India-Dual Power in a Guerrilla Zone-Part 2
by
Bernard D'Mello and Gautam Navlakha
Maoist Resistance
For instance, on July 16, 2006, the PLGA
attacked the SJ-SPO-organised, security forces-protected Errabore camp in
Dantewada to free the detainees there. On March 15, 2007, the PLGA attacked a
police camp that had been set up in a girls' school in Ranibodli (in Bijapur
police district), killing 68 policemen, a significant proportion of them
Special Police Officers (SPOs), and looted weapons, making sure that all the
schoolgirls in the hostel were safe. It is significant that after most of such
attacks the Party had appealed to the SPOs (locally recruited tribal youth) to
quit their jobs and seek the people's pardon. In one such statement issued
after the Ranibodli raid, Gudsa Usendi, the Dandakaranya Party spokesperson
addresses these desperadoes:
[T]he government is playing a dirty and
dangerous game of keeping you in the front and making you kill your own
brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers. That's why we are asking you to quit
this job.
Clearly, given the backing of the Party and the
PLGA, the tribal masses could not be terrified into submission. But the SJ-SPO
operation went on. On January 8, 2009, in the village of Singaram (Dantewada
district), the SPOs displayed a level of savagery, indeed, barbarity that was
shocking -- they took their hostages to a canal and butchered them, taking
turns in raping the women before slaughtering them. But repression breeds
resistance, and severe repression only hardens the resistance.
In September 2009, the Union Home Ministry, with
the joint command that it had organised to coordinate the counterinsurgency
operations of the central security forces with the police forces of the seven
states -- Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Orissa, Maharashtra,
and West Bengal -- where the Maoist movement was spreading, launched OGH.
Significantly, Dantewada -- the epicentre of what the Indian state calls
"left-wing extremism" -- was where OGH began, in the
Kishtaram-Gollapalli area. As expected the Maoists responded with an
intensification of their "tactical counter-offensive campaign".
On April 6, 2010, PLGA guerrillas the size of a
small battalion ambushed troops of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF),
including members of COBRA (Commando Battalion for Resolute Action), modelled
on the lines of the Andhra Pradesh Greyhounds, between Tadimetla and Mukaram
villages, killing 76 of the state troops. In the statement issued after the
attack, in a section entitled "why was this counter-attack carried
out?" the Party mentions, among other things, the barbaric acts of the
state forces, the Singaram incident (the state atrocity mentioned above, in
particular). The press release goes on to say:
Behind the April 6 attack on [the] CRPF in
Tadimetla lies the anguish, sorrow, insults, exploitation and repression
suffered by thousands of adivasis of Bastar. This is incomprehensible to those
hypocrites and empty phrase-mongers who repeat endlessly that Naxalites should
abjure violence.
There's a lot more detail one can add, but
suffice it to say that OGH has been stepped up from January of this year. In
the last major incident in Edsametta village on the night of May 17 in Bijapur
district, personnel of the COBRA fired unilaterally and indiscriminately,
killing eight ordinary adivasis, including four minors, none of whom were
Maoists. This deliberate targeting of the support base of the Maoists is part
and parcel of the state's counterinsurgency policy. It occurs so often, for
instance, what the villagers of Sarkeguda, Kothaguda and Rajpenta (in Bijapur
district in southern Chhattisgarh) suffered on June 28 last year when 19 of
them were gunned down, even when there was no exchange of fire. It is as if
whoever supports the Maoists deserves to be killed, for, according to state
intelligence, these were villages that backed the Maoists.
Ethics of the Violence of the Oppressed
Now where was the chorus of righteous
indignation against Maoist violence when SJ was committing crimes against
humanity and when OGH was (and is) doing the same? We know what decent
political behaviour is, and certainly a lot better than the leaders of this
chorus. But we owe it to ourselves to analyse what happened, this on our terms
and for our purposes. Given the fact that ordinary adivasis, including those in
the Maoist militia and the PLGA, have suffered so much at the hands of their
oppressors, there surely is a widespread emotional need to avenge deeply felt
wrongs (i.e., seek revenge) and there must be a lot of frustrated and tortured
people who are ready to sacrifice their lives to avenge themselves or their
fellow victims. We do not think that we ought to condemn their motives or their
violent actions, and we don't think or recommend that the CPI (Maoist) do the
same. Indeed, we think that the CPI (Maoist) is doing exactly what we think is
the right thing to do -- it has mobilised these people in a collective struggle
to change the very conditions which have driven some of their fellow men and
women to engage in violent acts of revenge.
In the context and circumstances we have
outlined, and given the fact that the Constitution and the law have failed to
bring justice to the victims, the violence of the oppressed, led by the
Maoists, is a necessity. Or, to put it differently, in the context and
circumstances, the use of violence is a necessary evil. Moreover, the violence
of the oppressed is serving the cause of justice. And, given that the law and
the Constitution have let the victims down, it is morally justified. The
oppressed have been left with no other way but to challenge the violence that
reproduces and maintains their oppression.
Nevertheless, there are dehumanising aspects of
the violence of the oppressed. We are radical-left intellectuals who have
learnt from Marxists, Marxist-Leninists, Maoists, feminists, ecologists,
dalits, tribals, oppressed nationalists, civil libertarians and peace
campaigners, indeed, even from pacifists. Often, violence and non-violence are
contrasted as mutually exclusive ways of confronting oppression, and the Maoist
way is claimed to be exclusively violent. This is far from the truth. At the
heart of the political activity of the Maoists is organising and convincing
people, not only of the need to fight against oppression, but of the need for a
new society free of oppression, and most of this political activity involves
only non-violent confrontation, albeit in a more committed manner. In the best
tradition of the philosophy of non-violent resistance, Maoist practice is based
on the "notion of witness" -- a small number of highly committed
revolutionaries, by force of example, involving a great deal of sacrifice, and
taking huge risks, teach a large number of people and, in the process, change
the political consciousness of these people and win them over in the collective
struggle for freedom and justice.
In their violent political resistance, however,
we feel that the Maoists need to take account of the entire set of
consequences. It is heartening to find that in the fight against the oppressors
and their hired combatants, the Maoists are now sensitive to the injuries and
deaths that they inflict on those who serve or protect the oppressors but who
have to do so because they have little choice. Like the People's Union for
Democratic Rights, we too want to persuade the revolutionaries to specify
certain limiting conditions for the deployment of violent means, like the
Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions and Protocol II relating to
non-international armed conflict. Cruelty and brutality must never be a part of
the means of revolution. Another consequence of violent means is that the mass
base of Maoists then comes under attack and the Maoists are often unable to
protect these supporters.
Political Goals of the Guerrilla Warfare
While the condemnation of the Darba ambush by
the anti-terrorist chorus ought to be subjected to criticism, it is important
that there is consistent and regular counter-political propaganda which places
such incidents in a political perspective and articulates the political goal of
the guerrilla warfare waged by the Maoists. For the Maoists, if we understand
them correctly, this war is not merely the continuation of politics by other
means. The political situation had developed to a stage beyond which it could
not proceed by the usual means, and in the course of the war the Maoists are
trying to sweep away the obstacles in order to achieve their political aims. At
present, the Indian state, on behalf of the ruling classes, is waging this war
to enable private, including foreign direct, investment in the industrial --
mainly the mining -- sector, while the Maoists -- again, in the present -- are
fighting a war of resistance, a just war for the physical security of the
adivasis, for the habitability of their natural environment as well as for the
preservation of their socio-cultural environment. Contrary to official
propaganda, in Bastar the war waged by the Indian state is not for the
"development and welfare" of the adivasis; indeed, as a result of
this "dirty war", the lives and livelihoods of the adivasis are under
severe attack.
While this political message may be clear to
many living in the proximity of the war zone, it is generally not understood
outside the war zone(s). Hence, there is a need to explain to people all over
the country why this war is being waged and in whose interests it is being
fought. The PLGA is an armed body for carrying out the political tasks of the
revolution and hence it is the responsibility of the Party to explain the
politics behind every major strike by the revolutionaries. The paucity of such
propaganda outside the war zone(s) is a weakness that the CPI (Maoist) has to
overcome if it is to retain the credibility of its political project.
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