There is a need to identify actors who have illicit connections with the Naxals living around
Shaan Kashyap
We have been told in the past that a huge militia which aspires to overthrow the Indian state with armed rebellion is ‘Gandhi, but with Guns’. This exaltation of sheer violence by Maoists was done by none other than Booker Prize winner author Arundhati Roy. She wrote a long article in The Outlook and British newspaper The Guardian in 2010 and also published a book entitled ‘Walking with the Comrades’. The whole narrative of the Left-Wing Extremism (LWE) was perverted to represent the Maoist guerrillas as Robin Hoods of Indian forests who are waging a war against the poverty and injustice. Are they actually doing so? No.
The last surviving hero of Naxalbari uprising, Kanu Sanyal, was disillusioned with the course of the movement during his last days. After he committed suicide on March 23, 2010 by hanging himself at his residence in Hatighisa village near Naxalbari, there were many reactions from Communist leaders to this disillusionment. Some of them like Sitaram Yechury from CPI (M) while speaking to the Frontline had confirmed, “Of late, particularly after Nandigram and Lalgarh, he has been saying that the line adopted by Maoists does not conform to the revolutionary understanding that the Naxalite movement had at the time when it started.”
The above statement implicitly acknowledges that Maoist movement has taken a criminal turn and is no more a movement which it claimed to represent. However, even the past claims have not been substantiated. Since an imported ideology from China which envisaged overturning democratically elected government, and overthrowing a modern state which came into existence after the long freedom struggle, cannot deliver justice to anyone.
Opium of the Ideology
The most challenging part to fight against the LWE in Red Corridor is of course a better training of our Paramilitary jawans. They should be well trained with guerrilla warfare techniques in hills and forests. Our Army is well trained for it. It must be reminded how 9 Para SF, one of the most accomplished units of the Indian Army, operated in Sri Lanka against the best-trained cadres of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE).
However, a huge threat is the urban segment that persistently legitimises, sympathises with, and patronises the Maoist violence. These ideologues can be found everywhere in the civil society, right from the media, university campuses, lawyers, Human Right activists, NGOs, etc.
One must add that all the major Left parties, be it CPI, CPI (M), CPI (ML) Liberation, have never condemned the Maoist violence vocally. Their lager cadre, be it in media, student outfits, labour unions, academics associated with them, and others are working diligently to legitimise this violence-ridden ideology.
One can easily find posters and banners across the university campuses like JNU, Jadavpur University, and others, exalting the Naxalbari uprising and Maoism. They look up to it as some kind of emancipating pathway. They all belong to Left wing student associations such as AISA, DSU, BASO, etc.
Recently, Gadchiroli sessions court in Maharashtra convicted DU professor G N Saibaba, JNU student Hem Mishra, former journalist Prashant Rahi and three others for Maoist links. This must ring an alarm now. The mushrooming of the Maoist ideology in the urban sphere is being groomed by respectable members of the civil society. They are earning a handsome livelihood and assistance under the aegis of the Indian state, while working against the state itself.
The Indian state now must make fast the surveillance in urban sphere as well. It needs to identify those actors who have illicit connections with the Naxals living around.
(The writer is a student of Modern History at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi)
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