FRIDAY’S derailment of Gyaneshwari Express in West Bengal in which at least 141 lost their lives is a pure case of cold blooded murder of innocent people by the leaders and activists of Communist Party of India (Maoists).
Those killed were not class enemies. Who knows some of them even empathised with the Naxalites and their movement. One thing is also absolutely clear that no amount of “sorry” is going to appease even Karl Marx and Mao Zedong and make them endorse their crime as a Marxist-Leninist action.
Any action should have a rationale. Will the Maoists spell out the rationale behind attacking the railways? The only answer they could come up with is; by attacking railways they want to destabilise the economy of India. Fine. But let us look at the real content and nature of the attack. During the last one and half year the Maoists have targeted railways on at least 19 occasions and killed not less than 300 innocent passengers. Their action is quite similar to the 26/7 Mumbai train attacks in which hundreds of commuters were killed. One can understand the logic behind terrorist attack. They want to create panic and also destabilise the Indian economy. While terrorists have been carrying out their operations without any pretentions, the Maoists have been doing it under the façade of serving the poor and proletariats. Will the Maoists tell the people what they have achieved by firing at Tatanagar Express last week and also blowing a train carrying oil in which 14 freight cars caught fire?
Mao had said “take lessons from the history”. But our Maoists are so obsessed with the success of their anarchic actions that history has become irrelevant for them. Even the founder leader of Naxalism, Charu Majumdar was against such anarchic killings. He was even opposed to killing of individual class enemies. In this background how could these Maoists claim that they are followers of Charu Majumdar? Their attack on trains also reflects on their poor understanding of the strength of the Indian state. They are simply jeopardising the lives of the ordinary people who have to undertake a journey only in extreme urgency. By attacking trains; do they intend to send the message to a common people not to come out of their houses? They should realise this would give rise to more animosity and hatred towards them in the common people.
This indiscriminate attack on common people and train passengers also puts a question mark on the integrity of the Maoist leaders. Eight years back when the Maoists had killed 14 adivasis in Andhra Pradesh, the general secretary of the organization, Ganapathy had apologised for the action. In some cases the Maoists have even offered compensation. But in the incidents that are happening outside AP and in which innocent persons are killed, no leaders offers any condolence or apology. Why this duality? What does it imply? Probably they have not realised that their indiscriminate actions have alienated them from vast section of the population and situation has come to such a stage that even their friends are unwilling to defend them publically. There is no denying the fact that the Maoists were digging their own graves by pursuing terrorist line.
