Arundhati Roy writes seductively. Recently I picked up her new book, Listening to Grasshoppers, and I was mesmerized by her luminous prose but I disagreed profoundly with her conclusions. I was revolted, in particular, by her support for violence. She regards Naxalism as armed resistance against a sham democracy. I call it terrorism.
Roy thinks that India pretends to be a democracy in order to impress the world. I think our democracy is as real as my grandson’s thumb. Yes, it has many flaws but it is legitimate. We need to reform the police; speed up justice; make babus accountable; stop criminals from entering politics; etc.. Yet, this democracy has done a colossal amount of good. It has raised the prospects and self esteem of the lowest in our society and protected us from the great genocides of the 20th century. Gujarat, to its disgrace, may have killed 2000 people but Mao’s China killed more than 50 million, according to the Marxist historian, Eric Hobsbawm. One may be justified in taking up arms against a loathsome African or Latin American dictator but not against the Indian state.
Like many in the 1960s I was a Leftist and admired Charu Mazumdar who had founded the Naxalbari movement. Although I belonged to that idealistic middle class generation, I was not tempted to abandon all and join the Maoists. Perhaps, it was because I lived in sensible Bombay rather than Calcutta. The Naxalite movement died in the 1970s but it revived subsequently and today it operates in 200 districts across ten states and controls huge Indian territory. The Prime Minister thinks it is the greatest security threat to India, and I agree.
Soon after the Maoist leader, Kobad Ghandy, the police in Hazaribagh got another prize catch. On October 10th, they captured Ravi Sharma and his wife, B. Anuradha. Top level Naxalites, they hailed from Andhra but were running the Maoist movement in Bihar and Jharkhand for the past ten years. On their laptop the police found their strategy and their plans. Ravi Sharma is an agricultural scientist and a member of the Maoist Central Committee. As he was being led by the police to the court in Hazaribagh, Sharma told reporters that he did not regret killing thousands of people. “During a revolution,” he spoke honestly, “one does not care how many are killed; only the goal should be achieved.”
Ravi Sharma thus raised the old dilemma of means and ends. Vidura posed the same question in the Mahabharata when he justified sacrificing an individual for the sake of a village and a village for the sake of a nation. Vidura, like Sharma, judges an act to be dharmic if it produces good consequences for the greatest number of people. Yudhishthira, however, is concerned with means rather than ends. Having given his word to Dhritarashtra, he refuses to give in to Draupadi’s insistent demand that Pandavas raise an army and win back their kingdom which was stolen in a rigged game of dice. No matter how great the goal, Yudhishthira would not condone the Maoists’ use of violence.
I usually agree with Vidura but on this one I am with Yudhishthira. Marxists have never valued human life and have always found it easy to take the gun. Mao and Stalin easily justified killing millions for the sake of the revolution. They never understood that violence in the end brutalises both the oppressor and the victim. Neither should we let the Indian state get away by using wrong means for the sake of good ends. I agree with Arundhati Roy that the state should not get away with unlawful detention or killing people in custody. I applaud her and human rights activists for raising these issues.
The Naxalite movement has always found sympathy in our influential, leftish upper middle class. Like most people I was aghast at the beheading of police officer Francis Induwar on September 30 by the Maoists, and I expressed my horror to an elegantly dressed friend who was visiting me. She is with an NGO and has sentimental feelings for Maoists. She said, “Yes, it is wrong, but we need development as well as force to defeat Maoists.” I could not disagree with her, but I was appalled at the ease with which she dismissed the beheading. Mamata Banerji, the leader of Trinamool Congress, had the same response.
For once we have a home minister who understands the Maoist threat to our nation and is determined to act with courage. It is pathetic that he should be slowed by endless debate on development versus police action; or whether helicopters should fire on rebels and risk civilian casualties. We have talked for two decades. Enough is enough. No ifs or buts, you cannot negotiate with someone with a gun. Now is the time for action.