By Dr. Annavajhula J.C. Bose
Department of Economics, SRCC
Hundreds and thousands of students—many of them brilliant in their studies—and tribal youth have joined the Naxalite (alias Maoist) movement in India over the last five decades since its inception. What could have induced them to be with the Naxals and what could stop them to be so, is the concern of this post.
According to D’Mello (2018), everything other than Naxalism in India is the devil to be eliminated–there is nothing to approve of in the established social order except the Naxalites, and their more than half a century of revolutionary history to establish ‘revolutionary humanism’ in India. There are many appearances of this devil that D’Mello elaborates in his book which is indeed a long haul of critiquing Indian economy and society—the principal characteristics of India’s underdeveloped capitalism and the process of dependent and unequal development steered along the last six to seven decades by an Indian big business-state-multinational corporation ruling bloc, the 1989 period of monstrous inequality and rise of financial aristocrats, the incompatibility between capitalism and political democracy, the barbaric repression of the state machinery, and the rise of semi-fascism and sub-imperialism of the Hindutva nationalism. His discussion of the origins of Naxalism, the 1968 decade of revolutionary humanism, the Naxalite attempts at mobilizing the tribal and dalit masses during 1978-2003, the Maoist guerilla army tactics in the period 2004-2013 and finally the reimagining of ‘new democracy’ and anti-semifeudal revolution in India on the long road to a communitarian basis for socialism, all go a long way to inspiringly educate the students to be with the Naxals as the messiah. That Naxalism is not the devil is also conveyed by, for example, Chakravarti (2008) and Pandita (2011). The real devil is the deep-rooted socio-economic problems, not effectively attended to by the successive governments of India, that drive India’s left-wing movements. These writers have also pointed to the brutalization of the state and the corporates. This can immobilize the students in favour of the state and the corporates. They have also pointed to Naxal brutalization and whether this is reactive or proactive is a moot question. For D’Mello, it has always been reactive.
By contrast, according to the Indian government (and the parliamentary political parties underlying it), the Naxalites are the devil to be eliminated and the Communist Party of India (Maoist) as their main representative, has been designated by it as a terrorist organization under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. This could stop an authority-fearing student to be a Naxal.
D’Mello does not, of course, blindly support the Naxals. But, sadly, he does not come out very boldly in favour of the criticisms that have arisen against the Naxals from within the Marxist underclass in India and abroad so as to drop gun-loving guerilla Naxalism in favour of people-loving democratic political traditions working for the upliftment of the underdogs.
These criticisms could stop the youth from being with the Naxals. They are variously as follows: Indian rural realities are different from what the eyes of the Chinese Communist Party of the 1940s/50s saw in terms of semi-feudalism and semi-colonialism. The Maoist praxis is fundamentally un-Marxist. For, the Maoists have not overcome the deeply ingrained casteism and sexism of the Indian social order in the internal culture and norms of their party functioning. They have substituted militaristic terrorism for mass organizational work in rural areas. Guerilla actions are not subordinated to mass-line politics. They have ignored the urban proletariat altogether. They have isolated themselves from various popular progressive and democratic movements (e.g. Chattisgarh Mukti Morcha) in the country. The open political activity of mass work is replaced by the power and glory of armed struggle in terms of guerilla warfare, retreating to jungles and hills when smashed by the militaristic state, and exposing the people to the free-for-all onslaughts of the oppressors. Maoists as vanguard parties of radicalized and, perhaps more so, even non-radicalised middle class youth have not only substituted themselves for the self-activity of the masses, but also become ruthless and authoritarian, using terror as political instrument, imposing medieval forms of punishment through so-called people’s courts, and getting overly attracted to weapons in place of politics that sees people as fighters for justice rather than receivers of justice. Former Maoist women have pointed to routine drunkenness, rape and sexual torture by the male leaders in Naxalite camps. The leaders have thus abrogated to themselves the right to reproduce the brutalities practised by the exploitative order. In the name of “class struggle” the vanguard parties have become highly secretive and hierarchical and oligarchic. They are unelected, unaccountable bosses not subject to recall. They have indulged too much in internecine annihilation among themselves, which is reminiscent of Hitlerite or Stalinist murder of rivals. They have extracted taxes from people and taken commission cuts from the developmental projects of the government. Although they inflict definitive losses on their enemies now and then, their militarism is often more than matched by the state’s institutionalization of encounter killings and the use of private lynch mobs (vigilante squads) whereby countless innocent people have been raped, looted and massacred. Rape becomes a day in, day out weapon of cops and vigilante squads against the tribal women. Even as the tribals have supported Naxalites in many parts of India, they have suffered terribly caught between the Maoist madness and the state madness. This is not all. The tribal cause is surely not the Maoist cause. The tribals, with still unfailing faith in democracy (rooted in the needs and aspirations of the villages and local councils, which provides the bare minimum for its people, and respects that the original inhabitants of the land have a role in charting their own future) want to get back the ancestral resources that have been taken away from them whereas the Maoists want to overthrow the state (Government of India) and establish a ‘classless society’. As a ‘hit and run movement’ they have become devils pitted against the state as devil and the natural resource grabbing corporates as devils. Sandwiched in-between these devils and facing extinction due to the consequent merciless invasion and pounding of the Janus-faced Avatar—a la James Cameron’s globalised movie–are the adivasis or the tribals, the original inhabitants of the land who populate the jungle heartlands of India. How can they save themselves from their economic and social dislocation? Violence begets violence and nothingelse as described in the Gospel of Matthew that is not to the liking of D’Mello.
For a student who has done a course on ‘political economy’ in conjunction with a course on Indian economy and society, D’Mello (2018) can be taken as a scholastic and activist application of Marxism and Leninism in terms of Maoist thought and practice to overcome the inequalities and multi-dimensional poverty of the Indian social order. Reading such a book, not just with romantic love but with critical thinking and non-dogmatic perception of ground realities, is useful at least in figuring out who is and who is not DEVIL–like the terrifying sickness and death due to the Corona Virus–in India.
References
Chakravarti, Sudeep. 2008. Red Sun. Penguin India.
D’Mello, Bernard. 2018. India after Naxalbari: Unfinished History. Monthly Review Press. New York/Aakar Books, Delhi.
Pandita, Rahul. 2011. Hello, Bastar. Westland.
Arthashastra 