Rebellion mounts against ‘democratic’ India

Despite all the violent efforts of the Indian armies and the government death squads known as the ‘Salwa Judum’, the Naxalite rebellion in India is far from suppressed. The Indian government recently claimed victory in forcing the Naxalites out of the poor state Andhra Pradesh, but current reports on the ground contradict the idea that the Naxal militias have actually been driven off. What’s more, the Indian state has hardly gained the propaganda war in the state either: a recent poll in the ‘Naxal-affected areas’ of Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra indicated that among the group aged 25-50 (basically the young and middle aged workers, the basic constituent group for either side in terms of support) in the lower income categories B and C on the socio-economic scale indicated that 58% felt the Maoist movement had actually done the area good. Another one-third said the movement had the right intentions but used the wrong means to go about it, with just 15% being willing to describe them as bandits (‘goondas’).(1) For a movement repeatedly described by government and major media in India alike as “India’s biggest security threat”, this is a revealing figure. Continue reading “Rebellion mounts against ‘democratic’ India”

Arundhati Roy on the Naxalites

The Indian magazine Outlook India has published a long article by Arundhati Roy, a famous writer and activist, on the Naxalite Maoist movement of the poor in certain parts of India. The Naxalites are often portrayed as mere fanatics, throwbacks to earlier historical periods, or ‘security threats’. Of course, one does not expect capitalist governments to see insurrections of the poor and exploited against their rule in any other terms, but what is more galling is the simple lack of attention for and understanding of the real causes of this movement’s existence and successes. All the more important the fact that Roy was willing to break this silence. This despite the fact that she herself had a negative idea of them, based on the general propaganda against Maoism as a purely barbaric form of cultural and social violence – similar to how the Chinese nationalist-religious revolts of Taiping and the Boxers were portrayed in the West in their day, and how they are often still understood. It is for this reason worth giving this article the widest possible readership, and therefore I reproduce it here, despite its considerable length. For more on the Naxalites and their relations to other groups, see http://mccaine.org/2009/06/24/communists-fight-in-india/ . Continue reading “Arundhati Roy on the Naxalites”

Communists Fight in India

Communism in India finds its mainstay and support in the eastern and northeastern sections of the country. These are relatively backwards, rural, and underdeveloped for the most part, although they also contain the very populous area of Kolkata and surroundings, the state of West Bengal. The highly impoverished poor farmers and land laborers of this region as well as the proletariat of Kolkata has a strongly developed class consciousness, and as a result Communism has found a secure footing there, even in times when globally its powers are at a low ebb. Continue reading “Communists Fight in India”