UNIVERSITY OF SAN FRANCISCO

Not Just Ideology

Indias Greatest Internal Security Threat
Maka Akan Najin Clifford 5/17/2010

Contents
I. Summary .................................................................................................................................................... 2 II. Recommendations .................................................................................................................................... 4 Long Term ................................................................................................................................................. 4 For the Indian Government .................................................................................................................. 4 For the Naxalite Movement .................................................................................................................. 4 Short Term ................................................................................................................................................ 4 For the International Community, NGOs, and Other Governments .................................................... 4 For the Indian Government .................................................................................................................. 5 For the Naxalite Movement .................................................................................................................. 5 III. Background .............................................................................................................................................. 6 Not Just Ideology ...................................................................................................................................... 6 The Naxalite Movement ........................................................................................................................... 7 The Conflict Today .................................................................................................................................... 9 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................................ 11 Appendice ................................................................................................................................................... 12

I. Summary The Naxalite movement has been one that has engaged an ideological battle for decades between the Indian Government and the communists within the nation. However, the nature of the conflict is much more complex as the tribal and rural peoples of the nation, who are deeply immersed in the conflict, have been displaced by mainstream Indian populations for centuries. India once suffered under a repressive caste system which placed the Brahmin, or religious order, at the top and the Chandalas, or the untouchables at the bottom of the political and social ladder. Thus, for centuries there have been peasant rebellions that have created the political and social climate for more uprisings to take place.1 The Naxalite movement has, since its inception, been linked to the tribal and peasant rebellions though the two remain exclusive.2 The Naxalites, synonymous with the word Communist, have created alternative governments known as the Janatana Sarkars which control much of the region known as the Red Corridor, autonomous regions outside the control of the Indian Government. The Janatana Sarkars have regional powers split anywhere between 500 to 5,000 people who further split into subcategories that give a government consisting of the people who live there. Peoples
1

Pratul Ahuja and Rajat Ganguly, The Fire Within: Naxalite Insurgency Violence in India Small Wars & Insurgencies, 18: 2 (2007) 254. 2 Arundhati Roy, Walking with the Comrades, http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?264738-0 (March 2010).

governments as they are literally translated.3 The Naxalite movement began in the 1940s as one of the first peasant rebellions cause a major uproar and galvanized more rural and tribal peoples to the communist cause. The Telangana Movement from 1946-51 was this first major eruption of violence. Following that was the incident where the Naxalites have since received their name. The Naxalbari incident involved a local farmer who, by court order, came to plough his field. This farmer was then attacked by wealthy landowners who refused to pay him his legal share of the crops that he farmed. The tribal people nearby immediately responded with a revolt that allowed them to forcefully capture lands and drive out the Indian elites in an effort that became extremely successful.4 Wealthy landowners in response have since created their own private paramilitary group known as the Salwa Judum. These entities are composed of villagers with rudimentary, if any, police training, armed with crude weaponry. Their lack of professional training and consequent feckless behavior have contributed to gross human rights violations and have done little to contain the Naxalite threat.5 The Salwa Judum have been rumored to be funded partially by the State Governments in which they reside, also they are rumored to be funded by corporations interested in gaining more resources from the area.6 The Salwa Judum are known to enter into civilian villages suspected to be under Naxalite control and burn down the village, rape, and commit murder in order to clear bases for the Naxalites and lessen their control over the area, at the expense of civilian lives.7 Some former Naxalite members have even been recruited to the Salwa Judum through economic coercion. The Naxalite government has said it would reintegrate such members if they undergo trials.8 The Indian Government has taken some steps to mitigate the conflict, however these have proven to be ineffective or creating an environment that incites more violence at worst. Notably the Counterterrorism Jungle School that is run by Brigadier B.K. Ponwar is meant to be a training ground for former police officers to become a counterterrorist force. The motto of the Jungle schools being, fight a guerrilla like a guerrilla. The Jungle schools have, however, proven ineffective. The majority of the graduates from the counterterrorism school go on to become private militias in urban areas like Delhi where the pay is much more attractive.9 The Indian Government has also come under fire for some seemingly ill conceived plots in order to mitigate the Naxalite problem. Which it has dubbed the greatest internal security threat.10 The military has begun what has been called Operation Green Hunt where the Indian military plans to send 70,000 troops in to rid the Naxalite problem in a single blow, dubbed the Lord of the Rings Strategy by critics (due to its size and epic nature, the conflict to end all
3 4

Ibid. Rajat Kujur, Naxal Movement in India: A Profile. Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies Research Papers (2008) 2 5 Sumit Ganguly, Domestic Turmoil and External Hopes. Asian Survey, Vol. XLIX, NO. 1, JANUARY/FEBRUARY (2009) 43 6 Arundhati Roy, Walking with the Comrades 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid. 10 Jason Motlagh, The Maoists in the Forest: Tracking Indias Separatist Rebels The Virginia Quarterly Review, 84, 3; (2008) 104

conflicts), this move is seen as more than likely ineffective as the organization of the Naxalites is not limited to one region.11

II. Recommendations Long Term For the Indian Government Implement Human Rights Policy o The Indian government has long held back on the need to introduce human rights policy into the national discourse. Though India fears undermining its sovereignty, the policies are meant to strengthen the need for local and internal guidelines for solving conflict.

For the Naxalite Movement Implement Human Rights Education o It is necessary to study and research and educate the people in the means in which peaceful justice can be reached. Implementing human rights education empowers the local people in the long run and provides a backbone to have peaceful dialogues about the need to enforce and engage in human rights policy with the Indian Government.

Short Term For the International Community, NGOs, and Other Governments Encourage Third Party Mediators o The inability of the Indian Government and the Naxalite Movement to reach a consolidated interest is not necessarily a problem with their negotiation skills, rather the interests are opposed and require an outside, non-biased eye to aid the conversation. Help Build International Awareness

11

Shlok Vaidya www.naxalrage.com

o The Naxalite conflict is one of many conflicts rarely depicted in international media. I believe that more attention to the situation in the eastern Indian states will help gain international support around aiding in the building of a solution to the conflict. Condemn the Actions of the Salwa Judum o The Salwa Judum are a major instigator in the continued violent conflict. The organization has committed human rights atrocities and has funding ties to both the Indian Government and the corporations who are interested in the natural resources of the area. Both of these elements should be condemned in order to apply pressure to the Indian Government

For the Indian Government - End all Memorandums of Understanding o The inclusion of corporations that actively seek to undermine the legitimacy the local population and cause the upheaval and dispersion of millions only fuels the tensions between the Indian Government and the tribal populations who already have a long and tense history with the mainstream population. - Relocation Reform o Millions of peoples have been displaced due to projects such as dams being built in the name of progress. India has yet to develop a relocation program in order to ensure that all peoples are carefully and legally given proper relocation housing and economic stability. Not doing so undermines peaceful relations. - Property Rights Reform o Tribal peoples have long lived in a manner that encourages a shared and communal use of land, establishing private property for individuals undermines and way of life of a tribal people and alienates them from cooperating with government officials. - Cease Funding and Disband the Salwa Judum o The Salwa Judum not only alienates civilians from the Indian government and creates sympathy for the Naxalite movement, the Salwa Judum has committed gross human rights violations which have no place in a growing democracy. - Cease Funding and Disband the Jungle Schools o The Jungle schools are acting not as a deterrent or effective counterterrorist unit. Rather these graduates from the school are leaving to become private military personnel rather than fighters against the Naxalites. The school is acting more like an escalation tactic than anything else. For the Naxalite Movement

Discontinue the use of land mines12 o Land Mines are difficult to trace and cause immense damage to the civilian population. Once the conflict has ended, much time and energy is wasted removing land mines from an area at the cost of equipment and more importantly lives. Discontinue the use of children as soldiers13 o Child soldiers are a human rights violation and should not be tolerated within the Naxalite movement Allow for Negotiations to take place o Though peace talks have happened in the past, a more serious effort by the Naxalites to end the fighting must take place. This includes rescinding some demands that the Indian government will not cooperate with.

III. Background Not Just Ideology In order to truly understand the conflict in the eastern Indian states one has to consider the context of poverty and disenfranchisement that has been present for ethnic minorities for centuries. The country of India, prior to British colonial rule, had bought into a religious system pervasive with institutional and systematic discrimination against what they considered the untouchable class or the chandalas. Indias rural poor, being from the lower castes and aboriginal communities (officially described by the Indian government as Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes), often experienced humiliating discrimination and ostracisation.14 This tradition combined with other factors such as economic disparity (often an indirect result of prejudice) has pushed rural and tribal peoples into a state of resentment toward the mainstream Indian government and the majority population. Though peasant rebellions have certainly erupted in the past, particularly during the 17th century15, and many violent battles have taken place, there have also been structural social means of keeping the lower castes at bay. This in no way undermines the violence that has taken place and legitimate uprisings that have shaken the elite of India. Yet, the Indian elite were apt to giving the tribal chiefs and landlords the status of Dwij, A name given to once considered tribal untouchables now considered a twice-born Brahmin, the religious elite of the caste system. This kept the tribal peoples in line with the caste system, considering their leaders were now directly benefitting from the system. (Though this was considered counterfeit Hinduism.)16
12

Human Rights Watch, Being Neutral is Our Biggest Crime: Government, Vigilante, and Naxalite Abuses in Indias Chhattisgarh State Human Rights Watch (2008) 147 13 Human Rights Watch, Being Neutral is Our Biggest Crime: Government, Vigilante, and Naxalite Abuses in Indias Chhattisgarh State Human Rights Watch (2008) 147 14 Pratul Ahuja and Rajat Ganguly, The Fire Within: Naxalite Insurgency Violence in India Small Wars & Insurgencies, 18: 2 (2007) 254. 15 Ibid., 252. 16 Arundhati Roy, Walking with the Comrades, http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?264738-0 (March 2010).

Many conflicts throughout the world can be linked to colonialism. Certainly, the communist revolutions in India are not immune to this reality, but I attest that the complete analysis of this conflict shows that the connections between communist revolutionary and peasant untouchable are deep rooted in the pre-colonial Indian world. Furthermore, the colonization of India by Britain can also be said to have played a large role in the sustained resistance by tribal peoples and communist revolutionaries. Britain imposed a colonial constitution on the Indian sub-continent, one that the post-colonial Indian government maintained, forgoing a chance at creating more equity. The Indian Constitution, the moral underpinning of Indian democracy, was adopted by Parliament in 1950. It was a tragic day for tribal people. The Constitution ratified colonial policy and made the State custodian of tribal homelands. Overnight, it turned the entire tribal population into squatters on their own land. It denied them their traditional rights to forest produce, it criminalised [sic] a whole way of life. In exchange for the right to vote, it snatched away their right to livelihood and dignity. 17 The new government started a rapid modernizing campaign that included the Green Revolution in the 1960s, an attempt to curb the food shortages prevalent at the time.18 The Green Revolution was an attempt to modernize the farming techniques used by Indias farmers by using mechanized techniques, fertilizer, pesticides, etc. What was intended to bring peasants out of poverty instead further pushed them into poverty. Rural farmers and tribal farmers could not afford the rising land costs (due to modernization), the cost of the machinery and the lack of training that the rural people had would not allow them to effectively run these new farms. What happened then was a draining of rural and tribal farmers and a replacement of mechanized and large corporate farms. This is only one example of policies that continued to undermine rural and tribal peoples way of life.19 Moreover, the Indian government has worked in partnership with corporations to remove indigenous people from their homelands. Memorandums of Understandings (MoUs) have been used to justify the removal of peoples from their homelands and allow corporations to move in and begin the process of extracting resources. To date more than 30 million people have been uprooted from their homelands by the building of Dams alone.20 These secret deals do not include the indigenous people in the decision making process. More and more the indigenous people of east India have been displaced and undermined by the Indian government in a manner that incites their resistance. As Arundhati explains, even after Independence, tribal people were at the heart of the first uprising that could be described as Maoist, in Naxalbari village in West Bengal Since then, Naxalite politics has been inextricably entwined with tribal uprisings, which says as much about the tribals as it does about the Naxalites. 21 The Naxalite Movement

17 18

Arundhati Roy, Walking with the Comrades Ahuja and Ganguly, The Fire Within, 19 Ibid., 262-264 20 Arundhati Roy, Walking with the Comrades 21 Ibid

Taking into context the history of peasant and tribal disenfranchisement by the mainstream Indian populations the catalyst for the Naxalite revolution becomes more of a reality. Communist revolution goes as far back as the Telangana Movement from 1946-51.22 This was considered the first serious movement by the Indian communists to achieve a comprehensive revolution and learn from the mistakes of the Chinese revolutions that were going on in at that time; they took inspiration from Stalin and were critical of Mao.23 There would be many groups from this point through breaking and re-convergence to form new coalitions as the communist revolutionaries. Notably during the India-China war of 1964 the communist party split into two groups, the Communist Party of India (CPI) and the Communist Party of India (Maoist) (CPI(Maoist)).24 Though there were some ideological differences between the two, they still had a political coalition for the government in West Bengal. In the following years however there would be another incident that would be the trigger for a new, more widespread uprising that would also become the inspiration for the name of the movement. As described in The Fire Within: The Naxalbari revolt of 1967 in the Darjeeling district of West Bengal was a further grim reminder of the exploitative conditions which prevailed in Indias countryside. In the village of Naxalbari, a handful of sharecroppers along with 150 members of the Communist Party of India Marxist-Leninist (CPI-ML), a more militant and radical group that broke away from the Communist Party of India - Marxist (CPI-M), armed with sticks, bows and arrows seized the entire stock of grain from a jotedars (landlords) granary in revolt against the practice of landlords taking away half of the farmers produce, even though the West Bengal Estates Act of 1954 stipulated that the cultivator-sharecropper should get two-thirds of the harvest.25 Another, more detailed, version of the story tells that a young farmer named Bimal Kissan had attempted to plough land in March 2, 1967, he was attacked and the tribal people revolted, slowly recapturing lands that belonged to the wealthy landlords who attacked Bimal. 26 In the aftermath of this incident, the many split communist parties would once again form a coalition to address the needs of the oppressed rural and tribal peoples. That same year in 1967 they would form the All India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries (AICCCR).27 Disagreements about the ideology of the group and the means by which a class revolution would be possible, the group split again reforming the Communist Part of India (Marxist-Leninist) in 1969 and the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC). 28 The Indian government claims that after this period much of the resistance was successfully suppressed as a part of Indias extensive Counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy. However, others say the Naxalites simply maintained a quiet presence before resurging in the 1980s.29
22

Rajat Kujur, Naxal Movement in India: A Profile. Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies Research Papers (2008)

23 24

Rajat Kujur, Naxal Movement in India 2 Ibid., 2 25 Ahuja and Ganguly, The Fire Within 257. 26 Rajat Kujur, Naxal Movement in India 2 27 Ibid., 2-3 28 Ibid., 3 29 Ahuja and Ganguly, The Fire Within 257

The Conflict Today What is present today in the conflict is at once fascinating and on the other hand troubling toward its resolution. Local tensions have given way to paramilitary forces that have undermined peace efforts; In the state of Chattisgarh, for example, state authorities have created what amounts to village-based auxiliary police forces, known as the Salwa Judum (literally, Peace Mission), to confront the Naxalites. These entities are composed of villagers with rudimentary, if any, police training, armed with crude weaponry. Their lack of professional training and consequent feckless behavior have contributed to gross human rights violations and have done little to contain the Naxalite threat. 30 In fact these forces have amplified the violence against tribal peoples which further alienates the fragile population of rural Indians. The Salwa Judum was founded by Mahendra Karma, a former wealthy landowner of a group of tribal peoples, he has since used the Salwa Judum to raid villages and burn down homes and buildings so that the Naxalites and civilians will not be able to return. They have road blocks and exterminate all types of people. 31 They have been cited as committing human rights violations. Though ties to the state governments and corporations have been hinted at, both entities deny such a relationship.32 The first village the Salwa Judum burnt (on June 18, 2005) was Ambeli. Between June and December 2005, it burned, killed, raped and looted its way through hundreds of villages of south Dantewada. The centre of its operations were the districts of Bijapur and Bhairamgarh, near Bailadila, where Essar Steels new plant was proposed. Not coincidentally, these were also Maoist strongholds, where the Janatana Sarkars had done a great deal of work, especially in building water-harvesting structures.33 The Naxalites are a well organized and highly efficient body, systematically they set up the Janatana Sarkars which are the peoples governments that operate for up to 5,000 people each. They are the governing bodies of the people which consist of many branches who specialize in a certain area or field of knowledge.34 The Indian government has also taken upon itself to create counterterrorism schools in the jungles to train police officers in the art of counterterrorism. Brigadier B.K. Ponwar runs one of these camps whose motto is fight a guerrilla like a guerrilla. These jungle schools act more as an escalation tactic than a police reality however. Many of the students at this jungle school end up becoming part of private military forces in Delhi and elsewhere considering there is more economic opportunity in doing so rather than fight the Naxalites.35

30

Sumit Ganguly, Domestic Turmoil and External Hopes. Asian Survey, Vol. XLIX, NO. 1, JANUARY/FEBRUARY (2009) 43 31 Arundhati Roy, Walking with the Comrades 32 Ibid. 33 Ibid. 34 Ibid. 35 Ibid.

It seems likely that this conflict does not have a clear road to recovery. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has even called the existence of the Naxalites the biggest internal security threat facing the Indian democracy this day and age.36 Such an attitude has led to such military conquests as the up and coming Operation Green Hunt where the Indian military plans to send 70,000 troops in to rid the Naxalite problem in a single blow, dubbed the Lord of the Rings Strategy by critics (due to its size and epic nature, the conflict to end all conflicts), this move is seen as more than likely ineffective as the organization of the Naxalites is not limited to one region.37

36

Jason Motlagh, The Maoists in the Forest: Tracking Indias Separatist Rebels The Virginia Quarterly Review, 84, 3; (2008) 104 37 Shlok Vaidya www.naxalrage.com

Bibliography

Arundhati Roy, Walking with the Comrades, http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?264738-0 (March 2010). Human Rights Watch, Being Neutral is Our Biggest Crime: Government, Vigilante, and Naxalite Abuses in Indias Chhattisgarh State Human Rights Watch (2008) Jason Motlagh, The Maoists in the Forest: Tracking Indias Separatist Rebels The Virginia Quarterly Review, 84, 3; (2008) Pratul Ahuja and Rajat Ganguly, The Fire Within: Naxalite Insurgency Violence in India Small Wars & Insurgencies, 18: 2 (2007) Rajat Kujur, Naxal Movement in India: A Profile. Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies Research Papers (2008) Shlok Vaidya www.naxalrage.com Sumit Ganguly, Domestic Turmoil and External Hopes. Asian Survey, Vol. XLIX, NO. 1, JANUARY/FEBRUARY (2009)

Appendice

The Red Corridor www.naxaliterage.com

Casualties www.naxaliterage.com