26 March, 2007
Tehelka


There is an atmosphere of growing violence across the country. How do you
read the signs? Do you think it will grow more in the days to come? What
are its causes? In what context should all this be read?

You don't have to be a genius to read the signs. We have a growing middle
class, being reared on a diet of radical consumerism and aggressive greed.
Unlike industrializing western countries which had colonies from which to
plunder resources and generate slave labour to feed this process, we have
to colonize ourselves, our own nether parts. We've begun to eat our own
limbs. The greed that is being generated (and marketed as a value
interchangeable with nationalism) can only be sated by grabbing land, water
and resources from the vulnerable. What we're witnessing is the most
successful secessionist struggle ever waged in Independent India. The
secession of the middle and upper classes from the rest of the country.
It's a vertical secession, not a lateral one. They're fighting for the
right to merge with the world's elite somewhere up there in the
stratosphere. They've managed to commandeer the resources , the coal, the
minerals, the bauxite, the water and electricity. Now they want the land to
make more cars, more bombs, more mines - super toys for the new super
citizens of the new superpower. So it's outright war, and people on both
sides are choosing their weapons. The government and the corporations reach
for Structural Adjustment, the World Bank, the ADB, FDI, friendly court
orders, friendly policy makers, help from the 'friendly' corporate media
and a police force that will ram all this down peoples' throats. Those who
want to resist this process have, until now, reached for dharnas,
hunger-strikes, satyagraha, the courts, and what they thought was friendly
media. But now, more and more are reaching for guns. Will the violence
grow? If the 'growth rate' and the sensex are going to be the only
barometres the government uses to measure progress and the well-being of
people, then of course it will. How do I read the signs? It isn't hard to
read sky-writing. What it says up there, in big letters is this: The shit
has hit the fan, folks.

You once remarked that though you may not resort to violence yourself, you
think it has become immoral to condemn it, given the circumstances in the
country. Can you elaborate on this view?

I'd be a liability as a guerilla! I doubt I used the word
'immoral'-morality is an elusive business, as changeable as the weather.
What I feel is this: Non-violent movements have, for decades knocked on the
door of every democratic institution in this country and have been spurned
and humiliated. Look at the Bhopal Gas victims, the Narmada Bachao Andolan.
The NBA for example, had a lot going for it, high profile leadership, media
coverage, more resources than any other mass movement. What went wrong?
People are bound to want to re-think strategy. When Sonia Gandhi begins to
promote Satyagraha at the World Economic Forum in Davos it's time for us to
sit up and think. For example, is mass civil disobedience possible within
the structure of a democratic nation-state? Is it possible in the age of
disinformation and corporate-controlled mass media? Are hunger-strikes
umblically linked to celebrity politics? Would anybody care if the people
of Nangla Machhi or Bhatti mines went on a hunger-strike? Sharmila Irom has
been on a hunger strike for six years. That should be a salutary lesson to
many of us. I've always felt that it's ironic that hunger-strikes are used
as a political weapon in a land where most people go hungry anyway. We are
in a different time and place now. Up against a different, more complex
adversary. We've entered the era of NGOs - or should I say the era of
palthu shers - in which mass action can be a treacherous business. We have
demonstrations which are funded, we have sponsored dharnas and social
forums which posture militantly but never follow up on what they preach. We
have all kinds of 'virtual' resistance. Meetings against SEZs sponsored by
the biggest promoters of SEZs. Awards and grants for environmental activism
and community action given by corporations responsible for devastating
whole ecosystems. Vedanta, a company mining bauxite in the forests of
Orissa wants to start a university. The Tatas have two charitable trusts
that directly and indirectly, fund activists and mass movements across the
country. Could that be why Singur has drawn so much less flak than
Nandigram, and why they have not targeted, boycotted, gheraoed? Of course
the Tatas and Birlas funded Gandhi too - maybe he was our first NGO. But
now we have NGOs who make a lot of noise, write a lot of reports,but who
the sarkar is more than comfortable with. How do we make sense of all this?
The place is crawling with professional diffusers of real political action.
'Virtual resistance' has become something of a liability.

There was a time when mass movements looked to the courts for justice. The
courts have rained down a series of judgments that are so unjust, so
insulting to the poor in the language they use, they take your breath away.
A recent Supreme Court judgment allowing the Vasant Kunj Mall to resume
construction though it didn't have the requisite clearances said in so many
words, that the question of Corporations indulging in malpractice does not
arise! In the era of corporate globalization, corporate land-grab, in the
era of Enron and Monsanto, Halliburton and Bechtel, that's a loaded thing
to say. It exposes the ideological heart of the most powerful institution
in this country. The judiciary along with the corporate press, is now seen
as the lynchpin of the neo-liberal project.

In a climate like this when people feel that they are being worn down,
exhausted by these interminable 'democratic' processes, only to be
humiliated eventually, what are they supposed to do? Of course it isn't as
though the only options are binary - violence versus non-violence. There
are political parties that believe in armed struggle, but only as one part
of their overall political strategy. Political workers in these struggles
have been dealt with brutally, killed, beaten, imprisoned under false
charges. People are fully aware that to take to arms is to call down upon
yourself the myriad forms of violence of the Indian State. The minute armed
struggle becomes a strategy, your whole world shrinks and the colors fade
to black and white. But when people decide to take that step because every
other option has ended in despair-should we condemn them? Does anyone
believe that if the people of Nandigram had held a Dharna and sung songs
the West Bengal Government would have backed down? We are living in times,
when to be ineffective is to support the status quo (which no doubt suits
some of us). And being effective comes at a terrible price. I find it hard
to condemn people who are prepared to pay that price.

You have been traveling a lot on the ground -- can you give us a sense of
the fissures you are seeing on the ground. What are the trouble spots you
have been to? Can you outline a few of the combat lines in these places?

Huge question - what can I say? The military occupation of Kashmir,
neo-facism in Gujarat, civil war in Chhattisgarh, MNCs raping Orissa, the
submergence of hundreds of villages in the Narmada Valley, people living on
the edge of absolute starvation, the devastation of forest land, the Bhopal
victims living to see the West Bengal government re-wooing Union Carbide -
now calling itself Dow Chemicals - in Nandigram. I haven't been recently to
Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharshtra, but we know about the almost hundred
thousand farmers who have killed themselves. We know about the fake
encounters and the terrible repression in Andhra Pradesh. Each of these
places is has its own particular history, economy, ecology. None is
amenable to easy analysis. And yet there is connecting tissue, there are
huge international cultural and economic pressures being brought to bear on
them. How can I not mention the Hindutva project, spreading its poison
sub-cutaneously, waiting to errupt once again. I'd say the biggest
indictment of all is that we are still a country, a culture a society which
continues to nurture and practice the notion of untouchability. While our
economists number-crunch and boast about the growth rate, a million people,
human scavengers - earn their living carrying several kilos of other
peoples' shit on their heads every day. And if they didn't carry shit on
their heads they would starve to death. Some fucking superpower this.

How does one view the recent State and police violence in Bengal?

No different from police and State violence anywhere else - including the
issue of hypocrisy and doublespeak so perfected by all political parties
including the mainstream Left. Are communist bullets different from
capitalist ones? Odd things are happening. It snowed in Saudi Arabia. Owls
are out in broad daylight The Chinese Government tabled a bill sanctioning
the right to private property. I don't know if all of this has to do with
climate change. The Chinese Communists are turning out to be the biggest
capitalists of the 21st century. Why should we expect our own Parliamentary
Left to be any different? Nandigram and Singur are clear signals. It makes
you wonder - is the last stop of every revolution advanced capitalism?
Think about it - the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the Chinese
Revolution, the Vietnam War, the Anti- Apartheid struggle, the supposedly
Gandhian Freedom struggle in IndiaŠwhat's the last station they all pull in
at? Is this the end of imagination?

The Maoist attack in Bijapur -- the death of 55 policemen. Are the rebels
only a flip face of the State?

How can the rebels be the flip side of the state? Would anybody say that
those who fought against Apartheid - however brutal their methods - were
the flip side of the state? What about those who fought the French in
Algeria? Or those who fought the Nazis? Or those who fought Colonial
Regimes? Or those who are fighting the US occupation of Iraq? Are they the
flip side of the State? This facile new report-driven 'human rights'
discourse, this meaningless condemnation game that we all are forced to
play, makes politicians of us all and leaches the real politics out of
everything. However pristine we would like to be, however hard we polish
our halos, the tragedy is that we have run out of pristine choices. There
is a civil war in Chattisgarh sponsored, created by the Chattisgarh
Government which is publicly pursing the Bush doctrine - if you're not with
us, you are with the terrorists. The lynch pin of this war, apart from the
formal security forces, is the Salwa Judum - a government backed militia of
ordinary people forced to take up arms, forced to become SPOs (Special
Police Officers). The Indian State has tried this in Kashmir, in Manipur,
in Nagaland. Tens of thousands have been killed, hundreds of thousands
tortured, thousands have disappeared. Any Banana Republic would be proud of
this record.. Now the government wants to import these failed strategies
into the heartland. Thousands of Adivasis have been forcibly moved off
their mineral -rich lands into police camps. Hundreds of villages have been
forcibly evacuated. Those lands, rich in iron-ore are being eyed by
corporations like the Tatas and Essar. MOUs have been signed, but no one
knows what they say. Land Acquisition has begun. This kind of thing
happened in countries like Colombia - one of the most devastated countries
in the world. While everybody's eyes are fixed on the spiraling violence
between government backed militias and guerilla squads, multinational
corporations quietly make off with the mineral wealth. That's the little
piece of theatre being scripted for us in Chattisgarh.

Of course it's horrible that 55 policemen were killed. But they're as much
the victims of Government policy as anybody else. For the Government and
the Corporations they're just cannon fodder - there's plenty more where
they came from. Crocodile tears will be shed, prim TV anchors will hector
us for a while and then more supplies of fodder will be arranged. For the
Maoist guerillas the police and SPOs they killed were the armed personnel
of the Indian State, the main, perpetrators of repression, torture,
custodial killings, false encounters. The ones whose professional duties
involve burning villages and raping women. They're not innocent civilians -
if such a thing exists - by any stretch of imagination.

I have no doubt that the Maoists can be agents of terror and coercion too.
I have no doubt they have committed unspeakable atrocities. I have no doubt
they cannot lay claim to undisputed support from local people - but who
can? Still, no guerrilla army can survive without local support. That's a
logistical impossibility. And the support for Maoists is growing, not
diminishing. That says something. People have no choice but to align
themselves on the side of whoever they think is less worse.

But to equate a resistance movement fighting against enormous injustice,
with the Government which enforces that injustice is absurd. The government
has slammed the door in the face of every attempt at non-violent
resistance. When people take to arms, there is going to be all kinds of
violence - revolutionary, lumpen and outright criminal. The government is
responsible for the monstrous situations it creates.

The term Naxals and Maoists and outsiders is being used very loosely these
days. Can you declutter it.

'Outsiders' is a generic accusation used in the early stages of repression
by governments who have begun to believe their own publicity and can't
imagine that people have risen up against them. That's the stage the CPI
(M) is at now in Bengal, though some would say repression in Bengal is not
new, it has only moved into higher gear.. In any case what's an outsider?
Who decides the borders? Are they village boundaries? Tehsil? Block?
District? State? Is narrow regional and ethnic politics the new communist
mantra? About Naxals and Maoists - wellŠ India is about to become a police
state in which everybody who disagrees with what's going on risks being
called a terrorist. Islamic terrorists have to be Islamic - so that's not
good enough to cover most of us. They need a bigger catchment area. So
leaving the definition loose, undefined, is effective strategy, because the
time is not far off when we'll all be called Maoists or Naxalites,
terrorists or terrorist sympathisers and shut down, by people who don't
really know - or care -who Maoists or Naxalites are. In villages of course
that has begun - thousands of people are being held in jails across the
country, loosely charged with being terrorists trying to overthrow the
state. Who are the real Naxalites and Maoists? I'm not an authority on the
subject, but here's a very rudimentary potted history.

The Communist Party of India the CPI was formed in 1925. The CPI (M)
Communist Party Marxist- split from the CPI in 1964 and formed a separate
party. Both of course were parliamentary political parties. In 1967 the CPI
(M) along with a splinter group of the Congress, came to power in West
Bengal. At the time there was massive unrest among starving peasantry in
the countryside. Local leaders of the CPI(M) - Kanu Sanyal and Charu
Mazumdar led a peasant uprising in the district of Naxalbari which is where
the term Naxalites comes from. In 1969 the government fell and the Congress
came back to power under Siddharta Shankar Ray. The naxalite uprising was
mercilessly crushed - Mahashweta Devi has written powerfully about this
time. In 1969 the CPI (ML) - Marxist Leninist split from the CPI (M). A few
years later around 1971, the CPI (ML) devolved into several parties: the
CPI -ML (Liberation) largely centred in Bihar, CPI -ML (New Democracy)
functioning for the most part out of Andhra Pradesh and Bihar, the CPI-ML
(Class Struggle) mainly in Bengal. These parties have been generically
baptized 'Naxalites.' They see themselves as Marxist Leninist, not strictly
speaking Maoist. They believe in elections, mass action and, when,
absolutely pushed to the wall or attacked- armed struggle. The MCC - the
Maoist Communist Centre at the time mostly operating in Bihar was formed in
1968. The PW Peoples War, operational for the most part in Andhra Pradesh
was formed in 1980. Recently, in 2004 the MCC and the PW merged to form the
CPI (Maoist) They believe in outright armed struggle and the overthrowing
of the state. They don't participate in elections. This is the party that
is fighting the guerilla war in Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Chattisgarh and
Jharkhand.

The Indian state and media largely view the Maoists as "internal security"
threat. Is this the way to look at them?

I'm sure the Maoists would be flattered to be viewed in this way.

The Maoists want to bring down the State. Given the autocratic ideology
they take their inspiration from, what alternative would they set up?
Wouldn't their regime be an exploitative autocratic violent one as well?
Isn't their action already exploitative of ordinary people? Do they really
have the support of ordinary people?

I think it's important for us to acknowledge that both Mao and Stalin are
dubious heroes with murderous pasts. Tens of millions of people were killed
under their regimes. Apart from what happened in China and the Soviet
Union, Pol Pot, with the support of the Chinese communist party (while the
West looked away discreetly) wiped out two million people in Cambodia and
brought millions of people to the brink of extinction from disease and
starvation. Can we pretend that China's cultural revolution didn't happen?
Or that that millions of people in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe were
not victims of labour camps, torture chambers, the network of spies and
informers, the secret police. The history of these regimes is just as dark
as the history of Western Imperialism, except for the fact that they had a
shorter life-span. We cannot condemn the occupation of Iraq, Palestine and
Kashmir while we remain silent about Tibet and Chechnya. I would imagine
that for the Maoists, the Naxalites as well as the mainstream Left, being
honest about the past is important to strengthen peoples' faith in the
future. One hopes the past will not be repeated, but denying that it ever
happened doesn't help inspire confidenceŠ.Nevertheless, in this part of the
world, the Maoists in Nepal have waged a brave and successful struggle
against the monarchy in Nepal. Right now in India the Maoists and the
various Marxist Leninist Groups are leading the fight against immense
injustice in India. They are fighting not just the State, but feudal
landlords and their armed militias. They are the only people who are making
a dent. And I admire that. It may well be that when they come to power they
will as you say, be brutal, unjust and autocratic, even worse than the
present government. Maybe, but I'm not prepared to assume that in advance.
If they are, we'll have to fight them too. And most likely someone like
myself will be the first person they'll string up from the nearest tree -
but right now, it is important to acknowledge that they are bearing the
brunt of being at the forefront of resistance. Many of us are in a position
where we have are beginning to align ourselves on the side of those who we
know have no place for us in their religious or ideological imagination.
It's true that everybody changes radically when they come to power - look
at Mandela's ANC. Corrupt, capitalist, bowing to the IMF, driving the poor
out of their homes - honouring Suharto the killer of hundreds of thousands
of Indonesian communists with South Africa's highest civilian award. Who
would have thought it could happen? But does this mean South Africans
should have backed away from the struggle against apartheid? Or that they
should regret it now? Does it mean Algeria should have remained a French
Colony, that Kashmiris, Iraqis and Palestinians should accept military
occupation? That people whose dignity is being assaulted should give up the
fight because they can't find saints to lead them into battle?

Is there a communication breakdown in our society?

Yes.