Maoism is terrorism

May 29, 2013 

Vaishakh Krushnapaksha 5,Kaliyug Varsha 5115

By Priyadarshi Dutta

More than 72 hours after the slaughter of the Congressmen in Chhattisgarh, People’s Union of Civil Liberties (PUCL) has not reacted to the Maoist butchery. Nandini Sundar updated her blog after a month on Monday May 27 expressing her reservations on four-year degree course in Delhi University. The Buddha Purnima massacre was a non-event to this Delhi University sociologist, whose PIL in the Supreme Court had led to the disbanding of the Salwa Judum movement in Chhattisgarh.

Maoists claim responsibility for Chhattisgarh attack

What Maoists’ apologists say

There are two kinds of apologists Maoists have on their side. First, there are the witch doctors in politics who suggest that Maoist menace can be defused through socio-economic upliftment. They see no ideological content in the Maoist movement. To them, Maoist violence is mere rage against poverty, underdevelopment and backwardness endemic in the tribal belt. It is quite another thing that Maoists who reportedly raise Rs 2,000 crore per year, mostly through extortion, do nothing to alleviate the poverty of those living in the Red Zone. They build no hospitals, found no school, commission no animal farms and run no cottage industry. Rather, they lay waste existing facilities like schools, hospitals, bridges and roads. Procuring trendy automatic weapons and ammunition constitute the major expenditure fir the Maoists.

Then there are others, mostly academicians and human rights activists, who project the Maoists as fighting an iniquitous order. They allege that the State has denied basic human rights and facilities to most of its citizens. The State acts as an agency of capitalist exploitation for the benefit of the few. The military and police commit human rights violation. The Maoists are ‘resistance force’ to this war, the State has unleashed upon its citizens. Arundhati Roy interestingly described them as ‘Gandhians with Guns’.

But both these set of people keep silent on the political convictions of the Maoists themselves.

What Maoists affirm?

The Maoists make no secret of their conviction, agenda and plan of action. There are several Maoist documents available in public domain. Their perusal shows the Maoist agenda is independent of the alibis extended by their apologists. The foundational documents (September 2004) of the CPI-Maoist like its Party Constitution, Strategy & Tactics of the Indian Revolution, Hold High the Bright Red Banner of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, Political Resolutions and Party Programme are of particular interest.

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A global revolution not tribal movement:

The Constitution of the CPI-Maoist says the “new democratic revolution in India as a part of the world proletarian revolution by overthrowing the semi-colonial, semi-feudal system under neo-colonial form of indirect rule, exploitation and control and the three targets of our revolution- imperialism, feudalism and comparator bureaucratic big bourgeoisie”. The Maoists thus view their revolution in India as part of a global movement, not an offshoot of tribal problem or reaction to entrenched poverty. In the whole document, there is no mention of the words poverty or tribal. The first chapter in their pamphlet Strategy and Tactics of the Indian Revolution is suggestively titled ‘Indian Revolution in the Continuous Process of World Revolution”.