The Maoist ‘threat’ in India 3-30-2010

30, March 2010                The Maoist ‘threat’ in India

While India is aggressively embracing capitalism with all its attendant benefits, it is simultaneously waging an unholy war against its poor, indigenous people in the country’s tribal belt. This large swath of land known as the Red Corridor, stretches from West Bengal, Jharkhand through Orissa to Chhattisgarh.

The land is coveted by local governments who have sold mineral mining rights for crores of rupees to corporations. The indigenous people are on an unholy collision course with paramilitary forces who have been given ‘007’ licenses to kill with complete impunity.

The local inhabitants, known as Maoist rebels, or Naxalites, are battling with government and paramilitary forces and have been castigated as India’s “gravest internal security threat.” In a staggering level of brutality over 640 villages have been burned and hundreds of villagers killed. This military action closely resembles the strategy of hamletting – forcing people to move off their ancestral lands for profit corporations – first devised by the British in Malaya. It was subsequently ‘refined’ by the US who forced Vietcom peasants off their land and burned their huts. It is unconscionable that India, which boasts to be a burgeoning democracy, should use such harsh, brutal measures to lay siege to a very vulnerable population. Once again corporate money interests triumph social justice.