Maoists criminals, nobody’s saviours

Those who take heart from democracy and the rule of law as a cardinal principle of civilised rule and the basis of statehood, no matter how imperfect their practice in our country, will honour a brave Jharkhand woman, Sunita, who would be widowed within days of enunciating a sentiment that would do high officials of a modern democracy proud. The wife of police inspector Francis Induwar, who was captured by CPI (Maoist) activists in the forests not far from the highway that links the two major industrial centres of Ranchi and Jamshedpur on September 30, courageously told the media that seeking the release of her husband in exchange for arrested Naxalite leaders ought not to be effected as a way to extricate him from Maoist captivity as he was an official of a legitimate government and believed in doing his duty honestly. An assertion so stirring, by one so intimately related to a captive held by elements who decry our Constitution and political structure, has not been heard before. Indeed, the Indian state is known to have capitulated more than once to demands of terrorists on prisoner swaps. Inspector Induwar was beheaded by his captors without warning earlier this week. He wasn’t the first policeman to die in the line of duty, but his Talibanesque killing can be said to be easily the most gruesome of all the cold-blooded murders committed by those claiming to be revolutionists. The credo of violence that comes naturally to the Maoists has not advanced the cause of the poor and the landless one inch in the past half-century that the Naxalites have been around. It is reasoned debate in the legislatures that has influenced policy. As for the Maoists, their violence without limit against innocent people — recently they shot an eight-year-old child through the head — has earned them rebuke even from the writer Mahasweta Devi, who is known to stand up against violence by the state. Like the Taliban they appear to follow in some ways, the Naxalites appear to be laying siege to ungoverned spaces, especially in forested territories, through the use of intimidation tactics against local residents, who are usually poor tribal people. The aura and the myth sometimes built up about Naxalism and the Naxalites — presenting them as preservers of land rights of the unprotected — appears more than a little overblown. A long time ago there was among the intellectual elite some romanticising of this. This has dissipated long since. News reports suggesting that a leading Naxal operative recently captured by the West Bengal police is the master of insurance policies worth around Rs 1 crore can only undermine any positive image the putative followers of Mao may have once had. Other than mindless violence directed against low-level state functionaries and innocent rural and forest people who like to keep their own counsel, it is not clear what goals the Naxalites espouse. They seem to have no visionary aim, and no theory to subserve even the platitudes that are mouthed. Their slogans may deceive, but their practices are indistinguishable from those of plain criminals who chose the path of terrorism. Like the Taliban, the Naxalites have become destroyers of any signs of development intended for the poor, such as roads, schools, medical facilities. Naxalites prosper only when every vestige of development is effaced. It is not just the state that needs to move with energy against them, but the political system as a whole.