Debating the Maoist challenge: Part Two

‘Maoists are part of the story’

The second source is the reports and features produced by the neo-liberal Indian corporate media. Duty bound daring scribes frequenting into the Maoist heartland bring out titillating news stories. Account of the ascending life of a once timid tribal and now a fearless Maoist guerrilla is described in those stories in graphic detail. During every crisis period in their movement, the Maoist leadership has invited the ‘dear pressmen & TV channel hoisters’ from the ‘democratic and free’ Indian print and electronic media into their ‘liberated zones’. The numerous investigating reports that the journalists carry out later, serves both the Maoists and the media bosses. The Maoists get free publicity which they think elevates their public image. The media gets steady readership that facilitate the manufacturing of public consent. These reports highlight why tribal youths want to join the PGA (People’s Guerrilla Army) and fight against the police. Why the tribal populace think that the Maoists are their only savior. It also helps to generate the myth of the Maoist style ‘development’. It creates a thriller effect in the mind of the readers and viewers as the concept of dissent is always attractive to the petty-bourgeois conscience. A section of the media has developed a generic habit of romanticizing the Maoists. There is a definite reason behind this romanticism. It is not to display their love for the Maoists but principally directed against the mainstream Left, to lower their significance in people’s mind. Thus, the compassionate media puts top Maoist leader couple Kobad and Anuradha Ghandy on a pedestal and asks in a melodramatic voice: how did the daughter of a high profile lawyer of Bombay High Court or the son of a top Glaxo executive come to choose a life of struggle and hardship? (Source) If we accept the media stories as true, we will discover that every Maoist leader was a first-rate student and at the same time ‘extremely aware of what was happening around’. They automatically get radicalized while studying in elite colleges and learn to shed tears for the poor. Responding to the righteous call to fight for the oppressed, they soon become gun carrying revolutionaries.

Vincent Brossel, head of the Asia desk of Reporters Without Borders (RWB) has defended the role of the ‘free’ media concerning the Maoists by saying, “When you have a civil war on terror groups it is the right of the press to cover both sides. The Maoists are part of the story.” (Source) RWB is an international NGO that advocates freedom of the press. The group is reputed for having ‘strong links with Western intelligence agencies and has focussed its energies on countries such as Cuba and Venezuela.’ (Source) RWB is also alleged to be on the payroll of the U.S. State Department. (Source)

There is a lucid pattern in which these stories are woven and planted. In fact, the corporate media serves its own agenda when it purposely turns into a Maoists mouthpiece. The transformation obscures the genuine democratic struggles that are going on in the fields and factories all over India. Mainstream Left parties have always criticized left extremism for dismantling of democratic movements. In this aspect they are absolutely right. The Maoists

and the corporate media work hand in glove and share a common understanding to actually demolish the scope of democratic resistance.

To acquire a true picture of alternative system of the Maoists governance, should we then rely on these sources as credible and truthful?

'To live outside the law you must be honest'

At present, these self-styled protectors who boast about safeguarding tribal wealth from ‘capitalist development’ and ‘corporate expansion’ have absolutely monopolized their control over mineral and other natural wealth in the regions they control. They are involved in illegal harvesting like growing poppy crop and smuggling of minerals and forest products through criminal syndicates of the timber and mine mafias. The revenue collection system, disguised as ‘taxes and donations from the people and fines from the anti people elements’, is their main source of income that comes from extorting huge amounts of royalty from the traders, contractors, mining corporates and big industries operating in those regions. While indoctrinating the tribal people against the Indian State, the Maoists at the same time had successfully built up dubious relationships and deceitful understandings with mainstream political parties. In Andhra Pradesh, local politicians have found them handy to secure electoral gains. The same nexus was evident during the Jharkhand assembly election in 2005. Recently in Bengal, the Maoists are working as second fiddle to Mamata Banerjee and her cohorts.

On the eve of Operation Green Hunt — the Indian State’s massive counteroffensive plan against them, the Maoists are feeling the urgent need to forge a strong support base ‘at every level possible’ which includes their ‘honorable’ sympathizers from the intelligentsia as well as mainstream political parties. Their offensive against the ‘brutal’ state forces needs to be carried out ‘in close coordination with, and in support of’ these mainstream sections of the Indian society. The Maoist leaders are definitely not fools but have cunning political brains. They know that to take up ‘wide propaganda exposing state terror and state-sponsored terror’ and evoke sympathy among the broader masses, the help and support from the babble mouth elite sympathizers, the ‘liberal’ media and petty-bourgeois radicals will give them the necessary propaganda mileage. By lending opportunistic ‘tactical’ support to petty-minded political groups to influence petty politics, by inciting an anarchic situation through their murderous politics, they want to divert attention from their surreptitious activities. Bengal is a paradigm case where reactionary political forces like the ‘useful idiots’ of the Trinamool Congress has volunteered to help the Maoists just to pathologically oppose the principal partner of the ruling Left Front — the CPI(M). So, it is not a surprise when we hear the shrewd CPI-Maoist politbureau member Koteshwar Rao a.k.a. Kishanji openly declaring Mamata Banerjee as the next Chief Minister of Bengal! This friendship will immensely help the Maoists to keep an escape corridor open for their ‘brave’ guerrillas to turn their tails and flee from the imminent State offensive.

During the show of might between state forces and the Maoists, the hapless tribals will be

caught in the crossfire and left to bear the maximum brunt. Their already wretched life will further get shattered. This is going to be the most disturbing part of the event.

Web Resources:

1. Ajai Sahni: ‘Naxalism’-   The Retreat of Civil Governance

2. Debasish Chakraborty: Who Are The Maoists Working For?

3. Nirmalangshu Mukherjee: Open Letter to Noam Chomsky

4. V Balachandran: An ideological adversary

(Concluded)