Indian Government and Media Disinformation Lies about the CPI(Maoist) and the Indian Revolution
India is a land of tremendous poverty, and tremendous exploitation and oppression of workers, peasants (small-scale farmers), women, minority nationalities, the lower castes, minority religious groups, and other sections of the people. When the people resist and fight back against this exploitation and oppression, they and their organizations are regularly vilified in campaigns of lies and disinformation by the ruling class and its government and media. This is particularly the case against those who seek to overthrow this system of exploitation and oppression entirely, the revolutionaries and their parties, and especially against the Maoists and the Communist Party of India (Maoist).
While such government and media campaigns of lies and disinformation have existed all along, recently they have been greatly expanded and intensified, as part of a new ruling class effort to wipe out the Maoists and revolutionary movement. While this new effort is primarily a military campaign directed at the Maoists and the masses, the government knows that it cannot be successful unless it also stops the growing levels of mass support for the Maoists and the revolution. It can’t possibly accomplish this by telling the truth about how Maoist revolutionaries arise from and work among the masses and support their interests, big and small, short-term and long-term. Thus the only thing left for the government and ruling class media to do is to spread lies about the revolutionaries.
The Indian lies are many and varied. Individual revolutionaries and leaders of the masses are falsely accused of venal motives, crimes, and pursuit of their own private interests. Chhatradhar Mahato, for example, a leader of the
adivasis in the Lalgarh village area of West Bengal, a mass movement which has been supported by the Maoists, has been falsely accused of being a rich absentee landlord himself in another locality. (See
Mahato section below.) And all sorts of criminal activities including murders and rapes which occur, including many carried out by fascist gangs organized by the big landlords, or even by the “security forces” themselves, are falsely blamed on the CPI(Maoist). One recent case in point is the
Amousi Massacre (see below).
There have in fact been a small number of incidents where the CPI(Maoist) or other revolutionary forces have inadvertently harmed or killed people who were actually part of the masses and not the enemy. One case occurred during the 2009 Lok Sabha elections when some election poll workers were mistaken for paramilitary troops and killed in a bomb blast in the Lalgarh area. But when these very infrequent and unfortunate events do occur the CPI(Maoist) always accepts the blame, publicly admits its error, criticizes itself, and takes steps to try to prevent similar things from happening again. (See
“On the Election Boycott Tactic of the Maoists: A Response by a Spokesperson of the CPI(Maoist)” for a discussion of this particular event.) It seems to us that the CPI(Maoist) party has already well demonstrated that part of what they understand to mean their responsibility to the people also means accepting full responsibility for their mistakes.
Consequently, when some new claim of outrageous behavior against the people is ascribed to the Maoists, and the Maoists themselves
do not accept responsibility for it, it is reasonable to conclude that this is simply another episode in the continuing disinformation campaign of the government and ruling class media. We at BANNEDTHOUGHT.NET will do our best to investigate these claims and bring out the actual truth of the matter, whatever that may be. In each section below, the newest items are at the top.
