From Dandi to Dantewada. A study in contrast

April 6. 1930

Millions of Indians led by Gandhiji made salt illegally defying the law as a non- violent form of protest against exploitation and injustice of the ruling British empire.

April 6, 2010.

 Maoists killed 72 jawans of the CRPF in an ambush in Dantiwada in a grossly violent form of 'protest' against alleged exploitation and injustice of the rulers.

 Methods of agitation cannot be as dissimilar as the above two. Ironically both happened on the same date 80 years apart.

Salt Sathygraha

Civil disobedience by symbolically breaking the Salt law was the strategy adopted my Gandhiji to create a political awakening in India and there by bring pressure on British to leave India.Salt he knew is essential for all communities, rich and poor alike. He announced his intention to the British through this letter.

                                  LETTER TO LORD IRWIN
                                                                 SATYAGRHA ASHRAM, SABARMATI,


                                                                                                           March 2, 1930
Dear Friend,
 
I cannot intentionally hurt anything that lives, much less fellow human beings, even though they may do the greatest wrong to me and mine. Whilst, therefore, I hold
the British rule to be a curse, I do not intend harm to a single Englishman or to any legitimate interest he may have in India.

And why do I regard the British rule as a curse?



It has impoverished the dumb millions by a system of progressive exploitation and by a ruinously expensive military and civil administration which the country can never afford.
It has reduced us politically to serfdom.

It is common cause that, however disorganized and, for the time being, insignificant it may be, the party of violence is gaining ground and making itself felt. Its end is the same as mine. But I am convinced that it cannot bring the desired relief to the dumb millions. And the conviction is growing deeper and deeper in me that nothing but unadulterated non-violence can check the organized violence of the British Government. Many think that non-violence is not an active force. My experience, limited though it undoubtedly is, shows that non-violence can be an intensely active force. It is my purpose to set
in motion that force as well against the organized violent force of the British rule as [against] the unorganized violent force of the growing party of violence. To sit still would be to give rein to both the forces above mentioned. Having an unquestioning and immovable faith in the efficacy of non-violence as I know it, it would be sinful on my
part to wait any longer.
But if you cannot see your way to deal with these evils and my letter makes no
appeal to your heart, on the 11th day of this month,1 I shall proceed with such co-workers of the Ashram as I can take, to disregard theprovisions of the salt laws. I regard this tax to be the most iniquitous of all from the poor man’s standpoint. As the independence movement is essentially for the poorest in the land the beginning will
be made with this evil. The wonder is that we have submitted to the cruel monopoly for so long. It is, I know, open to you to frustrate my design by arresting me. I hope that there will be tens of thousands ready, in a disciplined manner, to take up the work after me, and, in the act of disobeying the Salt Act to lay themselves open to the penalties of a law that should never have disfigured the Statute-book.
This letter is not in any way intended as a threat but is a simple and sacred duty peremptory on a civil resister. Therefore I am having it specially delivered by a young English friend who believes in the Indian cause and is a full believer in non-violence and whom Providence seems to have sent to me, as it were, for the very purpose.
I remain,
Your sincere friend,
M. K. GANDHI

Gandhiji started the march along with 78 satyagrahis, well trained in strict discipline and adherence to satyagraha and non violence on March 12. Walking around 15-20 kms a day through 4 districts covering scores of villages he reached Dandi and broke the Salt law on April 6, along with millions of Indians through out  the country.
Here is how United Press reporter Webb Miller described the Darsana Salt Work Satyagraha which was broke up by the British Police.

Not one of the marchers even raised an arm to fend off the blows. They went down like ten-pins. From where I stood I heard the sickening whacks of the clubs on unprotected skulls. The waiting crowd of watchers groaned and sucked in their breaths in sympathetic pain at every blow. Those struck down fell sprawling, unconscious or writhing in pain with fractured skulls or broken shoulders. In two or three minutes the ground was quilted with bodies. Great patches of blood widened on their white clothes. The survivors without breaking ranks silently and doggedly marched on until struck down


Maoist violence

Maoists believe Indian State should be overthrown by an armed revolution. They are of the opinion that the exploitation of poor of the Country can only end by a violent revolution. For them each and every person representing the State or the Capitalist class is a legitimate target to kill.Thats why they killed in cold blood 72 jawans of CRPF.

Study in contrast
Maoist believes the end justifies the means by which it is achieved. In contrast Gandhiji believed violence begets violence and an illegitimate way of achieving an end makes the end meaningless. Violence for a good cause makes the cause bad.Non-violence unites while violence divides people.


Is Gandhiji's strategy and beliefs outdated? I do not think so. All over the World it is getting more and more acceptance. You can see such strategies working in anti-war movements and in agitations of environmental groups.


Looking back at the history of the World I am sure that this mindless violence produced by Maoist fundamentalist ideology is bound to fail.


But how many more lives will it take before its inevitable failure?

Can the Maoists shun violence?

There are many who believe that Maoists are forced to resort to violence against the State.They feel it is a  response to the extreme repression of the Indian state.They say that since the Indian state is always ignoring or violently repressing various people’s movements, the people have no choice but to take to violence.


 

In a long article in The Outlook depicting her experience of living and traveling with the Maoists, Arundathi Roy shares similar view. She says

But what should I suggest they do? Go to court? Do a dharna at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi? A rally? A relay hunger strike? It sounds ridiculous. The promoters of the New Economic Policy—who find it so easy to say “There Is No Alternative”—should be asked to suggest an alternative Resistance Policy.

Is that true that Maoists are resorting to violence only because the State is extremely repressive and violent and they having no other alternative but to be violent?

The programme of the CPI[Maoist] says:

The immediate aim and programme of the Maoist party is to carry on and complete the already ongoing and advancing New Democratic Revolution in India as a part of the world proletarian revolution by overthrowing the semi-colonial, semi-feudal system under the neo-colonial form of indirect rule, exploitation and control. This revolution will remain directed against imperialism, feudalism and comprador bureaucratic capitalism. This revolution will be carried out and completed through armed agrarian revolutionary war, i.e. protracted people’s war with the armed seizure of power remaining as its central and principal task, encircling the cities from the countryside and thereby finally capturing them. Hence the countryside as well as the PPW (Protracted People’s War) will remain as the “center of gravity” of the party’s work, while urban work will be complimentary to it.

Here you can see that there is no talk of a non-violent alternative to fight against oppression.


The document states further that



Since armed struggle will remain as the highest and main form of struggle and the army as the main form of organization of this revolution, hence it will continue to play a decisive role, whereas the UF[United Front] will be built in the course of armed struggle and for the seizure of power through armed struggle. Mass organizations and mass struggles are necessary and indispensable but their purpose is to serve the war.


Maoists do not believe in the present Indian State and aims to overthrow it.The problems of the Adivasis are used by the Maoists to organise them against the State.Such people's movements are used by Maoists to serve their armed struggle against the State.

 This means Maoists can never shun violence.If they shun violence they cease to be Maoists.

 Can the Indian State defeat the Maoists?

 Yes,but not  by killing all the tribals in Maoist movement,but by genuinely addressing the problems of Adivasis.

A sudden end to the voice of the voiceless

The noted Civil rights activist K. Balagopal (52) died suddenly of cardiac arrest in a hospital in Hyderabad on  October 8th.


Prof Balagopal was a brilliant mathematician with a Masters degree and a doctorate and was teaching in Kakatiya University before he quit the job to become a full time human rights activist in 1985.

He later learned law and became a lawyer and fought hundreds of cases against State violence and fake encounter deaths. His arguments before AP High Court in the case pertaining to ‘encounter’ killings resulted in the historic judgment which said "in each incident of encounter killing; a case should be registered against the police, who will have to face trial in a court.

Balagopal was arrested several times and was once even kidnapped by Green Tigers, a self-styled outfit thought to be supported by the State during his long struggle as a civil rights’ activist. He traveled almost every part of the country for arduous and painstaking fact finding missions relating to Human, Civil and Democratic Rights’ Violation. One of the latest reports of his team was about the violence against Christians in Orissa and Karnataka

Balagopal was one of the staunch civil liberties activists in Andhra Pradesh and the leader of Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee (APCLC), with which he was associated since its inception in 1980’s,

Balagopal was close to the Naxalites during early part of his activist carrer. Later on the issue of violence by Maoists he left APCLC and formed Human Rights Forum.

Since then he was steadfastly opposing the ‘red violence’ of the Maoists as well as the State violence. He was a prolific writer on people’s issues and had recently written about the developments on the Maoist front in West Bengal.

His bold criticism of the Maoist’s propensity to indulge in violence attracted severe criticism from the Naxalites.

Here is how noted writer and social activist V.Geetha remembers him in 'The Hindu'.

"Balagopal was not just another civil liberties man: A brilliant mathematician who gave up his academic vocation for public life, a public intellectual, alive to ethical doubts and concerns, yet committed to being political and accountable in the here and now of history, he sought to link thought, action, consciousness… For many of us, the manner in which he lived his life was as important as what he said: he was like a moral compass that you turned to, to check your own political orientation and direction......


For nearly two decades Balagopal had worked hard and argued much to deepen and broaden our understanding of democracy in this country — precept and practice came together in his work, as he wrote, took up legal cases, organised fact-finding missions and called attention to the darker aspects of state power and authority in India.


While agreeing that state violence against its citizens and the impunity with which it was often carried out was the worst possible threat to democracy, he called attention to rights violations in other contexts. Structured inequality, whether of caste or gender, he argued, was as much a source of these violations. Further, he reasoned, the reactive violence of communist militants as well as the spate of killings that the latter carried out in the name of carrying out a ‘class’ war often ended in the deaths of vulnerable citizens or minor state functionaries, even as it left intact the real and material structures of state power. He argued too of the importance of democracy, of the rights guaranteed in the Constitution — for these had come about as a result of people’s struggles and movements, and rights groups had to learn to defend these hard-won historical legacies."


In death of Prof Balagopal India has lost a great champion of human rights. Thousands of voice less people's voice has been silenced.

Let us hope there will be more and more people brave enough to walk the path shown by him.