The Maoists have turned terrorists and must be dealt with swiftly before the fine line that divides terrorism and a people's legitimate fight against injustice gets blurred yet again. In the past six months, the Maoists have killed scores of people and then taken cover behind their champions in civil society who have never failed to veer the discourse back to the wrong side of the fine line again. But perhaps not this time. Last Friday's attack on the Jnaneshwari Express killed 148 people, most of them civilians. It was the Maoists' biggest attack on civilians. They sabotaged a railway track in the Jhargram area of West Midnapore, a Maoist stronghold in West Bengal state, causing the Mumbai-bound train from Kolkatta to derail. Moments later, a speeding freight train rammed head-on into the carriages of the derailed train that had fallen on the parallel track. The terrorists' intent was clear: kill as many civilians as possible. Soon afterwards, however, a Maoist spokesman denied involvement, saying that it is not their policy to attack civilians and that they would hold a public court to punish the guilty. The guilty, it appears, is the the People's Committee against Police Atrocities (PCAPA), a mass tribal forum backed by the Maoists, which took up armed struggle last October. Bapi Mahato, a PCAPA leader, has reportedly admitted to the sabotage but claimed that it was “some miscalculation.” He told the Indian Express that, “We never wanted these innocent civilians to die,” and that, “Trust me, we targeted the goods train.” Trust him? If so, what about last fortnight's attack on a private passenger bus in Dantewada in Chhattisgarh? A Maoist leader had said then that the 31 civilian deaths caused “could not be helped as the bus was carrying special police officers.” If we go by the latest figures compiled by the Chhattisgarh government, the Maoists have killed as many civilians as they have security forces personnel over the past three years. These civilians were killed for allegedly being police informers or for cooperating with the government. One can argue on and on about the Maoists' intended targets in their fight to establish communist rule in India but, really, are we to accept that it's OK for them to kill our security men – as many as nearly 6,000 since their violent uprising in 1967 in the West Bengal district of Naxalbari? On what grounds do civil society members such as writer Arundhati Roy and activist Sujato Bhadra discount these security men who are still one of us – people who elect governments, who may work in them and who obey orders and follow the rules for a living? Or are Roy and Bhadra implying that we the people in democratic India have had no control whatsoever over the many governments that have risen and fallen since 1967 and so must all deserve communism? Nobody doubts that the Maoists have been fighting for the cause of displaced tribal people. Yes, successive governments have failed to give the tribals a better deal. But the same can also be said about the millions of slum dwellers in the country's sprawing cities or the millions of poor farmers in the country's vast rural areas. Unfortunately, this is what India is all about, where the cacophony of democratic debate and the complications of freedom and legal recourse can suppress, cripple or delay well-meaning government action. Roy and her ilk have only contributed to our democratic state of virtual inertia, no matter how well intentioned they remain in their fight against human rights abuses of the tribals – not all of whom are Maoists. Perhaps that's why the federal government has decided to prosecute intellectuals and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) upholding the Maoists' cause. The Home ministry has warned members of civil society that under the Unlawful Activities Prevention (UAP) Act 1967, which was amended and adopted in Dec. 2008 following the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, they could be jailed for up to 10 years for being in contact with the Maoists to propagate their ideology. These pro-Maoist civil society members have effectively forced the government to use the UAP to curtail our much vaunted freedom. Bluntly put, they have given the Maoist cause new reason to overthrow India's “semi-colonial, semi-feudal” form of rule. To be fair to the government, however, it had no choice but to act harshly against the Maoists' first line of defense because cross-border terrorism is already a critical threat across the country. The Maoists have between 10,000 and 20,000 fighters spread out across the states of Jharkand, West Bengal, Orissa, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Karnataka, covering more than a third of India's 600-odd districts. In size, reach, ability to merge into rural populations and organizational capacity, they pose a far bigger danger in our overly-populated and poorly-policed country than cross-border terrorists. There's no telling the extent of devastation they can cause if we continue to recklessly indulge in our democratic ideals at the expense of letting their violent brand of Maoism become terrorism's latest avatar. – SG Feedback: [email protected] __
