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Business News/ Opinion / Online-views/  Have maoists lost the plot?
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Have maoists lost the plot?

Have maoists lost the plot?

File photo of armed Maoist rebels at an undisclosed training camp in the jungles of Chhatisgarh. APPremium

File photo of armed Maoist rebels at an undisclosed training camp in the jungles of Chhatisgarh. AP

28 July 1972 is the day Charu Mazumdar, co-founder of the Mao-leaning Naxalbari movement, died in police custody in Kolkata. Maoists of the present day take Mazumdar’s declaration in a 1971 issue of Liberation magazine—“Naxalbari has not died and will never die"—quite seriously. As a doff to Mazumdar and his colleagues, the Communist Party of India (Maoist) will observe its traditional Martyrs’ Week from 28 July to 3 August.

It will be a time of concern in areas of Maoist reach. Security forces will be alert in anticipation of Maoist protests. In several areas, transport will stop or be greatly reduced. The call to commemoration by a spokesperson of the Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee of the CPI (Maoist) adds: “By virtue of these sacrifices,"—15,000-plus rebels dead since the late 1960s—“revolutionary movement has been advancing, raising the slogan Naxalbari ek hi rasta (Naxalbari is the only path), with the aim of building liberated areas through area-wise seizure of political power."

File photo of armed Maoist rebels at an undisclosed training camp in the jungles of Chhatisgarh. AP

I’d like to suggest here that this incarnation of the Maoist rebellion has lost its plot. What I call Mark IV—the fourth cycle of left-wing rebellion since Naxalbari in 1967—is dying.

Before obtuse drum beaters in the corridors of power and business rejoice, let me qualify the statement. The pressure of losses, internal stress, and intensifying operations by security forces have cornered Maoist rebels into ever smaller rural or forested pockets in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra. But the rebels will continue to fight for survival and influence even if their operational geography reduces. It will come as no surprise if, in the wake of the end-June killing of innocents by security forces in southern Chhattisgarh, Maoists follow through their threat of targeting the families of police personnel in villages within their reach. Even accounting for the guerilla doctrine of attacking in strength and retreating when weak, it won’t be surprising if Maoists gather to mount a spectacular attack just to remind the establishment—and prospective recruits—about a sting in their tail. The occasional exploding of a mine targeting security forces will continue; and the kidnapping of administrators and politicians—even occasional assassination—will remain part of the Maoist playbook.

But these actions will likely be ultra-local, even with a Maoism Mark V with new strategies and tactics beyond the early 2000s Mark IV blueprint that has kept the rebel machinery going thus far. Focused urban action such as political assassination or targeting business executives could be part of this morphed phase, but it will be in the nature of “revolutionary" incision, not broad-spectrum violence. (Alas, India’s self-propelled negative energies have always ensured a space for armed resistance, left-wing or otherwise.)

Maoists have, for some years, been losing the plot to less violent folk, who use on-site and viral protest, social networking, legal recourse, media and enabling tools such as the Right to Information Act to expose wrongdoing by central and state government-controlled agencies and individuals, and businesses. While the Maoist rebellion, I would argue, has contributed to the rights of forest dwellers, the proposed mining Bill, and even the Planning Commission’s Integrated Action Plan to develop villages vulnerable to Maoist action, equal or greater success is accorded to non-violent movements of protest and exposure. Key people leading protests against projects are not Maoists—as erroneously branded by spin—but local community leaders, activists and lawyers, some of whom I know for a fact have asked Maoists to stay away and avoid piggybacking on them; outright conflict can also backslide a cause. This will remain the wave of the present and the foreseeable future.

Maoists will need to accept that the position and the growth of institutions of protest have evolved beyond them. An ongoing, tiny example: villagers of Nagri near Ranchi are resolutely protesting against the aggressive takeover of their land for the local Indian Institute of Management campus. Maoists are nearby, but they are both unable to help—and unwanted.

Sudeep Chakravarti writes on issues of conflict in South Asia. He is the author of Red Sun: Travels in Naxalite Country and the recently-published Highway 39: Journeys through a Fractured Land. This column focuses on conflict situations that directly affect business.

Respond to this column at rootcause@livemint.com

Also Read | Sudeep Chakravarti’s earlier columns

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Published: 23 Jul 2012, 07:36 PM IST
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