Indiendebatt den 18 april på ABF-huset.
Jan Myrdal fick inleda och ansåg sammanfattningsvis att det över huvudtaget inte skrivs särskilt mycket om Indien i västliga media inklusive Sverige. Och att informationsläget dessutom har försämrats, det var bättre på Palmes tid ansåg han. Arundhati Roy hade vid ett möte i London instämt i att Indieninformationen försämrats. Det dåliga informationsläget ansåg Jan Myrdal berodde på ekonomisk-politisk styrning, att "den som betalar kusken bestämmer färden":
– Någon "fri press" i största allmänhet tror jag inte det finns någon närvarande här som tror på. Det finns inte, ansåg Jan Myrdal.

– I min nya bok "Röd stjärna över Indien" (se recension i Fjärde Världen 3/2011) har jag påpekat att adivasierna i Indien sitter på en förmögenhet. Det pågår en kamp om dessa naturrikedomar, adivasis måste bort anses det. Men de vill inte bli avskaffade. Vilket har lett till en intensiv väpnad kamp.

– Vattenkraften bedrivs det en rovdrift på och man bedriver en kamp mot detta av ett slag som samerna borde fört för 300 år sedan, sa Jan Myrdal.

– Men när Indiens regering går emot läkemedelsföretaget Bayer stöder vi dem givetvis i det.

David Ståhl, ansåg att maoisternas kulor inte hade effekt mot korrruptionen. Foto: Ola Persson

David Ståhl höll inte med Jan Myrdal om att informationen om Indien varit bättre på Palmes tid, och ansåg att Arundhati Roy hade fel när hon sa att man "inte får" skriva om vissa saker i Indien.
– Dessutom finns svenska journalister placerade fast i Indien. Och de indiska tidningarna har fantastiska ledare.
– När det gäller fattigdomen så minskar den i Indien, men det finns fickor där den inte gjort det. Och det är där naxaliterna, maoisterna, Jan Myrdals kompisar, verkar.

De kan ibland göra saker som inte ligger i adivasiernas, ursprungsfolkens, intressen ansåg David Ståhl:
– Till exempel inrättade faktiskt bolaget Vedanta ett sjukhus i området nära de kända Nilgiribergen där dongria kondherna protesterat mot företagets planer. Men ingen personal vågar sig dit eftersom maoisterna hotat dem och sagt att de då kommer att agera.

– Ingen förnekar att vanstyre råder i Indien. Men Anna Hazare, en känd indisk personlighet, har med sin kampanj mot korruption åstadkommit mer på sex månader än vad maoisterna gjort på 30 år med sina kulor – och med mer varaktiga resultat!

P J Andersson höll delvis med Jan Myrdal ifråga om medieläget:
– USA-valet följs noga i svenska media, men inte indisk politik. Det blir en rundgång. Vi vet så lite om Indien, och därför blir det så lite intresse för Indien.
– Indiska media håller samtidigt en hög kvalité. Där finns en rå men frisk ton mot regeringen till exempel. I Sverige är underdånigheten från journalister påfallande mycket större, ansåg PJ Andersson:
– Det finns en offentlighetslag i Indien, Right to Information Act, och den står på folkets sida.
– När det gäller läskunnigheten i Indien så har den ökat snabbt. 74 procent är nu läs- och skrivkunniga. I Kina är det över 90 procent, men Indien har snabbt förbättrat sin siffra.

– Jag träffade några personer i Orissa som sa att: "naxaliterna är som samer, fast de har vapen". I delstater som Orissa och Uttar Pradesh finns ingen offentlig välfärd värd namnet. Men det är inte så enkelt att det bara är att ta upp vapen och slåss mot den indiska staten.

– Det finns aktivister som är gandhianer, många byar har vänt maoisterna ryggen.
– När det gäller adivasier – ursprungsfolken – och eftersatta kaster så har deras standard förbättrats snabbare än andra gruppers i Indien.

Christer Norström, frågade hur solidariteten med Indiens folk skulle utvecklas. Foto: Ola Persson
Hans Magnusson berättade om olika personer som haft betydelse för de "kastlösas" rörelser i Indien: dr Ambedkar, journalister, aktivister. Han nämnde också rörelsen Dalit Panthers:
– Kvinnorna utsätts för ett tredubbelt förtryck och diskrimineras utifrån kast, klass och kön.
– En aboriginkvinna sa vid ett tillfälle: jag vill inte ha din hjälp, men om du tror att din frihet är bunden till min, då är jag med.

FN och EU trycker på den indiska regeringen för att komma till rätta med diskrimineringen som daliterna utsätts för. Men man agerar inte i särskilt stor utsträckning, hävdade Hans Magnusson.

– När det gäller naxalitrörelsen och uppkomsten av ett "rött bälte" i östra Indien så bygger dess framgångar helt på att människor har tvingats iväg på grund av utvecklingsprojekt. Narmadaflodens dämningar, husdemoleringar.

– Det är bara en fjärdedel av Indiens befolkning som har dragit nytta av framstegen på senare år. Statistik från 2007 visade att 77 % av Indiens befolkning lever på 20 rupies (under 10 kronor) per dag, sa Hans Magnusson.

Hans Magnusson, till höger, påpekade att Indiens hundratals miljoner daliter inte fått bättre ekonomiska levnadsvillkor. Foto. Ola Persson

Christer Norström, socialantropolog som sysslat med Indien under de senaste 20 åren ansåg under frågestunden efter debatten att det bland Indiens bönder finns tre förhållningssätt: konfrontation, självmord eller förhandlingar:

– Vi kan stödja, hjälpa till. Frågan som måste besvaras är hur solidariteten med Indien ska komma till stånd?

Åhörarna gick hem kanske inte lugnade men med lite mer kunskaper. Arrangör av debatten var föreningen Indiensolidaritet i samarbete med ABF-Stockholm.

Text: Henrik Persson

Foto: Ola Persson

(Ur senaste numret av tidningen Fjärde Världen, nr 2-2012. Beställ via hemsida: www.f4world.org )

Den här e-postadressen skyddas mot spambots. Du måste tillåta JavaScript för att se den.

Gunilla Herlitz et al.,

DN har upplåtit en helsida till Per J. Andersson för att skriva om Jan Myrdal. Frågan är vad syftet är med artikeln – att tala om att Jan Myrdal blivit ”portat” i några länder och nu i år i Indien; eller Myrdals författarskap, eller Myrdals indologiska inställning – det blir litet av varje men utan fokus. Bara uttrycket ´portad´ ger ett raljerande tonläge. Men framförallt, artikeln ger ingen bakgrund eller försök till verklig information om det som Jan Myrdal beskriver i sin bok. Den allvarligaste kritiken vill jag rikta till Dagens Nyheter. Den enda bevakningen av Indien DN presterar är några artiklar i Indiens periferi; alltså ganska ytliga och föga lärorika. De kan vara sanna i sak men genom att bara upprepa sådana typer av nyheter blir bilden av Indien osann.

Om nu DN ställer en helsida till förfogande om Indien och då Myrdals bok om Naxalitrörelsen, varför då göra ett försök att försöka förstå och till läsarna förmedla varför en revolutionär rörelse kom till 1967 och fortköpande utvecklas och som Indiens premiärminister Manmohan Singh 2005 kallade för det allvarligaste interna hotet mot landets självständighet och därför sänt mer än 100 000 militär och mer poliser att bekämpa. Det, Gunilla Herlitz, är en undermålig nyhetsförmedling.

Jag bifogar två artiklar; en just klar om Naxalitrörelsen, och en artikel från 2006 om Daliternas situation. Med et vill jag säga, Gunilla Herlitz, att jag skriver gärna några artiklar för DN om Indien. Jag har de senaste 15 åren besökt Indien olika länga varje år sedan dess och har lärt känna den del av Indien som t.ex. Per J. Andersson eller de journalister DN brukar sända ut inte känner. Så om du verkligen vill skärpa bevakningen av Indien står jag till förfogande.

Hans

Hans Magnusson

Dalit Solidarity Network-Sweden (DSN-S)

DSN-S is a member of the International Dalit Solidarity Network (IDSN); a network organization consisting of national Dalit coalitions in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Bangladesh, national Dalit solidarity networks (DSN) in seven European countries and international associates working nationally and internationally to eradicate discrimination based on caste.

Tyvärr kan FiB.se endast bifoga en artikel som PDF med text och bilder.För båda PDF artiklarna:

Kontakta Hans Magnusson

Hans Magnusson

2006-11-11





My final words of advice to you are educate, agitate and organize; have faith in yourself.
With justice on our side I do not see how we can loose our battle. The battle to me is a matter
of joy. The battle is in the fullest sense spiritual. There is nothing material or social in it. For
ours is a battle not for wealth or for power. It is battle for freedom. It is the battle of
reclamation of human personality…

- Dr. B. R. Ambedkar







Berättelser om förtryck och befrielse



Hur ska man förstå en så absurd samhällsordning, där kasttillhörighet sedan århundraden har
en avgörande roll för människors sociala och ekonomiska villkor och ställning i förhållande
till varandra? Denna artikel är ett försök att sammanfatta många hundra år av berättelser om
en samhällsgrupp på ca 170 miljoner människor, som kallar sig Daliter och som har
definierats som de ´oberörbara´ inom kastsystemet, om förtrycket och förnekelsen av dem och
deras förmåga att skapa en egen identitet som ett led i kampen för fullvärdigt medborgarskap
med rätt till mänsklighet, mänsklig värdighet och mänskliga rättigheter.



Ordet dalit betyder ordagrant krossad eller bruten i bitar men innebär i ett socialt
sammanhang att vara förtryckt och underordnad.



En väg till förståelse är att lyssna till Daliternas egna berättelser, Dalit Sahitya. I år har flera
berättelser av Daliter uttryckta i poesi, litteratur, bildkonst och aktivism av en lycklig
tillfällighet flutit samman till att kunna presenteras i ett sammanhang. På bokmässan i
Göteborg i september i år introducerades två böcker, Berättelsen på min rygg – Indiens daliter
i uppror mot kastsystemet (Ordfront) och Detta Land som aldrig var vår Moder (Tranan) med
dikter av indiska Dalit poeter och bilder av Dalit konstnären Savi Sawarkar. Redaktörer för
båda böckerna är Eva-Maria Hardtmann och Vimal Thorat i samråd med Tomas Löfström och
Birgitta Wallin, Indiska Biblioteket. Samma månad utsågs Ruth Manorama från Bangalore,
Indien till en av tre mottagare av Right Livelihood Award 2006 för sitt livslånga engagemang
för Daliternas frihet. Det är lätt att räkna in också aktivism som en form konst, åtminstone på
det sätt som den förverkligas av Ruth Manorama.



Böckerna ger inblick i hur kastsystemet upplevs av daliterna själva och vilka konsekvenser
det har för dem. De visar hur ord, bild och aktivism kan samverka för att skapa
självmedvetande, självkänsla och värdighet hos en tidigare utstött och förtryckt
samhällsgrupp. Ord och bild blir en länk till att minnas historien men ger också uttryck för en
förändrad innebörd av ordet ´dalit´ från att innebära förnekelse av mänsklig värdighet till att
stå för ett egenvärde där förnekelse byts till självrespekt och en tro på att kampen för
mänskliga rättigheter ska leda fram till ett värdigt liv.



Dalit Sahitya och Savi Sawarkars bilder ger röst åt dem utan egen röst men lägger också
grunden för dem att långsamt samla insikten och kraften att stå upp och hävda sin rätt så som
till exempel Sharankumar Limbale ger uttryck för i sin dikt Vitbok






Jag ber inte om

en sol eller måne

er gård, ert land,

era höghus eller palats.

Jag ber inte om era gudar eller ritualer, kaster eller sekter

Eller ens om era mödrar, systrar, döttrar.

Jag ber om

Mina rättigheter som människa.

--------------

Mina rättigheter: infekterade upplopp

som smittar stad efter stad, by efter by, människa efter människa.

För det är de rättigheter jag har –

avstängd, utstött, fängslad, förvisad.

Jag vill ha mina rättigheter, ge mig mina rättigheter!

Kan ni förneka detta inflammerade sakernas tillstånd?

Jag kommer att riva upp skrifterna som järnvägsräls,

bränna era laglösa lagar som man bränner en buss.

Mina vänner,

mina rättigheter stiger som solen!

Kan ni förneka själva soluppgången?







Savi Sawarkar, Voice for the Voiceless



Eleanor Zelliot (1992) i sin bok From Untouchables To Dalit menar att ordet dalit under
senare delen av 1900-talet kommit att användas i en helt ny kulturell kontext för att


representera ”… a new level of pride, militancy and sophisticated creativity” … “and an
inherent denial of pollution, karma, and justified caste hierarchy”.



Zelliot refererar också till Gangadhar Pantawane, språkprofessor och grundare av
Asmitadarsh (Mirror of Identity), som hon menar gett den tydligaste definitionen av
innebörden av begreppet dalit så som daliterna ser sig själva idag. Det står för ett radikalt
avståndstagande från den religiöst betingade legitimiteten av förtrycket. Pantawane säger: To
me, Dalit is not a caste. He is a man exploited by the social and economic traditions of this
country. He does not believe in God, Rebirth, Soul, Holy Books teaching separatism, Fate and
Heaven because they have made him a slave. He does believe in humanism. Dalit is a symbol
of change and revolution.



Denna aktivistiska innebörd av begreppet har också den rörelse som bildades under 1970-
talet, Dalit Panthers, starkt bidraget till. De hämtade sin inspiration från de svartas
frigörelsekamp i USA under 1970-talet, Black Panthers i USA fick sin motsvarighet i Dalit
Panthers i Indien, i första hand i delstaten Maharashtra i västra Indien. Ordet dalit
omvandlades från att referera till de förtryckta i passiv mening till att associeras med
aktivism, självrespekt och motstånd.



Dalitrörelsen i den form som National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights i Indien och den
internationella rörelsen för solidaritet med Daliter (International Dalit Solidarity Network,
IDSN) utgör har sedan ett tiotal år organiserat sig nationellt och internationellt, vilket fört
frågan om kastbaserad diskriminering (discrimination based on work and descent) till både
FN och EU. Det internationella lobbyarbetet har utan tvekan haft framgångar. Exempel på
detta är beslutet av FNs kommission för mänskliga rättigheter (nuvarande Rådet för
Mänskliga Rättigheter) i april 2005 att utse två speciella rapportörer med uppgift att utreda
frågans omfattning och orsaker och lämna rekommendationer till kommissionen för hur denna
typ av kränkningar ska undanröjas. Ett annat exempel är att en kommitté under
Europaparlamentet den 18 december i år ska ha en hearing i frågan med representanter från
dalitrörelsen.



Kast som samhällsordning



Vad är kast och hur kom det sig att ett samhällssystem byggt på kaster alls uppstod? Inget
samhällssystem kommer till utifrån en väl genomtänkt modell. En social struktur uppstår och
påverkas av enskilda omvälvande omständigheter och utvecklas över en längre tid. Till slut
har den fått en klar och tydlig form och får sin legitimitet från ett avlägset förflutet, då de
ursprungliga händelserna för dess tillkomst är gömda under myter och legender. Vid det
tillfället intar den ett rationellt utformat system för ett samhälles organisation. Den hinduiska
samhällsordning, där kastsystemet ingår som en bärande princip, bör ses i ett sådant
sammanhang.



Ordet kast kommer från det portugisiska ordet casta, som närmast betyder börd eller härkomst
genom födsel. En kast i denna betydelse består av grupper som knyts samman genom yrke
och val av äktenskapspartner inom gruppen. De portugisiska bosättarna kring provinsen Goa
i mitten av 1500-talet observerade att befolkningen var indelade i olika castas av skiftande
rang, som upprätthölls så strikt att ingen med högre status kunde äta eller dricka med någon
av lägre börd och Garcia de Orta noterade 1563 att sönerna följde sina fäders yrken.




Termen kast har kommit att användas om de två indiska begreppen varna (färg) och jati
(födelse).



Samhällsordningen började ta form under den vediska perioden 1200 – 500 f. Kr. Då lades
grunden för den hierarkiska rangordningen av människor i de fyra varna som genom
århundradena getts en religiös legitimering. Jati-tillhörigheten kom under historiens gång att
bindas samman med varna kategorierna.



Enligt legenden i Veda skrifterna, RgVeda 10.90, (Purushasukta, the Hymn of Man) skapade
gudarna universum inklusive samhällets fyra klasser (varnas) genom att offra och söndra
Purusha, urmänniskan. De skapade en Brahmán (präst, lärare) ur hans mun, Kshatriya
(krigare, aristokrat) ur hans båda armar och Vaishyas (köpmän, handelsmän) ur hans lår. De
utgjorde de två gånger födda (twice born, den biologiska och den rituella). En fjärde varna,
Shudra (med uppgift att tjäna de högre varna) skapades ur hans fötter.



Panchamas, en femte grupp, de ´oberörbara´, de som utför de ´orena´ arbetsuppgifterna och
därmed uppfattas och behandlas som ´orena´ i religiös och rituell mening, kom att få sin plats
under och utanför de fyra varna. De står utanför varna systemet men de har en kasttillhörighet
genom att ingå i en jati.



Jati är ett uttryck för födelse, härkomst och sammanhållningen eller gemenskapen i en grupp,
en släktskapsorganisation, där medlemmarna traditionellt utövar ett eller ett par näraliggande
yrken. Läderarbetare, krukmakare, tvättare, boskapsuppfödare och lantarbetare i ett område
till exempel utgör var för sig olika jati. Denna gemenskap brukar också begränsa området för
val av äktenskapspartner. Alla individer tillhör därmed en jati. Det är dessa företeelser som
kan sägas definiera begreppet kast. Det finns flera tusen olika jatis och antalet medlemmar i
en särskild jati kan variera från några tusen till flera miljoner människor.



Då antropologerna under 1960-talet började studera och försöka förstå den sociala strukturen
kunde de iaktta den mångfald av olika jati (kastgrupper), som förekom i olika samhällen i
Indien. I likhet ned de hierarkiska förhållandena mellan de fyra varnas, så som dessa
framställdes i de vediska skrifterna, fann de att relationen mellan de olika jatis var
strukturerad på ett motsvarande sätt efter religiösa föreställningar om ´renhet´ och orenhet´.
Det är inte helt klart hur den ursprungliga rangordningen mellan de olika jatis såg ut, inte
heller till vilken varna de hörde. I den folkräkning som den brittiska kolonialmakten lät
genomföra vart tionde år från 1901 ingick i att alla skulle uppge både sin varna och jati
tillhörighet. Detta kan ha bidragit till att förstärka kastsystemet och göra det mer statiskt.



De olika jatis kom på så sätt att kopplas samman med det på religiösa grunder hierarkiskt
arrangerade varna systemet. Så får jatis som tillhör de högre varna högre status än de jatis
som räknas till shudras eller de ´oberörbara´. Dessa föreställningar länkade samman
respektive åtskilde de olika jatis i alla tänkbara relationer. Det kan gälla val av
äktenskapspartner, yrkesval kopplat till det material man använder, med vilka man äter och
dricker. De ´oberörbara´ ingick i sådana jatis, som med hänvisning till deras yrkesutövande,
uppfattades som det mest ´orena´ och var därmed fysiskt uteslutna från så gott som alla
sociala relationer, aktiviteter och platser.



Panchamas, de ´oberörbaras´, utanförskap och behandlingen av dem som ´oberörbara´ kom
att förtydligas och religiöst legitimeras i efterföljande vediska skrifter och i de smrti skrifter,
som utgörs av mytologiska skrifter och lagböcker.


Under Upanishad perioden, 800 till 600 f. Kr kom människors sociala ställning att förklaras
after principerna om karma och själavandring. Människors handlingar i tiden hade
konsekvenser för framtiden. Med kombinationen av karma och själens vandring till en ny
människokropp i ett flertal omgångar kunde man rättfärdiga att den social status en människa
har beror på hans handlingar i ett tidigare liv. Så kan också ´oberörbarheten´ förklaras och
rättfärdigas. I texten Chandogya Upanishad 10:7 talas inte bara om de tre högre varna utan
också om Chandalas (de utstötta), som jämförs med en hund eller ett svin:



Accordingly, those who are of pleasant conduct here the prospect is, indeed, that they will
enter a pleasant womb, either the womb of a Vaishya. But those who are of stinking conduct
here the prospect is, indeed, that they will enter a stinking womb, either the womb of a dog, or
the womb of a swine, or the womb of an outcaste (chandala).



De episka skrifterna Ramayana (ca 400 f. Kr.) och Mahabharata (the Pandu hero, 600-200 f.
Kr. och om Krishna, the divine hero 200 f. Kr-500 e.Kr.) ger tydliga uttryck för hur villkoren
för Daliterna, de ´oberörbara´, hade förvärrats. I dessa texter görs hänvisningar till den status
som tillskrivs både den fjärde varna, Shudras; och de utstötta, de ´oberörbara´, som är
förbjudna att lära sig läsa och skriva eller utöva religiösa riter. Bhagavad Gita bekräftar
föreställningen om de fyra varna (chaturvarnyam) och berättar att Lord Krishna har skapat
dessa. Den uppmanar också medlemmarna av respektive kast att troget utföra de plikter som
deras kasttillhörighet föreskriver.



En senare skrift, som fastställde graderingen mellan de olika varna är Manusmrti, Manus Lag
från vår tids första århundrade. Med denna skrift fråntas ´den femte kategorin´, de
´oberörbara´ en samhällelig identitet och deras utanförskap befästs. Lagen, som består av
2 685 verser, föreskriver grunderna för ett idealt socialt samhälle genom att fördela plikter och
rättigheter mellan de olika kasterna. Ordningen vilar på tre samverkande faktorer; en för varje
kast genom födelsen förutbestämd och evig fördelning av arbetsuppgifter; en ojämlik och
hierarkisk fördelning av sociala och ekonomiska rättigheter till exempel ägande av jord,
anställning, lön, utbildning; samt att ordningen behålls genom en serie sociala och
ekonomiska tvångsmedel. Innebörden av denna ordning är att den grupp, som befinner sig
högst i hierarkin, brahmaner, har alla rättigheter och den grupp, som är längst ned, de
´oberörbara´, har inga rättigheter. När sådana föreställningar genom århundradena får fäste i
människors sinnen finns ett inbyggt motstånd mot förändringar, också hos dem som tillhör de
exploaterade kasterna.




















Savi Sawarkar, Manu





Savi Sawarkars ger bilden av Manu ett strängt ansiktsuttryck som är analogt med den sociala
struktur som genomsyrar kastsystemet. Linjerna och prickarna i Manus ansikte påminner om
kobraskinnets teckning och märkena i hans panna liknar märkena på kobrans huvud. Ormen
med dess gift är en metafor för ondskan. Manus lagar är förkroppsligad ondska symboliserad
av medaljongen kring hans hals.



Att våga tro på förändring – ett hotfullt scenario



Den sociala och fysiska segregeringen mellan de olika kastgrupperna lever i stor utsträckning
kvar i det indiska samhället. Grundlagen och andra lagar förbjuder diskriminering på grund av
´oberörbarhet´. I lagteknisk mening är därmed ´oberörbarhet´ avskaffad, men i verkligheten
lever den kvar. De medvetna av de tidigare ´oberörbara´ kallar sig daliter men i stor
utsträckning är fortfarande kasttillhörigheten avgörande som identitet. Likaså lever de
traditionella införlivade vanorna vidare, möjligen så att de nu utgör en blandning av kast- och
klasstillhörighet. Fortfarande kan byarna vara delade, där daliterna lever utanför den centrala
byn, hämtar vatten i sin egen brunn och där fysisk kontakt med en person av högre kast till
exempel genom bruk av samma teglas eller vattenkälla ses som förorenande. Lagen om allas
tillträde till templen missbrukas likaså.



Också i städerna lever kast-kulturen vidare. Alla, oavsett kast är fria att slå sig ned i städerna.
Men fröet till kattillhörighet flyttar med och man slår sig helst ned i områden med människor
av samma kast. Daliter kan ha gjort en klassresa och leva ett hyggligt medelklassliv, särskilt
bland stadsbor, men inte en motsvarande kastresa, vilket ju inte är möjligt, ty det kast man
tillhör är evig och styr fortfarande stora delar av människors liv och i byarna lever
konsekvenserna av kastsystemet ofta kvar i traditionella former. Ett genom århundraden så
införlivat hierarkiskt socialt system tycks vara svårt att utrota. Industrialiseringen må ha brutit
den tidigare yrkesidentitet som tillsammans med härkomst (födelse) var knuten till en särskild


kast (jati) men den bryggar inte över kastgränserna. De rituella föreställningarna baserade på
´renhet´ och ´orenhet´ är mer bestämda av härkomst än av yrke.



Dalitrörelsen har haft framgångar i sitt internationella lobbyarbete, men den avgörande frågan
är naturligtvis vad som händer i Indien och andra länder där kastbaserad diskriminering
förekommer. Det kan vara lätt att förledas till att tro att i ett land som Indien, med en
demokratisk författning och en under många år stark ekonomisk tillväxt, ska ha förmåga att
lösa de sociala problem som förekommer. I Indien finns en medelklass på ca 300 miljoner
med en relativt god standard, en hightech industri i världsklass. Landet intar en växande plats
i den ekonomiskt globaliserade världen genom handelsutbyte och ett positivt mottagande av
outsourcing från de industrialiserade länderna i väst och är också en kärnvapenutrustad stat
som pockar på plats bland världens stormakter. Den sociala verkligheten för majoriteten av
befolkningen är emellertid en annan och pekar snarare på en i många stycken förvärrad
situation för de grupper som är de mest drabbade, daliter, stamfolk (adivasis) och andra
eftersatta grupper. Det visas inom olika samhällsområden; utbildning, hälsovård, barn och
kvinnors situation, övergrepp och våld mot utsatta grupper och rättsväsendets bristande
legitimitet.



Right to Food är en 500-sidig bok utgiven av Human Rights Law Network i Delhi. Den
bygger på en genomgång av Supreme Court Orders, Commissioners Reports, National Human
Rights Commission Reports och ett antal artiklar. Författarna summerar att kampen för den
grundläggande rätten till mat till alla i högsta grad är en fortsatt kamp: man har haft framgång
genom ett antal beslut i Supreme Court men utgången av kampen är fortfarande oviss. Hunger
och även svält förekommer i en oroande stor omfattning. I december 2000 skrev
centralregeringens minister för konsumentfrågor till delstatsregeringarna och meddelade att
fem miljoner människor var offer för svält. Hälften av Indiens barn är undernärda. År 1998
rapporterades hundratals människors död av svält och 2001 rapporterade People´s Union for
Civil Liberties beträffande Rajasthan att förhållandena var oförändrade. Samtidigt finns ett
överskott av spannmål lagrade men hindras från att fördelas genom oklar beslutsgång,
byråkrati och en snedvriden ekonomisk lönsamhetslogik. Reformer som ska garantera ´mat
mot arbete´, 100 dagar per år, har inte genomförts. Globaliseringen har medfört att
spannmålsarealen minskat och att regeringen skurit ned finansieringen av landsbygdens
utveckling från 11,6 % av BNP till 9,1 %, vilket har bromsat tillskotet av arbetstillfällen, samt
att högre kostnader för bekämpningsmedel och gödningsmedel kraftigt har försvårat för
mindre jordbruk att överleva.



The Human Rights Magazine Combat Law (April-May 2004) redovisar försämrade
förhållanden inom flera områden. Ett av elva barn dör före fem års ålder. En sjukdom som
diarré som är lätt att förhindra skördar 700 000 barns liv varje år. Rinnande vatten hemma
saknas av 100 millioner hushåll och 150 millioner hushåll saknar elektricitet. Privatisering
och marknadsanpassning, i linje med Världsbankens och IMFs rekommendationer, av
hälsovård, utbildning och vatten försvårar ytterligare för Indiens fattiga att få tillgång till
dessa nödvändiga tjänster. Det offentligas kostnader för utbildning föll från en topp på 4,4 %
av BNP år 1989 till 2,75 % 1998-99 samtidigt som regeringen backat från sitt löfte att se till
att alla barn skall få en god kvalitativ utbildning. Motsvarande försämring kan avläsas inom
hälsovården.



Även om det inte är ovanligt att daliter idag har andra arbeten än de som deras föräldrar
utövade är det fortfarande vanligt att daliter utför traditionellt diskriminerande yrken. Manuell
rengöring av torrlatriner är ett sådant. Denna form av arbete är sedan många år genom lag


9170372225_65
förbjuden och delstaterna är ålagda att installera vattentoaletter med fungerande avlopp.
Genomförandet av lagen är emellertid trög.



Fysiska övergrepp mot daliter, våldtäkter av dalit kvinnor, ekonomisk och social
diskriminering är fortfarande vitt spridd och polisens och domstolarnas låga kapacitet gör att
förövarna ofta kommer undan utan rättegång och påföljd. Alltför många människor har
förlorat tilltron till att politikerna ska ta sitt ledaransvar för att förbättra villkoren. Frågan står
öppen om vilken väg det indiska samhället ska gå.



En någorlunda säker förutsägelse är att det kommer fler berättelser från nya generationer av
daliter. Och frågan är om dessa berättelser enbart kommer att skrivas med pennan som
redskap eller om förtrycket och ointresset från officiellt håll drivs så långt att pennan byts mot
svärdet. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, daliternas ledare under första hälften av 1900-talet och
ordförande i den kommitté som författade förslaget till Indiens konstitution, pekade i sitt tal
till den konstituerande församlingen i november 1949 på den motsägelse, som fanns inbyggd i
det indiska samhället. Med den nya konstitutionen, menade han, fick Indien politisk
demokrati men saknade alltjämt social demokrati i betydelsen frihet, jämlikhet och
broderskap. Ambedkar avslutade sitt tal med denna varning: We must remove this
contradiction at the earliest possible moment or else those who suffer from inequality will
blow up the structure of political democracy which this Assembly has so laboriously built up.



Den varningen är berättigad också idag; och den får extra relevans i och med att så många
förtryckta människor har väckts till insikt om förhållandena och frustrerat och förgäves väntar
på den politiskt utlovade förändringen. Det finns skäl att tolka Gangadhar Pantawane´s ord i
det sammanhanget; Dalit is a symbol of change and revolution.



Berättelsen på min rygg



Boken Berättelsen på min rygg – Indiens daliter i uppror mot kastsystemet är en antologi i tre
delar, som hålls samman genom det gemensamma temat om daliter. I den första delen återger
åtta Dalit författare i novellens form sina egna och sina föräldrars upplevelser av
kastsystemet. Den andra delen tar upp den historiskt spännande konflikten mellan B. R.
Ambedkar (1891 – 1956) och M. K. Gandhi (1869 – 1948) under 1930-talets förberedelser för
ett självständigt demokratiskt Indien. Bokens tredje del innehåller tolv texter från samtida
dalitaktivister.


























Den symboliska innebörden av bilden av B. R. Ambedkar på bokens omslag har sin egen
historia. Ambedkar utgöra den gemensamma nämnaren för bidragen i såväl denna bok som i
boken, Detta Land som aldrig var vår Moder. Bilden visar Ambedkar i olika situationer av
hans liv från de personliga händelserna som födelse och äktenskap till hans offentliga uppdrag
som advokat, justitieminister i Jawaharlal Nehrus första regering och som ordförande i den
kommitté som författade Indiens konstitution. Ambedkar, själv dalit, var den samlande
personligheten under första hälften av 1900-talet för daliternas kamp för fri- och rättigheter
och han inspirerar också idag dalitrörelsen i den fortsatta kampen för samma rättigheter.
Statyer av Ambedkar är en vanlig syn i Indiens byar och städer och en bild av honom finns
ofta på väggen i daliters hem. Den 14 april, dagen för hans födelse, firas numera också
officiellt.

Boken har tagit sin titel från en berättelse av Omprakash Valmiki, som berättar om sin
barndom och skolgång i en by åtta år efter självständigheten. Den består som alla bidragen i
antologin av flera berättelser, om förödmjukelse och misshandel men också om vrede, mod
och motstånd.

Omprakash familj tillhörde kasten chuhra, en oberörbar soparkast och de utförde alla slags
arbeten åt de landägande bönderna, städning, lantarbete och annat grovarbete, mot låg eller
ingen ersättning. Med självständigheten skulle de statliga skolorna officiellt vara öppna också
för de lågkastiga. Omprakash pappa såg till att han fick plats i en statlig skola, där han fick ett
allt annat än välkomnande mottagande. Han fick sitta långt från de andra barnen på golvet.
Han fick stryk av både pojkarna och läraren. Han fick inte dricka vatten ur brunne eller ur ett
glas utan vattnet hälldes i hans kupade händer en bit ovanifrån för att händerna inte skulle
beröra och ´orena´ glaset.

Soparungen hade ingen plats i skolan enlig deras syn. Vid ett tillfälle beordrade rektorn
honom att sopa först klassrummen och sedan hela skolgården, en uppgift han fick tre dagar i
rad. Den tredje dagen kom hans pappa förbi. Omprakash berättar … ”far ryckte kvasten ur
handen på mig och slängde iväg den. Hans ögon gnistrade. ´Vem är din lärare? Var är den son
av Dronacharya som tvingar min son att sopa´”. Aldrig glömmer jag, säger Omprakash, med
vilket mod och viken styrka min far trotsade rektorn den dagen; det var av stor betydelse för
hela min personlighet. Fadern tar hjälp av byäldsten och sonen kan fortsätta i skolan.

Vid ett tillfälle dristar sig Omprakash att jämföra sin egen och sin kasts situation som
oberörbara med en historia om hunger och fattigdom hämtad ur det hinduiska eposet
Mahabharata, som läraren berättar. Hela klassen stirrade på mig, skriver Omprakash, och
magistern röt. ”Nu stundar de yttersta tider när en oberörbar vågar sätta sig upp mot sin
lärare” Sedan befallde han mig att inta murga – kycklingställning. Det innebär att man hukar
sig ned, sticker armarna innanför låren, böjer ned huvudet och griper med båda händerna om
öronen. Läraren tar en käpp och straffar honom: ”Din soparunge, hur vågar du jämföra dig
med Dronacharya? Här får du för det … och här! Jag ska nog skriva en bok om dig ska du se
… på ryggen på dig!” Och så, säger Omprakash, skrev han en berättelse på min rygg med en
rad snärtiga käppslag och där står den fortfarande att läsa, rad för rad. Berättelsen om min
ungdom, om hungern och hopplösheten, om underklasslivet i ett feodalt samhälle, är inte bara
inetsad i min rygg utan även i min hjärna.

Den tredje delen av boken presenterar ett urval av aktivisters texter från början 1970-talet, då
Dalit Panthers publicerade sitt manifest fram till 2000-talets, då dalitrörelsen blivit en del av
den globaliserade rättviserörelsen. Bland författarna finns gräsrotsaktivister, journalister,


akademiker, politiker och teologer. Gemensamt för dem alla är att de i arvet från Ambedkar
vänder sig bort från kastsystemet och hinduismen. Texterna tar upp skilda teman som
nationen Indiens och omvärldens tystnad, om oberörbarheten och diskrimineringen, om
dalitkvinnorna som trefaldigt alienerade och patriarkatet, om påtvingad identitet, om politiska
landvinningar, om det konfliktfyllda systemet med kvotering för de lägre kasterna, om
dalitrörelsen som effektiv lobbyorganisation och om daliterna i en globaliserad värld.

Dalitaktivisterna har deltagit i det årliga World Social Forum sedan starten 2001. År 2004
organiserades WSF i Mumbai med ett avsevärt deltagande av daliter och blev då genom
massmedias bevakning mer kända över världen. Daliterna har blivit en dal av den globala
rättviserörelsen med vidare identifiering och solidaritet med förtryckta grupper världen över,
som ger förutsättningar för en gemensam analys av och kamp mot förtryckande socio-
politiska och ekonomiska strukturer.





Foto: Hanna Sandberg, Ruth Manorama, World Social Forum, 2004



De litterära bidragen, Ambedkars gärning, aktivisternas texter och Savi Sawarkars bilder i
boken Detta land som aldrig var vår moder utgör tillsammans starka berättelser om kampen
mot ett kast- och klassförtryck som kan väcka förnyad kampvilja hos varje människa med
någorlunda insikt i vår tids socialt, ekonomiskt och politiskt så ojämlika värld.

Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar



Med tanke på den betydelse Ambedkar har ännu 50 år efter sin död finns skäl att ge en
närmare presentation av honom.



Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891 – 1956) växte upp i delstaten Maharashtra. Hans familj
tillhörde kasten mahar, en tjänarkast bland de ´oberörbara´. Bhimraos far tjänstgjorde fram till
1892 inom den brittiska armén, där utbildning för anställdas barn var obligatorisk. Fadern,
som insåg värdet av utbildning, såg till att hans barn fick plats i byskolan. Här upplevde
Ambedkar för första gången själv det stigma hans kast var utsatt för. Han tilläts inte sitta inne
i klassrummet och hans lärare rörde vare sig honom själv eller hans böcker för att undvika att
bli ”orenad”.


images6


Bhimrao Ambedkar fick möjlighet att fortsätta sina studier. Han fick stipendier och läste först
vid Columbia University i USA och sedan vid London School of Economics och tog
doktorsgrader i ekonomi och juridik. I augusti 1947 utsågs han till justitieminister i den första
regering som Jawaharlal Nehru bildade efter själständigheten. Han lämnade den posten 1951
då han inte fick stöd av kongresspartiet för sitt reformförslag, the Hindu Code Bill, vilket
syftade till att liberalisera de sociala villkoren för kvinnor. I samband med sin avgång
uttryckte han sin besvikelse över hur de ´oberörbara´ behandlades i Indien. Som en slutgiltig
protest beslöt Ambedkar strax före sin död år 1956 att lämna hinduismen. Han ledde då en
massomvändelse till buddhismen i Nagpur i delstaten Maharashtra. Med denna händelse som
förebild har nya massomvändelser särskilt under 1990- och 2000-talen genomförts. Några av
hans sista offentliga ord i november 1956 löd:



The greatest thing that Buddha has done is to tell the world that the world cannot be reformed
except by the reformation of the mind of man, and the mind of the world.







Dr. B. R. Ambedkar



I Berättelsen på min rygg presenteras Ambedkars bok Buddha och hans dharma (Buddha
and His Dharma), som är en av hans mest kända verk. Ambedkar gör där sin egen tolkning av
buddhismen, som kommit att kallas Ambedkar-buddhism. Den är skriven med Indiens daliter
i åtanke. Innehållet har en socialistisk prägel och har kommit att liknas vid befrielseteologi i
andra delar av världen. Han gör i boken åtskillnad mellan religion och Buddhas dhamma.
Syftet med religionen, menar han, är att förklara ursprunget till världen; dhammas syfte är att
omstrukturera världen i en anda av förståelse och kärlek. Ambedkar gör också en personligt
färgad jämförelse mellan buddhismen och marxismen. Han ser likheter mellan dessa på fyra
plan; tid bör inte slösas på att förklara världens uppkomst utan snarare på att förändra den; det
finns en intressekonflikt mellan klasser; privat ägande ger makt åt en klass men skapar
lidande för an annan; för samhällets bästa bör lidande avlägsnas genom att privat ägande
avskaffas. Ambedkar var en stark förespråkare för landreformer och insatser för industriell
utveckling och för statens framträdande roll för ekonomisk utveckling.



Introduktionen av Ambedkar i Berättelsen på min rygg är en intressant och tankeväckande
läsning och inspirerar till att fördjupa sig i Ambedkars omfattande författarskap.



Ambedkar är framförallt känd för sitt agerande i samband med två för Indien betydelsefulla
händelser. Den ena gäller Indiens konstitution, som utarbetades efter självständigheten och
den andra gäller hans ledarskap från tidigt 1930-tal för de ´oberörbaras´ sak.






. Indiens konstitution




Ambedkar var ordförande i det utskott under den konstituerande församling, som från 1946
till 1949 utformade Indiens konstitution. Förslaget till konstitution antogs av parlamentet den
26 november 1949 och fick sin giltighet från den 26 januari 1950. Den dagen föddes den
demokratiska republiken Indien, en dag som varje år högtidlighålls som the Republic Day. I
konstitutionen slås fast att Indien är en sekulär och parlamentarisk demokrati och den lägger
grunden för maktfördelning mellan lagstiftande, verkställande och dömande funktioner. I
konstitutionen finns ett kapitel om grundläggande fri- och rättigheter, där bl a diskriminering
baserad på ´oberörbarhet´ förbjuds.



Indien hade kämpat sig till självständighet och genom konstitutionen definierat sin politiska
demokrati. Men innebar det också att Indien etablerat en social, samhällelig, demokrati? I sitt
tal inför den konstituerande församlingen den 25 november 1949 pekade Ambedkar på den
motsägelse, som fanns inbyggd i det indiska samhället. Han menade att Indien med den nya
konstitutionen fått politisk demokrati men fortfarande saknade social demokrati i betydelsen
frihet, jämlikhet och broderskap:



”We must make our political democracy a social democracy as well. Political democracy
cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy. What does social democracy
mean? It means a way of life which recognizes liberty, equality and fraternity as the principal
of life. […] On the 26th of January 1950, we are going to enter into a life of contradictions. In
politics we will have equality and in social and economic life we will have inequality. In
politics we will be recognizing the principle of one man one vote and one vote one value. In
our social and economic life, we shall, by reason of our social and economic structure,
continue to deny the principle of one man one value. […] We must remove this contradiction
at the earliest possible moment or else those who suffer from inequality will blow up the
structure of political democracy which this Assembly has so laboriously built up”.



. Kampen för de ´oberörbara´




Historien om Amedkars liv och gärning är också historien om Indiens millioner ´oberörbara´.

Inspirerad av den amerikanska jämställdhetsförklaringen och med sin ideologiska övertygelse
och sin personlighet blev Ambedkar ledare för daliterna, de förtryckta, som i honom fann en
orädd förespråkare för deras sak oavsett vem han kritiserade, Nehru, Gandhi eller kongress-
partiet. Hans vapen var juridiska och politiska, hans anatema var det exkluderande hinduiska
kastsystemet, och hans ambition var att förverkliga medborgerlig demokrati. Hans kamp för
jämställdhet började 1924 då hans bildade the Council for the Welfare of the Outcastes.
Ambedkar ansåg, att den enda möjligheten att förändra villkoren för de ´oberörbara´ var att
erövra den politiska makten och bildade under sin livstid flera politiska partier med program
för omfattade socioekonomiska reformer.



I sin kamp för de ´oberörbaras´ fri- och rättigheter hamnade Ambedkar i motsatsställning till
Gandhi. Båda ansåg sig företräda de ´oberörbara´. De hade dock olika syn på såväl orsakerna
till diskrimineringen av denna samhällsgrupp som om medlen att komma till rätta med
problemet. Skillnaderna var så stora att det ledde till en oåterkallelig konflikt mellan dem.



Ambedkar såg kastsystemet så nära knutet till hinduismen att det är omöjligt att komma ifrån
den ojämlikhet som är följden av systemet utan att också ta avstånd från religionen.




Han ledde flera icke-våldsdemonstrationer mot de kastregler som diskriminerade de
´oberörbara´ och vars viktigaste regel är att inte i något socialt eller religiöst sammanhang
tillämpa kastblandning. År 1927 ledde han en demonstration i Staden Mahad söder om
Bombay där deltagarna symboliskt drack vatten ur en damm som de ´oberörbara´ inte hade
tillträde till. Samma år kallade Ambedkar till en ny konferens i Mahad och lät då offentligt
bränna Manusmriti (Manus Lag), den lagbok från ca år 700 e Kr som innehåller kastregler
och som för Ambedkar var en symbol för den sociala orättvisa som kastsystemet innebär.
Icke-våldsaktionen vid Mahad ses av de Daliterna som början på deras politiska uppvaknande.



Den mest omfattande icke-våldsdemonstrationen med krav att få tillträde till templen ägde
rum vid Kala Ram Temple, en vallfartsort för pilgrimer i Nasik nära Bombay. Den
organiserades av Ambedkar och lokala ledare. Tusentals ´oberörbara´ deltog.
Demonstranterna möttes av motstånd inte bara från renläriga hinduer men också från lokala
medlemmar av kongresspartiet. De fem årens kamp, 1930 - 1935, för att få tillträde till
templen misslyckades. Amedkar tog 1935 definitivt avstånd från hinduismen och
tillkännagav, att fastän född som hindu, skulle han inte dö som hindu. År 1956 konverterade
han till buddismen. I staden Nagpur i Maharashtra konverterade vid detta tillfälle 300 000 av
hans anhängare.



Gandhi ansåg att ´oberörbarhet´ var ett religiöst snarare än ett socialt problem. Han ville
reformera kastsystemet men inte avskaffa det. Han trodde på ett jämlikt varna system och gav
sitt stöd till de ´oberörbaras´ krav att få tillträde till templen men han gjorde det på ett sätt som
inte skulle kränka de högre kasterna. Han betonade att det var nödvändigt att bevara
indelningen i kaster, som han menade ger social harmoni och stabilitet och en naturlig
fördelning av kompletterande sysslor i samhället. Gandhi ville ge de ´oberörbara´ namnet
Harijan (Guds barn), ett namn som han lånade från en Bhakti helgon från 1700-talet. Hans
avsikt var att inordna dem i Varna systemet som en femte kategori i tron att detta skulle
förändra inställningen hos högkastiga hinduer gentemot de ´oberörbara´. Ambedkar och hans
följeslagare ansåg namnet vara nedvärderande och förkastade det.



Konflikten mellan Ambedkar och Gandhi fick ett politiskt uttryck i deras olika uppfattningar
om de ´oberörbaras´ representation i parlamentet. I samband med överläggningarna i London
1932-1935 om Indien framtida konstitution argumenterade Ambedkar för att de ´oberörbara´
skulle utgöra en fristående väljarkår (separate electorates). Han ville att de ´oberörbara´ skulle
utse sina egna representanter till politiska församlingar. Med denna reform skulle de eftersatta
grupperna bilda en sammanhållen intressegrupp. Gandhi motsatte sig förslaget. Han menade
att det skulle medföra en splittring av den hinduiska samhällsformen. När den brittiska
regeringen gav Ambedkars förslag sitt stöd inledde Gandhi en fasta och hotade att fasta till
döds.



Varför skulle inte de oberörbara säga ”akta er för Gandhi”, skriver Ambedkar, när de vet att
han inte skulle gå med på att använda politiska metoder för att frigöra dem. En människa med
vanligt sunt förnuft, fortsätter han, borde ha förstått att politisk makt i de oberörbaras händer
kunde åstadkomma mer på ett år än en hel orden av predikande munkar kunde åstadkomma
under ett helt sekel. I ett uttalande om Gandhis fasta riktat till Gandhi skrev han:



Jag är övertygad om att många har insett att om det finns någon klass som förtjänar speciella
politiska rättigheter för att skydda sig mot majoritetens tyranni under Swaraj-författningen så
är det de undertryckta klasserna. Här har vi en klass som uppenbarligen inte har möjlighet


att ta vara på sig själva i kampen för tillvaron. Den religion som de är bundna till bereder
dem ingen ärofull plats utan brännmärker dem som spetälska och ovärdiga ett normalt
umgänge. Ekonomiskt är det en klass som är totalt beroende av de högkastiga hinduerna för
sin försörjning



Ambedkar såg sig tvingad att ge med sig och en uppgörelse nåddes (the Poona Pact), som
undertecknades av ledarna för daliterna, inklusive Ambedkar och kongresspartiet. Gandhi,
som ansåg sig stå vid sidan av konflikten undertecknade inte handlingen. Uppgörelsen gav de
´oberörbara´ ett antal reserverade platser i politiska församlingar, som i jämförelse med det
ursprungliga förslaget var en stor förlust för dem.



Detta land som aldrig var vår moder



I boken Detta land som aldrig var vår moder knyts olika berättelser i poesi och bild samman
till en historia om känslan av utanförskap och främlingskap, den omänskliga skändlighet
Daliter lever under. Men de ger också uttryck för reflektion över vari deras osynlighet bottnar,
om uppvaknandet till insikt och om vägen till förändring; att se rebellen inom sig. Jyoti
Lanyewar från Maharashtra beskriver detta i dikten Hål i mitt hjärta, som också gett namn åt
boken:



Deras omänskliga skändlighet har frätt hål

i mitt hjärta av sten.

Jag färdas genom denna skog med försiktiga steg

och blicken fäst vid tidens förändringar.

Borden har vänts upp och ner nu.

Protester pyr

ena stunden här

andra stunden där.

Jag har varit tyst hela denna tid

och lyssnat till talet om rätt och fel.

Men nu ska jag få lågorna att flamma

För mänskliga rättigheter.

Hur kommer det sig att vi hamnat här

i detta land som aldrig var vår moder?

Som aldrig gav oss ens

ett liv som kattor eller hundar?

Jag tar dess oförlåtliga synder som vittnen

och blir här och nu

rebell.



Bildkonstnären Savi Sawarkar föddes 1961 i Nagpur och växte upp i ett område av staden,
som var känt för att vara ett starkt fäste för Ambedkarrörelsen. Ambedkars liv och tankar om
människors lika värde kom därmed tidigt på många sätt att inspirera honom. Sawarkars
farföräldrar hade också långt tidigare anslutit sig till rörelsen. De såg Ambedkar som en
demokratisk statsman med stor intellektuell skärpa och berättade i sagans form om honom för
Savi. Ambedkar hade också valt Nagpur för Daliterna massomvändelse till buddhismen.



Savi Sawarka beskriver drivkraften till sitt sätt att uttrycka sin solidaritet med de ´oberörbara´
så här: Min konst och mina idéer är ett individuellt sätt att nalkas social struktur och religion
i det indiska samhället och jag känner mig utmanad att starta en revolution mot brahminsk


estetik. Jag målar väldigt jordnära ämnen ur vardagslivet, såsom att promenera på en väg i
mörkret och även fotstegen på marken.



Sawarkar fick sin grundläggande utbildning i konstskolor i Indien och i kontakt med
konstnärer i Tyskland, USA och Mexiko kom han att utveckla sin konstform, grafisk
torrnålsteknik. Han kunde liksom andra daliter uppleva och iaktta den diskriminering som
daliterna utsattes för. Hans verkliga styrka var tecknandet. I denna form sökte han uttrycka sitt
inre jag, som var jaget av en dalit och vars ideal var Ambedkar. Oberörbarhet, kast och
brahminskt förtryck var verklighetens teman i samhället och Savi visualiserade detta i sina
bilder. De blir därmed ett uttryck för social kamp, en kamp som har sitt ursprung i arvet efter
Ambedkar.



Hans ikonografiska bilder berättar om existensen som oberörbar i en brahminsk social
ordning som kan ta sin utgångspunkt i en gestalt med spottkrukan hängande runt halsen för att
inte saliven ska orena marken och sopborsten hängande där bak för att sopa bort de egna
fotspåren från marken. Det temat är också ämnet i Arjun Dangles dikt, Revolution, som
beskriver hus de ´oberörbara´ förr i tiden bar krukor om halsen för att hindra deras spott att nå
marken, och kvastar bundna till baken för att sopa bort deras fotspår. Mahar är en oberörbar
grupp i Maharashtra, till vars sysslor hörde att ta hand om döda kreatur. De ropade ”Johar,
ma-bap” (hell dig moder och fader) istället för ”Ram, Ram” eller ”Namaste”. De näst sista
raderna i dikten citerar ironiskt en revolutionär brahminsk poet – de som däremot verkligen
revolterar kastas i elden och förgås.





Savi Sawarkar, Untouchable in pune



Vi brukade vara deras vänner

när vi med lerkrukor hängande runt halsen

och sopkvastar fastsatta vid våra arslen

gick våra rundor i de yttersta gränderna

och ropade: Ma-bap, Johar, Ma.bap.”






Vi slogs med kråkor

och unnade dem inte ens vårt snor

när vi släpade ut yttergrändens döda kreatur,

flådde dem snyggt

och delade köttet mellan oss.

Då på den tiden älskade de oss.

Vi slogs med sjakaler-hundar-gamar-glador

för att vi åt av deras beskärda del.

Idag ser vi en förändring från rot till krona.

Kråkor-sjakaler-hundar-gamar.glador

är våra närmsta vänner.

Yttergrändernas dörrar har stängts för oss.



”Ropa Seger för Revolutionen”

”Ropa Seger”

”Brinn, brinn ni som slår mot traditionen”



Ett tema i Savi Sawarkars bilder är devadasi traditionen inom vilken de lägre kasterna
utnyttjas sexuellt med religiös sanktion från brahminismens religion. Flickor från de
´oberörbara´ familjerna invigdes först i religiösa ritualer till tempelgudinna och därefter i
sexuell normlöshet och prostitution. Ett ordspråk i Maharashtra säger att en devadasi är
bortgift med guden men älskarinna åt hela byn. Familjerna gav sina döttrar ibland som resultat
av religiös tro och ibland för att de tvingades in i systemet genom sin utsatta social ställning.






Savi Sawarkar, Deva-dasi and the husband Goud



I dagens Indien är denna tradition förbjuden anligt lag. Många dalit familjer tvingas ändå
genom ojämlika sociala, kulturella och ekonomiska förhållanden att sälja sina döttrar till
prostitution. En offentlig utfrågning arrangerad av Council for Social Development år 2001 i
delstaterna Karnataka och Tripura avslöjade att genomförandet av lagen, Devadasi System
Abolition Act, hade klara brister och detsamma gällde rehabiliteringen av de kvinnor, som
sluppit loss ur systemet. Luckor i lagen och att offren själva tvekar att klaga medför att
dalitfamiljer av okunnighet och utsatthet fortsatt att tillägna sina döttrar detta system under
tyst medgivande av prästerna.



Hira Bansode, en kvinnliga dalit poet från Poona i Maharashtra, beskriver kvinnans roll i
slavens skepnad



-----

Där storslagna begär lämnas att flyta utför floden

Där hotet från kvinnornas styrka måste jordas

Där lyckan i silvrigt månsken töms i krus av mörker

I det landet är kvinnan ännu slav



Där en kvinna förtvinar i sin ungdom av Tradition är

hon hindrad hela livet som ett förkrympt träd förblir hon

i skuggan av någon annans hus

I det landet är kvinnan ännu slav

I det land där kvinnorna är slavar … påbörjas

ödeläggelsen i tidig timme

Festivalen till herraväldets ära firas grandiost men

berättelserna reciteras med smärta



Att vara född kvinna är orätt

Att vara född kvinna är orätt





Ruth Manorama



En i högsta grad aktiv representant för Daliterna och deras kamp för frigörelse, som i Indien
utgör ca 170 miljoner människor eller tillsammans med övriga länder i och utanför Sydasien
ca 240 miljoner, är Ruth Manorama boende i Bangalore. Hon är en av de tre som tilldelats
utmärkelsen Right Livelihood Award 2006. Priset instiftades år 1980 av Jakob von Uxekull
och tilldelas dem som visar på nya idéer och möjligheter att förändra orättfärdiga sociala
system. Visionen bakom priset är att föra samman människor från olika delas av världen som
verkar för avspänning och fred, mänskliga rättigheter och social rättvisa, miljöhänsyn och
förnyelsebar utveckling och vetenskapliga landvinningar inriktade på mänskliga behov.
















Click for high resolution picture <br>(free to use)


Ruth Manorama
India



Right Livelihood Award 2006


"...for her commitment over
decades to achieving equality
for Dalit women, building
effective and committed
women's organisations and
working for their rights at
national and international
levels."





I juryns motivering för priset presenteras Ruth Manorama som den indiska halvöns mest
effektiva organisatör och talesman för Dalit kvinnor. Juryn hedrar Ruth Manorama, som själv
är Dalit ”för hennes livslånga engagemang att uppnå jämlikhet för Dalit kvinnor, skapa
effektiva kvinnoorganisationer och arbeta för kvinnors rättigheter på nationell och
internationell nivå”.



I februari i år följde jag Ruth Manorama till Chennai, där hon och hennes organisation, som så
många andra, är delaktig i återuppbyggnaden av hus och fiskenäringen som spolades bort av
tsunamin. De förmedlade medel till ett par nya båtar och för reparation av bostadshus i ett
område strax utanför staden. Då, i februari, ett år efter katastrofen var det svårt att direkt se
vidden av vad som hänt. Man pekade på den breda strandremsan, ”där på stranden spelade ett
tjugotal ungdomar cricket, havet tog dem alla, de bara försvann”.



Förluster av det slaget skapar nya frustrationer. Men det fanns mer än så av konflikter i denna
samfällighet, kastgrupper och religiösa grupper vars ställning gentemot varandra inte sällan
leder till våldsamheter. Det är här jag återigen ser Ruth Manoramas mänskliga auktoritet i
förmågan att möta människor och förmedla vägen till att överbrygga sociala och kulturella
motsättningar och att se varandra som människor med gemensamma önskningar och behov.
Det är en början till försoning.



Män och kvinnor samlas först i områdets kyrka. Vi sitter på golvet längs väggarna, kvinnor
och män på var sin sida. Språket är tamil och jag förstår inte orden. Men jag förstår den
absoluta tystnaden, koncentrationen och blickarna som är fästa på Ruth, som talar sakta men
med ett eftertryck som ger resonans. Efteråt samlar hon männen kring sig för att tala om
ledarskap och förmågan att se varandra som människor med lika behov och önskningar och
om framsteg genom samarbete. Vi sitter i den varma sanden invid havet, där nattens mörker


sluter sig tätare kring oss och tidvattnet klättrar allt närmare. Då det är hotfullt nära fortsätter
vi mötet på den närbelägna parkeringsplatsen.



Ruth menar att även om förändring av Daliternas villkor är en prioriterad fråga kan detta inte
förverkligas om man inte kan nå ömsesidig respekt mellan människor. Förbättrade villkor för
en samhällsgrupp får inte ske på bekostnad av en annan. Förståelse, tolerans och samexistens
är återkommande tema i hennes tal och praktiska gärning på fältet.



Ruth Manorama har i praktiken följt Ambedkars uppmaning att utbilda, agitera och organisera
för att nå resultat:



… to get education as much as possible for gaining knowledge and wisdom;

to organize themselves for being a strong force to reckon with;

to agitate for achieving the constitutional rights as well as human rights;

to endeavour for the establishment of a society based on freedom, equality and fraternity

(Ambedkar, Code of Conduct)







Foto: Kalhander Basha, Ruth Manorama



Ruth Manorama betonar att Dalit-kvinnornas villkor i Indien måste uppmärksammas. De är
en av de till antalet största socialt segregerade grupperna i världen och utgör drygt 16 % av
det totala antalet kvinnor i landet. Dalit kvinnor är trefaldigt diskriminerade efter klass, genus
och kast: de är fattiga, de är kvinnor och de är Daliter. De är diskriminerade inte bara av de
högkastiga utan också inom den egna samhällsgruppen, där männen dominerar. Kvinnor är
aktiva i Dalitrörelsen men har få ledande positioner.

Ruth Manorama menar att den indiska regeringen har en skyldighet att leva upp till de lagar
och FN-konventioner man antagit för att främja kvinnors fri- och rätigheter i allmänhet och
Dalit kvinnors i synnerhet. Det gäller rätten till liv, frihet från tortyr eller omänsklig
behandling, rätt till likhet inför lagen, till ett privat skyddat liv, rättenn ingå äktenskap av fri
vilja, och rätten at vara fullt delaktig i offentliga ärenden. Hon pekar också på barnens
utsatthet. I Indien är 46 % av barnen inte registrerade vid födseln, inte heller finns ett


fungerande system för registrering av äktenskap. Detta försvårar möjligheten att skydda Dalit
flickor från sexuell exploatering och trafficking, barnarbete och påtvingade tidiga äktenskap.
De lagar som finns till skydd för kvinnor iakttas i påfallande begränsad utsträckning. Likaså
brister regeringen och delstatsregeringarna i att förverkliga en acceptabel levnadsstandard för
den fattiga delen av invånarna, där majoriteten av daliterna ingår. Det gäller bostad,
utbildning, hälsovård, arbetsmöjligheter, säkerhet i arbetsmiljön.

Dalit kvinnor är utsatta för olika former av våld, som ofta får passera utan påföljd för
förövaren. Det kan gälla verbalt nedvärderande ofta sexuella tillmälen, att bli tvingad paradera
naken eller att dricka urin eller mord efter anklagelse on häxeri, hot om eller verkliga
våldtäkter. Tempelprostitution, Devadasi, förekommer trots förbud i lag sedan många år.
Huvuddelen av våldet mot kvinnor registreras ofta inte och även när så sker visar polisen och
rättssystemet begränsat intresse att fullgöra sina åtaganden enligt lag.

Kvinnor har samtidigt varit aktiva deltagare i olika för Indien viktiga händelser, till exempel i
anti-kast rörelsen under 1920-talet och i frihetsrörelsen mot det brittiska kolonialväldet. De är
likaså ofta bärare av kampen för daliters rättigheter, till exempel för rätten till landrättigheter i
tusentals byar och intar många platser i by råden, Panchayati Raj, efter reformen som kvoterar
en tredjedel av platserna till kvinnor. Faktum är ändå att detta inte förhindrar det strukturellt
betingade våldet och diskrimineringen av dem. Våld i kombination med straffrihet fortsätter
att hålla dem kvar i en andra rangens plats.

Sedan 1980-talet har Dalit kvinnor därför sett behovet av en egen plattform, skapad och
kontrollerad av dem själva, genom vilken de kan föra kampen för fri- och rättigheter för dem
själva men också för daliterna som helhet, män som kvinnor. Initiativtagarna till en sådan
plattform betonar att detta inte ska ses som en splittring. De försäkrar istället att de klart ser
behovet att bygga en stark allians mellan Dalitrörelsen, kvinnorörelsen och den rörelse
Dalitkvinnorna formerat.

Ruth Manorama har varit med som initiativtagare till alla dessa tre rörelser, National Alliance
for Women, National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights och National Federation of Dalit
Women.
------------------
THE NAXALITE MOVEMENT 2012-06-20

India Political Map
Hans Magnusson; Dalit Solidarity Network-Sweden; Den här e-postadressen skyddas mot spambots. Du måste tillåta JavaScript för att se den.

The Naxalite Movement



Mapping the Naxalites



Click any State on the map and get the Detailed State Map





Source: http://www.mapsofindia.com/maps/india/india-political-map.htm




The Naxalite Movement – since September 2004 united under one banner, Communist Party
of India (Maoist) – has since its formal start in 1967, despite internal splits and
reorganizations, succeeded in spreading its ideology and their physical occupation of large
parts of rural territories of India. Particularly notable, as C. W. Punther1 (2010) points out, is
their achievement to establish liberated zones over vast amounts of land, over which the
Naxalites wield uncontested control through a combination of political mobilization and
coercion. . At present, Naxalites have a presence in almost half of India's 28 states. Raju J.
Das2 (2011) visualizes its progress with his statement that since its foundation the Naxalite
movement has grown from being a ´local flare-up´ organization to a regional movement,
having its presence to some degree of intensity in a quarter of India´s 600 districts, thus
covering 40 % of the country´s geographical area. In the regions where the Naxalite presence
has been established for decades many people see the Naxalite leadership as the sole source
of authority.

1 C. W. Punter 2010: 27; The Naxalite Movement in India from Independence-Present: Theoretical and
Pragmatic; Challenges of Counterinsurgency within the Framework of a Constitutional Democracy. Cody
referring to John Mackinlay (2010) The Insurgent Archipelago and Haringer Signh (2010) Counting the Naxals;
Institute for Defense Studies.

Bidyut Chakrabarby and Rajat Kumar Kujur (2010) remarks that although the Nepali Maoists “have abdicated
the path of violent revolution by joining the government, it would not be wrong” to include the mentioned part
of Nepal.

2 Raju J. Das 2011: 281, Radial Peasant Movements and Rural Distress in India; in W- Ahmed, A. Kundu, and R.
Peet, ed. India´s New Economic Policy; A Critical Analysis ,Routledge (2011), New York

3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File: India_Red_Corridor_map.png

4 Bidyut Chakrabarby and Rajat Kumar Kujur (2010: 27), Maoism in India, Reincarnation of ultra-left wing
extremism in the twenty-first century, Routledge, New York

5 Punter (2010), ref. to Singh, Harinder, Countering the Naxals; Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses. June
11, 2010

6 http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/150859/Dandakaranya



The Naxalites have mapped a Red Corridor3 stretching from Nepal to Tamil Nadu, thus
linking a significant part of the subcontinent. It covers a vast land mass stretching from
Pashupati in Nepal to Tirupati in Tamil Nadu and runs through a compact geographical zone
involving 13 states, including from north to south the states of Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh,
Bihar, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Orissa, Chattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Andhra
Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala4. The Red Corridor extends over areas that are
the most impoverished regions in modern India and thus the areas where people suffer from
the greatest illiteracy, poverty and overpopulation.



As of June 2010, the Naxalites were able to claim a total of 72,000 square kilometers as
being unquestionably under their political and military control5. This area included
Dantewada, Bastar, Bijapur and Narayanpur in Chhattisgarh; Malkinigiri and Rayagada in
Orissa; West and East Singhbhum in Bihar; Gadchiroli in Maharashtra; and West Midnapore
in West Bengal. A large part of this area is the Dandakaranya region or Dandakaranya Forest6


The "Red-Corridor" by Mritunjay
http://www.countercurrents.org/desai110510.htm Arundhati Roy (2010: 9), Walking with the Comrades,
OUTLOOK INDIA March 21, 2010

in east-central India. Extending over an area of about 40,000 square kilometers it includes
the Abujhmar Hills in the west and borders the Eastern Ghats in the east. It has dimensions
of about 320 km from north to south and about 480 km from east to west.



The Red Corridor









Map: Uploaded by Mritunjay October 8, 2009 http://www.nowpublic.com/world/red-corridor-0








What the Maoists term as the Dandakaranya Special Zone7 is the vast forest area situated
between the borders of four states – Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Orissa.
The Maoists have five organizational divisions – the south, west and north Bastar divisions,
the Maad and Gadchiroli divisions – covering the entire area. It is this area where the
Maoists have formed their own people´s government, Jantanam Sarkar (JS).

7 Mike Ely (2008), Dandakaranya – Two Paths of Development in India

http://kasamaproject.org/2008/01/23/awtw-dandakaranya-india-%E2%80%93-two-paths-of-development/

8 C. W. Punter 2010: 28

9 Basudev 2007: 3 ff; Naxal Movement in India: Peoples' Struggle transformed into a Power Struggle, Nov 11
2007 http://orissanewsfeatures.sulekha.com/blog/post/2007/11/naxal-movement-in-india-peoples-struggle-
transformed.htm

10 Basudev 2007: 4, Naxal Movement in India: Peoples' Struggle transformed into a Power Struggle,

http://orissanewsfeatures.sulekha.com/blog/post/2007/11/naxal-movement-in-india-peoples-struggle-
transformed.htm



The Dandakaranya region holds mineral rich forest land and the Indian government has
launched a military operation to drive out the Naxalites so that Indian and multinational
corporations can exploit the iron ore, coal and bauxite resources.



The Naxalite groups have further established a network with ideologically similar
organizations in Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Sri Lanka. A turning point in this respect was
the convening of the Coordination Committee of Maoist parties and Organizations of South
Asia (CCOMPOSA), where Maoist groups across South Asia reaffirmed their dedication to
armed struggle8. Additionally, these South Asian Maoist organizations and parties are
members of an international organization called the Revolutionary Internationalist
Movement (RIM)9.



The 2006 US State Department’s Country Report on Terrorism, drawing on media reports
and local authorities, estimates the membership of the CPI's (Maoist) to be as high as
31,000, including both hard-core militants and dedicated sympathizers. According to the
report women constitutes a significant part of the CPI (Maoist) cadre. However, the report
also states that it is difficult to assess its strength with any accuracy and Basudev10 (2007)
means that the number would have gone up considerably by now, as entry into the fold is a
regular process in the cadre groups.








The Naxalite Movement – a radical social movement
or a menace to society



How should one perceive the Naxalite movement? Is it a radical social movement involved in
a consistent struggle, also armed struggle, for the benefit of the poor and exploited people,
deliberately isolated and marginalized by the Indian Government, or is it to be viewed as
menace to the society as a whole? Depending on which side of the ideological and socio-
political fence dividing the Indian society people are two different positions are voiced.



Viewing the emergence of protest movements in a broader perspective, Raju D. Das´s11
points out that peasants have often been important protagonists in the class struggles
occurring in newer post-colonial societies, in Asia as well as in Latin America. In India, he
asserts, the Naxalite movement, so called because it started in the Naxalbari region of the
West Bengal province, is one such peasant struggle. Its continued existence “is a window on
an Indian countryside in perpetual development distress” ... and this distress … “has only
been worsened by the neoliberal New Economic Policy emphasizing ´free´ markets,
legitimizing the state´s withdrawal from pro-poor and pro-peasants activities, and
advocating free export and import of commodities, including farm products.” Raju D. Das
thus relates the emergence and the continuance of the Naxalite movement to the basic
failure of capitalist development and the failure of the post-colonial state to bring significant
benefits to the broad mass of the population, a state of affairs that has sharpened under
neoliberalism because capital becomes increasingly more exploitative, and additionally, the
state is increasingly withdrawing from the provision of welfare to the masses. Hence,
according to Das, the Naxalite movement in terms of its original occurrence, and its
continual existence must be explained in terms of multiple causes; class exploitation and
social oppression, the state´s development failure, and the success of the Naxalite
movement as a development factor. And, Punter12 fills in – “… it must be acknowledged
therefore, that in failing to deal with the underlying causes of tribal disaffection, the state
has effectively allowed for a rival political and socio-economic form of governance to
establish its authority in certain regions of the country.”

11 Raju J. Das 2011: 281, Radical Peasant Movements and Rural Distress in India; in W. Ahmed, A. Kundu, and R.
Peet, ed. India´s New Economic Policy; A Critical Analysis ,Routledge, 2011, New York

12 Punter (2010: 27), ref to Mackinlay, John, The Insurgent Archipelago (2010:18)

13 Arindam Chaudhuri, Long will live the Naxalite movement, (The exact date of this article is not known...);
http://naxalrevolution.blogspot.com/2009/01/indias-crony-capitalism-which-is.html



Arindam Chaudhuri13 underlines this analysis, saying that the Naxalites “are the only
revolutionary group in this country at the centre of whose agenda are the poor and
deprived. Their methods may involve violence, but then worldwide, all uprisings and


revolutions have been violent. To the people against whom they fight, they are villains –
terrorists if you may call them – but the people for whom they fight, they are the heroes.”



The 2007 federal budget, taken as an example by Chaudhuri, reveals how the state, over
successive governments, prioritizes its development policy. In this budget the government
allocated Rs 90,000 crore for establishing Special Economic Zones (or ‘land loot schemes’ in
Chaudhuri´s words). Another Rs 2, 35,000 crore of subsidies went into the corporate cash
box. This, Chaudhuri argues, is part of the government´s economic industrial policy in
helping a few industrial houses to acquire more and more land and public property …
“villages are being emptied; people are being uprooted and displaced and their mineral and
iron-ore rich lands left behind being handed over to the Tatas and Mittals.” Chaudhuri
compares the amount subsidizing corporate capital with that being allocated for
unemployment eradication programmes, which were to guarantee at least ‘100 days job’ per
person; “against a most urgent requirement of about Rs 2,25,000 crore, the allocation is a
meager Rs 11,000 crore.” So, he reasons, “If the poor in a country are left to die out of
hunger, curable diseases and poverty, Naxalites will rule. The only way to defeat them is for
our governments to believe in fact in what the Naxalites are fighting for – food, health and
employment. Till our governments allocate enough for such causes, many more
Chhattisgarh14 carnages will happen; and unfortunately, I won’t be able to blame the
Naxalites, or even call them terrorists.”

14 “On 6 April, Naxalite rebels killed 76, consisting of 74 paramilitary personnel of the CPRF and two policemen.
Fifty others were wounded in the series of attacks on security convoys in Dantewada district in the central
Indian state of Chhattisgarh (BBC World. 6 April 2010. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8604256.stm.
The attack resulted in the biggest loss of life security forces have suffered since launching a large-scale
offensive against the rebels.”

15 In Conversation with Ganapathy, General Secretary of CPI (Maoist) in an interview with Jan Myrdal and
Gautam Navlakha, January 2010



The General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Maoist), Muppala Lakshmana Rao
alias Ganapathy15, describes the role of the party and its military wing, the People’s
Liberation Guerrilla Army, in these words:



“Hence, at the present juncture our Party can play a significant role in rallying all
revolutionary, democratic, progressive and patriotic forces and people. Because our party
has an all India character, good political militant mass base in several States, a People’s
Liberation guerrilla Army fighting the enemy in several States and emerging New Democratic
People’s power in Dandakaranya, Jharkhand and some other parts of India. We have a
clear.cut understanding to unify all revolutionary, democratic, progressive, patriotic forces
and all oppressed social communities including oppressed nationalities against imperialism,
feudalism and comprador bureaucratic capitalism. Our New Democratic United Front
consists of four democratic classes, i.e. workers, peasants, urban petty.bourgeoisie and


national bourgeoisie. If we wish to form a strong United Front then it must be under
leadership of the proletariat, basing on worker and peasant alliance. If we wish to form a
strong United Front then it must be supported and defended by the People’s Army. Without
People’s Army people have nothing to achieve or to defend. Hence enemy is seriously trying
to eliminate our Party leadership with the aim of destroying a revolutionary and democratic
centre of Indian people. So the condition has matured further to rally around one centre and
revolution could go ahead under the leadership of the Communist Party of India (Maoist).”
He also says that the Dandakaranya Jantanam Sarkars (people´s government) of today are
the basis for the Indian People’s Democratic Federal Republic of tomorrow16.

16 The Dandakaranya Janathana Circars of today Message sent by Comrade Ganapathy.

Message sent by Comrade Ganapathy on behalf of Politbureau to the magazine of Dandakaranya Janathana
Circar. PEOPLE’S MARCH Voice of the Indian Revolution Vol.11 No. 1, Jan.Feb. 2010 p. 22.26 and 13, 18

17 Bidyut Chakrabarty and Rajat Kumar Kujur (2010: 10), Maoism in India; Reincarnation of ultra-left wing
extremism in the Twenty-first century, Routledge, Abingdon; with reference to Ministry of Home Affairs, Status
Paper on the Naxal Problems, Internal Security Division, 18 May 2006

18 Ibid. 2010: 11; ref. to Hindustan Times, 21 January 2007



The spectacular rise of the movement in the last six years has surprised many observers. The
Maoists seems, as B. Chakrabarty and R. Kujur (2010) claim, to have gained a great deal by
ideologically articulating an alternative to the prevalent inequitable world and of the failure
of the state in reaching out to the marginalized sections of the population. They refer to an
representative of the Ministry of Home Affairs, who in 2006 confirmed that “Naxalites
operates in a vacuum created by the inadequacy of administrative and political institutions,
espouse local demands and take advantage of the prevalent dissatisfaction and injustice
among the exploited sections of the population and seek to offer an alternative system of
governance which promises emancipation of these segments17”. It is therefore not
surprising, they say, that the Prime Minister in his address to the 2007 Chief Ministers´
conference argued that without meaningfully addressing “development needs of the
affected people”, the Naxalism cannot be effectively combated. The Prime Minister said:
“Development and internal security are two sides of the same coin. Each is critically
dependent on the other. Often, the lack of development and the lack of any perspective for
improving one´s lot provide fertile ground for extremist ideologies to flourish … At the same
time, development cannot take place in the absence of a secure and stable environment … I
have said in the past that the Left Wing Extremism is probably the single biggest security
challenge to the Indian state. It continues to be so and we and we cannot rest in peace until
we have eliminated this virus18.”



Before this, the Congress president Sonia Gandhi had expressed her concern over the Naxal
menace and advised the state governments to take it seriously. Further, the United States
has in the State Department’s Country Report 2006 on Terrorism designated the Naxalite


Movement in the name of Communist Party of India (Maoist) as a ´Group of Concern´19. On
16th July 2009 the Indian government further sharpened its position towards the Naxalite
movement when the Minister of Home Affairs told the Indian Parliament20: “For many years
we did not properly assess the threat posed by Left-wing extremism. We underestimated the
challenge and in the meanwhile they extended their influence. Today they pose a grave
challenge. We are preparing to take on the challenge.” The Minister informed the Parliament
that a special military adviser had been appointed to deal with the challenge and the
country´s premier paramilitary force, the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), had been
asked to assume the frontline role in the operation.

19 Basudev 2007: 6; Naxal Movement in India: Peoples' Struggle transformed into a Power Struggle, Nov 11
2007 http://orissanewsfeatures.sulekha.com/blog/post/2007/11/naxal-movement-in-india-peoples-struggle-
transformed.htm

20 Swain 2010:117

21 Cody William Punter 2010: 29; The Naxalite Movement in India from Independence-Present: Theoretical and
Pragmatic; Challenges of Counterinsurgency within the Framework of a Constitutional Democracy

22 Das 2011: 282

23 The Telangana Rebellion was a peasant revolt which was later supported by the Communists. It took place in
the former princely state of Hyderabad between 1946 and 1951. This was led by the Communist Party of India.
The revolt began in the Nalgonda district and quickly spread to the Warangal and Bidar districts. Peasant
farmers and labourers revolted against the local feudal landlords. The initial aims were to do away with illegal
and excessive exploitation meted out by these feudal lords in the name of bonded labour. The most strident
demand was for all debts of the peasants to be written off. The violent phase of the movement ended after the
central government sent in the army. Starting in 1951, the CPI shifted to a more moderate strategy of seeking
to bring communism to India within the constraints of Indian democracy.

Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telangana



It should be observed, as C.W. Punter21 (2010) points out, that the aims of the Naxalite
movement, is different from such insurgencies that occurs in for instance Jammu and
Kashmir and Nagaland. The latter, he means, contest the authority of the Indian government
to exercise its sovereignty over a given area based on religious or territorial claims. The
Naxalites on the other hand seek to challenge the sovereignty of the democratic state as
such by undermining the fundamental principles of governance and monopoly of violence;
the ultimate aim being the seizure of political power. The Prime Minister´s statement should
be seen in this perspective.



The development of the Naxalite movement



The West Bengal province in northern India has a long history of peasant and workers
struggles. The first peasant organization in the country, Raju J. Das22relates, was formed in
1925 at the All Bengal Peasant Conference. The origin of the Naxalite movement should also
as Kujur (2008) asserts be understood through the rise and fall of the Telangana Movement23
(1946-51), as this movement “will always remain the glorious chapter in the history of
peasant struggles for Indian communists.” The Telangana was, he says, the first serious


effort by sections of the communist party leadership to learn from the experiences of the
Chinese revolution and to develop a comprehensive line for India’s democratic revolution.



From the early 1950s, Das continues to say, a radical section of the Communist Party of India
(CPI) organized tribal peasants in the Naxalbari area of West Bengal´s Darjeeling district.
Most of the peasants were sharecroppers. In the period 1958-1962 the movement entered
into a militant phase when – in response to landlords evicting sharecroppers – local peasant
associations led by communists, such as Charu Mazumdar, armed the peasants in order to
protect their crops and defend themselves against police attacks.



The peasant activities in Naxalbari coincided with simmering problems within the, at that
time unified, Communist Party of India (CPI). In 1964, following the India-China war, CPI split
into the pro-Soviet Communist Party of India (CPI) and the pro-China Communist Party of
India (Marxist); the ideological and tactical difference between the two being shown by the
CPI preaching the theory of ‘peaceful road to non-capitalist development’, while the CPI (M)
adopted the centrist line. Despite this the two parties in 1967 went ahead with their
parliamentary exercises and formed the United Front government in West Bengal24. The
support by the peasant movements in Bengal enhanced the communists´ popularity, which
helped them to form a communist-led state government. This, Raju J Das points out,
increased the peasants´ expectations for immediate relief. When this did not occur, the
peasants were propelled into more militant action.

24 Rajat Kujur 2008: 5; Naxal Movement in India: A Profile, IPCS Research Papers, Institute of Peace and Conflict
Studies, New Delhi, INDIA

25 Rajat Kujur 2008: 13, 2-5;



The development of the Naxalite movement and its ideology as depicted by Rajat Kujur´s25
(2008) is a continuous process of organizational conflicts, splits, and mergers of different
groups. At the same time it also represents the coexistence, although as he says not
necessarily peaceful, of many streams and this Kujur means “is because the ultimate political
objective behind all organizational exercise, as reflected by the statements of various senior
Naxalite leaders, is to build a leftist alternative and mobilize people against increased
‘imperialist intervention’ and ‘proimperialist policies’ pursued by the union government, in
support of ‘revolutionary war’ based on the Chinese leader, Mao’s, theory of organized
peasant insurrection.” All along from its first phase of 1967, Kujur concludes, there has been
a continuous evolution in terms of several aspects: their understanding of the Indian
situation, the focus of the movement, its character, fighting capabilities and financial
resources of these groups. Yet, the leaders have remained more or less consistent as far as
their core ideology is concerned.




The incident that came to set off the Naxalite movement took place on 2nd March, 1967 in a
remote village called Naxalbari in West Bengal. It came to transform the history of left-wing
radicalism in India. When Bimal Kissan, a tribal youth, who had obtained a judicial order,
went to plough his land, landlords attacked him with the help of their goons. As a
consequence tribal people of the area retaliated and started forcefully recapturing their
lands. The incident acquired great visibility and within short the tribal people of the area
obtained tremendous support from cross sections of Communist revolutionaries belonging
to the state units of the CPI (M) in West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu,
Kerala, Uttar Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir26. When landlords resisted the peasant
seizure of their land and crops, the peasant movement turned violent. The clashes between
landlords and peasants made the police to act. On May 23, 1967 a policeman was killed and
following this incidence the state government on July 12 launched a major police action with
full support from the central government. The police killed nine people, including two
children, as well as six tribal women, who played an important role in the movement. The
government´s military campaign took back political power from the masses and the United
Front Government of West Bengal, headed by the CPI (M), using all repressive measures
possible was able to contain the rebellion within 72 days. The Naxalbari movement was
defeated27.

26 Kujur 2008: 2

27 Das 2011: 282; ref. to M. Damas 1991: 84, Approaching Naxalbari, Radical Impression;



Following this, Kujur (2008) relates, supporting units of the Naxalbaris held a formal meeting
in November 1967, which led to the formation of the All India Coordination Committee of
Communist Revolutionaries (AICCCR) in May 1968. The AICCR adopted two cardinal
principles for its operations; “allegiance to the armed struggle and non-participation in the
elections”.



However, soon thereafter, differences appeared over how an armed struggle should be
advanced. This led to the exclusion of a section of activists from Andhra Pradesh, under the
leadership of T. Nagi Reddy, and West Bengal, led by Kanhai Chatterjee. The Chatterjee
group objected to the question of the ‘annihilation of the class enemy’ and advocated that
this would be an issue only after building up mass agitations. Nevertheless, a majority in the
AICCCR rejected Chatterjee´s view and in May 1969 the AICCCR went ahead with the
formation of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist); CPI (M-L). The CPI (M-L) held
its first congress in 1970 in Kolkata and Charu Mazumdar was formally elected as its general
secretary. This led Chatterjee to join the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC).



Although both the CPI (M-L) and the MCC continued with their respective forms of armed
struggle for the next couple of years, Charu Mazumdar became the undisputed Naxalite
leader. With the organizational skills of Kanu Sanyal and Jaghal Santhal, the movement


spread to different corners of India28.The objective set by the Naxalite cadres under the
leadership of Charu Mazumdar, Basudev29 states, was “seizure of power through an agrarian
revolution”. Their motto, he says, was to replace the old feudal order with one that would
implement land reforms and free the poor from the clutches of landlords. The tactics
adopted to achieve their objective was guerilla warfare. The movement was thus very close
to a replica of the communist movement under the leadership of Mao Zedong in China. The
Naxalites visualized 'liberation' of territories and they thus hoped to set up 'liberated zones'
gradually in different parts of the country that would eventually merge into a territorial unit
under Naxalite hegemony.

28 Kujur 2008: 3

29Basudev 2007:2, Naxal Movement in India: Peoples' Struggle transformed into a Power Struggle,

http://orissanewsfeatures.sulekha.com/blog/post/2007/11/naxal-movement-in-india-peoples-struggle-
transformed.htm

30 Basudev 2007: 3, 7

31 A state of emergency in India refers to a period of governance under an altered constitutional setup that can
be proclaimed by the President of India, when he perceives grave threats to the nation from internal or
external sources or from financial situations of crisis. Between 26 June 1975 to 21 March 1977 under
controversial circumstances of political instability the then Preesident Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed upon advice by
the Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared a state of emergency under Article 352 of the Constitution of India
on the grounds that "the security of India" having been declared "threatened by internal disturbances". During
the declared state of emergency provisions of the constitution, which guarantee fundamental rights to the
citizens are overruled.



The popularity of Naxalite movement and the growing strength of Naxal groups alarmed the
Indian government. It decided, in the early 1970s, to set up a committee to look into the
issues behind the growing movement. The committee´s report, entitled The Causes and
Nature of Current Agrarian Tensions, revealed that the basic cause of unrest was the
defective implementation of laws enacted to protect the interests of the poor farmers and
tribals and that acute poverty and exploitation by the affluent outsiders were the reasons
why the tribals, dalits and agrarian communities supported the Naxalite movement30.
However, Basudev (2007) remarks, the government being worried over the law and order
situation in the areas of Naxalite influence, reacted opposite to the committee´s findings and
took reactionary steps by raising strong police action against the Naxalites. The observations
made in the report are yet to be addressed.



The police actions resulted in the loss of CPI (ML) cadre’s lives in the hundreds and with
thousands put behind bars during the Emergency31 in the mid1970s. A further blow to the
movement was the death of Charu Mazumdar in 1972. He was captured from a Calcutta
hideout and died twelve days later in police custody. The incident raised suspicion about the
treatment meted out to him in custody by the police. Allegation of the ill-treatment meted
to the detainees was made by intellectuals across the country, left wing politicians and
scholars. The movement witnessed confusion, splits and disintegration. The country, Kajur


concludes, had witnessed the euphoria of a Maoist revolution, but far more short-lived than
expected32.

32 Basudev 2007: 7; R, Kujur 2008:3

33 Ashida Vasudevan, Insight: On Naxalism in India, MSN News 24/03/2010
http://news.in.msn.com/internalsecurity/news/article.aspx?cp-documentid=3736080



The history of the Naxal movement post-Charu Mazumdar is characterized by a number of
splits, caused by personalized and narrow perceptions about the Maoist revolutionary line as
well as attempts at course-correction by some of the major groups. Kujur (2008) tells as an
example that even Kanu Sanyal, one of the founders of the movement and one of the main
organizers, by 1977 gave up the path of "dedicated armed struggle" and accepted
parliamentary practice as a form of revolutionary activity. In 1978, Ashida Vasudevan33
relates, attempts were made to revive the movement under the banner of CRC-CPI (ML).
This organization was popular in states like Kerala and West Bengal. Other groups gave up
the idea of armed struggle and joined the parliamentary path. In 1991 the CRC-CPI (ML) was
liquidated and new groups like the Kerala Communist Party and the Maharashtra Communist
Party were formed.



An initiative called ‘course-correction’ had been launched in 1974 by an influential group of
the CPI (M-L), led by Jauhar (Subrata Dutt), Nagbhushan Pattnaik and Vinod Mishra. The
group renamed itself the CPI (M-L) Liberation. During the 1976 Emergency the group
adopted a new line that called for the continuation of armed guerilla struggles, although
they also suggested that pure military armed struggle should be limited. Their aim was to
emphasis on mass peasant struggles, in an attempt to provide an Indianized version of
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism. At the same time it made efforts to form a broad anti-Congress
democratic front involving even non-communist parties. However, Kujur relates, over the
next three years, the movement suffered further splits. Leaders like Kondapalli
Seetharamaiah (Andhra Pradesh) and N. Prasad (Bihar) dissociated themselves from the
activities of the party. In 1980 Prasad formed the CPI (M-L) (Unity Organization) and
Seetharamaiah started the People's War Group (PWG). Prasad and Seetharamaiah had
different strategic lines; Prasad sought to restrict the ‘annihilation of class enemies’ while
People's War Group put emphasis on building mass organizations and did not seek to
develop a broad democratic front.



Since then, Kujur says, the principal division within the Naxalite movement has been
between two lines of thought and action; those advanced by the CPI (ML) Liberation on the
one hand and the PWG on the other; the Liberation denounces PWG as a group of "left
adventurists”, and the PWG castigates the Liberation group as one of the "revisionists"
imitating the CPI (M). The growth of the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) being a major
armed group in the same areas has, Kujur points out, in addition created the scope for


multiform organizational conflicts among the Naxal groups. Liberation took a theoretical
stand of correcting its past position and accepted to function within the framework of
parliamentary democratic politics. PWG and MCC, on the other hand, completely rejected
the parliamentary democratic system of governance and pledged to wage ‘people’s war for
people’s government’. In 1989 the Liberation group registered its first electoral victory in
Bihar. At the same time the CPI (M-L) New Democracy, the CPI (ML) S.R. Bhajjee Group and
the CPI (M-L) Unity Initiative, emerged in the state34.

34 Kujur 2008: 4

35 Rajat Kujur 2008: 6



During the following years there were both intra-organizational conflict and rivalry among
different groups taking place but also, despite the large-scale inner conflicts, ongoing efforts
at various levels to strive for unity. From the 1990s onwards two phenomena can be
observed; the affected states registered a considerable increase in the number of violent
incidents and at the same time, a considerable change occurred in the policy approach. Kujur
describes the situation in the way that while “the Naxal movement has mostly been
characterized by fragmented groups and innumerable splits; successive governments at the
national and state levels were never able to follow a uniform approach to deal with the
problem of Naxalism, thus, leading to a marked impact in the growth of the Naxal
movement.”



Four branches of the Naxal Movement



Kujur (2008) distinguishes four broad currents of the Naxal movement; the Communist Party
of India (ML) Liberation; Peoples War Group (PWG); Maoist Communist Centre (MCC); and
the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and looks into the similarities and dissimilarities of
the ideological bases and the programmes and organizational politics of these groups.





CPI (ML) Liberation



The origin of CPI (ML) Liberation35 dates back to 1974 but the activities of Liberation came
first to notice in the post-emergency phase of 1977, when leaders of the Communist
movement were released from jail. The Party Central Committee (PCC) called a meeting
during 30 January-2 February 1981 with the aim to unite the different groups that owed
their origin to CPI (ML), an attempt that did not turn out successfully. As Kujur quotes from a
party publication: “From this point onwards whereas the PCC group goes on to become
irrelevant and splits up into various factions, the M-L movement begins to polarize between
the Marxist-Leninist line of CPI (ML) (Liberation) and the anarchist line of CPI (ML) (People's


War)36.” The Indian People's Front (IPF), launched in New Delhi during 1982, became the
party's open political platform and in the subsequent Party Congress the issue of
participation in elections was finalized. Although the Liberation group “considers itself the
true inheritor of the CPI (ML) legacy, its political line has changed dramatically from that of
the original CPI (ML)37.” The CPI (ML) Liberation recorded its first electoral victory under the
banner of the IPF in 1989 and Ara (one Lok Sabha Constituency in Central Bihar) sent the first
"Naxalite" member to Parliament. In the early 1990s the party took the step to resume open
functioning, the Indian People’s Front was disbanded and in 1995 the Election Commission
recognized the party. The Liberation thus “converted from being a revolutionary movement
into a legalist, reformist and parliamentary movement; and changed the underground
organization into an open opportunist and revisionist organization38.”

36 Thirty Years of Naxalbari, an un-dated publication of CPI (ML) Liberation

37 Kujur refers to Bela Bhatia, Naxalite Movement in Central Bihar, Economic and Political Weekly, April 9 2005.

38 Kujur ref. to Sharvan, the then Secretary Bihar State Committee of CPI (ML) Peoples War, in an interview
given to People’s March, Volume 2, No. 3, March 2001.

39 A Party document of CPI (ML) Liberation titled The General Programme

40 Arundhati Roy 2010: 9



Since then the CPI (ML) Liberation has been contesting successive elections at national and
state levels. However, Kujur points out that though functioning within the parliamentary
democratic setup the CPI (ML) Liberation has not completely disbanded the path of armed
rebellion … “the Party does not rule out the possibility that under a set of exceptional
national and international circumstances, the balance of social and political forces may even
permit a relatively peaceful transfer of central power to revolutionary forces. But in a
country where democratic institutions are based on essentially fragile and narrow
foundations and where even small victories and partial reforms can only be achieved and
maintained on the strength of mass militancy, the party of the proletariat must prepare itself
for winning the ultimate decisive victory in an armed revolution. A people's democratic front
and a people's army, therefore, remain the two most fundamental weapons of revolution in
the arsenal of the Party39.”





People´s War Group (PWG)



The Peoples War Group (PWG) was originally a faction of the Communist Party of India
(Marxist-Leninist) CPI (ML), the original Naxalites. PWG was formally announced as a
separate, independent party on April 22, 1980 under the leadership of Kondapalli
Seetharamaiah from Andhra Pradesh40. Dandakaranya Forest was the first base at which the
PWG´s squads began the process of building guerilla zones. At the time there was a
discussion whether the PWG ought to have a standing army or a ´people’s army’. PWGs
decision to build an army, Arundhati Roy (2010) says, came from its experience in Andhra


Pradesh, where its ‘Land to the Tiller’ campaign led to a direct clash with the landlords. This
resulted in the kind of police repression that the Party found impossible to withstand
without a trained fighting force of its own. The dominant line within the Naxal politics today,
Kujur41 (2008) asserts, is the PWG line of thought. PWG is therefore the most important
among all the splinter groups representing the Naxal movement. Its official name is
Communist Party of India––Marxist- Leninist (People’s War). A PWG party document from
1992 highlights its aims, objectives and strategies:

41 Rajat Kujur 2008: 7

42 Kujur ref. to Path of People’s War in India – Our Tasks!’; a comprehensive PWG party document highlighting
its aims, objectives and strategies. The document was adopted by All-India Party Congress, 1992; the document
was obtained this from one of the principal ideologue of the PWG.



“The programme of our Party has declared that India is a vast ‘semi-colonial and semi-feudal
country’, with about 80 per cent of our population residing in our villages. It is ruled by the
big-bourgeois landlord classes, subservient to imperialism. The contradiction between the
alliance of imperialism, feudalism and comprador bureaucrat- capitalism on the one hand
and the broad masses of the people on the other is the principal contradiction in our
country. Only a successful People’s Democratic Revolution, i.e. New Democratic Revolution
and the establishment of People’s Democratic Dictatorship of the workers, peasants, the
middle classes and national bourgeoisie under the leadership of the working class can lead
to the liberation of our people from all exploitation and the dictatorship of the reactionary
ruling classes and pave the way for building Socialism and Communism in our country, the
ultimate aim of our Party. People’s War based on Armed Agrarian Revolution is the only path
for achieving people’s democracy i.e. new democracy, in our country42.”



Rejecting the parliamentary democratic system of the country and branding individual
annihilation as individual terrorism, PWG declared that people’s war was the only path to
bringing about a people’s government in the country.



The difference to the party programme of CPI (ML) Liberation, Kujur says, was that
Liberation mostly focused on the cause of peasants aiming at building a political front
focusing on peasant struggles, while the group led by K. Seetharamaiah wanted the party to
be a platform for peasants, workers, tribal and other weaker sections of society. PWG was
thus more interested in the formation of mass organizations instead of any democratic front.
Due to its changed manner of action Liberation in the 1990s was being reduced to a small
political party. The PWG in the same period managed to register its presence outside Andhra
Pradesh and gradually gained strongholds in different areas of Bihar, Orissa, Madhya
Pradesh, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh, and Maharashtra.



In November 1995, Kujur relates, the People´s War conducted an All India Special
Conference in Dandakaranya. The Conference adopted two important party documents.




The Party Programme as adopted by the Conference reads: “India is a semi-feudal, semi-
colonial society; here the New Democratic Revolution (NDR) has to be completed
victoriously paving way to the Socialist Revolution and to advance towards the ultimate goal
of Communism. The Indian people are weighed down by three big mountains: feudalism,
imperialism and comprador bureaucrat capital; these are the targets to be overthrown in the
present stage of NDR. The four major contradictions in the present-day Indian society are:
the contradiction between feudalism and the broad masses; the contradiction between
imperialism and the Indian people; the contradiction between capital and labour and the
contradiction within the ruling classes. While the first two are fundamental contradictions to
be resolved through the NDR, the contradiction between feudalism and the broad masses is
the principal contradiction at the present stage. India is a multi-national country--a prison-
house of nationalities and all the nationalities have the right to self-determination including
secession. When NDR is victoriously completed, India will become a voluntary and genuine
federation of all national people's republics43.”

43 Kujur´s comments: This report on the Special conference was posted in website
(www.cpimlpwg/repression.html) which claimed itself as the unofficial website of PW. The website has been
withdrawn. During its existence the site claimed it to be the unofficial website of PWG. But during my
interaction with many PW rank and file I found that it was no less than their official website.



The second document, which was adopted in the conference, concerned the Strategy and
Tactics. It reads: “The political strategy to be pursued in the present stage of NDR in India is
one of forming a broad united front of all the anti-feudal, anti-imperialist forces--the
working class, the peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie--under the
leadership of the working class to overthrow the common enemies--feudalism, imperialism
and comprador bureaucratic capital. The military strategy or the path of Indian Revolution is
the path of protracted people's war i.e. liberating the countryside first through area wise
seizure of power establishing guerilla zones and base areas and then encircling the cities and
finally capturing power throughout the country ... the tactics of boycott of elections have to
be pursued for a long time in the prevailing conditions in India; and participating in
parliamentary and assembly elections under any pretext only weakens the class struggle.”





Maoist Communist Centre (MCC)



The third important group within the broad spectrum of the Naxal movement, which is
brought to light in Kujur´s research paper, is the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC). The MCC
was formed on 20 October 1969, around the same time that the CPI (ML) was formed,
although during those days it was known as Dakshin Desh. It was in 1975 that the group
renamed itself the Maoist Communist Centre. MCC is different from other organizations in
that it was never a part of the CPI (ML), which many claim as the mother of all Naxal


organizations – “the MCC, while supporting the Naxalbari struggle, did not join the CPI (ML)
because of some tactical differences and on the question of Party formation44.” In 2003,
MCC merged with the Revolutionary Communist Centre of India-Maoists (RCCI-M) to form
the Maoist Communist Centre-India (MCC-I) 45.

44 30 years of Naxalbari, An undated Maoist literature, Vanguard Publication, p.36. Vanguard was the organ of
PWG.

45 Kujur 2008: 11

46 Red Star, Special Issue, p. 20. Red Star is the English language organ of the MCC, as quoted by Aloke Banerjee
in a pamphlet titled “Inside MCC Country”, dated June 2003. Red Star was the English language organ of the
MCC. Also quoted in ‘MCC India Three Decades Leading Battalions of the Poor’,

http://www.awtw.org/back_issues/mcc_india.htm.

Though it denies but many treat this as the unofficial organ of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement
(RIM.)

47 Kujur 2008: 11



From its initiation, Kujur asserts, the MCC stood for taking up armed struggle as the main
form of resistance and waging a protracted people's war as the central task of the party. This
position of the MCC, he says, has been repeatedly expressed and emphasized in a multitude
of Maoist literature, as is stated in Red Star46 (2003): “This armed revolutionary war is the
war of the armed people themselves; it is 'Protracted People's War' as shown by Mao Tse
Tung. The concrete economic and political condition of India leads to the very conclusion
that the path shown by the great leader and teacher, Mao Tse Tung, the path of the Chinese
Revolution, that is, and to establish a powerful people's army and people's militia and to
establish dependable, strong and self-sufficient base areas in the countryside, to constantly
consolidate and expand the people's army and the base areas, gradually to encircle the
urban areas from the countryside by liberating the countryside, finally to capture the cities
and to establish the state system and political authority of the people themselves by
decisively destroying the state power of the reactionaries -- this very path of the protracted
People's War is the only path of liberation of the people of India, the path of victory of the
new democratic revolution."





Communist Party of India (Maoist)



The next phase of organizational transformation was the merger of two of the principal
armed organizations, People’s War (PW) and the Maoist Communist Centre of India (MCC-I),
which resulted in the formation of the Communist Party of India (Maoist)47 in November
2004. The purpose of the party was phrased like this: “the formation of the unified
Communist Party of India (Maoist) is a new milestone in the history of the revolutionary
communist movement of India. A unified Maoist party based on Marxism-Leninism-Maoism
is a long delayed and highly cherished need of the revolutionary minded and oppressed
people of the country, including all our ranks, and also all the Maoist forces of South Asia


and internationally. Now, this long-aspired desire and dream has been transformed into a
reality48.”

48 Kujur refers to Ganapathy in an Interview given on the on the occasion of the formation of CPI (Maoist).
People’s March, Vol. 5, No.11-12, November-December 2004

49 Kujur refers to “Maoist-Influenced Revolutionary Organizations in India” available
at<http://www.massline.info/India /Indian_Groups.htm

50 Kujur ref. to “Maoist-Influenced Revolutionary Organizations in India” available at

http://www.massline.info/India /Indian_Groups.htm

51 Ashok Swain (2010: 117); Struggle against the State, Social Network and Protest Mobilization in
India, Ashgate Publ. Ltd. Farnham, England.



The aim of the CPI (Maoist), Kujur relates, as announced on the occasion of its formation is
to establish a compact revolutionary zone, stretching from Nepal to Bihar to Andhra Pradesh
and beyond and in continuing their pursuit of a people’s democracy the ultimate aim is to
seize power through protracted armed struggle. Kujur refers to a press statement, issued on
the event of announcing the merger that stated: “The immediate aim and programme of the
Maoist party is to carry on and complete the already ongoing and advancing New
Democratic Revolution in India as a part of the world proletarian revolution by overthrowing
the semi-colonial, semi-feudal system under the neo-colonial form of indirect rule,
exploitation and control. This revolution will remain directed against imperialism, feudalism
and comprador bureaucratic capitalism. This revolution will be carried out and completed
through armed agrarian revolutionary war, i.e. protracted people's war with the armed
seizure of power remaining as its central and principal task, encircling the cities from the
countryside and thereby finally capturing them. Hence, the countryside as well as the PPW
(Protracted People's War) will remain as the 'center of gravity' of the party's work, while
urban work will be complimentary to it49.” According to the same press release, the CPI-
Maoists “will still seek to unite all genuine Maoist groups that remain outside this unified
party”50.



By this statement, Ashok Swain51 (2010) asserts, the new entity, the CPI (M), thus
reconfirmed its commitment to the classical Maoist strategy of ´protracting armed struggle´.
Participation in elections and engagement with the prevailing ´bourgeois democracy´ are
rejected. Its objectives are not defined in terms of the seizure of lands, crops, or other
immediate goals. Although the demand of their struggle is to improve the economic and
social rights of the poor and indigenous tribes the ultimate object is the seizure of power.






CPI (Maoist) – Jantanam Sarkars; Military Capacity;
Financial Resources and Support Base; the Issue of
Violence



Jantanam Sarkars (people´s government)



Since the merger of the People’s War and the Maoist Communist Centre of India into the CPI
(Maoist) in November 2004 the Naxalites have developed its coordination machinery by
organizing special zonal committees in every Naxal affected state52. So, for example there
are three zonal committees; in Orissa like Andhra-Orissa Border Special Zonal Committee
(AOBSZC), the Jharkhand-Bihar-Orissa Special Zonal Committee (JBOBSZC), and the
Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee (DSZC). Further, in Andhra Pradesh, three special
zonal committees look after the Maoist operations.

52 Basudev 2007: 5, 6

53 Ashida Vasudevan, Insight: On Naxalism in India, MSN News 24/03/2010
http://news.in.msn.com/internalsecurity/news/article.aspx?cp-documentid=3736080



The principal governing bodies of the CPI (Maoist) consist of the politburo and a central
committee consisting of 34 members. There are state committees and special regional
committees. According to Ashida Vasudevan53 (2010) Muppala Lakshmana Rao, alias
Ganapathi, who replaced Kondappally as the general secretary of the Peoples War, was
elected the general secretary of the CPI (Maoist). The politburo of the party include
Mallojula Koteswara Rao alias Kishenji, Mallojula Venugopal alias Sonu alias Bhupathi,
Prasantha Bose alias Nirbhoy, Nambala Keshava Rao, Katakam Sudershan, and Cherkuri
Rajakumar alias Azad (Azad was on 3rd July 2010 shot dead in an ´encounter´ with the
police). Malla Raji Reddy, another politburo member, from Ankamali in Ernakulam was
arrested in 2007. After jumping the bail, Vasudevan tells, he rejoined the organization
recently. Another politburo member Misir Besra was arrested by the police in Bihar last year,
but the Maoists ambushed the police team while he was being taken to the court and
forcibly released him.

During the last decade the Maoists have laid the ground for a governmental structure
inspired by Mao´s idea of a new democracy. The main building block of this structure are the
Jantanam Sarkars (people´s government), which the Maoists regard as the basis for the
Indian People’s Democratic Federal Republic of tomorrow.



In January 2010 the civil rights activist Gautam Navlakha together with the Swedish author
Jan Myrdal, made a fortnight-long journey in Bastar, a district in the state of Chattisgarh.


Bastar is a guerilla zone in the Dandakaranya region, where the CPI (Maoists) runs their own
people´s government, Janathana Sarkar (JS). There they were engaged in conversations with
the general secretary of the CPI (Maoists) Mupalla Laxman Rao alias Ganapathi and other
leaders of the CPI (M); among them Mallojula Venugopal alias Sonu about the process of
forming a civil and military organization and the various facets of Maoist politics and the
socioeconomic and cultural life in the Dandakaranya region. Gautam Navlakha narrates
these talks in his article Days and Nights in the Heartland of Rebellion54.

54 Gautam Navlakha 2010: 24 ff, Days and Nights in the Heartland of Rebellion, April 1, 2010; published at
Sanhati, http://sanhati.com/articles/2250/ Jan Myrdal has written the book Red Star over India, released in
India at the Kolkata Book Fair on 28 February 2012. To read the documentation of the conversation with
Mupalla Laxman Rao, go to http://sanhati.com/articles/2138/

55 Interview with comrade Sonu, member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and
responsible for the Dandakaranya Special Zone Committee



Sonu55 tells that in 2001 at the 9th Party congress a conceptual development was reached in
the party about base areas and building the people’s army. After a thorough review it was
decided to build guerilla bases. Sonu explains: “Since 2001, the first base area construction
had to be analyzed in more concrete terms. This was discussed and debated thoroughly.
Accordingly, within the guerilla zones, guerilla bases began to be built. Therefore, concrete
shape was now finally being given to the construction of people’s power in accordance with
the terrain and available support of mass base. 500 to 3000 people in the villages were now
being constituted into Revolutionary People’s Committees. The understanding was that
without army people cannot build power. People’s army and people’s power were linked.
This developed understanding helped us a lot in working towards both the development of
the army and the development of people’s power. Two or three spots were selected for
guerilla bases in each division, and in this shape 10-12 spots were concentrated upon to
form the guerilla bases. The Maad (division) of Chattisgarh forms the Central Guerilla Base.”

The difference between guerilla zone and guerilla base is of substance. The guerilla zone is
to be seen as a fluid area in the sense that the State is not entirely absent. It is an area where
the Indian State has been forced to retreat and is using military force to re-establish its
authority. There is thus a contention for control between the government and rebels.
However, there are spots within these guerilla zones, which are demarcated to ensure that
some work can continue relatively uninterrupted. These are bases, which are not easily
penetrable or accessible. It is here the Revolutionary People’s Committees function and one
can see the liberated zone in its embryonic form.

Gautam Navlakha narrates from his talks with Sonu that the first step was to create village
level Revolutionary People’s Committees (RPC) which comprised up to 15 villages. The
second step was to create Area Revolutionary People’s Committees (ARPC) over the selected
guerilla bases in each division comprising 3-5 RPCs. By December 2004 the first ARPC was


built and by February 2005 the second ARPC was formed. From 2005 onwards till 2008 all
the spots were covered by ARPC. The party decision was to create minimum three ARPCs in
each division, which is currently under process. Now divisional governments are also built.
The first divisional government was formed in March 2007. During the initial stage of guerilla
bases, the corresponding military formation was platoons. With the development of
divisional sarkar (administrative authority unit), companies were formed at military level. To
intensify this process Zonal Level Sarkar Preparatory Committees were set up. When these
were in place a military development in terms of battalions were being built. The first
battalion was formed on August 10, 2009.



The provisional government formed by the Maoists in the name of Janathana Sarkar, B.
Chakrabarty and Rajat K. Kujur56 (2010) indicate, throws light on the Maoist governmental
structure. Ideologically inspired by Mao´s idea of a new democracy the Sarkar located at
village level with a population of 500 to 3000 people is the first stage of governance seeking
to articulate an alternative form of public administration in India. The constitution provides
that the provisional government will be formed by the people´s assembly comprising those
who are elected on the basis of adult suffrage. Those aged eighteen and above are eligible to
vote and the minimum age for contesting the election for the assembly is twenty. Due to the
adverse circumstances in which the Naxalites are operating the elections have so far been
held in secret locations. It is reported that in areas within the safe zones, elections are held
regularly.

56 Bidyut Chakrabarty and Rajat Kumar Kujur (2010: 142 ff), Maoism in India; Reincarnation of ultra-left wing
extremism in the Twenty-first century, Routledge, Abingdon; the discussion in their book on Janathana Sarkar is
drawn on the CPI (Maoist) document Policy Programme of Janathana Sarkar;

http://satp.org/satporgtp/countries/india/maoist/documents/papers/constitution



The term of the assembly is for three years. So far, Chakrabarty and Kujur say, the Sarkars
have been formed through consensus among the elected representatives to the people´s
assembly. However, in case of failure of the members to arrive at a consensus the
constitution allows the central committee to dictate the formation.



There are, Chakrabarty and Kujur point out, well written documents available in the public
domain about the structure of the government. The documents elaborate the specific
functions and responsibilities of eight departments that the Janathana Sarkar have, covering
the fields of finance, defence, agriculture, judiciary, education-culture, health, forest
production and public relations. Of these the forest protection and the judiciary
departments are considered the most important. In order to protect the forest dependent
communities, the forest department is entrusted with three important tasks: “(a) it will
regulate the trading of forest products for profit; it will oppose procuring of herbs, fruit trees
and other valuable trees that are helpful for medical services in methods that would destroy
them; (b) it will strive for developing forests; it will stop illicit timber business, it will arrest


those involved in illegal timber business and those who help them; (c) it will challenge the
government for its policy of displacement and dispossession of the natural heir to the forests
by giving away land to the outsiders for anti-people business ventures.”



Like the forest department, the people´s judiciary is popular in the areas controlled by
Janathana Sarkar. Following the class-sensitive principle of justice, the judiciary avoids
punitive measures unless they are absolutely necessary. The Naxal courts, known as Jan
Adalat, are expected to administer justice keeping in view the customary traditions of the
area besides while at the same time upholding the ideological importance of Marxism-
Leninism-Marxism. The authors point at two specific methods being generally followed by
Jan Adalat: “(a) for the class enemies, like landlords, agents for semi-colonial and semi-
feudal forces and those supporting anti-people activities, the court is not hesitant to adopt
stern measures after having given them a chance to defend themselves, and (b) while
settling disputes, these courts need to be sensitive to ´those various forums´ which the
adivasis have developed over generations. The Jan Adalat is expected to strengthen these
people-oriented forums, drawn on the local customary traditions to fulfill its people-centric
role.”



The Jan Adalat, the people´s courts, has become one of the most popular organs of the
provisional government mainly because of two reasons. The court resolves disputes more
quickly in comparison with government courts, which take years to dispense justice. An eye
witness account reveals that when there is a dispute “the Jan Adalat calls the parties
together and the punishment is given right away57”. This means that time is hardly wasted,
which the villagers seem to see favourable. The Maoists also seem to have gained
acceptance because the people´s courts are generally ant-landlords except on rare
occasions. This has given confidence to the tribals because “if you go to the police, they will
invariably support the landlord58”.

57 Chakrabarty and Kujur (2010) ref. to Sunday Times, New Delhi, 29 February 2009; Tehelka, 4 April 2009

58 Ibid. Ref. to report by Dan Morrison in The Christian Science Monitor, 9 September 2008

59 Chakrabarty and Kumar 2020: 187; Chakrabarty and Kumar states that the entire description of people´s
government in Bastar (Chhattisgarh) is drawn on the news report entitled ´Area Liberated … No Salwa Judum
Here´; The Times of India, 20 February 2009



The Maoists claim that during the period between 2006 and 2009, the Jan Adalat “has
settled about two hundred disputes between brothers, husband-wives, neighbours”. With
the growing popularity of the people´s court, the local police station seems to have become
redundant59.



However rudimentary the Janathana Sarkar may be in its form, Chakrabarty and Kujur assert,
it is most significant in the articulation and sustenance of the Maoist-led ultra-extremist
movement in India in two ways. It has projected the capability of the Maoists to provide an


alternative form of governance, based on Marxism-Leninism-Marxism and thus translated
into reality its commitment to new democracy. And, they assert, despite severe state
repression the formation and continuity of Janathana Sarkar point at the extent to which it
has organic roots in the area. One of the reasons supporting its growing strength, they
mean, is undoubtedly due to its success in addressing the genuine socio-economic
grievances of the people. Besides providing ´instant justice´ to the aggrieved tribals, the
provisional government plays a meaningful role in adopting schemes that contribute to the
well-being of the people in the area under its purview. A report underlines that the
provisional government’s development activities in five villages in Chhattisgarh seems to
have brought the government closer to the people. So, for instance, does the government
agree to financially endorse collective farming as perhaps the only meaningful device for
survival of those who almost every year are subjected to near famine conditions. This
appears, the authors say, to be a top priority of the provisional government. They refer to
the party declaring that “we must take up the development of agriculture and production as
the main political task … We have to develop irrigation, develop organic manure for
augmenting agricultural production”. The party is also aware that “this development is not
possible merely with local adivasi support”. What is thus required is to invite those who are
sympathetic to the Maoist cause to help in “guiding the local people for building ponds,
canals and other development activities [that cannot be] postponed and has to begin
now60”.

60 Ibid. 2010: 143; Ref to the report of the social audit of the Janathana Sarkar in Chhattisgarh,

http://satp.org/satporgtp/countries/india/maosit/documents/papers/constitution

61 Gautam Navlakha 2010: 26; interview with Sonu



Chakrabarty and Kujur point out that besides seeking to develop agriculture, the Sarkar
appears to have gained enormously in these areas where it is seriously engaged in providing
medical aid to those who cannot afford treatment. Medicine committees are constituted by
the provisional government to provide care to disease-affected tribals. Although the quality
of treatment provided may not, for obvious reasons, approximate to the standard of the
non-tribal areas, the effort is both meaningful and symbolically empowering for those who
usually surrender to “the supernatural forces or obnoxious black magic” for healing and
cure.



Sonu told Gautam Navlakha61 that doctors who are working in Dandakaranya guerilla zones
conduct workshops where elementary training is provided to members of RPCs
(Revolutionary People’s Committees). Since malaria, cholera and elephantiasis are the three
most dreaded illness which afflicts people, their symptoms are taught and medicines
identified by their colours and some treatment is offered to people who are unwell.




Sonu further told that “in so far as mobile schools are concerned these are in nature of
camps where children attend schools for anywhere between 15 to 30 days, depending upon
how tense the situation is in a particular area. Classes last for 90 minutes for each subject
with four subjects taught in a day. There are between 25-30 students and three teachers.
They have begun to employ certain teaching aids from globe, torchlight to CDs to teach
history and science. In science they find that they encounter problem because people’s
beliefs about evolution, universe, sun and moon etc are different from what science teaches
us. But children are taught through teaching aids or CDs the way life evolved, eclipses occur
etc. Significantly, JS education tries to meet the challenge posed to them to teach, for e.g.,
modern science by picking on everyday things around them and maximizing use of resources
which they have access to62.”

62 Ibid.

63 Gautam Navlakha 2010: 25; interview with Sonu



The establishment of the people´s government involving election of the assembly members
on the basis of adult franchise is a task that required particular preparations considering that
Dandakaranya region, where the Sarkars were first set up, was predominantly inhabited by
adivasi people with limited experience in new governance. Sonu informs that for the
purpose of preparing the election a number of workshops were organized. The first
workshop for this purpose was organized in February 2008. According to Sonu it was an
extremely productive endeavor as a free exchange of experience and opinion took place for
both the party as well as the people. He continues: “on the other side, as the higher level of
people’s government was being formed the call for boycott of parliamentary election was
now being actively undertaken. In the Chattisgarh Assembly Election of 2008 November as
well as in the 15th Lok Sabha Election of 2009 April and in the 2009 October Maharashtra
Assembly Election it was the JS which took the initiative of active and collective boycott of
the elections by the people. All the RPCs (Revolutionary People’s Committees) called public
meetings in their villages and told the people that now when they have been electing their
own government, how can they elect another government outside of themselves at the
same time? Alongside the people’s militia has also evolved with the purpose of protecting
the people’s government. The military strength has also been increasing and consequently
the paramilitary forces which during every election try to pressurize and threaten the
masses, according to the party, have been effectively resisted by the PLGA and the militia
lately. In the entire struggle area or the guerilla zone there are only been 2-5% polling. For
instance, in Gogonda, there were 700 voters and 1000 paramilitary posted during election.
As also the bourgeois media showed, even after such arrangements there were only 10
votes casted and that too after the third time of re-polling, which completely exposes the
irrelevance of the bourgeois parliamentary elections to the people of this area63.”




Along with people's government coming to power, Sonu asserts that “bourgeois
parliamentary elections have thus been rejected. This is the only place outside the Kashmir,
where the very low polling was held and election boycott was so successful and this had
definitely threatened the state.”





Military Capacity



The Naxalites, C. W. Punter64 relates, began employing violence to secure their political and
territorial gains in the mid-1980s. The first decade the violence remained at a relatively
stable level. However, the Naxal armed organization has over the years developed and as
the Naxal strong-holds have increased their military capacity, the violence has continued to
grow. In response to a government decision to launch coordinated action against the
Naxalites by police forces of the various Indian States affected by Naxal violence, the
People´s War Group (PWG) reorganized its guerrilla force65. In December 2000 it formed its
military wing, the People’s Guerrilla Army (PGA) – later People´s Liberation Guerrilla Army
(PLGA) – and special guerrilla squads, Permanent Action Team (PAT) and Special Action Team
(SAT). All armed cadre of the PWG are organized under the PLGA. The PLGA functions under
a single operational command, the Central Military Commission (CMC). In a State where the
PLGA has a presence there is a State Military Commission and in special guerrilla zones there
is a Zonal Military Commission. A Regional Military Commission supervises a group of State
Military Commissions or Zonal Military Commission. Each Regional Military Commission
reports to the Central Military Commission (CMC).

64 C. W. Punter 2010: 29; Punter ref, to P. K. Singh 2008: 14, The Trajectory of the Movement; ed. P. V. Ramana,
The Naxal Challenge; Observer Research Foundation, 2008

65 Kujur (2008: 10); Ref. to “People's Guerrilla Army”,

http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/countries/india/terroristoutfits/peoples_guerrilla_arms_left_wing_extre
mists.htm

66 Ashida Vasudevan, Insight: On Naxalism in India, MSN News 24/03/2010
http://news.in.msn.com/internalsecurity/news/article.aspx?cp-documentid=3736080



The CMC has three components – the main force, the secondary force and the base force66;
the main force consists of highly equipped guerrillas who are under the commands of state
units and these forces are deployed in major operations; the secondary force is the local
guerrilla squads; and the base force includes people's militia or the ordinary men and
women who are given rudimentary military training. The CPI (Maoist) has a military
intelligence wing and the central instruction team.



The type of weapon the different component use varies from the trained guerrillas, who use
sophisticated weapons like AK series rifles, INSAS, Carbine and rockets to the local militia,
who use locally available weapons like swords, knives, axes and iron rods. The estimated


number of PLGA, according to Ashida Vasudevan (2010) is between 15,000 and 20,000.
Punter (2010) argues that since the formation of the PLGA, it is estimated that 10,500
professional cadres have been trained, supplied with around 7,300 weapons, many of which
are more sophisticated than the standard issue rifles of the Indian police67. This professional
unit is supplemented by an informal militia built up of tribals armed with traditional
weapons. The militia is estimated to number around 40,000 spread across villages under
Maoist control. Further, the armed cadres and militia are supported by large portions of
disaffected populations. As an example Punter mentions the peasant-worker fronts; the
DAKMS front in Dandakaranya numbering 100,000 members and its women’s front,
Krantikari Adivasi Mahila Sanghathan (KAMS), has nearly 90,00068. Sonu in the interview
with Gautam Navlakha says that women membership in KAMS is 1 00, 000 members. KAMSA
was formed in 1991 as a women's organization for the purpose of emancipation of women.

67 C. W. Punter ref. ro Thakur, Sankarshan 2006: 3189, My Battle your Blood, Thelka May 2006: Referring to the
Naxalites, a policeman from Bastar complained that ‘They have ak--.47s, we have 303 rifles and not enough
ammunition’. Moreover the use of Improvised Explosive Devices (IED) and remote mines have made the
Maoists increasingly lethal, especially due to the state’s insistence on sending out large patrols into Naxal areas
as opposed to smaller groups as suggested in counter insurgency theory.

On the PLGA see also http://www.scribd.com/doc/92578680/PLGA-skrift

A Decade March of People´s Liberation Guerilla Army (PLGA) in the Path of People´s War (2000-2010)

68 C. W. Punter 2010: 30; ref to Mhkherji Nirmalangashu 2010: 17; Arms over the people. What have the
Maoists achieved in Dandakaranya, Economic and Political Weekly; June 2010

69 Ashida Vasudevan, Insight: On Naxalism in India, MSN News 24/03/2010
http://news.in.msn.com/internalsecurity/news/article.aspx?cp-documentid=3736080





Financial Resource and Support Base



The Naxalite Movement comprises a large cadre base and is involved in continuous armed
actions. It is also managing several projects. Vasudevan69 (2010) relates that an arrested
leader has confessed that for purchase of arms only the organization every year spends
around Rs 60 crore. Basudev (2007) further asserts that according to reports the Maoists
have gone into employing equally high-technology, setting up specialized technical unites
equipped with the latest technology, to face the CRPF and police forces of the states. These
unites employ information technology experts on monthly payment in order to draw up
plans to develop more potent explosives, tap governmental messages and get the latest on
techniques on guerrilla warfare. They have computers, laptops and experts and they possess
the technology to intercept the wireless messages of police, decode them and pass it on to
their red squad. It is expected that they have spent more than Rs. 2 million on their technical
unites. These experts also draw maps of different government installations and sketches of
jails. The Maoists have as well developed technology to prepare landmines by mixing 80
percent aluminium nitrate with 20 percent diesel.




All this requires a huge financial resource being met in different ways. In the dense forests
areas that the Naxalites control; i.e. large parts of the Red Corridor; they, according to
Basudev70, have created their own economic zones at which they have control over the
teakwood and timber trade in the forests of Vidarbha region in Maharashtra and next to all
control over the forest produce marketing.

70 Basudev 2007:6

71 Plucking of Tendu leaves, as known in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, in early summer is one of the
resources of livelihood for the tribes of central India. The leaves are used to make beedis, a type of
cheap cigarettes.

72 Arundhati Roy 2010: 10, Walking with the Comrades, OUTLOOK INDIA, March 21, 2010



Besides this, Basudev says, they have organized a parallel administrative system in the tribal
dominated pockets of Chattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa, wherefrom they collect taxes
from people and in many parts of Orissa, they undertake large scale Ganja (Marijuana)
cultivation and illegal trading of Ganja to generate revenue for their survival and operations.
Now, being ambitious to have a greater control over the national economy, the Naxals have
eyed upon the iron ore mines in Chattisgarh and Orissa as most of the iron ore mines are
easy approachable from their Red Corridor boundaries.



A considerable part of funding the Naxal activities is, according to Vasudevan (2010), taken
from the extortion from big business companies. The Naxal-affected areas in the central
and east India are mineral rich areas and the Maoists collect `revolutionary tax' from the
companies which operate in the areas. Another revenue resource comes from Maoists
looting banks.



The Naxalites also get a part of the wages of the Tendu71 leaf pickers, whose wages have
multiplied after the intervention of the Naxalites72. The rise of wages is a consequence of
Naxal interference in the Tendu employment market. Hence, besides constituting an income
source for the movement “the real success for the Party was its ability to demonstrate the
value of unity and a new way of conducting a political negotiation”. Preceding this, traders
paid three paisa for a bundle of about 50 leaves. The Maoists began to organize tribal people
to go on strike to demand a rise in the price they were being paid for Tendu leaves.
Eventually the strike was successful and the price was doubled, to 6 paisa a bundle. Today,
after several strikes and agitations, the price of a bundle of Tendu leaves is Rs 1. As
Arundhati Roy (2010) writes, it may seem a little unlikely at these rates, but the turnover of
the Tendu business runs into hundreds of crores of rupees.



Every season, she relates, the Government floats tenders and gives contractors permission
to extract a fixed volume of Tendu leaves; usually between 1500 and 5000 standard bags
known as manak boras. Each manak bora contains about 1000 bundles. By the time the
Tendu enters the market it is sold in kilos. “The slippery arithmetic and the sly system of


measurement”, converting bundles into manak boras and then into kilos is controlled by the
contractors, and leaves plenty of room for manipulation of the worst kind. Yet, she says, the
most conservative estimate puts their profit per standard bag at about Rs 1100 and this is
after paying the Party a commission of Rs 120 per bag; and, for the contractor; even by that
gauge, a small contractor (1500 bags) makes about Rs 16 lakh a season and a big one (5000
bags) up to Rs 55 lakh.



The Maoists have a large support base among the intellectuals and professionals. Ashida
Vasudevan73 lists the Revolutionary Democratic Front (RDF) in Delhi, People's Democratic
Front of India (PDFI), the Democratic Students Union (DSU) in Jawaharlal Nehru University in
Delhi, and the Revolutionary Writers Union in Andhra Pradesh, which all have allegiance to
the Maoism though they do not have any official link to them. Recently, Vasudevan relates,
Delhi police included some of these organizations and their leaders in the charge sheet filed
against the arrested Maoist leader Kobad Ghandy. It was alleged they helped the Maoists to
broaden the base of their activities. Civil rights activists like Arundhati Roy and Prashant
Bhushan, according to Vasudevan, have blasted the move saying that it “was a ploy to
silence the voices against Operation Green Hunt.”

73 Ashida Vasudevan, Insight: On Naxalism in India, MSN News 24/03/2010
http://news.in.msn.com/internalsecurity/news/article.aspx?cp-documentid=3736080

74 Punter (2010) refers to the MHA Report on Naxalism 2008, Ministry of Home Affairs, April 13, 2006





The issue of violence

“We are caught between these people”



In all armed conflicts, civilians are the most vulnerable; this has been proved over and again.
The incompetence of the Indian government to fulfill its commitments enshrined in the
Indian constitution to provide for social and cultural security for the vast poor and
vulnerable sections of the Indian society – this in itself a form of state violence; the militant
response to this failure by Naxalite insurgents in the name of People´s War, and the state´s
launching of military and police forces to curb this insurgency are telling examples. The
Ministry of Home Affairs74 registered that 877 security service personnel and 926 Naxalite
cadres lost their lives as a result of violence between state and Maoist forces between 2004
and 2008. Yet, Punter (2010) points out, what should be a worrying fact for the authority
and legitimacy between these two factions is that during the same period an estimated
number of 2,461 civilians were killed.



The Naxal movement, C. W. Punter relates, began employing violence in the mid-1980s to
secure their political and territorial gains. Over the years the armed branch of the Naxalite


movement has increased its military capacity and in response to a government decision to
launch a coordinated action against them by police forces of the various Indian States
affected by the insurgency the violence has continued to grow. Hence, a long-lasting conflict
has escalated into a war-like condition.



A Human Rights Watch report from 2008 titled Being Neutral Is Our Biggest Crime75
summarizes: “Caught in a deadly tug-of-war between an armed Maoist movement on one
side and government security forces and a vigilant group called Salwa Judum on the other
civilians have suffered a host of human rights abuses, including killings, torture, and forced
displacement.” A resident of Errabore, a government run camp in Andhra Pradesh, quoted in
the report, gives voice to the villager´s frustration: “We often wonder what sins committed
to be born at this time. Our lives are impossible. Naxalites come and threaten us. They
demand food and ask us to help them with information about police movements. Then the
police come. They beat us and ask us for information. We are caught between these people.
There is no way out.”

75 Human Rights Watch, Being Neutral Is Our Biggest Crime; Government, Vigilante, and Naxalite Abuses in
India´s Chhattisgarh State, 2008

76 Human Rights Watch World Report 2012: India; World Report Chapter: India 2012 (PDF)

77 Tusha Mittal, Are we the enemy you fear? Tehelka Magazine, Vol 8, Issue 15, Dated 16 Apr 2011;

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main49.asp?filename=Ne160411Are.asp



In its World Report 201276, Human Rights Watch once again affirms that the situation for the
people living in the conflict affected states in eastern India has not improved. The report
states that custodial killings, police abuses including torture, and failure to implement
policies to protect vulnerable communities marred India’s record in 2011 as in the past.
Social unrest and protests deepened in resource-rich areas of central and eastern India,
where rapid economic growth has been accompanied by rapidly growing inequality. Mining
and infrastructure projects threaten widespread displacement of forest-dwelling tribal
communities. The government has yet to enact comprehensive laws to protect, compensate,
and resettle displaced people, although a new land acquisition law has been drafted.
Impunity for abuses committed by security forces also continued. The Report also states that
Maoist forces continue to engage in killings and extortion, and target government schools
and hospitals for attacks and bombings. At the time of writing the report the Naxalites had in
2011 killed nearly 250 civilians as well as over 100 members of the security forces.
Government officials assert that security forces killed more than 180 Naxalites between
January and November 2011, though local activists allege that some of these were civilians.



Tusha Mittal77 writes in the April 2011 issue of the Tehelka Magazine about the first
anniversary of a brutal attack by the banned CPI (Maoist) party on India’s paramilitary
forces: “On 6 April last year, 76 jawans (police officers) were massacred in the forests of


Chhattisgarh. The carnage became a major flashpoint, renewing calls for an escalation in
anti-Maoist operations. One year later, the same forests have witnessed another brutal
carnage. As TEHELKA’s investigations reveal, this butchery comes not from the enemy, but
from the ‘security’ forces. Those attacked are India’s most invisible citizens. In the course of
a five-day operation in the second week of March, police torched three villages deep inside
the jungles of Dantewada district. Three hundred huts were set on fire. Hundreds of tribals
left homeless. Three women sexually assaulted. Three civilians killed. Granaries incinerated.
Gold jewellery and thousands of rupees looted. One corpse left dangling from a tree.
Another sliced with an axe. Two villagers kidnapped. Livestock stolen.”



Punter (2010) further claims that the Naxalites´ goal to advance their project of protracted
people’s war by transforming the former guerrilla zones into liberated zones in itself has
caused an increase in violence and a retardation in the progress of tribal interests as
Maoist’s target schools, roads, and other government sponsored development projects.
This, he means, is because once an area under Maoist control becomes declared liberated,
the interests of the tribals become second order to the Maoist political program; Punter
quotes K. Balagopal78 (2006), who states that after seizing control “the need to establish and
secure their authority, protect their armed squads from the police and paramilitary, secure
the obedience of the people living in the area to the sanghams set up by them etc., become
matters of predominant concern.”

78 Punter 2010: 31; ref. to K. Balgopal, Physiognomy of Violence, Economic and Political Weekly. June 3, 2006.

79 Human Rights Watch (2008); Abuses by Salwa Judum p. 43-60, 156-159; Abuses by the State p. 60-96;
Abuses by Naxalites p. 111-129, p. 156-159.

80 Arundhati Roy 2010: 30; Walking with the Comrades, OUTLOOK INDIA, March 21, 2010



Can the use of violence as means for political change ever be justified?



There are over the years numerous reports about violence like those mentioned above79.
Insurgency involves armed conflicts inflicting pain, death, torture and loss of livelihood. Not
only military personnel are targeted but as reported above vast numbers of civilians. What
circumstances justifies the decision to resort to arms in order to bring about social change
and decent livelihood means for a community of people marginalized by the inefficient
policy of an incapable state? Can the use of violence as means for political change ever be
justified?



Arundhati Roy80 (2010) When Walking with the Comrades contemplates over this question.
She is told about the Naxalite’s decision to approach Lohandiguda, a five-hour drive from
Dantewara, which never used to be a Naxalite area. They made this decision after graffiti
had begun to appear on the walls of village houses, saying Naxali Ao, Hamein Bachao (Naxals


come and save us!). A few months ago, Roy is told, Vimal Meshram, President of the village
panchayat was shot dead in the market. “He was Tata’s Man. He was forcing people to give
up their land and accept compensation. It’s good that he’s been finished. We lost a comrade
too. They shot him.” And on the radio there’s news of another Naxal Attack: “This one in
Jamui, Bihar. It says 125 Maoists attacked a village and killed ten people belonging to the
Kora Tribe in retaliation for giving police information that led to the death of six Maoists. Of
course we know, the report may or may not be true. But if it is, this one’s unforgiveable.
Comrade Raju and Sukhdev look distinctly uncomfortable.”



Roy writes: “I feel I ought to say something at this point. About the futility of violence, about
the unacceptability of summary executions. But what should I suggest they do? Go to court?
Do a dharna in Jantar Mantar, New Delhi? A rally? A relay hunger strike? It sounds ridiculous.
The promoters of the New Economic Policy —who find it so easy to say “There Is No
Alternative” —should be asked to suggest an alternative Resistance Policy. A specific one, to
these specific people, in this specific forest. Here. Now. Which party should they vote for?
Which democratic institution in this country should they approach? Which door did the
Narmada Bachao Andolan not knock on during the years and years it fought against Big
Dams on the Narmada?”



What Arundhati Roy brings out is something strikingly relevant for marginalized and
suppressed communities all over the world who are forced to live under the hegemony of
dominant groups, be it in the name of class or caste or racist interests, or privatization under
the name of liberation, or development. Angela Davis, who during the late 1960s through
the 1970s was associated with the Communist party, the Black Panther Party, and the Civil
Rights Movement in the United States, was at the time interviewed81 about her opinion on
revolution and violence. She replies: “If you are going to talk about a revolutionary situation
you have to have people who are physically able to wage revolution; able to organize.” But
how do you get there, the reporter asks – “do you get there by confrontation; by the use of
violence?”

81 Interview with Angela Davis in the documentary movie The black power mixtape 1967-1975; director Göran
Hugo Olsson. Angela Davis was during the late 1960s through the 1970s and was associated with the
Communist party, the Black Panther Party, and the Civil Rights Movement in the United States.



Angela Davis delivers a long response: “When you talk about revolution most people think of
violence without realizing that the real content of revolutionary thrust lies in the principles
and the goals you are striving for, not in the way you reach them. On the other hand,
because of the way the society is organized, because of the violence that exist under the
surface everywhere, you have to expect there is going to be such explosions, expect these
reactions.




If you are a black person living in a black community all your life and walk out on the street
and everyday see white police surrounding you – when I was living in Los Angeles for
instance, long before the situation ever occurred – I was constantly stopped. The police
didn´t know who I was. I was a black woman and had a natural big hair. I suppose they
thought I was ´militant´. When you live under situations like that constantly – and then you
ask me whether I approve of violence; whether I approve of guns; that just makes any sense
at all! I grow up in Birmingham, Alabama. Some very, very good friends of mine were killed
by bombs; bombs that were planted by racists. I remember from the time I was very small – I
remember the sound of bombs exploded across the street; our house shaken. I remember
my father having to have guns at all times because of the fact that at any time, at any
moment, we might be expected to be attacked.



The man that at the time was in complete control of our city government, Bull Connor, often
went on the radio to make statements like ´niggers have moved into a white neighbourhood;
we had better expect some bloodshed tonight´. And surely there would be bloodshed. After
the bomb blast killing four school girls all the men in the neighbourhood organized
themselves in armed patrols. They had to take their guns and patrol our community every
night because they didn´t want that to happen again. So, when someone asks me about
violence I just find it incredible! It means that the person who is asking that question has
absolutely no idea what black people have gone through, what black people have
experienced in this country since the time the first black person was kidnapped from the
shores of Africa.”



In the same way as the black people in USA were (and in many ways still are) deprived of
their rights to become equal citizens on a par with the whites, so are Adivasis and Dalits
treated in India today in relation to dominant groups; seen in the intersection of class and
caste and gender.



Speaking with double tongues



The issue of development in India carries a double tongued strategy. The economic reform
policy initiated by the then Finance Minister, Manmohan Singh, in 1991 and often referred
to as a success story showing annual growth rates between 6 and 9 % has by opponents
claimed to have a darker side. They claim that the policy of an open market and foreign
investment for spurring economic growth will lead to an accelerating divide between rich
and poor. Ashok Swain82 (2010) refers to Smitu Kothari, who in 2007 describes the situation
in this way: “Only select sectors have experienced rapid growth and only a few have

82 Ashok Swain 2010: 111 f. Ref. to Smitu Kothari (2007), Has Indian Democracy Failed? Hard News, August
2007


benefited. Most governments have failed to provide more equitable access to the processes
and benefits of the market. So, you have a classic situation of widening expectations created
by populist images of resurgent India and a reality of disenchantment”. Basudev83 (2007)
describes this state of affairs very bluntly: “When people in power are excited with India’s
nine per cent economic growth and vast consumer base, do they truly think about millions of
Indians who starve to death or, the thousands that prefer to kill themselves to get rid of
their farming debts? Or the poor citizens that die every day because they cannot afford for
doctors and medicines? Or the children, those who are forced to be at work when they
should be in school? Or the educated youth who becomes a liability to the old parents
because of no employment guarantee in the country? Do the Politicians and Policy Makers
ever realize that major benefits of various programmes implemented for the poor are
snatched away by the government employees and contractors who work as intermediaries?
Do they ever realize that deep rooted corruption has made this country the worst place not
only for the poor but for every general citizen?”

83 Basudev 2007: 7; Naxal Movement in India: Peoples' Struggle transformed into a Power Struggle,
Nov 11 2007 http://orissanewsfeatures.sulekha.com/blog/post/2007/11/naxal-movement-in-india-peoples-
struggle-transformed.htm

84 Arundhati Roy 2010: 3 Mr Chidambaram’s War; A math question: How many soldiers will it take to contain
the mounting rage of hundreds of millions of people?; OUTLOOK INDIA



The interesting or perhaps intimidating fact is that successive governments, politicians and
policy makers are well aware of the situation. It is not that voices showing insight are not
spoken.



In 2008, an expert group appointed by the Planning Commission submitted a report called
‘Development Challenges in Extremist-Affected Areas’84. The report underlined: “the
Naxalite (Maoist) movement has to be recognised as a political movement with a strong
base among the landless and poor peasantry and adivasis. Its emergence and growth need
to be contextualized in the social conditions and experience of people who form a part of it.
The huge gap between state policy and performance is a feature of these conditions. Though
its professed long-term ideology is capturing state power by force, in its day-to-day
manifestation, it is to be looked upon as basically a fight for social justice, equality,
protection, security and local development.”



This kind of official account, Arundhati Roy comments, is a very far cry from the Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh´s statement in 2005 about the Maoists being the ´single-largest
internal security threat´ to India. She continues to say that since the Maoist rebellion is “the
flavour of the week”, everybody seems to be suddenly ready to concede that it is decades of
accumulated injustice that lies at the root of the problem. Yet, she asserts, instead of
addressing that problem, which would mean “putting the brakes on this 21st century gold


rush”, they are trying to head the debate off in a completely different direction, with a noisy
outburst of pious outrage about Maoist ´terrorism´.



The reaction and statement by the Home Minister, P Chidambaram85, in 2009 is significant in
this context. He claimed that “as a government we cannot sit back and say what the
underlying causes are. We have to combat violence so that the civil administration can
function”. Thus, C. W. Punter (2010) states, rather than seeking to undermine the politics
and developmental programs of the Naxalites, the counterinsurgency initiatives of the
government have solely focused on the insurgency as a problem of law and order. The
Naxalite insurgents are seen as the principal cause of the breakdown of law and order and as
such they are the primary target of state counterinsurgency with the primary goal to
eliminate those who threaten to destabilize the functioning of the state. The ensuing
strategy, Punter asserts, relies heavily on the use of force. Anyone who gets in the way of
this goal is considered to be an enemy of the state.

85 Cody William Punter 2010: 31; Punter ref. to Hindustan Times, October 16, 2009

86 Ibid. 32

87 Bidyut Chakrabarty and Rajat Kumar Kujur 2010: 171, Maoism in India; Reincarnation of ultra-left wing
extremism in the twenty-first century; Routledge, New York, 2010



Punter86 means that the consequence of the conflict between the state and the Naxalites,
each claiming to assert their authority has led to deterioration in the rights and general
welfare of the tribals leading to their alienation. Of those initiatives which have been the
most alienating have been those taking place in the state of Chhattisgarh.



The central and state governments have made use of different methods in their attempts to
defeat the Maoist insurgency, most noticeably the Salwa Judum (literally ´peace mission´ or
´purification hunt´) and the Operation Green Hunt.



Salwa Judum



In June 2005 some local protest meetings against Naxalites in Bijapur district in Chhattisgarh
sparked the creation of what is now known as Salwa Judum. B. Chakrabarty and R. Kumar
Kujur (2010) claim that the initial idea came from a little-known school teacher from Kutru in
the Bijapur police district of south Bastar, who wanted to initiate a public campaign against
atrocities committed by the Naxalites87. It turned into an organized form under the
leadership of Mahendra Karma, the opposition leader of the Chhattisgarh assembly.
Chakrabarty and Kujur identified four groups of people, who joined the campaign of their
own accord: those who suffered due to Maoists atrocities, wealthier adivasis, local
tradesmen and contractors, local politicians and panchayat members, and people with
regional independent economic interests and power.




According to Chakrabarty and Kujur the Salwa Judum has a threefold approach: first, the
Naxal-hit tribals are marched to state-run relief camps while women and children are left
behind; second, Salwa Judum activists, accompanied by police and security forces, march
into the naxalite stronghold areas to distribute pamphlets condemning the Naxals for having
endangered the existence of the local population and, which they say is more important,
search for Sangham (Naxal village-level association) members, who are asked to surrender or
hand themselves over to the police; third, the government appoints Special Police Officers
(SPO) among Salwa Judum activists, who are armed and entrusted to protect the camps and
allowed to carry out raids in the Naxalite villages to capture and kill Naxalites88. It is, Punter
(2010) asserts, in particular young civilian men and women who are recruited into Salwa
Judum and then grouped with police and paramilitary forces with the task to force villagers
into camps located near major roads with the intention to ‘sanitizing’ the villages and to
control the population. More than 50,000 people have been displaced as a result of the
government’s relocation program. They are not only refused the right to return to their
homes89; additionally, within the camps they have no suitable access to employment or land
causing lack of food, water and shelter, which in turn has made people resort to raiding
nearby villages90.

88 Ibid.

89 Punter 2010: 32; ref. to K. Balgopal, Physiognomy of Violence, Economic and Political Weekly. June 3, 2006;

Human Rights Watch 2008: 37

90 Punter 2010: 32; ref. to Sundar, Nadini. Bastar, Maoism and Salwa Judum, Economic and Political Weekly.
July 22, 2006; pp 3187--.3192; see also John Harriss, The Naxalite/Maoist Movement in India: A Review of
Recent Literature; Institute of South Asian Studies, Working Paper; No. 109; July 8, 2010: 21ff;

91 Bidyut Chakrabarty and Rajat Kumar Kujur 2010: 172; ref. to report 2nd December, 2005, quoted from
Ramchandra Guha, Adivasis, Naxalites, Democracy, in Rajesh M. Basrur, Challenge to Democracy in India, New
Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2009: 186

92 Punter 2020: 33; ref. to Himanshu Kumar, Who is the Problem, the CPI (Maoist) or the Indian State;

Economic and Political Weekly, November 21, 2009.



What started with the alleged purpose to “save the tribals from the evils of Maoism” has,
Chakrabarty and Kujur assert, rather exposed the adivasis to more violence and made them
refugees in their own land. They claim that independent investigations by civil society
organizations and human rights groups reveal that the Salwa Judum campaign is “a ´cover-
up´ government sponsored counter-insurgence programme which, instead of providing relief
to those living in violence-prone areas, has made the situation further complicated by
instigating the tribals to fight among themselves91.” This polarization of the community at
which tribals look upon their fellow countryman as an enemy has, Punter92 points out, been
seen as a success as it has allowed the Chief Minister to proclaim with impunity that “those
who live in the camps are with us, and those who run away are Naxalites”; e.g. you are
either with us or against us.




The Salwa Judum has since its inception increasingly come under criticism from a wide range
of politicians, human rights activists and in special reports for its human rights abuses.
Investigations of accusations against Salwa Judum have, however, failed. So, for instance an
inquiry into the situation in Dantewada ordered by the National Human Rights Commission
(NHRC) was directed to the police and thus neither objective nor neutral. Violations by the
Salwa Judum went effectively uncondemned and were rather held up as an effective
extension of law enforcement. When the Salwa Judum found out that villagers had been
speaking with the NHRC committee, they punished them by beating them93.

93 Cody William Punter (2010: 46) ref. to Himanshu Kumar; Who is the Problem, the CPI (Maoist) or the Indian
State; Economic and Political Weekly. November 21, 2009.

94 Arundhati Roy 2010: 13

95 Punter 2020: 33; ref. to Sankarshan Thakur, My Battle your Blood; Tehelka. May 31, 2006

96 Cody William Punter (2010: 46) ref. to K. Balgopal, The NHRC on Salwa Judum: A Most Friendly Inquiry;
Economic and Political Weekly, December 20, 2008; pp.10--.14.

97 Gautam Navlakha 2010, Days and Nights in the Heartland of Rebellion, April 1, 2010; published at Sanhati,
http://sanhati.com/articles/2250/

Interview with comrade Sonu, member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and
responsible for the Dandakaranya Special Zone Committee



In this context as Arundhati Roy94 (2010) relates, the BJP Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh,
Raman Singh, announced that as far as his government was concerned, villagers who did not
move into camps, would be considered Maoists. So in Bastar district for instance, for an
ordinary villager, just staying at home, living an ordinary life became the equivalent of
indulging in dangerous terrorist activity.



Hence, Punter claims, the government has failed to take into account two consequences of
the set up of Salwa Judum. The first is the legal, political and security implications of arming
civilians without giving them proper training or specific political goals in fighting insurgents
and using them to force fellow villagers into improvised camps. Second, there was little
consideration given to how the Maoists might respond to the Salwa Judum. As a tribal95
living in the camps puts it “First it was the dalams, now there is the dalam, the Salwa Judum
and the danger of being blamed by both for reporting to the other”.



The criticism of the Salwa Judum also emphasizes that it is “the product of an alliance
between international and national mining interests and the local elites, capitalizing on local
inter-tribe rivalries, mediated by national and state policymakers96”. Sonu, the Politburo
member of the CPI (Maoist), in the interview with Gautam Navlakha97, underlines this as one
of the main reasons for many adivasis to change their minds in favour of the party. People
realized, he says, that if the Salwa Judum campaign was successful their forest land could
then easily be handed over to corporations. This, Gautam Navlakha means is not an
exaggeration.




According to Sonu, Salwa Judum was the product of a state, which was eager to loot the
natural resources of this region. The campaign formally started in June 2005, but it was
preceded by months of preparation. Thus, Salwa Judum was a pre-meditated, coordinated
and planned assault to stem any consolidation of people’s power which held out the biggest
challenge to implementation of MOUs (Memorandum of Understanding) signed by the
Chattisgarh, Orissa and Jharkhand governments for mineral extraction and mineral based
industries. With the coming of BJP to power in 2004, by 2005 hundreds of MOUs had been
signed. The Texas Power Generation Company had for instance invested 5000 crores in
Chattisgarh. In Lohandiguda, Tata had acquired enormous lands and so did Jindal in Bansi.



Sonu tells: “Behind the Salwa Judum are the traders, contractors and miners waiting for a
successful result of their strategy. The first financiers of the Salwa Judum were Tata and the
Essar in the quest for ‘peace’. The first onslaught of the Salwa Judum was on Muria villagers
who still owed allegiance to the Communist Party of India (Maoist). It turned out to be an
open war between brothers. 640 villages as per official statistics were laid bare, burnt to the
ground and emptied with the force of the gun and the blessings of the state. 350,000 tribals,
half the total population of Dantewada district, are displaced, their womenfolk raped, their
daughters killed, and their youth maimed. Those who could not escape into the jungle were
herded together into refugee camps run and managed by the Salwa Judum. Others continue
to hide in the forest or have migrated to the nearby tribal tracts in Maharashtra, Andhra
Pradesh and Orissa. 640 villages (in Dantewada district) are empty. Villages sitting on tons of
iron ore are effectively de-peopled and available for the highest bidder. The latest
information that is being circulated is that both Essar Steel and Tata Steel are willing to take
over the empty landscape and manage the mines.98”

98 Gautam Navlakha 2010: 14 f, Days and Nights in the Heartland of Rebellion, April 1, 2010; published at
Sanhati, http://sanhati.com/articles/2250/

99 1910 the Maad Adivasis had risen in revolt against the British exploiters in the "Mahan Bhoomkal" rebellion.



Starting January 2006 a concrete planned campaign against Salwa Judum was taken up.
While the party began its campaign against Salwa Judum, the state propaganda of projecting
Salwa Judum as an independent and spontaneous movement of the people and as some
kind of a democratic revolution had been thoroughly exposed. It was clearly a battle for
Adivasis survival. The party called the people to join the militia for survival and as part of
that the Koya Bhoomkal Militia was formed in 2006 and inaugurated on 10th February 2006,
thus linking it to the Bhoomkal uprising of 191099. According to the party thousands of
people joined the militia to fight for their life and existence against Salwa Judum. Sonu says:
“The people, the PLGA, the party, the mass organisations and the campaigns in the national
and international levels came together in the shape of a big movement for which the party is
grateful to the democratic forces of the country.” In their assessment, Gautam Navlakha


says, Salwa Judum was halted by May-June 2006100. By 2009 October, a public statement
finally announced the annulling of Salwa Judum.

100 Ibid: 22

101 Ibid: 24

102 Cody William Punter (2010: 43; ref. to Radha Raju Vinod (2010), Countering the Naxal Threat – II:The Case
for Specialised Units. Institute bfor Peace and Conflict Studies: Article 3150. 14 June 2010.

The reason for not using the army is because it is trained to kill foreign enemies. The army has itself affirmed
that it is not willing to engage with the insurgents. If it were to do so it requires the implementation of the
Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which would provide for the suspension of certain fundamental rights. This
would ultimately be worse than the current situation where although rights are being ignored, they are at least
in theory upheld.



Operation Green Hunt



However, the Salwa Judum was, according to the party, (CPI (M), only the first phase of a
war against the Naxalites. When this campaign failed, “the state began mobilizing its
repressive resources and another wave of intensification of the assault on the people is now
being seen in the form of Operation Green Hunt”. While the Salwa Judum has been led by
the state governments the Operation Green Hunt emanates from the centre. The central
government launched this campaign in the autumn of 2009. According to Sonu 18-20 000
forces were deployed in the Salwa Judum phase. “Today there is more than two hundred
thousand security forces that have been massed against the Maoists. The SPOs of the Salwa
Judum are now known as Koya Commandos. And so Operation Green Hunt is nothing but an
extension of Salwa Judum. Besides, such campaigns are not unique to DK, in Jharkhand,
Bihar and Orissa too there is the Sendra /Shanti Senas101.”



The government, Punter (2010) informs, has refused to employ the army in this campaign.
Instead it has relied heavily on its paramilitary force, the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF)
in conjunction with the state police of the districts of Chhattisgarh, West Bengal, Orissa, and
Jharkhand. With an emphasis on eliminating insurgents, the CRPF has been accused of
indiscriminately attacking unarmed tribals on the basis of their being ‘Naxalite
sympathizers’102.



Times of India reports on 2nd November, 2009 that the first phase of the much talked about
concerted operation against the Maoist rebels' jungle bases — Operation Green Hunt —has
begun in the Naxal-infested Gadchiroli district. “As many as 18 companies (1,800 CPMF
commandos) of central paramilitary forces (CPMF) have been deployed in key Naxal infested
areas identified for the offensive, close to the tri-junction of Maharashtra-Andhra Pradesh-
Chhattisgarh. The article quotes police sources saying: "The Operation Green Hunt will be
quite opposite to the one carried out in Lalgarh, West Bengal. The forces will penetrate
Naxal dominated areas, clear and sanitize the locations and hold the territory so that other


government agencies could move in to initiate developmental work.The operations are
expected to last around two years, an ample time frame for winning the hearts and minds of
local people through developmental activities." The companies of Commando Battalion for
Resolute Action (CoBRA), specially trained in jungle warfare, are also likely to move into the
district in the later stages of the operation. The deployment of helicopters for transportation
and rescue operations of troops is also in the offing, sources claimed103.”

pixel
pixel
103 Mazhar Ali, TNN Nov 2, 2009, 03.20 am IST First phase of Operation Green Hunt begins

http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/keyword/operation-green-hunt

104 Human Rights Watch, India: Overhaul Abusive, Failing Police System; Disrepair of Police Forces and Lack of
Accountability Contribute to Rights Violations, August 4, 2009 http://www.hrw.org/news/2009/07/29/india-
overhaul-abusive-failing-police-system



In its report from August 2009 Human Rights Watch accuses the state police forces in India
to “operate outside the law, lack sufficient ethical and professional standards, are
overstretched and outmatched by criminal elements and unable to cope with increasing
public demands and expectations”104. If it is to win over local populations from the
insurgents, the Indian government will have to make a concerted effort to purge criminal
elements from its police force through drastic reforms and the application of the law to
those forces which are guilty of committing abuses such as torture, murder and rape.



The abusive acts conducted by the police forces have been made public in many other ways.
Times of India, which has produced a series of articles on the Operation Green Hunt, reports
that a 17-member team of the Coordination of Democratic Rights Organizations (CDRO), a
federation of 20-odd civil liberty and democratic rights organizations from across the
country in March 2012 demanded the immediate withdrawal of CRPF forces engaged in
Operation Green Hunt in the state. The team also asked for cessation of the entire
operation. The team, which included members from Andhra Pradesh, Manipur, Maharashtra
and New Delhi, visited the districts of Latehar, Garhwa and Palamau between March 25 and
29 to investigate the recent cases of democratic rights' violations.



A member of the CDRO team said: "The number of security forces, police pickets and CRPF
base camps - especially in places where people are struggling for their rights - is growing. It
indicates suppression of the mass struggle against anti-people development policies." The
CDRO members, at a press conference presented nine cases of violation to validate their
demand. "The investigated cases highlight the lopsided development policy which is in place
here," the team added. The state has been in spotlight for the mass struggle against the
grabbing of land, water and forests as well as Operation Green Hunt and the team followed
up on some past cases. They will collate the incidents and prepare a final report. The
investigators claimed that they had managed an unscheduled meeting with a CPI (Maoist)
squad during their investigation. "We will share their conditions in our final report," said a
member. Demands have also been made to deter the amendment of the Chhotanagpur


Tenancy Act and the implementation of the Forests Rights Act, which provides individual and
collective rights to the forest dwellers. The team further demanded that all instances of CRPF
and police brutality should be investigated and the guilty punished. The investigators have
also asked the concerned agencies to look afresh into the people's opposition to various
projects105.

105 Times of India, Mar 30, 2012, 11.01PM IST; http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/keyword/operation-
green-hunt

106 Punter 2020: 34; ref. to Saikat Datta, Death of an Illusion; Outlook India, April 19, 2010.

107 “On 6 April, Naxalite rebels killed 76, consisting of 74 paramilitary personnel of the CPRF and two
policemen. Fifty others were wounded in the series of attacks on security convoys in Dantewada
district in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh (BBC World. 6 April 2010.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8604256.stm. The attack resulted in the biggest loss of life security
forces have suffered since launching a large-scale offensive against the rebels.”

108 National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganized Sector (NCEUS), April, 2009; the “poor and
vulnerable” increased from 811 million in 1999-00 to 836 million in 2004-05 (77 % of the population).
http://nceus.gov.in/The_Challenge_of_Employment_in_India.pdf



As with the Salwa Judum so has the Operation Green Hunt led to a polarization of tribals into
enemies and friends of the state and an over-dependant and indiscriminate dependence on
violence often against defenseless villagers. This, Punter asserts, has not only had a
demoralizing effect on the tribals; it has equally led to the demoralizing of the troops, who
are carrying out the operations106. A reason for this, he says, is partly because the
government forces have suffered a series of devastating losses as a result of Maoist attacks
carried out as counter-offensives against Operation Green Hunt; the single largest defeat
being the killing of 75 members of the CRPF and one local police superintendant in a Maoist
ambush in Dantewada107.



Conclusions



Since the beginning of independence a large section of the Indian population, ´the poor and
vulnerable108´, has lived under the contradictions between the prospects of welfare as
ensured in the Indian constitution and the world of reality offering not much more than lost
opportunities. It is in this climate of irredeemable deficient confidence in the state the
insurgency is to be understood.





A vista of a welfare state



The Preamble of the Constitution of India laid the foundation of the socialistic pattern of
society in which the state remained the most critical player. Accordingly, the state has a
positive duty to ensure to its citizens social and economic justice and individual dignity,


consistent with unity and integrity of the nation. The goal of India´s polity as laid down in the
Directive Principles of State Policy (Part IV of the Constitution) is to secure a social order for
the promotion of welfare of the people109. B. Chakrabarty and R. Kumar Kujur (2010) point
out that by “making the Principles fundamental in the governance and making the laws of
the country and duty of the state to apply these principles, the founding fathers made it the
responsibility of future governments to find a middle way between individual liberty and the
public good, between preserving the property and privilege of the few and bestowing
benefits on the many in order to liberate the powers of men equally for contribution to the
common good.” This led to a ´paradoxical socialism´ in India that approximated what the
Fabian socialists advocated as socialism; “an intellectual tool [that] facilitated, when
required, a distancing of oneself from the revolutionary left while still maintaining a claim to
socialism; and, possibly more importantly, justifying a socialism brought about by an elite
who were great believers in science110”. It thus involved opposing the revolutionary theory
of Marxism but holding that social reforms and socialistic permeation of existing political
institutions would bring about the natural development of socialism.

109 CONSTITUTION OF INDIA, (Updated up to (Ninety-Seventh Amendment) Act, 2011). This information is
downloaded from the website of Ministry of Law and Justice (Legislative Department).

http://indiacode.nic.in/coiweb/welcome.html

Part IV. DIRECTIVE PRINCIPLES OF STATE POLICY

38. State to secure a social order for the promotion of welfare of the people.—(1) The State shall strive
to promote the welfare of the people by securing and protecting as effectively as it may a social order in which
justice, social, economic and political, shall inform all the institutions of the national life.

(2) The State shall, in particular, strive to minimise the inequalities in income, and endeavour to eliminate
inequalities in status, facilities and opportunities, not only amongst individuals but also amongst groups of
people residing in different areas or engaged in different vocations.

39. Certain principles of policy to be followed by the State.—The State shall, in particular, direct its
policy towards securing—

(a) that the citizens, men and women equally, have the right to an adequate means of livelihood;

(b) that the ownership and control of the material resources of the community are so distributed as
best to subserve the common good;

(c) that the operation of the economic system does not result in the concentration of wealth and
means of production to the common detriment;

(d) that there is equal pay for equal work for both men and women;

(e) that the health and strength of workers, men and women, and the tender age of children are
not abused and that citizens are not forced by economic necessity to enter avocations unsuited to their
age or strength;

(f) that children are given opportunities and facilities to develop in a healthy manner and in conditions of
freedom and dignity and that childhood and youth are protected against exploitation and against moral and
material abandonment.

46. Promotion of educational and economic interests of Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and other
weaker sections.—The State shall promote with special care the educational and economic interests of the
weaker sections of the people, and, in particular, of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes, and shall
protect them from social injustice and all forms of exploitation.

110 Bidyut Chakrabarty and Rajat Kumar Kujur 2010:19, Maoism in India; Reincarnation of ultra-left wing
extremism in the twenty-first century; Routledge, New York, 2010; also ref. to Benjamin Zachariah, Developing
India: An Intellectual and Social History New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2005: 235




After independence in 1947, Waquer Ahmed111 (2011) relates, India´s development strategy
was, at least in theory designed to ensure that the economy would grow rapidly in a planned
and self-reliant direction. The private sector would invest only in high-priority industries
approved by the government. The government focused on producing balanced economic
growth and primarily invested in rural development, public utility and industry. A major
focus on agricultural reforms, and associated utility services helped India ride over chronic
hunger, starvation, famine that had become common during British rule. The government
held back corporate monopoly and concentration and imposed steep taxes for individuals
and corporations to provide resources for the plan, to check conspicuous consumption of
the rich, and create a society based on social justice. The overall ideology to produce
socialism, as articulated in the Preamble of the Indian Constitution, in a semi-feudal society,
W. Ahmed means, empowered the Indian bureaucracy and politicians to exercise control
over all business and economic decisions, including investment, production, technology,
location, prices, imports and exports, financing, and foreign capital. However, gradually the
relationship between business and government exchanged. He points out that in order to
attain ´favor´, business elites expressed allegiance to the state controllers of the economy by
contributing to party funds and over the years, the two biggest private business houses
(BIRLA, based in Calcutta and TATA, based in Bombay) became the biggest contributors to
party funds. Both houses contributed to the Congress Party and Tata also to opposition
parties. The business houses set in place elaborate networks of formal and informal
mechanisms giving access to government, which evolved into a system securing monopoly
protection and guaranteed profitability for the big houses. They grow, W. Ahmed says, at a
phenomenal rate, especially in the 1970s – the assets of the Tata and Birla industrial houses
increased by 44% and 34% respectively between 1977 and 1980.

111 Waquer Ahmed 2011: 37 f, From Mixed Economy to Neoliberalism; Class and Caste in India´s Policy
Transition in India´s New Economic Policy – a Critical Analysis (2011); edited by Waquer Ahmed, Amitabh
Kundu, and Richard Peet; Routledge, Madison Avenue, New York

112 Raju J. Das, 2011: 287 ff; Radial Peasant Movements and Rural Distress in India; in W- Ahmed, A. Kundu, and
R. Peet, ed. India´s New Economic Policy; A Critical Analysis ,Routledge (2011), New York







Lost opportunities



The state has sought to undertake structural and economic measures in addressing
problems related to poverty. Raju J. Das112 (2011) points at four such prospects; land reforms
(1950s); the green revolution (1960s); cheap credit to poor people (1970s); and job creation
under neoliberalism (2006). These measures, Das (2007) says, were prompted mainly by the
need to deal with, and/or take the sting out of, rural class struggles, including the Naxalite


movement. In spite of some achievements like increasing life expectancy and higher literacy
levels, the conditions for broader masses, Das claims, have not improved much in absolute
or relative terms.



The Land reforms aimed at imposing ceilings in land ownership, and distributing to poorer
people the ceiling-surplus land. This was expected to increase land productivity by
protecting small-scale peasant farming and security for the tenants. However, the ceilings
were kept at very high levels to protect the landlord´s interests; in Andhra Pradesh for
instance the ceiling for a family was 877 acres as compared to that of rural families, who
owned less than 5 acres or were landless. Ceilings were lowered in the 1970s in part as a
response to the Naxalite movement. Yet, the state did little attempt at finding the ceiling
surplus lands and distributing the vested land. The outburst of Naxalite activity In Darjeeling,
in 1967 was due to the failure of the state to redistribute 65,000 acres of surplus land owned
by tea estates and about 19,000 acres of private land owned by landlords. In Bihar the
situation was the same. The total failure of the land reforms legislation, Das (1999) asserts,
can be attributed to the mutual interests of large landowners, the bourgeoisie and the state
and those who were directly or indirectly responsible for the implementation of the
legislation, including judges, who all came from the landed class or represented their
interests. Hence Das points out, the state itself, especially at the sub-national scales, was
used as an ´instrument´ by the landowners to thwart land reforms.



Just as colonization was based on the violent takeover of land, now Vandana Shiva113 argues,
a re-colonization is taking place in the name of globalization leading to a massive land grab in
all parts of the world; in India, in Africa, in Latin America. Land is being grabbed, she says, for
speculative investment, for speculative urban sprawl, for mines and factories, for highways
and expressways – “land is being grabbed from farmers and trapping them in debt and
punishing them to suicide.” The Indian government´s instrument to forcibly acquire land
from the peasants and tribals and hand it over to private real estate corporations and mining
companies is the Land Acquisition Act of 1894. The government is today, Shiva argues,
behaving in the same manner as did the foreign rulers, when the Act was first enacted.
While the land is taken from the farmers at Rs 300 ($6) per square metre by the
government, it is sold by developers at Rs 600,000 ($13,450) per square meter. This land
grab and the profits it generate contribute to poverty, dispossession and conflict. Thus, she
points out, these conflicts inflict “serious consequences for our nation´s democracy, our
pace and our ecology, our food security and rural livelihoods, this land wars must stop if
India is to survive ecologically and democratically.”

113 Vandana Shiva, The great land grab: India´s war on farmers, article 7th June, 2011; source Al Jazeera



The second rural development policy following the failure of the land reform discussed by
Raju J. Das, the green revolution was launched in the late 1960s. This policy aimed at


increased food production through technological change. In reality the capitalist cultivation
was given a boast. In many areas landlords attracted to greater profitability evicted their
tenants and started cultivation by using hired workers some of whom were erstwhile
tenants. Moreover, Das states, the subsequent increase in the use of machinery threatened
to displace a large number of agricultural workers and slowed down or stopped the
tendency to any gain in wages. Thus, he concludes, while landowners gained, workers did
not benefit as much. Additionally, technology itself was expensive and was generally
monopolized by upper-caste owners. This led to smaller owners began leasing out their land
to larger owners as they could not profitably invest in the technology leading, Das says, to
the phenomenon of reverse tenancy. As a result tribals and poor peasants lost control over
land. Finally114, the benefits of the green revolution technology were geographically
concentrated as a result of deliberate strategy by the state to concentrate resources in
specially endowed areas; those areas with irrigation facilities. This meant that vast areas
continued to be deprived of public investment, resulting in a low level of development of
productive forces and hence poverty.

114 Das referring to V. Shiva, The violence of the green revolution, Zed, London, 1991

115 Das 2011: 290



The green revolution, Das concludes115, meant to represent an ease to India´s rural distress,
came to be associated with multiple forms of layers of inequality: between employers and
labourers, between larger and smaller owners, between landlords and tenants, and between
peasants in green revolution areas and those in non-green revolution areas. It is in these
different forms of inequality, he asserts, that “led to resentment, which created an
ideological climate in the nation for radical action. In this climate, in some areas including a
few areas in Punjab, a bastion of the green revolution, Naxalism was launched.”


The next attempt initiated by the state with the intention to reduce poverty took place
between the late 1970s to early 1980s. It went under the name of the Integral Rural
Development Policy (IRDP) and aimed at giving small loans to poor people to start income-
generating activities, such as setting up small shops, starting dairy businesses, etc. This
policy, Das asserts, was more or less also a failure and the reason to this, he states, is the
overall profit-logic of the capitalist system. The use of a nation´s resources, he means, must
be justified mainly on the basis of this logic and this “put limits on the amount of money the
capitalist state could commit in the form of pro-poor policies, such as the IRDP, relative to
the massive need of the tens of millions of the poor whom the system marginalized; e.g.
peasants increasingly loosing access to land; people without security employment for a living
wage.” It is also widely known, he states, that that officials and politicians work in an utterly
undemocratic manner and have unscrupulous links to traders, who in many areas were
closely connected with the landed class. Therefore, much of the IRDP money ended up in the


pockets of local officials, or with the traders supplying the assets needed for the income-
generating activities.



The fourth measure to reduce poverty that Das discusses was a new policy of employment
creation that started in 2006, 15 years after the neoliberal policy was introduced. It came
about partly due to the pressure from the parliamentary left. It is known as National Rural
Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS). Its aim is to provide at least 100 days of
guaranteed waged employment a year to every household whose adult members volunteer
to do unskilled work at the legislated minimum wage. Early reports suggest that, like the
IRDP, a large part of the money meant for this policy has gone to the politicians, officials and
property owners, like contractors, except in those areas where the poor people are able to
exercise constant vigilance over the implementation of the scheme116. As also Punter (2010)
underlines, the implementation of acts such as the NERGA and other programs like the Backwards
Districts Initiative has been poor as a result of the ‘corrupt bureaucracy’ of the state. Indeed, Punter
says, none of these programs have shown any serious dedication to providing sustainable
development to tribal populations. The reasons for this can be summed up by the fact that it remains
in the immediate economic interest of the state to push through development projects, which are
centered on profit creation rather than jobs creation and conservation of specially designated tribal
areas117.

116 Raju J. Das, 2011 ref. to R. Khera (2008); Empowerment Guarantee Act; Economic and Political Weekly, 43
(35): 8-10, and P. Rai (2007); NREGA battling cancerous corruption; India Together; www.indiatogether.org

117 Punter 2020: 44; ref. to Kaustav Banerjee and Saha Partha; NREGA, the Maoists and the Developmental
Woes of the Indian State; Economic and Political Weekly, July 10, 2010: 42--.47.

In many cases the NERGA has failed to even guarantee minimum wages due to poor implementation, while
lower level corruption in government banks has meant that often workers do not get paid at all.

118 Waquer Ahmed, Amitabh Kundu, and Richard Peet, to India´s New Economic Policy – a Critical Analysis
(2011); Routledge, Madison Avenue, New York

119 Waquer Ahmed, Amitabh Kundu, and Richard Peet pose this question in the introduction to India´s New
Economic Policy – a Critical Analysis (2011); Routledge, Madison Avenue, New York





The neo-liberal phase



The neo-liberal policy launched in India in 1991 under the name of a New Economic Policy
brings to debate the relation between the issues of economic growth and development. The
structural adjustment measures applied with the purpose to encourage private
entrepreneurship in the 1980s and the adoption of neoliberalism in the early 1990 have
certainly resulted in substantial increase in the rate of economic growth. However,
accumulative growth figures cannot be understood to be corresponding to the development
performance of any economy, in particular not of such a large and socioeconomically diverse
country like India118. So, the question is who benefits from the new growth regime; “what
have been the socioeconomic effects of India´s turn to encouragement of private
entrepreneurship in the 1980s and the adoption of neoliberalism in the early 1990s119?” W.


Ahmed, et.al. (2011) confirm that the secondary sector of the economy (manufacturing of
finished goods, processing, and construction) and in particular the tertiary sectors (the
service industry) have assumed positions of dominance within the Indian economy since
1991.



The rapid growth of the manufacturing and service sectors, W. Ahmed120 asserts, led to the
entry of many more private entrepreneurs into the Indian market and a larger group of
private investors came to exercise influence on the government of India. Furthermore,
beginning in the 1980s a more private-capital-friendly government (under Rajiv Gandhi)
withdrew important constraints on the expansion of big business and encouraged them to
enter areas hitherto reserved for the public sector. The pro-business package included tax
concession to private investors, which for the first time led to pressure on the national
budget.

120 Waquer Ahmed 2011: 38

121 Raju J. Das, 2011: 291

122 Bidyut Chakrabarty and Rajat Kumar Kujur 2010:26, Maoism in India; Reincarnation of ultra-left wing
extremism in the twenty-first century; Routledge, New York, 2010; ref. to (Rod Jenkins, Democratic Policies
and Economic reforms in India; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999: 172-207. Since economic reforms
were not ´strategy based´ but ´crisis driven´ India hardly had a choice and was thus more or less forced to
accept ´the Conditionalities´ imposed by the donor agencies.



The economic growth has however, W. Ahmed et.al. argue, been highly uneven among
regions, between urban and rural areas, and across different size classes of urban
settlements. And, they state …“far more serious, neoliberal growth has come at the expense
of high levels of smallholder indebtedness, mounting unemployment, and a declining natural
resource base. These have contributed to large-scale agrarian distress, reflected in high and
persistent levels of malnutrition, illiteracy, and preventable illness.” Also Das121 (2011)
concludes in the same way that not only have the programs introduced by the government
in the neoliberal phase failed, also earlier programs have been diluted in several states, which
certainly is the case with the land reforms laws. The effect of neoliberalism, he asserts, on rural
income, employment, and access to land has had disastrous outcomes; declining food availability for
the poor, land alienation especially in tribal areas, and farmer´s suicide. Hence, the introduction of
market-driven economic reforms in 1991 has hardly brought benefits to the marginalized.
Instead, the creation of Special Economic Zones (SEZ) out of prime agricultural land in
various part of India for industrial purposes has rendered land-dependent population jobless
and homeless. As a Maoist document says underlining the adverse human consequences of
SEZ122:



“… today the reactionary ruling classes of the country care bent open transforming vast
tracts of fertile agricultural land into neo-colonial enclaves if it means enacting blood-baths
all over the country. Thousands of crores (ten million) of rupees have already flown from big


business and imperialists Multi National Corporations into the coffers of the ruling class in
India. It is clear that the battle-lines are drawn for an uncompromising war between the
haves and have-nots, between those who want to turn our mother land into a heaven for
the international capital, the Indian big business and the handful filthy rich on the one hand
and the vast majority of the destitute, poverty-stricken masses, particularly the peasantry,
on the other. There is no middle ground: either one is with the vast masses or with filthy
rich. Two hundred and thirty seven SEZs have already been approved and lakhs of acres of
fertile agricultural land are being forcibly acquired by the various state and central
governments. In Orissa, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Haryana
and several other states, lakhs of the people are rendered homeless due to anti-people
projects. The CPI (Maoists) calls upon the oppressed masses, particularly the peasantry, to
transform every SEZ into a battle zone, to kick out the real outsiders – the rapacious MNCs,
comprador big business houses, their (boot lickers) and the land mafia – who are snatching
away their lands and all means of livelihood and colonizing the country.”



The areas mentioned above, Punter (2010) says, have a variety of steel, iron and mining
planned projects totaling US$ 85 billion of promised investment123. The problem of these
projects is not so much their goal of economic development, but rather the fact ‘they do not
involve the people but simply treat them as objects of the development process’ and ‘often
end up as conduits of largesse for elite groups – middlemen, contractors, officials, politicians
and favoured special interest groups – [with] very little reaches the intended
beneficiaries124.’

123 Punter 2010: 45, ref. to Rajat Kumar Kujur Rajat Kumar Kujur, Underdevelopment and Naxal Movement;
Economic and Political Weekly, February 18, 2006: 557--.559.

124 Punter 2010: 45;ref. to Pranab Bardhan 1998: 189;

125 Arundhati Roy, A math question: How many soldiers will it take to contain the mounting rage of hundreds of
millions of people? OUTLOOK INDIA, November 2009

126 Article signed by Tugge from December 2007 issue of the Indian monthly People´s March; Posted by Mike
Ely (Mike E) on January 23, 2008

http://kasamaproject.org/2008/01/23/awtw-dandakaranya-india-%E2%80%93-two-paths-of-development/





Arundhati Roy125 claims that the government has identified 1, 40,000 hectares of prime land
to give to industrialists for more than 300 Special Economic Zones. This was done at the
same time as it declared its inability to resettle even a fraction of the fifty million people who
had been displaced by ´development´ projects.



The use or rather misuse of fertile agricultural land is also displayed in an article signed by
Tugge from December 2007126. Industrialization and tourism, he states, are being jointly
promoted in “the current imperialist globalization.” Both demand good roads and railway
lines. The multi-national corporations require good roads and railway lines for transporting


raw material from the forest and for supplying manufactured goods to the forest dwellers
and so does the tourism sector. So, Tugge says, a new road, The National Highway No. 16,
which virtually bisects the Dandakaranya area is being built under the protection of the
security forces, at a cost of crores [tens of millions] of rupees. The ring roads being built all
over the interior areas are all “meant to precisely and solely serve the above sectors.” The
roads are also necessary for the quick deployment of police and paramilitary forces against
the revolutionaries. The construction of railway lines serves the same interests. He points at
the Kirundul-Kothavalasa railway line that was built solely for the purpose of transporting
Bailadilla iron ore to Visakhapatnam port, for onward export to Japan. The railways operate
32 goods trains daily on this route. For the construction of this line thousands of crores of
people’s money was spent and thousands of poor adivasi peasants´ lands were forcibly
acquired, without any compensation. So, he says, this is the ´development´ the rulers boast
about. Another example is the construction by the big comprador house (the ESSAR) of an
under-ground pipeline connecting Bailadilla with Visakhapatnam port for transporting iron
ore. The adivasis put up strong opposition to this construction as the pipeline not only affect
thousands of acres of their fields but also destroy a huge tract of the forest. Yet, the ruling
classes got this work completed under the protection of the security forces “so that, their
Japanese imperialist masters can get the ore at still cheaper transport costs.”



This kind of industrialization has, ´Tugge´ asserts, destroyed the Adivasis´ homes and fields,
thus hitting hard their livelihoods and endangered their very existence, and, he says, their
culture and traditions has got trampled upon. He refers to a survey of the socio-economic
conditions of more than 300 families in 10 villages conducted by the author of the article
referred to here in 2004. The survey revealed that the people were gradually getting
separated from their former way of living, that of cultivating their lands and collecting minor
forest produce thus being deprives of the work that used to guarantee the livelihood of the
people.



Palagummi Sainath, the rural journalist at Times of India discusses in the same manner the
failures of the India´s development policies in his lecture The Age of Inequality at York
University, Toronto on March 10, 2010 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTGwSEQO1Vo).





An alternative way to end insurgency



The Indian government has acknowledged that Naxalism constitutes a threat to the
sovereignty of the state. Holding this view on the Naxalite insurgency the state´s
counterinsurgency operations have depended on traditional military strategies; this being
the one and only alternative. No consideration has been taken of the effects these
operations have on populations affected by insurgency. Additionally, the state has


constantly failed to provide physical and legal protection to those who are affected by the
insurgency127.

127 Cody William Punter 2010: 36; The Naxalite Movement in India from Independence-Present: Theoretical and
Pragmatic; Challenges of Counterinsurgency within the Framework of a Constitutional Democracy; 2010

128 Arundhati Roy 2010:3, Walking with the Comrades, OUTLOOK INDIA, March 21, 2010

129 Cody William Punter 2010: 27; ref to Mackinlay, John 2010:18, The Insurgent Archipelago. C Hurst & Co,
2010

130 Punter 2010: 43 ff

131 Punter 2010 ref. to Sumanta Banerjee, On the Naxalite Movement: A Report with a Difference’; Economic
and Political Weekly, May 24, 2008.



Therefore, as Arundhati Roy128 argues:”When the Government begins to talk of tribal
welfare, it’s time to worry.” Each time, she continues, when the government needed to
displace a large population to give space for development projects, be it dams, irrigation
projects or mines, it talked of “bringing tribals into the mainstream” or of giving them “the
fruits of modern development”. The refugees of India’s ‘progress’, she says, are the tens of
millions of internally displaced people, of which more than 30 million by big dams alone. The
great majority of these are tribal people. They have reason to feel deceived of the promises
in the Indian constitution – “In exchange for the right to vote it snatched away their right to
livelihood and dignity.”



So, while the state has failed to provide substantive justice and development in order to deal
with the underlying causes of tribal disaffection it has effectively allowed for a rival political
and socio-economic form of governance to establish its authority in certain regions of the
country. The Naxalite movement has been able to distinguish itself by “becoming directly
involved in a struggle to capture the minds and beliefs of the population129.” If the
government is to win over local population from the insurgents it will at least, Punter
asserts, have to make a concerted effort to purge criminal elements from its police force
through drastic reforms and the application of the law to those forces which are guilty of
committing abuses such as torture, murder and rape130. Additionally, he says, the central
government also faces the challenge of implementing development initiatives that are
beneficial to the people, who have been won over by the rudimentary improvements made
by the Naxalites.



The panel of activists, journalists, professors, ex-police officers, and former politicians that
the government´s Planning Commission put together in 2010 concluded that if the
government is to effectively deal with the insurgency it will have to reverse the current
development paradigm pursued since independence which has ‘aggravated the prevailing
discontent among marginalized society’131. A change in this direction would require a strong
political will and commitment from the leaders, planners and bureaucrats, something as


Basudev132 (2007) argues is not happening in India. Instead, he asserts, India has during the
last sixty years “experienced a leadership that is completely unaccountable to its deeds.
Most of the development plans and measures are politically motivated and committed to
party lines and high commands than to the people and the nation. A democracy that is said
to be ‘of the people, for the people, by the people’ has, ironically, become ‘of the corrupt,
for the affluent, by the politicians’.”

132 Basudev 2007: 8-9; Naxal Movement in India: Peoples´ Struggle transformed into a Power Struggle. Nov. 11,
2007 http://orissanewsfeatures.sulekha.com/blog/post/2007/11/naxal-movement-in-india-peoples-struggle-
transformed.htm

133 Cody William Punter 2010: 48; ref. to Anant Maringanti Talks between the Maoists and the State: Learning
from the Andhra Experience; Economic and Political Weekly. August 21, 2010.

134 The Hindu: Interview with Azad

135 Shoma Chaudhury, Are We Living in a State that Mouths Peace but Shoots Its Messengers’. Tehelka. Vol 7,
issue 34, August 28, 2010.



The most effective way to achieve a political end to the insurgency, Punter states, is to hold
talks with insurgents. He refers to an article published by Anant Maringanti133, who writes
that in order for there to be talks, the government must acknowledge that ‘the Maoist
movement is a political movement and there can only be a political resolution.’ To
accomplish this, the government will have to acknowledge that the current insurgency is not
the same as the one that it crushed in the late 1960s. Two major differences are that, first,
the current insurgency has been able to mobilize and control a large portion of the
population, and second, in the past five years it has increasingly employed the rhetoric of
democracy and demonstrated a willingness to arrive at a political solution to the
insurgency134. This, Punter means, is because the majority of the leaders, who are generally
well-educated, realize that despite the progress which they have made in the last thirty
years, the movement has reached a plateau and thus the goal of overthrowing the
government through armed insurrection is neither possible, nor in the interests of the
masses of people they claim to represent. He refers to one senior Maoist commander, who
acknowledged: ‘Communist rule is a very distant ambition. Just now we are fighting for
democracy. We are fighting for the Constitution135.’ Indeed one of the benefits of
confronting the Maoist insurgents on a political plane is that there are elements of their
political ideology which not only coincide with those of the government, but which are in
fact enshrined in its constitution. However so far, Punter concludes, any talk of being able to
negotiate between the government and the insurgents has been constrained due to the
Home Ministers insistence on the precondition that Maoists “abjure violence and say they
are prepared for talks … no ifs buts and no conditions.”



During the first months of 2010 the Indian press suggested that talks between the
government and Azad Cherukuri Rajkumar, spokesperson for the CPI (M) and fourth in rank
in the party, were being prepared, with a view to entering into political negotiations. Azad


was close to Maoist general secretary Ganapathi and regarded by many as the second-in-
command.



On July 3, 2010 the Indian Express136 reported that Azad was shot dead by Andhra Pradesh
police in an encounter near Sarkapalli village in Adilabad district. Officials said a task force of
Adilabad police, Special Intelligence Branch (SIB), raided a hideout 15 km from Maharashtra
border where a Maoist meeting was on. Police said Azad died in an exchange of fire. An
official of the police reported: “We raided on a tip-off. About 25 Maoists were present there.
The firefight started late in the night and ended at 3 am. Two persons were shot dead by
police while the rest escaped. One of the dead has been identified as Cherukuri Rajkumar
alias Azad, the CPI (Maoist) spokesperson. We did not know that he too was at the meeting.
The other person has not been identified so far but is suspected to be Sahadav or
Chandrana.” Police also recovered an AK-47, a 9 mm pistol and rucksacks with food. Azad’s
killing comes two days after Maoists shot dead 27 security-men in Chhattisgarh.

136 http://www.indianexpress.com/news/top-naxal-azad-shot-dead-by-andhra-police/641755/

137 Cody William Punter 2010: 53

138 Punter ref. to Shoma Chaudhury, Are We Living in a State that Mouths Peace but Shoots Its Messengers’.
Tehelka. Vol 7, issue 34, August 28, 2010



The Indian Express article reveals that writer and Maoist sympathizer Vara Vara Rao filed a
petition in the AP High Court, seeking registration of a case of murder against those involved
in the alleged encounter, and permission to bring Azad’s body to Hyderabad. The court
dismissed his petition. The government thus refused to hold an official inquiry into the
death.



The death of Azad was a setback for the possibility of a political resolution to the violence as
the build-up to the talks had been met with anticipation that at the very least a ceasefire
might be agreed upon leading to a temporary cessation of violence on both sides137. This
anticipation was further undermined by the circumstances surrounding his death, which
seemed to indicate that his death was an assassination staged as an encounter between
state and Maoists. In the last week of August 2010, Kisenji, one of the higher ranking
members of the CPI (M), reaffirmed his party’s dedication to a peaceful settlement
contingent on a mutual ceasefire and an inquiry into the death of Azad138. It remains to be
seen, Punter says, whether the government will overcome its tradition of maintaining the
status quo.



Arundhati Roy remarks: “The Government is quite wrong if it thinks that by carrying out
‘targeted assassinations’ to render the CPI (Maoist) ‘headless’ it will end the violence. On the
contrary, the violence will spread and intensify, and the Government will have nobody to
talk to.”






Limitations of the Naxalite Movement



The Naxalite movement has as discussed above over the years established itself in many
states of India and has a large following. The reason to this relative success is summarized by
Raju J. Das139 (2011): “failure of capitalist development; failure of the capitalist state; and
pro-poor political-economic interventions of the Naxalites.”

139 Raju J. Das, Radial Peasant Movements and Rural Distress in India; in W- Ahmed, A. Kundu, and R. Peet, ed.
India´s New Economic Policy; A Critical Analysis ,Routledge (2011), New York (2011: 297 ff)





However, he says discussing what he sees as limitations of the CPI (Maoist) movement, it is
almost totally confined to the areas demographically dominated by tribals, who constitute
less than 10 % of the total population of the country and who live in areas, where the
development of capitalist relations of exploitation is relatively stunted. Nor is the
movement, he asserts, sufficiently sensitive to class differentiation in the tribal population
leaving out vast sections of distressed people, especially the non-tribal poor peasantry and
labourers. Moreover the movement is generally absent from urban areas, which are growing
every day, with the influx of rural people displaced by neoliberal policies. These limitations
of the Naxalite movement, Das argues, means that the movement is weakly integrated into
the class struggle of the non-agrarian working class, which hinders the Naxalite movement to
have a larger following; socially and geographically. He sees three reasons for this.



One major aspect is their failure to target the capitalist character of Indian society directly.
The Naxalite Maoists, Das means, mistake feudal relations of exploitation for what are really
capitalist relations at a low level of development of productive forces. The use of the
concept of ´semi-feudalism´ for instance explains why the extent of feudal exploitation is
overestimated. Therefore, in the political sense, the movement is confined mainly to
economically backward areas, thus ignoring vast sections of the country reeling under
capitalist, and especially neoliberal capitalist, exploitation. This kind of ideological-political
focus on what they call feudalism, Das argues, will continue to keep millions of toiling people
outside their influence and “this will be the case unless the fight against localized feudal
practices becomes a part of the fight against the capitalist system as such, whether the
bearers (Marx 1977: 92) of that system are ´national´, monopoly, or imperialist capitalists”



A second aspect is the issue of caste and gender. The Naxalite movement, Das confirms, has
paid more attention to these issues that the traditional left. They have emphasized the
importance of caste and gender; yet, Das means, the ideologues of the movement tend to
conflate these non-class relations with class relations; oppressive caste and gender relations,


and especially caste relations, are seen by them as necessarily indicative of some kind of
feudalism. Additionally, he asserts, some critics140 say that patriarchal attitudes and practices
persist within the Naxal organizations. Women are almost negligible in leadership positions.
And, regarding caste, the hard and dangerous work of handing guns is mainly done by dalits
or people from the lower castes of which follows those who get killed belong mostly to these
sections. Generally, tribals and dalits, and other low-caste people comprise the bulk of their
support base but “they are not [yet] adequately represented in the upper echelons of the
party leadership141”.

140 Raju J. Das ref. to M. Mohanty (2006. 3164), Challenges of Revolutionary Violence; Economic and Political
Weekly 41/39; 3163-3168;

141 Raju J. Das ref. to B. Bhatia (2006); On armed resistance; Economic and Political Weekly 41/29; 3179-3183;

142 ibid. Bhatia 2006: 3182

143 Raju J. Das ref. to K. Balagopal (2006: 3185); Chattisgarh: The physiognomy of violence; Economic and
Political Weekly 41/21; 2183-2186;



A third aspect that Das discusses is the violence practiced by a section of the movement.
With the aim to bringing about a change in the balance of power between landlords and
masses these Maoists revolutionary squads are exclusively focusing on armed struggle. This,
Das argues, will cause strategic and tactical problems for the Naxalite Movement. Class
struggle is not easy to mobilize and conduct, so Das agrees. Yet, he argues; “it is difficult to
reduce, conceptually and politically, class struggle to military struggle. There is no shortcut
to revolutionary self-emancipation of the exploited.” Indeed, he asserts, “the success and
popularity of the Naxalite movement itself owes more to the achievements of its open mass
movement than to armed action by secretly operating squads142”.



Armed action may sometimes have helped the mass movement as for instance when the
party offers ´protection´ to students or women organizations at open mass meetings; e.g. in
Bihar, where labourers did not even have the right to hold a meeting, as this outraged the
landlords (Bhatia 2006: 3182). Such a relation between the party and mass movements is,
however, not without problems, Das pointing at consequences for members of the open
front, who often the price for action taken by the underground party (Bhatia 2006). This may
occur for instance in a case when a mass organization is engaged in the struggle for ceiling
surface land and the party decides to ´annihilate´ the landlord. The state is then likely to
target the members of the open front since they are the only visible actors.



Another problem may arise, Das says, when the Naxalite movement seeks to ensure justice
by means of armed squads and the beneficiaries of justice tend not to be involved in the
process of obtaining this justice. What may happen is that the masses tend to think of the
squads “as a substitute for their own struggle for justice143” This can corrupt – some say has
corrupted – the masses into receivers of justice rather than fighters for it in a process of self-
emancipation. Das compares these actions with the armed actions in the early stages of the


Naxalite movement. In these, he says, peasants were engaged in by direct actions against
landlords, e.g. occupying surplus land or destroying usury records. The use today of secretive
violent methods by squads is, he asserts, a different matter; it does make it difficult to
launch non-electoral radical mass movements.



One more consequence of the continuous armed conflicts between state forces and
Naxalites is that it may cause a drastically reduced space for other non-violent struggles. In
many areas, Das points out, anyone who challenges the government about its inactions or
fights for legal rights, such as payment of minimum wage, runs the risk of being labeled a
Naxalite, and the ´Naxal label´ means punishment. In this way Naxalites´ armed action is
being used by the state as a justification for killing Naxalite supporters, who include the
organic leaders of the exploited classes. They are killed by armies supported by mainstream
political parties and also by the state´s military forces or by state-sponsored civilian
militias144.

144 Raju J. Das, (2011, note 32) Radial Peasant Movements and Rural Distress in India;

145 Raju J. Das ref. to B. Bhatia (2006. 3181); On armed resistance; Economic and Political Weekly 41/29;

146 Raju J. Das ref. to Sagar (2006: 3177); The spring and its thunder; Economic and Political Weekly 41/29;

147 Arundhati Roy 2010:23-34; Walking with the Comrades, OUTLOOK INDIA, March 21, 2010.



One more effect arising from the use of violence is how it the political climate of the
movement. The loyalty of the followers can be put in question. When people are becoming
depended on the party for protection it becomes difficult to know whether the people are in
it voluntarily145. This is because once one is labeled a Naxalite, it is difficult to return to
normal life, relatively free from suspicion, fear, and death; so, many people stay in the party
because they need the party´s protection.



There also exists, Das discusses, a culture of intolerance among the Naxalites toward those
holding a different political view or belonging to another Naxalite faction, which is often
resolved through violent encounter. Also ordinary people are killed because they are seen as
police informers. This has, Das points out, caused alienation of the Naxalites from a section
of their own support-base, including the urban intelligentsia, and tribal and poor people146.





What happens after the revolution?



The rhetoric of the Naxalite Maoist ideologues in the past has created an image of the movement of
inflexibility and uncritical self-centredness to the outside world. Arundhati Roy147 (2010) refers to
Charu Mazumdar, who in the 1960s said: “China’s Chairman is our Chairman and China’s
Path is Our Path”. He was prepared to extend it to the point where the Naxalites remained
silent while the Pakistani General Yahya Khan committed genocide in East Pakistan


(Bangladesh), because at the time, China was an ally of Pakistan. There was also silence, she
says, over the Khmer Rouge and its killing fields in Cambodia, over the egregious excesses of
the Chinese and Russian Revolutions, and over Tibet. Also within the Naxalite movement,
Roy writes, there have been violent excesses and, she means, it is impossible to defend
much of what they have done. Yet, Roy argues, this being the dominant image of the
movement to the outer world is a great disservice to everything that is happening. And, she
continues, “can anything they have done compare with the sordid achievements of the
Congress and the BJP in Punjab, Kashmir, Delhi, Mumbai, Gujarat…and yet, despite these
terrifying contradictions, Charu Mazumdar was a visionary in much of what he wrote and
said. The party he founded (and its many splinter groups) has kept the dream of revolution
real and present in India. Imagine a society without that dream. For that alone we cannot
judge him too harshly. Especially not while we swaddle ourselves with Gandhi’s pious
humbug about the superiority of “the non-violent way” and his notion of Trusteeship: ´The
rich man will be left in possession of his wealth, of which he will use what he reasonably
requires for his personal needs and will act as a trustee for the remainder to be used for the
good of society´.”



Yet, Roy in the end utters a word of uncertainty of the future when she writes that although
today when “the Party is a suitor (as it is now in Dandakaranya), wooing the people,
attentive to their every need, then it genuinely is a Peoples’ Party, its army genuinely a
Peoples’ Army … but after the Revolution how easily this love affair can turn into a bitter
marriage. How easily the Peoples’ Army can turn upon the people. Today in Dandakaranya,
the Party wants to keep the bauxite in the mountain. Tomorrow will it change its mind? But
can we, should we let apprehensions about the future, immobilize us in the present?”