Tackling India’s own Taliban

By Ritika at 26 June, 2009, 9:18 am

I can’t help but draw parallels between Pakistan’s crusade against Taliban in Swat valley and Indian government’s crusade against Maoist in Lalgarh. As Pakistan army fights the Taliban to uproot their hold over the Swat valley, India too is fighting its own Taliban, the Maoists in Lalgarh and currently carrying out an operation to regain the land usurped by the Communist Party of India (Maoist) in the hinterlands of the West Bengal.

The area had become out of bounds for police and government and houses and properties of members of the WB ruling Communist Party of India (Marxist) were routinely destroyed by the Maoist cadres and the people of the village. A few leaders from CPI (Marxist) were even killed during the diatribe that has engulfed an area few kilometers away from Kolkata, the capital of WB. The support of the tribal to the Maoist militants may come as a surprise to an urban yuppie like me but its commonplace for anyone who knows the history of the ruling government’s apathy and atrocities against the tribal of the region.

Though tribal areas in West Bengal, Orissa, Jharkhand, Chattisgarh have had a history of Maoist terrorism, more of a rural phenomenon owing to the government’s apathy towards the tribal and very poor of our society, the current revolution is a result of the police high-handedness in the form of indiscriminate arrests and raids against the locals after a botched Maoist bid on the life of the chief minister in November 2008. This resulted in formation of People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCPA) that got together to protect themselves from the administration and hence joined hands with the ultras.

The police and paramilitary forces are fighting the militants right now to regain control of Lalgarh and the Centre has proposed a ban on the Communist Party of India (Maoist). But, such measures are only a short term solution and it won’t be long before these groups resurge. The main cause for tribal and locals supporting such acts of terrorism is the government’s negligence of such areas which leaves them years backward from the mainland country. The atrocities committed by the government and police personnel only add salt to their wounds.

Manmohan Singh’s government since its first innings in 2004 has identified Naxalite terrorism as India’s enemy no.1 and had even proposed A Special Task force in 2004 for tackling the menace but little has been done on that front in the past 5 years. Hopefully with the problem now staring at their face, the government will take appropriate actions to not only the contain the Naxal supported violence but to stem the problem at its root, that is, by framing and undertaking necessary policies for the upliftment of the long neglected extremely poor children of this country.

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Categories : Politics & Society