The tale of bodies

This is not for the faint of heart.

Yesterday's papers had front page photos of security forces emerging from the jungle. They were carrying wooden poles between them - and on the poles were trussed the dead bodies of the Maoists that they had killed in the gun battle.

Among the bodies recovered were 3 women. Two of them appeared to be in their late teens.

The inference in clear. These be beasts. Government officials are on damage control - stating that after a person has been killed - that they should be honoured - with the minimum that they be brought out on a stretcher.

The operation took place in Lalgarh a part of West Midnapore district in West Bengal - and is part of an on-going struggle between various factions of Left-wing Extremists on one hand, and local political forces and state security agencies on the other. No one is given any quarter. The fighting is sporadic and brutal. This particular episode is being called a major victory against the Maoists as an entire squad of 15 armed members were killed in the Ranja forest.

Over the last few months various factions of the Maoists have shown spectacular and horrifying efficiency through multiple strikes which have left scores of dead security forces. The most prominent ones were the massacre of 76 paramilitary troops in the state of Chhattisgarh in April, and the horrifying deaths of over 140 civilians in West Bengal when a passenger train was derailed by sabotage only to be hit by an oncoming goods train in May.

We seem to be in a new phase of the decades old struggle across the dry forested areas of Central India.

On one hand, the Maoist forces have become entrenched across fairly large swathes of the vast hinterland. Given poor policing (hardly better than in colonial times - some would say worse) and a local political class that is riddled with corruption at every level - the Maoists have managed to carve a niche for themselves. Many of the local villages end up 'sheltering' the Maoists. But do they have much of an alternative. Much of the current struggle draws on guerrilla techniques of recruiting children, imposing their own taxes, developing rough justice courts where the 'guilty' are tortured and executed. In addition, the Maoists can only look north to the recent history of Nepal to realise that it is possible to control large portions of the countryside for years - and force the politicians to jump to their tune.

Make no mistake. These Maoists are not folks in college coffee houses - discussing the finer shades of Fabian socialism as opposed to Trotskism. These are men (and some women) who are willing to kill - and who do.

On the other hand, we are seeing an increased determination by different levels of security forces to move in and eliminate the Maoists. In Chattisgarh the Salwa Judum movement has armed local groups to directly fight with the Maoists - along with various levels of paramilitaries. In West Bengal the Marxist (!) but elected state goverment has armed its local cadres and to go in and finish off the Maoists together with the various police forces. Nationally the Centre takes LWE (Left Wing Extremism) very seriously - and is linking together various state forces through Operation Green Hunt - a coordinated offensive against the Maoists.

Throw in a constant string of insurgencies in Kashmir and in the North-East - and a set of bombings from various outfits (most often jihadist or so it seems) - and we have a situation where ever higher levels of violence are reported - and ever higher levels of counter-violence are being sanctioned.

All of this plays itself out rather faintly on the windscreen of metro India. The economy is booming - despite a global cooling of sorts - and a generation of aspiration means that all things success is the mantra of the day. When a spectacular Maoist strike takes place - it appears on the front pages and the TV channels sputter to life about how bad everything is and what should be done. Within 48 hours of the event things go 'back to normal'. Cricket, film star gossip, endless speculation about various political pairings, the weather, exam results - these are the things that colour the daily lives of aspirational India.

The Maoist violence actually questions the very fabric of our state. Despite our regular 5 yearly election cycles at almost all levels of government - we are dealing with a fundamental failure of civil society. The growing use of the gun (or sickle) points not only to an escalation of violence since the state has started moving in through Operation Green Hunt etc. - it speaks to the very core of who we are as a country. There is such a huge disconnect between the basic set of justice deliverers (our local police constable for example) and what every citizen of our country should be receiving - the right to life and safety and security.

The bodies that we see - being carried like some kind of jungle game that has been successfully hunted - or lying on the ground with a crumpled pamphlet accusing them of some 'crime against the people' - these are unacceptable in any sense of a civilisation. These dead bodies speak of the war within that rumbles on.

When will the killing stop? When will justice flow like a river and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream (Amos 5.24)?