 elections, well wishers and good numbers of Communist cadres and sympathizers are realizing the need of reunification of Communist Movement. They believe that only Communists can defeat the Right Reactionary forces. The CPI has always been in its favor of reunification and conveyed its decision to the CPI (M) and other Communist groups to respond.

             Faulty tactics on the part of the Left, as also other democratic forces are responsible for the advancement of the right reaction, particularly the R.S.S. to a large extent. Large number of Shishu Mandirs are running in India for many decades where communalism is being taught to the little children. Whatever they learn in their adolescence age is difficult to remove from their minds. The R.S.S. and its outfits from time to time have asked the Government to check on Madarsas but Communists hardly demanded check on Shishu Mandirs. Religious issues like Ram Mandir in Ayodhya and Hindu Culture in a distorted manner are being spread in the society. And the right reaction is successful in polarization.

Communist and Freedom Movement - Communist Movement in India is a product   of National Freedom movement, the working class struggles, the peasant resistance, students and youth movements etc. and impact of Great Russian Revolution. The Communist Party of India (CPI) came in to existence in December 1925 and spread rapidly. The British Government was scared of the rising Communist movement and tried to crush the newly formed Party through the repressive and historic Meerut Conspiracy Case (1929-33) wherein 32 prominent and leading Communists were arrested on the pretext that they wanted to overthrow the British rule in India once for all. The trial lasted for five years and nothing could be proved against them. However, the defense side was able to publicize the ideology of Communism through their arguments, which used to be published in daily and other newspapers of the country.The prominent leaders of the Communist Party arrested were: S.A. Dange, P.C. Joshi, G. Adhikari, Muzafar Ahmed, Sohan Singh Josh, S.V. Ghate etc.

          It is also important to note that at one stage the Party adopted a wrong policy on national freedom movement under the influence exerted by the Sectarian formulation of colonial thesis adopted by the comintern in the sixth congress in 1928. According to this thesis the Communist should not participate in any movement led by any bourgeois leadership like Gandhi ji or Indian National Congress. In other words no revolution in India is successful without the leadership of Communist Party. However, the famous Dutt- Bradely thesis greatly helped the C.P.I. to make a correct turn and forge ties with the national movement. This ghost of sectarianism is haunting the Communist Movement in India till today.

 In 1936 three mass organizations namely All India Students Federation(AISF), All India Kishan Sabha(AIKS) and Progressive Writers Association(PWA), mainly at the initiative of the CPI, particularly of PC Joshi, who was General Secretary of the party, came into being as joint organizations. In 1943 during Bengal famine a new organization of creative artists, like singers, writers, theatre activists etc. Indian People Theatre Association (I.P.T.A) was formed at the initiative of the party who collected money to start commune and kitchens for famine victims by holding street plays and other programme.The influence of the party was increasing day by day and important personalities of different walks of life were either Communists or associated with these mass organizations. Notable among them are Munsi Prem Chand, Prithvi Raj Kapoor, Rahul Sankritiyayan, Prof. N.G. Ranga, Jawahar Lal Neharu, Subhash Chandr Bose, Satyajit Ray, famous scientist Homi Jahangir Bhabha etc. Apart from freedom struggle in which the scarifies of the party are historic and glorious, these personalities contributed a lot in every walk of life be it art and culture, literature, science and technology; laborers, farmers, students and women movements against exploitation and social injustice.

                  India got independence on 15th August 1947. CPI led by its general secretary PC Joshi welcomed the achievement of freedom. But this line changed after six months or so when the left sectarian and adventurist group led by B.T Ranadive ( B.T.R) changed the line completely by saying that it was a sham independence and Nehru Government should be overthrown. Under BTR leadership the entire line was changed and call for armed overthrown of the Nehru government was given. This line of armed struggle totally isolated CPI from the masses, who were celebrating achievement of freedom. Naturally, the BTR line also opposed all the progressive policies including the public sector, adult franchise, five year plan, foreign policy of the Nehru government etc. The CPI refused to participate in any the elections, which were supposed to be ‘bourgeois hoax’.

 Because of this adventurist line, the party had to suffer a lot. Its membership went down by 90% and the party and mass organizations were smashed. BTR leadership had to be removed in 1950, and gradually new leadership led by Ajay Gosh, S.A Dange, S.V. Ghate, and later C Rajeswar Rao came to the helm of affairs. A correct party line was adopted by supporting the government in the development of the country. It adopted a positive and supportive attitude towards public sector, heavy industrialization and five year planning. It welcomed the Indian Constitution and decided to take part in the first general elections.

 The CPI participated in the first general elections in a state of organizational dislocation. Yet it became the main opposition party, next only to the Congress. It got 27 seats. Had it not suffered the BTR line, it would have emerged as a far more powerful party just behind the Congress, and surely would have won more than 70 Lok Sabha seats. The future of the country would have been different. This is the price party paid for BTR adventurism.

 The CPI also supported the government foreign policy of friendship with Soviet Union and other socialist countries. At the same time it also clarified that it would build the united front of the people to oppose harmful and anti people policies of the government. The party enjoyed great prestige because of correct strategy and tactics, high knowledge level and dedicated self-sacrificing lives of leaders and cadres having significant mass support. As a result, for the first time a Communist government came in to power through ballot in Kerala headed by E.M.S. Namboodiripad in 1957. The C.P.I played a significant role in Goa Libration Movement. Any illusions against the parliamentary electoral line were dispelled. It was proved in practice that elections are not a ‘bourgeois hoax’ but a weapon in the hands of the people.

  The BTR understanding continued to prevail among a section of the party, and contributed later to the rise of Maoism and left sectarianism. Later, it led to the formation of the break-away CPI-M as a new ‘Communist party’. These events only helped the rise of the right reaction in the country.

                After the Chinese attack in 1962 the inner party struggle in the CPI scaled new heights. The majority of the leadership headed by Dange had opposed the Chinese aggression and aligned the Party with the stand taken by Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru. Those who were in minority, later on, split the party at the behest of Maoist China. They believed that Congress cannot be replaced by peaceful democratic path of the parliamentary and extra parliamentary mass movements. It was indispensable to embark sooner rather than later on the road of armed struggle in the cities and in the country side. This group, as mentioned earlier formed a new political party-Communist party of India (Marxist) or CPI (M) in 1964. Till date the party has not t undertaken armed revolution. However, the problem arose when the party took part in parliamentary general election held in 1967. This led a section within it broke away to establish what has come out to be known as Naxalite formation. The Naxalites were fully Maoist. The CPI-M were now not so much under Maoist-Chinese influence, and with time shifted considerably away.

                     The Naxalites were much more influenced by Cultural Revolution in China. Their famous slogan was ‘China’s’ Revolution is our revolution and ‘China’s’ chairman is our chairman. They began the so-called ‘armed struggle’ first of all in Naxalbari in West Bengal. Their strategy was to start and spread in rural areas and then surround and liberate cities and from different parts of the country, converse on and capture Delhi thus thereby to establish the People’s Democratic Dictatorship. The movement could not survive and collapsed because it was totally at variance with the objective conditions in India. One of its tallest leaders Kanu Sanyal admitted in his last days that there political line was not correct. Had it been correct, public could have fully supported them. The CPI (M) barely took up any ideological struggle against the Naxalites beyond branding them as CIA agents. Today Naxalite movement is staggered in small pockets and numerous branches in some parts of the country. This unrealistic theory and practice has helped reactionary and imperialistic forces.

The strategic line of the CPI was of unity and struggle vis-à-vis the Congress and had electoral alliance in 1971 general elections. It became the second largest political party of India. During the period 1969-73 it played a crucial role in nationalization of banks and coal mines. Abolition of privy purses was yet another progressive step taken by the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and CPI whole heartedly supported the government. However the CPI (M) was quite reluctant in these matters. Though it was sympathetic to the Bangladesh revolution but not with any fervor and when India did sent its Army they stated that outside intervention in internal affairs of other country could only lead to negative consequences. On the other hand the CPI was first and foremost to support union government on this crucial issue.

           Jai Prakash Narayan (JP) started a movement in 1973 in Gujarat. It spread immediately to Bihar and other parts of the country. Anyway, hollow slogans like partyless democracy and total revolution were given to target Indian democratic polity and the Left and Democratic Movement. The JP movement grouped together RSS-Jan Sangh (Parent political party of BJP), socialist and ultra Left etc.The CPI opposed this movement tooth and nail and rolling it back particularly in Bihar whereas the CPI (M) was associated with it. In 1975, Indira Gandhi imposed internal emergency in order to maintain law and order in the country as the situation arose due to JP movement. In addition to that she was defeated in a court case filed by Rajnarayan a socialist leader in Allahabad High court, who contested election against her from Raibarely in 1971, challenging her victory. The CPI initially supported the emergency because it thought that it attacked right reaction but opposed it due to its excess at later stage, but by that time it was too late. The CPI (M) on the other hand was nowhere in the scene. Jagjit Singh Lyallpuri a rebel from CPI (M) has given its account in his book, ‘My life my times’. Emergency was lifted and general election held in the country in 1977. The Congress party lost and the Janta Party came into the power and the CPI also suffered a lot.

            There was a great resentment among the CPI leaders as well as cadres regarding the election debacle. Most of its leaders and members blamed Dange for it who was a strong advocate of ‘Unity and struggle with the Congress line’. In 1978 the party congress held at Bhathinda in Punjab. New Political Tactical Line ‘Left Unity’ was adopted which was totally anti Congress.Indira Gandhi wanted to have alliance with the C.P.I. as usual and sent Giani Zail Singh to Ajoy Bhavan to meet the General Secretary Rajeshwar Rao and workout an electoral understanding in Andhra Pradesh where assembly elections were scheduled to be held soon. According to a reliable source, an offer of 60+ seats that the C.P.I. wanted from the Congress Party ( Indira). However the General Secretary turned down the offer. He was of the opinion that there was no political future for the Congress Party. There was anti- Congressism and hatrated towards the Congress (I). Instead the C.P.I. preferred to go with the Brahmanand Congress and the result was the Congress (I) got spectacular victory in these elections while the C.P.I. drew a blank.

                 Prior to it the CPI not only advanced of its own in some states but some leaders and cadres who had left it for the CPI(M) returned to it. The Party was very much in media and its leaders were consulted from time to time by the government in policy matters. This momentum was lost after 1978. Internationally it was the only recognized Communist Party of India. Then onwards the position of the CPI start declining. In order to get more seats in assemblies and parliament it was doing seat adjustment with regional parties like Rashtriya Janta Dal, DMK, AIADMK, Samajwadi Party, Telugu Desam etc. In certain cases it has proved harmful for the party as the party has lost its presence in assemblies like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar where its presence was in good number.

 Division In The Democratic Camp- The Janta Party which was a product of JP movement, consisting of Jan Sangh-R.S.S. and split away group of Congress, Bhartiya Lok Dal and some others came into power in 1977 but could not survive long. Bhartiya Jan Sangh-R.S.S. split from Janta Party in the name of dual membership and formed a new political party the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP). Hence mid-term elections were held in 1980. Indira Gandhi wanted Congress and the CPI alliance to continue but the latter’s leadership did not agree.

                        S.A. Dange, the most outstanding leader of the working class who brought the message of socialism in this land was one of the founder members of the Communist Party of India. He spent several years in jail before and after independence. A masterly public speaker, a brilliant parliamentarian and Marxist historian who exposed Mao-Tse-Tung much before the Indo-China conflict in 1962. This political-ideological line of “Unity & Struggle” was realistic but was not accepted by the sectarian and anti Congress trend.

               Indira Gandhi came into power with a thumbing majority whereas the CPI could not improve its position. In 1984 she was assassinated and Rajiv Gandhi became the Prime Minister. The general elections held thereafter the Congress party won more seats than the previous elections and the BJP got just two seats. In the next general elections held in 1989 the Congress lost the power and a new political formation the Janta Dal came into power with V P Singh as Prime Minister supported from outside by both the left and the BJP. This was the height of the anti —Congressism of the Left parties headed by the CPI (M).

                The Janta Dal government could not complete its tenure and the Congress party came into power and lost it in the General elections held in 1996.The united front, a new political formation, formed government with H D Devegoda as Prime Minister. The CPI became a part of the government with two ministers Indrajit Gupta as Home Minster and Chaturanan Mishra as Agriculture Minister, while CPI (M) refused to join the government and supported it from outside. Deve Gowda was replaced by Inder Kumar Gujral after some time but could not deliver goods for a long time, so after 22 months the United Front government collapsed. Jyoti Bosu’s name was flouted round the corner as a compromisable candidate for Prime Ministership but the highly principled Polit Bureau prevented him for doing so. Jyoti Bosu termed this action of Polit Bureau as ‘Historic blunder’. A historic opportunity was missed to sectarian attitude of the C.P.M. BJP-RSS came to power, as a result. Otherwise India’s history would have been different. Between 1998 to 2004 National Democratic Front (NDA) was in power with Atal Bihari Bajpayee as the Prime Minister of India.

                            In 2004 General Elections no political party was in majority so in order to keep BJP out off power the Left parties including the CPI (M) supported United Progressive Alliance (UPA-1) government with Manmohan Singh of the congress party as the Prime Minister ignoring the party line to keep both the Congress and the BJP on same footing. This was because to save West Bengal Government as there was every possibility of dismissal of the set government in the name of law and order, in case BJP or NDA comes to the power. In this election the Left parties won 62 seats and the attitude of the people was sympathetic towards the Left. The UPA-1 asked the Left Parties to join the government and offered one third of ministerial seats but the Left turned down the offer. This opportunity could be utilized to strengthen the Left movement in the country. Contrary to it the entire Left headed by the CPI (M) withdrew its support from the government after four and a half years on the issue of nuclear deal with United States of America; an issue which may not be clear in the minds of the most of its leaders, leave aside the cadres or the general public. Perhaps they were under the impression that government would not survive without their support but it did survive. The withdrawal opened the flood gates for right reactions.

                  Singur and Nandigram proved waterloo for the Left government of West Bengal. At both the placed government purchased fertile agriculture land from the farmers at very cheap rates and planned to sell it to Tata Motors. There was a great resentment among the the people of state and it paved way for Mamta Banerjee to come into power. Thus 34 years of the Left rule was over. Thereafter the number of Left MPs are decreasing day by day. The domination of left parties headed by CPI (M) reduced drastically and it lost power in Tripura. This was because of refusal of CPM to development work.

Problem of Communist Unity

               The CPI (M) seems reluctant to it and so are the other Communist parties or groups. The CPI (M) believes that the split in the Communist Movement was a historical necessacity which shows that the party is not in favor of reunification. Moreover, as per the policy document of the CPI (M) the revolution in India has to be led by party of the working class and the CPI (M) is the only such party. Question arises will the CPI (M) drop its Sectarian approach from its document? If the answer is no then there is hardly any possibility of reunification.

               At present Communist Movement in India is weak and scattered. Those who believe that after reunification of the Communist Movement alone can defeat the Right Reaction, they are mistaken. In West Bengal, this process is going on for a long time; what is the result? A party which came into existence about 95 years back, contributed a lot in the freedom movement and after independence in the development of the country is conversing day by day, its reason has to be found out. However, the CPI (M) and other Communist parties and groups will not agree to accept the CPI proposal, though the reunification is the need of the hour keeping in view the existing political atmosphere of the country. Hence, in order to defeat the right reaction all the Communists have to come together and form a broad mass front consisting of all progressive and democratic forces.

                The main political task is to isolate and defeat RSS-BJP, and for this purpose to build broad democratic unity. This should be the main task of the left parties.

             As for the Communist Parties, and the other Communist groups the programmatic understanding has to be clarified. Only after prolonged discussion can a unified party programme worked out.

   The Left and the Communist Parties have to give up their anti- congressism. They must realize or recognize the grave danger from the right reaction and communal —fascism the progressive section of the national bourgeoisie have to bring into democratic front.

                  The CPI (M) and Nexilite have to give up their sectarianism.

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