Maoists,
Naxilites’ threat to India
Mohammad Jamil
The Central Reserve Police Force (CPRF) of India has approached the
‘Ministries of Communications and Information Technology’ and ‘Science and
Technology’ with a view to acquiring sophisticated communication equipment, and
improving on their fire power.
The CPRF wants to acquire this equipment to help its troops tackle the
Naxal problem in 80 Left Wing Extremism (LWE) affected districts in nine
states. According to the annual report of the UN Secretary General on Children
and Armed Conflict, “Maoist armed groups were recruiting and indoctrinating
children and constituted children’s squads and associations such as Bal Dastas,
Bal Sangham and Bal Manch, as part of mass mobilization”. The Maoists are using
strategy of Salwa Judum, anti-Maoists group supported by the Government, in
which children were being recruited through intimidation and abduction. Apart
from that, the Maoists recently abducted railway employees, including a station
master in Bihar’s Jamul district of India but later released 16 of them in a
forest.
The Maoists threat in India is waxing while India is deliberately
downplaying the issue to prove that India has neither major law and order
problem nor centrifugal tendencies. But the world has started understanding the
realities on ground which India has been trying to hide. India has been blaming
Pakistan for the freedom movement in occupied Kashmir, what it calls
insurgency, but who is to blame for the Naxalite insurgency in Andhra Pradesh,
Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Uttaranchal and other Indian States? It is
widely felt that Naxalites is no more a law and order problem, but poses a
threat to internal security, as is evident from the declaration of a ‘Compact
Revolutionary Zone’ of ‘Red Corridor’ from Nepal to Tamil Nadu - accounting for
almost a third of the country’s total area’ (The Statesman - August 28, 2006).
The Indian Government’s ‘multi-pronged approach’ had no effect on rising
Naxalite influence. The Naxalite movement is a movement against economic
deprivation and brutality of the state or central government’s law enforcing
agencies. The Naxalite ideology has great appeal for marginalised strata
(particularly dalit and adivasis) of India’s caste-ridden society. The
Naxalites’ aim, as contained in their Central Committee’s resolution (1980) is:
“Homogenous and contiguous forested area around Bastar Division (since divided
into Bastar, Dantewada and Kanker Districts of Chhatisgarh) and adjoining areas
of Adilabad, Karimnagar, Khammam, East Godavari Districts of Andhra Pradesh,
Chandrapur and Garchehiroli district of Maharastra, Balaghat districts of
Madhya Pradesh, Malkagiri and Koraput districts of Orissa would comprise the
area of Dandakarnaya, which would be liberated and used as base for spreading
people’s democratic revolution”. The term “Naxalite” has the origin in
Naxalbari village (West Bengal) where Kanhu Sanyal had presented the concept of
forcible protest against the social order relating to holding of property and
sharing of social benefits.
For him, the objective was “organizing peasants to bring about land
reform through radical means including violence”. Charu Mazumdar had initiated
the Naxalite movement in 1965, and the world came to know of the movement in
1967 when the Beijing Radio reported about peasants’ armed struggle at Naxalbari
(Silliguri division of West Bengal). In July 1972, the police arrested Charu
Mazumdar and later tortured him to death on the night of July 27-28. Anyhow,
the Naxalites vow to carve out an independent zone extending from Nepal through
Bihar and then to Dandakarnaya region extending up to Tamil Nadu to give them
access to the Bay of Bengal as well as the Indian Ocean. The populist appeal of
the movement’s ideology reflects that it would soon assume international
dimensions. India’s Lieutenant General K.M. Seth - who retired from the army in
1997 and was governor of Chhattisgarh, Tripura and Madya Pradesh – had
lamented: “Unfortunately, the threat to internal security from Naxalites has
assumed dangerous proportions and can no longer be whisked away. They have
suffered and bled heavily, and also caused huge human casualties exceeding
13,000 uniformed personnel and 53,000 civilians during the last 25 years”.
In this backdrop, Naxalites would remain a pain in the neck for India
for a long time to come. It is unfortunate that the US and the West do not see
any threat of disintegration of India and threat of its nukes falling in the
hands of insurgents, terrorists or Communists. According to South Asia
Terrorism Portal’s report 2007, “at least 231 of the country’s 608 Districts
were afflicted, at differing intensities, by various insurgent and terrorist
movements. Terrorism in Jammu & Kashmir (12 of the States 14 Districts), in
different States of the Northeast (54 Districts) and Left Wing extremism
(affecting at least 165 Districts in 14 States) continues to pose serious
challenges to the country’s security framework. In addition, wide areas of the
country appear to have ‘fallen off the map’ of good governance, and are acutely
susceptible to violent political mobilization, lawlessness and organized
criminal activity”. In this backdrop one can conclude that India is awash with
home-grown terrorist organizations and can implode from within without any
outside effort.
Despite the rhetoric of having good relations with Pakistan, India is
keeping the focus entirely spotted on Pakistan to demonise it as a state,
denigrate its agencies and its military, to project it as a state sponsoring
terrorism globally, to isolate it internationally so that Pakistan is not
entrusted with any role in post-drawdown Afghanistan. But this path is fraught
with dangers because the escalation of tensions and then war between the two
nuclear states could be disastrous. It is therefore in the best interest of
both India and Pakistan to resolve all outstanding issues through dialogue,
when it has been established that Pakistan as a state is not involved in Mumbai
blasts. What Indian leadership should understand that India does not have the
history of a cohesive nation except for a brief period under Ashoka and Akbar.
If Indian leadership does not stop inhuman treatment to its minorities then
there would be reaction from the insurgents and it will not be possible to keep
India united.
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