From the September/October 2013 issue:
The Naxalite Rebellions
American Interest
These so-called Naxalites have terrorized the “Other India” for years, but the recent wave of Naxalite terror is murdering politicians, recruiting child soldiers, overwhelming the police and scaring international investors. Rebels now control areas with key natural resources (timber, coal and natural gas), prompting Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to declare the Naxalites India’s “biggest internal security challenge.” As a consequence, the government expanded India’s counterinsurgency force by 80,000 in 2012, with plans to redeploy 3,000 from Kashmir to the northeast. Last year India’s Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde declared that “terrorism and Naxalism are shadowing the glory of Mother India.” The Global Terrorism Index 2012 ranks India in the top five terrorism-hit countries in the world, worse than Yemen, Somalia and Columbia in the number of incidents and fatalities.
Naxalites are active in 18 of 28 Indian states, targeting security forces and civilians alike, and their activity is accelerating. From 2005 to 2010, the number of civilians killed in terrorist acts in Kashmir decreased by 93 percent, while civilians killed by Naxalites increased by 116 percent in the Indian state of Bihar, and increased by 6,460 percent in the state of West Bengal. But what do we mean by “Naxalite”? Is this one linked insurgency campaign or many unrelated ones? What is their unconventional order of battle, so to speak? How has the rebellion evolved over the years?
The name Naxalite comes from a small region in West Bengal, Naxalbari. Peasants rebelled against landlord oppression, and received the name Naxalwadi or Naxalite. It was a classic class-caste struggle. The Indian countryside and especially its more mountainous areas are inhabited by Hindu tribes that have long practiced a repressive caste system. Since before recorded history that system has designated Brahmins as landlords and Dalits (untouchables) as serfs. Unsurprisingly, Dalits filled the Naxalite ranks and the ranks of the Communist Party of India.
The Communist Party of India contested the very first elections in 1952. Amid ideological and other forms of discord, however, in 1964 the communists split into a left-wing faction that favored Mao’s Chinese model (revolutionary war strategy) and a more moderate wing that supported the mainstream ruling Congress Party, which pursued close relations with the Soviet Union. Maoist Naxalites sided with the Chinese in the China-India war of 1962 by flooding border towns with communist propaganda, providing human intelligence to the Chinese, and aspiring to foment a popular uprising.
The 1962 Maoist Naxalite revolt was short-lived, however. The Maoists planned a three-stage uprising that would entail creating an organization, safe areas, training grounds and eventually an army that could effectively challenge India’s military. The Central Committee provided rhetorical support, but had no viable strategy. The plan never got off the ground. Poor organization and lack of arms rendered the Maoists no match for heavily armed and police-supported landlords. The revolt ended before it could spread beyond a few villages.
But unlike the insurgency’s founders, today’s Naxalites are no Robin Hoods fighting rich and cruel landlords. Indeed, in some areas of the country they are worse than the landlords and security forces, pillaging villages, raping and murdering locals, recruiting child soldiers and dealing illicit drugs. In many cases they have become the enemies they claimed to be fighting decades ago. As with many protracted insurgencies, the Naxalites began as idealists and devolved into thugs fighting more for profit than ideology; the insurgent way of life gradually swallowed the cause. That is why the moderates, who embrace opportunism over obstinacy, cannot speak for more radical insurgents, and why appeasing the former will not have much impact on the latter.
Still, most of the Naxalite-afflicted states have grossly ineffective police and dangerously low numbers of them. Counterinsurgency best practices dictate 270 police and 2,000 troops per 100,000 citizens. The police to population ratio in states like Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa and Chhattisgarh is less than 180, and over 450 in Indian-administered Kashmir and Nagaland. Moreover, there are serious human rights and corruption allegations against the police when they are present.
Today Naxalites focus on controlling areas rich in natural resources like iron and destroying state infrastructure like railroads, telephone exchanges and industrial plants. From 2005 to 2010, Naxalites preferred armed assaults, including ambushes (43 percent of all attacks), bomb attacks, including IEDs (27 percent), infrastructure destruction (15 percent), and kidnappings (13 percent) to assassinating government officials (2 percent). Naxalite presence overlaps critical areas with minerals and forest. Bihar, Jharkhand and Orissa contain the bulk of India’s iron ore, and Andhra Pradesh has large reserves of bauxite, key inputs to Indian industry. The January 2007 report of the Naxalite central military commission explicitly identified a number of industrial plants and resource development initiatives in these areas as potential targets. Moreover, Naxalites dominate areas containing 85 percent of the country’s coal resources, which are used to power 55 percent of India’s energy supply and 75 percent of its electricity generation.
As already suggested, however, the Naxalite violence has proved a double-edged sword. Popular support for the Naxalites has decreased. A 2010 public opinion poll stated that only 10 percent of respondents self-identified as Naxalite “sympathizers.” At the same time, 32 percent agreed with the Naxalite demand of equal peasant pay and better working conditions, but 32 percent also said that the “methods were wrong.” Among Naxalite sympathizers, 59 percent disapproved of their destruction of infrastructure and other state property.
------------------------------
India, between nuclear euphoria and Naxalite insurrection
Global Research
July 2007
The Bush administration began the process of agreement with India on the nuclear issue in March 2006, at the same time as the beginning of the nuclear crisis with Iran.(2) That rapprochement consisted of the recognition by the US of India’s nuclear capacity, justified as part of an effort by Bush to prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons, avoid an arms race between India and Pakistan and reinforce India-US ties. It put an end to the 30-year embargo on nuclear material imposed on India in 1974 when India – which is a non-signatory of the Nuclear Arms Non-Proliferation treaty, while Iran is – carried out its first nuclear test. In accordance with the agreement, which is up in the air for now, India would accept the presence of International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) inspectors in 14 of its nuclear installations and would clearly separate the civilian and military aspects of its nuclear programme.
But the agreement went even further : it sought to have India break off all its energy and military agreements with Iran. The US offer included stronger trade links with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, two Central Asian states with large energy reserves, especially gas, and likewise with Afghanistan and Pakistan to make good India’s energy deficit if it were to break with Iran.
Both India and Pakistan have signed an agreement with Iran to build an oil pipeline, “the oil pipeline of Peace” worth US$7bn, to distribute gas to the three countries and this is expected to be formally signed on June 30th. This is something the US is trying to avoid at all costs since at the end of June it intended to return to the UN Security Council asking for a new set of harder sanctions against Iran for not halting its nuclear programme. Already early pressures are being applied by the US to the member countries of the UN Security Council so as to include gas companies within the sanctions.(3) As usual, US foreign policy carries an undeniable element of coercion and in this case more than usual : in exchange for the signing of a nuclear agreement, the Bush Administration would support India’s entry into the Security Council as a permanent member, although without veto rights.
Maoist insurrection and the struggle for land
India aspires to become an unrivalled regional power by 2015. But, to achieve that, guaranteeing its energy needs (oil and, preferably, gas) is vital and it is in this regard that nuclear energy plays an important role. Since its independence from Great Britain, India has tried to set out from what one might call “an economy of size”, taking advantage, in other words, of its geographic and population potential. However, despite enormous social differences revolutionary forces, or the Left, if you like, have had difficulty making progress given that capitalism has developed slowly but constantly. The explanation for this situation is that since independence in 1947 India had relatively developed industry and a wealthy, powerful bourgeoisie very adept both at international politics (one should not forget India’s importance in creating the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries) and national politics, integrating social measures – although without abolishing the caste system – with outright capitalist ones.
However, during the last 18 years, India has implemented neoliberal policies, gradually dismantling its centralized economy and privatizing its main sectors under the wing of a battery of laws to protect Direct Foreign Investments, especially those from the United States that have now increased from US$76m to US$4bn. At the moment, India’s gross domestic product is about US$786bn, four times that of the rest of countries in South Asia.
This policy has led to an increase in the middle classes to around 300 million people, the Bollywood movie watchers and migrants to Europe or the United States and who are more and more isolated from disadvantaged classes not only along traditional caste divisions but in economic matters too. It is reckoned that more than 700 million Indians live in the most absolute poverty. Almost all of them are rural workers who live on small plots of land of less than one hectare and who depend on big private businesses for supplies of seed, fertiliser and other inputs. Furthermore they have to survive amidst impressive industrial projects (especially mining projects) and water projects that flood their land or else expropriate them at absurd prices. To that one has to add the traditional oppression that lower castes have suffered since time immemorial and the ever-increasing presence of paramilitaries in the service of big landowners.
So it is no wonder then that a Maoist insurrection is spreading across India like an oil stain across paper, already affecting 14 of India’s 28 States (Chatisgarh, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Asma, Uttaranchal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Maharashtra and Bihar). In figures, that means the Maoists are in control in 165 districts out of the total of 602 into which the country is divided. In fact in the last five states mentioned one can say that “popular new democratic power” is a reality, given that they are the ones who control the countryside, collect taxes from large businesses within their zones of influence, build dykes and irrigation systems, impart justice, decide land disputes among rural families and have suppressed, for example, child marriage. Prime Minister Singh recognised the Maoist advance on August 23rd 2006 when he declared solemnly to Parliament that the Maoists “have become the biggest internal challenge to security that India has.” (4)
To deal with the Maoist surge the New Delhi government put into practice the well known US strategy from Vietnam, later perfected in Central America during the revolutionary processes in El Salvador and, above all, in Guatemala : the creation of strategic hamlets and the formation of paramilitary patrols to defend them (in Guatemala, the Civilian Self-Defence Patrols). In India they are known as Slawa Judum (that translates as “Peace Hunters”
and have the status of “special police agents” in rural communities. They are especially active in Chatisgarh and it is against them that the guerrilla offensive is currently aimed. An ambush on March 15th killed 50 out of a joint force of police and paramilitaries.(5) The main activity of the paramilitaries is the forced displacement of rural families to “temporary camps” set up in the areas of Bhairamgarh, Gedam y Bijapur and in which 50,000 people are currently crowded.
This strategy is favoured in the “red zone”, a category applied by the Indian government to the states of Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Maharashtra y Bihar, although in the last few months an impressive guerrilla military campaign has begun in Chatisgarh which has made the new Delhi government focus on this state leaving its plans for the other states in abeyance. The reason the guerrillas are prioritizing Chatisgarh is that this state, along with Jharkand, is turning into the spearhead of the government’s neoliberal policies following the signing of juicy, million-dollar contracts with big national and multinational industrial corporations, on steel, iron, coal and electricity, which presuppose a new wave of rural families in exodus to wretched slums in the cities. In fact, the most recent guerrilla attack was on June 3rd against the electricity plant of Narayanpur, a district of Chatisgarh. (7)
The Maoists say little when they carry out their actions. It is a fact that guerrilla control in this state is almost complete, with 10 of its 16 districts in their power (8) and that their military actions are more and more daring, including attacks against officials, police, politicians and strategic economic and industrial targets.
The government’s aim is to confine the Maoist presence to that “red zone” and avoid it spreading with equal force to the rest of the country. Once that objective is achieved, repression will centre on what can be called “support bases” or liberated zones. Nonetheless, it is the different States that have responsibility for security matters, not central government, which explains why police implement the repression rather than the army, and there are different opinions about the best way to confront the guerrilla. In Andra Pradesh the tendency is to negotiate directly, while in Chatisgarh the paramilitary phenomenon is used, to mention the most extreme examples. These positions are influenced by the role the moderate Left has in different State governments and even in the central government which would collapse without the Left’s support, as was pointed out earlier. This is the reason why timid agrarian reform is being advanced throughout India and which has as a pilot experience the one implemented in 2005 in the mother State of the guerrillas, West Bengal.
For the moment the guerrillas are ignoring the cities to focus on total control of the countryside, following the old strategy of surrounding the cities from the countryside. The strategy is to penetrate rural areas, consolidate in them and, once the bases of support are deemed secure, to go on building up effective and efficient links with different cells in other states. It is the classic strategy that has given such good results in Nepal. As with their Nepalese comrades, the Indian Maoists respect local officials – including the police – if the people think they are honest and not compromised by cases of corruption or repression. They also respect businesses established in their zones of influence but they collect from them a “revolutionary tax”, which varies between 15% and 20 % of their profits, to fund their operations.
History of the Naxalites
The Indian Maoists are known as Naxalites from the town of Naxalbari in West Bengal, where the first armed actions occurred of an organization called the People’s War Group, the armed wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) which, with the slogan of radical reform of land ownership, forced a stand-off through the 1960s with the Indian government. Although the rebellion they led – land occupations, burning of catastral property registers, forgiveness of rural families’ mortgage debts and execution of the most important oppressors and usurers – only lasted three months, it ended with a very severe repression that caused more than 100,000 deaths and the virtual disappearance of the organization’s members. But some groups carried on operating, although without mutual contact. This led to the fragmentation of the CPI-ML which lasted until 2003 when the Maoist Communist Centre and the Indian Revolutionary Communist Centre united to form the Maoist Communist Centre of India (CCMI) and, one year later in 2004, the integration of a tendency of the CPI-ML called “Popular War”. That is how the Communist Party of India (Maoist) came into being with its main slogan as “the fight against feudalism and imperialism”.
If one can believe reports of the Indian intelligence services, the country’s Maoists have been tempered in the revolutionary popular war in Nepal where they have won greater political training and military experience. The intelligence services reckon that the People’s Guerrilla Army (the Indian Maoists military wing) last year counted on 8000 combatants, 25,000 militia members – protecting support bases, carrying out intelligence work and logistic support for the combatants – and 50,000 political members. Small numbers if one considers that India is a country with 1bn inhabitants. But the rapid development of the Maoist movement has set off alarm bells among India’s political elite.(9) The immiseration of two thirds of India’s people and their social oppression counteract elite desires to turn India into a regional power via nuclear weapons and an agreement with the United States. Today the Naxalites are a reality that has to be taken into account. Perhaps westerners looking to India have been able to learn that “naxa” in the Indian vocabulary now means “rebel rural worker” and that the current and past struggles of the naxalites are part of modern Indian culture, even of its cinema.
India, between nuclear euphoria and Naxalite insurrection | Global Research
The Naxalite Rebellions
American Interest
These so-called Naxalites have terrorized the “Other India” for years, but the recent wave of Naxalite terror is murdering politicians, recruiting child soldiers, overwhelming the police and scaring international investors. Rebels now control areas with key natural resources (timber, coal and natural gas), prompting Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to declare the Naxalites India’s “biggest internal security challenge.” As a consequence, the government expanded India’s counterinsurgency force by 80,000 in 2012, with plans to redeploy 3,000 from Kashmir to the northeast. Last year India’s Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde declared that “terrorism and Naxalism are shadowing the glory of Mother India.” The Global Terrorism Index 2012 ranks India in the top five terrorism-hit countries in the world, worse than Yemen, Somalia and Columbia in the number of incidents and fatalities.
Naxalites are active in 18 of 28 Indian states, targeting security forces and civilians alike, and their activity is accelerating. From 2005 to 2010, the number of civilians killed in terrorist acts in Kashmir decreased by 93 percent, while civilians killed by Naxalites increased by 116 percent in the Indian state of Bihar, and increased by 6,460 percent in the state of West Bengal. But what do we mean by “Naxalite”? Is this one linked insurgency campaign or many unrelated ones? What is their unconventional order of battle, so to speak? How has the rebellion evolved over the years?
The name Naxalite comes from a small region in West Bengal, Naxalbari. Peasants rebelled against landlord oppression, and received the name Naxalwadi or Naxalite. It was a classic class-caste struggle. The Indian countryside and especially its more mountainous areas are inhabited by Hindu tribes that have long practiced a repressive caste system. Since before recorded history that system has designated Brahmins as landlords and Dalits (untouchables) as serfs. Unsurprisingly, Dalits filled the Naxalite ranks and the ranks of the Communist Party of India.
The Communist Party of India contested the very first elections in 1952. Amid ideological and other forms of discord, however, in 1964 the communists split into a left-wing faction that favored Mao’s Chinese model (revolutionary war strategy) and a more moderate wing that supported the mainstream ruling Congress Party, which pursued close relations with the Soviet Union. Maoist Naxalites sided with the Chinese in the China-India war of 1962 by flooding border towns with communist propaganda, providing human intelligence to the Chinese, and aspiring to foment a popular uprising.
The 1962 Maoist Naxalite revolt was short-lived, however. The Maoists planned a three-stage uprising that would entail creating an organization, safe areas, training grounds and eventually an army that could effectively challenge India’s military. The Central Committee provided rhetorical support, but had no viable strategy. The plan never got off the ground. Poor organization and lack of arms rendered the Maoists no match for heavily armed and police-supported landlords. The revolt ended before it could spread beyond a few villages.
But unlike the insurgency’s founders, today’s Naxalites are no Robin Hoods fighting rich and cruel landlords. Indeed, in some areas of the country they are worse than the landlords and security forces, pillaging villages, raping and murdering locals, recruiting child soldiers and dealing illicit drugs. In many cases they have become the enemies they claimed to be fighting decades ago. As with many protracted insurgencies, the Naxalites began as idealists and devolved into thugs fighting more for profit than ideology; the insurgent way of life gradually swallowed the cause. That is why the moderates, who embrace opportunism over obstinacy, cannot speak for more radical insurgents, and why appeasing the former will not have much impact on the latter.
Still, most of the Naxalite-afflicted states have grossly ineffective police and dangerously low numbers of them. Counterinsurgency best practices dictate 270 police and 2,000 troops per 100,000 citizens. The police to population ratio in states like Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa and Chhattisgarh is less than 180, and over 450 in Indian-administered Kashmir and Nagaland. Moreover, there are serious human rights and corruption allegations against the police when they are present.
Today Naxalites focus on controlling areas rich in natural resources like iron and destroying state infrastructure like railroads, telephone exchanges and industrial plants. From 2005 to 2010, Naxalites preferred armed assaults, including ambushes (43 percent of all attacks), bomb attacks, including IEDs (27 percent), infrastructure destruction (15 percent), and kidnappings (13 percent) to assassinating government officials (2 percent). Naxalite presence overlaps critical areas with minerals and forest. Bihar, Jharkhand and Orissa contain the bulk of India’s iron ore, and Andhra Pradesh has large reserves of bauxite, key inputs to Indian industry. The January 2007 report of the Naxalite central military commission explicitly identified a number of industrial plants and resource development initiatives in these areas as potential targets. Moreover, Naxalites dominate areas containing 85 percent of the country’s coal resources, which are used to power 55 percent of India’s energy supply and 75 percent of its electricity generation.
As already suggested, however, the Naxalite violence has proved a double-edged sword. Popular support for the Naxalites has decreased. A 2010 public opinion poll stated that only 10 percent of respondents self-identified as Naxalite “sympathizers.” At the same time, 32 percent agreed with the Naxalite demand of equal peasant pay and better working conditions, but 32 percent also said that the “methods were wrong.” Among Naxalite sympathizers, 59 percent disapproved of their destruction of infrastructure and other state property.
------------------------------
India, between nuclear euphoria and Naxalite insurrection
Global Research
July 2007
The Bush administration began the process of agreement with India on the nuclear issue in March 2006, at the same time as the beginning of the nuclear crisis with Iran.(2) That rapprochement consisted of the recognition by the US of India’s nuclear capacity, justified as part of an effort by Bush to prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons, avoid an arms race between India and Pakistan and reinforce India-US ties. It put an end to the 30-year embargo on nuclear material imposed on India in 1974 when India – which is a non-signatory of the Nuclear Arms Non-Proliferation treaty, while Iran is – carried out its first nuclear test. In accordance with the agreement, which is up in the air for now, India would accept the presence of International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) inspectors in 14 of its nuclear installations and would clearly separate the civilian and military aspects of its nuclear programme.
But the agreement went even further : it sought to have India break off all its energy and military agreements with Iran. The US offer included stronger trade links with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, two Central Asian states with large energy reserves, especially gas, and likewise with Afghanistan and Pakistan to make good India’s energy deficit if it were to break with Iran.
Both India and Pakistan have signed an agreement with Iran to build an oil pipeline, “the oil pipeline of Peace” worth US$7bn, to distribute gas to the three countries and this is expected to be formally signed on June 30th. This is something the US is trying to avoid at all costs since at the end of June it intended to return to the UN Security Council asking for a new set of harder sanctions against Iran for not halting its nuclear programme. Already early pressures are being applied by the US to the member countries of the UN Security Council so as to include gas companies within the sanctions.(3) As usual, US foreign policy carries an undeniable element of coercion and in this case more than usual : in exchange for the signing of a nuclear agreement, the Bush Administration would support India’s entry into the Security Council as a permanent member, although without veto rights.
Maoist insurrection and the struggle for land
India aspires to become an unrivalled regional power by 2015. But, to achieve that, guaranteeing its energy needs (oil and, preferably, gas) is vital and it is in this regard that nuclear energy plays an important role. Since its independence from Great Britain, India has tried to set out from what one might call “an economy of size”, taking advantage, in other words, of its geographic and population potential. However, despite enormous social differences revolutionary forces, or the Left, if you like, have had difficulty making progress given that capitalism has developed slowly but constantly. The explanation for this situation is that since independence in 1947 India had relatively developed industry and a wealthy, powerful bourgeoisie very adept both at international politics (one should not forget India’s importance in creating the Movement of Non-Aligned Countries) and national politics, integrating social measures – although without abolishing the caste system – with outright capitalist ones.
However, during the last 18 years, India has implemented neoliberal policies, gradually dismantling its centralized economy and privatizing its main sectors under the wing of a battery of laws to protect Direct Foreign Investments, especially those from the United States that have now increased from US$76m to US$4bn. At the moment, India’s gross domestic product is about US$786bn, four times that of the rest of countries in South Asia.
This policy has led to an increase in the middle classes to around 300 million people, the Bollywood movie watchers and migrants to Europe or the United States and who are more and more isolated from disadvantaged classes not only along traditional caste divisions but in economic matters too. It is reckoned that more than 700 million Indians live in the most absolute poverty. Almost all of them are rural workers who live on small plots of land of less than one hectare and who depend on big private businesses for supplies of seed, fertiliser and other inputs. Furthermore they have to survive amidst impressive industrial projects (especially mining projects) and water projects that flood their land or else expropriate them at absurd prices. To that one has to add the traditional oppression that lower castes have suffered since time immemorial and the ever-increasing presence of paramilitaries in the service of big landowners.
So it is no wonder then that a Maoist insurrection is spreading across India like an oil stain across paper, already affecting 14 of India’s 28 States (Chatisgarh, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Asma, Uttaranchal, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Maharashtra and Bihar). In figures, that means the Maoists are in control in 165 districts out of the total of 602 into which the country is divided. In fact in the last five states mentioned one can say that “popular new democratic power” is a reality, given that they are the ones who control the countryside, collect taxes from large businesses within their zones of influence, build dykes and irrigation systems, impart justice, decide land disputes among rural families and have suppressed, for example, child marriage. Prime Minister Singh recognised the Maoist advance on August 23rd 2006 when he declared solemnly to Parliament that the Maoists “have become the biggest internal challenge to security that India has.” (4)
To deal with the Maoist surge the New Delhi government put into practice the well known US strategy from Vietnam, later perfected in Central America during the revolutionary processes in El Salvador and, above all, in Guatemala : the creation of strategic hamlets and the formation of paramilitary patrols to defend them (in Guatemala, the Civilian Self-Defence Patrols). In India they are known as Slawa Judum (that translates as “Peace Hunters”
and have the status of “special police agents” in rural communities. They are especially active in Chatisgarh and it is against them that the guerrilla offensive is currently aimed. An ambush on March 15th killed 50 out of a joint force of police and paramilitaries.(5) The main activity of the paramilitaries is the forced displacement of rural families to “temporary camps” set up in the areas of Bhairamgarh, Gedam y Bijapur and in which 50,000 people are currently crowded. This strategy is favoured in the “red zone”, a category applied by the Indian government to the states of Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Maharashtra y Bihar, although in the last few months an impressive guerrilla military campaign has begun in Chatisgarh which has made the new Delhi government focus on this state leaving its plans for the other states in abeyance. The reason the guerrillas are prioritizing Chatisgarh is that this state, along with Jharkand, is turning into the spearhead of the government’s neoliberal policies following the signing of juicy, million-dollar contracts with big national and multinational industrial corporations, on steel, iron, coal and electricity, which presuppose a new wave of rural families in exodus to wretched slums in the cities. In fact, the most recent guerrilla attack was on June 3rd against the electricity plant of Narayanpur, a district of Chatisgarh. (7)
The Maoists say little when they carry out their actions. It is a fact that guerrilla control in this state is almost complete, with 10 of its 16 districts in their power (8) and that their military actions are more and more daring, including attacks against officials, police, politicians and strategic economic and industrial targets.
The government’s aim is to confine the Maoist presence to that “red zone” and avoid it spreading with equal force to the rest of the country. Once that objective is achieved, repression will centre on what can be called “support bases” or liberated zones. Nonetheless, it is the different States that have responsibility for security matters, not central government, which explains why police implement the repression rather than the army, and there are different opinions about the best way to confront the guerrilla. In Andra Pradesh the tendency is to negotiate directly, while in Chatisgarh the paramilitary phenomenon is used, to mention the most extreme examples. These positions are influenced by the role the moderate Left has in different State governments and even in the central government which would collapse without the Left’s support, as was pointed out earlier. This is the reason why timid agrarian reform is being advanced throughout India and which has as a pilot experience the one implemented in 2005 in the mother State of the guerrillas, West Bengal.
For the moment the guerrillas are ignoring the cities to focus on total control of the countryside, following the old strategy of surrounding the cities from the countryside. The strategy is to penetrate rural areas, consolidate in them and, once the bases of support are deemed secure, to go on building up effective and efficient links with different cells in other states. It is the classic strategy that has given such good results in Nepal. As with their Nepalese comrades, the Indian Maoists respect local officials – including the police – if the people think they are honest and not compromised by cases of corruption or repression. They also respect businesses established in their zones of influence but they collect from them a “revolutionary tax”, which varies between 15% and 20 % of their profits, to fund their operations.
History of the Naxalites
The Indian Maoists are known as Naxalites from the town of Naxalbari in West Bengal, where the first armed actions occurred of an organization called the People’s War Group, the armed wing of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) which, with the slogan of radical reform of land ownership, forced a stand-off through the 1960s with the Indian government. Although the rebellion they led – land occupations, burning of catastral property registers, forgiveness of rural families’ mortgage debts and execution of the most important oppressors and usurers – only lasted three months, it ended with a very severe repression that caused more than 100,000 deaths and the virtual disappearance of the organization’s members. But some groups carried on operating, although without mutual contact. This led to the fragmentation of the CPI-ML which lasted until 2003 when the Maoist Communist Centre and the Indian Revolutionary Communist Centre united to form the Maoist Communist Centre of India (CCMI) and, one year later in 2004, the integration of a tendency of the CPI-ML called “Popular War”. That is how the Communist Party of India (Maoist) came into being with its main slogan as “the fight against feudalism and imperialism”.
If one can believe reports of the Indian intelligence services, the country’s Maoists have been tempered in the revolutionary popular war in Nepal where they have won greater political training and military experience. The intelligence services reckon that the People’s Guerrilla Army (the Indian Maoists military wing) last year counted on 8000 combatants, 25,000 militia members – protecting support bases, carrying out intelligence work and logistic support for the combatants – and 50,000 political members. Small numbers if one considers that India is a country with 1bn inhabitants. But the rapid development of the Maoist movement has set off alarm bells among India’s political elite.(9) The immiseration of two thirds of India’s people and their social oppression counteract elite desires to turn India into a regional power via nuclear weapons and an agreement with the United States. Today the Naxalites are a reality that has to be taken into account. Perhaps westerners looking to India have been able to learn that “naxa” in the Indian vocabulary now means “rebel rural worker” and that the current and past struggles of the naxalites are part of modern Indian culture, even of its cinema.
India, between nuclear euphoria and Naxalite insurrection | Global Research
