Stalingram

The honour of being the biggest mass annihilators has been bagged by Communists the world over. So they couldn't have afforded to lag behind in the last and residual bastion of the ideology still so highly revered in every single party convention with portraits of Stalin and Mao overseeing the struggling crowd of comrades.

Everywhere they have eliminated the 'enemy' for 'protecting' the rights of the proletariat, maintaining 'peace' and defeating the 'forces of hate and divisive anti- social' tendencies. After all, 'counter revolutionaries,' 'revisionists,' 'agents of the Western evil empire,' 'lackeys of capitalism' have to be eliminated for a 'peaceful, progressive, friendly and fraternal socialist government of the revolutionary masses' functioning dedicatedly from the interiors of the red bricked Writer's Building.

The ministry of home affairs testifies their single-minded dedication to the cause. In its 2007 annual report, passed and authenticated by Home Minister Shivraj Patil, it says, 'The Communist Party Marxist Leninist-Peoples' War (CPML-PW) and the Maoist Communist Centre of India (MCCI) have continued to spearhead the Naxal violence in the country, accounting for about 91 per cent of the country-wide violence and 89 per cent of the resultant deaths.' (*Source: Ministry of Home Affairs)*.

The violence spearheaded by the Communists in India has surpassed even the bomb blasts and attacks of the Islamic jihadis. Those who are supporting the UPA government to survive so that the 'communal' saffron party is kept at bay and the country 'saved,' adheres to the same ideology that is being practiced by the killer Maoists and Naxals and Leninists. They share the perception and portraits and prognosis about the nation's ills.

Their conventions proudly display portraits of Stalin and Mao and they show the same allergy and hate for Gandhi and Subhas and would never hang their portraits in the corner of a wall at their exit door. And they show utmost respect for Che Guevara and Fidel Castro and share their prescriptions with another great Communist leader known as Pol Pot.

Public memory is very short and with large media houses being run on the impulsive showmanship encasing the 'big mouths who matter in the contemporary power corridors' as their respected public face of opinion and debate, the Left is presented to readers as the sole repository of peaceful propagators fighting for communal harmony and the rights of 'victims of State terrorism' like Afzal Guru and the providers for the poor, hungry and disadvantaged.

While another ideology, Hindutva to be precise, is caged in a manufactured imagery of violent, hateful, divisive, anti-woman, obscurantist, anti-minority stream of lumpen. Remember all these words are used by secular columnists in their daily sermons on how to run the country.

It would be not inappropriate to recall what the icons and luminaries of the Communist tradition, who still inspire our seculars so much that one of them, named his son, not after any Indian, not even after Periyar or Dalit reformers like Shahuji Maharaj or Ambedkar or Buddha but after Stalin, the erstwhile Communist ruler of Soviet Russia.

Josef Stalin. What a leader was he?

He reminds us of Gulags, Siberia's labour camps and, of course, Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. According to the declassified Soviet archives, during the worst excesses of Stalinist power, in 1937 and 1938, Russia's secret police, the NKVD, detained 1,548,367 victims, of whom 681,692 were shot -- an average of 1,000 executions a day.

Historian Michael Ellman claims the best estimate of deaths brought about by Soviet Repression during these two years is in the range 950,000 to 1.2 million, which includes deaths in detention and those who died shortly after being released from the Gulag as a result of their treatment in it.

The other Communist icons are Mao, Lenin, Che, Fidel and Pol Pot. Every one is credited with conducting summary trials and executions of opponents. During the Cultural Revolution and the 'Great Leap Forward' lakhs were killed.

About 14 million to 20 million deaths occurred due to starvation as a result of Mao's 'Great Leap Forward'. Besides the historical sites, manuscripts, artifacts, and civilisational places were completely destroyed by the Red Guards.

Pol Pot left Hitler and Idi Amin behind in barbarities with mass killings in Cambodia during his Khmer Rouge regime. More than 19,400 mass graves have been identified and 167 former prisons documented. The discoveries by the Cambodian investigators estimated the number of victims of the Khmer Rouge from 1.7 million to 2.5 million.

Now the followers of his legacy proudly call themselves Maoists and execute teachers, labourers, policemen and farmers in the name of a Communist revolution in India.

A RSS teacher was hacked to death in the classroom before tiny tot students in Kannur, Kerala, and another student, belonging to the ABVP, was forcibly drowned in the Pampa river in Kerala by the 'red revolutionaries.' The reason -- a different ideology's influence was not tolerated.

More than a hundred workers of the RSS, BJP, VHP and ABVP have been killed by CPI-M cadres and its student wing members in Kerala. Hundreds have been maimed, and brutally assaulted.

In West Bengal CPI-M workers have been 'punishing' villagers for supporting Mamata Banerjee's Trinamul Congress with rape, dismembering limbs, and murder after barbaric torture. Mamata had paraded such victims and made several pleas to the government and media, yet the Left remains a blue eyed favourite of secularists in every field like a religious order.

The menace of Communist terrorism has become so grave that a Standing Committee was constituted under the chairmanship of the Union home minister with the chief ministers of 13 Naxal-affected states as its members. The second meeting of the Standing Committee was held on April 13, 2006 in New Delhi under the chairmanship of the prime minister.

An inter-ministry group headed by the additional secretary, home ministry, has been constituted. Another empowered group of ministers, headed by the home minister and comprising select Union ministers and chief ministers, has been set up to monitor the spread of Naxalism and evolve effective strategies to deal with it.

Still further, a Naxal management division, headed by an additional secretary, has been set up by the home ministry to ensure periodic reviews and close monitoring of the action plans drawn up by the states to deal with the Naxal problem.

Of the total 12,476 police stations in the country, Naxal violence has been reported from 395 police stations (2006). It is bleeding India both physically and economically. Just read these lines from the home ministry's latest report, 'In order to enhance the capabilities of the Naxal-affected States... the central government had included 55 Naxal-affected districts in 9 states under the Backward Districts Initiative (BDI) component of the Rashtriya Sam Vikas Yojana (RSVY) and had provided financial assistance of Rs 2,475 crores... under the Police Modernisation Scheme to modernise their police forces... the central government has released an amount of Rs 3,677.67 crores to the Naxal-affected States.'

Incidents of Communist-Naxal terrorism

2003    

Number of incidents: 1,597
Number of civilians killed: 410
Number of policemen killed: 105

2004

Number of incidents: 1,533
Number of civilians killed: 466
Number of policemen killed: 100

2005*

Number of incidents: 1,608
Number of civilians killed: 524
Number of policemen killed: 153

2006

Number of incidents: 1,509
Number of civilians killed: 521
Number of policemen killed: 157

(** Reconciled figures for 2005 (source ministry of home affairs 2006-2007 report) *

The Communist Party of India (Maoist) have been trying to increase influence in Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Uttarakhand. The Revolutionary Democratic Front (RDF), set up in May 2005 has been enlarged into the People's Democratic Front of India (PDFI).

The Naxal outfits have been targeting the police posts, railway stations, forest checkpoints and other government and private properties. Followers of the Communist ideology are affecting the nation's development by forcing the government to spend huge amounts of money, public money, on combating Communist terror and reimbursing cash-starved states expenses incurred on plans to face Communist, jihadi and other types of terrorism like the one spearheaded by NSCN groups in the Northeast.

Special police units raised by states for combating Naxal operations are being provided specialised training in jungle/guerrilla warfare. The Greyhounds Training School in Hyderabad is being used for this purpose. So far, the central government has released an amount of Rs 3,677.67 crore to Naxal-affected states like Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Uttarakhand, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka.

Under the Security Related Expenses (SREs) Scheme which reimburses expenditure incurred by the states on ammunition, training, upgradation of police posts etc in Communist terrorism affected areas, 76 districts in 9 states, badly affected by Naxal violence, are covered.

This is how Communist ideology and its adherents are affecting the nation's growth, peoples' development and infrastructure. They are destroying the atmosphere to make economic progress affecting only the poor and disadvantaged sections and helping exploitative rich classes to make big money.

Hence, should one be surprised at what happened at Nandigram? What else can one expect from a government that proudly declares its allegiance to those who are known globally as the hardcore perpetrators of mass killings, intolerance and violence?

The Left with all its burdens of an ideological shamanism needs a democratic purge -- the Indian way to make it suitable for the Indian environment. It understands this language only and unless it is de-Stalinised, it can't acquire a human face.

Tarun Vijay is the editor of Panchjanya, the RSS weekly.