In the latest chapter in the war waged between the State and the Maoists in Dantewada, a Maoist attack at Sukma district of Chhattisgarh has claimed the lives of 15 security personnel and 1 civilian. Such sensational actions, symptomatic of the Maoists’ exclusively militaristic strategy, are utterly futile as a response to the burning questions of corporate plunder and the accompanying war by the State on adivasi people. CPI(ML) deplores such actions, and stresses that there is no alternative to the course of building mass political resistance to the policies of plunder and repression.
The Indian State’s war on adivasis in forest areas, facilitating corporate plunder, has resulted in countless deaths of innocents in police firings on unarmed protestors and massacres by security forces (disguised as ‘encounters’). These killings, even when they claim the lives of little children celebrating harvest festivals, never invoke the moral outrage of most of the media and the ruling class political parties. This fact cannot in any way justify the Maoists’ strategy of sensational killings of CRPF personnel or SPOs.
The State’s war is waged against adivasi civilians; the jawans, who are used to unleash barbaric brutality on the adivasis, are cannon fodder in that war, and the Maoists’ actions only contribute to the spiral of violence. And on many occasions, the Maoists too have not spared civilians, killing poor civilians in acts of revenge or for perceived acts of betrayal.
The State attempts to use Maoist attacks to justify and intensify its policy of Operation Greenhunt – i.e the witch-hunt and war on adivasi people. It is all too clear, however, that the State is waging war in the forest areas, not to rid them of Maoists, but to make them available for corporate plunder. Peaceful protesters against land grab are routinely branded as ‘Maoists’ as a pretext for unleashing repression. The CPI(ML) demands an end to the State’s war on people, as an essential measure to pursuing peace and justice in the forest regions of the country.
Kavita Krishnan
Member, Polit Bureau
CPI(ML) Liberation
