Minorities, Part Four: The Maoists in Eastern India

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

These masks are used by Chhau dancers in the tribal areas of West Bengal.  Chhau is a very acrobatic dance form which also, often, tells tales from the great Indian epics.  When I made an official visit to Purulia and was invited to see Chhau in situ, we visitors also had to watch out for two off-stage threats: insurgents and/or elephants.  In the midst of a very dramatic after-dark Chhau performance, the news arrived that a small herd of elephants was going to cut me and my party off from the guesthouse where we were to sleep.  We left in a flash—very frustrating!—and never saw the least shadow of an elephant in the teak forest.  No insurgents either.

Hostages for Jharkhand

Later I actually was kidnapped (aka involuntarily detained) by tribals.  It was in 2000.  A big strike for the creation of a new state to be called Jharkhand was underway.  The experience didn’t last more than half a day, and I never told the Consul General, because I knew I’d lose the little freedom of movement I’d retained since he’d arrived to embody, arrogantly, aggressively, the State Department takeover of U.S.I.A.   So far as he was concerned, we public diplomacy people were no longer of any significance to the mission.  (Note to all bosses: if you want to be well informed, treat people with respect.)

What happened that day is this:  I needed to travel from Kolkata in West Bengal to Bhubaneshwar in Orissa, where we were opening an impressive exhibit of photos by an American photographer.  I’d decided to drive—a matter of 5 or 6 hours, as I remember—so I could familiarize myself with a part of the country I’d never set foot on.  Then the strike was called and a road closure was announced, on a portion of the national highway I’d have to traverse.  What to do?  I had to reach Bhubaneshwar, but it was too late to obtain train or air tickets.  “Let’s go,” I said to my driver, who spoke Hindi, Oriya and Bengali as well as English.  “We have Consular Corps plates.  No one will stop a diplomat.”  My driver was game.  Off we drove.

How wrong I was.  We were waved off the road and forced to park in a large muddy area that fronted a cluster of shops, eateries, mechanics, etc., all the usual commercial necessities for travelers.  Several other cars had also been pulled off the road.  My driver explained, in all his languages, the usual rules for diplomats.  Useless.  I looked around to get a better idea of who might be in charge.  No principle of organization was obvious or made known to us.  Some young demonstrators seemed more like university nerds than radicals. Others carried bows and arrows that did not look like toys—or like the archery equipment used in modern competitions.  These were tribal weapons and dangerous.  Machetes were also in evidence.  A noisy procession came along.  We appealed to the woman politician who appeared to be leading it.  All she could think of was the new state.  She couldn’t care less about hostages.  The procession disappeared.  Hours passed.  The experience was fascinating, at first, but  boring as time wore on.  We kept appealing. " I’m a diplomat.  We have to get to Bhubaneshwar, etc."  We didn’t dare to start the car and make a dash for it because I didn’t want to run over anyone and cause a diplomatic incident.  Besides the road was still blocked in both directions.  I wasn’t sure the car could blast through.

Then the drinking began.  Behavior changed.   Respect for womankind disappeared.  A definitely tipsy yokel came up to the car and tried to touch my face.  That was the end of the boredom and the beginning of anxiety.  Drunk demonstrators are definitely not to be trusted.  Finally a couple of the student types in trousers and buttoned-down shirts approached us.  They, too, had noticed the change in mood.  They too were worried.  “Trust us,” they said.  They began shouting and pointing toward the jungle behind the shops.  Then they got into the car and told my driver to steer, not for the road, but into the forest, along a rutted dirt road.  I told the driver to obey.  It was our best hope, even though the potential for ending up in an even worse situation was not absent.  Several bumpy miles later, the young men told the driver to stop the car. They got out.  In two more miles, they said, the dirt road would rejoin the highway. The young men would not accept payment.  They were embarrassed, they said.  “You should not have been detained.”  And then they disappeared. 

We reached Bhubaneshwar, unharmed, several hours after dark.  The exhibit opening the next night was a smashing success. I did not mention my own adventure, when I told local officials as much as I could about the demonstrators we had seen.  The CG got the same sanitized version.

Insurgents in the Forests

Not long after that incident,  Jharkhand was carved out of Bihar, and neighboring Chhattisgarh was carved out of Madya Pradesh.   Both new states are hilly and heavily forested,  and tribals make up a relatively large percentage of the population of each—about 25% in Jharkhand, some 34% in Chhattisgarh.  Both new states are also plagued by a worrisome Maoist insurgency.  Clearly state-making has not led to harmony in these perfect-for-guerilla-operations locales.  Indeed the Maoist Naxalite movement, which had been largely wiped out in the contiguous, equally forested and hilly tribal areas of western and southern West Bengal, never quite died.  When I visited Kolkata as a private citizen  three years ago, an ex-colleague volunteered to accompany me to Bankura, his home town and the site of some famous terra cotta temples.  I’d also have a chance to meet and listen to some tribal musicians he knew.  Getting the train tickets for the half-day journey was easy.  Getting the protection of the local party in power, the CPI (M), was more complicated.  The CPI(M), you see, is no longer a revolutionary Marxist movement, but the Maoists are, and no one moves in the forested areas around Bankura without good information and local protection. 

These days Maoist activity seems only to have intensified.  The fight over Lalgarh in West Bengal has even hit the international headlines.  Meanwhile,  the central government in New Delhi and the CPI(M) state government (as well as their chief opponents the Trinamul Congress) in Kolkata quarrel over who is to quell the rebellion and how.  (Think federal-state relations in the U.S.)

Ten Per Cent Adivasi and Aggrieved 

Who are these tribals among whom the insurgents move?  They are peoples whose presence in the sub continent appears to predate the Dravidians as well as the Indo-Europeans.  They make up somewhat less than 10% of India’s population.  Linguistic and genetic analysis shows that these adivasis come from many stocks.  Nowadays, like indigenes in many parts of the world, most of them are making a kind of last stand in inhospitable, hilly, forested areas. Some of the largest tribal groups in the portions of Eastern India that concern me here are the Santals (6 million), the Bhirs (10 million) and the Gonds (4 million), and they, like all tribals, have long-standing legitimate  grievances, which their new states have not really addressed.  Here’s a little historical background:

This relative autonomy and collective ownership of adivasi land by adivasis was severely disrupted by the advent of the Mughals in the early 16th century. Similarly, the British beginning in the 18th century added to the consolidation of feudalism in India....Land, both forest areas belonging to adivasis and settled farmland belonging to non-adivasi peasants, was rapidly made the legal property of British-designated zamindars (landlords), who in turn moved to extract the maximum economic benefit possible from their newfound property and subjects without regard to historical tenure or ownership. Adivasi lands sometimes experienced an influx of non-local settlers, often brought from far away...to better exploit local land, forest and labor. Deprived of the forests and resources they traditionally depended on and sometimes coerced to pay taxes, many adivasis were forced to borrow at usurious rates from moneylenders, often the zamindars themselves. When they were unable to pay, that forced them to become bonded laborers. Often, far from paying off the principal of their debt, they were unable even to offset the compounding interest, and this was made the justification for their children working for the zamindar after the death of the initial borrower.

Maoists and Marxists

One reason the CPI(M) has managed to stay in power in the state of West Bengal for so long is that the party did live up to aspects of the Marxist social justice agenda.  It achieved some of the most effective and durable land reform in independent India’s history (which is not necessarily saying a lot, but something is something).  These land reform efforts in the more settled parts of the state helped to defang the Maoists, who splintered off when the U.S.S.R and Red China ceased to be properly comradely.  Now the CPI(M) is more like the Party in China, very entrepreneurial, though in democratic India, it has to play by different political rules.  Nevertheless, it continues to leans left on many issues, thus, for instance, hampering the acceptance of Man Mohan Singh’s nuclear negotiations with the Bush administration. 

Unfortunately for the CPI(M) and others, those land reforms didn’t do much for the tribals, who are, after all, a minority.  What’s more, some tribals aren’t always sure they want to be part of modern Indian society anyway.  So the Maoists can feed off grievances and move around in the hilly forested areas according to the old Maoist principle, like fish among other fish in the ocean, so far as outsiders are concerned.  As far as the tribals themselves are concerned, some protect and/or join the Maoists out of fear, some out of conviction, some out of boredom, some out of ambition, some for money, some on the lesser of many evils principle.  For coverage of killings, encounters, betrayals, etc., go here and explore.  For a queasy  sense of the ambivalence and ambiguities of this life via fiction, read Magic Seeds, one of V.S. Naipal’s more cryptic novels.  It gives a good picture of the cruelty and cameraderie, the ideals and the betrayals, the paranoia and arrogance, of  insurgencies that outlast any initial clarity of purpose. 

So the new states have not bought peace for Eastern India as earlier state making did for other parts of India. Although these new states do have a certain larger historical and cultural rationale, they do not offer simple obvious solutions to one issue politics: Gujarati speakers needed a state of Gujarat.  Sikhs needed a Sikh state.  Tamils needed civil service exams in English.  Etc.  What’s more, like fundamentalist Islam, the Maoist appeal is not local.  It’s universal.  It crosses all borders.  Even when Maoists act most violently, they speak of defending the oppressed in general.  Many people are taken in, especially when they have real unmet grievances.  But, as Naipal’s hero Willie discovers, there is no constructive agenda.  Just words and a will to power.

Don't Send the Dregs or the Newbies

Still, the Maoists will continue to wreak havoc until India decides to take the problem seriously enough to insist on united local cooperation in crushing them.  In the meantime,  Ashok Mitra got it right in his op-ed for Kolkata’s The Telegraph.    Entitled "Serving in the Wilds: Backward Districts Need the Presence of Senior IAS [Indian Administrative Service] Officers,” the whole thing is worth reading, but these excerpts give the gist:

The pattern is more or less the same in state after state: the more backward districts lag way behind the more advanced ones in both quality of day-to-day administration and implementation of welfare and development projects. Whether it is supply of minikits on the eve of the kharif season or providing work under the rural employment guarantee scheme or preparing the list of persons below the poverty level, the least developed districts have the worst record of performance. This is, in everybody’s reckoning, an absurd situation. Awareness of what is horridly wrong does not, however, lead to any measures of rectification, which possibly provides one rationale for the sobriquet, Unchanging India.

Not surprisingly, the backward districts become principal targets of insurgency groups. They cannot be blamed for taking advantage of a situation that persistent deprivation tailor-makes for them. Sums are allocated by the state government, funds flow under this or that Central scheme, every other day new projects enter the pipeline. The so-called ‘delivery system’ does not work though. Either the money allotted does not arrive, or does not arrive on time; even when it finally arrives, most of it is not spent, or disappears without reaching the intended destinations. The objective reality therefore remains unaltered: the poorest districts, largely peopled by Dalits and adivasis, stay the poorest and the distance between them and the relatively prosperous continues to widen....

In the early 1930s, Mahatma Gandhi shifted himself to the wilderness of the then semi-village, Wardha, right at the dead centre of the country. He was always a bit of an old fox. He had a purpose in mind: to force political eminence seeking his darshan to undergo the drudgery of travelling to Wardha; they would thereby come to comprehend the dire plight of the nation’s overwhelming majority and be awash with noblesse oblige. Leaders in the post-Independence era missed the point of Gandhi’s message. Having paid some lip service to the cause of the underdog, they chose to concentrate on developing an intensely class-skewed metropolitan culture. The consequences of their decision are now gradually being revealed. Despatching hard-boiled civil servants to the countryside is no guarantee that things will change, but it could at least have one, not insignificant, spin-off. As the civil servants begin to travel to the country’s god-forsaken interior, ruling politicians might feel compelled not to be far behind.