Within a span of 45 days, three major operations by the CPI-Maoists have killed more than 115 police personnel and some civilians in Dantewada, Chhattisgarh. Landmines were blasted followed by ambushes and firing. On 6^th April, in one of the attacks, 76 CRPF personnel died. In some other states of India, viz. West Bengal, Orissa, Bihar and Jharkhand, incidents of killings are continuous and almost a regular affair.

The recent incident of killing of more than 40 people travelling in a bus blown by a blast in Dantewada is merely a new chapter in the volumes of brutalities, being scripted in Chhattisgarh and other parts of the country in the name of ‘The Peoples’ War’ carried out by the ‘purest revolutionaries’ of the planet. On this occasion, their victims include a few civilians as well, who couldn’t even be branded of being police informers.

While we unequivocally declare that the harshest possible words of condemnation from our vocabulary are meant for the Indian state for their oppressive actions against the people of India through their capitalist and undemocratic economic, social, political, administrative, military and diplomatic practices; words of condemnation and criticism are also there for the Maoists.

We do not intend to say that revolutionary violence doesn’t apply in any circumstance, nor do we deny the importance of the role of force for revolutionary changes. Nevertheless, we deny equating the violent Maoists practices, entirely by a self-proclaimed vanguard, carried on for decades, with revolutionary violence by the people in moments of mass upsurge. Maoist violence is not based on any mass politics. Even in the few cases where so-called mass involvement is claimed, especially by urban intellectual supporters of the Maoists, the reality is that gun wielding Maoist cadres dictated the violence. We strongly feel that this sordid violence would fail to bring any radical change even in remote future. All such Maoist violence across the globe, for e.g. in Peru, Philippines and in other places has been an abject failure. Any attempt to equate the experience of Chinese revolution with the experience of Indian Maoists shall be a gross distortion of history.

The Maoist analysis of the Indian state as semi-feudal is highly erroneous. They claim that the advasis/forest dwellers suffer the highest form of feudal exploitation by linking the kind of poverty prevailing there. It is pertinent to note that poverty is not limited to feudalism only. Moreover, this claim is contradicted when they also say that the locals are being displaced for the purpose of free passage to the corporate. Such displacements of people from land and livelihood are typical capitalist phenomenon, contrary to feudal characteristics. As a matter of fact, the Maoists themselves penetrated in those areas by supporting and participating in struggle for wages.

We are very clear that big corporates want free access to the forests and mineral rich areas to exploit resources for capitalist expansion. This ruthless capitalist abuse is the root cause for the present crisis that India and its people are facing. We strongly believe that the only force that can lead the struggle against capitalism in India and globally is the organized working class. However, with their current strategy, the Maoists are failing to make any impact on the class. Firstly, because they are unable to reach them (they don’t have a policy to reach them either) and secondly, the working class doesn’t approve the politics of annihilation, particularly when this class is far from identifying a need for a revolutionary social change for which they are a major force.

An illusion disseminated by the Indian state and media, in order to justify the Operation Green Hunt and to label all political dissent against neoliberalism and globalisation as terrorism and Maoism, is that the Maoists are controlling around 200 districts of the country where civil administration cannot operate. This is not true. The number is much less than that and in most cases only a part of the mentioned districts are under the control of the Maoists. These areas are thinly populated. Even, if we consider those areas as Maoist ‘liberated zones’; they are far-off from capturing the state power, its machineries, its military bases, its power centres. They have neither been able to extend nor, move beyond the inaccessible forest region, and it seems unlikely in the future as well. No matter what they say about “encirclement of the cities from the countryside” the bulk of rural India has remained totally out of their reach; forget about the cities where the bulk of the principal revolutionary force - the working class - is concentrated. Hence, the question of encircling the cities with liberated villages shall not apply with the current strategy of the Maoists. They over simplify the strength of the state.

While making such statement we do not project impossibility of proletarian revolution, but the opposite. Proletarian revolution is possible when the working class is ready to lead the movements for revolutionary social change and other exploited classes accept their leadership and when the larger section of people deny the legitimacy of this capitalist state through action, participation and support mechanism. The role of force and violence arises only then and not currently when working class is yet to identify itself as a revolutionary class.

Under these circumstances, we do not limit ourselves to a criticism of the Maoists’ strategy but also reject their practice of indiscriminate annihilation as they cross basic human values. They are as well in a process of detracting people from revolutionary classes and from socialist ideology; we condemn their call for ‘war against the state’ as their path spoil an unarmed revolutionary force simply for the sake of their adventurist and opportunist politics. Instead of linking the struggle of adivasis with the broad class movements against the state, with movements of all exploited classes, Maoists recruit young teenagers from poor adivasis and indoctrinate them to burn schools and dig roads, which further alienate them from the other forces of movement. As a result of this strategy, the capitalist state is getting legitimacy and capitalists are getting benefits. The cause of so proclaimed revolution is actually losing its justification.

Radical Socialist