Wails Within Wails

Though fighting oppression in West Bengal, Maoists are busy oppressing their own cadres in Jharkhand.

Just as the CPM finds itself clamping down on increasing dissent in West Bengal—where the strife is being fuelled by Maoists—Maoist rebels themselves face trouble from their own in neighbouring Jharkhand. They are not only fighting a battle with the State; they are now also at war with some of their own cadres—those who have demonstrated a tendency for ‘parliamentary deviation’. And the Maoist leadership in Jharkhand is reacting towards the rebels with no more restraint than the CPM is.

The attempt to rein in the deviants is strongest in those pockets of Jharkhand where they have been trying to establish a second ‘base area’ for themselves, on the pattern of one they already have at Dandakaranya.

Though limited to parts of Jharkhand, the intense debate on whether to use elections for tactical purposes, instead of outrightly boycotting them, has prompted the central committee of the Communist Party of India (Maoist)—India’s largest underground political outfit—to clamp down heavily on those who supported the candidature of their former comrades in Palamu and Chatra in the recently held Lok Sabha polls.

“On the night of 15 June local guerrilla squads organised a Jan Adalat [people’s court, the notorious system of Maoist justice in villages] at Manatu in Palamu district and asked the party cadres and sympathisers to apologise for taking part in electoral politics, but they resisted and refused to apologise. The guerilla squads left the village without precipitating the issue,” says a member of Palamu district committee of CPI (Maoist). “A week back (on the night of 8 June) a similar Jan Adalat was organised at Barbaiya village in Manika block of Chatra parliamentary constituency,” he says, adding: “Our comrades and friends at Barbaiya admitted their mistake and pledged not to defy the party line in future.”

Kameshwar Baitha, a former Maoist commander, won from Palamu Lok Sabha seat on the ticket of Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, while Keshwar Yadav, another former area commander, contested from Chatra on the Communist Party of India (Marxist Leninist-Liberation) ticket and polled an impressive number though he lost to an independent candidate, Inder Singh Namdhari. Not only did Maoist squads in these two constituencies back their former commanders, several of their state- and district-level leaders also lent their support to the two.

The party took note of these activities. “At least two state committee members of the party and several district committee members in the state received notices in the second week of June. They have been asked to reply within 20 days,” says a member of the Jharkhand state committee of the party. Sources in the CPI (Maoist) expect strict disciplinary measures against all leaders succumbing to parliamentary temptation, but only token action against the cadres and ‘sympathisers’ who supported the poll efforts of former Maoists.

The swiftness with which the central committee has cracked the whip to ‘stem the rot’ in the ranks, even as the debate remains concentrated in a small pocket of the region controlled by Bihar-Jharkhand-Bengal Special Area Committee (BJB-SAC) of the party, has surprised none in the underground outfit. The Bihar-Jharkhand region is of pivotal importance to the CPI (Maoist).

Setting up a second ‘base area’ in this region has been one of the main goals of the CPI (Maoist) ever since 2004, when the Maoists regrouped and renamed themselves after the merger of two main ultra-Left outfits. These two outfits were the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist -People’s War) and the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC). The former had a strong base in Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and Chhattisgarh and minor presence in Bihar and Jharkhand. MCC was the strongest Maoist group in the Bihar-Jharkhand region. Even a slight ideological deviation in their projected ‘base area’ could prove to be detrimental for the Maoists’ growth prospects in the eastern and northern parts of the country.

According to sources, disciplinary action against party leaders and cadres forms only part of the central committee’s strategy to crush any voice that goes against the party line. Another part of this strategy involves creating situations that would compel ‘deviating’ party leaders to abandon their softness towards polls, a source says. He adds that the party is trying to turn up the pressure on these deviating leaders by increasing the frequency of strikes on security forces.

This scheme is not a figment of an idle mind. Since 10 June, Maoists have organised at least five major ambush operations against the security forces in Jharkhand, killing a total of 27 policemen and injuring scores of others. In none of the five incidents was there any provocation from police forces. And intriguingly, the Maoist guerrillas who carried out the attacks did not seem interested in looting weapons either.

The post-poll spurt of attacks started on 10 June when Maoists killed ten security personnel at Chaibasa. Two days later on 12 June, a total of 11 policemen were killed on the outskirts of Bokaro. On 13 June, five security men were injured in a landmine blast. On 15 June, two policemen were killed at Kokar, and on 16 June, four cops were killed and six others injured in an ambush at Manatu in Palamu district.

The state committee member of the CPI (Maoist), speaking on condition of complete anonymity, confirms that most of the attacks on police are being coordinated by a few mobile units that are from outside Jharkhand. Their task is to carry out a ‘rectification drive’ among the party ranks. These units have now taken charge of most of the guerrilla operations in the state, leaving these so-called ‘right-wingers’ with no other option but to take up arms again and follow the party line without any deviation.

The rebellious section of Naxalites is demanding a tactical shift from bullets to a judicious mix of ballots and bullets. However, many in the party ranks are sceptical about the success of strong-arm tactics to crush dissent in the organisation. And they fear that the differences that kept the Maoist parties separated for long, might once again come to the fore.

Broadly, Naxalites who are in favour of integrating the armed struggle with mass action are those who once operated in parts of Bihar and Jharkhand under the CPI-ML (Party Unity). They merged with People’s War Group in the late 1990s. These leaders argue that an indirect participation in elections would not only help the party in “upstaging the system from the inside out” but it would also provide an opportunity to mobilise masses and thereby sustain the armed struggle in the face of increasing police repression.

Maoists who joined the CPI (Maoist) from MCC are simply appalled at the proposition being put forth by their Party Unity comrades—a proposition that is creating rumblings among the party ranks in parts of Jharkhand and Bihar. “No, there is no such debate in our party. There is no point in discussing the issue (of indirect participation in elections) at all. Our fight is to break the legitimacy of Parliament. Only the primacy of this fight in our tactical-strategic position can make the revolutionary instincts of our party and cadre sharper,” says another CPI (Maoist) leader, contacted by Open on the outskirts of Patna. Before the merger in 2004, he was one of the MCC leaders from south Bihar.

The rumblings are still being heard in the jungles of Jharkhand and fields of Bihar. A crisis of similar proportions, though of a different kind, had arisen close on the heels of MCC’s merger with People’s War. Several breakaway Naxalite groups had appeared soon after. This forced the CPI (Maoist) to hold a conference (dubbed the Ninth Unity Congress) in 2007 somewhere in Jharkhand. One of its objectives was to dispel any notion of cracks in the Maoist conglomerate. It is yet to become clear whether the central leadership of the CPI (Maoist) would once again go for a similar exercise to settle the issue, or simply choose to purge the ‘revisionist’ elements from its ranks.

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