The following article about the expanding operations of the CPI(Maoist) into northeast India originally appeared at A critique of the times.
The Northeast is in danger of becoming the next Maoist hub
January 15 2012
Reports of Maoists mobilising people against dams in Arunachal Pradesh, shortly after Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi had warned about ultra-Left presence in Assam, can only mean that policymakers both in New Delhi and the North-East can no longer ignore the presence of the Reds in the region. The situation in the state is increasingly worrying, especially now that captured Maoist members have reportedly confessed links to elements in the North-East.
Gogoi’s claims were not backed by reports from the ground. All he said was that two officials – one from the Assam Students Youths Organisation (ASYO) and the other from the Assam Chah Janajati Suraksha Samiti (ACJSS) – had been nabbed by security forces in Orissa’s jungles. He did not have any more incriminating information to offer, except to say that these were frontal organisations of the Maoists. Moreover, the timing of this revelation was suspect – it came close on the heels of the tripartite Suspension of Operations being signed by the Union and state governments with the overground faction of the ULFA led by Arabinda Rajkhowa. Read the rest of this entry »
Millions of people in India build their homes and shelters on land technically ‘owned’ by the state. In West Bengal, the Trinamool Congress government has been selling off this land to corporations, which means the squatters and slum residents are brutally evicted. All in the name of ‘development’. Recently officials have set their sites on the Nonadanga slum in Kolkata, attempting to displace residents and jailing all who resist. The following article in Radical Notes provides a useful political and economic analysis of the situation.
Nonadanga is at just a stone’s throw from the eastern metropolitan bypass behind such glitzy corporate hospitals like Fortis, Ruby and Desunand and plans are on to transfer the land at throwaway prices to big real-estate projects by ‘Urbana’ and IT hubs. Obviously, in such a strategic location in a metropolis, they will not tolerate slums and ‘all these dirty people’.
Nonadanga: Against Repression and Arrest
April 11, 2012
by Parag,
Krantikari Naujawan Sabha
Condemn Repression in the name of ‘Development’ of the ‘Beautiful’ ! Demand Immediate Release of Arrested Dissenters !!
The ‘beautiful’ and the ‘developed’ entwined as it is with power, must make war on its underside, the ‘ugly’, the toiling, and demolish it, hide it under the shine of corporate towers and election promises. The brutal violence of the present process of ‘development’ in India comes buttressed with State Repression. This is exposed yet again when the Trinamool-led West Bengal government with its brute police force and Kolkata Municipal Development Corporation (KMDA) bulldozed and burnt the houses of 800 slum-dwellers in Nonadanga, South Kolkata on 30th March 2012 in the name of ‘beautification’. This is backed up with continuous state repression- residents who tried to resist their homes being demolished were beaten, picked up and put into police vans. Picking up pieces from their broken homes, setting up temporary shelters with vinyl sheets and a community kitchen, Read the rest of this entry »
Last week SARev published the Introduction to this piece. It was originally published by Sanhati, and we thank them for making this available.
This week we are continuing this fascinating story.
Part 2: Days and Nights in the Heartland of Rebellion
Gautam Navlakha
Inside the Guerilla Zone
The first thing that strikes one entering a “guerilla zone” in Bastar, where the Maoists run their own government, Jantanam Sarkar (JS), is the form of greeting. Everyone, old and young, men and women, villager or party member, shake hands, raise their fist and greet you “Lal Salaam”. The second thing that that strikes one is the number of women in JS as well as in every platoon or compoany of Peoples’Liberation Guerilla Army (PLGA) or Jan (i.e. People’s Militia). Read the rest of this entry »
Sanhati has published the original issues of Liberation, the monthly central organ of the undivided Communist Party of India (Marxist – Leninist) (CPIML). Currently, issues from 1967 to 1972 are available in PDF format. The CPI-ML, as many of our readers know, laid the groundwork for the Naxalbari movement. Though plenty has been written about Indian Maoism and the Naxalbari uprisings, much of the primary material published by the CPI-ML has not been readily available. We will be republishing select pieces from the journal, but we encourage our readers to check out the originals for themselves.
“What is it that connects the Wall Street occupation to the people in the forests? And I think what connects it is absolute exclusion of the majority of the people in the world for the obscene benefit of a very few.”
Jan Myrdal is a Swedish author who has written extensively on revolutionary communist movements worldwide, including works like his well-known Report from a Chinese Village (1963) as well as his recent book Red Star Over India.
He recently spoke in India at the Forum Against War on the People in New Delhi. What follows is the text of a speech Myrdal delivered at the Forum. Thanks to Democracy and Class Struggle for pointing this out. (Introduction by Joe).
Let’s Stand Against the Indian State’s War on People
Forum Against War on People–Public Meeting, Rajendra Bhawan, DD Upadhya Marg, New Delhi, 6 February 2012
(The text of the speech of Jan Myrdal, internationally well-known writer for his support for the people’s movements world-wide)
Dear friends,
I want to say something on the international solidarity movement with the peoples of India.
We are here because there is an ongoing war against the peoples of India by the Indian state itself or – to put it more charitably – by dominant sections of the Indian state machinery. You as Indian citizens want to stop this war. I and other friends of India abroad are trying to organise an international solidarity movement with the people of India against the horrors of this war. Read the rest of this entry »
This is a lightly edited transcript of an interview conducted by Manav Bushan for Free Speech Debate in January 2012.
India does gain a lot of brownie points from appearing to be a democracy, which is why nobody says half as much about Kashmir as they will about Tibet or about the uprising in the Middle East. So when major media start reporting very enthusiastically about one uprising and keeps very quiet about another, you have to work it out – why is it happening? What’s the story here?”
This is from freespeechdebate
Arundhati Roy on National Security and the Indian Media
The award-winning Indian novelist and activist speaks to Manav Bhushan about the limits to free speech in India, including government censorship through the media and “good squads”.
MB: Do you think there should be any restrictions on the freedom of speech, justified on the grounds of national security, public order or morality?
AR: No. I am completely against any restrictions. Once you have restrictions, they lend themselves to interpretation and the interpretations will always favour the state or the powers that be. So I am completely against any restrictions. Read the rest of this entry »
Workers in India’s cities have an incredibly militant history, and the current moment is hardly different. Now India’s trade union leaders are planning a massive strike on February 28. The following article, however, prompts questions: how well will revolutionary unions, reformist trade unions, and unions with Muslim members coordinate with unions affiliated with right-wing parties like Congress and the Hindu nationalist BJP? Will the strike present further opportunities for collaboration between revolutionary forces in the cities and rural scheduled castes and tribal peoples? Will the strike be effective in exposing the rotten foundations of India’s “shining democracy” to the world?
Readers who are closer to these issues are encouraged to post their thoughts and clarifying information.
Senior Communist Party of India leader and All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) general secretary Gurudas Dasgupta has termed the joint strike call by the trade unions on February 28 as the biggest show of unity by the working class and the poor.
All the leading trade unions, including the INTUC (Indian National Trade Union Congress), affiliated to the Congress, and the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh of the Bharatiya Janata Party, besides the Left unions — the CITU (Centre for Indian Trade Unions) and the All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) — will participate in the strike. Read the rest of this entry »
This article from thekashmirwalla.com discusses the draconian control India, the “world’s largest democracy,” exerts over journalists who attempt to tell the truth about the occupation of Kashmir.
David Barsamian on Journalism in Kashmir
From The Kashmir Walla – a monthly online magazine
January 7, 2012: For obvious reasons freedom of the press in Kashmir is limited and constrained. Military occupation with its attendant curfews, roadblocks, checkpoints, searches, surveillance, wiretapping of calls and emails, and state-sponsored violence from custodial deaths and extrajudicial killings to torture and disappearances, produce immense pain and suffering among Kashmiris. Intimidation and fear are widespread. This is the intent and design and logic of occupation. Read the rest of this entry »
This is meant to be a simple and brief explanation of the goals and strategies of the Maoist movement in India for people who may not have much awareness about it and are confused by the propaganda in the mainstream media. This does not go into the arcane debates about mode of production in India, the debates among communist revolutionaries over strategy and tactics etc. This aims at people who, for example, often resort to violent activities against the Government. Read the rest of this entry »
This profile of Arundhati Roy originally appeared at The Independent UK.”
The country that I live in is becoming more and more repressive, more and more of a police state…. India is hardening as a state. It has to continue to give the impression of being a messy, cuddly democracy but actually what’s going on outside the arc lights is really desperate.
Arundhati Roy: ‘The next novel will just have to wait…’
by Peter Popham
October 17, 2011
Arundhati Roy, winner of the Booker Prize in 1997 for The God of Small Things, is not in the frame this year. Again. In fact, she has yet to follow up on that first book, what John Updike described as her “Tiger Woodsian debut.”
It’s not for want of trying: it is no secret that she has a second one on the stocks. “Everybody has known that for many years!” she laughs. Few people have had a glimpse of it, however, one exception being her friend John Berger, the octogenarian novelist and art critic. He was so impressed that he urged her to drop everything and finish it. “About a year and a half ago I was with John at his home,” she recalls “and he said, ‘You open your computer now and you read to me whatever fiction you are writing.’ He is perhaps the only person in the world that could have the guts to say that to me. And I read a bit to him and he said, ‘You just go back to Delhi and you finish that book.’ So I said ‘okay…’” Read the rest of this entry »
To fully understand the threat that the CPI(Maoist) poses to the Indian state, and to neoliberal capitalism at large, one has to consider India’s capitalist development schemes. Capitalism requires unlimited growth, without regard to environmental destruction, sustainability or the welfare of indigenous peoples. As this article from Mining Weekly points out, India’s mining profits are far lower than those in other countries with comparable geological resources. To maintain its status as an emerging capitalist power, India needs to boost its profits in this sector. So it is pouring money into mining technology. What the article doesn’t say, however, is that the Maoists and their tribal base in Central and East India, often prevent mining firms from operating in these areas. This is not just a problem for the Indian state, but for capital accumulation on a global scale. As this article makes clear, (albeit with some disinformation) Indian coal is a key global commodity–and its extraction is being slowed by Maoist efforts. Further capitalist mining development will only mean further military and economic attacks on the Maoists and tribal peoples.
India sets aside $1.4bn for exploration investment
By Ajoy K Das
13th October 2011
KOLKATA – India’s Mines Ministry has proposed the government spend $1.4-billion between 2012 and 2017 to plug the technological gap in mineral exploration, thereby increasing mining’s share in the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), which was currently pegged at 2.2%. Read the rest of this entry »
The following comes from IBN News. While this brief article from the bourgeois speculates on details, its clear that the attempts of the Indian state to contain this growing revolutionary movement is not working. South Asia Revolution site will continue to keep updates, news and analysis on the revolution in India as it develops.
Maoist leaders escape after encounter in Orissa
Bhubaneswar, Oct 26 (PTI) Maoist leaders escaped after an encounter with security forces during a raid on a camp at Jadu Loisingh forest in Orissa’s Sambalpur district today. Maoist leaders Girish Mahato of Jharkhand, Kunu Dehuri of Orissa and others escaped from the camp as the Maoists and security personnel traded fire, Sambalpur Superintendent of Police Nikhil Kanodia said. The Maoists fired 150 rounds, which was retaliated by 300 rounds and 16 grenades by the security forces but none was killed or injured, Kanodia said. Read the rest of this entry »
The following video, a clip from Louis Malle’s documentary “Calcutta,” shows Naxalite involvement in student uprisings and the ensuing police repression. It is interesting for its visual resemblance to many recent international uprisings, as well as the way the bourgeois narrator tries to frame the events.
Revolution in South Asia 