Being the armchair activist that I am, I just had to comment on the recent developments in the Red corridor of India. Namely, the Naxalite insurgency.
First things first. I don't really understand why everybody on Wikipedia is arguing about who is a naxalite and who isn't. Is a Maoist a naxalite automatically? Does CPI (M) mean CPI Marxist or CPI Maoist? And then what does the denomination Marxist-Leninist mean? Can we have a Russo-Sino-German Marxist-Leninist-Maoist CPI? Guess that's the only permutation remaining.
Kudos to India. Only India can encourage such schism and get away with it. All in the name of tolerance. However, I don't want to comment on the Indian government. All I want to know is the why, what and where of Naxalite insurgency.
It all began 20 years ago(says wikipedia). It really does not matter, when it began. What matters is the alarming proportions it is reaching. And even more alarming is the charming Indian "Head-in-the-sand" attitude towards it. Discussing the recent massacre of close to seventy five policemen in the jungles of Dantewada, somebody remarked very sweetly, "Why are they even doing this? Don't they know they cannot be successful"? Whoa. Cannot be successful? If moving from one tiny Naxalbari and creating an entire Red Corridor extending until the southern reaches of the country isn't being successful, I don't know what else is.
However, for us chosen ones who are blessed by the capitalist economy, Naxalism is as difficult to understand as hunger. We, who overeat and suffer from various diseases of excess, will scarcely know what it means to be deprived. The deprivation here is not even of the luxuries of life, it is of the basic needs of the flesh. Having faith in an ideology that esteems annihilation as a solution to problems must spring from desperation, I would think. It is the same desperation which drives people to suicide when the rains fail...only now the outlet is different. I have to concede that at some level, at some primal level, maybe when I am in a special mood, I can understand the Naxalite ideology. Only the ideology, but never the actions. I don't empathise, and I don't sympathise with them, because killing of the innocent has never ever changed anything for the good.
Yes, not all of them might be going hungry to bed, I agree. Some might just be on the look out for disrupting peace in general keeping with the tendency of trouble making. But what gave birth to this was not this general keeping. The mother of the ideology lies in the typical Indian indecision and inequalities which creep into our daily lives. Poverty gave birth to Naxalism, and poverty fuels it now. When we crush this insurgency, we must remember that we are just curing the symptom. The disease continues to fester, in the hearts and hungry bellies of millions out there in the scrubs of Jharkhand and Chattisgarh. Violence is the mark of many a revolution. And with many susceptible people to fall prey, this violence is going to extend to areas far far beyond the current red corridor.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. There will be no more farmer suicides in Vidarbha. There will be police ambushes this summer. We are moving from strength to strength.
posted by Anupama. @ 8:24 pm
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