Two eyes for an eye...

Exterminate Maobadi terror now!

This picture was taken at the Silda Eastern Frontier Rifles camp in West Midnapore district, West Bengal, after Monday's (February 15) raid by Maobadis, reportedly led by a woman Maobadi with the "eyes of a cobra". The Maobadi raid left 24 security personnel dead.

A marauding horde of Maobadis descended on Phulwaria Karasi village in Bihar’s Jamui district on Wednesday night and slaughtered 12 tribals. Reports say that the Maobadis have abducted several villagers. Their fate is not known.
On Monday, Maobadis killed 24 jawans of Eastern Frontier Rifles at Shilda in West Bengal's West Midnapore district. Many of them were charred alive. Crucial, actionable, real time intelligence input received by the West Bengal Police at least three hours before the attack was not passed on to the EFR camp.
The attack was led by a woman Maobadi, Jagari Baskey, who is said to have the “eyes of a cobra”. Maobadi leader Koteswara Rao, also known as ‘Kishenji’, who is in regular contact with mediapersons, issued a statement after the attack: “”We have attacked the camp and this is our answer to P Chidambaram’s Operation Green Hunt… unless the Centre stops this inhuman military operation we are going to answer this way only.”
Maobadis, coyly described as ‘Left-wing extremists’ by the Government of India but in reality thugs and criminals masquerading as champions of tribals whom they terrorise with guns, loot, rape and murder at will, now have a free run of at least 25 per cent of all districts in the country.
The worst affected States are Chhattisgarh, Odisha, West Bengal, Jharkhand and Bihar.
The much-touted and talked about Operation Green Hunt is yet to be launched. The Government’s hand, it would seem, is being held back by the Left-liberal intelligentsia which monopolises television studios and provides an ‘intellectual’ cover for Maobadi terrorism, romancing their criminal misdeeds and justifying murder in the name of Mao.
If the Union Government is hesitant to act against what the Prime Minister has repeatedly described as the “gravest internal security threat” which India faces, then State Governments, barring the Government of Chhattisgarh, have proved to be equally pusillanimous in their approach.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar refuses to crack down on Maobadis. Jharkhand Chief Minister Shibu Soren is equally reluctant. Neither of them attended a recent meeting in Kolkata chaired by Union Home Minister to review the Maobadi situation in Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal and Odisha and work on a blueprint or inter-State coordinated action against Red terror.
Soren has agreed to free wanted Maobadis from prison to secure the release of an abducted BDO. The Union Government has conveyed its approval! Strangely, a Cabinet Minister, Mamata Banerjee, claims that there are no Maobadis and hence there is no need for police action. The Trinamool Congress is long suspected of being backed by Maobadis in rural West Bengal. A Trinamool MP, Kabir Suman, who sits in the Lok Sabha and has sworn to uphold the Constitution of India, has recently released a music CD extolling a Maobadi, Chhatradhar Mahato, now in police custody.
Just how grim the situation is can be gauged from what Chidambaram said while presenting his Ministry’s report card for January 2010:

“The situation in the States affected by Left Wing Extremism continues to be a cause of grave concern. The number of deaths in 2009 amongst civilians (591), security forces (317) and militants (217) indicated a rising trend. The increase in the number of incidents and casualties is not surprising because, after a review of the policy, State Governments decided to deploy a larger number of security forces and engage the naxalites in the districts dominated by them with a view to re-establish the authority of the civilian government. I expect this trend to continue in 2010.”

[Data regarding Maobadi violence can be accessed here. Assessments of the threat posed by Maobadis in various States can be read here.]
The time to discuss and strategise the state’s response to Maobadi terror is long past. The Government cannot be seen to be abdicating its primary responsibility of protecting citizens from criminal excesses. It must act with the fully fury of the state, and act now.

. Maobadis are thugs and criminals who deserve to be hunted down.
. Maobadis are pursuing the path of armed insurrection to overthrow the state.
. Maobadis do not respect human rights yet their protectors in the Left-liberal intelligentsia wax eloquent on the need to protect the human rights of Maobadis!
After such knowledge, what forgiveness?

The argument about fighting Maobadis with development is fallacious. Maobadis are the biggest impediment to development projects. They have been blowing up schools, hostels, health centres, roads and panchayat buildings, thus destroying crucial infrastructure for taking development to the rural hinterland inhabited by tribals. They are anti-development, yet claim they are fighting for tribal welfare! The photograph reproduced below is of a school building blown up by Maobadis in a remote area of Jharkhand -- it was the only school in the area.

[My comments on Barkha Dutt's NDTV programme Buck Stops Here on February 16 on intellectuals romanticising Maobadi violence can be watched here http://www.ndtv.com/news/videos/video_player.php?id=1201939 ]
[My comments on Vikram Chandra's NDTV programme, Big Fight, on February 20 can be watched here http://www.ndtv.com/news/videos/video_player.php?id=1203542 ]
[My comments on Barkha Dutt's NDTV programme We the People on February 21 on Maobadi violence can be watched here http://www.ndtv.com/news/videos/video_player.php?id=1203629 ]

The Left-liberal intelligentsia’s demand that Government should talk to the Maobadis is absurd. What will the Government negotiate? The takeover of the Indian state by Maobadis? To allow them full control over vast swaths of Indian territory?
The Government’s response must be harsh, relentless and unforgiving: Two eyes for an eye; a jaw for a tooth. Terror must be met with overwhelming force. Jolawallahs should be asked to go take a walk, or join Khobad Gandi in his prison cell.
Unless the Maobadi menace is put down mercilessly now, we will end up with a situation similar to the one that prevailed in Sri Lanka till the LTTE was exterminated. Surely we don’t need a civil war to establish the primacy of the Constitution of India, do we?
What do you think?

News Updates

Two get bail
Jamshedpur, Feb 20 (PTI) Two of the 14 people whose release was demanded by the CPI (Maoist) as a condition for the release of abducted BDO of Dalbhumgarh Prashant Layek were today granted bail by a court in Ghatsila here. Additional District Judge M M Singh granted bail to Jasmi Mardi and her father Bahadur Mardi after hearing the case, which was re-investigated recently following the directives from Home department of Jharkhand. Mardi's lawyer M Haque said the two were released on a bond of Rs 10,000 each and will be released from Ghatsila sub-divisional jail later in the day.
Referring to Mardi's case, Haque claimed they alongwith other accused were falsely implicated in the case by Jasmi's husband Ramrai Hembram, a police constable, following the murder of Hembram's brother Dukhia Hembram last year.
Layek, who was kidnapped by Maoists from his office in Dalbhumgarh on Saturday last, was released yesterday at Hadian village under Ghatsila sub-division.
Picture below shows the kidnapped BDO Prashant Lakak with a Maobadi at Ghatshila:

Rs 25 lakh demanded for safety of BSNL towers
Rourkela (Orissa), Feb 20 (PTI) In a letter, written by the Maoists, the rebels have threatened to blow up BSNL's mobile towers at Maoist affected Biramitrapur in Sundargarh district, if the authorities did not pay Rs 25 lakh. B K Jog, general manager, BSNL Rourkela, today said an open envelop containing the letter was found from the commercial section of the office.
The letter written in Oriya with red ink was not addressed to any officer of the department. After receiving the letter, the GM said he has requested the superintendent of police to investigate. The police said an investigation has been ordered to verify the authenticity of the letter.

Coffee Break

Summer hols at Chakadapore
I'm not much of a film buff and have extremely poor knowledge of contemporary films, actors, actresses and directors, especially of the Bollywood variety. Which is not to suggest that I hate watching films; on the contrary, it's great to watch the occasional movie, provided it's interesting and not sequenced absurdity, and I don't have to go to a cinema. Nothing can be more distracting than cellphones bursting into distasteful versions of Bhangra.
A couple of weeks ago, I had picked up a VCD of Anjan Dutt's latest film, Bow Barracks Forever, from the music shop at Chittaranjan Park where we mandatorily drop in every time we go shopping for 'Bengali vegetables' and end up buying at least six varieties of saag which philistines in India's dust bowl consider no better than cattlefeed. I am rather partial towards Anjan, who is not much of a filmmaker (he is yet to get over his theatre days and ends up making movies that are theatrical and lack the subtle sophistication of the audiovisual medium) but an excellent human being with a big heart.
Anjan started off as a journalist with The Statesman and was a fine writer. I have known him since my early years in journalism, which was much before the last millennium came to an end. After some years, Anjan meandered into theatre, acted in some avant-garde Bengali films, appeared in Mrinal Sen's movies and then began making his own films. Late in life he decided to become a musician-cum-singer and though I don't care much for his music, he is quite popular as Kolkata's balladeer doing a desi version of Bob Dylan. Amazingly, mashimas love him as much as teenagers with names like Ranjana, although kakus tend to frown upon his subversive lyrics.
But this is not about Anjan so much as it's about Bow Barracks Forever. The film has been shot on location at central Kolkata's famous red brick landmark, Bow Barracks, built to house American soldiers during World War II and now the last refuge of Anglo-Indians in what once upon a time used to be the 'Empire's Second City'. The barracks, declared unsafe for human habitation, officially houses 133 families, but according to one estimate, as many as 1,500 people live in its crumbling rooms, balconies, corridors and doorways.
At the time of independence, all the occupants of Bow Barracks were Anglo-Indians who, like Anglo-Indians elsewhere in the country, especially in railway colonies, could trace their ancestry back to Britons who had come to India during the Raj, married Indian women and raised 'half-and-half' families. Although never entirely owned and accepted by India's colonial rulers who had their own little 'Whites only' charmed society, they were integral to the colonial administration. Anglo-Indians were preferred over others for jobs in the Railways, Customs, Excise and Posts & Telegraph as they could be 'trusted'.
Looked upon as 'collaborators', perhaps unfairly so, during the freedom movement, tragically Anglo-Indians were disowned and dumped by the departing British when the Union Jack was replaced by the Tricolour. Overnight, they became the Empire's abandoned children. Some of them were able to migrate to Britain, others set sail for Australia, New Zealand and Canada. But many, like the Anglo-Indians of Bow Barracks, stayed back because they felt this was their home and their destiny. So much so, the Anglo-Indians of Bow Barracks are loath to vacate their sooty, poky, damp and crammed rooms for new apartments promised by the Government; this is the only anchor they have known in their lives.
Years ago Aparna Sen had made a film, 36 Chowringhee Lane, on the loneliness of an Anglo-Indian teacher, Ms Violet Stoneham (Jennifer Kendal excelled in this cameo appearance) and her brother, Eddie Stoneham (Geoffrey Kendal was equally good) in the twilight of their lives. Ms Stoneham at least had a job and an apartment of her own; Eddie lived out his days in an old-age home waiting for his son to visit his dad. Ms Stoneham is left with memories of the Raj, a whistling kettle and her cat, Sir Toby.
Bow Barracks Forever is also about the loneliness and the frustrations of a community that lives on an island yet craves to be accepted as part of the mainstream. It's about the moral science teacher whose wife, Rosa, runs away with her pot-bellied afternoon lover, an insurance agent, and then returns home suitably contrite and chastened (Moon Moon Sen does look like a lush!) and Aunty Lobo (Lilette Dubey), a widow who bakes cakes and brews wine and calls her elder son in London only to be greeted by an answering machine. There's Anne (Neha Dubey), the battered wife of Tom (Sabyasachi Chakravarty) who is a small time racketeer. And then, of course, there's dear old 'Peter the Cheater' (Victor Banerjee matures like Boujelois), the cheerful conman. Bradley is a quintessential Anglo-Indian lad, bindaas and a layabout who can't keep a job and has no problems apart from his love for Anne, whom he rescues from Tom.
There's more to the film, however, than the tragicomic lives of Aunty Lobo, Rosa, Anne, Bradley and Peter. It's about their struggle to hold on to what they have known as their home for generations. They fight back the 'building mafia' and turn down lucrative offers to sell their property. Nothing, they decide, is going to make them give up their way of life. The film ends on a happy note. Bradley marries Anne, Peter declares his love for Aunty Lobo, and the mafia steps back. Bow Barracks is going to last forever, if not as a series of decrepit buildings threatening to collapse at any moment, then as a concept, an idea, a memory of times long gone by.
There used to be this Anglo-Indian boy in school with me (there were quite a few Anglo-Indian families in Jamshedpur those days) who would go out of town for summer holidays. I once asked him where did he spend his summer vacations. "With my aunt at Chakadapore. My uncle's a loco driver," he replied, "During Christmas, we go to my other aunt's place at KGP. She's got a fireplace and all, men." That evening I poured over my school atlas, trying to locate Chakadapore and KGP. I couldn't find either place. Next day I asked him to write down the names of these locations which to a young upcountry boy had an exotic ring. He scrawled out, in uneven letters, Chakradharpur and Kharagpur in my English exercise book. Half way through that term, he left for Australia with his mum and dad ("He's going to drive a tram, men!"). I wonder if he remembers his summers at Chakadapore and Christmas at KGP.