34 Maoist Movements in India: Issues and Challenges

Contents

1.      Objective

2.      Introduction

3.      Learning Outcome

4.      Factors influencing Maoist Movements

5.      Necessary Conditions

6.      Sufficient Conditions

7.      Conclusion

1. Objective

The objective of this module is to introduce you to the issues and challenges of Maoist movements in India. As several factors have dictated the contours of this movement, this module will allow you to introspect into diverse structural processes and discursive conditions that make the possibilities of any collective action indefinite, fluid, and situationally contingent.

2. Introduction

The Maoist/Naxal movements (these words used alternately though they refer to different phases of the movement) in India, which would complete 50 years in May 2017, have drawn the attention of many scholars and activists by now. While it is true that such movements have been able to draw our attention to the plights of poor tribals and dalits, it is equally true that the Maoist themselves are to be blamed for restricting this ‘political’ struggle to certain pockets having little base among the mass. Though the leaders of such movements claim to have maintained certain ideological and strategic uniformity, these movements have taken several trajectories and shades over the years and its leaders have maintained critical differences on many issues. Thus, the beginning of Naxalbari uprising in 1967 took the shape of an armed uprising of peasants against the landlords by a group of revolutionaries in the Darjeeling district of West Bengal. But in 1980s, in the second phase of the movement (Banerjee 2006a), rethinking took place on the part of some survivors of the first phase. Participation in parliamentary politics and trade union activity then became the possible path for them. Even though some became ‘revisionists’ or ‘counter-revolutionists’, a mixture of the line of armed struggle with mass mobilisation through open fronts was favoured by some. Fragmentation was a common feature of the Maoists groups during 1970 and 80s. Again, in the third phase, in 2004, leaders of scattered and divided fractions of Maoist could create a single revolutionary party, the CPI (Maoist). Further, despite their critique of the parliamentary system, the CPI (Maoist) changed its stance in 2009 and started developing tacit understanding with regional parties like Rashtriya Janata Dal, Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and Trinumul Congress (Verma 2011: 11). Despite these differences, there are some strong commonalities among those who identify them as Maoists or Naxals. Keeping in view the changing shades and colours of Maoist movements, we would treat these as different phases of the same movement and therefore use the plural word ‘movements’ to refer to them.

3. Learning Outcome

In this module, we would learn about the way Naxal/Maoist movements have grew in India, the factors that contributed to its sustenance for the last five decades and the consequences of armed struggle over the lives of marginalised tribals and dalits. The discussion would also allow students to critically review the activities of the Maoists and decide whether and to what extent the movement poses a ‘threat’ to India’s security.

4. Factors Influencing Maoist Movement

It is often argued that the major reasons of Maoist movements in India are poverty, inequality, lack of development and want of primary services. Sundar (2011) has labelled this dominant liberal thinking as “root cause perspective”. Ghosh (2003, 2015) has termed such factors ‘necessary conditions’ which very often play a critical role in explaining the origin of many social movements. The necessary conditions include several socio-economic factors like poverty, inequality, land alienation and eviction, displacement, under-development, unemployment, etc. For instance, the Maoist movements have flourished in the backward regions domesticated by the tribals and dalits. The necessary postulate that results out of such argument is that Maoist will find it difficult to sustain if this ‘gap’ is bridged. Going by such logic, the Indian state has announced a number of developmental projects. Despite very strong arguments in favour of this approach, ‘development’ alone does not explain the rise of Maoism in any area. Logically speaking, factors like “poverty, deprivation, oppression and neglect” identified by Bandhopadyaya committee (GoI 2008: 3) are present in many other parts of the country that has nothing to do with Maoism. According to Nandini Sundar (2011), Jhabua in western Madhya Pradesh and Dantewada in Chhattisgarh share similar socio-economic conditions. Yet, Dantewada is the heartland of the Maoist movement while Jhabua is a site for remarkable non-violent movement (Narmada Bachao Andolan). Similarly, Naxalites are absent in western India despite the presence of sizeable number of adivasis there. Scholars have therefore preferred to contextualise Maoist movements by regions as areas with better records of development also witness the growth of insurgent activities as compared to less developed districts.

As against the arguments of ‘root cause perspective’, Maoism did not die a natural death in areas that witnessed ‘development’. One of the reasons for the sustenance of Maoism is that it serves as a form of ‘political protest’ (Judge 2015: 248) putting up stiff ‘political challenge’ to the ruling elites like landlords, capitalists including the state apparatus at local level. Maoists also represent a political movement based on a distinct ideology. As a political formation or group(s), the Maoists have much similarity with many other political parties particularly of Left variety. Thus, they maintain a hierarchy of structure with top leadership dictating terms, collect fund to maintain their operations, change ideology and strategy to spread across regions, stress on local/regional issues and develop tacit understanding with regional/local political parties and groups in opposition to the ruling elite. We need to take contingence of these political processes in evaluating the strength of Maoists in a particular area.

Another reason for their sustenance is the costs of the very model of ‘capitalist development’ that the state follows. It has been argued that the neo-liberal policy pursued by the Indian state since 1991 had led to displacement and deprivation of the tribals in large numbers. The state has therefore not altered the ‘basic structure of exploitation’ (Sundar 2011) even though it spends crores of money to ‘develop’ Naxalite affected areas. Hoelscher et al. (2012) have shown that mining projects undertaken in recent years have “pushed” local people to support anti-capitalist and anti-foreign stance of the Maoist in order to save their land. To these authors, increased violence is a result of “pull factors” as mining industry and Maoist movements are correlated.

One, therefore, needs to go beyond the conventional models to explain the phenomenon and look for alternative reasons. Ghosh (2003) has called them ‘sufficient conditions’. These conditions include an acute sense of discrimination among the youth in particular, emergence of a strong elite leadership, political interest and manipulation, state policies and actions, easy accessibility to external support and geographical location. Let us now discus these conditions in some detail.

5. Necessary Conditions

The significance of necessary conditions like poverty, unemployment, backwardness, deprivation, land question, displacement, exploitation, marginalisation have found prominence in any analysis of social movement in a country like India. The rise of Naxalite/Maoist movements also depicts the same story. Thus, The Naxalbari movement came into being as a result of prevailing social and economic issues. The West Bengal State Secretariat of the CPI (M) while conducting an enquiry into the uprising, recognised that “behind the peasant unrest in Naxalbari lies a deep social malady – malafide transfers, evictions and other anti-people actions of tea gardeners and jotedars” (Quoted in Dixit 2010). All the regions in which the Naxal movement took place are ones with alarming levels of poverty. Alienation of tribal land was a major issue that crippled their economic welfare. This was evident in good measure in the Srikakulam Naxal movement. Andhra Pradesh accounted for the highest incidence of tribal land alienation in the country with non-tribals owning more than half the land in the scheduled areas (Banaji 2010: 136). In the Kondeamodalu in East Godavari, the Maoist took up the demands of indebtedness of the tribals, their exploitation by money lenders and farm wages (Sinha 1989). One of the major services that the Maoist cadres have provided is to offer protection for villagers from confiscation of assets by moneylenders (Kapur et al 2012).

The Expert Group set up by the Planning Commission of Government of India (2008) to look into the issues of ‘development’ of Naxal/Maoist affected areas also observed that the affected districts suffer from lack of proper governance and appropriate implementation of poverty amelioration programmes. And since economic globalisation, the dispossession and oppression of tribals and dalits in India have provided the Maoists a major platform to launch movement. 

We may use the example of Lalgarh in West Midnapur, West Bengal to explain the issue. This place became famous for Maoist activities in recent past. It is an undulated forest area within Junglemahal occupied mainly by the tribal communities belonging to the Santal, Bhumij and Sabar, along with the Mahatos who are recognized as an OBC Community in West Bengal. The people here generally have little or no landholding, except a very few who enjoy political authority. The area virtually has no irrigation facility. The marginal economy is centred round collection of minor forest produces like sal leaves (for making leaf-plates), forest tubers, babui grass (for making rope) and kendu leaves (for making bidi). The sale of these products is done through the middlemen at a much lower price than that in the market. Most of the young men and women are unemployed and engaged as occasional labourers with very low wage rate. People here are forced to go to namaal (low-land distant areas with rich agricultural prospects) as seasonal agricultural wage labourers at a cheap wage rate. Junglemahal being an underdeveloped area is marked by absolute poverty and dearth of proper healthcare and educational facilities. The poor people are, therefore, deprived of their basic requirements for generations (Midya et. al. 2012).

It is under such circumstance, the outside Maoists leaders initially chose some areas of Junglemahal to build up their organizational bases in late 1990s. Their presence was felt during 1996-97 when they were trying to achieve higher price for babui rope and kendu leaves in Banspahari area. In several other places where the Maoists operate in the country, the immediate issues of the tribals or dalits are seriously addressed through armed resistance. These ‘modus operandi’ often allowed them to break new grounds, spread influence and could establish them as ‘protector of rights of the tribals’ (Verma 2011: 13). To the marginalised tribals and dalits then, Maoism is “an ideology of hope for those at the lower rung of rural society” (Chakrabarty and Kujur 2010: 202). It in such a context that Arundhati Roy (2010) has argued for understanding a “spectrum of resistance”, on which Maoist armed struggle deserves respect.

6. Sufficient Conditions

We have seen earlier that ‘necessary conditions’ alone cannot explain the totally of the way the Naxal/Maoist movements have spread and sustained over the last 48 years. Such straightforward argument does not take care of the “human agency” factor that plays a crucial role in deciding the trajectory of any social movement. Too much of stress on the economic factors also distract out attention from the salient social, cultural, political and geographical factors. Let us now discuss these factors in the context of Maoist movements in India.

6.1 An acute sense of discrimination among the youth

Studies on social movement have time and again stressed on the role of youth population in either perceiving prevailing discrimination or aspiring for a better system and thereby forming the core of any protest activity (Ghosh 2003, 2015, Oommen 2010, D’mello 2015). Scholars studying the Maoist movements in India and Nepal have also found that the educated disenfranchised youth were the first to join it. In recent times, tribal girls have also joined the rank of rebels though they are mostly assigned ‘women specific’ jobs like cooking (Verma 2011: 28). Alpa Shah and Judith Pettigrew (2009) have noted the importance of youth aspiration along with modernity and gender roles. The Maoist movements have enabled them to participate in a new type of modernity. The young cadres also started asserting their rights over the traditional authority of the village elders. Banerjee (2006a) has also noted that the early activists of the Naxal movement were influenced by romantic ideals of revolution. The sense of disillusionment and the fiery idealism of youth directed them to Naxalist ideology. The repression of Naxalism during the emergency also attracted a large number of youth to Naxalism as a rebellious reaction to the government’s oppression (Dixit 2010). In Jharkhand, tribal youth with the appropriate language and technical skills can join the Maoists, NGOs, and sometimes, even both (Chandra 2013: 3). These youths, who did not like working in the field and forests because of their education, liked the higher, masculine status of a ‘terrorist’ with gun or even the job of a special police (Salwa Judum) that entails a monthly salary (Guha 2007). It is, therefore, argued that there is recognisable deterioration of quality as the new cadres are “more attracted to its weapons than its politics” (Balgopal 2003: 515).

6.2 Elite formation

The role of local and external elites in providing leadership is another interesting feature of Maoist movements. The spread of modern education and the rise of middle class are found to be critical in developing a critique of the state and its policies. It is for such reasons that the Naxalist movement found enormous support among the educated youth (Banerjee 2006b). Many of these young men and women belonged to the petty bourgeois class. Some of the young Naxalites who went off to the forests were medical and engineering graduates. For them, universities are hotbeds of radical ideology. Some went to rural areas to mobilize the people there and some stayed back in Calcutta, perpetrating acts of violence in an attempt to overthrow the state. Rabindra Ray (1988) has, therefore, argued that the Naxal movement is ‘intellectually driven’ as the doctrinal inputs of the movement came from middle class ideologues who wanted to lead ‘the people’. 

In the subsequent phases of Maoist movements also the leadership, by and large, is found to be from among the highly educated middle class intellectuals who were often from urban India (Shah and Pettigrew 2009, Banaji 2010). Though it is often claimed that cadre of the CPI (Maoist) comes from sections of India’s poorest population, it is equally true that men and women from subaltern backgrounds are yet to assume top leadership posts in the party. Interestingly, Maoists also believe that “the adivasis cannot represent themselves; they must be represented” (Nigam 2010). Looking into the methodology of the Maoists, it appears that ‘someone else’ and not they were the liberators. It is a project defined as such by those who claim to represent their interests.

Shah (2006) has found that the initial spread of movement of the Maoist Communist Centre in Jharkhand was not among the poorest tribal populations, but rather within an educated, often upper caste, rural elite, who were intimately connected with the developmental state. The Maoist could trap the educated youth, who were no longer satisfied with tilling their land, by entering into the ‘markets of protection’ offered by locally powerful people. Similar such parallels, noted by scholars from different parts of the world, prove that social movements take shape only after certain stages of development, and more importantly after certain level of literacy, awareness, and growth of middle class (Oommen 2010, Shah and Pettigrew 2009, Ghosh 2003).

6.3 Political Interest and Goal

The political interests and goal of the Maoists formation play a major role in dictating their activities in real life. There is, however, doubts about what constitute their ‘real’ political interests and goal. Maoists also differ about the uses of armed struggle. Irrespective of such critical assessments, it can fairly be claimed that the Maoists’ ‘political’ interests override the other types of interests. Thus, as per written documents of the Maoists, their major goal is to annihilate class enemies, create liberated zones and seize state powers through the barrel of the gun to establish people’s democratic dictatorship. Some ideologues of this movement have also cautioned the revolutionaries not to fall in the trap of ‘humane’ socio-economic approach that would urge them to strip their politics as a prelude to bring them back to ‘normal political process’ (Giri 2009: 465). It is due to such political reasoning that the Indian Maoists, unlike their Nepali counterparts, have paid less attention to the identity or indigenous question even though they mostly operate in Adivasi-dominated areas (Ismail and Shah 2015: 112).

The Maoist’s line of ‘politics’ is critiqued by many intellectuals including some of their sympathisers. Balagopal (1997: 2254), for instance, has argued that Maoists take and implement most decisions “over the heads of the people but justified in the name of the people”. Some critics also argue that the real political interests of the Maoists become clear when they gain and retain control over a group of people and territory (Miklian 2009, Bahree 2010, Verma 2011, Hoelscher et al. 2012). In the context of Maoist domination in Dandakaranya in central India over a long period of time, Mukherjee (2010: 16) has argued that, they themselves have achieved little by way of adivasi welfare, be it in wages, education, health or agriculture. This is because the Maoist’s politics of waging guerrilla warfare on the road to seizure of state power has meant that they must focus on using the adivasis for their war.

Similarly, questions are being raised about their commitment for the marginalised and a revolutionary ideology. No one can deny that the Maoists have strong monetary interests since they collect huge amount as royalty/levy from the contractors, companies and others. They also ‘sell’ protection in return for support like the state (Shah 2006). The interconnections of politicians, private companies and both Maoists and non-Maoists forces also lead to reproduction of conflict, because so many powerful actors benefit from it (Harriss 2010: 22). It is accused that their arms deals lead them inevitably into shady transactions with rich and corrupt power brokers at different levels (Sarkar and Sarkar 2009: 11).

The shifting strategy of mobilization of the Maoists has also given rise to confusions. There are several instances of Maoists shifting their emphasis from mobilising landless dalits to uniting the middle peasants by addressing the latter’s demand for government subsidies and remission of rents and more importantly protecting them from the classes below them. This led the dalits to suspect the Maoist’s motive.

The armed strategy of the Maoists is not without criticism. There are plenty of instances where the Maoists have liquidated common tribals, dalits, human rights workers, NREGA activists and members of rival groups. More importantly, the strategy of ‘annihilation of class enemies’ has ultimately led to killing of poor tribals in most cases (Nigam 2010; Simeon 2010). In this context, it is also alleged that notwithstanding revolutionary proclamations, the Maoist party in practice is an undemocratic—perhaps even anti-people—force whose sole aim is to seize state power by hook or crook to bring the masses under the control of the leadership of the party (Mukherji 2010). As against such a negative assessment, Sundar’s (2011) field exposures in the undivided Bastar district of Madhya Pradesh tells us about the positive contributions of the Maoists in reorganizing the stratified society that helped them to expand their support base. But, as people’s allegiances change over time, in response either to repression or to new opportunities, they may consciously choose to be neutral or portray as “sandwiched” between the Maoist and the state (Sundar 2013: 366).

Santosh Rana, one of the original participants in the Naxalite movement, has accused the Maoists of destroying the people’s unity at Lalgarh in West Bengal by killing Sudhir Mandi in November 2008. Sudhir was a leader of Majhi Marwa. His only offence was that he refused to act according to orders of the Maoist squads (cited in Mukherji 2012a). Interestingly, when the Maoist extended support to this movement to resist and defeat the police and other forces, the people did not mind it as they themselves were not in a position to resist the ‘powers’ of police, forest officials, CPI (M) leaders, big landholders, ration shop owners, contractors, agents of babui rope and kendu leaves and the like. But gradually they understood that the Maoists are using them for their own political benefit (Guha 2012). A movement against dictates of police and political force has therefore lost its relevance under the dictates of an ultra-violent force.

6.4 State policies and action

Along with rebel groups like the Maoists, the state is equally to be blamed for the rise of armed conflict and insurgency. C. P. Bhambri (2015: 71) has argued that “the Indian state is in a hurry to ruthlessly and violently suppress the Maoist armed groups because the big business houses of India, and powerful transnational corporations of the West are feeling impatient”. In the context of ethnic movement in India, T. K. Oommen (1997: 158) has argued that the state does not even take the justified demands of ethnic minorities seriously unless the movement takes an anti-India or ethno-national character. Its approach is one of tension management preferably with force (Ibid. 158). Similarly, in case of protest movement by the tribals or dalits, the state and its agencies tries to ignore the genuine issue until it picks up a violent character. The Maoist threat is often utilised by the government to justify the rise of security centric state and even to crush popular democratic uprising. Sundar (2011) has argued that for the cash-strapped state governments, Naxalite threat is a ploy to attract more funds from the Central government.

In Junglemahal and elsewhere, the issues of intolerance on the part of the state machinery to give redressal to people’s demands and that of near-absence of governance and democratic principle have important bearing upon the growth of Maoist movement. It is an irony that the state starts confidence building measures only after it is destroyed. Even those efforts remain mostly on paper as the fund allocated for development is either not spent or diverted for some other cause. More importantly, there has also been very little progress to implement properly pro-tribal laws like the Panchayat (Extension to Schedule Areas) Act, 1996, or The Scheduled Tribe and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of forest Rights) Act 2006.

Ironically, ‘cleansing operations’ by the state in the name of ‘Greyhounds’ (Andhra Pradesh), ‘Operation Green Hunt’ (Dandakaranya), or Salwa Judum (Chhattisgarh) have rather allowed the Maoists intellectuals and activists to gain fresh support and followers (Shah and Pettigrew 2009, Harriss 2010, Sundar 2011, 2013 Chandra 2013). This is because, when the state attacks and the economic lives of adivasi and dalits are further disrupted, enrolment for the militia increases sharply. In other words, “more the repression by the state, the bigger the ‘people’s army’ of starving children” (Mukherji 2010b: 20). Hence, it might be argued that incidences of ‘white terrors’8 by the state serve as ploy for the Maoists to prepare the ground for the ‘red terror’.

There are also contrary instances to prove that violence resulted only when the Maoists failed to utilise the alternative line of action like mass mobilisation or when they became confident about challenging the state. For instance, the Maoists in Bihar depended on mass mobilization of dalits in the 1980s and the Mazdoor Kishan Sangram Samiti (MKSS), a Maoist mass front, carried out the task. But, in the 1990s, with shrinking space for such mobilization, the Maoists became increasingly reliant on armed actions (Shah and Pettigrew 2009). Consequently, the Government of India has banned the Maoists as ‘terrorists’ only in May 2009. From such a point of view, the production of ‘red terror’ appears to be a specific strategy that the Maoists use in a particular context (Lecomte-Tilouine 2004).

6.5 Outside support

The involvement of outside leaders/agencies has been found to be instrumental in aggravating the issues of the tribals and dalits. Interestingly, the Maoist movements did not emerge from within. Instead, it was brought to the forest highlands by committed cadres seeking to expand their revolutionary ambit. In case of Singur and Nandigram movements, the Maoists took advantage of popular anger of the peasants to show their presence. There are also a number of evidences that prove that external Maoist leaders very often force the local tribals or dalits to accept their path of violence after they are able to capture the territory. As a corollary, the strength or zeal of the movement vanishes rapidly after the surrender or death of their leaders, mostly in encounters. This has exactly happened in Junglemahal in West Bengal after the death of Koteswara Rao (alias Kishenji). In other words, Maoists brand of politics is not always spontaneous and one of the reasons for this is the dominance of outside leaders.

The domination of outside leaders is also closely linked to the ‘hidden’ political agenda of the Maoists. When these ultras starts infiltrating the ranks of Adivasis in their fight against poverty, deprivation and exploitation, their other agendas remain concealed. Having secured the confidence of the local, predominantly adivasi population, they set about organising them so that they can realise their rights like rights of land, forest produce, and the like. The tribes also do not question Maoist insistence on guerrilla warfare as they themselves had a strong tradition of armed militancy. As a corollary, the Maoists gain impressive support base among the adivasis (Mukherji 2010). But gradually, the real agenda of the outside leaders comes to the forefront and a new chapter of domination of the tribal begins. Maoists then try to replace the traditional social structure of a tribe with a new authority structure in the controlled areas. The non-tribal leaders, being unable to understand the significance of tribal social structure and identity, then start alienating the latter.

6.6 Geographical Location

The fact that the Maoist movements are concentrated in a specific geo-political space for more than four decades raises serious questions about close connection between Maoism and hilly terrain or Jungle that are inaccessibility (Banerjee 2006). In the 1980s and 1990s, state repression in the plains drove the Maoists in search of forested and hilly tracts better suited for guerrilla warfare. Their concentration in the central and eastern Adivasi-dominated belts is not due to their “premeditated strategy to align themselves with the historical struggle of the Adivasis”, but “because of the coincidence of territorial demand of guerrilla tactics” (Ismail and Shah 2015: 116). It is also a coincidence that marginalised population live in these hilly terrains where there is no semblance of any government. But the continuous forest terrain of the states like Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Telengana, and West Bengal have allowed the Maoist/Naxals a free space to conduct arms training, hide themselves and carry out guerrilla warfare. In certain parts of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, they have also taken advantage of Nepal border to organise their guerrilla activities. The remote areas of Sonbhadra, Chandauli and Mirzapur districts of Uttar Pradesh – are all considered the hotbed of Maoist activity. The Maoists have been able to make use of such geographical location to run a parallel administration (South Asia Terrorism Portal 2013). Harriss (2010: 26), therefore, argues that ‘the essential reason for the strength of the Maoists in the hilly, forested tracts of eastern and central India is that this terrain, in India and elsewhere in the world, mostly favours guerrilla insurgency’. It is equally a major challenge for the police force during combing operations. Instead of spreading the armed struggle all over India, the Maoist leadership concentrated on the forests and mountainous areas “as these are the strategic areas where base areas can be set up” (Banerjee 2006).

7. Conclusion

This discussion so far may allow us to conclude that the growth and sustenance of Maoism have been influenced by various structural processes and discursive conditions. Since 1967, the Naxal/Maoist movements have surfaced again and again despite retreating to subterranean levels. This because of the combined forces of developmental (necessary) and sociological (sufficient) issues. The number of districts affected by Naxalism was 50 in 1990, but today it is 270. It is true that the poor tribals or dalits do not always support the Maoists for ideological/political reasons. The agenda of the tribal and the Maoists are not the same and hence the victory of the one would not mean the emancipation of the other. But, in a country like India, anti-state movements have their potential to crop up under different conditions even though at a particular context its strength and intensity may become less. A situation of conflict that generates between the ‘powerless’ and the ‘powerful’, cannot be resolved without looking into the structural and discursive issues. Hence, the state should realise the limits of its counter-insurgency operation by treating such issues merely as a ‘law and order problem’. Given the complexity of the situation, we also need to debate whether anti-state movements are really a ‘threat’ to our democracy or not. Often, ‘anti-state’ stand of a violent group is only a strategy to draw the attention of the ‘deaf and dumb’ state. Since the possibilities of collective action in any movement are ‘indefinite’, and often they develop in sequence over a period of time, it is up to the state and other stakeholders to presume such ‘situationally contingent’ initiatives in advance and take corrective action.