PRAGOTI

Your analysis is interesting although some of your arguments need clarification. In the second para of your comment, you suggest that "it is not any perverted, exploitative and blood-thirsty leadership of the Maoists that is orchestrating this exploitation of tribals and a war on common people but it is their wrong strategy of setting up bases in the natural-resource hinterlands with limited agriculture that will willy-nilly make them do all this." In other words, the strategy of selecting the 'locale of political operation' is wrong and not 'armed-struggle' as a political strategy to fight the Indian state and the corporates! That means, are you supporting the strategy of 'armed struggle' as an effective strategy to fight a mighty Indian state and corporate plunder of natural resources even if they hypothetically change their strategy of basing in the forest zones to migrate closer towards places with relatively greater human settlement/population density? We have to also understand that if communist politics should ideally be based on 'concrete analysis of concrete situations', then I am afraid, the Indian situation is markedly different from say that of 1920s to 1940s China, and surely different from say early 20th century Russia. Thus, Indian revolution has to be on the basis of concrete analysis of Indian situation and finding parallels while following either Chinese model or Russian model is not going to help us. Previously, in the history of third world communist movements such dogmatic path dependence has been extremely harmful and led to complete debacles. I am not saying that it is altogether a futile excercise to learn from the history of international communist movement but we have to acknowledge that 21st century communism would be absolutely a new political project on two grounds: 1) Taking lessons from the past mistakes of 20th century communist debacles including path dependence to either Moscow or Beijing line 2) Taking note of fundamentally different socio-economic and political conditions of globalized phase of neoliberal capitalism, technological advancement of late capitalism along with the limits of universality of contemporary bourgeois project with the emergence of particularist identitarian struggles along pre-modern categories like caste, tribe and religious community, which were not dominant during the socialist struggles in the first half of the 20th century. Secondly, your analysis of distancing/differentiating the Indian Maoists with Mao Zedong's anti-imperialist strategy during the Long March is correct, but a Maoist might argue that if they vacate the forest zone, who would give everyday resistance to the oppression and exploitation of tribals in the forest zone? He might also argue that precisely because that the Maoists have successfully 'mingled among the people like fish in the water' that the Indian state is unable to contain their movement and they get support, cadres and informers from the people. It is another matter as you rightly pointed out that the Maoists are unable to successfully resist the corporate plunder. But at the same time, a Maoist might argue that it is because of their presence in forest zones while earning some concessions for the Tribals like increasing the price of Tendu leaves, giving the Tribals a voice of protest, some community development etc. (as informed by Arundhati Roy's article) that Mr. Chidambaram, who have intimate relationship with the Vedanta group as a former counsel has vested interests and thus he is so eager to militarily crush the Maoists. Please don't misunderstand me. I am not at all in favour of Indian Maoists, but just playing a devil's advocate to get some unanswered questions in the Left's engagement with the Maoist question.
 
Your assessment about Chidambaram, a representative of neoliberal power bloc to manipulate the current situation by using both the Left and Naxalism to have fratricidal fight against each other so that a Leftwing space of opposition to neoliberalism is further shrinked is absolutely correct. But it does not explain the ontological cum existential question of Indian Maoism. That is to say, how do we explain the existence of Indian Maoists in places, where Maoists were historically absent or in territories, where the mainstream Left has been historically strong? I think the existence of Indian Maoism is a result of non-existence/absence of the mainstream Left as a 'credible representative' of the 'people' in many parts of India including the Maoist affected areas of West Bengal. Here, I would argue that since the mainstream Left is organisationally weak in places like Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar, Orissa and parts of Andhra Pradesh in addition to its weak organisational presence in the forest zones of these states, that for a section of people, the only available mode of political protest/resistance to some extent has been to support the Maoists. In other words, since there was no other protest politics/resistance against everyday oppression and exploitation of corporate plunder, harassment of statist agencies, local money lenders, local businessmen etc. under the tutelage of bourgeois political parties like Congress, BJP and regional bourgeois parties, a section of population actually end up being mobilized by the Indian Maoists: representing a frenzy distorted kind of violent politics and often a perversion of communist ideas and praxis without any clear agenda of mass mobilisations among urban poor, rural proletariat and other marginalised sections of Indian population and thus only limited themselves among the Central-Eastern forest zone. This is not to say that all tribals have been mobilized by the Maoists. Certainly, the tribals in many states particularly in North, Western, Southern and North-Eastern states have not even seen a Maoist! So, we need to differentiate between the 'tribal identity' and 'Maoist identity' as in most cases, it is not the same. It is only in the Central-eastern forest zones that the Maoists have been able to garner some support among the Tribals.
 
Now, in this context, how do we explain the existence of Maoists in West Bengal? The emergence of Maoists in Bengal is a symptom of crisis of the Left. Surely, the current crisis of the Left is fundamentally linked with its inability to provide a counter-hegemonic politics of ‘alternative’ to neoliberal capitalism. In fact neoliberal hegemony has partly influenced the policies and political thinking of the parliamentary Left, which is presently facing a crisis of what can be called as an alternative vision of development in a world marked by neoliberal consensus. Cumulative factors regarding questions of land, livelihood, industrial development, and a series of unfulfilled democratic demands particularly the issue of education, health, jobs and proportional representation in the party and government for various marginalised groups like peasantry, working classes, Dalits, Tribals, Muslims and Women have resulted into such a crisis of the Left and the entry of Indian Maoists and reactionary Trinamul and Congress to make political capital out of such a crisis the Left. In this context, an equivalential popular political articulation manipulated by the reactionary bourgeois opposition in the name of Trinamul-Congress alliance with the help of anti-Left Maoists in Bengal, which in the recent past has successfully constructed a political discourse, where the Left Front government has been increasingly transformed from ‘representative of the people’ to ‘representative/repression of the power bloc’. Once, the Left is identified with the ‘power bloc’ and loses its plebeian/underdog character, the ‘people’ would no more identify with its politics. Moreover, the aggressive and less humble approach of the Left as a narcissist or ‘messianic authoritarian’ by claiming that ‘we know much better than the people’ also contributed to its politico-electoral erosion in Bengal. It would be rather foolish to argue that the ‘people’ in Left citadels is completely unaware of its interests when it has been participating in historic struggles under Left’s mobilization and thus gained a consciousness that can detect a difference between its self-interests and its ‘other’ antagonistic one. Thus, the Left in its own citadels needs to debunk its alleged one-upmanship attitude and by being modest should take lessons from the ‘people’ by carefully listening, instead of ignoring them.
 
The present crisis of the Left has much to do with its crisis of popular political mobilization behind its project, whatever that project might be, whether it is industrial development or peasant based economic development in short run and people’s democratic revolution in the long run. In other words, the Left needs to earn legitimacy and consent of the people on any economic or political project (although both are inter-related and the differences today is blurred) without an authoritarian imposition from above. Furthermore, the current crisis of the Left is related to its inability to articulate a new hegemonic politics by convincing the ‘people’ about its immediate and futuristic political goals besides addressing the immediate concerns of vast sections of population. But how can the Left mobilizes people in the current phase of globalized capitalism within the structures of neoliberal hegemony? The precise answer might be to find an alternative political articulation in the form of constructing a new political project of Leftwing populism by addressing and mobilizing varied marginalised groups like the peasantry, working classes, Dalits, Tribals, Muslims, women and lower OBCs who together constitute the Indian 'people'. Moreover, the Maoist cashing on the current crisis of Leftwing political mobilisation is also an outcome of lack of ideological struggle both inside-outside the largest communist party in Bengal. A political vacuum is created due to the withdrawal of ideological struggle and the lack of direct political participation of the politically conscious subject due to the ideological disillusionment of the ‘political subject’ emanated from the lived experiences of political bankruptcy, ideological degeneration and other forms of politico-ideological corruption. But the political space never become merely void as it is filled by someone else may be a depoliticised animal. This form of depoliticisation and political apathy only strengthens neoliberal consensus and results from perpetual existence of minimalist and instrumental democracy without much extra-parliamentary struggles that failed to carve out an autonomous space for maturity of political consciousness of the people with substantive elements of democracy. The only way out for the Left to tackle this crisis of mobilisation might be to construct and implement the following: 1) alternative model of people's democratic development with class bias towards marginalised groups and active participation of those marginalised groups in such development projects 2) an alternative strategy of political mobilisation by articulating several democratic demands for land, education, jobs, health and proportional representation in party and government for marginalised groups like workers, peasants, Dalits, Tribals, Muslims, Women and lower OBCs 3) protracted militant extra-parliamentary struggles with mass mobilisations and making such militant extra-parliamentary struggles as the major axis of communist movement rather than a lop-sided focus on electoral battles 4) Vibrant ideological struggle inside the party with a correct class perspective and strong inner party democracy 5) open dialogues for long-term alliances with broader social movements like Dalit movements and several anti-capitalist, anti-neoliberal and anti-imperialist resistant movements led by Tribals, peasants and ordinary common citizens etc. With the combined approaches of all these politico-ideological activities, the Left might have a future in the long run, otherwise there is no hope for a Leftwing project in India and the only opposition that might be left to be countered by the neoliberal power bloc is none other than the anarchist Maoists, who definitely cannot lead the Indian revolution towards its desired political goal of people's democracy because of the numerous faulty nature of Indian Maoists, whom we are all aware of and some of which you have aptly demonstrated like killing innocent civilians, mafia extortions, and sometimes tactical aligning with rightwing parties to decimate the Left. In this respect, the Left has to convincingly win back the confidence of the 'people' and has to offer a radical agenda with clarity in ideological thought as opposed to the Maoists who have nothing to offer but mayhem and diabolic rhetoric by neither successfully resisting neoliberalism nor being able to lead a politics of social transformation via people's democratic revolution. Therefore, the Maoists would continue to exist until and unless the Left approaches the problem with a combination of several strategies 1) It has to invent a new politics of counter-hegemony with a new agenda of resisting neoliberalism on one hand and lead the Indian people towards the goal of people's democratic revolution on the other and 2) It has to politically and ideologically defeat the Maoists rather than a lop-sided policy of administratively tackling them.      
 
Comradely yours, 
 Maidul Islam