Green of this valley is Red

The Maoist insurgency has popular support among Dalits and adivasis. This is not a law and order problem, as the PM thinks, but consequence of a failed State

Mohan Guruswamy Delhi

The Indian establishment seems to have finally woken up to the fact that while they have been obsessed with economic growth and India's place in the world, the country's hinterland is witnessing an awakening of another kind. A raging insurgency, with its epicentre in the adivasi homelands of central India, is fast engulfing at least a fifth of India's districts. Over 200 million people live in areas where militant Naxalism takes on the Indian State. This is probably the last communist ideology-inspired insurgency in the world, but the scale dwarfs every such conflict the world has known save in China that ended with Mao's victory.

China has moved on a great deal, and China's chairman is no longer the Naxalites' inspiration. In fact, China's chairman too is part of the enemy. On December 20, 2007, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh formally declared war on Naxalites when he addressed a high-level conference on internal security comprising chief ministers, police and intelligence chiefs, top civil servants and representatives of most political parties. The prime minister gave the clarion call to crush the Naxalites. 

Having travelled several times through the 'affected' areas in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, I have little hesitation in testifying that the insurgency has considerable popular support, particularly among Dalits and adivasis for whom trickle-down has meant a little more of little less. In the forest areas of central India — police, forest and excise departments are hated. This is not a mere law and order problem, but a consequence of a failed State. It calls for a revamp of the public administrative system and new paradigms of equity and justice.

The prime minister has a bureaucratic response to this crisis which has gripped six states. The government will now raise 25 more battalions of police, for the CRPF and other para military forces. It is unfortunate that he is looking at this as a law and order problem. One would have thought Manmohan Singh would have known that more coercion by the State will only beget more violence against it by the people.

However, the prime minister's threat of more force got favourable response with all the participants of the conference, including the Congress, CPM and BJP chief ministers. In his closing remarks, Singh said that conferences of this nature send a strong message that the “political leadership of the country can rise above political and party affiliations when it comes to facing national challenges, particularly those concerning internal security”. It seemed that the entire national political spectrum was not just speaking but thinking as one.

The spread of Naxalism is an indication of the sense of desperation and alienation that is sweeping over large sections of our nation who have been not only systematically marginalised but also cruelly exploited and dispossessed in their homelands. Historian Nihar Ranjan Ray once described the central Indian adivasis as “the original autochthonous people of India”. Anthropologist Verrier Elwin stated this more emphatically when he wrote: “These are the real swadeshi products of India, in whose presence all others are foreign. These are ancient people with moral rights. They were here first and should come first in our regard.” Like indigenous people all over the world, India's adivasis too have been savaged and ravaged by later people claiming to be more 'civilised'. They still account for almost 8 per cent of India's population and are its most deprived and oppressed section.