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Mainstream, Vol XLVIII, No 23, May 29, 2010

In the Wake of the Dantewada Killings

Tuesday 1 June 2010

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COMMUNICATION

This is with reference to the killing of 44 people —including 28 civilians and 16 special police officers—reportedly by Maoists, by blowing up a bus in Dantewada district (in Chhattisgarh) on May 17. (The Times of India, May 18, 2010) Those who are familiar with the ground realities in Chhattisgarh [including intellectuals, such as B.K.Roy Burman and Arundhati Roy, journalists, such as Shoma Chaudhury and Gautam Navlakha, and civil rights groups, such as the People’s Union for Civil Liberties (Chhatttisgarh)], have made it abundantly clear that the conflict between the Maoists and the Indian state is rooted in the clash of interests between the adivasis on the one hand and big corporations on the other. For the former, the principal issue is the retention of control over land, water and forests for their livelihood; for the latter, the principal issue is the exploitation of natural resources to generate super profits. While this is the fundamental contradiction, it tends to recede into the background because it is overlaid by a militarised confrontation between the Maoists and the Indian state. The former, through the People’s Liberation Guerilla Army (PLGA), claim to defend the interests of the adivasis. The latter, through various para-military formations, is ostensibly pursuing area domination to maintain law and order and carry out ‘development’, but is implicitly paving the way for domination by corporate capital.

The consequences of the militarised confron-tation between the Maoists and the Indian state are profoundly disturbing. The operations undertaken by the PLGA inflict casualties not only on the para-military forces but, from time to time, on civilians as well. Likewise, the offensive mounted by the state against the Maoists also destroys innocent lives among the adivasis. While the responsibility for the escalation of conditions leading to the adoption of armed action by the Maoists must be borne by the Indian state, as argued by, among others, B.K. Roy Burman (see Mainstream, April 10, 2010),1 the former must also be held accountable for the manner in which they conduct their campaign. No revolutionary movement that claims to be propelled by the injustices inflicted on the masses can afford the liberty of taking for granted the lives of ordinary people who constitute these very masses. Implicit in this stance is that the casualties suffered by civilians in the course of the military campaign may be deemed as collateral damage, or that the lives of civilians caught in the crossfire are somehow dispensable. One expects from those who claim to be engaged in a revolutionary struggle a higher ethics than that governing ordinary combatants; or else the ethics of the Maoists would appear to be no different from that informing the Indian state. Moreover, the killing of civilians, including women and children, is liable to create a deep revulsion among ordinary people at large, and alienate the Maoist militia from the masses, on whose behalf they seek to act, and on whose support they must depend.

There is also something deeply problematic about the functioning of the post-colonial Indian state. By and large, the Directive Principles embodied in the Constitution have been flouted with impunity. If the state had actually promoted the welfare of the common people by securing a social order in which there is justice—social, economic, and political (Article 38)—there would be no mass discontent, nor would there have been a Naxalite movement. Ironically, while the state has violated certain core provisions of the Constitution defining a just social order, it renders culpable those who draw attention to this travesty, included among whom are those who do not endorse the violence on either side. Critical voices in civil society are sought to be silenced through the application of draconian laws, thus casting aside the fundamental rights of citizenship. From the point of view of the people at large, the darkness of the colonial era appears to have been superseded by another darkness, generated by the leadership of the post-colonial state.

Anand Chakravarti

G-4, Anand Niketan

New Delhi-110021

1 Professor B.K. Roy Burman was the former Chairman, ‘Study Group on Land Holding Systems of Tribals’, Planning Commission, Government of India (1985-86).

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