BackThe creative side of propaganda
The insurgents use various means of propaganda to attract the masses, while the state comes up with its own counter techniques
Premium
What’s with government officers and the Maoist rebellion that spurs their creativity?
Take Rajiv Kumar, a former director general of police (DGP) in Jharkhand, currently heading the state’s home guards and fire services.
Pratyavartan—The Homecoming opened in state capital Ranchi last week to rave reviews from the state’s media. In it, Kumar reprises his role as DGP (he held the real job till February this year). The movie has cast several of his police colleagues. The storyline disparages Maoists for moving away from a path of ideology to thuggery—thereby accepting the logic that rebellion is good as long as it’s ideologically sound—and urges rebels to accept the state’s policy of surrender and rehabilitation. The Homecoming is co-presented by Jharkhand Police and funded by the government.
The movie is based on a script Kumar wrote and titled Phir Ek Nayee Subah Hogi (loosely translated as A New Dawn). That in turn was based on a similar play Kumar wrote during his stint as inspector general of police of Jharkhand’s Palamu Range, for long a Maoist battle zone. It was enacted in several such zones over 2002-03, with policemen co-opted into the cast alongside professional actors.
Later posted as inspector general in Bokaro, he scripted a radio-play drawn from the same fount, called Ek Naya Savera (A New Dawn), that went on the air on local stations of All India Radio. The plot revolved around a few youngsters going missing from a village, and ending up dead as Maoists. Then a bunch of villagers educate other villagers about the virtue of staying away from ‘anti-social’ groups. (The Maoists threatened to blow up radio stations if the show continued. The police persisted with 17 half-hour episodes aired on Saturday evenings.)
It isn’t unusual for police to fund propaganda. The police departments of most states budget for it. States in the whirl of the Maoist rebellion tend to be a little more creative with their psychological operations, or psy-ops. Chhattisgarh Police, for instance, sponsored anti-Maoist essay competitions in schools.
A former senior officer with Chhattisgarh government, B.K.S. Ray—in the late 2000s tasked with heading anti-Maoist operations—even wrote a novel. He once offered me a glimpse of a chapter from a work-in-progress manuscript during a visit to his office in Raipur. It was filled with quotes by the philosopher Herbert Marcuse. One character asks of another: “Naxalism is a failed ideology, isn’t it?"
I had read that aloud to him. “It’s still around, isn’t it? So would you say that the state too has…?"
“It’s set in the sixties and seventies," Ray cut in. “It’s against Naxalism. I am proofing it now. Then I will show it to K.P.S. Gill."
After evidently fruitful oversight by that policeman of legend, the manuscript was published in 2007 as The Revolutionary: Saga of a Struggle Against Terror and Tyranny. Ray has also published collections of short stories, and confessed that he was a busy poet. Indeed, in his 1999 collection Dream Songs and Shadows, one poem, an outpouring of dilemma titled A Bureaucrat’s Armour, describes a “decision-making soul" suspended “between positive and negative" and “reconciling the opposites like a hot-cold beverage".
Propaganda and angst can be uneasy companions, and it isn’t clear how much such ventures contribute to winning over rebels and vulnerable people they mark for recruitment or deliverance in the revolutionary marketplace. At any rate, it can’t be more than the virtues of good governance, delivery of justice and limiting collateral brutality while reclaiming space—geographical and ideological—from Maoist rebels. But such works will continue to be written and funded alongside clearly left-of-centre works that, as a flip of the coin glorify rebellion and demonize police and the state; and more mainstream books, plays, poetry and cinema that attempt to portray both sides.
Anyway, good for Kumar. As a writer I envy him a bit. Though I write extensively on the Maoist rebellion, and have also seen my non-fiction narrative Red Sun adapted as a play and performed at a prestigious theatre competition in Chennai, I’ve missed the cut in movies beyond my work being used unacknowledged. A 2010 meeting in Mumbai with a director of big budget ‘Bollywood’ movies began well. After I briefed him and his core team for nearly two hours, a relative of his turned to the maestro and said: “Boss, lagta hai item number difficult hoga."
There it rests. No dancing Maoists, no movie glory.
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. Respond to this column at rootcause@livemint.com
Unlock a world of Benefits! From insightful newsletters to real-time stock tracking, breaking news and a personalized newsfeed – it's all here, just a click away! Login Now!
