Still On Red Alert

IN UNUSUALLY CANDID remarks at a public event on October 17, Prime Minister Narendra Modi lambasted the “ecosystem” that had supported Maoists for many decades. He went on to say that a distorted picture of Maoists had been presented to the country, one that whitewashed the truth about Maoism in India. As a result, the youth of the country was misled and in a large number of cases, their future was destroyed.

“These Urban Naxals, they were so dominant and they are even today, that any incident involving Maoists would be censored so that it could not reach the people of the country. In our country there was extensive debate on terrorism, Article 370 was debated… but the Urban Naxals who had mushroomed during the Congress party’s rule captured institutions. They would work to throw a curtain on Maoist Terrorism. They would keep the country in the dark.”

What made the remarks unusual was their stridency. Never before has a prime minister described Maoists as terrorists. In Modi’s case, this was probably the first time that he elaborated on the issue. The division of labour, since 2014, has been clear: the prime minister let the home minister handle the problem, once described by his predecessor as the gravest threat to India’s internal security.

The prime minister’s words have a ring of truth to them. Terror­ism, defined as the use of violence for political purposes, was never used to describe Maoism and the activities of Maoists. It was not a linguistic sleight of hand but something altogether sinister that Maoists were described as “misguided revolutionaries” and even as “agents of justice” for the downtrodden. They served a different purpose, one at odds with the idea of India as a coherent nation-state.

But that does not mean its supporters have lost any of their potency in fomenting mischief. The prime minister was at pains to stress that aspect of Maoist terrorism, for it is not just with guns that a lawfully elected government can be ousted. A far more potent and more dangerous threat lies in the ‘ecosystem’ that provides legitimacy to Maoists. That system, as Modi said on October 17—and Union Home Minister Amit Shah stressed just days earlier—remains intact.

That challenge is now almost at an end, at least its armed aspect is. The prime minister said, “There was a time when 303 was at work but now 303 have surrendered.” The allusion was to the boom of 303 guns that could be heard in Maoist-infested areas and the surrender of 303 referred to the more than three hundred Maoists who had surrendered in the few days before Modi spoke.

Two days before the prime minister spoke, the top Maoist com­mander in Chhattisgarh, the 70-year-old Mallojula Venugopal Rao, formally surrendered before Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis in Gadchiroli. Rao, also known as Sonu, was a member of the politburo of the CPI (Maoist) and also a mem­ber of the outfit’s Central Military Commission. Along with him dozens of other cadres surrendered before a beaming Fadnavis who presented them with copies of the Constitution. In all, 60 Maoists gave up arms that day in Gadchiroli.

Even as these events were playing out, in the neighbouring district of Kanker in Chhattisgarh, another 78 Maoists surren­dered at a Border Security Force (BSF) camp. There were other surrenders in adjoining districts like Sukma and Narayanpur, taking the tally to the “303” the prime minister was referring to.

Rao’s surrender was partly due to the realisation on his part that Maoism was a doomed idea in India. But it was also fortuitous in many ways. He represents the last of the ‘Andhra Maoists’ who are able to rationalise and respond to changing political circum­stances. The remaining rump of the CPI (Maoist) is under the control of Thippiri Tirupathi, who remains firm on waging war against the country. Rao’s personal circumstances, too, played a part in his surrender. His wife gave up arms last year and surren­dered to the Maharashtra government. This does not mean the end of Maoism as an ideology. That remains strong as Modi said.

The turn of events in what was until recently a very violent part of India should be seen in perspective. It took the better part of a decade on the part of the Centre to get these results. A multi-pronged strategy that involved giving the Central paramilitary forces a free hand and the creation of road infrastructure in some very remote areas to even get matters moving. The latter required very large doses of money and provid­ing security to entire populations so that road-building and area domina­tion could commence. In between, there was the minor matter of getting the cooperation of state governments in states governed by the Opposition. That cooperation was always elusive: political patronage of Maoists, direct and indirect, was an insidious problem that could not be solved until the right kind of governments took control. Much time was lost that way.

In between, there were vigorous attempts by Maoists to expand their presence beyond the confines of the jungles of East Central India. The Bhi­ma Koregaon conspiracy that came to light after the violent incidents on Janu­ary 1, 2018 is a case in point. The list of those involved in the planning and execution is a who’s who of Maoism in India. Almost all those involved in the conspiracy were associated closely with Maoists but, as the prime minister was at pains to show, were whitewashed as “activists” and “academics” by the ecosystem. How else does one explain the arrest of a Delhi University profes­sor, a ‘respected’ human rights lawyer, another English professor and dozens of usual suspects (‘activists’) in the case? Many in this cast of actors have been released on bail while others remain in judicial custody. Over time strenuous efforts have been made to convince the judiciary that all of them are innocent. If some are out on bail, that is largely due to official incompetence in adhering to legal procedures and not due to the innocence of these individuals. It is incongruous that this group has first-class legal help that ordinary Indians can only dream of.

But one thing is clear: all of them, without fail, were either jus­tifying Maoism in India or were active participants in spreading it ideologically. They abused the freedoms available to all Indians. But the moment they were detained, a chorus of protests emerged alleging that freedom and liberty were under threat. It is a travesty that some of the most precious freedoms available to citizens have been abused in furthering an ideology dead-set against any freedom.

The true nature of the threat posed by Maoism and its real func­tion in Indian politics in the past decades became manifest in the days before the gunning down of Nambala Keshava Rao, the gen­eral secretary of the CPI (Maoist), on May 21 in a remote part of the Indravati National Park in Chhattisgarh. Appeals were made to the Centre not to kill him even as not a word was uttered on atrocities committed by Maoists, something Modi spelled out in his remarks.

In the days following the death of Rao, who also went by the alias Basavaraju, a wave of condemna­tion followed. Mainstream Left par­ties—CPI, CPM and CPI(ML)—criti­cised the government. It is worth noting that these parties have opposed Maoists in both theory and practice. In the areas controlled by Maoists in the Bastar re­gion and elsewhere, these parties and their members were the first political activists to be targeted by Maoists.

It is another matter that right until he died, Basavaraju, in contrast to Mallojula Venugopal Rao, refused to surrender and abjure “revolutionary violence”. This ob­duracy in the face of changed economic, political and social circumstances seemed irrational. But was it?

The dirty secret of Indian politics is that Maoists served a ‘useful purpose’ both for the mainstream Left as well as liberal, centrist parties, another fact spelled out by Modi in his remarks: “I say with great responsibility that those who hold the Constitution on their fore­heads, even today, they are working day and night to protect Maoist terrorists who do not believe in the Constitution.”

Nominally, the support for Maoists by this class of politicians and intel­lectuals is couched in the language of justice. They seek to explain the scale of Maoist presence and their political role in India as a response to ‘injustices’ meted out to Adivasis and other downtrodden groups in India’s remote regions. The reality is in absolute contrast to these claims. The first Maoist dalams that entered the southern tip of Madhya Pradesh in 1980 made short work of the petty revenue and police department officials, the alleged tormentors of the Adivasi folk who lived in the area. At that time Chhattisgarh did not exist as a state and the ability of the government in Bhopal to control and administer territory in its far-flung domains was, at best, rudimentary. In these years, until the last decade, Maoists had a tight grip on the area. These were, if one goes by the class of politicians and intellec­tuals backing them, agents of ‘justice’. It is absurd to claim, some 45 years after Maoists entered the area, that their presence dem­onstrates continuing injustice at the hands of the government.

The truth is that the Maoist idea of revolution is considered out­landish to the point of irrelevant even by their diehard backers in India’s capital and other urban areas. Maoists, however, serve the purpose of a “countervailing force” that is useful to keep the Union executive weak and distracted. These forces think a weak execu­tive is the only way to preserve democracy in India. Never mind the huge costs involved: livelihoods destroyed, and generations of youth destroyed in a quest that was a falsehood to begin with.

IN THESE DECADES, efforts were made to generate multiple countervailing forces to ensure that government authority in India remained divided and weak. There is a neat division of labour. It is worth noting that liberal politicians and intellectuals never criticise Maoists and their excesses. The latter, it goes with­out saying, have no love for anyone’s liberty. This group champi­ons another countervailing force: federalism. Left politicians and intellectuals, in contrast, devote their energies in giving cover to Maoists. A range of Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) do the leg-work for both.

The results were for everyone to see. From mining to infra­structure projects and from defence to economic reforms, every aspect of governance and development became hostage to this pernicious politics. Interstate projects became impossible as the Centre could not coordinate between different states led by gov­ernments belonging to different parties. Entire swathes of India became no-go zones due to security threats and due to the spread of the ideology of ‘federalism’ whereby only separatist and quasi-separatist parties were considered legitimate rulers of these areas. Development suffered and bred frustration among citizens, fur­ther fuelling alienation. A vicious cycle that seemed impossible to break emerged and it became fashionable to speculate whether it was better to break India into different nation-states as it could not be governed as a coherent country. The celebration of Maoist ideology was an integral part of this design.

That danger and the impasse are now over. The spate of sur­renders and elimination of topmost Maoist leaders indicate the tide has turned. Modi’s speech showed that the problem was ap­preciated as soon as the BJP-led government was formed in 2014 but it took the better part of a decade to wrest control from Mao­ists. Yet celebrations are premature. Both, Prime Minister Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah have repeatedly emphasised that the ecosystem that gives protection to Maoists remains, by and large, intact. Solving that problem requires a different solution. It remains a pressing and even more daunting task than taking back control of territory that was lost to the Maoists decades ago.

This will not be a simple task even if the government of the day has the necessary resolve needed. India is a chaotic democracy where different levers move and interact with each other often at cross purposes. Different state governments, the plethora of judicial forums and, above all, an ecosystem that is against any Central authority in India remain potent challenges ahead.