The Hindu : An insidious campaign

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Sunday, Oct 19, 2003

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An insidious campaign

From being confined to isolated backward pockets of Andhra Pradesh and Bihar, the naxalites have spread their network across several States, says K. Srinivas Reddy.

The remnants of Chandrababu Naidu's car that was blasted by the People's War.

IT IS something like oil being spilled on a water surface. The drops quickly spread out, the isolated spots offering a myriad changing colours. They start drifting slowly, sooner or later, they join together to form bigger spots and these join again to form an oil slick. If oil continues to be spilled, it turns into a major slick, difficult to remove.

The oil-spot analogy is perhaps relevant to the growth of Left Wing extremist activity throughout the country, particularly during the last two decades or so. From being mired in obscurity and fighting for a New Democratic Revolution (NDR), a Utopian concept for many, the revolutionary movement in India has indeed made big strides, notwithstanding the claims by different governments.

The armed insurrection hitherto was confined to isolated pockets of backward and inaccessible areas of Bihar and Andhra Pradesh. But it has now emerged as a unified one that has not only withstood the periodical crackdowns, but also managed to spread to new areas.

Ideological differences led to splits; there has been reunification of these splinter groups. At present, the CPI-ML People's War (PW) has a strong presence in eight States, and significant presence in another seven. The other major extremist party that can be counted is the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) of Bihar. According to a rough estimate, the naxalite movement has a presence in 53 districts in about 15 States. While the MCC activities are more or less confined to Bihar, the PW has expanded its base rapidly. Formed in Andhra Pradesh on April 22, 1980 by Kondapalli Seetaramaiah, one of the most revered ideologues of naxalites, the PW saw its `ebb and tide' stages in Andhra Pradesh as successive State Governments adopted different strategies to tackle the problem. Interestingly, while the PW could not penetrate the towns and urban areas, it managed to strengthen its base in tribal areas in jungles and in areas abutting the forests, where the Government's hold is rather weak.

The PW movement has formed several guerrilla zones and is attempting to establish guerrilla bases in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Maharashtra and West Bengal. In States like Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala in south India and Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Punjab in the north, the PW is trying to expand its activities.

Its methods vary from State to State and area to area, depending on the stage of revolution, as the party hierarchy sees it. The PW movement can be classified broadly into organisation, guerrilla and liberated stages. In the first, the cadres do not necessarily indulge in violence, but concentrate on `mobilising' people on various issues. Armed squads are present but there would not be many `class actions'. Once people are mobilised, the armed squads begin action targeting the traditional structures of exploitation. People welcome this and help the naxals consolidate their base. Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan fall into this category for the PW.

In the guerrilla phase, the movement is sub-classified into preparatory and advanced stages. In the preparatory stage, armed squads undertake `shoot-and-scoot' operations mainly to confuse the police forces. Ambush of patrol teams and sneak attacks on politicians attempt to create a political vacuum at the village level, to be filled by grama rajya committees consisting of people from different walks of life. The advanced stage of the guerrilla phase would be a situation where the revolutionary has an upper hand over the state, practically manning a parallel government.

Going by the strategies and tactics of the PW, its movement is in the guerrilla phase in Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, and in the adjoining areas of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and Jharkhand. The PW is talking of forming two guerrilla bases in the Dandakaranya area covering continuous forest tracts in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa.

A review of the current stage of the movement all over the country done by the PW Central Committee (CC) has some interesting angles. According to the CC, in Andhra Pradesh (excluding Telangana districts), the Andhra-Orissa border districts and Dandakaranya, the revolutionary movement has intensified. The Nallamala-Guntur zone in Andhra Pradesh and the Koil-Kaimur-Magadh zone in the north have reached the guerrilla zone phase, while the movement has weakened in north and south Telangana districts. The CC document says the movement has spread to Uttaranchal and Kerala, while in Karnataka, its focus shifted from the Hyderabad-Karnataka region comprising Bijapur, Raichur and Gulbarga to the Malnad area. The disputes between local people and the Government over forestlands and the plantation labourers' problems are being taken up by the PW.

The PW is of the view that it has not made much progress in Maharashtra, especially in the Gondia-Balaghat areas. The movement has weakened in Punjab, while in Tamil Nadu, it is stagnating because of the intensified police raids. But in West Bengal, the PW claims it has been able to unite forces against the ruling CPI (M).

The three recent major developments on the revolutionary front are: The understanding the PW reached with the MCC to form a broad-based united front on issues; formation of a Coordination Committee of Maoist Parties and Organisations in South Asia (CCOMPOSA) two years ago; and the formation of a Compact Revolutionary Zone (CRZ) from the forest tracts of Adilabad (Andhra Pradesh) to Nepal traversing the forest areas of Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Bihar.

The understanding between the PW and the MCC has not only paved the way for stopping internecine clashes, but also helped in the CRZ becoming a reality. The CCOMPOSA formation is significant because it established fraternal ties with revolutionary groups outside India.

The coalition consists of the PW, the MCC, the Revolutionary Communist Centre of India (MLM), the Revolutionary Communist Centre of India (Maoist), all from India, the Purba Bangla Sarbhahara Party and the Bangladesh Samajwadi Party (ML) from Bangladesh, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), and the Communist Party of Ceylon (Maoist).

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