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Mainstream, VOL LI No 25, June 8, 2013

Eliminating Salwa Judum Leader Mahendra Karma

Sunday 9 June 2013

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by Arun Srivastava

On May 25, 2013, a detachment of the People’s Liberation Guerilla Army of the CPI (Maoist) carried out the most gruesome attack in Sukma of Chhattisgarh in which at least 27 Congress leaders, activists and policemen, including Mahendra Karma, the Salwa Judum leader of the State, were gunned down. The Maoists have legitimised the killing as, according to them, Karma represented the oppressive face of the State administration. The handout released by the Maoists after the massacre claimed that it was a legitimate response to the inhuman atrocities, brutal murders and endless terror perpetrated on the adivasis of Bastar.

Describing the attack as historic, the Maoists claimed that it took place when the Congress party leaders were touring the Bastar region as part of their ‘Parivartan Yatra’ programme (that is, March of Change) keeping their eye on the forthcoming Assembly elections. Obviously this implied that this attack was neither a classical revolutionary action nor a people’s intervention. The attack was basically a military action devoid of an ideological base and approach. Karma has been the target of the Maoists for a pretty long time. But the Maoists could not muster courage to attack him earlier. On Saturday (May 25) when he was participating in the parivartan yatra the Maoists shot him dead. Polemically this action does not fit into the Maoist philosophy or ideology.

Maoists claim that the goal of the attack was mainly to eliminate Karma and some other reactionary top Congress leaders. Then why were other innocent people, junior Congress workers, security personnel, activists killed? What is the explanation of the revolutionaries? See the audacity of the Maoists, they even did not apologise for their dastardly crime. The Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) simply expressed regrets and conveyed condolences and sympathies to the families of the bereaved. This is the highest form of averseness towards the precious lives of the innocent persons. As if they have demolished and defeated the state apparatus, they also congratulated the guerilla activists. “We send our revolutionary greetings to the PLGA commanders who led this daring ambush, to the red fighters who contributed to its success, to the people who took part in it by lending active support and to the entire revolutionary masses of the Bastar region. This attack has once again proved the historic fact that those fascists, who perpetrate violence, atrocities and massacres on the people, will never be forgiven and they would inevitably be punished by the people.”

This is something like patting their own back. Maoists have been trying to hide behind the façade of self-eulogy. Karma was a corrupt, anti-people element but this does not mean that he should be killed in this manner, an action of deceit. Maoists should have taken to the mass movement and organised the people of his constituency to expose his anti-adivasi and pro comprador nature. In sharp contrast to Maoist operations, Karma in fact went to the people and prepared them to fight against them. The Maoist handout confesses that “from the very beginning, Mahendra Karma stood as an arch enemy of the revolutionary movement. The first Jan Jagaran (‘awareness’) campaign was launched in 1990-91 against the revolutionary movement. The revisionist CPI had participated in that counter-revolutionary campaign. Karma and many of his relatives, who belonged to the landlord classes, had actively participated in it. The second Jan Jagaran campaign was launched in 1997-98 led by Mahendra Karma himself. This was started in Mahendra Karma’s own village Faraspal and its surrounding villages and spread up to Bhairamgarh and Kutru areas.” No peace loving people or those concerned over the rights of the tribals would endorse the creation and launching of Salwa Judum by Karma. This utterly violated the fundamental rights of the adivasis and was a mechanism to perpetrate the worst nature of torture on them. Basically this was the reason that the Supreme Court had ordered the State to disband it.

Maoists claim: “One can hardly find any example in the history to compare the severity of the devastation and barbarity caused by Salwa Judum to the lives of the Bastar people. It killed more than one thousand people in cold blood; torched 640 villages into ashes, robbed thousands of houses; ate or took away chickens, goats, pigs, etc.; forced more than two million people to be displaced; dragged more than 50 thousand people into state-run ‘relief’ camps. Thus the Salwa Judum became anathema to the people. Hundreds of women were gangraped. Many women were murdered after rape. Massacres took place in many places.” The question arises as to what did the Maoists do to mobilise this suffering humanity against Karma? Nothing, they simply relied on the power of their arms. In such a situation when the people are finding it arduous to survive no force on earth could have prevented them from joining the ranks of Maoists and launching a mass movement. But that did not happen.

In fact the attack on the Congress leader was an extension of their policy to attack the security forces. No one should be under the illusion that the Maoists are serving the interests of the poor. They are in the true sense turning them more vulnerable to the retaliatory actions. The reason for this digression is wrong application of the ideology. Maoism is not an ideology; instead it is a thought process. This has been going on in the days Kanai Chatterjee was the leader of the Maoist Communist Centre. They did not believe in Marxism-Leninism and based the edifice of their revolutionary struggle on Maoism. Ironi-cally, they treated tactics as strategy. This has given birth to lawless militarism and distancing from mass mobilisation.

Maosists have been perpetuating the old line of Kanai Chatterjee. Basically this was the ideological difference that Kanai Chatterjee had and that is why he kept away from the Marxist-Leninist parties and their policies. The Maoists believe in one philosophy: that devoid of a political ideology they can reach their destination through assertion of their gun-power. But they are completely wrong. They must thank the Raman Singh Government for their survival in the terrains of Chhattisgarh. Look at the manner in which they have been flushed out of Andhra Pradesh. If tomorrow the state decides to have its presence in the dense forests of Chhattisgarh, they will simply run helter-skelter for their survival.

Wielding gun is simply a romance with weaponry and the Maoists must learn this through bitter experience. They must look at Democratic Centralism as one word and not as two separate words having different meanings. They must realise that their over-dependence on arms and using the power of arms in this indiscriminate manner will simply jeopardise the interests of the tribals for whom they claim to fight for.   

The author, a senior journalist based in Kolkata, can be contacted at sriv52@gmail.com

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