Tags:
Journalism of Courage
It’s here, in this busy little town on Nepal’s border with India, that you realise how simple it is for anyone, even Maoists, to cross over.
All you need to do is drive to Raxaul, 50 km from Motihari in Bihar, park your car and hop on to a cycle rickshaw or simply walk across the little bridge that links the two countries.
No questions asked, no checks. Not on the Indian side, not at the Nepal frontier.
Bored securitymen wave you on, assuming you are tourists with plenty of time to shop. Some are even helpful: ‘‘Don’t pay more than ten rupees, Indian, for the rickshaw.’’
As you enter Birganj, you see a board directing you to Kathmandu, 270 km away. Patna is even less. Touts pester you, asking you where you are headed. If you don’t have Nepalese currency, there’s no problem. This is one place where the Indian rupee is sturdy, buys more. ‘‘Don’t worry, we can take you anywhere,’’ they promise.
Taking advantage of Bihar’s poor policing, an administration which has collapsed, heavy traffic—freight trucks from both sides clog border roads— and the highly porous 740 km border that the State shares with Nepal, the People’s War and Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) have found their way north to join hands with Nepal Maoists.
It’s the connection they have worked years to establish, one that’s central to their plans for a Compact Revolutionary Zone stretching from Andhra to Nepal through the forests of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Bihar.
With a border so permeable, it’s easy for Maoists on either side to meet and exchange views, money, even arms.
Entering Nepal, you recall what Vara Vara Rao—considered to be the PWG’s ideologue, representing them in talks with the Andhra government—explained in faraway Hyderabad: ‘‘The People’s War has a serious relationship with Nepal’s revolutionaries (CPN-M or the Maoists) and they are in regular touch, aware that winning a revolution in Nepal may not be such a big thing but to sustain it againt US imperialism and Indian hegemony will be really big.’’
Patna woke up on a February morning last year to discover an MCC hideout in the heart of the city, the cadres playing host to their Nepalese counterparts.
In fact, Nepal Maoists are said to have sanctuaries in the forests of Bagaha on the Indian side. When the MCC and PWG met in the Jharkhand forests, they made it a point to declare that they would back their Nepal comrades all the way.
‘‘It’s the Nepal connection, which helped the MCC and PWG extend their theatres of operation from central and south Bihar, and Jharkhand, to the border districts in the north. In July 2001, Naxal groups of India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka set up the CCOMPOSA or the Coordination Committee of Maoist Parties of South Asia to network Left wing extremism,’’ says a Bihar official.
The border districts of Bihar are fertile for the growth of Left-wing extremism. Most people live off the land, there’s little or no industry, very few jobs and you can feel the tension between the exploited and the exploiter. With police virtually invisible—ditto for those who are supposed to maintain roads—conditions are ripe for the ‘‘people’s war’’ to take root.
Something which has been bothering the manager of a restaurant in Birganj. ‘‘Look at your side of the border. Raxaul never had a decent restaurant. We used to laugh at Bihar because here you can get anything you want… Carlsberg, electronic toys, cyber cafe.
But your Maoists and our Maoists are trouble now and this will hurt us. When will India clamp down?’’ he asks. He may as well ask Delhi.
