Where are you, human rights activists?

News Analysis

Where are you, human rights activists?

By Kartik Lokhande
Some time back, award-winning writer Arundhati Roy described Maoists as ‘Gandhians with guns’. It found echoes in pseudo-intellectual circles within India and in the outside world. It was not for the first time that such an echo was there to glorify, and to justify, the violent, subversive, and anti-national activities of Maoists.
Every time when security forces kill a Maoist cadre or sympathiser, such pseudo-intellectuals and so-called human rights activists raise a cry of human rights violation. However, whenever any civilian or a representative of democratic political system of the country is killed brutally by the anti-national Maoists -- like in the ambush laid by the outlaws in which several Congress leaders and workers were killed on Saturday in Jeeram Ghati in Chhattisgarh -- the same pathetic bunch of Maoist supporters goes surprisingly missing. Probably, in such cases, it becomes too difficult for them to justify brutal massacre by ‘Gandhians with guns’.
For the world, the artists, litterateurs, human rights activists are ‘fighting for true democratic values’. If it is so, why are they mute when the Maoists have killed brutally the leaders of the opposition party -- Congress -- in Chhattisgarh? These leaders right from party veteran V C Shukla to former MLAs Mahendra Karma and Uday Mudaliar to Chhattisgarh state chief of Congress party Nandkumar Patel and his son Dinesh, were on a ‘Parivartan Yatra’ as part of their ground-making efforts ahead of Legislative Assembly polls. In true democracy, there is enough space for political awakening of masses through such rallies and public meetings.
The Maoist-supporters, legal and human rights activists claim to be champions of struggle for democracy. For them, probably, their own meaning of ‘democracy’ holds significance. In their own admission, the ‘new democracy’ they conceive is ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. Thus, their meaning of democracy has an element of dictatorship, a term denoting value contradictory to that implied by democracy. The usage is just like ‘Gandhians with guns’. As Maoists and their supporters among intellectuals, writers, activists find it difficult to answer these contradictions in a convincing manner, they choose an easier way -- keeping silence when it is not convenient for them to answer. They have done precisely this after every killing by Maoists including the latest blood-bath in Chhattisgarh.
It is high time for other vast sections of the society, who believe in values of democracy and peace, to start questioning the Maoists and their supporters in different walks of life. People, who get carried away by propaganda unleashed by the Maoists and their sympathisers, must start careful reading of the founding documents of CPI (Maoist). In ‘Strategy and Tactics’ document of the banned outfit, plan of Maoists has been outlined quite clearly in the following words:
“The Central task of the Indian revolution also is the seizure of political power. To accomplish this Central task, the Indian people will have to be organized in the people’s army and will have to wipe out the armed forces of the counter-revolutionary Indian state through war and will have to establish, in its place, their own state - the People’s Democratic State and will have to establish their own political authority. The very act of establishment of the state machinery of the people by destroying, through war, the present autocratic state machinery - the army, the police, and the bureaucracy of the reactionary ruling classes - is the Central task of the People’s Democratic Revolution of India.” (The Central Task of the Revolution - Seizure of Political Power Through Protracted People’s War).
No one should have any illusions about the goal of the Maoists. They have unleashed a war to destroy the existing State machinery. They do not mind killing innocent people and their representatives. They do not mind trampling the human rights and democratic rights granted to people of India. To counter their menace effectively, all peace and democracy loving people need to counter the nuisance of pseudo-intellectual and human rights activists supporting Maoists. One step towards this should be asking the question, “Where are you, human rights activists?” after every killing executed by the Maoists in any corner of the country.

(Published in The Hitavada on May 27, 2013)