Opinion View from the right: Maoist menace

The Organiser refers to the injuries sustained by some CRPF personnel also in the encounter and observes that it was indicative of the fact that it was not a peaceful gathering of villagers. The Parivar journal refers to the response of CRPF Director General K. Vijay Kumar to the “peaceful gathering” claim. Kumar has been quoted as saying: “The villagers do not gather at the dead of the night in the middle of the forest to discuss forthcoming festival arrangements.” Kumar had reportedly maintained that people from four villages were present and they were part of the “Jan Militia” the Naxalites were organising to launch a major offensive against the CRPF, which was at the forefront of the anti-Maoist operation. He added that the first firing came from the Naxal gathering, after which the CRPF men could not but retaliate. At least six personnel were injured and four of them received bullet injuries. Kumar said that Maoist sympathisers had earlier claimed that the men in uniform were injured in friendly fire indulged in deliberately to create evidence of an encounter.

On the reactions to the same operation, the Organiser says that “The very fact that the so-called human rights activists and left-desperadoes have condemned the killings gives credence to the police version, that it was a genuine operation. For, going by the past track record, these arm-chair bourgeois-anarchists, stationed in their cosy air-conditioned rooms, venture out to voice their concern only when the Maoists are injured or killed. They unfailingly keep quiet when convoys of security forces are blown up or when the poor tribals are tortured, maimed or killed by the terrorists on suspicion of being informers. The names that have issued a statement this round, asking for a judicial probe, are the same as before, their number limited to half a dozen.”

VAIDIK AND SAEED

Ved Pratap Vadik’s recent meeting with Hafiz Saeed in Pakistan stirred a major controversy, with the Congress and other opposition parties demanding a categorical clarification from the BJP-led government as to who organised it, how and why. An opinion piece in the Organiser by Jaibans Singh (“Lesson Learnt from Saeed-Vaidik meeting”) says: “In his capacity of being a journalist, albeit semi-retired and out of the mainstream, Vaidik has the right to meet all persons across the spectrum… One, however, wonders as to how he could control his revulsion while coming face-to-face with a person like Hafiz Saeed who harbours so much venom against his country. The justification for the meeting that he is now presenting and the outcome that he is talking about is something that the nation is finding rather difficult to digest. If his action was designed to get the people of the two countries closer… he has failed miserably. He has, instead, caused considerable embarrassment to his country and his government. If Ved Prakash Vaidik or anybody else feels that terrorist leaders in Pakistan… can be deviated [sic] from their goal, they are living in a fool’s paradise… This is the enduring lesson that has been learnt from the unseemly and unfortunate incident.”

WEST ASIA

“The dark tunnel of fundamentalist thinking” is how Panchjanya views the current violence in West Asia. The Hindi weekly says in an editorial that it has raised several questions. The first being about the capitalist system, because the spread of violence from Syria to Iraq can be traced to the weapons supplied. The second is the thinking which makes people slaughter those sharing their faith, but belonging to another sect. The third is for those claiming to hold a franchise over wisdom and humanism, “who turn their face away from the grief marking Mosul, but beat the trumpet of Gaza”.

Compiled by Pradeep Kaushal