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I would like to state at the outset that I hold the
firm belief that in any insurgency, the first step that the government
should do is to study the economic background of the insurgency,
assess the causes and then dovetail the security strategy with the
plan of setting right the economic, social and development failures by
the government so that the economic and social injustices are set
right as the security operations progress. I believe that handling an
insurgency is best left to the professionals. It is absolutely
necessary to leave politics out of it. I also believe that psychology
has no role in the counterinsurgency module. I am, therefore, basing
my paper on two factors only – security and delivering economic and
social justice. I feel that when this is done insurgency will wither
away because there will be no cause for the people of the affected
area to fight with the government.
I have always held that the best model of a counter-insurgency that
succeeded was the campaign conducted by President Magsaysay of the
Philippines against the Huk guerillas. In fact, the leftwing extremism
or Naxalite insurgency that we are facing in this country strongly
resembles the situation in the Philippines, when the Huk insurgency
erupted before the Second World War and continued after the country
was given freedom by the United States. The issue in the Huk
insurgency was land. Tenant farmers were being squeezed by big land
holders and were getting a raw deal in tenancy rights. Regrettably,
the government sided with the landlords and set the police and the
military against the Huk guerillas. The police and the military were
blundering around committing excesses against the tenant farmers for
supporting the guerillas, so much so that when President Magsaysay
went touring the affected areas, the people told him again and again
that they hated his corrupt police and brutal Army and corrupt civil
servants who sided with the landlords against the poor tenant farmers.
Magsaysay went back to his capital, amended the tenancy laws in favour
of the tenant farmers, reined in his Army and ensured that no excesses
were allowed to be committed. After a year when he toured the affected
areas, the scenario had changed. The people now told him that his
soldiers were behaving well, the police were fair and the civil
servants were not sucking the blood of the tenant farmers any more.
The Huk insurgency gradually withered away.
In India, the obstacles hindering the counter-insurgency effort are
easily identified. They have bad politics and not just bad politics
but rotten politics. One of the major obstacles is something that the
Philippines did not have. This is caste, at the root of the Naxalite
problem. The other problem is a peculiar concept that was introduced
into the body politic and administration of India during the emergency
and perpetuated thereafter by all political parties without exception.
This is the concept of committed bureaucracy not just to the party in
power but to the family heading the party in power. When you have a
situation of the caste factor being conjoined with the political
factor, then you have a stranglehold where on the basis of caste the
oppression of the poorer economic communities continue and economic
and social justice is continually denied and the concept of committed
bureaucracy protects the perpetrators who are oppressing the lower
castes. Denied economic and social justice, the oppressed classes are
motivated by the left wing extremist (LWE) parties and you have an
insurgency in your hands.
Let us now examine the incidents of Left Wing Extremism (LWE) in India
briefly assessing the cause of resorting to violence in each case.
1946. The Tebhaga Movement in undivided Bengal
The demand was for the share of the landlords to be reduced from one
half to one third. The movement spread from Rangpur and Dinajpur in
the north to 24 Parganas in the south. When their demands were not
heard the Kisan Sabhas, dominated by the Communist party, encouraged
the peasants to forcibly take two thirds of the harvested crop from
the granaries. As a result, there were bloody clashes between the
peasants and the landlords. The movement petered out when the
landlords with the help of the local administration let loose a wave
of repression.
1946-51. The Telengana Insurrection
The movement was directed by the Communists from the very beginning.
The peasants launched their struggle on economic issues against forced
labour, illegal exactions and unauthorised evictions. It soon
developed into an uprising against the feudal rule of the Nizam. More
than 4000 lives were lost before the Communist party withdrew the
struggle. The Telengana insurrection (1946-51) was broad-based and had
no parallel in Indian history since the 1857 war of Independence.
1967. Naxalbari
The revolt was in the area of three police stations – Naxalbari,
Kharibari and Phansidewa. About 65 per cent population of these three
police stations was scheduled castes and tribals. They worked as
agricultural labour or in mines, forests and plantations. A small
percentage owned small holdings. The majority cultivated on agency
basis (baghchash). The baghchashis were exploited by the joledars.
When the land reforms act was passed in 1955, the jotedars started
malafide transfers of land. Santhals armed with bows and arrows
forcibly occupied the lands of the kulaks, lifted stocks of hoarded
rice and killed an inspector of police. Thereafter, there were a
number of such incidents. After this, there was a major deployment of
police forces by the CPI (M) government and after several operations
the movement was squashed. The leadership of the movement was by
communist cadres who were following the path set by Mao Tse Tung after
the Cultural Revolution. This culminated in the formation of the
Communist Party of India Marxist-Leninist (CPI-ML) on 22 April 1969.
Not more than a score of people were killed in this uprising, but it
left a far reaching impact on the entire agrarian scene throughout
India. It was like the throw of a pebble bringing forth a series of
ripples in the water.
1968. Srikakulam
Girijans or tribals comprised about 70 per cent of the population of
Srikakulam district living in the Agency area of the Eastern Ghats.
They were mainly involved in agriculture, while some collected minor
forest produce. The British, conscious that they may be harassed by
the plainsmen decreed that no land could be transferred from a girijan
to a plainsman, without the permission of the District Collector. The
Act was, unfortunately, observed more in the breach. The traders and
money lenders took full advantage of the poverty of the girijans. They
gave them daily requirements like tobacco, kerosene, salt and cloth on
credit and also lent money for purchase of seeds. Those unable to
clear their debts were made to part with their land. Thus, most of the
fertile land was alienated from the girijans and passed into the hands
of the plainsmen. The landlords squeezed them to the utmost and paid
subsistence wages. Lease holders had to give two-thirds of their
produce to the landlord. It was in 1967 that one Vempatapu
Satyanarayana started work among the girijans. The movement he led was
able to make substantial gains for the poor girijans. Wages of farm
servants rose, the landlord's share of harvest was reduced from 2/3 to
1/3, 2000 acres of land was wrested from the landlords and more than
5000 acres of wasteland came under the possession of girijans. Then on
31 October 1967, a clash took place between a large group of tribals
going for a meeting of the Marxist party and a group of landlords. The
landlord group had guns and they shot and killed two tribals. The
girijans were incensed and the movement became violent. Vempatapu
Satyararayana organized the girijans into guerilla squads called
dalams. At this stage, the Srikakulam leadership who had joined the
CPI (M) faction of the Communist party broke away from the CPI (M) and
joined a group that split from it to form the All India Coordination
Committee of Communist Revolutionaries which in due course evolved
into the communist Party of India, Marxist-Leninist CPT (ML). There
were a series of raids on houses of landlords and money lenders; their
houses were burnt down and cash looted. There were a number of
encounters with the police. From December 1968 to January 1969, twenty
nine policemen were killed in action by the dalams. Charu Mazumdar,
the CPI (ML) leader visited Srikakulam and gave a fillip to the
movement. During 1969, the Naxalites committed 23 murders and 40
dacoities. Some of the murders were gruesome. For example, on 11 May
l969, a landlord, P Jammu Naidu of Ethamanuguda was killed and slogans
were painted with his blood by the members of the dalam that executed
him. He was a notorious man who had grabbed the land of the poor
tribals and forcibly taken the daughters of the tribals as his wives.
When he was killed he had seven wives, two of whom were little girls
he had forcibly taken from tribals. This showed the extent of
exploitation of the tribal people by the upper caste landlords. The
exploitation of the forest tribals who collected minor forest produce
is evidenced by the account of a trial of a sahukar by a Peoples
Court. The sahukar or usurer used to go into the Agency area to
collect tamarind from the forest girijans. The list of borrowers which
he brought showed that he had lent a sum of Rs. 280/- to peasants of
four villages. Against this he proposed to collect from them 40
bundles of tamarinds which at the market rate was worth Rs 1600/-.
This meant that the peasants were to pay back nearly six rupees for
every rupee they had borrowed! The usurer was arrested and tried
before a Peoples Court. He repented and promised to behave and not
fleece the peasants. He was let off.
1967-71. West Bengal, Midnapur and Birbhum
The Midnapur district of West Bengal bordering Bihar and Orissa
witnessed a well planned and well organised Naxalite movement in the
Debra and Gopibhallavpur police stations. The district has a sizeable
tribal population of Santhals, Oraons and Lodhas. The majority of them
were landless labourers. A small proportion owned small plots of land
or cultivated the jotedar's land under the Barga system.
Gopibhallavpur has a long forested border with Orissa and Bihar. After
the Naxalbari uprising in 1967, a section of CPI (M) workers in
Midnapur started propagating the extremist line. They supported the
kisans and bargadars and worked for a movement against the jotedars.
Santosh Rana, Ashim Mukherjee, both first class postgraduates of
Calcutta University and a host of students from well to do upper caste
families from Calcutta lived and worked among the tribals, identifying
themselves wholeheartedly with them. From September 1969, big tribal
groups armed with spears, bows and arrows attacked the houses of
jotedars, killed some of them, looted cash and burnt all deeds of
land. The State Government alarmed at the spate of killings sent
several companies of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and state
police and by March 1970, the area was brought under control. The
Naxalite uprising in Birbhum district was also masterminded by several
students from Calcutta University. The State Government reacted by
deputing CRPF, State armed police companies and an army infantry
company for cordoning and searching the area. Nearly 150 CPI (ML)
cadres were arrested and the movement died down.
1968-70. Bihar and Uttar Pradesh
The Mushahari block of Muzaffarpur district of Bihar covered 12
villages with a population of about 10,000 people. There were various
forms of oppression by the upper classes on the peasantry. In April
1968, the peasants of Gangapur harvested the arahar crop of the
landlord in broad daylight. Retaliation was quick. Bijli Singh the
zamindar of Narsingpur organised an attack on the peasants with 300
men armed with lathis, swords and firearms with the landlord leading
on an elephant. In the fight that ensued, the landlord and his
hoodlums were routed. The humbling of this powerful landlord by the
harijan peasants had a magical effect on the surrounding villages.2
Kisan Sangram Samitis were formed and there were incidents of seizing
of land by the peasants. In April 1969, landless peasants forcibly
harvested the crop on 14 acres of land of a landlord. There was a
clash in which the retainer of the landlord was killed. In June 1969,
an attack was made in Paharchat village. The landlord and two
associates were killed. Hundreds of peasants gathered after the raid.
In their presence, all the deeds and documents were burnt and the
pawned ornaments returned to the owners. A series of incidents
followed. Alarmed, the State sent police forces and after several
combing operations, the movement died down. The Mushahari struggle
caused ripples to spread into Dharbangha, Champaran and Chota Nagpur.
Here in May 1970, 54 Adivasis were arrested in the Jaduguda forest
during police operations. A British girl Mary Tyler was found among
them. Later she wrote poignantly about the movement-"The Naxalites
crime was the crime of all those who cannot remain unmoved and
inactive in an India where a child crawls in the dust with a begging
bowl, where a poor girl can be sold as a rich man's plaything, where
an old woman must half starve herself in order to buy social
acceptance from the powers that be in her village; where countless
people die of sheer neglect, where many are hungry while food is
hoarded for profit, where usurers and tricksters extort the fruits of
labour from those who do the work, where the honest suffer, while the
villainous prosper, where justice is the exception and injustice the
rules and where the total physical and mental energy of millions of
people is spent on the struggle for mere survival ."
The Naxalite violence that erupted in Singhbum and Ranchi had more
serious dimensions. Jamshedpur became a mini Calcutta, with instances
of attacks on schools and, government offices and police piquets.
Schools were also attacked in Jamshedpur. There were also large scale
attacks in Ranchi. In Uttar Pradesh, the Palia area is part of the
Lakhimpur district in the Terai region. It was inhabited by Tharu
tribals. The state government encouraged poor peasants to go to the
Palia area, allotting 10-12 acres of land to each family. In actual
fact landlords forcibly occupied big chunks of land, ejecting the poor
peasants. This provided the Naxalites with fertile grounds for
agitation. Their object was to clear the area of big farmers, thugs,
corrupt political leaders and moneylenders.4 A series of attacks and
raids on landlords ensued in which a number of firearms were also
snatched. Deployment of the armed police in the area brought the
situation under control.
In all these states, the Naxalite movements were organised and
coordinated by various CPI (ML) groups. Unfortunately, the top
Marxist-Leninist leaders like Charu Mazumdar in West Bengal,
Satyanarain Singh of Bihar, were not tactically sound in their
approach. They thought that there would be mass uprisings and they
could build up a Peoples Liberation Army from the rag-tag band of
peasants who had revolted against the atrocities of landlords and
money lenders. Charu Mazumdar succeeded in arousing the students of
Calcutta, who left their studies and went and lived in the forest
villages and shared the tribulations of the tribals. The vital element
of building up a guerilla force training and equipping them to take on
the might of the state was lacking. One by one the movements fizzled
out as the Central Para-Military forces with the state police were
deployed in the interior areas and well planned raids and search
operations were carried out. The CPl (ML) leadership lacked the vision
to organise the poor peasants against the might of the state, though
the cause was just. Also, lumpen elements infiltrated the leftist
groups and affected the discipline of the groups.
According to a rough estimate, there were about 4,000 incidents of
Naxalite violence from the middle of 1970 to the middle of 1971, with
the break-up as follows-West Bengal-3500, Bihar-220 and Andhra
Pradesh-70. The Government of India made a plan for joint operations
in West Bengal, Bihar and Orissa with the Army, Para Military Forces
and the state police. This was undertaken from 1 July to 15 August
1971. This was Operation Steeplechase. The broad strategy was to
surround an area that was a known stronghold with an outer cordon of
the Army, an inner cordon of the CRPF, and local police operating
inside. The operation disrupted the network of the naxalite cadres and
the movement stalled. Meanwhile, internal dissensions between the
factions of the CPI (ML) also disrupted the movement. A number of top
leaders were arrested, including Charu Mazumdar. When he died shortly
after, it marked the end of a phase of the Naxalite movement in India.
However, it was only a lull. The movement was to surface again, for
the Indian Government had not removed the causes of the insurgency.
This movement was not going to be finished with cosmetic remedies. The
causes were deep rooted in caste, the crucial factor behind the
exploitation of the poor and the downtrodden.
1980. Peoples War Group (PWG) Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and
Maharashtra
Andhra Pradesh has a radical tradition going back to the Telengana
struggle of 1946-51. The Girijan awakening in Srikakulam had preceded
the Naxalite movement. The forces of the state squelched the uprising
by 1970. The movement, however, continued to simmer. After Charu
Mazumdar's death, his associates Kondapalli Seetharamiah, KG
Satyamurthy and Suniti Kumar Ghosh formed a Central Organising
Committee (COC) in December 1972, concentrating on organising and
mobilising the masses. They decided to eschew militancy until such
time as the party was strong enough to embark on a course of violence.
Kondapalli Seetharamiah encouraged the party workers to commit money
actions- an euphemism for dacoity or robbery. He was arrested on 26
April 1977, but jumped bail and thereafter organised underground
activities on a large scale. He broke away from the COC of the CPI
(ML) on 20 April 1980 and formed the CPI (ML) Peoples War Group. For
the next ten years, he moved from strength to strength and the Peoples
War Group emerged as the most formidable Naxalite formation in the
country.
What led to the resurgence of Naxalism in the Telengana area? The
basic reason was the continued economic exploitation of the tribals by
the landlords, traders and government officials especially those of
the Forest Department. As PS Sundaram wrote-"The tribals owning small
pieces of land are expropriated and sharecroppers impoverished. They
are all kept under perpetual bondage towards repayment of a small debt
supposedly taken generations ago. The forest wealth is freely smuggled
out by contractors in connivance with the forest staff. The tribals
get neither a remunerative price for their produce nor a fair wage for
their labour."
The social dimensions of exploitation were far more revolting. The
landlords of the region were commonly known as dora (lord). C
Lokeswara Rao has described the high-handedness of the doras-"The
tyranny of Doras in Telengana is unmatched. Tribal girls working on
the Dora's land are forcibly taken in his household and are at the
disposal of the master and his guests. She is forced to have abortions
when she gets pregnant. She has to subsist on the leftovers passed on
by the cook, but has to satisfy the appetite of any male in the
master's household. Naxalite songs are replete with references to rape
by landlords and to girls growing up with the knowledge of the
inevitability of rape that awaits them. Only a few such practices have
disappeared and the pace of change is slow."
On 20 May 1981, the Naxalites had called for a meeting of tribals at
Indraveli in Adilabad district. More than 30,000 tribals had turned
up. The administration refused permission for the meeting,
apprehending a clash between landlords and tribals. The tribals were
determined to have the meeting. There was a lathi charge and firing
and 13 Gond tribals were killed. The PWG exploited the anger of the
tribals and consolidated their hold on the area. Kondapalli
Seetharamiah was arrested for the second time on 2 January 1982. He
escaped from hospital on 4 January 1984. He now concentrated on
organisation of the PWG cadres. He constituted Forest Committees for
the forest areas and Regional Committees for the plains areas. Armed
squads or dalams comprising six to 10 members were formed. About 50
dalams were soon active in Telengana.
The PWG is believed to have redistributed nearly half a million acres
across Andhra Pradesh. The modus operandi was to forcibly occupy
excess land of big land owners and give them away to the landless or
to the labourers working for the landlord. As per the State
Government's own admission, counter affidavit 68/82 filed by the state
against the Naxalites, the radicals had forcibly redistributed 80,000
acres of agricultural land and 1, 20,000 acres of forest land. I
wonder that the court did not react to this. What was the government
doing all this time since the land ceiling act came into being? This
is the crux of the matter in Andhra Pradesh and in many states of
India. The land ceiling act is not enforced. The party activists
insisted on a hike in the daily minimum wages from Rs. 15/- to Rs.
25/- and the annual fee for jeetogadu (year long labour) from Rs.
2000/- to Rs. 4000/-.8 The poorer sections were particularly happy at
these two measures. They found that what the politicians had been
talking about and the government promising year after year could be
translated into a reality only with the intervention of the Naxalites.
Gorakala Doras (Lord of the Bushes) is how the Naxalites came to be
known in the interior forest areas. Revolutionary writers helped in
furthering the Naxalite ideology. The moving spirit of the Jana Natya
Mandali, the cultural front of the PWG was Gummadi Vittal Rao, better
known as Gaddar. This wandering ministerial's ballads inspired the
simple tribal. He became a legend in Andhra Pradesh.
The PWG fought a running battle with the Telugu Desam Government. When
the Congress came to power in 1989, they took a soft line with the
Naxalites, freeing a number of Naxalite who were under detention and
in prison. They, however, did nothing to control the exploitation of
the tribals like enforcing the land ceiling or controlling the
moneylenders. The Naxalites began organising, extorting money and
running peoples courts, giving the general impression of a parallel
government. The Congress resumed the hard line. Soon the PWG had
spread to the adjoining areas of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa
and into some areas of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. They also acquired
50-60 AK 47 rifles probably from the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam
(LTTE). Naxalite violence was gradually stepped up peaking in 1991
with several attacks on railway and electrical installations and
police stations and patrols. On 8 May 1992, the PWG was banned and
coordinated operations commenced against them by the Central Para
Military Forces and the state police. The results were good with 3500
cadres being arrested and 8500 surrendering. By 1993, the Naxalites
surged back with violence rising again.
They now spread to the Bastar district of Madhya Pradesh, which till
then was a sleepy forest outpost. The tribals of Bastar were used to a
life of deprivation. They made the truant teacher to take classes
regularly and the absentee doctor to attend to his patients. The
tribals began to look at the Naxalite cadres with awe and respect. The
Peoples Union of Civil Liberties wrote aboutBastar-“A lopsided
socio-economic development of the district caused by exploitation
through cheating and duping was an ideal setting for the Naxalites to
take root in the area. With their idealism, free of corruption or
other vested interests, they could win the confidence of the tribals.
They punished corrupt officials, made the tendu leaf contractors to
increase the wages.9 The movement spread to Balaghat and Rajnandgaon
districts.
Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra is largely inhabited by tribals.
The jungle is spread through 10,495 square kilometres out of the
district area of 15,434 square kilometres. The entire life of the
tribals revolves around the forests, yet the tribals were denied
access to the forests due to a stupid interpretation of the Forest act
and rules. With the coming of the Naxalites, the forest officials
abdicated their jurisdiction. The best testimonial of the presence of
the Naxalites was given by an innocent tribal who got a lift from the
Commissioner of Scheduled castes and tribes during his visit in
Gadchiroli district. The Naxalites are called Dadas in Gadchiroli.
When asked about the Dadas, the tribal replied-"There is at least one
change since the Dadas have come. The government atrocities are over
and the police cannot harass us.”10 There were 113 incidents of
Naxalite violence in the district in 1990 with 16 deaths. On 12
November 1991, 10 State Reserve Police Force (SRPF) personnel were
killed and 13 injured in a landmine explosion under their vehicle. The
PWG has attained a high degree of expertise in making and detonating
improvised explosive devices (lED).
The New Left in Bihar
The best description of the dismal state of affairs in Bihar is summed
up by Arvind N Das – "Bihar's economy has been at a stand still for
decades. The discriminatory nature of public and private investments,
the green revolution bypassing the state, principally on account of
non-implementation of land reforms, the willful subversion of whatever
social security system existed, all this has pushed the people into
poverty, the economy into backwardness, the society into violence.”11
The resentment of the oppressed sections in this environment found an
outlet in the emergence of a 'New Left' manifested in the form of
three Naxalite groups in the beginning of 1980 – the Maoist Communist
Centre (MCC), CPI ML (Anti Lin Piao Group) and the CPI ML Party Unity.
In May 1982, the Bihar Government reported that 47 out of the 857
blocks were affected by the Naxalite movement. Subsequently, the
movement has grown enormously in the face of a corrupt, casteist and
incompetent administration.12 When the CPI ML was formed, one Naxalite
group Dakshin Desh had remained aloof. Amulya Sen and Kanai Chatterjee
were its leaders. They considered mass mobilisation as a precursor to
armed action. The group chose Jangal Mahal area of Burdwan, with a
sizeable population of scheduled castes and tribals, for its
operations. Agricultural land was inadequate, irrigation virtually
nonexistent, and the wage rates dismally low, all conditions suitable
for a Naxalite uprising. The landlords generally belonged to the upper
castes, while the sharecroppers and landless labour were scheduled
castes or tribals, the ideal cocktail for the Naxalite to enter. By
1973, the party had 37 militias who organised actions like looting of
food grains, killing of class enemies and snatching of arms. In 1975,
the group was renamed as the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC). The MCC
gradually spread over central Bihar. Its membership exceeded 10,000
and they had stockpiled about 700 weapons including some AK rifles.
There were gruesome slaughters of Rajputs by Yadavs in the MCC. These
were more by way of the feuds between the two communities and because
of the way the Rajputs had treated the Yadavs. On 29 May 1987, the
Yadav cadres of the MCC slaughtered 42 Rajputs of Baghaura and
Dalelchak villages of Aurangabad district. On 12 February 1992, 37
members of the landowning Bumihar caste were hacked to death by the
MCC cadres in Bara village of Gaya district.
Vinod Misra formed the CPI ML anti Lin Piao faction in December 1973.
It struck roots in Bhojpur district and spread to Rohtas, Jehanabad,
Patna and Nalanda districts. They had 50 underground armed squads and
some weapons, mostly country made guns, a few rifles and sten guns.
The Indian Peoples Front was the political front of the anti Lin Piao
faction. The CPI (ML) Party Unity was formed in 1982 by the merger of
the COC CPI (ML) of Andhra and the Unity Organisation of CPI ML of
West Bengal. The Party Unity has about 30,000 members. It has 25 armed
squads holding about 150 weapons, including a few sten guns.
The third phase of Naxalite violence commenced with the holding of the
Ninth Congress of the Peoples War Group in 2001 in which it was
decided to give more sophisticated arms to the Peoples Guerilla Army.
This phase has extended the Naxalite war to nine states.
Conclusion
It will be seen that in all the theatres of Naxalite violence, there
has been a diagnostic response only in one state – West Bengal. Here,
the CPM government carried out operation Barga under which share
croppers were registered and given permanent and inheritable rights on
cultivation of their plots covering a total area of 11 lakh acres.
Besides 1.37 lakh acres of ceiling surplus and benami lands were
acquired by the state government and distributed among 25 lakh
landless and marginal cultivators. The land reforms have seen the
emergence of a new class loosely termed rural rich, weakened the
social and political power enjoyed by the landlords in the
countryside. This has not even been thought of by Andhra Pradesh or
Bihar, where the Land Ceiling Act has not been enforced after more
than 50 years of its legislation. And sadly this is not the end of the
picture in these two states. The law enforcing officers say openly
that the Naxalites are a band of thugs and criminals and must be wiped
out. There is no question of the Land Ceiling being enforced. What
they have left unsaid is that it is the right of the upper classes to
have hundreds of acres of land and it is the duty of the scheduled
classes and tribes to slave on these lands for the benefit of the
upper classes. In this regard, the case of land tenancy in Kerala is
of interest. The upper classes in Kerala were generally landlords but
with medium holdings. The majority of the landlords had tenant farmers
on their lands who deposited half of the crop to their landlords. The
landlords themselves and their progeny were educated and took up white
collar jobs in the metropolises of the country. Then the CPI M was
elected in the late fifties, they legislated land tenancy laws that
transferred ownership of tenant holdings to the tenants who were
having tenancy for 12 years. At one stroke hundreds of upper caste
landlords lost their holdings and tenant farmers got ownership rights
of the lands that they had tilled for long years. This is one reason
why the Naxalite movement did not grow roots in Kerala. They had no
cause.
The issue in the forest lands of Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra. Madhya
Pradesh, Chattisgarh and Jharkhand is different. Traditionally the
forests here have been the home of the tribals for centuries. Here
again, the root cause is the caste factor. It is the Vaisya who
trades. It is he who is the moneylender. In thousands of years of
Hinduism the roles of the castes have been honed well. You will find
that in the forests of all the Naxalite affected states, the bania has
had a vice like grip on the tribals. He lends money to them and
collects minor forest produce against the loans, taking care to keep
the tribal perpetually indebted.
When posted in Hyderabad in 1989, I had a chance to discuss the
Naxalite problem with the state's Home Minister, who asked me how this
problem could be solved? When I replied- "You have to enforce the Land
Ceiling." The Revenue Minister of the state raised his hands and
replied-"But that is impossible." What he did not tell me was that the
two major castes of Andhra, the Reddy and the Kamma, both landlords
would never allow the land ceiling to be enforced. And they were the
main political force in the state. Here then is the crux of the
problem. The same situation exists in Bihar, where the Brahmin,
Bumihar and Rajput will have his land holdings in the names of his pet
dogs and cats rather than allow the land ceiling to be enforced.
In the landed areas, the upper castes are the main political factor
and they will not allow the lower castes to get their share of land.
In the forested lands, it is the bania, the Vaisya, who is in league
with the political class and who bribes the bureaucrat and keeps the
poor low castes and the tribals in perpetual subservience. There can
be no solution to the problem of the CPl ML leading a proletariat
rebellion without solving the basic problem of giving rights to the
lower castes and the tribals and putting an end to the exploitation by
the upper castes. Measures like the salwa judum are clever ploys by
the same upper caste political and bureaucrat nexus operating. Above
all there can be no military solution to this problem.
The Way Forward
In the landed areas, the first step is to enforce the land ceiling.
This has to be done, forgetting the political factor of particular
political parties wanting to retain power in states like Andhra
Pradesh and Bihar. The Central Para Military Forces and the state
Police which are used in operations against the Naxalites should now
be used to enforce the land ceiling, evict the landlords from their
excessive holdings, and ensure that the surplus lands are cultivated
by the lowest classes and tribals. They should ensure that the crops
grown by the new land holders are secure and they harvest the crop
keeping the landlords away. Once this is done, the Naxalite cadres
will not use landmines on the police forces.
In the forest tracts, laws should be legislated that only forest
dwelling tribes and scheduled castes should have access to forest
lands. Very strictly, upper castes should be prevented from entering
the forests. Cooperatives should be organised of tribals who can be
trained and only these tribal cooperatives should be allowed to trade
in forest produce. Branches of banks with micro credit loans as
operated by the Grameen bank in Bangladesh should be set up with
forest cooperatives to sanction loans to the forest tribes. The Para
Military Forces that were used to hunt the Naxalites should now be
used to enforce the new laws for the forests. They should see that the
Bania does not enter within 100 kilometres of a forest. They should
ensure that all trade is carried out only by the Forest Cooperatives.
They should guard the branches of the micro credit Grameen banks.
When this is done the tribal will know that the government is now with
him at last and he will befriend the police force and stop putting
land mines for them. The Naxalite problem will then wither away.
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