The revival of the Maoist movement in India and its appearance in Nepal represent a phenomenon that goes against the trend of international communism. At a time when the doctrine seems to have run its course in both Russia and China - once the two main bastions of the creed - and is surviving precariously in isolated outposts like North Korea, Cuba and Laos, it is a matter of surprise that the most violent version of the dogma has reared its head in South Asia.

It is almost as if a mysterious, pagan cult associated with bloody rituals has somehow managed to retain a fairly large number of its secret band of followers to pose a renewed threat to established regimes after a period of quiescence.

It would have been understandable if the Maoists had grown in numbers and organisational skill in the 1970s when China under Mao Zedong openly urged them to spread the 'prairie fire' of revolution. It was indeed as a result of Chinese inspiration that the Maoists under their charismatic leader Charu Mazumdar broke away from the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) in West Bengal in 1969 to emulate the Maoist example of guerrilla warfare in the countryside. The first shots - or, rather, bows and arrows - were fired in Naxalbari village in West Bengal in 1967, giving the uprising the name of the Naxalite movement.

However, the determined steps taken by the Indian government, with the tacit support of the CPI-M, along with several splits in the ranks of the Maoists, had decimated the movement within a decade. It was during this period that the term 'encounter killings' entered the lexicon as the police ruthlessly eliminated hundreds of mostly young men in staged shootouts - euphemistically called encounters - whom they nabbed on the suspicion of being Naxalites.

Mazumdar's death in police custody in Kolkata also removed the ideological inspiration for the movement. But, even more important, China began to lose interest in exporting revolution after Mao's death with the result that the Maoist movement lost its momentum.

By the mid-80s, therefore, it seemed that the Marxist-Leninists, as the Naxalites liked to call themselves, no longer posed a major problem, not least because several of its stalwarts, Vinod Mishra, Satyanarain Sinha, Kanu Sanyal and others, admitted the folly of their ways and emerged from the underground. Some even began participating in the parliamentary process, forsaking their earlier description of parliament as a 'pigsty'.

Yet, even if the 'prairie fire' was doused, it was not stamped out. Evidently, the flames continued to flicker silently out of eyesight as the complacent law and order authorities believed that Naxalism was dead. They are now paying the price for their negligence since the Maoists seem to have been able to establish their strongholds over large areas in Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Jharkhand.

What is more, they are also in a position to link up with their ideological brethren in Nepal through a so-called 'red corridor' stretching virtually through the entire length of the sub-continent from Tamil Nadu to the Himalayas. It is a measure of their new-found ideological coherence that in contrast to the earlier splits, which delighted their opponents, two major Maoist formations - the People's War Group, based mainly in Andhra Pradesh, and the Maoist Communist Centre, based mainly in Bihar - have recently merged to form the Communist Party of India (Maoist).

However, what can be interpreted as a faint sign of hope is the fact that this new party has decided to begin negotiations with the government of Andhra Pradesh, where it is probably at its strongest as the attack last year on the life of the then chief minister Chandrababu Naidu showed.

It is not yet clear whether this is a mere tactical move intended to recoup their losses or represents a genuine desire to return to the mainstream born of the tedium and danger of leading a prolonged underground existence. It is quite possible that the talks will lead nowhere as no government can accept their demand to allow the Maoist cadres to continue carrying arms or to redistribute land according to their dictates.

But an emergence from the underground can often mark the beginning of the end of a 'revolutionary' movement. The lure of the television cameras of an open society and the pomp and circumstance which accompany negotiations with the government can often prove too tempting to those who have long been on the run, living in jungles and caves, and are now getting on in age. The Nepalese Maoists too are no longer averse to talks.

However, whatever the outcome of the negotiations, the authorities can no longer afford to revert to the complacency of the mid-80s. There is a serious need to focus much more concerted official efforts on the amelioration of the degrading poverty and hopelessness in the countryside in both India and Nepal, which provide grist to the Maoist propaganda about the inherently pro-rich bias of the system and enables the committed ideologues to lure young men and women to join their ranks.

Along with the targeting of poverty by the official agencies, political parties and civil rights groups should ensure that there is no violation of human rights in the rural areas by the police and paramilitary forces, which are prone to brutal conduct, especially against the underprivileged. India, with its long experience in fighting insurgency in Kashmir and the northeast, should not find it too difficult to contain the Maoist rebellion.

(The writer is a political analyst. He can be reached at amulyaganguli@yahoo.co.in)
     
--Indo-Asian News Service