Opinion Recognising the Maoist threat
Its a bizarre perversion of truth. Maoists massacre 76 security personnel in Dantewada in Chhattisgarh....
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Its a bizarre perversion of truth. Maoists massacre 76 security personnel in Dantewada in Chhattisgarh,and suddenly a whole battalion of human rights activists has started crying hoarse that the Indian State is waging a war on its own people. Pray,who is waging a war on whom? P. Chidambaram,who has brought much-needed focus and commitment to the Home Ministry after five years of dangerous drift in UPA-I,was absolutely clinical in setting the record straight after visiting Dantewada. If this is a warand I wish to say that we have never used the wordit is a war that has been thrust upon the State by those who do not have a legitimate right to carry weapons or to kill. The Indian Statethe Central Government and the affected state Governmentsis discharging its legal and Constitutional duty to protect the people.
The Communist Party of India (Maoist),whose largest constituent earlier called itself the Peoples War Group,has never hidden its aim of overthrowing the Indian State,using violence as the midwife for the birth of a new one-party dictatorship. That dictatorship would be just a variant of the Stalinist state in the now-extinct Soviet Union,or the state that spread terror and mayhem in China during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution sponsored by Mao Zedong himself,or the Mao-inspired Pol Pot regime in Cambodia.
Maoists say they are fighting the Indian State because it is anti-people. But they define people in a very restrictive and self-serving manner. Even the poor,if they defy Maoists ideology and practice,invite the same treatment meted out to non-people. In Pol Pots Killing Fields in Cambodia,as many as 1.5 million such non-people,in a population of 7 million,lost their lives in the 20th centurys worst genocide. Millions of non-people perished in other manifestations of communist violence in the Soviet Union and China.
Maoists reject the Indian Constitution and dismiss Indias democracy as fake democracy. They dont even believe in the idea and ideal of India as one nation. India,according to them,is an artificially and forcibly united entity. Hence,every secessionist movement receives their support. Havent we heard Arundhati Roy and other defenders of Maoists deriding the Indian Army in Kashmir as an occupation force and supporting the call for azaadi? Only the purblind will fail to see the convergent strategic goals of Maoists and the Islamist terrorists backed by Islamabad. Do you think the ISI would be indifferent or unhappy when Maoist insurgents attack our security forces and their supporters create hatred against the Indian State amongst members of the intelligentsia,academia and media? Recall how some pro-naxal student organisations celebrated the Dantewada massacre on the JNU campus.
Dantewada,therefore,has forewarned India. Many more massacres,even bigger ones,will take place if the Maoist menace is not eliminated. Even targeted assassinations of high-profile representatives of the Indian State cannot to be ruled out. The Maoists war against the Indian State will be a protracted one. Home Secretary Gopal K Pillai,one of the finest officers we have in Indias senior bureaucracy,did a signal service to the nation recently by disclosing,citing Maoists own literature,their plan to overthrow the Indian democracy through armed struggle by 2050. Obviously,Pillai and Chidambaram know much more about the Maoists ominous plans than the Government is willing to reveal for operational reasons. Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh was not talking flippantly when he described,as early as in April 2006,that naxalism posed the greatest threat to Indias internal security.
It is distressing to see that Chidambarams serious approach to tackling this threat is not getting adequate support from within the Congress and the ruling coalition. How can anyone fault him for affirming that the State has a legitimate right to deploy its security forces to resist,apprehend and,if necessary,neutralise militants who are determined to strike at the very roots of the nation? We,common citizens,too have a duty to heed Dantewadas message. The Indian State,with all its imperfections,is our State. We must rise to its defence because it defends us and the nation from external and internal foes. It guarantees our rights and freedoms,which are non-discriminatory in our enlightened Constitution. True,many of its instrumentalities are doing an infuriatingly shoddy job of ensuring justice,honour and dignity to the poor,especially to our tribal brethren. Only the heartless can deny this shaming reality. But isnt it our duty as citizens to reform this condition through social,political and individual action? In particular,we must force the top leaders of major political parties to reform their corruption-ridden politics and governance,which have created a fertile ground for the poisonous weed of Maoism to grow. They must be made to see the havoc that corruption is wreaking on well-intentioned development projects at the grassroots,denying the poor their legitimate entitlements. Also,they must realise that unless corruption is curbed at the top,little is going to change at the bottom.
However,in recognising the infirmities of the Indian State,let us not give legitimacy to an anti-Constitutional,anti-religious and anti-national foreign ideology that is out to destroy India. We can indeed cure Indias myriad ills by relying on our democratic system,on our own socio-cultural-spiritual ethos,(which must include the many life-enriching ingredients of our tribal ethos) and on rediscovery of the superior power of non-violence.
(Write to: sudheenkulkarni@gmail.com)
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