By Kartik Lokhande
The
question naturally comes to one’s mind after reading the media reports
on a recent judgement of the Kerala High Court that ‘Being a Maoist is
no crime.’ For, Maoists or the members of the banned Communist Party of
India (Maoist) are not into furthering the Constitutional goal of
Parliamentary democracy, but are dead against it.
As per the media
reports, Justice A Muhamed Mustaque of Kerala High Court observed, “The
police cannot detain a person merely because he is a Maoist, unless the
police form a reasonable opinion that his activities are unlawful.” This
implies that Maoists can roam around freely spewing venom against
everything Indian and advocating trampling of every right enshrined in
the Constitution. However, they cannot be arrested or booked till the
time they physically execute any action that amounts to a crime or
unlawful activity. The ‘observations’ made by the said judge force one
to think if the judiciary is really aware of the Maoist threat to
democracy.
Let us see what the Maoists are after.
In one of the
founding documents, CPI (Maoist) explains its designs in following
words, “If it is a capitalist country where bourgeois democratic rights
prevail, the Party of the proletariat prepares the working class and its
allies through open, legal struggles -- parliamentary, trade union,
general strikes, political agitation and such other activities, in order
to organise a country-wide armed insurrection at an hour of
revolutionary crisis, seizing power first in key cities and then
extending it throughout the country, at the same time strengthens
appropriate secret party apparatus and combines secret, illegal and
semi-legal activities with open and legal activities in accordance with
concrete conditions.”
The statement makes it amply clear what the
Maoists are after. While declaring their intention of organising
country-wide ‘armed insurrection’ and ‘seizing power’, the Maoists dub
as ‘bourgeois’ the democratic rights enshrined in the Constitution of
India drafted by Bharat Ratna Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar. To call anything
not suitable to their anarchist agenda as ‘bourgeois’ is their routine
practice. Also, the above-mentioned statement brings to fore the fact
that they are operating in urban areas through secret party
organisations combining ‘secret, illegal, and semi-legal’ activities. At
present, there are many organisations claiming to champion the cause of
human rights, women’s liberation, legal rights etc, which the Maoists
have infiltrated into. Once they get entry into these organisations,
they use those to further the goals of ‘armed insurrection’. As Maoists
operate in the cushion of social contradictions, their presence in such
organisations often goes unnoticed.
As has been proved time and
again, the Maoists have scant regard for the Republic of India,
Constitution of India, democracy, brotherhood, cultural heritage, and
rights of people. They oppose hoisting of or even burn the national flag
of the country, often on Republic Day and Independence Day. They refer
to Constitutional values as ‘illusions’, and condemn their own cadres
pressing for adopting Parliamentary democracy. In the resolutions passed
in their Unity Congress, Maoists have clearly opposed the idea of
brotherhood. For, in those, they have explained their nefarious designs
to widen the social discords among various sections. They do not
recognise any cultural heritage that is Indian. They do not recognise
rights of people who oppose their violence, and this is clear from the
fact that they have killed more than 23 Dalits in Gadchiroli district of
Maharashtra alone. The number of Dalits and tribals killed by Maoists
in Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh etc is much bigger.
There
are several statements of Maoist leaders and sympathisers available
online, which are enough to shake any sane person out of the illusion
that Maoists just profess an ideology. For instance, in one of its
documents, CPI (Maoist) mentions, “In the conditions prevailing in our
country, participation in election neither helps in developing
revolutionary class struggle, nor in enhancing democratic consciousness
among the people. Rather it will only foster Constitutional illusions
and legalist trends among the Party ranks and the masses at large.”
Against
this backdrop, ‘observation’ of a judge of Kerala High Court that being
Maoist is ‘no crime’ should shock all sane persons, democrats, and
Republicans. The judge must have made the ‘observation’ (which may, or,
may not form operative part of the order) under the influence of
literary works produced by air-conditioned intellectuals. While making
the said ‘observation’, the judge did not realise that soon the urban
cadres of Maoists might use it to quote in countless many articles to
appear online and in various magazines and journals to get ‘legal
sanctity’ to practice of their ideology. Even if the ‘observation’ does
not form operative part of the court order in the said case, the Maoist
sympathisers will not bother to mention about it. Previously also, some
judges have made ‘observations’ that did not form operative parts of
their orders, that granted Maoists the opportunity to further their
ideological spread mainly in urban areas.
One should not be
surprised, if quoting the Kerala High Court’s ‘observations’ in the
context of Maoists, elitist supporters of anti-national elements start
seeking legal sanctity to their ideological practice. Some elements may
even extend the Kerala High Court’s ‘observations’ to press that
practising ideologies of terrorist outfits like Taliban or Islamic State
or Lashkar-e-Taiba or Indian Mujahideen do not constitute a crime.
The
court’s view that a person could not be detained merely because he was a
Maoist ‘unless’ the police formed a reasonable opinion that his
activities were unlawful, also is worth a comment. While expressing this
view, the court appears to have forgotten that any unlawful or
subversive or anti-national activity is a result of a long period of
practising and spreading a particular ideology or thought. If the cops
go by the court’s ‘observations’, they should not make any preventive
arrests, but search for perpetrators only after a crime is committed. By
making such ‘observations’, the courts -- knowingly or unknowingly --
are sowing the seeds of ‘extra-judicial’ actions in the minds of cops
who are hauled up after any violent or terrorist incident happens.
For
these reasons, it is high time that the judges study not only the
technical aspects imprisoned in legal jargons but also the practice of
anti-national ideologies by some so-called intellectuals. Also, judges
need to be more careful about making ‘observations’ that do not form
operative part of the order.
(24-05-15)
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