Our Defence Minister Rajnath Singh’s braggadocio that the Islamist terrorists in Kashmir have been eliminated, and our Home Minister Amit Shah’s much touted announcement that the Maoist insurgents (termed officially as LWE – Left Wing Extremists) have been crushed, are receiving wide-spread applause by the mainstream media. But both the claims have turned out to be deceitful, or at best delusory. Two incidents, one following the other within a week’s time, show how the Islamist terrorists and the Maoist guerillas, on their separate turfs, can cock a snook at the Indian state. On April 20, in Poonch in Jammu and Kashmir, the terrorist outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba attacked an army vehicle and killed five jawans and injured many others. Six days later, on April 26 in Dantewada in Chhattisgarh, Maoist guerillas blew up a vehicle carrying armed soldiers, killing ten jawans.
These bare facts stand out in sharp contrast with the continuing arrogant and insouciant public oratory indulged in by our ministers. They need to be taken to task for their failures. But then, in what diction do we, the common citizens, chastise them ? Humour is the only non-violent diction (as opposed to hate speech) that we possess – although even that is being taken away by the state which is hauling up stand up comedians who lampoon the prime minister and his party.
Recalling a war time joke
So even in these tragic circumstances of the killing of our jawans, I am tempted to recall an old black humorous joke – just to remind Rajnath Singh and Amit Shah that after all, like all rulers, they have feet of clay ! In 1964, an American military hawk, General Westmoreland, was put in charge of US operations in Vietnam. On arriving at Saigon in 1964, when asked by reporters, he said: “I’ll finish the Vietcong (the term used by Americans to describe the Vietnamese Communist guerillas) within a week.” After several weeks and months passed, when asked by reporters about his pledge to finish the Vietcong, he replied: “Once I find them I’ll finish them.” Four years later in 1968, on the eve of his departure from Vietnam, at the same Saigon airport, when asked by reporters, he said: “I haven’t yet found them.” But in the meantime, during those past four years, under his command, lives of thousands of young American soldiers had been sacrificed to meet the imperialist ambition of their rulers. They became targets of the Vietnamese Communist guerillas who were fighting to protect their independence from US aggressive designs.
The joke about Westmoreland thus carries sad overtones. While we laugh at him as an egregious jackass for his militarist rhetoric, we at the same time cannot forget – and forgive him for – the tragedy that he heaved upon both the common citizens in Vietnam who were bombarded by his air force, and the families of his own countrymen who lost their sons in a futile war.
But there was one admission by Westmoreland – “ I haven’t yet found them” (referring to the invisibility of the Vietnamese Communist guerillas), that should strike a chord with the dilemma being faced by the Indian army and security forces in coping with both Left Wing Extremist and Islamist terrorist groups today. It is this invisibility of their operators that poses a challenge to the Indian state.
Visibility of public grievances and invisibility of their militant articulators
The two incidents in Poonch in Kashmir and Dantewada in Chhattisgarh, although separated by distance and different political motivations, need to be analyzed in the wider perspective of the causes that give birth to such anti-state assaults. It is significant that the police and intelligence agencies have confirmed that local villagers were in complicity with the attackers in both the cases.
As for the Poonch incident, the Jammu and Kashmir Director General of Police, Dilbagh Singh has admitted that the attackers enjoyed support from the local populace, stating: “Such attacks can’t be carried out without local support.” He added: “The terrorists were provided shelter at one place and transport to carry out the attack at another.” (Times of India. April 29, 2023) .
Coming back to the Maoist assault in Chhattisgarh, newspaper reports indicate that the local villagers alerted the Maoist guerillas and informed them of the route that the security forces were taking, thus enabling the guerillas to trigger the blast (Re: Times of India, April 28, 2023)
How do we explain this connivance by local villagers in these two incidents ? To seek answers, it is necessary to explore the background that hovere around them. As for the Poonch assault, it took place in the midst of wide spread public resentment in Jammu and Kashmir against the Modi government’s decision to revoke Article 370 and thereby reduce the autonomy that the people had enjoyed since their agreeing to integrate with the Indian Union. The newly appointed Lieutenant Governor of the recently transformed Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir further aggravated the situation by clamping down on protestors, arresting young people, imposing curfew and stopping internet connection, thus alienating the common citizens.
The Islamist militants who attacked the army vehicle and killed the jawans, took advantage of this public mood of hostility against the Indian state. The villagers in Poonch were all too ready to give them shelter, so that they could take revenge on the Indian soldiers whom they accuse of raping their women, and killing their men. Such allegations against the behavior of Indian jawans in Kashmir have been accumulating over the years. In fact, there is an organization of Kashmiri mothers of `disappeared’ sons who were picked up by these jawans of the Indian security forces, and never returned. But the government has failed to address their grievances. Left with no options, the Poonch villagers chose the only available agency for wreaking vengeance on their oppressors. The agency was Lashkar-e-Taiba, which they hosted. It is necessary to understand how they arrived at that point – out of sheer despair after their failure to get justice from the state.
When we turn to the case of the Maoist assault in Chhattisgarh, we again need to examine the background. While the mainstream media have been highlighting the technology used by the Maoists (e.g. digging tunnel, planting explosives, etc.), they have ignored another incident that took place a few days prior to the Maoist assault. On April 7, 2023, the Indian Air Force carried out drone bomb attacks on four villages in Bastar in Chhattisgarh, as a part of its `Operation SAMADHAN ‘, purportedly targeting Maoist guerillas, but for all practical purposes, victimizing poor Adivasis of these villages who had been resisting encroachment on their lands and forests by state- supported mining corporations. This was the fourth such drone bomb attack by the air force in the Bijapur district of Bastar. (Re: Countercurrents; 11/04/2023, and 18/04/2023).
Given such bitter experiences suffered by the Adivasis in Chhattisgarsh, should we be surprised if they switch their loyalty from the state to the Maoist insurgents, to seek their help to protect their forest rights – as well as to take revenge on the Indian security forces which they identify with an oppressive regime ?
An insensitive Indian state retaliating against public protests by militarist measures
Instead of heeding to these long standing grievances of the people of Kashmir and Chhattisgarh, through peaceful negotiations and by providing relief to them, the Indian state has retaliated against their legitimate demonstrations of protest by unleashing military terror on them. Ironically, such a policy has led to an increased militarization of popular protests (which were earlier peaceful) – as evident from the growing acts of violence by the Islamic groups in Kashmir. By targeting the Indian security forces (e.g. the Poonch incident), they are satisfying the popular desire in Kashmir for revenge on the Indian jawans – who have acquired notoriety for horrendous crimes like abduction and killing of young Kashmiris and gang rapes.
As for the Maoist actions in Chhattisgarh, they represent a last desperate attempt to articulate the long-ignored voices of protest of the Adivasis there – now through militarist actions, after the failure of peaceful negotiations with an obstinate state.
This is not to justify the acts of indiscriminate violence by these two armed groups. While the Islamist terrorists should be condemned for their selective attacks on Hindu citizens in Kashmir, the Maoists should be equally denounced for their spree of killing of tribal villagers, suspecting them of being police informers – the latest case being the brutal murder of a blind tribal in Turrenar village in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar division (Re: Deccan Chronicle, May 3, 2023).
But at the same time, it has to be recognized that the longer the Indian state refuses to negotiate with these aggrieved people in Jammu and Kashmir, Chhattisgarh, and addresses complaints of ethnic and religious communities in other parts of India, the more these disgruntled people, already harassed by the security forces, are likely to join the anti-state armed groups. Whether in Kashmir or Chhattisgarh – the local inhabitants tend to accept these militant armed groups as a protective shield against the encroachment of their domestic space by the soldiers of the Indian state. Apart from that assurance of protection, these armed groups also satisfy their desire for revenge for the atrocities committed by the Indian army and security forces.
Both the administration and the political parties need to sensitize themselves to the ground reality, and probe into the psyche of these disgruntled sections of our people, and understand why they have reached a point where many among them choose to be suicide bombers and martyrs (as the Islamist terrorists in Kashmir), or become brutalized by their bitter experience of exploitation and oppression (like the Maoist guerillas in Chhattisgarh).
Sumanta Banerjee is a political commentator and writer, is the author of In The Wake of Naxalbari’ (1980 and 2008); The Parlour and the Streets: Elite and Popular Culture in Nineteenth Century Calcutta (1989) and ‘Memoirs of Roads: Calcutta from Colonial Urbanization to Global Modernization.’ (2016).
