The Maoist-Naxalite rebellions in one-third of the vast territory is an important issue today. They recently beheaded a police inspector; they shot dead 17 policemen in another skirmish; and in Bengal they secured the release of 23 of their jailed comrades in exchange for one policeman they had captured. I just read somewhere that a pitched gun-battle is now raging in Lalgarh. The situation is extremely grim.
Let us begin with what Vir Sanghvi has written, in a column titled “Let’s listen to common sense.”
Sanghvi begins by outlining the contours of a broad consensus among the urban middle class on Maoists and Naxalites. The first point he notes is that we all hold that “Naxalites lie on the margins of our society.” Further, that “they have been shamefully neglected by the Indian State.” He follows this with a damning statement:
“Indian politicians have treated adivasis and others like them with a neglect that borders on contempt, taking the line that they are too weak to protest and can, therefore, be forgotten about.”
He goes on to make another damning statement:
“We understand what this protest is about and we recognise that the Indian State has failed.”
Sanghvi calls for a return to peace, the rule of law, a redressal of wrongs. Sounds like common sense and balanced journalism to me.
Gurcharan Das talks a vastly different language. The title of his column is blunt: “No ifs and buts, defeat Maoist violence.” There is no subtlety in the message of the author of a recent book on the “subtle art of dharma.” He is calling for strong State action against those people who are at the “margins of society.” He believes they are “terrorists.” However, it is this second para of his that somehow does not ring true. He sounds not like an independent thinker, but like a shill for the regime:
[Arundhati] Roy thinks that India pretends to be a democracy in order to impress the world. I think our democracy is as real as my grandson’s thumb. Yes, it has many flaws but it is legitimate. We need to reform the police; speed up justice; make babus accountable; stop criminals from entering politics; etc... Yet, this democracy has done a colossal amount of good. It has raised the prospects and self-esteem of the lowest in our society and protected us from the great genocides of the 20th century. Gujarat, to its disgrace, may have killed 2,000 people…. One may be justified in taking up arms against a loathsome African or Latin American dictator but not against the Indian state.
Methinks Das lives in cloudcuckooland. It is not unsurprising, therefore, that the author of a book on “being good” ends up reposing full faith in the central State’s police minister, in charge of a force that specializes in “being bad”:
For once we have a home minister who understands the Maoist threat to our nation and is determined to act with courage. It is pathetic that he should be slowed by endless debate on development versus police action; or whether helicopters should fire on rebels and risk civilian casualties. We have talked for two decades. Enough is enough. No ifs or buts, you cannot negotiate with someone with a gun. Now is the time for action.
Shoot the fuckers, says Das.
Actually, we cannot negotiate with The State because The State has all the guns. People rise up against such a predatory State not because of any “ideology,” but only to preserve themselves. And most of these people don't have guns. They fight with bows and arrows, spears and machetes.
Das’ unequivocal support for our “democracy” only serves to paint a rosy picture of a huge house of horrors. He professes to be a “free market” kind of thinker – but there is a lot of difference between a free market (which means Liberty from the State) and “democracy,” which is just the meaningless ritual of the vote. The free market allows us to earn our keep, to obtain our needs, to survive. The vote only gets us one group of rogues or the other to plunder and oppress us. I have never supported Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma because all she harps on is about “democracy.” I have never heard her use the terms “free trade” or “free market.” Das’ column also does not advocate free trade and free markets for our poor adivasis. He wants their revolt sternly suppressed. Methinks there is nothing subtle about his dharma at all. His only dharma is The State.
Not Gurcharan Das, it is Vir Sanghvi who is really being good, especially when he says:
We understand what this protest is about and we recognise that the Indian State has failed.
By "we" he is referring to the entire urban middle class.
Get to grips, folks. It’s not just that the cities are hell-holes, that every small town is a disaster – even the jungles are revolting. Manipur, Kashmir, and all these 230 Maoist-Naxalite affected districts – these tell a story of State Failure that is probably unparalleled in the history of the world. So many millions of ordinary people did not revolt against the East India Company in 1857. There is something big happening in India, something called widespread rebellion. We need to wake up. Read Sanghvi. Das' column will put you to sleep. It is opium on a bright Sunday morning. After reading this kinda shit I need a strong joint myself.
Sauvik, I consider myself a hardcore libertarian, but have to disagree with you on this. There is only one way to deal with AK-47 wielding thugs, and that, to quote you paraphrasing Gurcharan Das, is to "Shoot the fuckers".
ReplyDeleteWe need free markets, better roads, less duties, more freedom, but no way can we co-exist with "Naxals" whose only solution to societal evils is to basically go around killing policemen. We have to have law and order before anything else -- and for that these Naxals have to either give up their guns or have them taken from their cold, dead hands. :-)
Thats not entirely true. Sure the naxals are violent thugs but its the police and armed forces that have acted with impunity and killed and harmed people. Laws like AFSPA have only given them a free hand.
ReplyDeleteFirst the police should improve their own conduct so that we can separate the good and bad and create a situation of law and order.
The armed forces have abused their monopoly of force and as such they deserve no support.
@D: Civil government is based on LOCAL policing, itself based on local self-government, that too, based on the citizen's right to keep and bear arms.
ReplyDeleteThis Naxalism-Maoism is a LOCAL problem. There are some horrible things going on in these areas, including State-armed groups like Sulwa Judum; these have been going on for long, and strong central force can never be a policy I can ever subscribe to. I will never sanction the public morality of murdering citizens in revolt. The answers must be POLITICAL.
Further, you seem to expect that some sort of "good" objective can be achieved, good for the commonwealth at large, that is, from this Total Chacha Central State - or, indeed, from its bhateejas. I suffer from no such delusions. I have always believed in local self-government. The local people must form their own little "polities" and give up arms in favour of peaceful, gainful and free trade, and co-operation, in harmony with the natural laws of justice.
You see, what has ultimately gone wrong is their PHILOSOPHY - which is the Strong Central State as the Great Big Thing combined with a hatred for The Market.
Don't blame me: I went to the LSE to study comparative LOCAL government in 1989. I had seen it coming all along. Just didn't guess they would come to such a sorry pass.
I think the underlying feeling of abandonment felt by the poor is legitimate, but it stems from their surrender of their own fate to the State and the fact that the State consistantly fails to change it.
ReplyDeleteThey do not want freedom from this socialist state, but to replace it with a totalitarian one that will erase their feeling of inequality - and they aptly choose mindless violence to make their point.
Communist hatred towards the socialist State is very different from Libertarian hatred towards the same in terms of agenda as well as method.
The enemy of the enemy is not always a friend.
As Sanghvi put it, "It is entirely possible to sympathise with the victims but to disagree profoundly with the people who claim to represent them."
@Madam: Exactly. To "disagree profoundly with the people who claim to represent them," as Vir Sanghvi put it, is very different from SHOOTING them. What it really means is that POLITICAL methods must be used.
ReplyDeleteJust clearing up what I meant in the earlier comment. There are currently thousands of armed Naxal guerrillas basically wreaking havoc. Killing policemen at random is not going to help the poor tribals -- or anyone else, for that matter.
ReplyDeletePlus, if the government were to give these Maoists/Naxals their own little pieces of India, they wouldn't set up free-market libertarian zones -- they'd make all the mistakes that old Mao did, collectivization of property, cultural revolutions etc. It wouldn't make anyone's life better. You'd have little banana-republic socialist hells instead of one big socialist hell.
I agree that a political libertarian solution is only way to remove poverty in India, but for that these Naxals and anyone else sporting AK-47s (or turning to violence) have to be eliminated -- preferably peacably. But they can't be allowed to just go on doing what they're doing.
I'm with you on gun ownership. But people who kill innocent people at random? Even Adam Smith would have agreed that it's the State's job to do whatever's necessary to deal with them.
@Sauvik,
ReplyDeleteHow is the Naxalism any different from terrorism? Looking at your logic, we can apply the same to terrorists who attacked Mumbai. That also makes India a failed state. Ohh I exactly do not know what you and Vir Sanghvi might have written then. I guess you did not say to shun the gun and speak with terrorists.
How can you go and speak with the goons who behead a human being?
Why do you think naxals are there in a state being ruled by Communists? Another simple question and also hypothetical one. If we assume there are elections now and also assume naxals contest them and also assume that none of the contestants show money power, do you think Naxals are going to win??? I will say big no. Naxals do not even know whats Marxism. I doubt if anyone has read Das Capital. I doubt if they even know who and what Mao stands for.
I heard some enlightened souls saying that naxals fight for a society of equals. What does "equal" here mean? You may create a society where there is equal distribution of wealth but still there won't be equals. One may be more intelligent, one may be more loved, one may be more beautiful than others. How can you then create a society of equals? What I am trying to say is the ideology of naxals is itself misplaced. And to fight it you need the gun. Look at Andhra Pradesh. The once worst affected state of Naxalism has been quite for the past 5 years. Its because it has effective policing.
In my native village there was no telephone. BSNL invests 50 lakhs and puts a telephone exchange and everyone gets a phone. What do naxals do then? They blast the exchange since its difficult for them to hide. BSNL then again puts a single tower so that atleast panchayat office has the phone. And then again they blast it.
@ D and Dheeraj: I stick to my stand above - local self-government, local policing, local polities, an armed citizenry.
ReplyDeleteIt is well said that when two armed men meet, they treat each other with respect. Mumbai massacre represents State Failure: an armed citizenry would have finished off 100 such goons in a few hours.
Thus, the AK-47 is not the problem. The problem is a political order, with elections, that is NOT working to solve political problems and create a political order.
The only solution is POLITICS.
I recommend my column titled "The Purpose of Politics" available here:
http://indefenceofliberty.org/story.aspx?id=381&pubid=120
@Sauvik,
ReplyDeleteI did not read your Purpose of Politics article. I will do that after I post this comment.
You say politics will solve Naxalism. But here Naxals do not believe in democratic process of elections. Every time they issue warnings to people asking them not to cast their vote. Then why should the govt deal with them in democratic or constitutional way when the other side has no belief in either of them.
Yes the socio-politico-economical problems need to be solved. But before that I think the police should eliminate the top rung leaders among naxals which will effectively cripple the movement for couple of years and will let the govt concentrate on the problems people have.
Ok I read your article Purpose of Politics. This comment is regarding the above mentioned article and has nothing to do with Naxalism.
ReplyDeleteTo say let the million flowers bloom, I can give you only one example. See our neighbors Pakistan. They did not have proper centralized rule and gave autonomous power to the tribal chiefs in SWAT, Waziristan, Baloch and various other areas in NWFP. Look whats happening there. No govt control, utter chaos. Today you are saying that Nehru was wrong in having a powerful centralized govt rule. But Nehru faced total different situation then. If not Nehru, then the concept of India wouldn't have been there. South India might be a separate country. The India which are you are seeing today might have been 5 different countries if not for Nehru.
I think if Nehru has done any good in his life, that is uniting India as a single land mass (probably might have failed in uniting people)
@Dheeraj: You must do me the courtesy of reading what I have asked you to before putting your bullshit on the page. What fucking nonsense! What do mean by "the police should eliminate the top rung leaders among naxals which will effectively cripple the movement"?
ReplyDeleteYou haven't understood anything. You are a "nationalist." This is the result of long political miseducation. A political order can only be based on individual rights, private property and liberty. You seem to think that The State exists to enforce an order on a disorderly people - a very erroneous Hobbesian view. In reality, a civil government only exists to preserve an order that is already present. The only way to do that is through politics, not shooting the top leadership of a marginalised and oppressed people.
Please rethink your disastrous views. You sound like a police agent, not a citizen.
And let the entire nation read this:
ReplyDeleteLudwig von Mises: "The liquidation of all dissenters is the condition that will bring us what the communists call freedom." - Liberty and Property
I apologize if my statements made you insane. I do not know what made you angry.
ReplyDelete"Bullshit, fucking nonsense" WOW. That was totally uncalled for. A respected author and journalist losing temper at a person who reads his blog and comments on it. If you did not like it moderate it. Delete the comments or parts of it and try to convince me or atleast warn me.
I did not say to go and kill the poor people. I said kill the leaders of naxal movement who have ordered mass massacres. If I go and kill a policeman will I not be hanged. Will the govt have negotiations with me? Don't you think all the naxals who have committed gross crimes (beheading of a police officer) need to be punished.
"not shooting the top leadership of a marginalised and oppressed people". You did not read my comments properly. Naxals are fighting to just show their existence. They do not have the popular support. If only they had it they would have won all the elections. If there is anyone who can or should fight for the marginalised people, it is people like you. Naxals are making life of those oppressed people much worse.
This is the first time I am reading your blog and I see that you are big journalist and obviously much more knowledgeable than I am. I don't think I can argue with you.
And something unrelated. Is being "Nationalist" a crime?
Sauvik, one may not agree with the stand taken by Gurcharan Das, but you can hardly deny that it is a perfectly reasonable one. All he is saying is that going around killing innocent people (the Naxals, incidentally, do kill a lot of villagers based on mere suspicion that they are police informers) is wrong and that violence is wrong no matter what the ends. Second, whatever the flaws of Indian democracy (what they call an illiberal democracy) it is, as Das rightly points out, still better than a tyrannical state like China or even Pakistan. I know i would rather live in India than in either of these two countries, or even in North Korea or some Saudi states. I think you're being a little unfair on Das, and certainly you sound more unreasonable than him.
ReplyDeleteAlso, let's not forget that Naxalites are very much against development, free markets and everything you stand for - they're something called Maoists, for god's sake. Surely, Sauvik, you the great liberatarian are not supporting a Maoist ideology? Because that's the Naxal end.
ReplyDeletedevil's advocate et al - so if you oppose the naxal maoist murderers so vehemently why do you find it difficult to oppose the brutal state with the same fervour?.
ReplyDeleteand what is 'wrong' with being a nationalist?.
i dont know who said this,but it is a powerful reminder:
"Skin a socialist and you will find a nationalist; skin a nationalist and you will find a socialist. Two sides of the same counterfeit coin."
the nationalists of india are equivalent to the neo-cons of the US. the think in terms of 'evil them' and 'good us'.and always are willing to use the state to enforce their ideas
unilateral restoration of the right to property will be a good first step for the state to de-scalate the violence . more violence is never an answer. the US fucked up the middle east for decades and when its time for blowback, the only response is more violence. that is the chicken hawk theory of justice.not libertarian.
ReplyDeletegurucharan das is no different than an irving kristol
The point is violence can only lead to yet more violence and savagery. Nobody doubts that the State - the police - is violent with impunity, and that their powers should be curbed. Likewise the Naxal violence should be curbed. But first the State must put it's own house in order.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Dyslexic for those highly pertinent comments. What I would like to add to the point on the "ideological divide" between a libertarian rebel and a Maoist rebel is this: Today, Prakash Karat has been quoted saying that "Maoists are NOT leftists." Arundhati Roy is a leftist and she hates them too. Peculiar ideological divide when The State, by its Constitution, is supposed to be "Socialist." Reflect on that!
ReplyDeleteSauvik, while I agree that the State is the primary problem, when you say "So many millions of ordinary people did not revolt..." you completely miss a point - the power of ideologies. India is a land where poverty, hunger and deprivation hardly raise a whimper of protest. But ideology is a powerful motive that drives people to kill and get killed. Try depriving half of Mumbai water for a week. Or drown thousands of her inhabitants in rainwater. You will hear nary a protest. Try lifting the ban on Salman Rushdie's book - there will be riots and arson and dozens will die on the streets. The Maoist problem is local in the sense that they deftly exploited local grievances. But there is as much difference between desperate locals turning to violence to express their anger and Peoples War as there is between a kite and a 747 Jumbo jet. People have never risen in rebellion for want of food in India, and never will. The Maoists army exist solely due to the organizers who are neither poor nor ill-educated. For a fighting force all that matters is top leadership. The Maoists have ideologically driven and competent top leadership. The chatterati delude themselves that the Maoist rebellion is a people's rebellion.
ReplyDeleteAnd most of these people don't have guns. They fight with bows and arrows, spears and machetes
You really mean it? The fact is, today Maoists can outgun the best armed of Indian forces. And don't overestimate the prowess of the latter because they have 'all the guns'. Our policing is so ineffective against real criminals that it took the best part of three decades to finish off a two-bit poacher like Veerappan, armed with nothing more sophisticated than country made guns.
And what triggered 1857? - it was not hunger, poverty or even the humiliation of being subjugated by a foreign race - it was the supposed slight to somebody's religious sensibilities!
ReplyDeleteIt is high time that the poverty-and-hunger-creates-terrorists theory be consigned to the dustbin of history.
@Murali: Constitutional government, the rule of law, these great civilizing ideas are only about limiting the powers and discretion of those who wield coercive State authority. What you are advocating is giving them free license - against a supposed "enemy" of society at large. This is suicidal for all hopes of a stable political order.
ReplyDeleteWhen the gangs of thuggees and pindaris were suppressed by the British, thousands were tried in courts, and most of the work of the administration lay in assembling together all the required evidence. That is the civilized and legal way of doing things.
And as for the bows and arrows: some months ago, masses of forest-dwellers marched down the streets of Calcutta in protest, armed with their traditional weapons. I saw the pictures. I saw the tv report.
What you are advocating is giving them free license - against a supposed "enemy" of society at large. This is suicidal for all hopes of a stable political order.
ReplyDeleteNo, I don't advocate anything like that. But what is the immediate solution? I don't know. The establishment of constitutional government and rule of law can't take place as long as Maoists have the upper hand, simply because they don't believe in any of them and are not fighting for them even for name's sake. For anything to happen, that power has to be broken first. There is no doubt in my mind that the government's strategy is flawed.
And no, I don't think that good governance is a guarantee against ideologically driven insurgencies. It can reduce the chances and even the amount of mass support, but quite often, ideologies based on identity trumps everything else.
@Murali: You say:
ReplyDelete"The establishment of constitutional government and rule of law can't take place as long as Maoists have the upper hand, simply because they don't believe in any of them and are not fighting for them even for name's sake."
My question: Does our The State believe in these ideals? Has it ever? What great ideal are its men supposed to go shooting other men for?
And as far as the battle between ideologies is concerned, ideas have to be fought with ideas. This is the method of POLITICS.
Maoists have no right to fight for the oppressed people. They are not the leaders of marginalized society. Medha Patkar can be said as a leader. She did not kill any policeman but bought the entire state and central govt, supreme court and world bank to their knees. Had Maoists fought for the tribes getting affected by Sardar Sarovar dam, the plight of the tribes would have never seen light.
ReplyDeleteIf the maoist menace is not controlled by the state using the force then every tom dick harry would then take a gun and go on killing spree, endorse himself saying he is fighting against corruption, against injustices of upper castes and what not.
Govt exists not only to preserve an existing order but also to get the society back to order when its in turmoil.
Aristotle, Plato, Ludvig von Misses, Rousseau, Locke ... all are good in books and political discussions and nothing more.
@Dheeraj; You could not be more wrong. Of course, the purpose of government is to enable and foster social co-operation. But they have not achieved this, have they? Medha Patkar is leading some oppressed people, I am leading the oppressed charsis and ganjeras, and the Moists and Naxalites are leading their people. Who is The State leading? Who is Manmohan or Chidambaram leading?
ReplyDeleteFurther, about the great philosophers, politics is all about ideas. If we substitutes good books for guns we will descend to the level of savages, if, indeed, we are not already there. Civilized and free people have no other option but to choose politics as the way of resolving public disputes. This is the only civilized and knowledge-intensive way to achieve public order.