Fall of the Left and Buddhadeb

During a press briefing in May 2006, CPI(M) state secretary Biman Bose made a prophetic comment. While speaking on the role of media which was then projecting chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee as the poster boy of reforms, Bose remarked bluntly: “The media has taken the Brand Buddha line. But it can spell trouble for him.” (Source) The outspoken CPI(M) state secretary was expressing his worry that the same media which is making a superhero out of him, was equally capable of abruptly changing color, chameleon-like, and start smearing the chief minister’s image. Biman Bose’s comment came at a time when the political influence and reputation of Buddhadeb was at its peak. He had just won the 2006 state assembly elections with a colossal majority and was hailed as a new-age leader, a “capitalist communist” who was expected to steer Bengal to glory. The industrial lobby, the neo-liberal media and large sections of the urban middle class was praising him animatedly for his single-point industrialization agenda. He was been credited for bringing back hope to a state marred by “despair”. Neo-liberalism advocate The Economist went gaga to extol him for his “reputation for probity,” for being “modest and engaging” on topics from agri-business to consumerism and Indian poetry. From Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Azim Premji of Wipro, many big-shots were lauding him as India’s best chief minister. Unfortunately for him, it took just a year after the famous victory for the Brand Buddha bubble to burst. Within a couple of years the monolithic edifice of the CPI(M) came tumbling down when the people of Bengal delivered a real kick in the teeth to sweep out the Left Front from thirty-four long years of uninterrupted power.

To the Comrades in Bengal

The 2011 Bengal assembly election is now over. A synthetically manufactured socio-political commotion that had embarked on a plotted journey from mid-2007 has finally arrived at its logical end. The much hyped circle of poriborton (change) is now complete. An assorted conglomerate of anti-Left elements, personified by the “magnanimous” Trinamool chieftain Mamata Banerjee have triumphed over a thirty-four years long uninterrupted Left Front rule in this eastern Indian state – the longest-serving elected communist government in the world. The euphoria over the victory in the anti-Left camp is therefore obvious. Prominent renegades, fence-sitter Leftists, drawing room revolutionaries and the awake-aware intellectuals have also joined to sing the celebration chorus. The winners and their embedded friends in the mainstream corporate media have announced with a big sigh of relief that Bengal, at last, is free. The people, we are told, is now liberated from a tyrannical and sluggish regime which has destroyed every aspect of democratic rights in the state. The Left’s terrible debacle, we are edified again and again, is therefore nothing less than historic. On the other side, a stoic silence has been observed from the losers who have gracefully accepted the people’s mandate and are presently tiring to protect their grass-root workers from the vicious attack launched against them by the victorious Trinamool goons.

Media hyperbole and Bengal assembly elections

If we go through the standard news reports, analysis, editorials and opinion pieces been published daily in the national and local mainstream media concerning the ongoing assembly elections of Bengal, there can be little doubt in our minds about whom the voters would prefer to see in the next government. According to the obvious trends and predictions reflecting in the media, the people of Bengal have already “decided” to reject the worn out Left Front and embrace the impressive Trinamool Congress (TMC)-Indian National Congress (INC) opposition alliance. Experienced pollsters have concluded that in all probability, this grand alliance under the sagacious leadership of our famed railways minister Mamata Banerjee is heading for a clean sweep. Passionate supporters of the Left might still go on arguing that a sheer anti-Left bias in the print and television coverage during any election campaign is nothing new in Bengal. The spectrum of debate that gets released on various media forums during the election season has seldom been objective. They are also trying to point out that for a long time independent media organizations in the state have been completely polarized along political lines. But not many people are listening to them. The coming Bengal election results are therefore, as one thin on top editor recently wrote, “the easiest to predict in our electoral history in a very long time.”

Looking at the Egyptian uprising

It all began in a rural Tunisian town. Mohamed Bouazizi, who sold fruits and vegetables on the streets to make a living for himself and his impoverished family, was publicly humiliated on December 17 by a policewoman Fedya Hamdi. Hamdi slapped Bouazizi in the face, spat at him and forcefully confiscated his goods and weighing scale. An angry and distressed Bouazi­zi, who often suffered harass­ment and abuse at the hands of the local police, went to complain his grievances to the local municipal officials but failed to get any recourse as the officials just refused to meet him. As an act of desperation, Bouazizi doused himself with inflammable fluid and set his body on fire outside the municipal office. The plight of young Bouazizi became the catalyst that sparked off massive anger against the regime of president Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, who ruled Tunisia since 1987 with an iron fist. Thousands of furious Tunisians came out on the streets to protest against police brutality, the corrupt power structure, soaring unemployment and unending poverty. Weeks of violent demonstrations followed as protesters clashed with the state security forces. Members of the police force clubbed the unarmed anti-regime protesters and open fired on them killing dozens. Sensing the enraging public mood, Ben Ali visited the bedside of Bouazizi in an attempt to draw public support. He also dissolved the government, promised legislative elections within six months and assured to take meaningful steps toward political reform. But his entire attempt was all but too late. On January 4, Bouazizi succumbed to his injuries escalating unrest and further violence. On January 14, president Ben Ali fled the capital Tunis with his wife Leila in a private jet to Saudi Arabia shortly after the army general Rachid Ammar refused to back his orders to keep shooting on the protesters. According to French agencies, the 74-year-old dethroned president suffered a stroke and is now lying in coma at a Saudi hospital.

Who are the Harmads of Bengal?

When a joint forces team raided and arrested two suspected Maoists – Amiya and Asim Mahato from the Municipal Guest House in Midnapore town, Trinamool Congress chieftain and railway minister Mamata Banerjee rushed at the spot with “friendly’’ television units and swung into damage control mode. Banerjee’s quick reaction does not need much explanation. The guest house was run by her party with the Congress as a relief camp to “shelter” party workers who are on the run from CPI(M) cadres “reclaiming” lost ground in various parts of West Midnapore district. According to Midnapore police chief Manoj Verma, the “sheltered Trinamool workers” comprises many hardcore Maoists and PCAPA activists from the Jangalmahal area. His team was keeping a keen watch on the guesthouse for a long time and the raid took place only after they became definite that seven Maoists had been staying there. Eight letters of CPI(Maoist) politbureau member Koteshwar Rao alias Kishenji, senior Maoist leader Asim Ghosh alias Akash and Jharkhand Maoist leader Ranjan Munda has been seized from the two arrested suspects. One of Kishenji’s letters was addressed to the boisterous and bleeding-heart Trinamool MP Kabir Suman. The police have also informed that Amiya Mahato was present with Maoist commander Sidhu Soren when the faction encountered with the joint forces and lost eight of their members including Soren. Asim Mahato acted as Kishenji’s courier. The duo was hiding in the guesthouse since September 2010 with other Maoists including Kanchandeb Sinha, who was arrested on November 2010, from Trinamool block president Nepal Singh’s car in Shalboni. They have also participated in the recent Trinamool-PCAPA rally at Lalgarh. The joint forces team faced stiff resistance from local Trinamool men and women who had tried to prevent them from raiding the den for a second time. Six journalists suffered injuries when the police baton charged the mob to control the pandemonium. The police force has failed to nab the other suspected Maoists who have fled the den after breaking a window at the back of the building. (Source)

Ayodhya verdict & our secular conscience: Part Two

The three members Bench of Justice D.V. Sharma, Justice S.U. Khan and Justice S. Agarwal has ruled by a 2-1 majority that all the parties in the title suit, i.e. Bhagwan Shree Ram Lalla represented by his sakha (close friend) Triloki Nath Pandey, the Nirmohi Akhara and the Sunni Waqf Board will have one third equal share each of the disputed property and declared the litigants joint title-holders. Justice Sharma has disagreed with the decision of the majority that one-third of the disputed land should be given to Muslims for construction of a mosque. Dismissing the suit filed by the Sunni Waqf Board for a declaration and possession of the site so that Muslims can rebuild the demolished mosque on the same spot, the Bench has allotted the portion right below the central dome of the demolished Babri Masjid to Bhagwan Shree Ram Lalla Virajman with a caution that the defendants should not obstruct or interfere the area in any manner. The areas covered by the structures of Ram Chabutra, Sita Rasoi and Bhandar in the outer courtyard were allotted to the Nirmohi Akhara. The two Hindu litigants will share the remaining unbuilt area within the outer courtyard “since it has been generally used by the Hindu people for worship at both places.” The Bench has allotted the rest of the area where the Babri Masjid stood, including part of the inner courtyard and if necessary also some part of the outer courtyard to the Waqf Board stating that “the share of Muslim parties shall not be less than one third (1/3) of the total area of the premises”. To alleviate the progress of such a three-way division, the Bench has advised to use some parts around the disputed land presently under acquisition of the Government of India. The judges also ordered that the prevailing status quo which is currently under state control shall be maintained for a period of three months.

Ayodhya verdict & our secular conscience: Part One

In a large and diverse country like India, there is never a dearth of issues that stimulate the citizens to talk, argue and fight. But the credulous public mind, overexposed and debilitated by artificial trends and a plethora of confusing information are often been hypnotized by the shining pendant of a forged present and a delusional future. Moreover, a vague vision of history compels them to acquire comfort by mirroring a general trend of forgetfulness. In this spurious atmosphere, even a detrimental agenda can easily capture public imagination and receive popular support. Incapable to ponder much of its gravity, people tend to offer themselves as cannon fodder in socio-political conflicts waged against their own interests. The six-decade-old Ayodhya dispute over the ownership of 2.77 acres of “holy” land is such a thorny issue that has sharply polarized a devout Indian society along quasi-religious lines. Flaring up from time to time, the dispute has instilled a stream of dangerous ideas deep inside the country’s psyche. Acknowledged as one of India’s most divisive and contentious issues, the dispute with its high hegemonic potential has shaken the very foundation of the country’s collective identity as a nation and gradually grown into a symbol of subjectivity. Looking into the chronology of events including the wide network of relations and sectoral interests in and by which the dispute is situated and sustained for such a long time will provide us a necessary linkage to the Ayodhya verdict which was recently delivered by the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court.

CPI (Maoist) and their disingenuous defenders

The Indian State which is ruled by the comprador class cannot be overthrown by means other than armed conflict. This is the fundamental political belief of the CPI(Maoist) which aims to seize State power through “protracted armed struggle”. When the Maoists are so frank and clear about their ultimate objective, it is difficult to appreciate why the ongoing conflict between them and the State should be viewed as “one side is bent on destroying the ‘LWE’ (left-wing extremism) and the other side determined to defend themselves”. To some, it may appear that the “other side” is concertedly defending the subjugated masses from a repressive and brutal State but the real intention of this “other side” is obviously something more ominous and far more profound than it seems to be. Is it not true that both the sides are equally resolute to destroy each other? Many exponents and experts who find nothing wrong in the Maoists method of action have affirmed us that condemning the Maoists violence is actually a symptom of “bourgeois-liberalism”. Maoist violence and State violence cannot be viewed as same because the heart of State violence is to suppress and consistently kill innocent people whereas the Maoists’ are violent just to “defend” the poor Adivasis. Even when the Maoists opt for offensive steps, we are advised to view it as a part of their defense tactic! When State forces take action, it is “war against our own people” which is highly condemnable because “political aspirations ought not to be suppressed militarily”. But when the Maoist People’s Army arrogantly slaughters innocent people at random under so many “noble” pretexts, it does not need to be condemned, but instead needs to be glorified because the victims simply “suffered the fate that they deserved”. (Source) This is a strange and dangerous logic.

Violent ideologies will continue to attract people as long as the very source of their resentment remains unabated. But why does ultra-left sectarian politics always have some special appeal among a section of the thriving middle-class of this country as the only way to address injustice? In a recent speech, CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat has explained that left sectarianism seems to be an “easy way out” for it’s proponents since they can “dangle the prospect that there is another short cut to revolution.” (Source) Accordingly, a battalion of human rights, civil liberties organizations, Gandhian social workers and a section of urban embedded intellectuals are raising the mercury level in the ongoing debate on the Maoist menace by repeatedly harping on two aspects as the real cause behind the Maoists spread. They talk about the development model implemented by the Indian State since 1990’s which is responsible for shattering the livelihood of the Adivasi (tribal) people. They also talk endlessly about the gross violation of Adivasi rights from the ongoing State paramilitary offensive Operation Green Hunt. Both the issues are relevant and needs proper introspection.

In the Adivasi land

No one can deny that the Adivasis are among the poorest of the poor in India. Well-off sections of the society have always deprived them of their elementary rights and never viewed them with any respect. Historically, they have been left at the mercy of the oppressors, plunderers and their agents. Numerous time during the colonial rule, the Indian Adivasis had bravely fought to resist the British colonial interests but their rebellion was never been treated as part of the Indian Freedom Struggle. The British took away their autonomy over the forests by imposing the Forest Act in 1927 after terming them as traitors and encroachers. The biased law remained in force until 1980. Valued only as cheap labour in factories, mills, plantations, quarries and mines during the British colonial rule, the Adivasis also became the victim of a separate Adivasi identity created by the colonial rulers that had categorized the community into tribal and non tribal, criminal and non criminal tribes.

The situation remained unchanged even after Independence. Successive governments and their callous, corrupt and inefficient bureaucracy have failed to provide them the basic means of livelihood. Development works or benefits of government policies have seldom touched their lives. People in the remote Adivasi dominated areas continue to live without roads, electricity, hospitals, clean water and proper sanitation. The post-independent elites, the middle-class and various political leadership were also ineffectual to do any justice to them. Instead, they have regularly cheated and victimized the Adivasi communities by showing little or no concern for them and went on exploiting their precious resource base. In the situation as it prevails now, the Adivasi population has increasingly become alienated from their vicinity and traditional resources. They are forced into chronic poverty and are also at risk of losing their community identity.

According to a recent study of the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), nearly 2.6 million people have been displaced between 1950 and 1991 in the country due to mining and 164,000 hectares of forestland has been diverted for the purpose. 52 per cent of the displaced population belongs to the Adivasi communities whose livelihoods and economy are closely attached with the forests. A wilderness of terrible despair that the Adivasis are facing today is directly linked with the central government’s disastrous National Mineral Policy (NMP) released in the year 1993. The Ministry of Environment and Forest has sanctioned 881 mining projects between 1998 and 2005 in forest areas diverting 60,476 hectares of forest area and forced a significant number of the Adivasi populations towards immediate displacement from their traditional habitat.

Almost half of the 50 major mining districts in India have a large Adivasi population. Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Orissa are the three top mineral-bearing Indian states regarding concentration of mineral deposits. About 70 per cent of India’s coal, 80 per cent of its hematite iron ore (high-grade ore), 60 per cent of bauxite, 40 per cent of manganese and almost all its chromite are found in these three states. The three states are also characterized by large forest covers, big Adivasi populations with a very high rate of poverty and backwardness. (Source)

The Maoists have made inroads in areas where hilly regions with dense forest covers provided a geographical advantage for them to operate in a relatively easier way. These are also the areas where State apathy, abuse of power and denial of people’s rights are severe. These favorable conditions have immensely helped the Maoists to strike a chord with some sections of the people living here. The Adivasi dominated regions were selected as a strategic choice, not because of any special concern for the dismal condition of the Adivasis. After subtly exploiting their misery, the phraseology mongering Maoist leadership has effectively applied a warped and distorted ideology on them. They have ignited the brewing resentment with their gun wielding politics and enlisted the Adivasis youths as the perfect cannon fodder in their protracted people’s war.

A “Gandhian social worker” gives a fantastic ‘Gandhian’ interpretation on why the Adivasis are with the Maoists. He has expounded that when the Adivasis come to the realization that “the only reasons for losing my land and my resources were because the “government” agents were not on my side and that they had guns,” the only means that is left to oppose the government agents and save their resources is, “to have guns of my own”. (Source) This now famous “Gandhian” social worker believes that under a repressive setting choosing a gun is the only way to channel the anger of the poor, and thus grants a “Gandhian” legitimacy to the Maoist gun-culture. A section of the deracinated intellectuals and rights group activists tend to perceive the Maoists like a Messiah for championing the Adivasi causes and for offering “formidable resistance against implementation of hundreds of Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for mining and mineral-based industries in predominately tribal India.” It becomes an excellent excuse to vindicate the rebels from all their misdoings.

To endorse what the Maoists are doing today, passionate sympathizers are putting forward an outrageously simplistic and romantic logic. They argue that in a “fake” democracy, “resistance seemed the only way out”. One cannot “pretend to be neutral” under such terrible circumstances. Violence of the “oppressed and the oppressors” cannot be morally equated. They have discovered that the only political force that is capable to channel the anger of the poor against a failed system is the one and only CPI(Maoist). They are enthralled by the wild dreams of a “new democratic regime” under the Maoists where landlordism will be abolished and the tillers will become landowners, where the property of the imperialists and the big bourgeoisie will be confiscated, the representatives and backers of the anti-democratic opposition to socialism will be stymied, income and wealth will be properly redistributed to satisfy the reasonable needs of all. At the same time they convey a warning to “the ruling classes and those who govern on their behalf” that the CPI(Maoist) “is not merely a guerrilla army backed by a large section of the people in its areas of operation, but a party with a vision and a plan that does all it can to implement, against all odds”. (Source)

Let us now see how the so called “Maoist ethics” works on the ground. The Maoists who are about to create a “new democratic regime” surprisingly does not keep trust in democratic principles themselves. This aspect is evident from the everyday life under an authoritarian military setup in the dark Dantewada jungles where in the name of the people everything including the functioning of the ostensible people’s committees and jan adalats (people’s courts) are determined by the Maoist dictum. Whoever dares to disobey their authority is branded as agents of state or police informer or exploiter and is executed in cold blood. Without any transparent process of verifying guilt, these kangaroo courts act in a four-in-one role – as the accuser, prosecutor, judge and executioner to regularly deliver capital punishment to the accused after identifying them as class enemies. The Maoist leaders keenly follows the ultra-left tradition initiated by Charu Mazumdar and has elevated their murderous obsession into a political principle. It is quite easy to terrorize and keep the people under a constant threat by the AK 47 wielding people’s guerrillas. Instead of being involved with issues of livelihood and socio-economic justice, the Maoists believe in practicing mindless militarism as the only resort to achieve their desired goal. The barrel of their guns is pointed to disrupt the emergence of any strong democratic movement in their area of dominance. However, they are rarely heard to assault any member of the “comprador bureaucratic capitalist class”. There is no instance where the Maoists have stopped mining operations in these areas; neither did they ever organize any strong movement against the poor living and working conditions of the locals who work in the mining industries. How is it possible for so many industrialists and mining companies, traders and forest contractors to happily go on doing their business in the Maoist infested areas? It is simply because the big bourgeoisie and corporate houses are their stable cash cows. They have to regularly pay handsome protection money to the Maoists and fund their "revolution".

The Maoist backers believe that “unless people are armed there is no other way one can neutralize the great advantage the ruling classes enjoy over means of violence”. These backers have found an effective way to “humanize the demonized” and counter the State sponsored “abuses, half-truths and untruths” by reciprocating it with similar abuses, half-truths and untruths in favor of the Maoists in thrilling reports based on what they “saw, heard, read, discussed, debated, and argued” during the sponsored trips into the Maoist heartland. (Source) The mystifying reports tell us that the Maoists shit in neat field toilets, do not drink or smoke, can skillfully stitch and sew, can cook delicious but nutritious meals, watch popular movies, listen to their all time favorite BBC news and “be it day or night” takes out a book to read and a notebook to write. The senior Maoist members carry laptops and download TV programs from You Tube. Hearing from them that “we do not kill, loot or rape,” the enthusiastic fact finders become sanguine about the moral stateliness of the rebels. They are equally satisfied with the answer, “we only kill enemy of the people”. When a senior leader was asked why they are killing CPI(M) party workers, the terribly “honest” revolutionary replies that he “couldn't answer without reading report of the state committee”. After blowing the Maoist trumpet in full force these “quite supportive” admirers become flabbergasted to find that the Maoists do not try to “over blow their achievement”!

Gurucharan Kisku a.k.a Marshal, a key Maoist functionary of the Kharsawan-Purulia-West Midnapore-Bankura sub-zonal committee who has recently turned into a renegade with several of his followers has revealed a disturbing account which is in sharp contrast to the lofty claims of the backers. Kisku has exposed how the Maoists squad members “collect a levy of Rs 20 and 3 kg rice from every such poor and deprived tribal household at gun point” and have killed “more than 200 tribals who where neither rich, nor oppressor”. (Source) In another interview, Kisku has said, “I have realised that if the party line is clear, there is no need for unnecessary killings. Ultimately, most of the dead people are tribals themselves. Whenever a tribal raises his voice against the Maoists, he is killed.” In reply to the question whether he is still a Maoist, Kisku answers, “If you consider Maoist as someone who kills police officers and innocent people, I am not one.” (Source)

Kisku, who was one of the closest aides of CPI(Maoist) leader Kishenji, has also accused that the Maoist leadership were not working for the Adivasi people but instead “have attempted to divide tribals”. In the name of leading a justified war on behalf of poor and deprived tribals, the Maoist top brasses are “using them as instruments.” Expressing his discontent, Kisku went on to say that, “Tribals are a social entity, with distinct customs, religion and language. The party is destroying this tribal system and way of life in Jungalmahal and other areas. It is following the proletariat line where distinctness is not recognized. There is no development of tribals under CPI(Maoist). There is only 20 per cent representation of tribals in the leadership of the party at all levels.”

Lalgarh paradigm

The ongoing events in Lalgarh have revealed how the Maoist’s “strategy” works among the impoverished masses. From 2007, there have been sporadic incidences of violence in the area carried out by armed Maoist squads’ crossing over from Jharkhand. The Maoists had prominently marked their presence in that area when they tried to assassinate the chief minister of Bengal by an IED explosion on November 2008. In the ongoing verbal extravaganza, it is seldom uttered that the police action in Lalgarh had intensified only after the attack on the Bengal chief minister. The CPI(Maoist) had accepted the responsibility of the explosion in a press release. Maoists spokesperson Gour Chakraborty was found to reveal in an interview that, “Our party wanted to kill Bhattacharjee”. (Source) A key Maoist leader Shashadhar Mahato, better known as Bikash, had openly stated that since someone needs to execute the chief minister “we took charge of it”. When the police raided across the Lalgarh area in search of the culprits, a resistance group called the PCAPA (People’s Committee against Police Atrocities) cropped up instantaneously to “defend” the local Adivasis from police brutality.

It is undeniable that the PCAPA was able to maneuver a significant number of locals, most of them impoverished and ingenuous Adivasis, and has coercing them to confront the state administration. Even after the government reprimanded the accused policemen and undertaken several remedial steps, the PCAPA refused to come to any compromise with the state government and continued with their violent protests which in many ways were identical with the Maoists distinctive style. On the grass root level, the PCAPA targeted local CPI(M) workers. No wonder that the CPI(Maoist) is particularly hostile against the CPI(M) in Bengal since the Marxists are the only political force in the state that has come forward to fight them politically. They systematically started burning houses of “class enemies”, looting banks and killing local CPI(M) leaders and workers who were either agricultural laborers or poor peasants and created a total anarchy after undermining and preventing the state forces to enter the area. Soon, the devious Trinamul Congress chieftain and a section of high-flying urban intellectuals were seen screaming on media to justify the anarchism and bloodbath with the excuse of expressing their “concern” for the subjugated Adivasis and started to feed the “heroic resistance movement” with dubious fodder. Gradually it became crystal clear that the PCAPA is really not interested to resolve the apparently meager issue of police brutality but has a much greater objective in mind – to cordon off and convert the area into another notorious Maoist stronghold. The Home Minister of the country has to later admit in the Rajya Sabha that the PCAPA is “only a front organization to the CPI (Maoist)”.

Though proclaimed by some rights activists and run-of-the-mill academics, in real sense Lalgarh was never a “community upsurge”. Let there be no mistake that from its origin, the movement steadily followed the dictums of the Maoists bosses. The killings and destruction of properties, the call for a boycott of the State agencies were the handiwork of the so called “revolutionaries” who were eager to create another liberated zone of its own kind in Lalgarh. The “radical democrat” intellectuals attempts to show how the Maoist leadership carries out a class analysis to understand the concrete forms of exploitation and oppression and “clearly” identifies the friends and the enemies while spreading their movement. If this is the case then why the Maoist hands are smeared with proletarian blood? The majority of people killed by them are always from the deprived and neglected sections of society for whom the Maoists claim to be fighting for. Most of the CPI(M) party members in and around Lalgarh who are bearing the brunt of the deadly “new democracy” of the Maoists also belong to the same social class.

Disingenuous defenders

Inside and outside pressure groups are robustly persuading the government to renounce the “unconstitutional” Operation Green Hunt and rethink its counter-Maoist strategy. But who will pursue the Maoists to desist from their killing spree? Isn’t it quite obvious that the present situation will not improve any further if only the Indian State discontinues their anti-Maoist operation? Isn’t it also the Maoists who must be prevented from their violent acts? The activists who have specialized in defending the rights of the Maoists are debating the issue with utter dishonesty. Presently their single track demand is that the State must first and foremost stop the repressive action on the “Adivasis”. They are always quick to raucously denounce the State offensive but rarely seen to come forward to even say with the same intensity that along with the State onslaught, the Maoists violence must also stop. Instead, when the Maoists massacres paramilitary forces, triggers deadly blasts, attacks police posts, robs banks and mines, kidnaps and murders innocent people to provoke the State for instigating brazen measures to curb the deteriorating law and order situation, the so-called rights activists create a hullabaloo on sympathy networks against the “phlegmatic response” of the State while maintaining a discreet reticence about the clinical atrocities of the Maoists or try to define it on moral terms. This particular façade of the Rights groups is not only disingenuous but also deeply suspicious.

Just like the State agencies, the rights and civil liberty groups are similarly caught up in misleading public opinion by systematically giving a lopsided view of the subject. When the Maoist armed squad attacked a relief camp in Dantewada on July 2006 and killed thirty Adivasis including children, CPI(Maoist) spokesperson Azad had surfaced to justify the killing by saying, “No people’s war can be so clinical as to have no civilian casualty”. How did they forget that incidence? Are they not aware that the Maoist goons have ingeniously melted among the Adivasi population and it is quite hard if not impossible for the State security forces to distinguish between a hardcore Maoist insurgent and a naive Adivasi? How to identify and isolate the CPI(Maoist) leaders and members from the common people in the so-called “liberated” villages? After getting recruited as cannon-fodders in the Maoists squads, should the State forces continue to consider the Adivasi men and women simply as Adivasis? Is it not true that at the end it will be no-one else but the Adivasis who will be left to bear the catastrophic impact of the clash between the State forces and the so-called revolutionaries? On this question the activists are maintaining a conniving silence.

“A defining characteristic of the human rights movement is its attitude of suspicion towards all power and authority,” wrote K. Balagopal, one of the finest human rights activists in India. Asserting that “the human rights movement is equally concerned about physical violence and structural violence,” Balagopal had revealed that “the violence of rebel movements is rarely as well balanced and exactly sufficient for its stated aim of establishment of justice as the movements’ claim it is.” Pointing out at “the more romantic the more distant” human rights activists who finds it uncomplicated to condemn institutional violence but remain relatively quiet against the “popular militancy” carried out by rebel movements, Balagopal had asked, “Can the fact that the purported final aim of the authority is total liberation of human beings from all oppression render one blind to these questions?” (Source)

Balagopal had intensely denounced all forms of violence. Since “systematic violence on both sides bleeds society,” he was also a sharp critic of the Naxalites for their belief that violent armed struggle is the inevitable form of revolutionary class struggle. Writing in the context of the Naxalite movement in Andhra Pradesh, Balagopal had argued that the Naxalites, “intentionally used methods that would challenge the very authority of the law and push the state, inch by inch, to repudiate law and legality”. He had further observed that the, “systematic violence by the naxalites has gone hand in hand with the State electing a response of systematic violence to the naxalite movement,” and had swayed both sides to “copy a lot from each other because they set each other’s terms.”

According to Balagopal’s analysis, “Systematic and calculated violence begins with the enemy but soon turns to the agents of the enemy within and among one’s friends”. Exposing the dilemma that characterizes the Naxalite movement he further continues, “The naxalites social base consists of the landless poor, the peasants, and the miners and factory labor, with the middle class as a potential ally. Yet the majority – overwhelmingly – of the victims of naxalite violence belong precisely to these classes/groups.” He had argued that as “there is no natural mechanism to ensure that the aims of the militants remain close to the needs and aspirations of the supporters…..This question is all the more urgent because it is the supporters who willy-nilly bear the brunt of the State’s counter-attack.”

Balagopal’s moral honesty did not go well with the pro-Naxalite coterie of academics and intellectuals who have lately been reduced to the obnoxious position of fire eater apologists of the CPI(Maoist). He analysis had surely irked the pseudo-dissent shadow-warriors who thinks that, “violence of the state forces in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Orissa and the violent resistance of the tribals (under the leadership of the CPI(Maoist)) whose land had been taken, livelihood destroyed and who had been thrown into the wilderness of destitution, despair and hunger cannot be morally equated.” Quite predictably, Balagopal was ruthlessly abused by them for the “basic shift” in his priorities and world view and was termed as a “liberal humanist” and “reformist”. His critics has even gone to the extend to declare that, “Those who claimed that they were equidistant from the aggressor and the aggressed were on the side of the aggressor – it was their class bias that made them assess the two with the same yardstick.” (Source) However these frenzy concerns sounds almost bizarre since neither the noisy “radical democrats” nor the highflying Maoist leaders belong to the aggressed class.

Selective Human Rights

Balagopal’s criticism can be fittingly applied to the various human rights and civil liberty groups who thinks that State terror and the terror by non-State actors is altogether different since the “states have killed many times more people than those killed by non-state actors”. In his writing Balagopal had raised a fundamental question: “How can the Human Rights movement not look at how this power is being established, with how much real backing and support it is being exercised, what norms it is following, how democratic the norms are, how accountable this power is to the people in whose name it is exercised, and so on?” Criticizing the sheer duplicity of the Maoists politics he writes, “…expression of contempt of institutions and processes of public justice under the State is quite common with the Maoists, though it has never prevented them from demanding enquiries and lawful action by such institutions against perpetrators of what they believe to be injustice.” (Source)

To defend the rights of the Maoists, human rights activists have chosen to rest on the third preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1948. The preamble says, “Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law”. Indigenous human rights groups and activists has interpreted and reinterpreted the Declaration in their own way to fit it into their diverse schemes. “…the real Human Rights Activists would never justify any kind of cold-blooded murder, torture or ill-treatment committed either by the State or non-State Actors” claims one such activist but then go on saying, “The Human Rights Activists raise their voices only when the state violates or does not enforce, ensure and protect the Human Rights guaranteed under the Constitution of India, embodied in the UN Conventions, Covenants and Protocols signed and ratified by the Government of India and enforced in the Court. The human rights violation by the non-state actors takes place only when the state is inactive, ineffective and unjust, which also should not be justified.” (Source) This statement reveals the sly attitude of the human rights community. They claim to be impartial but cannot prevent themselves from exposing their prejudices. The resonance of their rhetoric is quite obvious to notice. Off course they do not justify the atrocities committed either by the State or non-State actors but definitely tries to shield the non-state actors by squarely putting the responsibility on the State. When the Maoists killed 70 CRPF jawans in Dantewada on 6 April 2010, the civil rights organization PUDR issued an incredible statement: “we neither condemn the killing of security force combatants nor that of the Maoists combatants, or for that matter any other combatants, when it occurs.” Why? Because civil rights organization “can only lament the folly of the Indian government which lacks the courage and imagination to pursue a non militaristic approach which is pushing us towards a bloody and dirty war.” (Source)

As a result of this half-baked outlook, the rights activists have considered that it is their moral duty to take a “zero tolerance” and “antagonistic” stance while criticizing human rights abuses by the State while human right abuses by non-State actors should be criticized in a “non-antagonistic” manner. But there is a fundamental question here – do non-State actors have the same human rights duties or commitments to respect or renounce from the direct human rights violations of others? What if non-State actors commit significant human rights violations? Should it also be criticized with a “non-antagonistic” approach? In the height of their folly, rights activists has completely overlooked Article 30 of the Declaration which has cautioned that, “Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.” (Emphasis added)

“Among all the armed opposition groups in India, the Naxalites or Maoists are probably the worst human rights violators” reports the rights group Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR). According to the report “Torture in India 2010” ACHR has noted that, “the Maoists continued to kill civilians on the allegation of being “police informers”, members of the anti-Maoist civilian militia such as “Salwa Judum” and for not obeying their diktats. The Maoists have been responsible for brutal killing of their hostages after abduction. Often the hostages are killed by slitting their throats or beheading. Often these killings were authorized by Maoist ‘people’s courts or Jan Adalats.” (Source) When the Police Officer of the CID Special Branch, Francis Induwar was brutally beheaded by the Maoists, human right activists who swear by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights dawn to dusk were seen to be more occupied to establish a “seems to be true” allegation that, “Francis Induwar was not protected by the police department because he belongs to the Adivasi community.” In Lalgarh, while the Maoist cadres have slaughtered more than 150 CPI(M) workers and supporters from June 2009 to February 2010, the concerned human rights group APDR representative have disclosed that the group is keeping a list of the dead but only the “people allegedly killed by armed CPM forces”. According to their selective human rights principles, the victims who are associated with the CPI(M) are State actors by default and therefore not entitled to human rights at all. Going by this weird logic, all Maoist violence can be effortlessly justified.

Article 10 of the Declaration has proclaimed that, “Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair, and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.” However a noted professional dissent and “world citizen” cannot stay away from mitigating the kangaroo courts as a “lesser wrong” by putting forward an eye-for-an-eye school of morality: “At least … the collective was physically present to make its own decision. It wasn’t made by judges who had lost touch with ordinary life a long time ago, presuming to speak on behalf of an absent collective.” (Source) If this is not outright deception then nothing is.

Conclusion

While the entire human rights system is based on the responsibility of the State, the dangers that originate from the non-State actors must also be considered as a matter of grave concern. The human rights communities usually trace their lineage to the United Nations General Assembly's 1948 Declaration which has entitled rights and freedoms for everyone but does not suggest that the State has any specific responsibility in this regard. Those who advocate that human rights is related only to serious abuses of State power and relevant only when applied against the State is deliberately ignoring this point. Their disagreement about applying human rights obligations to non-State actors is based on a slanted outlook which is often superficial and simplistic. Several examples are available in the media reports which confirm that non-State actors like the armed Maoists are amply capable of abusing and violating human rights too. While many human right groups has constantly held the State liable for violating human rights and for failing to make human rights obligatory, time has come when the non-State actors must also be held evenly accountable. International humanitarian law applies to all sides. It cannot be purely a state-focused subject.

Most of the human rights groups that operate in India today have emanated in the 1970s from the outer fringes of a variety of Naxalite factions. It is therefore obvious that these groups will be biased about the left sectarian adventurist politics of the Maoists and the organized violence perpetrated by them. These groups are purposely serving the cornered Maoists who are in desperate need for support from the civil society to broadcast and propagate their cause. The “victory” in Nandigram and Singur has stimulated these groups to become more aggressive against State discrimination or victimization. But they must be reminded that all discourses regarding human rights must be kept away from the realms of rhetoric and ideology.

Human rights can never be selective.

The failure of “My Name is Khan”

Karan Johar’s over-hyped film My Name is Khan (MNIK) has dealt with a challenging subject – a subject that is extremely serious, pensive and political. The film has attempted to focus on a number of crucial socio-political issues and tried to make a humane statement concerning racial-religious discrimination and stereotyping. But the wide scope offered by the subject was purposely diminished by the director-producers of the film. The story of Rizwan Khan ended up being another feel-good film depicting Bollywood style heroism, romance and eye-wetting brash emotion – all embedded into a fairy tale arrangement. Based on a political subject, the film deliberately moves out of the political arena to engender flimsy humanism and fails terribly to emerge as a politically conscious film. A pseudo-real, fantasy like milieu and an escapist approach to life are the weakest aspects of the film. The self-styled “sensitive” performance by Shah Rukh Khan in the role of Rizwan, burdened with make believe mannerisms, have not only failed to cover-up these shortcomings but has actually become an integral part of it. By exaggerating on the “just a good man in love” side of the character, Shah Rukh’s celebrity presence has diluted the sternness of the subject as well as the film. A hoopla manufactured by the infamous idiots of the Thackeray clan surrounding MNIK’s release, the grand presence of Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol – super-hit duo of Indian mainstream cinema, the arty efforts of a bubbly director or the genuine technical excellence could not lift MNIK from its mediocre rank.

Good people, bad people

There is little doubt that the September 11 attacks were a huge turning point for millions of Muslims living in America. Impact of this catastrophic event had generated a significant amount of hostility towards the Muslims in general and had sharply polarized the American society down to street level. Islam and the Muslims turned into a subject of grave concern for the American state and became an important political issue. Though anti-Muslim bias and prejudices had existed before September 11, the attitude to connect the Muslim community to terrorism and perceiving the entire community as a threat, as a grave security risk, has intensified drastically following the incident. Post September 11, it became more difficult to be a Muslim in America. Non Muslim Americans became haunted by Islamophobia – a common parlance diversely applied today to define the discrimination faced by Muslims or to convey anti-Muslim sentiments. The response of common non-Muslim Americans towards Muslim minorities and their anti-Islamic hostile attitudes against them were also fuelled by certain sections of the mainstream media and political establishment, which had frequently used the term and popularised it among the scared masses. Muslims living in America including the women faced religiously motivated harassment; the Arabs were particularly singled out as objects of suspicion and became victims of official and societal discrimination, especially the younger Muslims who are more exposed to anti-Muslim bias than their parents. They were told to become “good citizens”, instructed to integrate into the multi-religious, multi-cultured American society, reprimanded for exhibiting hate and violence and were strictly warned to keep away from radical activities and extremist influences. The first targets of the American government’s anti-terrorism overdrive were obviously the softest ones – the immigrant Muslims who has arrived in the “land of freedom” virtually from all over the world.

The ambitious screenplay of MNIK had tried hard to depict this turbulent time and the condition of American Muslims. The film opens with the awful airport frisking scene where villain-like security men hounded the hero Rizwan Khan as a terror suspect because he was found to mutter verses from the Holy Koran while standing in a queue. Khan is portrayed in the film as a devoted and duty bound believer. In the backdrop of riot ridden Bombay he has learned from his mother that there are only two kinds of people in the world – good people and bad people. One holds a stick and the other holds a lollipop. In the entire film, Rizwan Khan actually tries to establish himself as the one who belongs to the lollipop holding “good people” class. In the film he is depicted as an extremely devoted Muslim, a loving husband, a caring papa, an innate humanist and ultimately a “good citizen” of America. The film has overstuffed a lot of issues and mishandling them badly. But at the end, it remained principally focused on establishing the “good citizen” aspect of the hero. The director was abetted by an oversimplifying attitude, twisting and fantasising the grim subject into a droopy romantic tale.

American Muslim, Bollywood Muslim

By law, the Census Bureau of America does not count adherents of a particular religious identification. Hence, the account of how many Muslims live in America differs widely in various estimates – from 1.3 to 7 million. This population with its vastly different ethnicity, culture, race and sectarian diversity have constituted a microcosm of the Muslim world. Immigration wave in America has increased rapidly after the American immigration law was reformed in 1965. Between 1989 and 2004, 15.5 million legal immigrants have entered the country. The number of Muslim immigrants is little less than one percent of America’s national population but constitutes the majority of the total Muslim population. Two-third of them is foreign-born, coming from South Asia, Iran, and the Arabic-speaking countries. The single largest group of Muslim immigrants among them are from the three South Asian countries of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Destitution, ethnic- religious discrimination, class repression, Islamism or anti-Islamism and war are some of the major reasons why Muslim immigrants seek refuge from their respective countries to “smell freedom” in the paradise of America.

All immigrants are not necessarily from the socio-economically marginalized class. A large number of them belong to the wealthy and middle class elite group. They are enticed by the candour of American life, the span of opportunities for a better livelihood, superior professional facilities, socio-political freedom and economic rewards. Immigrants in general are aggressive job seekers and hard-working due to their economical motivations. Likewise, immigrant Muslims are also inclined to resolutely focus on their professional and entrepreneurial careers and many of them possess good educational standards. As a result of these qualities they have achieved considerable economic success over time. Muslims in America today appears to be more educated and affluent than the country’s national average. This affluent economic situation could also be a vital reason behind the post September 11 anti-Muslim bias rather than their religious believe. After September 11, the employment-population ratio among Muslims had declined considerably. The arrogant anti-terrorism policy of the government under President Bush has caused enough humiliation and suffering to Muslim communities living across America. Race and ethnicity became deciding factors for opening an investigation against the Muslims. Mosques were raided to find out suspected terrorists. Surveillance and detention without warrant became a commonplace affair that had created an aura of endless fear within the community.

Where does Rizwan Khan fit here? He arrives in San Francisco after his mother’s death to live with his younger brother and his compassionate wife. Though Rizwan has a super ability to repair any broken machines from his early days, the jealous brother forced him to accept the job of an herbal cosmetics salesman. Rizwan is not economically motivated and dislikes his job. Instead, he gets more involved and occupied in winning the love of a Hindu hairstylist named Mandira. In fact, the director is not interested to focuses on the privations and struggles an immigrant usually comes across in a foreign country, particularly if the immigrant is a mentally challenged person. But privation does not sell! The film is thus packaged with lollipop emotion of love and longing, a utopia of its own kind, far away from the hard reality an immigrant might face in a foreign land. Rizwan Khan belongs to the moderate section of Muslims but at the same time he is also a dutiful practitioner of the laws of Islam – carrying a handful of pebbles to throw upon the devil, muttering scriptures and offering namaz wearing his prayer cap. If read in a different way, one might discover that Rizwan Khan’s religious behaviours are fairly deliberate, and at the same time exceedingly provocative.

One must not forget that Rizwan Khan is actually a Bollywood Muslim in America. Bollywood has its own unique way of characterising Muslims, even in the changed times. Syed Ali Mujtaba has observed in an article that, “Bollywood might be coming good in reaching out to the world but when it comes to creating Muslims on screen it’s closed to a dangerous time warp. Cinematic subtleties, community's sensitivity and societal realism are all thrown overboard. What quickly lapped up is, dirty stereotypes and reckless cliche while sketching Muslim characters.” In the same article he has further noted that, “no one likes to disturb the apple cart of set formulas that Bollywood mindlessly follow while making movies.” (Source)

Bush, Obama and Rizwan Khan

At least on one occasion George W Bush was absolutely sincere when he stated that, “the world has changed after September the 11th”. The twin tower attacks had significantly changed America’s relation and dealing with the world, particularly with the antagonistic Islamic nations. Just four weeks after the attacks, the “war president” and war hawks within his “war administration” had unleashed their infamous “war on terror” and successively destroyed the two sovereign countries Afghanistan and Iraq in cold blood. Although for eighteen long years, from 1980 to 1998, successive American governments were romancing the Taliban in Afghanistan. The attack on Iraq in particular, had nothing to do with the attack on the twin towers except oil interests of America’s business mafia. According to the book Plan of Attack by Bob Woodward, the CIA had already concluded that the hard-nut Saddam Hussein could not be removed from power except through a war. This CIA finding along with “pressure from advocates of war inside the administration” led to the secret planning for military action against Iraq. The September 11 incidence made it politically feasible for the coterie to stupefy public opinion and launch a “pre-emptive attacks against countries believed to be a serious threat to the United States”.

America’s war against Afghanistan has helped the film’s storyline to advance further. Rizwan and Mandira Khan’s American neighbour Mark, a journalist by profession, gets killed in Afghanistan while covering the war. The death of Mark changes the attitude of his grieving son Reese who develops racial hatred against his once dear friend Sam – Rizwan Khan’s sweet step-son. Sam gets involved in a brawl with him and dies of his injuries. A devastated Mandira holds Rizwan culpable for her son’s death. She indicts her husband that Sam was dead only because “his name was Khan”. The distressed and irate wife then tells her husband to depart from her life till he is able to ensure the people and the President of America that he is not a terrorist. Dumped by Mandira, Rizwan starts tracking after President Bush across the country to notify him: “My name is Khan, and I’m not a terrorist”.

Although the Afghanistan war is a vital resource to unfold MNIK's storyline, it is surprising that the name of Iraq was never mentioned in the film. When Rizwan Khan was travelling around the country to “fight against the disability that exists in the world”, American military was invading Iraq on phoney grounds “to free its people, and to defend the world from grave danger”, bombarding the country and its people into pieces. No “weapons of mass destruction” was ever unearthed from Iraq; no al-Qaeda–Saddam Hussein nexus could ever be proved. America’s Iraq misadventure is completely ignored in the film. Instead, the filmmakers were keen to concentrate on Rizwan Khan’s ultimate goal of fixing the broken relation with his beloved wife. They were less concerned about America’s corporate and military greed. The Iraq war was too insignificant an issue for them to be bothered about.

During his long journey across America, Rizwan Khan lands in a poor African-American neighbourhood in Georgia and finds refuge and console from an affectionate woman, Mama Jenny, who has lost her solider son in Afghanistan. Thus, in one stroke an African-American and an Indian immigrant’s grief becomes one and the same. Sharing the common grief, Rizwan joins the chorus in Mama Jenny’s community church to sing the civil rights anthem We Shall Overcome. From here the story rolls faster to its desired end. Rizwan Khan gets arrested while trying to meet Bush and is tortured in jail as a terror suspect, gets noticed by Indian-American journalists who put him on national news which Senator Obama watches with deep interest. In a mosque he confronts a jihadi doctor, vehemently opposes his devilish views by throwing pebbles at him and immediately informs the FBI. The film has to confirm that in spite of everything Rizwan is essentially a “good citizen” of America! He even performs a superman act to dramatically appear as a saviour at Mama Jenny’s hurricane devastated village to repair the lives of the devastated dwellers. The media follows and make a hero out of him. All of a sudden a disciple of the jihadi doctor stabs him in front of his repentant wife, accusing him for betrayal. But typically, he survives in style.

Rizwan Khan finally succeeds to deliver his message to the President of America. Not to Bush but to the newly elected Barak Hussein Obama who promptly assures him that “he is not a terrorist”. Here the director has clearly made a statement by projecting Obama as a responsive President against Bush. This is a loose statement and one should not read too much from it. The Obama effect or the colour of his skin might have also inspired the director and screenwriter to give prominence to the African-Americans and favorably linking Rizwan with them in the film.

This focal point seems to be essential for a film which is marketed and distributed by Fox STAR Entertainment, a joint venture between Twentieth Century Fox and STAR. Trade news has suggested that MNIK is selling extremely well across the globe through its lollipop message to “repair the world with love”. In America it has “turned out to be the largest weekend grosser Bollywood film ever”. (Source) The film has earned Rs 150 crore from its first week of release in India and abroad.

Everyone looks good against the pathological liar and hypocrite George W Bush. But what are those steps the populist Obama is taking that are significantly different from Bush policies? This is the pertinent question which doesn’t have an easy answer. And the problem with MNIK is that, it has not even attempted to raise any pertinent question. The world has gradually started to taste Barak Obama’s “audacity of hope”. “I think people are dazzled by Obama's rhetoric,” observed eminent historian Howard Zinn who has passed away recently, “and that people ought to begin to understand that Obama is going to be a mediocre president – which means, in our time, a dangerous president – unless there is some national movement to push him in a better direction.” (Source)

Rain Man syndrome

The makers of MNIK were definitely aware of the huge success of Barry Levinson’s 1988 Hollywood film Rain Man where Dustin Hoffman gave a fabulous performance as an autistic savant. To authentically portray the autistic-like traits of his character, Shah Rukh Khan spoke with an emotionless intoning voice, walked in mincing steps, always has his head tilting sideways and never makes eye contact with his addressee – not even in romantic scenes. All these mannerisms can’t help but remind us about Hoffman’s performance as Raymond Babbitt in Rain Man. A critic has objected about comparing Hoffman and Shah Rukh’s performance. The comparison, according to the critic, is “childish and naïve” because “Hoffman plays a highly gifted autistic savant while Khan is just a good man, in love, who happens to have Asperger’s Syndrome”. (Source) This point of view is certainly not of a film critic. It can only be a humble opinion by an ardent fan of Bollywood's “de facto super-star”.

Depicting the hero Rizwan Khan with Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism spectrum disorder, did not really help to carry any lofty message except for raising high-pitch sympathy and emotion for the character in the audience’s mind. The idea to portray the hero as an autistic is basically a discreet commercial formula applied by the makers of MNIK. People with Asperger’s have significant difficulties in social interaction and communication which includes “a failure to develop friendships or to seek shared enjoyments or achievements with others”. Throughout the film, Rizwan Khan acted quite the opposite. Just like a regular Bollywood hero, he had absolutely no problem to stalk and woo the single-mother heroine, to become close and friendly with her son and develop a deep affectionate relationship with an African-American family in up-country Georgia. Here, the director Karan Johar and his screenwriter Shibani Bhatija’s typical Bollywood mindset have prevailed. They have deliberately twisted the basic aspects of the disorder to fit them into a popular Bollywood schema. Asperger’s syndrome became a marketing tool to sell the film. Carried away by this fantasizing feint of MNIK, a mainstream critic has claimed that the film “uses familiar devices to create new meaning”. (Source)

The film has indeed created a “new meaning” of king-size profiteering by effectively exploiting many disabilities of the post-modern world to achieve record-breaking box office success.

NYT image courtesy: brothersjuddblog.com

MNIK poster courtesy: filmicafe.com

Adivasis and the Maoists: few thoughts from an outsider

Gandhian social worker Himanshu Kumar has recently delivered a talk at the Mumbai Press Club after his NGO Vanvasi Chetna Ashram in south Bastar’s Dantewada was bulldozed by the Chhattisgarh government. Hailed by other NGO associates as their ‘only hope’ in Dantewada, the mainstream media has given wide publicity to this incident and has tried to put up Himanshu Kumar as a worthy victim of a repressive State. In the incisive talk, the Gandhian has expressed his utter discontent about the State sponsored Salwa Judum and has categorically held the State of Chhattisgarh responsible for brutalizing its own people – the adivasis (indigenous people), in the pretext of eliminating the Maoists. He has resentfully spoken about how the State has forcefully evicted the adivasis from their natural habitat in the process of bringing their villages under the Salwa Judum fold and subsequently pushed the displaced villagers into makeshift relief camps – because “the Maoists had support among the adivasis”. Calling the Indian State’s much publicized Operation Green Hunt as an operation to ‘Hunt’ innocent adivasis, he has pointed out that the real intention of the government behind the operation is to lay the adivasi land – the mineral belt of India, to the MNCs. “The State talks of the violence of the Maoists, but it is the State which is violent”, he has thundered. The Maoists, according to this now famous Gandhian, are the one “who supported the adivasis. That is why they regard the Naxalites as their friends.” He is also absolutely doubtless to declare that the awful situation in Chhattisgarh “is because of the State, not because of the Naxalites” where adivasis are held under perpetual fear and all the normal channels of redress are closed to them. The liberated zones, according to him, are actually “part of the State’s strategy” to generate a credible excuse for failure of governance in those areas. He has resentfully asked “how can peace come when you are all the time attacking the adivasis? Then you expect me to tell the Maoists, stop your violence.” (Source)

While Himanshu Kumar’s comments on the recurrent violence in Dantewada might sound like the same ‘chicken or egg’ fallacious argument currently clichéd by numerous discourses related to this subject, his fuming words regarding the repressive Chhattisgarh government and the Salwa Judum campaign cannot be straightaway disregarded. Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada district is literally a Maoist hotbed. To combat the perpetrating violence, the Chhattisgarh government, apart from utilizing the state forces, has also initiated to shape a notorious vigilant force Salwa Judum by arming and training adivasis with guns and ammunition and recruiting them, including their children, as special police officers (SPOs) to fight their own people. This civil militia force is infamous for carrying out mindless atrocities against adivasis on the opposite side. Their activists have been responsible for many illegal activities and crimes including looting and burning villages, gruesome killing of innocents, torture and rape. While this counter-insurgency campaign has been strongly defended by both the centrist Congress and the right-wing BJP as a spontaneous ‘people’s movement’, in reality it has brought extreme suffering on adivasi life and livelihood by pitting adivasis against adivasis, as the executor and the victims, and creating a civil war like condition in the state.

To perceive a crisis which has its origins in socio-economic deprivation and backwardness only as a ‘law and order’ problem is a grave mistake. But the imperious Raman Singh government has precisely chosen to follow this mistaken path. Powered by draconian laws like the Chhattisgarh Public Security Act (CSPSA) and the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) along with an exclusive possession over the legitimate use of forces, the BJP regime in Chhattisgarh has considered that a ruthless counteroffensive is the only solution to the problem. Instead of taking initiatives for a political solution, they started reacting with guns and bullets, went on sponsoring the Salwa Judum campaign and virtually converted Chhattisgarh into a police state which became a futile exercise to tackle the menace and have caused counterproductive effects. The Maoists could easily exploit the adivasis as a profound feeling of neglect, alienation and deprivation had already been settled among them due to the existence of acute poverty, severe inequality in living standards, intense exploitation and lack of economic prospects. The callous approach of the government has further augmented the situation by offering a fertile ground to the Maoists for spreading their red roots deeper into the adivasi heartland. Today the situation of Chhattisgarh has become a predicament from where there seems to be no way out.

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This blazing issue also puts forward several uncomfortable questions. Is it an assuring or a disturbing signal when a Gandhian working among the adivasis in Chhattisgarh for seventeen long years goes “soft on Maoist violence” and eventually starts transforming into a “Maoist Gandhian”? Are the compassionate feelings extended towards the adivasis and the sympathy extended towards the Maoists equivalent to each other? Is it appropriate to severely criticize the state sponsored violence but at the same time praise the Maoists for their efforts “to take on the violence of the ruling classes and its representative state machinery”? Can we overlook the fact that the Maoists have also committed an unlimited number of indescribable atrocities on innocent adivasis by either branding them as Salwa Judum activists or police informers? Is it a morally correct stand to support the cruel Maoists since we hate the brutal Salwa Judum? Should we then also start believing that we “can’t extract morality” when the clash is between “an army of very poor people” and “an army of rich that are corporate-backed”? Can we ignore the daily annihilation program that the Maoists have undertaken to eliminate the poor and ordinary rank and file rival political activists? In which army do these victims belong to? Should we carry the belief that the poor adivasis are fighting their own battle and the Maoists deserve sympathy because they have joined them in their fight as ‘true friends’? Are they really ‘friends’?

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To save their backs from the looming State onslaught, the Maoist leadership has chalked out elaborate plans and projects. They have expedited the work to build several escape corridors through Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Bihar and Jharkhand which includes strategic places to function as transit camps. (Source) With the assistance extended by the ‘useful idiots’ of Trinamool Congress they have now included three Jharkhand bordering districts of Bengal – West Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia in their list. In exchange of the ‘premeditated support’ they have received from the Maoists in places like Nandigram and Lalgarh, the TMC has gleefully agreed to assist them without considering the dangerous ramifications.

Another brilliant plan has recently surfaced. In an interview with The Indian Express, the CPI(Maoist) central committee spokesperson Azad has provided details of their insightful battle strategy against the Central forces and said that “All our plans, policies, strategy and tactics will be based entirely on the active involvement of the vast masses of people in this war of self-defense”. Using the catch-phrase “relying on the sea of people in which we swam like fish”, the spokesperson has further emphasized that “The enemy class cannot decimate us without decimating the entire population in regions we control”. (Emphasis added) This appalling statement about how the ‘entire population in regions we control’ will be used as sacrificial lambs for safeguarding the invaluable lives of the Maoist leaders bares the real face of the so called ‘friends of the adivasis’. There is no lofty revolutionary moral embed with this statement. It is just a declaration of blatant treachery with the plain and simple adivasis who have wholeheartedly trusted them with all their passion and dedication. (Source)

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By living sheltered within the adivasi society, by acting as avengers and rousing the adivasi masses against elite repression, the Maoists have earned much admiration and support from them. They have also made themselves admirable in the eyes of many city-bred bleeding-heart intellectuals and academics who love to visualize them as ‘weapons of the weak’. Though the Maoists pretend as leaders of adivasi freedom, in real sense, they are nothing but an anarchic group with an erroneous ideology. It will be far more accurate to describe them as ‘social bandits’ – using the Eric J. Hobsbawm term. The learned academics may keenly argue that their paramount contribution is overturning a general assumption that the adivasis are only interested in livelihood issues and cannot get politicized. (Source) Here, the distinguished academics can be gently reminded that when the politics of a socio-political movement is fundamentally wrong, everything goes wrong. Instead of leading the adivasis towards socio-political freedom they have pushed then into a far greater danger. Their future is getting devastated almost beyond redemption by the politics of gun championed by the Maoists. They are not really ‘fighters for justice’ but merely another ‘power structure’ within the system. Therefore it will be a systemic blunder to glorify them as ‘revolutionaries’. The ‘strategy of the Protracted Peoples’ War’ is a falsehood. They need this war because war means business!

From many shady sections of our society there is an overwhelming display of compassion for the adivasis today. It is hard to distinguish how much of these compassions are genuine and how much is actually a pose or disguise of the Maoist sympathizers. If their concerns are genuine then they should stop romanticizing the Maoist social bandits as beacons of resistance and instead, start talking against their perilous plots in the same intensity in which they talk about the terrible State repression. They need to condemn both the sides equally for causing immense harm to the hapless adivasis like political and social activist Aruna Roy who has unambiguously expressed that, “anybody who indulges in violence or kills is a murderer, be it a policeman or a tribal person”.

The nonstop disgorgements of aesthetic, academic and theoretical jargon on this topic is incessantly making all of us perplexed. However, it has also made us particularly suspicious about the moral uprightness of some of our learned friends who have cherished to share the repugnant viewpoints of conspicuous Indian dissent Arundhati Roy. While passing a remark on the approaching State-Maoists conflict, the talkative ‘global justice activist’ has said, “You have an army of very poor people being faced down by an army of rich that are corporate-backed…..So you can’t extract morality from the heinous act of violence that each commits against the other”. (Source) Maoist sympathizers like Roy go on talking endlessly about a symbiotic relation between the adivasis and the Maoists. The same has been put in plain words, but differently, by the other Roy, Aruna: “The people have taken to this ideology because there is no alternative, or they see it as their best alternative. If you give them a better alternative, the people will go there.” She further continues, “For the tribals, the truth is that there is no choice, or very little.” (Source)

What is the way out from this gloom and grey? The primary task is to find out the alternative. It should be followed by asserting some tangible steps to facilitate a climate of justice, equality, freedom and peace. It is going to be another big battle; but a special one to fight. Winning this battle will depend upon the combined political will and commitment of the State and its people. But before everything, the Maoists must be separated off from the adivasi life. At the moment this is the most challenging task in front of the country.

Debating the Maoist challenge

In the public domain, a frequent argument is taking place to find out whether the extremism of Indian Maoists is an act of terrorism or not. In fact, there is a very thin line which divides the Maoists extremism from other typical forms of terrorism. Mindless mass killing, brutal extermination of detractors and critics, destruction of state property are among the many common features of the terrorist doctrine that fits well with the Maoists ‘revolutionary’ strategy. Maoists, like the terrorist groups cling to a fanatic socio-political and cultural belief, prefer supreme loyalty from their cadres and favor absolute totalitarianism. Both have trained themselves to use sophisticated weaponry and have grown more adapted these days to pathological killing. Both believe in oppositional terror and try to achieve it by intense violence. Where religious terrorism is inspired by religious dogma, Maoist political terror is inspired by a rigid form of political dogma. Both have practiced mastery to cunningly utilize rival mainstream political groups against one another to pursue their goal while the mainstream political groups stupidly think the reverse. Both have grown to be a lucrative media catch and perfected the art to make use of the extreme double standards of the fourth estate. Reluctant to renounce violence from a deliberate choice of applying terror tactics to force political concessions, Maoism in India is incessantly getting synonymous with terrorism.

The gun-cult

To neutralize the strengths of conventional law enforcement forces and capture areas from political parties who have the potential to raise an unyielding challenge to them, Maoists are frequently applying tested terrorist methods of macabre violence. The Maoist guerrilla squads perpetrate ambushes on security force convoys, kidnap and gruesomely assassinate individuals from poorly protected police stations in remote regions, plant booby traps of homemade improvised explosive devices or chic landmines, carry out a programme of individual annihilation of grass-root workers, supporters and sympathizers of rival political parties after terming them ‘class enemies’ or ‘renegades’. Most of their victims, notably, belong to the poor section of the society.

Their petty-bourgeois cheer-leaders and intellectual sympathizers believe that there is nothing wrong in this gun-cult as it is only a ‘consequence of mass anger’ and so cannot be labeled as ‘premeditated terroristic attack’. They consider this politics of terror as a socio-economic phenomenon, created impulsively as a response to a particular social and economic situation. To them, this risky belief seems to be convenient at the moment. However as Bob Dylan has once said “People seldom do what they believe in. They do what is convenient, then repent.”

Democracy at Gun point

A lot has been said about the ‘admirable’ development works that the Maoists have put up in the forests of south Bastar's Dantewada in Chhattisgarh where they are running a parallel government — the Janathana Sarkar (People’s Democratic State). Here, the Maoists have gone all out with their experiment to build a model classless society. The Janathana Sarkar is an elected body but ‘Landlords, anti people hierarchs, stooges of exploiting government and anti revolutionary forces are disqualified to participate in elections.’ As we learn from the lofty Maoist document ‘Policy programe of Janathana Sarkar’ (Source) the People’s Democratic governments have deployed a robust revenue collection system to run their expenses, distributed lands confiscated from landlords to poor and landless peasants. It has formed a forest protection committee to protect the natural livelihood of the tribals, running schools to raise political consciousness and scientific knowledge among the masses. To deliver summary justice to the oppressed masses, people’s courts reinforced with ‘new principles of justice, class line and mass line’ often tries and punishes ‘landlords, hierarchs, heads of the ruling class parties, exploiting government officers, police, paramilitary, military forces, goondas, anarchists, thieves, deceivers, conspirators, police agents’. To successfully control every aspect of the lives and livelihood of the tribal inhabitants and to maintain its absolute authority, the Janathana Sarkars has built up a considerable guerrilla base equipped with sophisticated arms and ammunition.

Elite bleeding-heart Maoist sympathizers have been provided enough space in the liberal bourgeois media to continuously drum on their admiration and paint a romantic picture of the ‘constructive programmes’ of this illegal Maoist governments which is run by the ‘principles of democracy’ where ‘individuals shall be committed to the government, minority to the majority’. They are ecstatic about how the Maoist governance has made the oppressed tribals feel proud of their identity and has brought back their self-respect. How the Maoist gunmen have protected them from the exploitation and harassment by local feudal lords, village chiefs, forest and police personnel, businessman and contractors. How the Maoists have empowered the marginal tribal farmers by teaching them agricultural skill, affiliated tribal families into cooperative farming, organized them to volunteer for digging tanks for irrigating land and breeding fish and has provided primary education and health care facilities to fight illiteracy and endemic diseases like malaria and diarrheoa. Above all, the sympathizers are delighted to describe how the Maoists have reignited the tribals against state sponsored atrocities and endowed them with guns — the ultimate symbol of power. The tribal voice under the Janathana Sarkars, they exclaim, is the real voice of people’s power. Here the voice grows out, literally, from the barrel of gun.

Are the Maoists really interested about the genuine problems of the tribal inhabitants of these regions or they are using the tribals as a pawn in their game? Do the Maoists represent the entire tribal population of these regions? These remain pungent questions which does not have an easy answer. The tribal heartland of India was not really selected by the Maoists because they had any special affection and empathy for the underprivileged tribals. It was a strategic choice for its geographical advantages. To build up a safe base and getting prepared for their so called revolutionary war, the Maoists required a secured hideout for themselves which will be inaccessible to the state security forces. There could be no argument at all that the tribals have remained the most neglected people in India and has encountered endless state apathy during both pre-independence and post-independence time. The tribal regions are among some of the most backward regions of the country. The Maoists have simply exploited the situation by seducing a major section of the inhabitants to achieve their own gory interests. Improvement of tribal life has little significance in the broader context of the Maoist strategy. The secluded tribal lands are important for them as self-sufficient base areas, for consolidating their strength to later expand and unleash ‘protracted People’s War’ against the Indian state and subsequently overthrow it.

What is actually going on inside these jungles? How do we, who live outside the ‘liberated zones’, learn about the effectiveness of these ‘classless’ Maoist governance when much of their functioning inside the jungle hideouts is invisible? Fortunately, we have two important sources of information.

The ‘stinking’ dissenters

“The Central task of the Indian revolution … is the seizure of political power. To accomplish this Central task, the Indian people will have to be organized in the people’s army and will have to wipe out the armed forces of the counterrevolutionary Indian state through war and will have to establish, in its place, their own state - the People’s Democratic State” – from the CPI (Maoist) document: Strategy & Tactics of the Indian Revolution.

The first unambiguous source of information is the several fact-finding reports by civil liberties groups and accounts of social activists and NGO organizations mostly comprising the liberal and radical left. This is a special mix of ‘aware and awake’ people who essentially believes that ‘people have a right to defend themselves against state violence’ and certifies Maoist violence as ‘the very last option of a desperate people pushed to the very brink of existence’. These are the people who validate the killing spree of Maoists by citing that ‘Hindu mobs led by the Bajrang Dal and the VHP had killed more people than the Maoists’ and unquestionably believes that the Maoists ‘don’t kill without a good reason’. They feel that the Maoists cannot lay down arms as it will only allow the State to crush them. These are the people who believe that the people's courts of the Maoists ‘only existed because India's courts are out of the reach of ordinary people’ and love to talk persistently about ‘police repression, the arrests, the torture, the killing, the corruption’. These are the people who inform us about how state governments, from an absolute paranoia of the Maoist specter, are branding every dissenter as Maoists and thus pushing activists as well as ordinary people ‘to take up arms and join the Maoists’. These are the aware people who knows about ‘the dangers of trying to extract a simple morality out of individual incidents of heinous violence’. These are the sensitive and concerned citizens of India who turn blind when the Maoists carry out cold blooded murder of CPI(M) activists in Bengal or behead police inspector Francis Induwar in Jharkhand. These are the people who get extremely angry when the Vanvasi Chetana Ashram in Dantewada was demolished by the state forces because this ‘neutral outpost’ had virtually became the base camp of city-bred outsiders to exchange useful information and support with the Maoists but do not get angry at all when the Maoists blow up schools. These are the same group of people who talks about human rights violation during every action of state security forces but maintain absolute silence when the Maoist and their frontal organizations unleash mindless violence on common people.

These Indian dissenters are the champions of the oppressed, who couldn't help looking (and smelling) cheap! These are the people among whom Arundhati Roy has found that ‘a humane heart still beats’. (Source)

‘Maoists are part of the story’

The second source is the reports and features produced by the neo-liberal Indian corporate media. Duty bound daring scribes frequenting into the Maoist heartland bring out titillating news stories. Account of the ascending life of a once timid tribal and now a fearless Maoist guerrilla is described in those stories in graphic detail. During every crisis period in their movement, the Maoist leadership has invited the ‘dear pressmen & TV channel hoisters’ from the ‘democratic and free’ Indian print and electronic media into their ‘liberated zones’. The numerous investigating reports that the journalists carry out later, serves both the Maoists and the media bosses. The Maoists get free publicity which they think elevates their public image. The media gets steady readership that facilitate the manufacturing of public consent. These reports highlight why tribal youths want to join the PGA (People’s Guerrilla Army) and fight against the police. Why the tribal populace think that the Maoists are their only savior. It also helps to generate the myth of the Maoist style ‘development’. It creates a thriller effect in the mind of the readers and viewers as the concept of dissent is always attractive to the petty-bourgeois conscience. A section of the media has developed a generic habit of romanticizing the Maoists. There is a definite reason behind this romanticism. It is not to display their love for the Maoists but principally directed against the mainstream Left, to lower their significance in people’s mind. Thus, the compassionate media puts top Maoist leader couple Kobad and Anuradha Ghandy on a pedestal and asks in a melodramatic voice: how did the daughter of a high profile lawyer of Bombay High Court or the son of a top Glaxo executive come to choose a life of struggle and hardship? (Source) If we accept the media stories as true, we will discover that every Maoist leader was a first-rate student and at the same time ‘extremely aware of what was happening around’. They automatically get radicalized while studying in elite colleges and learn to shed tears for the poor. Responding to the righteous call to fight for the oppressed, they soon become gun carrying revolutionaries.

Vincent Brossel, head of the Asia desk of Reporters Without Borders (RWB) has defended the role of the ‘free’ media concerning the Maoists by saying, “When you have a civil war on terror groups it is the right of the press to cover both sides. The Maoists are part of the story.” (Source) RWB is an international NGO that advocates freedom of the press. The group is reputed for having ‘strong links with Western intelligence agencies and has focussed its energies on countries such as Cuba and Venezuela.’ (Source) RWB is also alleged to be on the payroll of the U.S. State Department. (Source)

There is a lucid pattern in which these stories are woven and planted. In fact, the corporate media serves its own agenda when it purposely turns into a Maoists mouthpiece. The transformation obscures the genuine democratic struggles that are going on in the fields and factories all over India. Mainstream Left parties have always criticized left extremism for dismantling of democratic movements. In this aspect they are absolutely right. The Maoists and the corporate media work hand in glove and share a common understanding to actually demolish the scope of democratic resistance.

To acquire a true picture of alternative system of the Maoists governance, should we then rely on these sources as credible and truthful?

'To live outside the law you must be honest'

At present, these self-styled protectors who boast about safeguarding tribal wealth from ‘capitalist development’ and ‘corporate expansion’ have absolutely monopolized their control over mineral and other natural wealth in the regions they control. They are involved in illegal harvesting like growing poppy crop and smuggling of minerals and forest products through criminal syndicates of the timber and mine mafias. The revenue collection system, disguised as ‘taxes and donations from the people and fines from the anti people elements’, is their main source of income that comes from extorting huge amounts of royalty from the traders, contractors, mining corporates and big industries operating in those regions. While indoctrinating the tribal people against the Indian State, the Maoists at the same time had successfully built up dubious relationships and deceitful understandings with mainstream political parties. In Andhra Pradesh, local politicians have found them handy to secure electoral gains. The same nexus was evident during the Jharkhand assembly election in 2005. Recently in Bengal, the Maoists are working as second fiddle to Mamata Banerjee and her cohorts.

On the eve of Operation Green Hunt — the Indian State’s massive counteroffensive plan against them, the Maoists are feeling the urgent need to forge a strong support base ‘at every level possible’ which includes their ‘honorable’ sympathizers from the intelligentsia as well as mainstream political parties. Their offensive against the ‘brutal’ state forces needs to be carried out ‘in close coordination with, and in support of’ these mainstream sections of the Indian society. The Maoist leaders are definitely not fools but have cunning political brains. They know that to take up ‘wide propaganda exposing state terror and state-sponsored terror’ and evoke sympathy among the broader masses, the help and support from the babble mouth elite sympathizers, the ‘liberal’ media and petty-bourgeois radicals will give them the necessary propaganda mileage. By lending opportunistic ‘tactical’ support to petty-minded political groups to influence petty politics, by inciting an anarchic situation through their murderous politics, they want to divert attention from their surreptitious activities. Bengal is a paradigm case where reactionary political forces like the ‘useful idiots’ of the Trinamool Congress has volunteered to help the Maoists just to pathologically oppose the principal partner of the ruling Left Front — the CPI(M). So, it is not a surprise when we hear the shrewd CPI-Maoist politbureau member Koteshwar Rao a.k.a. Kishanji openly declaring Mamata Banerjee as the next Chief Minister of Bengal! This friendship will immensely help the Maoists to keep an escape corridor open for their ‘brave’ guerrillas to turn their tails and flee from the imminent State offensive.

During the show of might between state forces and the Maoists, the hapless tribals will be caught in the crossfire and left to bear the maximum brunt. Their already wretched life will further get shattered. This is going to be the most disturbing part of the event.

Web Resources:

1. Ajai Sahni: ‘Naxalism’- The Retreat of Civil Governance

2. Debasish Chakraborty: Who Are The Maoists Working For?

3. Nirmalangshu Mukherjee: Open Letter to Noam Chomsky

4. V Balachandran: An ideological adversary