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Many such groups are a Maoist front

The entire civil rights discourse in India has become an apologetics for the Maoists. Civil rights groups have been transformed into weapons in the hands of various terrorist and insurgent formations in India, engaging in a campaign of harassment and disruption, undermining the capacities of state Forces, and often paralyzing the state's agencies in their counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism campaigns. This is far from accidental - a question of misplaced intellectual sympathies or confusion. It is an integral element of the Maoist strategy.

Many, though, of course, not all, of the 'civil rights' groups are, in fact, no more than front organizations set up by the Maoists themselves. The Strategy and Tactics document of the Communist Party of India - Maoist very clearly identifies the multiplicity of such organizations that the Party must set up or exploit. In addition to the underground revolutionary organizations that are the core of their armed struggle, it outlines the setting up of 'Open Mass Organisations', 'Cover Organisations' and a range of 'Legal and Democratic Organisations'. In addition, a spectrum of those who have, in a different context, been described as 'useful idiots', are to be brought together under the canopy of 'United Front Activities' - this may include a number of well-intentioned or simply opportunistic or self-seeking civil rights groups, who are co-opted into the Maoist strategy without fully understanding their role, or the damage they are instrumental in doing.

By and large, none of these groups condemns the Maoists even for their most blatant brutalities. Where qualified condemnation is occasionally heard, it is immediately followed up by justification in terms of the 'root causes' shibboleth, or as 'natural' reactions to 'state oppression', or convoluted interpretations of one-sided histories.

What is systematically ignored is the fact that extreme violence, intended to terrorize the people, is an escapable element of Maoist strategy and tactics. As Mao noted, "it is necessary to create terror for a while in every rural area, or otherwise it would be impossible to suppress the activities of the counter-revolutionaries… Proper limits have to be exceeded…" Extreme and demonstrative cruelty are, thus, an essential element in the Maoist paradigm, a fact that is systematically ignored by Maoist 'civil rights' fronts and sympathizers.

 

(Published in The Economic Times, April 9, 2010)

 

 

 

 

 
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