Examining the Maoist Resurgence in Andhra

by Uddipan Mukherjee


IDSA Comment, 28 December 2010


http://www.idsa.in/idsacomments/ExaminingtheMaoistResurgenceinAndhra_umukherjee_281210

If two events of recent occurrence are compared, then they would ostensibly appear to be disconnected. Nevertheless, they ought to evoke considerable interest because of their actual linkage.

First, Swaranjit Sen, former Director General of Police (DGP) of Andhra Pradesh, is to be anointed as the vice-chancellor of the troubled Osmania University, which of late has been a hotbed of Telengana agitation. His appointment would be a historic occasion as for the first time an Indian Police Service (IPS) officer will be a vice-chancellor in the state. [1]

Second, the Maoists called for a bandh in the Andhra-Orissa border area on December 22. Their agenda was the protestation against the encounter of five of their comrades by the elite Andhra Greyhounds personnel at Cheruvuru near Korukonda in Chintapalli mandal. [2]

In fact, these two events represent different facets of the Maoist movement in Andhra. And the connection is manifested when it is remembered that Sen is known in the state for his ‘hardline’ image against the Maoists.

On one hand, it shows that the police force in Andhra commands significant confidence among the political leadership. That is why an IPS top cop has been entrusted to tackle internal security problems; and that too within academic circles. For instance, media reports say that the Andhra government has, in principle, approved a suggestion by Governor Narasimhan to nominate senior Indian Administrative Service (IAS) or IPS officers to head the three strife-torn universities of Osmania, Kakatiya and Andhra [3]

On the other hand, the events portray the fact that the Maoists are trying their best to reclaim their lost territories. Hence, a more severe skirmish is in the offing in Andhra Pradesh. In fact, the Maoists have a grandiose plan to create ‘liberated zones’ in the state.[4] Moreover, it is not at all unlikely that the left-wing ultras are not aiding and abetting the Telangana movement and would continue to do so in future through their frontal student and other mass organisations.

To corroborate, quite recently, the Telangana Praja Front (TFP) was floated by Maoist sympathiser and balladeer Gaddar. Reportedly, he has demanded the central government to honour its commitment by immediately tabling a bill in the Union parliament for formation of Telangana. [5]

Gaddar’s actions, though in the garb of democracy, needs to be conceived as the covert moves of the insurgents. Moreover, when some Telangana groups have already warned of 'bloodbath' if Srikrishna committee makes no recommendation for the formation of Telangana state by December 31 2010, the inherent liaison between these militant pro-Telangana groups and the Maoists simply cannot be outrightly rejected.

In this backdrop, Gaddar’s TFP acting as an open party to subvert the democratic processes of the state is basically what the outlawed outfit wants or rather badly needs. It is a natural tactical belief of the Maoists that overt military acts in the Andhra-Orissa border region can be effectively compounded with mass agitations around Hyderabad to weaken the existing political structures of Andhra Pradesh. Moreover, when the issue is as emotive as Telangana, the rebels do have a raison d’etre to back their tactics.

There is another reason to believe that the ongoing agitation for separate Telangana state may have a Maoist ‘hand’. There are allegations of extortion against the Telangana activists which seem to follow the ‘extortion regime’ of the Naxalite movement in Andhra. [6]

Pro-Telangana activists believe that taking donations to propel the movement forward is a reasonable step. However, Lok Satta Party president Jayaprakash Narayan asserted in the state assembly that there is heavy extortion involved in the Telangana movement.

Furthermore, there have been allegations that local leaders were collecting huge amounts to the tune of Rs 10,000 to 20,000 from businessmen, government employees, contractors and others to conduct even cultural programmes.[7] This is quite interesting considering the fact that this is a standard modus-operandi of the Maoists to garner finances.

Operating from their headquarters at Abujhmar in Chattisgarh, the Maoists are essaying into other states. Most importantly, along with the historically rebel-dominated district of Srikakulam, the districts of Vizianagram, Vishakhapatnam, East Godavari and Khammam are the disturbed areas of Andhra Pradesh. Khammam shares a long border with Chhattisgarh whereas the other districts are contiguous with Orissa.

The Maoists are now celebrating the 10th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA) and hence have taken up a month-long recruitment drive in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chattishgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar and West Bengal.

Their party spokesperson Gudsa Usendi and Dandakaranya special zone military commission in-charge Sudhakar said that the 10th anniversary of the PLGA, which began on December 2, will continue till January 2 2011. They proclaimed that during the period, revolutionary propaganda, processions, meetings and rallies would be conducted in every village. [8]

The Maoists had been physically driven out from Andhra from a law and order point of view almost five to six years back. But in June 2008 at Balimela reservoir in Malkangiri district of Andhra-Orissa boarder, the elite greyhounds suffered casualties at the hands of Maoists.[9] That could be interpreted as the ‘come back’ event for the latter in Andhra. And the present surge in militancy is in sync with that. Additionally, since the Maoists are losing ground in other states, they need to regain their lost forte in their old backyard so as to have an edge in the psychological war with the Indian state.

In addition, it is quite disturbing for the Maoists not to have a mass base in Andhra since most of their top leadership hail from the very region. Hence, they are trying to cash in on major issues to extract maximum dissatisfaction of the masses toward the parliamentary structure of the state. Telangana is one such. Alongwith it, it seems natural that the Maoists may focus on the issue of suicide of farmers too in the foreseeable future through their frontal organisations.

In this regard, the porous border with Orissa is a major cause of concern for the Andhra authorities. The ultras have bases in the Malkangiri, Koraput and Rayagada districts of Orissa that adjoins the Andhra border. There are no border checkposts except on the highway and main roads. Furthermore, on both sides of the border the same Kondh tribals live who provide the mass base for the ultras.

The Andhra government might have had won the first phase of the civil war with the Maoists. But the renewed violence in the area portends ominous signals for the future. A far more dangerous futuristic situation was reflected by an opinion poll published by the Times of India on September 28 2010 [10].

According to it, a clear 58 per cent of the populace (who were polled) in Maoist-dominant areas of Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Orissa said that Naxalism had actually been good for their area. In Andhra, Khammam was one of the districts where the poll was conducted. Four districts of the Telengana region; Adilabad, Nizamabad, Karimnagar, Warangal were also chosen.

Probably the vital aspect of ‘winning the hearts and minds’ of the people in a counterinsurgency warfare is yet to be accomplished by the Andhra authorities. And the failure to do so may have serious ramifications in the long run.

References

1: ‘Swaranjit may be first IPS to be Osmania VC’, December 19 2010, DC Correspondent, http://www.deccanchronicle.com/hyderabad/swaranjit-may-be-first-ips-be-osmania-vc-983

2: ‘Maoist bandh in AOB region tomorrow’, TNN, Dec 21 2010, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/hyderabad/Maoist-bandh-in-AOB-region-tomorrow/articleshow/7135743.cms

3: ‘Maoist-hunter top cop to be Osmania University V-C’, Hyderabad, Dec 19 2010, DHNS, http://www.deccanherald.com/content/121994/maoist-hunter-top-cop-osmania.html

4: ‘Maoists plan janata sarkar in AOB’, Siva G, TNN, Dec 9 2010, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/hyderabad/Maoists-plan-janata-sarkar-in-AOB/articleshow/7068037.cms

5: ‘Telangana groups observe 1st anniversary of centre’s announcement’, Dec 8 2010, IANS , http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/politics/telangana-groups-observe-1st-anniversary-of-centres-announcement_100471551.html

6: ‘T activists following extortion line of Naxals?’, TNN, Dec 23 2010, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/hyderabad/T-activists-following-extortion-line-of-Naxals/articleshow/7147670.cms (TNN-3)

7: TNN-3, See 6

8: ‘Maoists on a major recruitment drive’, TNN, Dec 16 2010, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/hyderabad/Maoists-on-a-major-recruitment-drive/articleshow/7108340.cms

9: ‘Maoist Insurgents Hit Back Greyhound Commandos Killing 35’, Santosh K Agarwal, Alarm Bells, July 01 2008, http://www.groundreport.com/Arts_and_Culture/Maoist-Hit-Back-Greyhound-Commandos-Killing-35/2864225

10: ‘58% in AP say Naxalism is good, finds TOI poll’, TNN, Sep 28 2010, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com//india/58-in-AP-say-Naxalism-is-good-finds-TOI-poll/articleshow/6639631.cms

Maoists Eye the Cities

by Uddipan Mukherjee

published in the Institute for Peace & Conflict Studies, 14 December 2010

www.ipcs.org/article/india/maoists-eye-the-cities-3297.html

In the first week of December 2010, the Special Task Force (STF) of Kolkata Police arrested Kanchan alias Sudip Chongdar, the West Bengal state secretary of the banned outfit CPI-Maoist. Along with him, four other top leaders of the group were also taken into custody. Kanchan is considered to be next in hierarchy to the media-friendly Maoist leader Kishenji alias Koteshwar Rao. This high-profile arrest comes months after the state committee leader Telugu Deepak was nabbed in March 2010 from the same city. Moreover, in February 2008, Kanchan’s predecessor Soumen alias Himadri Sen Roy had already been put behind bars.

Kanchan’s role in the radical outfit could be evaluated by the following facts. When Maoists announced their involvement in the landmine blast that targeted West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee on November 2, 2008, the statement was issued in the name of Kanchan. Later Kanchan issued the statement claiming responsibility for the Lalgarh movement in 2009.

Some startling revelations have been extracted by the STF from Kanchan and his comrades. These, inter alia, indicate toward a number of important things.

First, it points to the fact that the Maoists are trying to build up an urban network in the eastern zone with Kolkata as the focal point. This means that in the foreseeable future, they want to coordinate their activities from Kolkata. Apart from aiding the ongoing guerrilla warfare in the hinterland by supplying logistics from the city, the Maoists seem to have chosen Kolkata for two more additional reasons.

One, they want to penetrate the student organisations and workers in the unorganised sector. This would help them to bolster their frontal mass movement. Furthermore, the students can serve as a potent recruitment pool for the guerrilla movement as well as provide fillip to the technological prowess of the ultras. And secondly, the rebels, by all probability intend to wreck the electoral process of the impending Legislative elections in West Bengal in the middle of 2011. To ensure that, presence in the city is a must.

Second, information has been obtained that the insurgents want to extend their network beyond the so-called Red Corridor and target the tea plantation labourers in the North-East. In that venture, they are in the process of forging alliances with terror outfits based in that region. Incidentally, the capture of these Maoist leaders appears to be linked to the nabbing of Anthony Shimray, the chief arms buyer of the NSCN (IM) and Rajkumar Meghen, the chairman of UNLF.

Shimray was located from Kathmandu on October 2 soon after he had bought a fresh consignment of rifles, rocket launchers, pistols and communication devices worth 4.5 crore. There is a distinct possibility that the huge cache of arms and voice-controlled explosives seized from Kanchan and his team was in some way connected to the separatists of North-East.

Kanchan has disclosed that the Maoists have already struck a deal to get arms and training from the Manipur-based insurgent group, the People’s Revolutionary Party of Kangleipak (Prepak). He further told the STF that the deal with Prepak was struck around eight months ago after the leadership of both outfits agreed to help each other.

Hence, this is an additional rationale for the Maoists to develop a base in Kolkata since that would facilitate the communications with North-East. Moreover, close contacts with the Bangladesh-based Shailen Sarkar’s Communist Party can also turn out to be a reality.

Third, the investigations also point to the interesting fact that Kanchan and his associates feel alienated from the party activities. According to them, Kishenji has been bypassing the state committee since the beginning of 2009 and has been operating with his coterie. Kanchan has claimed that he was almost kept in the dark regarding the party's activities in Purulia, Bankura and West Midnapore. However, this could well be a ruse in order to avoid divulging any operational information to the authorities.

Fourth, following these arrests, Maoists appear to suffer from a leadership crisis. A day after the arrest, Asim Mondal alias Akash, a senior member of the state committee, told the Times of India: “The arrest is unfortunate and no doubt it is a jolt to our organisation.”

In fact, Maoist sources have confirmed that they had an 11-member state committee and now seven of them are either behind the bars or dead.

However, these arrests are not without a parallel. A 42-year-old Maoist operative Loknath Panth, hailing from Gulmi district in Nepal, has been arrested from New Delhi on December 03 with a huge cache of explosives. This clearly indicates that the Left-wing ultras are ominously targeting the cities. It is to be remembered that their top ideologue and politburo member Kobad Ghandy was also arrested from New Delhi.

In sum, it may be inferred that the Maoists are venturing into the cities like Kolkata and Delhi with obvious intentions of solidifying and extending their networks. And in addition to that, they are in the process of colluding with other terrorist outfits based in North-East, Bangladesh and Nepal which have grave security implications for the Indian state.

 

The Maoists are losing legitimacy

by Uddipan Mukherjee 

published in CLAWS Web Journal, 04 December 2010

http://www.claws.in/index.php?action=master&task=690&u_id=136

Of late, it seems that the SPs (Superintendents of Police) of the Bankura and West Midnapore districts of West Bengal have bagged considerable evidence so as to jeopardise the legitimacy of the Maoists in Jangalmahal; that is, the area spreading across the three Maoist-affected districts of West Bengal (Purulia being the third).

On November 16, Rumpa Mahato alias Sujata surrendered at the Bankura SP's office. She actually belongs to the Majurkata village in West Midnapore's Salboni area. Rumpa told SP Pranab Kumar that she joined the Maoist ranks about two years ago, basically with a hope to get work as she was the daughter of a daily wage labourer.

A couple of months back, in August, Maoist woman leader Shobha Mandi alias Uma, surrendered to the police in West Midnapore. After four months on the run, the CPI-Maoist Jhargram area commander walked into West Midnapore SP Manoj Verma's office.

These two events, though spatially unconnected, however have profound linkage because both the female comrades of the CPI-Maoist (CPI-Communist Party of India) allege sexual exploitation by their male counterparts and leaders.

What does this indicate?

Prima-facie, if one accepts the veracity of the revelations of these surrendered women comrades, then one is led to understand that there has crept in a serious flaw in the internal organisational structure of the Maoists. And, this can and should be seriously exploited by the authorities to win the ongoing Low Intensity Conflict.

Any sort of physical or mental abuse of women cadres is ideologically totally unsupported by Maoist-Marxist dogmas. Hence such a development, if not arrested soon by the Maoist leadership, in the long run may be effectively used by the government as a propaganda tool to thwart their designs in Jangalmahal and other areas.

In the foreward of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara’s acclaimed book “Guerrilla Warfare”, Harry Villegas states that “according to Che, the people are to the guerrilla fighters what water is to a fish, that is, their means to existence.”

In fact, this is the very reason why Mao Zedong had used the nomenclature of ‘Protracted People’s War’ to describe the long drawn out ordeal of the Chinese peasants against both the Kuomintang forces and the imperial Japanese in the 1930s and 40s.

And incidentally, this has been the very pillar of ‘legitimacy’ erected by the Indian Maoists. They are supposedly fighting a ‘war’ against the comprador-bourgeoisie Indian state which is overtly exploiting the masses through the bureaucracy-politician-corporate nexus.

Now, in light of the above gruesome tales, what shall be the defence of the Maoist leadership spearheaded by Muppala Lakshmana Rao alias Ganapathy? Will he term these as mere aberrations?

Now, if these are ‘exceptions’, then how does the leadership substantiate the involvement of their cadres in the sordid saga of the derailment of the Jnaneswari Express? The Maoist leadership may distance itself from such ‘wanton’ acts of terror by using the jargon of ‘lumpen elements’. Simply put, it shall be easy for them to say that such acts of terror were carried out by ‘misled’ cadres. However, more such happenings will jeopardize the internal hierarchy of the ultras and along with it, shall also alienate the very ‘downtrodden masses’ for which they claim to be fighting.

Apart from the afore-mentioned facts, a very recent report of November 11 flashed an ominous link between the CPI-Maoist and the Lashkar-i-Toiba (LeT).

According to Vishwa Ranjan, the Director General of Police of Chhattisgarh; somewhere in April or May this year, two LeT operatives had reportedly attended a Naxalite meeting as ‘observers’ at a forested location inside Orissa, close to Chhattisgarh's Bastar region. He however cautioned that the inputs received by the intelligence wings were based on a single source which had to be corroborated with multiple sources.

In fact, even before, there have been allegations that Islamabad-based terrorist organisations have, if not overt, but at least peripheral connections with the Indian Maoists.

Well, the Maoist core leadership has constantly denied such allegations. Nevertheless, there is a context in which the Naxalites may come close to the Islamist Fundamentalists backed by the theocracy-military complex of Pakistan. As per principle, the Maoists support any movement for self-determination by any section of the Indian populace. Accordingly, they espouse the cause of the Kashmiri separatists and the groups belonging to the North-East. Such an ‘emotional’ and ‘philosophical’ attachment with the groups who in turn have direct linkages with the Islamist Fundamentalists, will certainly brand the Maoists as ‘purely terror outfits, shorn of any legitimacy’.

In his article dated June 3 2006, in the Economic and Political Weekly, Gautam Navlakha strongly opines: “To advocate seizure of power and to work to change the world is a legitimate project. Whether this should be through an armed struggle, peaceful means or a fusion of all is an open question. But to advocate as an absolute must the disarming of people concedes to the government the right to a monopoly over violence.”

Interestingly, if the kind of ‘acts’ under discussion, proliferates with space and time; and the Maoist core leadership is unable to control such ‘growing aberrations’, then the basic ‘ideology’ for which the Maoists are purportedly fighting, shall fall into shambles.

Though any linkage, direct or peripheral, between the Maoists and the Islamist Fundamentalists, are problematic security concerns for the Indian state; but in the long run, such an alliance and along with that any misdemeanor toward female cadres have the potential to ‘internally wreck’ the organisation of the Left Wing Ultras.

Ganapathy et al. must appreciate the fact that ‘they’ also possess no ‘monopoly’ over the will of the Adivasis.

Space and Strategy

A first look at the monograph really impressed me. Space is the next horizon in strategic issues.


http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fidsa.in%2Foccasionalpapers%2FSpaceCapabilityandIndiasDefenceCommunicationsUpto2022andBeyond&h=31fd1

The New Colonisers

by Suman Sahai, The Asian Age

A new colonialism is underway. Rich, food-importing countries are grabbing the world’s farmland for captive food production for their people. China, South Korea, Japan, as well as Saudi Arabia and the Arab states are the new colonisers. Africa, with its large land mass, fertile land in most places and abundant water, is a target, like India, with its fabled wealth that once was. Only this time, India is joining the ranks of the land grabbers, not on the same scale as the biggies but India, too, is acquiring land in Africa.

The tragedy of Africa is that it remains food insecure despite its fertile farmlands, receiving food-aid from UN agencies like the World Food Programme. Ethiopia, which is aggressively promoting the lease out of its land to foreign investors, receives food aid worth $115 million but its lands generate cereals worth $100 million for Saudi Arabia. Ethiopian land produces food for foreigners but cannot do the same for itself! Similarly, Sudan which receives as much as $1.6 billion worth of free food from international agencies, grows wheat for Saudi Arabia, vegetables for Jordan and its own staple food, sorghum, for animal feed in the United Arab Emirates.
 
The food crisis of 2008 and high food inflation brought home to many how fragile the global food situation can be, not just for the poor but also for the rich who do not have sufficient land to grow the food they require. When global food commodities disappeared from the international market as a result of factors like speculation leading to hoarding, diversion of foodgrains like corn and soybean to biofuels and increased demand for animal feed, the rich food-importing nations realised that it was not sufficient to have money. To be food secure, they decided, they could not depend on international food stocks but must have control over food production directly. 

If they did not have enough land in their sovereign territories, they would simply acquire this land elsewhere, produce the food there and ship it home. This would allow them to bypass global food markets and the volatility associated with them in the recent past. It is estimated that in the last few years, up to 20 million hectares of land are either already leased or are being negotiated for lease.

This new colonialism takes forward the trend of the last centuries. The 19th century Europe took over large tracts of farmland in Africa for coffee and cocoa plantations. US-based fruit growing conglomerates appropriated farmland in South and Central America and in Southeast Asian countries like the Philippines to produce bananas, pineapples and other tropical fruits for the world market. The farmland grab of today is fundamentally different though. Earlier it was cash crops and a means to wealth generation, today it is based on straightforward food security instead of revenue generation. Food-importing countries are seeking the first instance to secure food supplies for themselves.

Not just the wealthy countries, others have also joined this exploitation of global farmland. South Africa, it is reported, could negotiate a deal to lease 10 million hectares from Congo and Java-based companies in Indonesia are trying to occupy land in Indonesian islands like Borneo and Sulawesi. In neighbouring Pakistan, the government is offering farmland to (largely) Arab investors. Government-backed roadshows are being held in the Gulf state, offering extremely generous tax incentives to attract investment. Given the state of the country’s domestic security situation, an additional bonus that Pakistan offers is a one lakh strong security force to protect the foreign investments.
 
India too is in the thick of the land grab. Indian companies have found a way out of the land ceiling laws in India to build vast agriculture operations in Africa where there is no ceiling on land ownership. Building huge agriculture empires is not possible in India, but it is in Africa. The Indian government supports this move and provides soft loans and reduced import duties to enable the shipment of agriculture produce to India. Indian farming companies have bought thousands of hectares of land in Africa and are growing rice, maize and pulses which they sell to India. 

These companies have invested upwards of $2.4 billion to buy up farmland in Ethiopia alone. Karuturi Global, a Karnataka-based company is one of the biggest land owners in Africa, where it grows cash crops like sugarcane and palm oil, as well as rice and vegetables. Not surprisingly, the backlash from people in Africa against foreign investments has begun. Karuturi is one of the prime targets. Activist groups are calling the investments a “land grab” taking away the entitlements of the African people. They say such alienation of land will deprive local people of their livelihoods leading to destitution. 

They have a point.
 
There is a fear that the foreign investments in food production will end up hurting farmers as corrupt local governments allow the land to be leased out without building in any securities for the land owners. These could often be small farmers with little idea of what has been negotiated or what would be the terms of getting their land back. Would the land owner have some right to the food that is produced on his land? Would the local community have preferential rights to access the food or could it be all exported without leaving anything for the local people? Who would ensure that the land is not degraded during the lease period and that it is returned to the owners in a healthy state? Such investment deals have been notoriously non-transparent in most cases so far.
 
If this form of land leasing is to be made fair and sustainable, and if the small landholders are also to benefit from it, a code of conduct must be formulated. This could be done by bodies like the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation. They should define the terms and conditions under which land is made available for contracted food production. There must be a consultative process with not just the governments but with the land owners directly and the terms and conditions must be made clear to them. Prior Informed Consent, a feature of recent negotiations determining access to resources, as for instance in the Convention on Biological 

Diversity, must be made standard features in all such arrangements, before a deal can be finalised. The international community must put its weight behind compliance of the code of conduct in both the host and investor country so that such deals do not become tools of exploitation, depriving the poor and hungry and robbing them of the chance to ever become food secure.

Graft in India

Economist is a bit late to report on this

http://www.economist.com/node/17583050

Thus Spake Obama

by Uddipan Mukherjee


in South Asian Idea


http://southasianidea.com/foreign-policy/thus-spake-obama/

Deganga : West Bengal's Ayodhya?

by Uddipan Mukherjee


When this has been published in a weekly which emanates from the capital and has its reach in several parts of the country, then I presume some people will take a note of this. 


Uday India, 13 November 2010
http://www.udayindia.org/content_13nov2010/perspective.html

“Faith (Imam) and Infidelity (Kufr), both are galloping on the way towards Him,

And are exclaiming (together): He is One and none shares His kingship.”

Darbar-i-Akbari by Muhammad Husain Azad (p. 492) tells us that Abul Fadl had this verse inscribed on a building which the eclectic emperor Akbar had built for the common use of the Hindoos and Mussalmans.

  

There were a plethora of articles, essays and reportage with regard to the Ayodhya verdict. In fact, there was no dearth of publications, both national as well as ‘international’ which did not discuss the issue. Undoubtedly, the matter was of profound significance and could have had a serious politico-security impact on the Indian state. Nevertheless, it seems that two decades must have taken away a lot of steam and momentum from it. A globalised, post 9/11 India, especially its youth may not be that much interested in the debate of Mandir-Masjid. They are rather more engrossed in the aspects of career.

Still, even in this subdued political atmosphere of 2010, on the day of the verdict, the streets exhibited a deserted look; shutters of most of the shops were down and majority of the vehicles were unmoved. That too in Kolkata: the city which boasts of being the epicenter of communal harmony; at least for the last three decades of Marxist governance.

Interestingly, this same city was full of gaiety and fanfare when at around 40 km away from its international airport; a group of people were languishing in their own prison-like habitats. The reason: communal disharmony. Or one should aptly refer to it as ‘ruffian-like hooliganism’ inflicted on a section of the populace; which went visibly unnoticed by their brethren. This is not to be seen only through the prism of religion; but surely to be viewed in terms of responsibility of a civilized nation-state where the administrative machinery still does declaim to exist.

Has the time come to deconstruct the political apparatus of this six decade old democracy? Conservatives may not subscribe to such a radical viewpoint. Even if not, then even the most hardliner probably would agree that a serious re-thinking in that direction is necessary. At least one particular parameter needs to be looked into, analysed thoroughly and the hypocritical moorings pruned off, sooner; the better.

As an Indian citizen, we feel proud to vociferously proclaim the secularist strand that echoes through the labyrinth of our voluminous constitution; sometimes explicitly in the form of Fundamental Rights and at times, even implicitly. And we decry counter-arguments manifested in the vitriolic attacks launched on us both from within as well as from without as far as secularism is concerned.

We also boast of an impartial judicial system which takes care, through writs, of any infringement on our Fundamental Rights. And last but not the least; we flex our intellectual muscles when we talk about our independent media and civil society: which do not merely act as the fourth pillar of democracy by extending Montesquieu’s categorical definition of the term; but definitely act as an important platform to showcase independent thought in an independent India.

But where were the media, the civil society, the politicos, the administration and the common man when a section of hapless Hindoos (the author is helplessly using this term) were being traumatized in a secular land? They were not being subjected to torture, pillage and rapine in an Islamist state which is governed by the Shariat: that could have still provided a raison d’etre to the overt acts of those goons. Rather they were being ‘mentally demolished’ in a land which grants ‘freedom of religion’ to every citizen.

And what was the dispute all about? Well, about a piece of land. Yes, again a piece of land.

As Dr Tharoor points out in his book “INDIA: From Midnight to the Millennium and Beyond”, that there exists a ‘hackneyed phrase that there are several Indias in one India’; this particular event corroborates the cliché once again. However, Dr Tharoor may not appreciate this ‘India’ that is being discussed in this article.

He, like many liberal thinkers, who may or may not have been mentally and intellectually persecuted by a group of over-enthusiastic right-wingers; have quite unnecessarily shielded themselves from a reality which now sometimes haunts us in our wildest dreams, but would probably graduate toward ominous proportions if not taken due care.

The reality that is being put forth here is not unknown to any of the Indians, and not in any way alien to the liberal writers, thinkers and politicos of all shades and colours. The reality not just pertains to pseudo-secularism, since the word betrays semantics, but rather of ‘deprivation’, of ‘beguiling a large section of the populace’, of ‘emasculating a group’ and of ‘dismantling the very structure for which our forefathers gave up their lives’.

Coming back to the incident, on September 07 2010, a group of hooligans, allegedly under the tutelage of Haji Nurul Islam, a Member of Parliament (MP) from the Bashirhat constituency, vandalized the Kali Mandir in the Deganga intermediate Panchayat area: a place which is close to a busy hub of the capital of West Bengal.

Why did the goons do this? Actually, they wanted to extend the graveyard and naturally got engaged in a conflict with the ‘other’ community who perform Durga Puja for years in a nearby compound. As an altercation ensued, the huns under the auspices of the local MP wielded their authority and the police were to act as bystanders, as has always been the case in West Bengal for the last three decades.

However, it seems that apocalypse is looming large on the horizons of the province because this time around, the MP belonged to Trinamool Congress, the party which is believed to bring succour to the people of the province after the thirty-year long maladministration and malnourishment of the Left.

Now, this really turns out to be dangerous. Who would the beleaguered people now confide in? The Left has been termed as pseudo-secularists and now the centrists seem to be a close second in that regard. The far right has been distinctly disowned by the people themselves. In fact, they are no less than a pariah in West Bengal.

A seasoned political analyst would comment as follows: “As we live in ghettos in India, based on language, religion, caste etc., our politics is also moulded accordingly. Hence, the majority has nothing to fear, even if they are a minority on a national or provincial scale. What would actually matter is the population density of a particular group in a constituency.”

The author would like to yell and ask that analyst: “Should we not again go back to the Morley-Minto Reforms of 1909 and give to ourselves the separate electorates? Should we not undo the reforms of the Father of the Nation? And should we not reverse the irreversible tract of historical formation of India?”

And if we are impotent enough to do either of the aforementioned, then please let us not always be confounded, bemused and manhandled by a ludicrous set of political generalissimos. And let us all break the yoke of a biased liberal thought-process which quite ‘illiberally’ terms any antagonistic literature as reactionary, conservative, communal and biased.

The desecration of the Kali Mandir at Deganga is an irreversible process, no doubt. The Hindoos reacted in the Satyagraha-esque manner by not performing the Durga Puja this year. Even then, the reluctance of mainstream media to cover the event evokes stupefaction.

No sane character would, however, contemplate an equally uncivil attack on the ‘other’ community since in the lexicon of the sane; the word ‘other’ ought not to exist. But the single most important thing at this juncture is to bring the perpetrators to book; whosoever they are.

If the rule of law is to exist in independent India, then the guilty needs to be sent to the hoosegow. If the people of India in general and West Bengal in particular are still to have faith in the constitutional process, then the culpable has to be incarcerated. The travails and tribulations of the ‘minority’ in Deganga must end.

As a disclaimer, this article is not preaching any dogma, nor proliferating any parochial mindset; but merely labouring for an enlightenment of both the masses and intellectuals alike to not perpetuate a ‘false sense of secularism’ which has been held hostage to political hooliganism and a systemic criminalization of the Indian political apparatus.

Well, at last, the light may be at the end of the tunnel, if not for India as a whole but may be for the ‘minorities’ at Deganga. The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) asked the West Bengal government to file a report on the violence that took place on September 7, within a month. But again, reports and commissions for most of the times foster delinquency.

For Deganga to become West Bengal’s Ayodhya, there needs to be a complete revitalization of ‘consciousness’ of the masses of the province, which seems unlikely in the foreseeable future unless propelled by some externalities. Nevertheless, an ‘Ayodhya-isation’ of the issue is evidently not desirable. But if the interests of the ‘minorities’ are not safeguarded in a ghettoized India and especially in West Bengal, then fanning of sentiments of gullible denizens would be easy.

What the masses basically need is the rectitude of the government, whichever composition it might be. And no one desires a Godhra or Ayodhya or for that matter a Deganga. What Akbar could do in the medieval era surely can be replicated in the post-colonial.

Insurgency and COIN

by Rajesh Rajagopalan


http://www.india-seminar.com/2009/599/599_rajesh_rajagopalan.htm
 

INDIA has been beset with armed rebellions from its earliest days as an independent nation. Some rebels wanted to secede from the republic; others wanted to redraw the partition to join Pakistan; some even wanted to replace the liberal democratic political order. Most of these rebellions have continued in fits and starts over the last many decades and many are still active. None have succeeded.

The measure of success and failure is somewhat different in guerrilla wars: there is a military saying that guerrilla wars cannot be won, only lost. India has been successful by this measure: it has not lost any of the domestic counterinsurgency campaigns that it has fought. The only one that the Indian Army lost was the ill-fated expedition to Sri Lanka in the late 1980s against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Only one campaign can be considered to have been successfully ended, the one in Mizoram. But India’s approach has been successful in ensuring that the intensity of violence is kept low and that certain level of normalcy is maintained in political and civil life, even though many insurgencies continue. What accounts for India’s impressive record?

Insurgents have had some extraordinary victories in the last century, defeating both of the Cold War superpowers and a host of smaller powers. But it is also notable that most of these successes have come when guerrilla groups have been fighting at home against foreign forces. Guerrilla fighters have had far less notable results when fighting against their own government. Where they have succeeded, as the Mukti Bahini did when they liberated Bangladesh, a large measure of such victory was due to foreign military assistance and intervention. For example, while the Bangladeshis succeeded, other rebellions against Islamabad in Sindh and Baluchistan, which have not had the benefit of direct foreign support and intervention, have been brutally crushed. It is possible then that India’s successes are not so unique after all. If the success rate of domestic insurgencies is generally low, then India’s record seems somewhat less spectacular.

Nevertheless, the Indian experience with insurgencies is worth serious study and perhaps emulation. India has not only managed to keep under control a large number of rebellions, but has managed to do so without recourse to the kind of methods that has recently been referred to as the ‘strategy of barbarism’.1 Such strategies would have been morally abhorrent to democratic India, and India’s saner approach provides an alternative that is equally successful in countering armed rebellion. The lessons from the Indian experience reiterates the British approach to counterinsurgency and finds resonance in the recommendations of the so-called ‘fourth generation warfare’ theorists, though the term is itself unfamiliar in India.

It is difficult to say with certainty whether India has a counterinsurgency ‘strategy’ because strategy suggests an amount of deliberation that, in this case, is notably absent. Nevertheless, there is a certain consistency in the Indian approach towards counterinsurgency that allows us to characterize it as strategy. We might even call it ‘grand strategy’ because it is primarily a political approach in which military force plays an essential but ultimately limited role. The essence of this strategy is the willingness to compromise with rebellious sub-nationalities on all issues with one exception: secession is taboo.

But short of secession, the Indian state has been willing to compromise on most other political demands. New states have been carved out to satisfy demands for local government and under the Sixth Schedule of the Indian Constitution some ethnic communities have been allowed to create autonomous regions and districts to allow for a measure of self-rule. Those rebels who were willing to give up the demand for secession and work within the Indian Constitution have been welcomed into the political order, becoming important regional leaders.

In order to permit such compromises, it was essential that military force be kept carefully limited. Thus, though military force was employed frequently its use was circumscribed by the clear understanding that the ultimate solution would have to be a political rather than a military one. Today, the fact that the Indian forces do not use aerial bombing or heavy artillery in fighting against insurgents seems unremarkable. But a look at the manner in which other counterinsurgency campaigns are fought illustrates how remarkable the Indian approach is. Whether it was in the Cold War conflicts in Vietnam or Afghanistan, or in the more recent American campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan or the Russian campaign in Chechnya, the use of heavy fire-power – aerial bombing, tanks and artillery – is standard.

Around the region, the Pakistani counterinsurgency campaigns in erstwhile East Pakistan and in Baluchistan, or the Sri Lankan campaign against the LTTE have all been marked by the intense use of fire-power. It is not that Indian counterinsurgency campaigns have been gentle. Nevertheless, the intensity of violence in Indian counterinsurgency campaigns has been carefully calibrated by political calculations and it has completely abjured the use of heavy firepower that causes indiscriminate casualties and has the potential to become an obstacle to future political resolution.

The limitation on the use of force in counterinsurgency campaigns began with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Many of the early rebellions were initially handled by the state police forces or paramilitary forces such as the Assam Rifles. But by the mid-1950s, it was clear that the challenges facing the nascent nation state could not entirely be handled by these forces. The Nagas, in particular, represented a serious challenge. Despite tribal differences, the Nagas had managed to forge a strong sense of common identity in opposition to the idea of an Indian nation that included them. Their initial activism was confined to peaceful protests, including mass rejection of the national elections in 1951.

But such peaceful initiatives were rapidly overtaken by more forceful ones, as the Nagas developed a growing military capability. The Nagas were well positioned to do this because a number of Nagas had fought in the Second World War, and some stocks of weapons were available. As the rebellion took a violent path, New Delhi dispatched military units to put the rebellion down by force.

As the Indian Army began to fight the Naga insurgents in the mid-1950s, they sought the use of airpower but were rebuffed by Nehru. He emphasised the political nature of the Naga problem, arguing that the Nagas had never developed a sense of Indian nationalism because they had been kept isolated from the rest of the country by British colonial rule. Thus, the Naga alienation was understandable, and their identity with the Indian nation needed to be developed gently. This was coupled with Nehru’s ambivalence about the development project of modern India as applied to the Northeast. Nehru, as a modernist, believed that development had a lot to offer, but was uncertain about the impact that it would have on the way of life of the tribal population of the region.

All these uncertainties suggested a carefully moderated policy that emphasized the need for understanding the context of the Naga rebellion, and a strategy that sought political accommodation rather than military victory. Punitive actions were forbidden, and force was to be used as sparingly as possible. Nehru reminded the army that the Nagas were fellow-countrymen who had to be won over, not suppressed. Though there were rumblings within the army about being forced to fight with one hand tied behind their backs, the army accepted these political limits on the use of force. In the early days, the Naga tendency to fight conventional set-piece battles, a consequence of their experience in the Second World War, helped the Indian Army. But the Nagas soon shifted to guerrilla tactics, making the army’s task much harder.

The use of force against the Nagas was complemented by political concessions to the more moderate sections among the Naga leadership. They had demanded greater self-government and in response the Indian government formed a new administrative unit called the Naga Hills-Tuensang Area (NHTA) in December 1957, carving out the Naga Hills district from Assam and placing it directly under New Delhi’s administration. This concession managed to strengthen the moderates within the Naga community without seriously weakening the Indian position. When this concession did not satisfy all the insurgents, and in order to further strengthen the moderates within the Nagas, a new state called ‘Nagaland’ with a local legislature was created in 1963 to replace the NHTA.

A ceasefire was declared in late 1964 and a meandering peace negotiation began which ultimately led to the Shillong accord in 1975 under which most of the rebels agreed to lay down arms. Some of the Naga fighters were inducted into the newly formed Naga Regiment while others joined the Border Security Force (BSF). This did not mean the end of the Naga rebellion, for some Nagas continued the struggle. Nevertheless, the Naga insurgency is a much weaker force today, riven by internal divisions, and no longer a major threat.

A similar strategy of political compromises and a judicious use of force also helped end the Mizo insurgency. The Mizo rebellion began in 1966, spurred by famine and a callous administration. Led by Laldenga and the Mizo National Front (MNF), the first phase of the rebellion was so successful that several towns were captured by the rebels, which included parts of Aizawl. The Indian Air Force (IAF) had to be called in to help the army retake control, one of the few instances when combat air power was used in counterinsurgency operations in India.

Once again political compromises and military effort went hand-in-hand. Responding to the demands of the more moderate sections of the Mizos, New Delhi made Mizoram into a Union Territory in 1972, with its own legislature. But complete resolution would have to wait another decade, until a final peace agreement was signed between the MNF and New Delhi in 1986. Under the agreement, Mizoram became a full-fledged state in the Indian Union and Laldenga became chief minister of the state. Though there have been some recent rumblings in the state, Mizoram has largely remained quite since the insurgency ended over two decades back.

The Indian experiences in fighting the Nagas and the Mizos set the broad outlines of the Indian counterinsurgency strategy. But an important reason why this strategy succeeded was because its underlying principle was accepted by the Indian Army. The army developed a counterinsurgency doctrine that complemented this larger political grand strategy.2 The most important element of the army’s counterinsurgency doctrine is the limitation on the use of force. Though this restraint was originally imposed by Nehru, the army has assimilated this as an attitude when it engages in counterinsurgency operations. Army elements deployed for counterinsurgency operations are usually divested of any heavy equipment and do not receive artillery or air support. Such attitudes were reinforced by the army’s own professional view of counterinsurgency, which was based on studies of both British post-Second World War counterinsurgency experience as well as Mao’s writings on guerrilla war. Both stressed the political nature of insurgencies and both were frequently cited in Indian military journals.

The British experience in Malaya and Mao’s writings were an important source for yet another element in the Indian Army’s counterinsurgency doctrine: the need to isolate the guerrillas from the population. The Briggs Plan, under which the British resettled villagers in what they called ‘New Villages’, helped to isolate the Malayan communist guerrillas from their sources of support in the general population. The Indian Army attempted the same tactic in dealing with both the Naga and Mizo insurgencies. But what worked for a colonial power was difficult to implement in an independent democratic society. The constitutionality of the village grouping scheme in Mizo areas was challenged in the courts by local political parties and human rights groups and ultimately stopped by the Assam High Court. Nevertheless, the principle continues to be an important one in the army’s counterinsurgency doctrine, though the method used subsequently was with cordon and search operations rather than resettlements.

A third element in the Indian Army’s counterinsurgency doctrine was the emphasis on dominating the area of operations by blanketing it with troops. Large troop presence in insurgency affected areas allowed the army to assert control without using heavy firepower. For example, India deployed as many as four divisions in the northern and eastern provinces of Sri Lanka when it fought the LTTE. Such troop intensive operations are possible because India has a very large army and even larger central paramilitary forces. Large-scale deployment has a psychological effect, preventing the insurgents from claiming victory and demonstrating to them the impossibility of any ultimate victory.

A fourth element of the doctrine is conducting operations in large numbers. This goes against the conventional wisdom regarding counter-guerrilla warfare which stresses the importance of small unit operations. Indeed, small unit operations are stressed even in the army’s professional journals but rarely followed in actual counterinsurgency combat operations. This is chiefly because the Indian Army sees its main mission as defending India against external threats (Pakistan and China) and trains primarily for full-scale, high-intensity conventional wars. Most of the Indian Army’s infantry equipment is also optimized for conventional war rather than counterinsurgency. Retraining and retooling for small unit operations might make the army more effective in fighting domestic guerrillas but also hurt its preparations for fighting conventional wars.

The final element of the army’s doctrine is the firm conviction that insurgencies are political problems that require a political solution. The army’s role is seen as limited to creating the conditions for the political process to resume (‘restoring normalcy’ in army parlance) rather than militarily defeating the insurgency. This is also the most recent element in the army’s doctrine, achieving visibility in professional writings only in the 1980s. Nevertheless, it is difficult to read any essay on counterinsurgency in the army’s professional journals that does not include the mantra that ‘there are no military solutions to an insurgency.’

This comport between political ends and military means has not been without problems. Politicians, from Nehru down, have worried that the army might not be sufficiently sensitive to political considerations. Army officers, in turn, blamed the political and administrative leadership for creating the conditions for insurgency through their political short-sighted-ness and administrative incompetence, and then saddling them with the task of fighting their own countrymen. For the army, counterinsurgency is a task they would gladly give up not only because it brings little glory but also because it is a hard, thankless one.

A more serious limitation that the army faces is that it views fighting conventional wars against Pakistan and China as its primary mission. In consequence, there are limitations to how innovative the army can be with its counterinsurgency doctrine. The earlier reference regarding small unit operations is a case in point. The army attempted to create a much ‘lighter’ fighting unit called the ‘I’ (Insurgency)-battalions in the late 1960s. But the experiment was short-lived and the Bangladesh war in 1971 demonstrated again to the army that it could not afford such experiments.

In the 1990s, the army again attempted to create a new dedicated counterinsurgency force called the Rashtriya Rifles (RR). The original purpose of the RR appears to have been to create a new paramilitary force but one stiffened with army officers, which would relieve the army of its counterinsurgency burden. Though Indian paramilitary forces are much larger than the army, they are not trained or armed well enough to tackle insurgencies. The RR was supposed to make up for this lacuna. The plan for the RR went through many changes because of disputes between the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Home Affairs about who would control and pay for this new force. When it was finally established, the RR became a completely army-based force, defeating its original purpose. But the 60 plus battalions of the RR have at least increased the strength of the army by an equal amount, thus marginally offsetting the army’s manpower commitment to counterinsurgency.

How effective will India’s approach be in the coming decade? While India has had considerable success with its approach to secessionist insurgencies, the Maoist/Naxalite rebellions brewing in many parts of rural India represent a different kind of danger. Because they are seeking political power through violence but not secession, they are more dangerous but also less capable than ethnic secessionist movements. The Maoist seek political power by ‘liberating’ swathes of rural India which they rule. They hope that this process might eventually help them overthrow India’s bourgeois state.

The Maoists are more dangerous because it is unclear as yet what political compromises can be made with such groups. But the Maoists suffer from the perennial problem that all insurgencies suffer: deciding when to convert their insurgent fighters into a standing army. As the LTTE learned in Sri Lanka, it is not easy for an insurgency to convert itself into a full-scale conventional military force that occupies space. Once that transformation is done, the guerrillas lose one of their most vital sources of strength: their capacity to withdraw from battle. Thus the Maoist rebellion has the potential to be a serious headache but not a fundamental threat to the Indian state.

But the Indian state also faces some challenges in tackling the Maoist scourge. Until now, the Maoists have been tackled by either local police forces or central paramilitary forces. If they are unable to handle the threat, there will be increasing calls for the army to be called in, which will strain the already overstretched army. A better alternative would be to either retool the existing paramilitary forces or create a new paramilitary force that can handle insurgencies. But it should also be understood that such measures are temporary solutions to essentially political problems. A more responsive and representative political and economic order would prevent the conditions that gives rise to rebellions. Whether India’s counterinsurgency strategy would evolve to recognize that larger truth remains to be seen.

 
Footnotes:

1. Ivan Arreguin-Toft, ‘The [F]utility of Barbarism: Assessing the Impact of the Systematic Harm of Non-Combatants in War,’ at

2. I use ‘doctrine’ here to mean not just the pamphlet that the army issues but more importantly the attitude of the army towards counterinsurgency task, gleaned from interviews, essays in professional journals and other writings.