Jamil Chughtai
Sages from every bracket of the history have had the consensus on the fact that ‘what goes around, (eventually) comes around’, and the same has started to divulge upon and prove true in case of India whose bad deeds are now echoing back onto herself giving more shriller and agonizing resounding. India has always proved to be the state that fanned, funneled and funded the subversive elements within almost all the neighbouring countries in the region, but this time round it is experiencing a deadly surge in separatist movements in her very own backyard. Besides reaching of boiling point for Kashmiri Intifada and resurgence of Punjab’s Khalistan movement, the phenomenal swell in Maoist-Naxalite rebel attacks on Indian paramilitary forces have rung the dread bells making India realize that it badly needs to do some serious introspection for setting its own house in order, though it would already be too late.
These independence-seeking separatist movements in India, including that of Naxali-Maoist, are collectively put into the category of Left Wing Extremism (LWE) and the same have continued to pose one of the most serious security threats in post independence India. Besides strong focus on disintegration, the LWE also carries political and socio-economic challenges for the country. India, however, apparently have consistently shrugged them off as a mere fomenting tools being used by external (presumably Pakistan and China) hands to create unrest in the country, which in fact mounts to burying the head under the sand, blaming others for one’s own laxities and then hoping for the best. However, had it not been a serious concern for the federation of India, the former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh should not have described the subversive movements as “India’s biggest internal security challenge ever” and lately PM Modi have not been forced to urge the pro-independence separatists to “shun the gun for a few days and visit the families affected by their violence”. Although the incumbent Indian Premier has now launched a ‘technology penetration’ drive to ensure that the undeveloped tribal areas are provided with good infrastructure that may act as some relief to the regions under subversive movements, yet it is bound to fail being too less and too late.
Historically, the Maoist insurgency is an ongoing conflict between Maoist groups, also known as Naxalites, and the Indian government. Maoist insurgency started as peasant uprising in 1960s, and since then has cost thousands of lives in the rebel-dominated “red corridor” stretching through central and eastern India. Emerging merely from three police station areas namely Naxalbari, Khoribari and Phansidewa of Darjeeling district in West Bengal in 1967, the Naxalites now operate in well over 100 districts in India, mainly in the states of Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Mezoram, Nagaland and West Bengal. In the West Bengal, the areas west of Howrah are fully dominated by the insurgents while Chhattisgarh is considered as the epicenter of the conflict. Along these 50 years, the movement has flourished on some basic issues like poverty, disparity, and discontent among the masses of these areas as the intensity of such problems is seriously high in the effected districts in particular.
As a natural consequence to the prevailing sense of deprivation and insecurity among the masses of these neglected areas, the Maoist insurgency has thrived on the glorification of the extreme left ideology which legitimizes the use of violence to overwhelm the existing socio-economic and political structure. Based on this ideology, People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army was created as an armed wing of the Communist Party of India – Maoists (CPI-M). The movement became strong in 2004 with its merger with People’s War Group that was influential in Andhra Pradesh and the Maoist Communist Centre of India (MCCI) with a stronghold in the central Indian states. This deadly combination significantly upgraded the combat capabilities of separatist groups as a whole. Since 2004, the movement is assessed to have impacted 40 percent of India’s territory and over 35 percent of its population. Currently, the lethality of the separatist movements has increased manifold, establishing a complex network all across India with secessionist outfits reaching millions and equipped with sophisticated firearms such as LMGs, automatic rifles, mortars, and rocket launchers. The extensive use of landmines and Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) against security convoys, police stations, and railways highlight the separatists’ hi-tech weapon capabilities making them a major challenge to the internal security of India. Encouraged by their increased strength, they have in the recent past resorted to high profile and high impact terror attacks; major among them being the April 06, 2010 attack in Tadmetla killing 76 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel, the June 29, 2010 incident at Dhaurai in Narayanpur in which 26 Jawans were killed, May 25, 2013 attack at Darbha Ghati in which 27 people including political leaders as well as CRPF personnel were killed, March 11, 2017 ambush of a patrol party killing CRPF Jawans and the latest one on April 24, 2017 killing 25 personnel of CRPF.
So all is not sugary out there for India, especially in the backdrop of latest uprising in Indian Occupied Kashmir where the Kashmiri youth is all set for ‘now or never’ stage of their freedom movement. As if the havoc created by Gau Rakshaks of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in killing and isolating the Indian Muslims, Christians and Dalits for eating cow-meat was not enough, the BJP has started to implement a new identity politics based on its Hindutva ideology of ‘Hindu, Hindi, Hindustan’, which has further isolated the minorities and low-caste segments of society every passing day. In fact, what we are witnessing in the present India is a state of chaos in search of some undefined pseudo identity. The identity crisis, along with phenomenal surge in extremism, terrorism and separatism, has already created huge disillusionment among the masses of the effected states. This very phenomenon bears all the potential to eventually disintegrate Indian federation into myriads of independent states soon, and then leaving the residual India in a much smaller yet manageable tract of land dwelled by high caste ‘Hindus’ only.
