Around an year back, I had written a post about how the Chhattisgarh government’s tactics were serving to destroy the entire social structure of the Bastar tribes (http://resistancerebellionanddeath.blogspot.com/2008/08/do-read-this-and-think-youve-nothing-to.html). A year down the line, the very tactics, endorsed by the local media, the urban middle and upper class, and the central government, and conveniently ignored by the national media, have been adopted on a nationwide scale. A recent article in Tehelka, the only publication which regularly tries to communicate the tribal’s plight, has prompted me to express my views on this extremely significant, but again, largely ignored, move by the Indian government.
In the words of the home minister, P Chidambarm, a counter-insurgency militia has been deployed to wipe out the naxalites from India. As the Tehelka article pointed out, the biggest discrepancy in the state’s ‘elimination strategy’ is that the enemy in this military operation is unidentifiable. From the home ministers’ standpoint, it seems it’s the naxals. But who are the naxalites? The oxford and Webster dictionaries still don’t recognize the word, although the oxford dictionary does consider the words ghee, pakora, samosa, and tandoori significant enough to be included. Wikipedia offers a very one-dimensional labeling of the naxalites as a group of violent communists who have rejected parliamentary democracy and have vowed to rule the people by imposing dictatorship of their party.
The churlishness of these disinterested third-parties aside, who would the home minister term as a naxalite. A simplistic definition would be someone who subscribes to the naxalite/maoist ideology. But even the staunchest anti-naxalite would agree with the fact that most of those who have taken up arms to combat the state are from the most oppressed, disenfranchised and illiterate sections of the society. The so-called ideologues hardly ever get into the battle zone, nor do they subscribe to the mindless violence propagated by the cadre. On ground zero, the naxalite is in all likelihood unaware of the country to which mao belonged or the essential premise of his brand of communism. His/her revolution is limited to getting back at the entity whom he considers culpable for the miserable living conditions he and his fraternity have had to endure for decades. He does not have the discernment to segregate the state from the human beings which constitute it. In his restricted point of view, an inhuman attack on any individual from the government machinery is an act of retribution.
Quite obviously, this viewpoint is by no means justifiable. But then, why is the state resorting to the same warped rationale? Why is it conveniently turning individuals into groups to make its task of identifying the enemy easier? Shouldn’t there be a difference between the thought process of the democratically elected machinery and an illiterate rabble-rouser? From the actions initiated over the past few months, the difference has ceased to exist. Instead of eliminating the problems faced by individuals who constitute and comprise the state, the solution adopted is to eliminate the very individual who has a problem.
On a more elementary level, how does the state, represented by the militia, actually identify a naxalite (or a group, for that matter)? The simplest way out, and which has been in vogue for the past decade or so in states like chattisgarh is to dub anyone who is disgruntled as a threat. And from what the trends of the past few months depict, the threat is not to be kept behind bars anymore, it has to be liquidated.
The most juvenile idea behind the tactics being adopted, as propounded by P. Chidambaram is that the naxalites are a bigger threat than J&K terrorists. By that logic, if the government, even after adopting the most stringent military measures in the disputed state, has been unable to make any headway towards removing terrorism, how does it expect to tackle this ‘bigger threat’ within such a short time and with much a much lesser military force?
