It is neither easy, nor ordinary when the hands that plough the fields choose to raise guns. The incident dates back to the year 1967 when peasants in the Naxalbari village of West Bengal, rose in rebellion against ages of oppression and injustice. The rebellion escalated in the face of violence and soon insurgencies from various parts of the country surfaced. There was a huge participation of students, particularly in West Bengal where a number of students left their education to join the movement. What followed was a period of turmoil when numerous radical groups became active in different regions across the country.
The country has come a long way since then. We forgot Naxalbari; we forgot the movement, the raison d’être that led to it. What has remained is a term, largely ambiguous, Naxalism, another addition to the numerous ‘isms’ that continue hovering over our social, economic and political consciousness, but nevertheless inconsequential. In fact, it poses one of the greatest threats to the nation’s internal peace and harmony.
Where did we go wrong and where did ‘they’ go wrong? Or, is it the rift created between ‘we’ and ‘they’ that led to this state of affairs? The question has met with a shameful apathy since its inception and still awaits an answer. So do many questions that have been fostered by these years of insurgency.
The uprising at Naxalbari was supposed to be a wake-up call for our policy makers, governments and above all the ‘class’ that was constituted of both the oppressors and the majority which remained impassive to the plight of the oppressed. The unorganized rebellion was crushed with an iron hand and as time passed by it fragmented into numerous groups of varying degrees of extremism and varying ideologies. From what was initially a struggle for one’s basic human right to live with dignity, it transformed into a ‘class struggle’, and a cruel manifestation of the same in the principle of ‘annihilation of class enemy’.
The movement truly lost its direction, if it had any, and the world has changed in more ways than one since then. What is the significance of Naxalism in the current scenario is the question that needs to be pondered upon. Is creation of ‘Salwa Judums’ the solution for the rising militancy? Or, does the solution lies in a much deeper understanding of the entire problem, its dynamics, the factors that lead to such insurgencies and thereby undertaking some fundamental systemic reforms?