NAXALITE rebels are winning their war against the corrupt Indian state, a senior minister has admitted.
Reports the Indian Express: "A total of 713 civilians were killed by Naxalite groups in 2010, as compared to 591 the previous year, Home Minister P Chidambaram said on Tuesday while presenting a monthly report card.
"The Naxalite groups also enjoyed the upper hand vis-a-vis the security forces in terms of the number of people lost in the battle.
"The security forces lost 285 personnel, as compared to 317 in 2009 while the casualties on the Naxalites’ side was only 171, again significantly less than 219 in the previous year."
The report quotes him as adding: "It will be apparent that the Naxalites have not only spurned the offer of talks but have also escalated the conflict."
The Naxalite insurgency is a vast movement of the poor and landless in rural India against the rich capitalist elite.
The grassroots rebellion, which embraces tribal peoples in remote areas, continues to grow despite massive and brutal repression.
NAXALITE resistance fighters in India are said to be teaming up with freedom fighters in the North East territories of the oppressive pro-Western state.
The Assam Tribune reports that the peasant rebel movement, politically Maoist-led but clearly a manifestation of a much deeper-rooted resistance to the destruction of their natural way of life by neoliberalism, has "started eyeing the North East region yet again after managing to regain their bases in Jangalmahal area of West Bengal".
It says senior Naxalite leader Kishenji has already made efforts to establish links with the anti-talk faction of the United liberation Front of Asom (ULFA).
And an article in Eurasia Review recalls: "In October 2008, the Manipur based People’s Liberation Army (PLA) inked a three-point pact with the CPI-Maoist calling for consolidation of “mutual understanding and friendship” to “overthrow the common enemy”, the “reactionary regime of India”.
Highly placed official sources in New Delhi apparently told the Assam Tribune that previous attempts by the Naxalite rebel groups to establish strong roots in the North East region failed, but the organizations had started making fresh efforts after a number of militant outfits came over ground to hold peace talks with the Government of India for political solution of the issues.
Sources said that according to information available, some "modules" of the Maoist groups have started working in the North East region, particularly in Assam.
Added the newspaper: "Sources said that the militant groups of North East having shelter in Myanmar have already decided to come closer and if the Maoist rebels manage to join hands with them, the situation in the region may deteriorate fast.
"The Maoist groups have already signed an agreement with the PLA of Manipur and Maoist leader Kishenji has talked often about coming to same kind of arrangement with the anti-talk faction of the ULFA. Under the circumstances, the possibility of the Maoists coming closer to all the militant outfits of the region cannot be ruled out."
Explaining the reasons for the Naxalite uprising, author and campaigner Arundhati Roy has said: "The constitution ratified colonial policy and made the state custodian of tribal homelands.
"Overnight, it turned the entire tribal population into squatters on their own land. It denied them their traditional rights to forest produce. It criminalised a whole way of life. In exchange for the right to vote, it snatched away their right to livelihood and dignity."
NAXALITE rebels in India have struck a stunning blow against the armed government forces sent to crush them.
Reports Al Jazeera: "Authorities say hundreds of fighters ambushed a bus carrying Indian police officers, killing at least 70 paramilitary personnel in the central Indian state of Chhattisgarh.
"In October, Al Jazeera interviewed 'Kishan-ji', commander of the group's armed wing, who said such attacks were 'directly related to the power of the state'. 'Eighty-five to 90 per cent of India's population lives under a dictatorship, it is not really a democracy,' he said.
"'The state is running a terror campaign against the people, and we fight against anyone who is perpetrating terror against the common population, be it any political party or the armed forces.'
Referring to the Chhattisgarh raid, Rubina Khan Shapoo, a senior correspondent for the private NDTV television station, said: "This is the deadliest attack so far and the biggest setback for Indian security forces'."
A superb first-hand account of the strengthening Naxalite uprising in India by author Arundhati Roy was recently published by The Guardian.
NAXALITE rebels have staged a successful ambush of Indian state forces near Rapur.
Reports AFP: "Maoist guerrillas killed five policemen in a gunfight in India's central state of Chhattisgarh on Sunday, a senior police officer told AFP.
"Three of the men belonged to the elite Border Security Force paramilitary group and two were regular police officers, Chhattisgarh's anti-Maoist operations chief Ramniwas, who only uses one name, told AFP.
"The clash took place in Kanker district, 175 kilometres (110 miles) south of the state capital Raipur.
"Kanker is the headquarters of a police jungle warfare school which trains security personnel in the government's increasing efforts to tackle the Maoist insurgency.
"Chattisgarh is a stronghold of the rebels, who killed 15 police officers in an attack in the state two months ago.
"Authorities in New Delhi launched an offensive last year to tackle the worsening insurgency, but since then the Maoists have hit back with a series of bloody strikes.
"Maoist rebel groups have fought for decades in east India against state and central government rule, drawing support from tribal groups and landless farmers left behind by the country's economic expansion."
INDIA'S Communist Party has joined the capitalist establishment in attacking the growing naxalite rebellion in the country.
Reported The Times of India: "CPM general secretary Prakash Karat on Friday said ultra-Left in India was nothing but part of Left-sectarian and anarchist trend.
"Stressing the need for 'political-idelogical exposure' of Maoists in India, Karat, however, cautioned the government not to treat them as terrorists and even admitted that they had struck a chord among tribals and a section of intelligentsia.
"Giving out a historical perspective on the growth of Maoists in India, Karat said wherever Left has grown, there has been Left-sectarian and anarchist trends. He cited Lenin saying how petty bourgeoisie was drawn to anarchism when it experienced horrors of capitalism."
NAXALITE rebels in India have hit back at reactionary state communists involved in brutal attempts to crush their peasant uprising.
The Times of India reports today that the People’s Committee against Police Atrocities "ran amok in many places in Jangalmahal with its militia squad killing four CPM [Communist Party of India - Marxist] cadres and setting several vehicles and three oil tankers on fire".
The report adds: "They also set a sponge iron factory and a forest beat office ablaze.
"On Thursday night, suspected Maoists dragged two CPM cadres — Anil Chalak and Dayal Chalak — from Bandhgora in Jhargram and hacked them to death.
"Police found their bodies on Friday morning. A CPM leader escaped with injuries. Also on Thursday, Maoists beat a CPM supporter at Dherua in Kotwali."
The CPM, a leading part of the government in West Bengal, has for many years been involved in brutal repression of radical opponents and villagers trying to defend their rights, happy to brand whole rural communities as "Maoist" as a pretext for mass arrests and killings.
Naxalites are active across approximately 220 districts in twenty states of India, accounting for about 40 percent of India's geographical area, according to Wikipedia.
They are especially concentrated in an area known as the "Red corridor", where they control 92,000 square kilometers.
According to India's intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, 20,000 armed cadre Naxalites were operating apart from 50,000 regular cadres working in their various mass organizations and millions of sympathisers, and their growing influence prompted Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to declare them as the most serious internal threat to India's national security.
The Naxalites are, needless to say, opposed by virtually all mainstream Indian political groups.
NAXALITE rebels in India have killed three policemen and are holding another four hostage in the impoverished Bastar region of the Chhattisgarh state.
Reports The Hindustan Times: "The killing and abduction comes a month after Maoists did the same with four policemen in Bihar’s Lakhisarai district.
"Handwritten posters were found nailed to trees near some villages in the district, giving the state 48 hours to meet the rebels’ demands or have the remaining cops killed, senior police officials told HT on condition of anonymity."
Meanwhile, a survey in Andhra Pradesh, where the state has claimed it has won the battle against the rebels, has shown huge popularity for the Naxalites, who champion the rural poor.
Reports The Times of India: "India's biggest internal security threat, as the Prime Minister famously described it, may be worse than you thought.
"That's because even in Andhra Pradesh, where the battle against the Maoists has apparently been won, it turns out that the government is losing the battle for the minds and hearts of the people.
"Perhaps the most revealing answers are in response to questions on whether the Maoists — still better known as Naxalites in this belt — were good or bad for the region and whether their defeat by the AP police has made matters better or worse.
"Almost 60% said the Naxalites were good for the area and only 34% felt life had improved since they were beaten back.
"As for whether exploitation has increased after the Naxalite influence waned, 48% said it had against 38% who said it hadn't, the rest offering no opinion.
"Those answers are buttressed by the responses to three other questions. The first of these was on whether the characterization of the Naxals as extortionists and mafia was accurate. Two-thirds disagreed.
"An elaboration of this came in response to a slightly more open-ended question. Over half said the Naxalites worked for the good of the area, another one-third said they had the right intentions but the wrong means. Only 15% were willing to describe them as just goondas [thugs]".
NAXALITE rebels in India have demolished a newly-built police station in Chhattisgarh's Dantewada district.
Reports IBN Live: "A group of 50 Naxals assembled at the police station near Geedam area
and asked the labourers present there to leave. They blasted the
building using huge amount of explosives, police said, adding there were
no reports of any casualty."
According to The Economic Times: "On Tuesday, dozens of Maoists [Naxalites] stormed into a two-storey building at
Geedam town, some 10 km away from Dantewada town. They blew up the
newly-constructed building which had been built by the state government
at a cost of Rs.3.5 million.
"The building, which was ready to be
handed over to the police department, was located barely a km away from
the existing Geedam police station where about two dozen policemen were
present at the time of the incident. But no policemen reached the blast
site for several hours."
Following the incident, the state
government transferred Dantewada police chief Ankit Garg and posted him at police
headquarters to Raipur, official sources said.
The photo shows Naxalite rebels with writer Arundhati Roy, who has explained the reasons for their uprising, in the face of massive anti-Naxal propaganda from the Indian state.
She said last year: "Over the past five years or so, the governments of Chhattisgarh,
Jharkhand, Orissa and West Bengal have signed hundreds of memorandums
of understanding – all of them secret – with corporate houses worth
several billion dollars, for steel plants, sponge-iron factories, power
plants, aluminum refineries, dams and mines. In order for the MOUs to
translate into real money, tribal people must be moved. Therefore, this
war."
NAXALITE rebels in India have struck back at the state forces trying to crush the desperate uprising of the rural poor.
They blew up a private bus packed with serving police and new recruits, killing up to 50 of them.
While corporate media made much of the deaths of 'civilians' in the attack, The Hindu revealed that "the civilians comprised youth appearing for a constabulary exam" and quoted a police officers as explaining: “Currently we are in the midst of a recruitment drive.”
Reported the LA Times: "The 4:15 p.m. bombing occurred in the Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh, a mineral-rich state that had been the site of fierce fighting between Maoist rebels and government forces in recent months.
"Police said the explosion killed at least 19 civilians and 16 police officers, though other sources placed the death toll as high as 50. The same area saw an attack last month that killed 76 police officers."
Even India's home minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, admitted the state has provoked the angry rebels, saying: "There are police excesses. Government has to answer when human rights are violated deliberately."
Added the LA Times report: "Maoist rebels, concentrated in some of India's poorest states, have won support from the poor, especially landless peasants, who are angry over local corruption, weak governance and the growing wealth gap. Despite India's high economic growth rates, vast numbers have not seen any improvement in their lives.
"Maoists operate in 20 of India's 28 states and have from 10,000 to 20,000 fighters, according to the Home Ministry."
NAXALITE rebels could be winning their war against the might of the Indian state.
That is the unthinkable conclusion now being reached by the corporate mainstream media across the world, following the latest insurgent attack on an express train in West Bengal.
Reports the BBC: "Analysts say that the strategy of 'clearing, holding and developing' rebel-affected areas evidently inspired by the US strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan is not working.
"One reason, they say, is that the surge of security forces and resources on the ground are not sufficient enough to take on the rebels who are spread over a vast swathe of remote mineral-rich forest lands.
"The government is now in a 'visible retreat' after a spree of rebel attacks, says security analyst Ajai Sahni.
"He believes that a lack of adequate forces, training and intelligence is leading to these 'disasters'.
"Unless local capacities for intelligence and operations are enormously augmented, this [offensive] can go nowhere, and lot of lives are going to be lost for no useful purpose," Mr Sahni says.
"Till that happens, the rebels will be seen to have an upper hand in what promises to be long drawn out and bloody conflict, the like of which India has never seen."
A SUPERB first-hand account of the strengthening Naxalite uprising in India by author Arundhati Roy has been published by The Guardian.
The report, which includes a video, is a rare piece of UK publicity for the struggle of the tribal people and guerrillas who have taken up arms against the Indian state.
Explaining the background, Roy says: "The Indian constitution, the moral underpinning of Indian democracy, was adopted by parliament in 1950.
"It was a tragic day for tribal people. The constitution ratified colonial policy and made the state custodian of tribal homelands.
"Overnight, it turned the entire tribal population into squatters on their own land. It denied them their traditional rights to forest produce. It criminalised a whole way of life. In exchange for the right to vote, it snatched away their right to livelihood and dignity.
"Having dispossessed them and pushed them into a downward spiral of indigence, in a cruel sleight of hand the government began to use their own penury against them.
"Each time it needed to displace a large population – for dams, irrigation projects, mines – it talked of 'bringing tribals into the mainstream' or of giving them 'the fruits of modern development'.
"Of the tens of millions of internally displaced people (more than 30 million by big dams alone) – refugees of India's 'progress' – the great majority are tribal people. When the government begins to talk of tribal welfare, it's time to worry.
"Over the past five years or so, the governments of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa and West Bengal have signed hundreds of memorandums of understanding – all of them secret – with corporate houses worth several billion dollars, for steel plants, sponge-iron factories, power plants, aluminum refineries, dams and mines. In order for the MOUs to translate into real money, tribal people must be moved. Therefore, this war."
NAXALITE rebels in India are giving their moral upport to the Kashmiri resistance against the Indian state machine.
Reports The Times of India: "In a scathing criticism on the role of the central and state governments, the Naxals have claimed that the enemy was the same, be it at Dandakaranya or Kashmir.
"Through a two-page release, the rebels have extended their 'revolutionary salute' or Inquilabi salaam to the Kashmiri protesters fighting for their rights. The Maoists were critical of the use of force by the Omar Abdullah-led coalition government to crush the resistance of the people.
"The CC, along with the people's army and other revolutionary outfits, has vowed to continue supporting the valley protesters.
"The naxals dramatically equated the stone throwing youths of Kashmir to the bow-and-arrow equipped tribals of Dandakaranya. The CC 'believes that the Kashmir belongs to Kashmiris'. It has also appealed to all to support the 'just national liberation struggle of the people of Kashmir'.
"The CC has lashed out at the media for distorting Kashmir's history. Naxals have also urged citizens across the length and breadth of the country to raise their voice against the 'heartless killing of youth' by the security forces.
"They have also made an appeal to the activists and right bodies to demand the withdrawal of the forces from Kashmir. The rebels had made a similar demand several times in the Dandakaranya region in the past too."
OUTRAGE and anger have greeted the jailing of a well-known Indian civil rights campaigner for helping the Naxalite rebel cause.
Writer Arundhati Roy and American academic cum activist Noam Chomsky are among those who have voiced support for the growing campaign.
Dr Binayak Sen was convicted of sedition under the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act and faces life in jail on what many see as false trumped-up charges.
Sify News reports that activists and civil society leaders staged a protest march in Kolkata to condemn the judgement, and said their protests would continue till Binayak Sen was released.
It quotes renowned actress and filmmaker Aparna Sen as saying: "We protest this because we feel we have very few workers who serve the poor as tirelessly as Binayak Sen.
"We feel it is a travesty of our democracy that a fine worker like Sen is incarcerated while we know there are many people who are cheats and who have robbed the country of thousands and thousands rupees of money are walking free on the streets today."
Renowned activist Medha Patkar called the judgment a political statement, says Sify.
"We must really stand up and fight. We condemn something that is not legal or a judicial judgment. It is political statement, that clearly expresses the content of constitution, the fundamental rights and also the freedom of expression," Patkar is reported to have said.
Raipur Sessions Court had held Dr Sen and three other people guilty of treason and waging war against the state. He has also been found guilty of sedition. He now faces life imprisonment.
Dr Sen was arrested in Chhattisgarh in 2007 and was granted bail two years later. He was honoured with Jonathan Mann award in 2008, while he was still in prison.
The 58-year-old paediatrician and public health physician with a 25-year record of providing health care to the Adivasi people of Chhattisgarh.
A graduate of Christian Medical College (CMC), Vellore, Binayak Sen was one of the top students of his batch. He completed his post graduation in paediatrics in the early 1970s.
For most of the years since then, he has devoted his life to health care of the poor.
An overwhelming majority of people are happy to be living in this industrial capitalist world. We know this because we are told it constantly.
How could we foresee a near future in which the hypnotic spell is broken, the scales fall from a billion eyes and those who say 'Enough!' are revealed, all of a sudden, to be a gale force wind of revolt, a tidal wave of insurgent delight sweeping all before it, a minority so vast it will change everything?
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