The Indian state and their political representatives seemed to be quite trigger-happy. Especially when it comes to dealing with the Maoists. They have enacted several so-called ‘encounter deaths’ when actually the Maoists had systematically been tortured and then shot dead in cold blood after being arrested. Such incidents are quite regular in the vast stretches of Dandakaranya, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Jharkhand, Bihar and South Bengal. Revolutionaries are arrested and tortured and the booty seized from them distributed by the ‘Greyhound’ special forces— who are no better than cannibals, when their victims are still alive and bleeding.

Volume 6, No. 4, April 2005

Maoist ‘Rebels Against the State’ are the True Defenders of People’s Interests

Samya

The Indian state and their political representatives seemed to be quite trigger-happy. Especially when it comes to dealing with the Maoists. They have enacted several so-called ‘encounter deaths’ when actually the Maoists had systematically been tortured and then shot dead in cold blood after being arrested. Such incidents are quite regular in the vast stretches of Dandakaranya, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Jharkhand, Bihar and South Bengal. Revolutionaries are arrested and tortured and the booty seized from them distributed by the ‘Greyhound’ special forces— who are no better than cannibals, when their victims are still alive and bleeding.

Today, however, we are not talking about the bullets. We are talking about the application of Indian laws, of the most stringent sections of the Indian Penal Code. The IPC, as it stands today, is a continuation of the laws enacted by the British imperialists during the 1860s. Its most stringent sections are 120, 121, 122 and other sub-sections attachéd to them which deal with ‘conspiracy to wage war against the state’. These charges were levelled against such anti-imperialist revolutionaries as Surya Sen, Bhagat Singh and others by the British raj, against the heroes of Telengana by the Nehru-led government, against Charu Mazumdar, Vempatapu Satyanarayanam and other Naxalite-Maoist revolutionaries of the 1960s and 1970s by the Indira Gandhi-cum Siddhartha Ray-led governments. The same charges of conspiring to wage war have been levelled against the Maoist revolutionaries of today by governments in AP, WB, Bihar and other states.

Did those brave men and women who dared to storm the gates of heaven wage a war against the State? Yes, they did. They are quite justified in doing so because unless this man-eating system is totally uprooted, there can never be the liberation of the people. But the fact is that during the past 3-4 years, thousands of people—most of whom are poor villagers—have been picked up from different areas of WB, such as West Medinipur, Bankura, Purulia, Nadia, Hooghly, North Bengal etc. and the majority of them have been implicated under sections 120, 121, 122 and so on. It seems that the Indian State and their political representatives in WB, the CPM, and other states are not at all in a position to take chances. So they are tagging anti-State conspiracy cases against most of them. They know it well that persons charged under these sections will not get any bail in the lower court; they would be detained for an indefinite period and that they could, meanwhile, also be tagged in new baseless cases in future which would prolong their indefinite stay inside the jails. The State is facing a conspiracy everywhere, even in such democratic demands as more wages, right to freedom of speech, to hold one’s opinion, to organize demonstrations and processions, condolence meetings to mourn the deaths of compatriots at the hands of the police( e.g., Ashim Das breathed his last in a so-called ‘encounter’ on 28 February 2004), or to print leaflets in criticism of the government. All these show the extent to which the Indian State and ruling governments have become trigger-happy. Unable to combat the revolutionary and democratic movements politically, they have been adopting the foulest of means to eliminate them from the political map of West Bengal. Throughout history, reactionaries had always framed such charges against those who fought for the creation of a world based on equality, liberty and fraternity. By so doing they seek to make their unjust actions appear justified in the eyes of the people. The revolutionaries, on their part, try to expose the falsehood that lay at the root of their claims and make counter-propaganda to mobilize the people in greater numbers.

But this is not the end of it. Now-a-days, the ruling classes are playing a more nefarious game. Sensing that anti-State conspiracy charges may not click, they have started branding the revolutionaries as anti-people and anti-country (deshadrohi). They seek to make anti-State movements appear as anti-people and anti-country movements. Thus those who are rebels against the State could be branded as enemies of the people and the country. If the communist revolutionaries could be made to appear as deshadrohis in the eyes of the people, then the State would have the moral right to maim and butcher them at will. There is no difference here between Advani and Chandrababu Naidu, between Marandi and Buddhadev or YSR Reddy. This is the sinister game they are playing now. The question is: are the interests of the State and the people identical? No, they are not. On the contrary, they are opposed to each other.

The Maoist revolution, in the true Maoist spirit, definitely wants to overthrow the present semi-feudal and semi-colonial Indian State by defeating the comprador big bourgeoisie, the feudal forces and other reactionaries and their imperialist masters, the most hated of which is US imperialism. The overthrow of the present State would be followed first by the creation of a new-democratic society and then by a socialist society—the last one being a transitional stage leading to the stage of advanced communism. Throughout history, oppressed people all over the world had fought for the end of exploitation and the establishment of social and economic equality. The historic revolt of Spartacus against the Roman slave state in 78 AD, that of Thomas Munzer against the feudal German state in 1525, that of the Taipings( 1851-1864) led by Hung Hsiu-chuan against the feudal Manchu state in China or that of the Indian people against British imperialism in 1857 and many more were rebellions against the state. All these rebellions were just from the people’s point of view and truly People’s Wars. And the Maoist revolutionary efforts of today, which had their beginning in the Naxalbari uprising of 1967, are a continuation of similar efforts of yesteryears.

What does the Maoist revolution really aim at? It aims at creating a new India free from exploitation by feudalism, imperialism and comprador capitalism. It seeks to abolish the all-pervasive control over our country by such imperialist agencies as the Ford Foundation, IMF, World Bank, Cargill, Monsanto, DFID, Mckinsey and many more. It seeks to abolish the feudal system from all parts of the country, adopt the policy of abject dependence on foreign imperialism, nullify all contracts entered into by the Indian governments with their foreign masters. It would be a society where nobody would die of starvation and every man and woman would be properly fed, clothed and housed. In that society, human creativity would have full scope of development. It would not be a me-first society. Here there would be all-round development of everyone. Nobody would remain illiterate. Everyone would have full scope to improve upon his/her knowledge derived from social practice. It is the vision of a society where human values would triumph over the lust for profits. Many years ago, Karl Marx cherished dreams such as these in his mind and inspired Millions of people through his scientific analysis to transform those dreams into reality. All these are the demands of the people and genuinely represent people’s interests. The Andhra Pradesh Committee of the CPI(Maoist) during its first-round discussions with the AP government raised exactly these demands of the people such as the immediate rejection of funding by the World Bank, confiscation of huge landed estates and their distribution among the poor peasantry etc.

The Indian ruling classes and their political representatives like Reddy, Buddhadev and others talk about the country’s interests and brand the revolutionaries not only as rashtradrohi (rebels against the State), but also as deshadrohi(enemies of the country and people). Do they have any right to talk about the interests of the country and the people? Do they have any right to give us homilies about how the starving and dying masses should behave? What role did they themselves play and are playing in this context? Have they not put the interests of imperialism above everything else? Are they not pursuing a policy that reduce the people of our country to a state of complete dependence and enslavement ? Did not the policy of borrowing more and more money from foreign agencies immerse our people deeper and deeper into debt? Both the central and state governments have been pursuing a policy of privatization of public sectors at throw-away prices leading thereby to the further opening of the country to renewed foreign investments and their gaining control over those enterprises? Does such a policy serve the interests of the people or those of the people’s enemies? The employment of workers on contractual basis, cultivation of the soil on the basis of contract, the conversion of agricultural land into land for the planting of fruit and flower at the dictates of McKinsey—the imperialist policy-makers, forcible eviction of the tribal people from the forest areas and slum dwellers from the slum areas, unthinkable increase in electricity charges, hikes in school and college fees, the imposition of water taxes on city-dwellers, conversion of women into commodities—all these and many more are the direct outcome of what they call ‘globalisation’. The FBI, the US intelligence agency, was allowed to set up their office in New Delhi. Joint military exercises are being undertaken not only with US troops, but also with Russian, French and Israeli troops. Whose interests do such policies serve? Do they serve the interests of the people or those of the foreign masters?

Who are the real defenders of the interests of the people? Are they the Indian ruling classes and their political stooges like Manmohan, Advani Reddy or Buddhadev who sell out our beloved motherland to their imperialist masters in the name of ‘development’? Or are they the Maoist revolutionaries who have been advocating a policy self-reliance and the total end of imperialist domination and control over our country? It is not the Maoists, but the Indian ruling classes and their political representatives who are the enemies of the people. It is they who are deshadrohi. In reality, the Maoist ‘rebels against the State’ are the true defenders of the rights of the people. What right do you people like Reddy, Buddhadev and other running dogs of imperialism have to brand these patriots as ‘enemies of the country’? You wretched enemies of the people should know that History would have its own retribution and, let us assure you, that that would surely be ruthless. Beware of that!!

The heroic people of India have again stood up with arms in hand, more determined than ever before to finally put an end to this man-eating system which the domestic stooges of imperialism have built up at the dictates of their masters. The sound of the their marching songs has been reverberating through AP, Dandakaranya, Maharastra, MP, Bihar, Jharkhand and parts of South Bengal. A new, independent, new democratic India would certainly emerge through immense sacrifices where human values would prevail over the lust for profits.

The century was coming to an end. It was end 1999 and the Berlin Wall had just collapsed. "End of History" and other anti-Communist hysteria was at its peak. The BBC decided to hold a poll to find out who the people thought were the greatest thinkers of the century that was coming to an end. The Poll results as grudgingly printed in The Economist:- 1st place was none other than Karl Marx, to followed by Einstein, Newton and Darwin.