The limits of violence

Andhra Pradesh offers a good case study of the compulsions that underlie the choice of violent methods of struggle, as well as the unpleasant consequences of the decision to take up arms. The Maoist movement owes its political character to the vicissitudes of its unfolding in both Andhra Pradesh and Bihar. But today, the movement is at its lowest ebb ever in Andhra, pushed to the corners of forest hideouts and into neighbouring Orissa and Chhattisgarh. At the same time, the movement is more prominently in the thoughts of politically active people than at almost any time in the past. Whether that interest can help the movement to truly break the shackles of repression, however, is a question that no close observer can avoid posing.

India's Maoist movement is today the site of multiple paradoxes. On the one hand, many groups that would have unequivocally condemned the movement a decade ago for its violent methods are today increasingly prepared to see whether it has anything of value to offer – keeping open the question of violence. This change of heart has largely been brought around by the extreme insensitivity of the state – a change that ideological persuasion long failed to achieve. On the other hand, by increasingly relying on violence, including more arbitrary forms of it, the Maoist movement is receding farther and farther from any meeting point with such open-minded groups. In the era of neo-liberalism, many activists are not objecting as vociferously to violence in the 'interests' of the people as they once did, given that the current global socio-economic set-up is widely seen as an instrument of visible and invisible violence, the victims of which are the most vulnerable communities. But nearly all would still insist that the use of violent methods is nothing more than an exceptional option. Here is where the Maoists have yet to come around.