BackAn anniversary of great shame
CPI (Maoist), on 21 Sep, will complete 10 years of existence, and this anniversary will again remind us of our acute incompleteness in things such as governance and delivery of justice
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How time flies.
Less than a month from now, on 21 September, the Communist Party of India (Maoist), or CPI (Maoist), will complete 10 years of existence. The day will mark the anniversary when two major left-wing rebel factions—one dominant in south-central India, the other in the north—banded together to form India’s pre-eminent rebel group.
For all the drumbeating and spectacular operations the two rebels may indulge in to celebrate this anniversary, for India it will be an anniversary of great shame. After all, rebellion is really a reflection.
The anniversary will again remind us of our acute incompleteness in things that matter at our deepest constitutional core: governance; delivery of justice; delivery of development; and delivery of dignity.
It will be another reminder of where we have succeeded only too well: corruption and mis-governance; free, prior and informed consent for projects to transform India, instead opting for minimal consultation with citizens; and arrogance that permits public servants to make servants of the public.
Such rebel ammunition may come cloaked in obsolete and often-twisted rhetoric of a Mao or Marx or Lenin, but has an entirely home-grown core more potent than any improvised explosive device.
If such truth hurts, and impedes our journey to the high table of global power, by all means let’s avoid it.
On this anniversary let’s make a collective resolution to kill the rebels. Box them in. Compel them to surrender or die. Play to win the zero-sum game of your-human-rights-violations-are-greater-than-mine. Clear the forested, mineral-rich lands of such pestilence, hold on to that advantage with massive application of force, ignore collateral death and destruction to build future prosperity. Show such cynics, such wilful escapees from the mesmerizing dream of achhe din (good days), the virtue of self-fulfilling prophecy that at once sweeps under a magic carpet all of India’s ills and illusions.
But we must have courage to not blame the rebels for India’s failings as a nation.
To put things in perspective, the 10-year timeline is for the CPI (Maoist), not left-wing rebellion. Such rebellion, or movement, has been around through wax and wane since the cusp of India’s independence, from Tebhaga in West Bengal to Telangana; from the so-called Naxalite movement that erupted in 1967 to the rash of rebellion though the 1980s and 1990s.
Intense left-wing rebellion is a part of India’s fabric. It has kept pace with the country’s growth in self-belief, stature and even undeniable development that has brought for tens of millions the benefits of affirmative action, of socio-economic progress. Rebellion can’t live so long without enduring systemic rot. Besides, the rebels are really us.
Forget 1947. Take 1967. Three villages near Naxalbari. In one district: Darjeeling. In one state: West Bengal. To now: close to a hundred districts across nine states, marked as affected or vulnerable to Maoist rebel influence by home ministry estimates. Four years back that count was nearly a third of India’s 600-plus districts, across 14 states.
Truth? Dare you believe it?
When future anniversaries come around, there may not be a CPI (Maoist) as we know it. Tens of thousands of additional paramilitaries are to be deployed into areas of southern Chhattisgarh, and adjacent areas in Odisha and Maharashtra, in an attempt to contain and destroy this redoubt of present-day rebellion. It is likely that rebel strength will be further whittled down by death, surrender and arrest, from an estimated 8,000 or so now (it was estimated at 20,000 less than a decade ago). Indeed, the CPI (Maoist) leadership freely admits to great diminishing of numbers and operational area.
The CPI (Maoist) could fracture, torn by government pressure, internal contradictions—even egos—and need to control territory, which brings both recruits and revenue. For several years such considerations kept apart the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) People’s Warand the Maoist Communist Centre of India till a need for survival, and ambition, brought them together in 2004.
Quite like the 1970s and 1980s, several rebel leaders—some as warlords, really—could stake claims to territory, some even protected by politicians; an old game of give and take. Some groups, allied to central purpose, but deliberately splintered to hide, and operate more easily, may form small cells across the zones of deprivation and destitution in India. This is work-in-progress.
Rebellion will remain, or resurface, as long as root causes for rebellion remain: anger and desperation as hors d’oeuvre, entrée and dessert. We can dine out on that for several anniversaries.
Sudeep Chakravarti’s latest book is Clear.Hold.Build: Hard Lessons of Business and Human Rights in India. His previous books include Red Sun: Travels in Naxalite Country and
Highway 39: Journeys through a Fractured Land. This column, which focuses on conflict situations in South Asia that directly affect business, runs on Fridays.
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