A spectre is haunting ‘India Shining’ – the spectre of Maoism that threatens to destroy our newly acquired way of life, our globalized culture, our dreams of unlimited wealth and goods and weapons. Perceived as the greatest internal security challenge facing the country, the state now proposes to adopt a two-pronged approach to tackle it: release massive development funds to alleviate the suffering of people in Maoist ‘infested’ areas and simultaneously mount a military offensive with the air force and special armed forces authorized to fire at Maoists in self-defence! Operation Green Hunt, the anti-Naxal squads with a ‘license to kill’ and ‘answerable to none’ will set out to annihilate Maoists. And since the Maoists are not tattooed or branded, only the number of dead will be a decisive indicator.

On 12 October 2009, a group of concerned citizens issued an appeal to the prime minister, pointing out that the plan to launch a military offensive to liberate parts of the country from Maoist rebels will endanger large sections of the poorest people living in these areas, resulting in massive displacement, destitution and human rights violations. The poverty, hunger, humiliation and insecurity of the adivasis would only be aggravated and spread further.

The dilemma at this juncture is a tragic consequence of allowing ends to justify the means. Yet, even as there is much public anger and bitter disappointment at the mindless ‘counter-violence of the Maoists’, the violence of the state is rarely disputed. What then should be the role of democratic citizens in this crisis?

In 1990, when the then Congress Chief Minister Chenna Reddy lifted the ban on the People’s War Party, a rally was held in Warangal. Lakhs of people poured into the fields. No trucks, no daily allowance, no packet of biryani and sachet of liquor at the end of the day. The police had no work. The rally was peaceful. The people were largely poor peasants, youth and women bright with hope at the restoration of freedom of the party they placed their faith in. The feeling of hope that afternoon was palpable.

 

Equally memorable was the meeting at Guthikondabilam on 11 October 2004 when the underground leaders of the PWG came into the open to address a public gathering before proceeding for the peace talks. There was no public transport available for miles. Yet, hundreds and thousands of people from villages, far and near, walked for miles to see their leaders and listen to them. As earlier, there was barely a token presence of the police. Only a dozen vehicles in which the media and sympathetic intellectuals had come. There was a sea of faces framed by the hillocks around that field. First a heightened excitement and then a calm with which the crowd parted to allow the leaders to enter from their midst. Leaders who ran in like beloved brothers or sons just happy to be home. No trace of the swagger and self-importance that marks our elected representatives. Unforgettable.

The Maoists still carry the burden of the people’s hopes. Despite all the confusions, the violence, the mistakes, the problems they create and face, the ordinary people still place the hope for liberation from poverty, need, dispossession and exclusion on their shoulders. And that is a grave responsibility to shoulder, ideologically and practically.

As early as 25 June 1998, the Committee of Concerned Citizens pointed out that the emergence and the institutionalization of democratic values represent two different processes. While the emergence of values takes place through people’s collective actions, their institutionalization requires a conscious effort of the party. The fact of repression cannot be an excuse for flaws in the process. They also pointed out that though there is a fundamental difference between state violence and revolutionary violence, mistakes committed by activists working contrary to the party’s ideology result in the same tragic consequences on people’s lives as do atrocities by the police.¹

 

The ideological challenge facing the Maoists is thus far greater than their lack of organizational strength. The programme of an agrarian revolution and anti-imperialist mobilization enjoys a renewed appeal in the era of globalization and economic reforms, as seen in the last two decades. The spectre of hunger and the continuing farmers’ suicides, the neglect of the rural economy, the tribals’ shrinking access to forest resources and their displacement due to mega mining – all provide a base for the Maoists to recover the ground that they had lost. Yet, the inadequacies of their programmatic and strategic line in coping with the complex Indian reality in a changed international situation too grow clearer. The agrarian scenario, the question of wages, year round employment, disastrous anti-farmer policies within the WTO framework, all compete with the land issue for political attention.²

Besieged and embattled, their leaders ‘encountered’ and their cadre decimated, the Maoists seem unable to effectively address the changed global realities and the newly emerging needs. Caught in a battle of supremacy with the state, they have allowed the social problems of the masses to take a back seat. Their considerable military expertise has developed to the stagnation of their political development.³ It is only the poor who have no means of redress, no political clout, no means of bribing or coercing officials who continue to keep faith, even though they are increasingly crushed between the police, the armed gangs it has set up and the Maoists in their area.

 

Two issues seem critical for the survival of the movement. One is the support of a progressive middle class. The increasing alienation of this section complicates issues related to the defence of human rights. Carried away by revolutionary rhetoric and contemptuous of those who do not constitute their base, the self-righteous statements of their leaders/spokespersons only serve to alienate these sections. Equally, the emphasis on armed action rather than their revolutionary vision systematically alienates the intellectuals who otherwise might support them.⁴

The other issue which disturbs most sympathizers is a total lack of accountability. The Maoists’ unprincipled use of extortion, the lack of a system within the party to control or monitor funds, as also state repression, the impact of the media, the rewards for surrender and corruption after long years of suffering, combined with a puritanical stance that discourages questioning, are all serious problems that the movement needs to address.

Many scholars have highlighted the need for accountability and openness to public scrutiny. Bela Bhatia, for instance, points out that an exclusivist reliance on violence as a means of struggle has deletrious implications for an organizational structure that is hierarchical, militaristic and secret. Even the use of retaliatory violence often creates a dynamics of its own, often out of proportion, in turn raising several ethical issues.⁵

 

In the struggle to bring about a democratic revolution, a movement needs the support of sympathetic intellectuals and civil society. This presence was obvious during the Emergency when countless teachers, writers, poets and journalists were thrown into jail as sympathizers of the revolution. Despite a hostile political environment, the power and visibility of the revolutionary writers’ associations was evident. Today, much of this incipient support has been vitiated, not only by global factors and state repression, but also the intractability of revolutionaries.

Take the case of Anuradha Ghandy. It is often asked: How did the daughter of a high profile lawyer of the Bombay High Court, a graduate of the city’s prestigious Elphinstone College, an M. Phil in Sociology, a girl born into privilege, come to choose a life of struggle and hardship in the treacherous jungles of Bastar, a rifle by her side and a tarpaulin sheet for a bedding? The answer may well lie in the times she lived in.⁶ More important perhaps was the power of the movement at that time to attract the finest minds in the universities. It is critical for the movement to recover that base. The signatories to the October 2009 Peace Appeal are not part of the Maoist mass base; yet their voices can help raise the issue globally and force international attention on the genocide that Operation Green Hunt signals.

 

As important as nurturing a base of sympathizers is the need to pay attention to issues of gender. It is impossible to imagine a nation or political institution that can be defined or constructed without a fundamental redefinition of the gender relationship in its political dimension. Though feminists have long written about gender and violent conflict, their voices are routinely marginalized and excluded, not only in the course of conflict but also in the course of theorizing conflict.

They have, for instance, questioned the assumption that poverty and bad governance in themselves are the cause of conflicts in the Third World. They also point out the continuing role of the western corporate and political involvement in the plundering of the natural resources of Third World countries. In highlighting the genderedness and militarization of the global economy, they emphasize how specific global, political and economic realities become an element in the local process of gendered social exclusions, and how specific local economic and political dynamics in turn become an element in the gendering of global redistribution of power.

Women have an active interest in processes of democratization and secularization of civil society. Their survival rests on the complete abatement of conflict and an elimination of all forms of conservatism and orthodoxy. Gujarat 2002 is a stark reminder of the grave assaults that women face in situations of conflict and moral policing. And this has more to do with patriarchal ideologies than with any specific religious ideology.

Unfortunately, since most ideological apparatuses, even those sensitive to the unanticipated and uncontrollable assaults on women during periods of crisis, see these as a reflection of larger cultural questions that have no immediate remedies, they often fail to focus on ensuring the security of women within the due process of law.

 

The fact that an increasing number of women are being killed in encounters does not by itself explain the gendered nature of violent conflict. Violent conflict produces dominant hierarchical masculinities and femininities, which in turn are marked by assumptions about men as soldiers and breadwinners and women as home-makers and caregivers. Without such a definition of masculinity through power and femininity through vulnerability, violent conflict could be very different. There are tangible structures of inequality and exclusion that support and enforce these assumptions, which if changed would transform the very nature of conflict.⁷

As example take the tribute paid to two leaders, one man and one woman, both killed in encounters.⁸ Even as the woman’s death is presented as a loss to the movement, the images used in the poem to celebrate her are dispiriting. The poet claims that she has redefined and revolutionized the meaning of woman from abala to sabala. By growing into a real woman warrior of the working class, a Kali on the battlefield, she has proved that women can be sabala. From a tender bud to the time of death, this veeranari, though town-bred, faced difficulties and overcame her fear of darkness of the midnight forest. Further, it is pointed out that though well-educated she was not arrogant. (Evidently, learning tempered with modesty and humility is not threatening.)

 

The man, in contrast, is described as having moved from south to north. His bravery shining through each battle, his poetry capturing the heartbeat of the people, echoes through the hearts and mountains of Dandakaranya. It describes him as born from the hill of the revolution, the womb of revolutionaries – Tekulagudem in Warangal.

These poems reflect the stereotypical and hierarchical masculinities and femininities that inform the movement even at the highest levels. For the woman who had risen to leadership, every step is perceived as an exception, a difficult struggle to redefine womanhood. For the man born in the womb of the revolution, drawn to armed struggle through college, it is only natural to strike terror in the heart of the enemy and write songs that echo through the mountains.

The focus on controlling sexuality, the cornerstone of patriarchy, operates not only in feudal neocolonial societies, but also in semi-feudal patriarchal revolutionary attitudes. The inherent belief that female sexuality must be controlled to maintain social order is responsible for the multilayered oppression of women, a belief which revolutions and revolutionaries too seem to share. This belief in the inevitability of marriage for women results in forced marriages, abduction of minor girls for marriage and sexual harassment of women. And perchance when women refuse to conform or raise questions related to democratic governance within parties, they are accused of sexual and moral-ethical misconduct.

Few women’s movements so far have been able to sum up their experiences, far less raise them to the level of strategic thinking and transmit them to the next generation. No wonder, the questions raised by the women’s movement have been routinely dismissed as diversionary and bourgeois, devoid of ideology and lacking in political perspective. Women are thus relegated to marginal roles and are absent in accounts of intellectual creativity or agency, as also in the front face of the leadership. Yet, a political perspective that is not nuanced by an understanding of gender as a structural and ideological fact remains seriously flawed.

 

Neglecting women’s questions both at the ideological and programmatic levels and dismissing them as trivial and ‘personal’, results in their active disempowerment as a class within the movement. The refusal to examine the fundamental and ubiquitous power relationship between men and women only serves to mask the power that men wield over women and guarantees immunity, especially to perpetrators of violence against women both within the party and outside. Terms like veeramatha and veerapatni, so rampant in revolutionary vocabulary, are extremely sexist terms. The glorification of motherhood/wifehood masks the active denial of entitlements and equal citizenship in practice, while idealizing sacrifice, service and unquestioning surrender to sons. The collapsing of all issues of women’s rights into those relating to liquor and prohibition reflects a blindness to the much larger, much more pervasive violence against women.⁹

 

Women have consistently raised the issue of the inadequate and ill-planned political education they receive.¹⁰ Yet, even for women who have entered the movement, there is little space to theorize the gendered nature of war or conflict even as they struggle to conquer the use of terms like imperialism and neocolonialism? Not that the women are ignorant. They enter the struggle to end oppression and build a new society, seeking the meaning and goals conspicuously absent in their lived realities. That is why the presence of educated women who are aware of the gap between theory and practice and their attempts that strive to bridge that gap are important for the movement.

Anuradha Ghandy, for instance, lectured regularly on the problems faced by women guerrillas, wrote and translated Naxal propaganda material, prepared charts with photos of political leaders and explained world affairs to local illiterates, even conducted classes on health issues. In the process, she continually attempted to address and change the patriarchal assumptions in the party.¹¹

 

For women to recognize and articulate the dilemma caused by their sexuality is a Sisyphean task. The fear of being labelled bourgeois and losing their battle for equality to men in armed struggle works as a powerful censoring agent. Even the fact that there are a large number of women in the armed squads and many are killed in encounters does not resolve the dilemma.

The fundamental problem faced by women in all (including militant) movements is the fact that they do not inhabit a space as citizens or as individuals with rights. Although the party struggles to accommodate, train and promote women to positions of leadership, there is an uneasy tension between the embedded patriarchal assumptions and the need to negotiate the actual presence of women and their rights as individuals into the democratic principles professed. Often women married to comrades killed in an encounter remain vulnerable and are exposed to abuse and violence, both from the police as well as groups in civil society; this even as their ‘martyred partners’ are glorified as having died for ‘a cause’.

The plight of the poor who are labelled Naxalite because of actual or imagined connection with the party is equally distressing. Even more poignant is the condition of young women who are forced to leave the party for political, personal or health reasons. Thayamma Karuna, who lost her husband in an encounter and left the party for health reasons, spoke of the difficulties of women who had left the party. The general assumption is that she had surrendered to the police. She described the condition of countless women like her who had given up family, community and friends for the party but had no way to speak out and tell their story. Unlike men who still find some support from family and community when they return, women suffer – unable to find a space even to explain why they left and where they stand. Assumed to be traitors to a cause that their accusers do not even support, they are judged and excluded.¹²

 

Let me end this brief note with several questions that disturbed us as interlocutors in the ‘failed’ peace talks between the PWG and the Government of Andhra Pradesh in 2004. These, I believe, are important and need to be debated.

The first is the role of the media. For the media to fulfil its watchdog role, the concern for peace should have been at the forefront of reporting on the issue. Neither individualism nor romanticism has any place in a process of ethical politics. Similarly in the peace process, there are no adversaries because there is a common and collective interest that binds all the parties.

 

When the Maoist leaders were in Hyderabad, the media was full of stories about the romanticism of the forest and the revolution. There was an over-exposure of the team that came for the talks – the leaders, the women, what they wore, what they ate and so on, driven by the very individualism that this persuasion of politics eschews. In a situation that called for the foregrounding of ethical politics, the tendency was to play up the adversarial mode of politics – the focus on participants as political opponents, statements of one party being pitted against statements of another – instead of writing about the different parties as participants in the peace process. This was not only a distortion of the process, but contributed in no small measure to undermining it.

The second issue has to do with the bearing of arms. The critical issue in the talks with the Naxalites hinged on whether they could bear arms in public. We, however, often forget that the ruling party has legitimate access and entitlement to arms, even military might. In a state marked by factional politics, a leader is one who carries arms, has private armies and is fully equipped with the latest weapons. Criminal gangs carry arms, cinema actors and members of their fan clubs carry arms, Naxalites carry arms. Yet, it is only the Naxalites who declare openly that they will carry arms as part of their political ideology. It is only the common citizen who does not carry arms, because s/he has the biggest ‘no-cost’ weapon in a democracy, the vote. It is ironical that those who come in through the vote choose to stay on solely by the power of the gun. In such a situation, how justified is the demand by the state or the police that the Naxalites lay down arms?

For the people, all arms are instruments of coercion, weapons of assault that even when used ‘in the interests of the people’ are by definition used arbitrarily, and therefore unjustly. That is why in the interest of democracy, the radical groups must be engaged in the debate that the gun represents the power of coercion and disproportionate authority.

The third question has to do with land reforms. For the Congress, the land reform programme essentially involves giving pattas to those already cultivating the land, without in any way changing existing relations. For the Naxalites, meaningful land reforms involve the redistribution of land and equitable distribution of resources. This reflects a fundamental difference in ideology and a divergence of interests.

The fourth question has to do with neutrality in political matters. Debates on political processes, including peace processes, must evaluate positions against the yardstick of human rights and democratic governance. Yet, in situations where political dissenters are under siege by the state, can there be any ‘neutral’ assessment of state action in relation to them?¹³

The current siege contemplated by the state must be assessed against the tremendous loss of life and organic leadership that we have witnessed in the course of these years and that will be erased in the ‘civil war’ that is likely to ensue. That cost (invisible because the poor don’t exist, only poverty does) must be weighed against the benefits development will bring us.

 

Footnotes:

1. Report of the Committee of Concerned Citizens (1997-2000), Hyderabad, 2000.

2. Tilak Gupta, ‘Maoism in India: Ideology, Programme and Armed Struggle’, Economic and Political Weekly 41(29), 22-28 July 2006, pp. 3172-3176.

3. K. Balagopal, ‘Maoist Movement in Andhra Pradesh’, Economic and Political Weekly 41(29), 22-28 July 2006, pp. 3183-3187.

4. The consistent targeting of human rights activists by vigilante groups, foisting of false TADA, POTA cases from which there seems to be no escape, is yet another strategy of the state to erode all vestiges of support and stamp out attempts by citizens to work for democratic rights. Binayak Sen is a recent and well-known example, but only one of a countless number consigned without hope of trial or defence to prison.

5. Bela Bhatia, ‘On Armed Resistance’, Economic and Political Weekly 41(29), 22-28 July 2006, pp. 3179-3183.

6. Rahul Pandita, ‘Anuradha Ghandy: The Rebel’, www.openthemagazine.com/article/nation/the-rebel, last accessed on 12 January 2010.

7. Dubravka Zarkov (ed.), ‘Introduction: On Militarism, Economy and Gender – Working in Global Contexts’, in Gender, Violent Conflict and Development, Zubaan (an imprint of Kali for Women), New Delhi, 2008, p. 5.

8. CPI(M-L) People’s War Central Committee, ‘Adarsha Gerillalu: Comrade Sukhdev and Comrade Padma’, Jung: Military Journal 4(2 & 3), July 2002-June 2003, pp. 55-60.

9. Vasanth Kannabiran, Volga, and Kalpana Kannabiran, ‘Women’s Rights and Naxalite Groups in AP’, Economic and Political Weekly 39(45), 6-12 November 2004, pp. 4874-4877.

10. This is particularly true for women in the revolutionary movements. Women have been raising issues of political education and equality for women from the time of the Telangana peasant struggle in the fifties. Long ago, speaking of the political classes held by the communist party during the Telangana peasant struggle, Kondapalli Koteswaramma said that they were like (inapa guggilu) the boiled gram made of iron pellets. Unswallowable. She also added that it was like (annaprasam nadu avakai pettinattu) feeding a child hot mango pickle at its first ceremonial solid feed. See Stree Shakti Sanghatana, We Were Making History: Life Stories of Women in the Telangana People’s Struggle, Kali for Women, New Delhi, 1990.

11. Rahul Pandita, op. cit., fn. 6.

12. The Rangavalli Memorial Trust was set up by her father to commemorate the life and work of Rangavalli who was killed in an encounter in 1999. It honours one woman for lifetime achievement and selects the best short story of the year for a prize. The prize for 2009 was awarded to Thayamma Karuna who in her acceptance speech described the plight of women who had left the party.

13. Kalpana Kannabiran, Volga and Vasanth Kannabiran, ‘Reflections on the Peace Process in Andhra Pradesh’, Economic and Political Weekly 40(7), 12-18 February 2005, pp. 610-612.