Dear MHA, there is something called email…

The story of how Indian Postal Department caused political crisis by losing a letter.

This happened last month, but it is too hilarious to miss out on. On 24 December, the Minister of Home Affairs sent a letter to the West Bengal Chief Minister asking him to shutdown the illegal political militia Harmad Vahini (more on that below). The letter was sent through speed post, but the Indian Postal Department, being the Indian Postal Department, didn’t deliver the letter until 27 December.

Meanwhile, the letter had been already leaked to the press and an anonymous MHA official was quoted wondering why the West Bengal Government wasn’t responding (hinting it had something to hide). Given that CPI (M)-run West Bengal Government and Congress-led Central Government are not exactly on best of terms since their fallout a couple of years ago, the three extra days gave New Delhi ample of time to snipe at West Bengal government and the latter couldn’t respond while not in possession of the letter.

No Naxals will be hurt in the making of Telengana state

Finally! I have finished reading the 505-page Srikrishna Committee Report on Telengana issue (pdf). Above all, I realized two things- Justice Srikrishna is no John Grisham and I hate Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA). After wading through hundreds of pages documenting the ethno-religious and social details of the region I find out that the juicy part, internal security considerations, has been censored out, courtesy MHA. What am I supposed to read if not the Naxal angle?

Surprisingly, despite hardly mentioning Naxalism in its report (minus the censored security considerations) the committee report scares the bejesus out of anyone thinking that Naxalism wouldn’t be an issue in the state formation. And it is not the only one. Security agencies (read MHA) have already suggested to the government that creating Telengana will help Naxalism rise again. So the question is, whether Naxalism is a threat for Telengana or merely a bureaucratic excuse for the government to do their favorite thing in the whole world – maintain status quo.

Salwa Judum is back...sorta

In 2005-2006, the Government of Chhattisgarh came up with a brilliant solution for the Naxalism problem. Why not give the tribals living in these areas some guns and let them fight it out with Naxals? With this Salwa Judum (Peace March) was born. Cloaking it as a socio-political movement, the government claimed that the tribals were motivated on their own to fight naxals and the government was merely supporting the movement (with guns.) Many tribals were taken up as Special Police Officers (SPOs) and others were just given weapons.

Needless to say giving guns to untrained (or partially trained) young boys with nothing better to do is not gonna end up well. I am not going to go in the gory details (you can read them here [.pdf]) but the situation became very bad. The Judum members started killing each other, sold the weapons to Naxals themselves, abused their power and recruited child soldiers. A case currently ongoing in Supreme Court accuses Judum of "over 500 murders, 99 rapes and 103 acts of arson." With all the heat generating because of this drama, the government did what it does best- locked the file and underwent a selective amnesia. Judum is currently in limbo. It hasn't exactly been disbanded but guns and money has stopped pouring in.

A few days ago, some of the leaders from Salwa Judum, launched a new political forum and held a press conference. The new forum, DKSSS is supposed to find a peaceful resolution to the Naxal strife. The communists immediately responded to this declaration for a 48-hour bandh. 

I talked to a couple of very interesting and knowledgeable people in Chhattisgarh who are working on this issue and they suggested that DKSSS is probably has to do with the Judum leaders trying to remind the government of that they still exist. When Judum came up, these leaders came out openly against the Naxals. Now they have burned the bridges and constantly have to be surrounded with bodyguards. Disowned by the government they are kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place. They resent the government for having left them while every Naxal in the neighbourhood is trying to tak a shot at them.

Of course, another angle to the whole issue is the money as it almost always is. While Judum continued a lot of people made a lot of money. With the government support drying up, their own pockets are getting lighter. It may be another reason to push for reviving Judum.

Whatever the reasons might be, for the time being, Judun remains an unresolved issue that may come back to haunt Chhattisgarh for a long time to come.

Image: Judum members being trained
Image Credit: humanrightsforum.org

Indian Maoists being trained in Nepal...and we are just making it worse.

The Ministry of Home Affairs has just warned the state governments that many Indian Maoists are being trained along with the People's Liberation Army of Nepal Maoists by Lashkar-e-Toiba in Nepal. Considering that the Indian Government has thrown all its weight (read below) against letting Nepalese Maoists build a democratically-elected coalition government in the country, what can you expect from them.

The Nepalese Maoists, after a decade of bloody civil war, laid down their arms in 2006 to join the Nepalese democracy. However since 2009, when the Maoists resigned from the government, the country has been a rudderless democracy. Yesterday Nepal failed to elect a new Prime Minister, for the twelfth time in the last two months! 

And to top it all off, the Indian Government is doing all it can to disallow the Maoists from making a coalition government. A month ago, an Indian intelligence operative actually threatened a member of Nepalese Parliament to have his daughter's admission revoked from the embassy-run Kendriya Vidyalaya if the MP does not vote a particular way. True story.

Of course with this attitude towards Maoists, it is no surprise that they are looking at us as their enemies. What does government expect to achieve even if it succeeds in ousting Maoists from the democratic process? Maoists with more than 8,000 troops and experience of fighting civil war for more than a decade. Won't their failure as a democratic party simply boost the extremist factions within them and lead to greater sponsorship to the Indian Maoists?