ABSTRACT
Maoism is a continuity of ultra-left wing radicalism that was ideologically articulated in the form of the Naxalbari movement in the late 1960s in India. Drawn on classical Marxism and Leninism, the Maoists spearheaded a politically meaningful campaign in the subcontinent that has undoubtedly put forward a new discourse of development by challenging both the state and market-led development paradigm. Unlike the Naxalbari movement of the past, the Maoist movement is not only geographically well spread out, it has given a powerful voice to the peripheral sections of Indian society. In view of the ideological uprising of Spring Thunder, which became famous in the Naxalbari movement, Maoism can be said to have articulated Marxism in the changed socio-economic and political environment of a globalizing world. The expressions, Naxalites and Maoists, are therefore used interchangeably to denote the same ultra-left wing radical movement, especially in the official records and contemporary visual and print media. It is true that differences between the two movements in two completely different historical phases are merely cosmetic given the clear ideological compatibility between these two movements representing serious endeavours in pursuing an ideological purpose based on ‘the reinvention’ of Marxism in the non-industrialized world. In the industrially developed countries, Marxism articulated its ideological responses keeping in the mind the adverse impact of ‘mechanical industrialization’ subjecting ‘the producers of services and goods’ to alienation. Maoism is a Marxist formulation to address the basic contradiction in an agricultural society where feudal land relations are still well-entrenched. Maoism is not ‘a revisionist’ doctrine, but an extension of Marxism that is being interpreted and also reinterpreted to make the doctrine contextually relevant. This is a creative exercise because given the growing complexities of Indian society due to an equally complex unfolding of her development trajectory since independence in 1947, it is difficult, if not impossible, to comprehend India’s socio-economic reality in a straitjacketed formula. Furthermore, because of colonialism and its obvious devastating role for more than two centuries, India’s growth was skewed and was naturally tuned to the consolidation of British power in India. So the political authority was neither responsible for a uniform development of the country nor was accountable to the governed. In independent India, political authority was transferred. But the euphoria over
this shift was short-lived since the planned economic development programme that the independent India pursued did not appear to be appropriate to fulfil the aspired goal of ‘socialistic pattern of society’. Instead, by creating severe economic imbalances across the country, the Nehruvian development planning completely lost its viability especially when the market-compliant development programme was introduced following the adoption of the 1991 New Economic Programme by India’s political elite. The phase that began by officially accepting economic liberalization is different from its past on a variety of counts. Besides projecting the obvious adversities of market-drawn development plans, this phase also witnessed the mass mobilization over numerous ‘new macro issues’, particularly environment and displacement of people due to indiscriminate industrialization. The indigenous population seems to be hard-hit and it is therefore not surprising that Maoism has struck an emotional chord with the tribal population in areas where the forest land is being taken away at the cost of the habitat for industrial purposes. By challenging the land-grabbing by the industrial houses and also the government, the Maoists in these areas have become ‘the true saviour’ of the tribal population. In fact, this is a major factor explaining the growing consolidation of Maoism in a large number of constituent Indian states. Besides attacking feudal forces, Maoism has thus raised those issues which do not belong to its ideological fold in the classical Marxist sense. Broadly speaking, Maoism is politico-ideological platform seeking to articulate ‘the neglected voice’ of the peripheral sections of Indian society that have become critical to India’s contemporary development trajectory. One has to be careful in assessing its future because the story of Maoism is also one of factional feuds, personal rivalry and corrupt practices that perhaps account for its slow success in building a united platform for espousing the cause of ‘the wretched of the earth’.
