The encounter death of Kishenji, the CPI (Maoist) PB member, just a few days after West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was exhorting the “mediators” to continue “negotiations”, reminds people who are old enough, of the encounter deaths of the 1970s. It smacks of the hypocrisy involved in the populist slogans of ‘peace and development’ trumpeted by the Government of West Bengal. This state terror exposed how self-defeating have been the efforts of a large sections of the left and ex-left intelligentsia which, in its hatred of the CPI(M), had called for votes for the TMC, or had collaborated with the TMC-led government.
Kishenji had in fact gone on record saying he would prefer to have Ms. Banerjee as the West Bengal Chief Minister, while she for her part, when not yet a CM, had condemned the killing of Azad. This shows that political opportunism was behind her moves at that stage – a desire to gain the pro-Maoist votes, as well as portray herself as a democrat.
The Indian state, and all the political parties that aspire to become governing parties, from the BJP via the TMC and the Congress to the CPI(M), are agreed that “terrorism”, whether of national minorities, or of Maoists, is best met by a brute show of force. Suryakanta Misra’s televised reaction, that he would have been happier if Kishenji had been caught alive, is partly suggestive that as it is he is not really unhappy, and partly just a fraudulent statement given his party’s months of bleating about why the joint forces were not operating.
The CPI(Maoist) is not the LTTE, and Kishenji is not Prabhakaran. So his killing, while seriously setting them back, will not stop this style of politics. Indeed, from the original line of the CPI(ML), via the various groups dedicating themselves to “armed struggle,” to the PWG, Party Unity and MCC three-way unification, this line of substitutionist revolutionism has been fed and strengthened by the failure to develop a mass class-struggle oriented left politics, and by the fact that Indian capitalist development, which is undoubtedly real, has however been based on super exploitation of certain sections of the Indian people, notably adivasis. While we completely reject the political line of the CPI(Maoist), and emphasize that substitutionist guns in fact depoliticise the broad masses, we recognise that the social base of this line is the afore mentioned super exploitation, and a disgust by sections of radicalising youth in every generation to the abject parliamentarist politics of the mainstream left.
Condemn encounters and encounter deaths
Halt all operations and sexual violence in Jangalmahal
Stop Operation Green Hunt
Ensure the right to life, livelihood, education, health and shelter of the people of Jangalmahal
Radical Socialist
25 November 2011