Maoists may soon realise that India is not a soft state (Comment)

Knowingly or otherwise, the Maoists are engaged in a dangerous game which can ultimately prove disastrous for them. It is clear that their present tactics involve attacking the police and the paramilitary, mainly the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF).

After the deaths of 148 passengers as a result of the derailment of the Jnaneswari Express in West Bengal and an attack on a public bus in Chhattisgarh, the insurgents seem to have realized that such acts of terrorism against ordinary people could harm their cause and embarrass their sympathizers in the human rights groups.

The police, however, fall in a different category in their view as they represent the might of the “bourgeois” state. Killing them, therefore, is a lesser sin for the proletarian revolutionaries. It can be recalled that the two major targets selected by the Naxalite leader, Charu Mazumdar, in the 1970s for annihilation were the police and rural landowners.

Therefore, instead of blowing up transmission towers and school buildings in the countryside, the Maoists have recently been concentrating on ambushing and killing CPRF and other police personnel.

Unfortunately, these groups have also played into their hands by their strange ineptitude. After almost every incident of a massacre, the routine explanation is trotted out - that the standard operating procedure was not followed. For instance, instead of taking different routes to go to an area and while withdrawing from it, the forces tend to use the same path.

Hence, the contemptuous term - broiler chickens - used by the Maoists to describe them since these consignments of poultry are also transported in vehicles along prescribed routes. Lack of coordination between the CRPF and the local police, who have better knowledge of the terrain, is also mentioned in this context.

In addition, there have been incidents of the CRPF becoming “casual” and “callous” while coming near a police station, as has been said about the unit which was ambushed in Narayanpur in Chhattisgarh June 29. In Dantewada, where 75 jawans were killed, the CRPF had lost its wireless set, with the result that the Maoists could track its movements.

The casual attitude was also exposed by the Maoist attack on the camp of the Eastern Frontier Rifles in Silda in West Bengal where many of the 24 dead were found to be in undergarments. Similar scenes were witnessed after the Maoists carried out simultaneous attacks on the police lines and the jail in Jehanabad in Bihar a few years ago.

While these setbacks have persuaded the union home ministry and state governments to opt for special training courses in jungle warfare and the provision of better armament, what is evident is that the CRPF and other police personnel were asked to take on the Maoists with the authorities having no clear idea of the kind of enemy they were confronting.

After getting accustomed to dealing with stone-throwing mobs all these years, even in a hot spot like Kashmir today, the top brass in the police as well as ministers and bureaucrats apparently did not realize that they were facing a well-equipped and ideologically motivated adversary.

Of course, the first lapse of the authorities was to be oblivious of the surreptitious manner in which the Maoists were establishing their bases in the remote areas. Now, that failure has been compounded by the inability to assess the nature of the threat. The result is the heavy loss of life which the CRPF has been suffering.

However, the Maoist gamble of targeting the security forces is likely to misfire. No government can allow the indiscriminate gunning down of policemen, not to mention the mutilation of their bodies, as has been the case in Narayanpur. It is only a question of time, therefore, before there is a harsh response.

What is more, since the training and equipping of counter-insurgency units will take time, the authorities have to act within a short period to avoid demoralization in the ranks. But what is holding back the government is the difficulty of a largescale offensive in the forested areas. Up to now, most of the insurgencies, whether in Kashmir or the northeast and even in Punjab in the 80s, have usually been hit-and-run affairs by small militant groups, or selective assassinations, instead of the guerrilla tactics followed by the invisible Maoists.

The possibility of collateral damage is another inhibiting factor. Hence the reluctance to use helicopters on a wider scale lest the tribal habitations be affected. If the Maoists persist, however, in targeting the security forces, as they have threatened to do, they will only be stirring a hornet’s nest to their own peril.

India is often described as a soft state. But it is necessary to remember that some of the methods used to quell other uprisings have been extremely harsh. It is not only in Kashmir or the northeast that there have been complaints of police brutality; the earlier Naxalite movement was also crushed with the help of fake encounters. In fact, the cold-blooded killings of captives by the police began on such a scale at that time.

The same ruthlessness was also seen during the Khalistan agitation when scores of “unclaimed” bodies were burnt in funeral pyres and at least one human rights activist “disappeared”. The Maoists may be inviting the same fate by their provocative acts in the hope that the deaths of innocent tribals in the crossfire will help their recruitment drive and add grist to the mill of the civil libertarians. But the coming weeks and months are likely to unfold a grim story.

(03.07.2010-Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst. He can be reached at aganguli@mail.com)