Sudeep is also the author of the critically acclaimed and popular novel Tin Fish (Penguin, 2005) and the recently published Red Sun: Travels in Naxalite Country (Viking/Penguin, 2008), a work of narrative non-fiction about India‘s present-day Maoist rebellion. His second novel, Once Upon a Time in Aparanta (Penguin, 2008), will be published in August this year. 

In an email interview with Rohit Chopra about Red Sun, Sudeep describes the failings of the Indian state and society that have engendered and sustained Maoist rebellion, the massive denial about the issue, and why prosperous ‘middle India’ needs to be shaken out of its mall-stupor and awakened to the reality of the situation.

What made you write this book? Why did you feel this story had to be told?

I have spent my career as a journalist, both as reporter and editor, tracking India’s economic development, meeting those on the “street”, as well as top ministers, entrepreneurs, and executives from India and abroad; and attending summits from Delhi to Davos. I am a direct beneficiary of India’s ongoing economic liberalization and freedom of expression that India’s urban middle classes have come to take for granted. But there is an issue I did not wish to keep quiet about. Except for perhaps a ‘unity’ based on the rupee, corruption, cinema, and cricket, there is a grave disconnect between urban and rural India and even within urban India. This disconnect is economic, social, and political. Seventy percent of India is away from the ‘growth party’. To imagine that India can be unstoppable with its gross poverty and numbing caste issues is to be in lunatic denial, a display of unstoppable ego.

Red Sun: Travels in Naxalite Country was a story waiting to be told. There is a fairly large and excellent body of non-fiction writing on the Naxal movement of the 1960s and early 1970s and on various subsequent extreme-Left incarnations through the 1980s, in several Indian languages and in English. But besides the occasional media coverage around the time of major skirmishing between rebels and security forces, there isn’t a book on the movements of today as driven by the Communist Party of India (Maoist) that attempts to demystify the Naxal movement.

The second reason for the book was that there is a great lack of telling the human story about and around the present play of Left-wing rebellion. Typically, one comes by statistics and glib sound bites. The dispossessed and the dead are not numbers; they were–and are–people. With Red Sun I have attempted to humanize a very tragic conflict, of a country at war with itself.

A third reason is that learned writing about Maoism in India (which continues to be interchangeably referred to as Naxalism) is generally restricted to academic journals and analyses by think-tanks. There is a crying need to mainstream it, tell the lay reader, as it were, about what is going on, shake ‘middle India’ out of its mall-stupor and diminish the delusions of grandeur of India’s lawmakers.

There was every reason to write Red Sun. The truth about this wrenching war has to be told.

It helped, of course, that I have a broadminded editor, who is not risk-averse to going against the grain- to publish a questioning book in the blatant bubble of a good news environment. At a meeting with my editor at Penguin to discuss the progress of my second novel (Once Upon A Time in Aparanta, to be published in August 2008), he and I got talking about current affairs, as we often do. During the course of the conversation, I suggested to him that Penguin ought to be doing a book on the Maoist issue, to awaken ‘middle India’, as it were, and I offered to write it. My editor instantly agreed. I wrote a brief, we discussed logistics and likely deadlines, and it was a ‘go’ project from then on.

I am glad that the reception and sales of Red Sun: Travels in Naxalite Country have borne out the true purpose behind the book. At my book readings and launches, there have been a mix of students, academicians, businessmen, bankers, and other executives, bureaucrats, police officers, security and economic analysts, human rights activists, media, writers, and, I dare say, some Maoists.

And I am quite pleased with what a former chief of army staff told me a few weeks back. He said the problem with Red Sun is that it’s true.

You describe the massive denial in India about the urgency of the Maoist issue. The Maoists are not entirely voiceless. Nearly a third of India, by some counts, is under their control, they do get some media coverage, and bureaucrats and politicians are profoundly aware of the problem. Yet there seems to be a refusal to squarely engage with the issue in all its complexity. What, in your view, are some of the reasons for this state of affairs?

A clarification: Maoists do not ‘control’ one-third of India.  While they certainly control vast forest areas like the Dandakaranya region that encompasses areas of Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, and Orissa, and other forest areas in Orissa, Jharkhand, and West Bengal, in other areas they operate with less impunity. But that reality, too, is extremely significant, as it all suggests abdication of governance by the state in an area that equals a third of India, lack of a justice system, extreme poverty, and social discrimination, and the state utterly taking its own people for granted.

The thing to keep in mind is that Maoists are not only in the forests of India. They are gradually spreading their influence in the non-forested areas of Vidarbha and Marathwada in Maharashtra, industrial hotspots in Orissa, the plains of West Bengal, plantation areas of Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, and Kerala, and even in the agricultural hotspots in Punjab and Haryana. Maoists are today allied with numerous groups across India, from those protesting displacement on account of large projects to those protesting ill treatment on account of their caste. Maoist sympathizers number many tens of thousands. A former home minister of Karnataka mentioned that he estimates at least 5,000 families in Bangalore to be sympathetic to the Maoist cause. If these numbers don’t seem significant in a country of over a billion, consider that it took only 19 volunteers and a small circle of planners to bring down the World Trade Centre towers, attack the Pentagon, and trigger an attack on Afghanistan, and the still unwinnable global war against terror.

In this context, ‘threat’ is relative. Insurgency in Kashmir and India’s northeast steadily bleeds India, but even as it demolishes the myth of India being a wholesome nation, it does not currently hold the power to demolish India. The Maoist issue, on the other hand, goes to the heart of India. It has the power to implode India: poverty, dissatisfaction, helplessness, and anger make for potent ammunition. We have great islands of prosperity, but great oceans of discontent. Maoism is not India’s greatest internal security threat. Poverty, non-governance, and corruption are. Maoist rebels are merely mirrors of our own failings as a nation.

And perhaps that is why much of media, administration, and even what passes for “civil society” are at some level unwilling to engage in discussion aimed eventually at solving the issue. Perhaps they don’t understand it. Perhaps they don’t wish to acknowledge it, even if they understand the problem.

Because the government of India and governments of various states have no fingers to point at anyone but themselves. There is no ‘foreign hand’, no xenophobia to feed on, no shrill cries of ‘secessionism’ to blame for the abysmal failure of governance, stunning apathy, and callousness of our rulers and administrators, and the indelibility of how badly we treat our own people. Then, there is the development gravy train. An estimated 10 percent of funds reach the intended in India: who needs a developed India if the skim from ‘developing’ India is so lucrative?

The government of India, the governments of the states of India, and in many cases, the people of India have failed utterly in so many respects to raise the condition of hundreds of millions of their own people. We can think of sending a person to the moon, but there is no great joy in being only a little above sub-Saharan Africa in development indices and human rights. Our record shows that we are an innately corrupt, innately caste conscious, racist bunch of people content to vote criminals back to power over and over again. In Jharkhand politicians have used money to upgrade policing facilities to buy SUVs for themselves. In Maharashtra, distribution of relief in suicide zones of Vidarbha is a success in only that it has become a gravy train. Dalits are beaten, raped, and burnt. Such examples are endless. Why are we surprised when there is anger and resentment? Why are we surprised when some are driven to arms when state agencies fail? No less a person than the president of India is on record saying citizens are increasingly taking justice into their own hands because there is a failure of law and order.

In my conversations with various people, I keep referring to the example of a lady called Sabita Kumari, a tribal person from Jharkhand state. She went to the local police to register a complaint about her sister being raped. The police asked her instead to provide sex. Sabita went into the jungle, was recruited by Maoists, and has sworn to kill “at least 100 policemen” unless she is killed first. Poverty did not drive her. Just a simple corruption, of non-delivery, in India’s criminal justice system. The examples are legion.

By the way, Maoists are patriots by their own admission. Some analysts even call them ‘extreme patriots.’ This is worth thinking about, given our past, given that Bhagat Singh, a hardcore Left-wing revolutionary from the time of anti-British protests, the ‘Freedom movement’, has a bust in Parliament, and the Information Ministry takes out newspaper advertisements on his birth anniversary!

Maoist rebels are fighting to be heard, to be given the most basic rights. If they are heard, and their problems addressed, why would there be any reason to fight? We may not like it, but there it is.

Red Sun shows how for significant sections of the Indian population the Indian state is essentially experienced as a criminal enterprise. How does one make sense of this, especially in light of both the ‘India Shining’ narrative that glorifies India‘s imminent ascendancy in the global economy and the celebration of India‘s democracy 60 years after independence?

The good news stories about India are mostly true. It is a vast economy and getting bigger. The actual electoral process–voting–works to a great extent (even if pre-process issues, such as rigging of electoral rolls and intimidation, continue in large parts of India!). There is far greater affirmative action than ever. There is finally space for the ‘India Shining’ narrative, as good news stories about India are coming at a much faster clip than ever.The story in India is vastly different from, say, Nepal. That country was at a dead-end politically and economically, which in great part assisted in Maoists there achieving their goal in 12 years-from the first attack on a government office in 1996 to the present, when they are the power in Kathmandu.  In India, there is some forward movement, in certain pockets even astounding movement. India’s Maoists are the first to acknowledge that their task of national domination is made much more difficult precisely on account of India’s growth. But India’s Maoists don’t really need to win; they just need to be there, to show us where we have gone wrong.We have asked for it. It’s called ‘privileging violence’: unless people take up arms, they are not listened to. It’s all very unfortunate.

True development and governance: these are the greatest weapons against anger and resentment. The state can try to steamroll Left-wing extremism–for that matter, any extremism–and it did with Naxalism in the 1970s. But it has only got worse even with so-called development. Surely, there is a lesson somewhere, and that too is a no-brainer. Again, spread development. Ensure development funds actually reach the intended. Ensure efficient administration, policing, and justice. The government knows exactly what it has to do. It appears to have little will to do it.

And, one must remember what happened to the ‘India Shining’ narrative. The Bharatiya Janata Party coined the phrase as an election platform in 2004, against the advice of some political allies. The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance lost the general elections. It was clearly living in a bubble of its own making.

One of the achievements of Red Sun is that it navigates the labyrinthine terrain of Maoist politics and the Indian state in an impartial manner. The state is brutally repressive in its counter-insurgency measures, but one also finds bureaucrats and intelligence officers who are not unsympathetic to the situation of those who join Maoist movements. The Maoists are opposed to the savagery perpetrated upon India‘s weakest but they are also guilty of violence and extortion. You cull out these shades of grey in extremely effective fashion. How did you seek to achieve this balanced perspective, both in terms of maintaining a critical distance from various viewpoints and stylistically?

You are very kind. For me, the only way to tell the story was tell it straight, tell it from the heart, and present as many viewpoints as possible. That’s how I work. From the beginning I told all those I met or discussed the project on the telephone or email that I was writing a book, and that Viking/Penguin would publish it. When Maoists asked me if I was talking to the police, I said “yes”; if police asked me about my interaction with Maoists, I acknowledged the interaction. But I never traded in information-that would have been unethical, it would also have been folly. This is an edgy situation. It is life and death for people and, possibly, for the country, in the longer term. You can’t mess with it.

Stylistically, I have always favored the ‘feature’ style of writing, as it brings alive a situation, allows an observer and writer to look deeper. It was clear to me that with Red Sun I would adopt the style that the publishing business terms ‘narrative non-fiction’. It goes well with my preferred approach of mixing on-the-road with background research, color with cohesion, and telling the story in as accessible a manner as possible. After all, rebels know why they are rebelling-they don’t need me or anyone else to tell them that. Equally, state agencies know who and what they are fighting. Therefore, the ‘story’ had to be brought out, as it were, narrated to a wider audience. I would very much like those who palpitate if they can’t source fresh celery sticks for their Sunday afternoon Bloody Marys to read Red Sun and palpitate some more.

Somewhat more seriously, I believe I have also benefited from my relatively recent experience as a novelist. I’ve written two these past four years. Stylistically, reportage has, possibly, merged with skills I am learning as a novelist.

One of the more disturbing aspects of the book is its depiction of the use of extreme violence as negotiation, whether by the Indian state, the Maoists, or other disenfranchised sections of Indian society. On the one hand, the official Indian state position completely runs roughshod over their rights of insurgents as citizens. On the other hand, the Left and Marxist perspectives that see violence committed against the state as justified are surely ethically untenable.  I would be interested in your response to this issue.

I’m afraid there is little to debate here. Let’s consider some facts.

Fact One. India has an appalling record in dealing with its own people: in its incarnation as a bunch of princely states; through a series of colonial dominations; and as a country since 1947. India’s human rights record is appalling and so is its human development record–in the overall scheme of things. Caste, religion, and inequity merely add to the general emotional and physical conflagration. And what the Indian state has practiced in Northeast Indian regions of Nagaland, Manipur, and Mizoram is little short of genocide.

Fact Two. Despite all the claptrap of spiritual enlightenment in this part of the world, violence is a way of life. (If there wasn’t such misery and confusion, would there be a need to rise above it?)  The state practices violence, and, as I have mentioned earlier, it privileges violence: unless a person shouts, screams, burns, and kills, rulers do not listen. Violence is used both by the state and rebels-and is ingrained in Indian politics–as justification for their own ends.  All political parties have a record of practicing it and encouraging it.

Fact Three. The Indian Constitution and what it contains is mocked and sidestepped in more ways than it is adhered to. ‘Civil society’, ‘right to information’, and ‘public interest’ are still in their infancy in India.

Fact Four. We have a surfeit of glib intellectuals and political theorists who would shame a caveful of spiders with their spin. We have largely successful elections, given the complexity and corruption of India. That is on account of a handful of efficient and fiercely proud officials and electoral momentum from voters who, with increasing regularity, vote out the corrupt and vile every five years only to have someone equally cynical step in. These people think nothing of burning a bus–with people inside it–if it means they can score a political point. The reality of coalition politics and ‘vote-bank’ or special interest group politics lets such people off the hook.

Fact Five. In five Indian states (not counting the 14 states out of 28 affected in varying degrees by Maoist rebellion or activity, which is a stunning statistic on its own) security forces have the freedom to arrest, incarcerate, and shoot to kill on mere suspicion of “anti-state” activity, with immunity to military and paramilitary. In Chhattisgarh, a law permits the state to jail whoever they deem appropriate, without assigning specific reason. There are close to 50 minor and major terrorist and militant groups active and proscribed in India. Jammu & Kashmir is in a state of war and despondency. Riots and lynching occur regularly across India. Your own assertion adds to this point. India is a very violent place in a very violent part of the world–only our size and dogged aspiration keeps us going, offering us the irony of being a relatively safe haven hemmed in by chaos in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh.

As we are on the subject of violence, let’s discuss Salwa Judum, a government-sponsored vigilante army in Chhattisgarh that sets tribal against tribal to combat Maoist influence. Senior police and security officials from even Maoist-affected states like Maharashtra, West Bengal, Orissa, and many from the Center have told me on the record as to what a bad idea Salwa Judum is. So far, there is no move to transplant the Salwa Judum concept into other such states. Even in the Ministry of Home Affairs, there are strong opponents of Salwa Judum even as there are strong proponents.

The truth about Salwa Judum is that it is not spontaneous. It is a monster created cynically from a real grouse that some tribal people and farmers harbored against the heavy-handedness of Maoists in the area. The government tapped into this partial resentment and created Salwa Judum with state support–financial, logistical, and moral.

But by setting brother against brother, Chhattisgarh has created a situation of mutually assured destruction of tribals. Homes are razed, lands are lost, livelihoods are destroyed, and futures erased. It is Vietnam redux, Afghanistan redux, Nagaland and Mizoram redux.

The chaos that Salwa Judum has caused is perhaps the only reason that has kept other states from employing similar methods as strategy. Senior policemen, intelligence officials, and security experts have told me Salwa Judum is a no-hoper. But Chhattisgarh can’t retract it; it has become a prestige issue, a noose.

The Salwa Judum camps are little more than instant slums, laced with sewers, oppression, fear, and dejection. These house wrecked lives of a people who are treated as the lowest forms of life. Think of an abject slum in a city, marry it with scenes of a resettlement camp immediately after a flood or earthquake, populate it with security forces, and you begin to get a sense of it. This hell is created as strategy by the state, mirroring what it earlier practiced in Nagaland and Mizoram in the 1950s and 1960s. It’s absolutely unpardonable.

Perhaps the time has come for Indians to admit that we are not quite as ‘civil’ as we like to think of ourselves; by “ourselves” I mean the bulk of our 1.12 billion. India has numerous achievements and ‘good news stories’ to be justifiably proud of, but as yet they amount to little in the Indian universe. There is little point in benchmarking ourselves with Zimbabwe and Myanmar and breaking out cases of Dom Perignon at the World Economic Forum when we score over that abysmal benchmark.

The language of the postcolonial Indian state resembles the language of the colonial state in documenting its response to insurgencies. The Maoist perspective will probably not be recorded in the official Indian archive for posterity, which is why works such as yours are so important. Do you, as someone who inhabited this world as a journalist, feel that such a history can be written at all?

Any need for documentation has accepted that the Government of India and state governments of India routinely tailor history to their own requirements of expediency, whitewash, hagiography, and posterity.

This is not only with regard to the Maoist perspective, but any perspective that senses a need to be a recorded and heard. (And here, we cannot discount that, were Maoists to come to a controlling interest in India or parts of India, their documentation would become ‘official’ at the cost of other ‘histories’. We will, in all probability, soon see it happening in Nepal, where Maoist history will be ‘true’ history in the same way that monarchic history was for these past 250 years.)

In such an environment, it is imperative to try to bring to the attention of the reading public as many independent perspectives as possible. Such an initiative needs to go beyond media, which in India is becoming increasingly giddy. India is still relatively low on the curve of ‘indie’ projects. I can only hope the trend accelerates. If the much hyped “Idea of India” concept takes root, those who care about the Indian nation-state in its clinical sense, in its need to find a bona fide place in the sun, then such documentation, such histories, as you call them, will become more common.

One of the implicit historical questions raised by your work is whether the deprivation experienced by tribals, Dalits, and peasants has its roots in colonial political economy or is primarily a product of the policies of the postcolonial state. It seems that this is an important topic for historical inquiry. But from another perspective–that of the rights of the wretched of the Indian earth–what does it matter  where the historical roots of exploitation lie?

I would go entirely with the last point that you have raised. That is indeed my perspective. Being a student of history, a practicing journalist, and a die-hard Indian, colonial and postcolonial attitudes mean little in the face of continuing, explosive exploitation. India, alas, is very likely to pay a heavy price.

A related question: can one make the case that these disenfranchised communities are colonized peoples? Is there any glimmer of this line of thinking among Maoist ideologues? They claim that they are patriots and they use the language of anti-imperialist movements. But do they specifically invoke legacies of anticolonial nationalism (regarding which, the extreme Left in India have been considerably ambivalent)?

Thus far, there is no indication of this being the case. India’s Maoists do talk of “imperialist hegemony” when referring to India’s geopolitical interests in Nepal, which is now Maoist-dominated, but accusations of such behavior, in relation to India, are generally placed at the door of United States, United Kingdom, European Union, and such.

There is a ‘colonial’ narrative that exists in northeastern India, especially in Nagaland and large parts of Manipur, that claims India as the aggressor and invader as these areas were historically and ethnically never part of India and Indian-ness prior to 1947. But this is not led by Maoists. It is an intensely local feeling.

The only aspect of this narrative, that of disenfranchised communities being colonized people, exists in some degrees in the arguments of ‘adivasi’ politics, that tribal people in India’s heartland have been colonized by outsiders, their livelihood damaged and identities shattered–in a narrative similar those of American Indians and Australian Aborigines. Tribal leaders and Maoists have leveraged this feeling, but only as a kick-start tactic in overall strategy, not as abiding policy. Maoists are leveraging anything they can anywhere: displacement of farmers on account of industrialization, caste issues, labor unrest, high debt, and despondency among farmers. In this, a Monsanto or Cargill becomes today’s East India Company in Maoist narrative–but it is not unusual; as you know, there is increasing general activism against such businesses by anti-WTO and anti-GM foods lobbies, both in India and elsewhere. In this, Maoists have found common cause.

A last point: the extreme Left in India have not been ambivalent about anticolonial nationalism, but the Left have. There is a big difference.

Let me move to the question of rights here. The Maoists (as, indeed, Marxist and Left movements) appear to bear a profound ambivalence towards the idea of rights as well as toward the institutions of liberal democracy. This tension is brought out very starkly in your book.  On the one hand, the Maoists dismiss the institutions of liberal democracy as bourgeois, comprador, hegemonic hogwash, and the like, and justify the use of violence and vigilante justice. On the other hand, they also invoke the language of rights, including the right of freedom of expression and freedom of assembly, in articulating their cause.

This is a big one. Your observation is spot on, and I agree entirely. With all my anger against India’s venal politicians and bureaucrats, I must acknowledge the fact that I am exchanging ideas with you as a free citizen. That my book, Red Sun: Travels in Naxalite Country, is not as yet banned in India (though I could be in trouble in Chhattisgarh).

It all adds up to an enormous degree of complexity.Some weeks ago I was asked at a literary meet in Mumbai what I thought of the Maoist proclivity for absolute domination of ideology or abhorrence of dissent. And, whether I thought if Maoists were in power, would they allow free circulation of Red Sun as it enjoys now. My answer was: I don’t believe in Maoism, I’m merely writing about it and the cause and effect of deprivation in the context of India’s grand claims. Hypothetically, if a Maoist leadership emerged that was as venal and domineering as India’s current masters, I would in principle have no hesitation to rail against them and to offer an independent narrative.

Two unfairly difficult questions about the future to conclude the interview. Recently, on May 29, 2008, Nepal‘s new assembly, comprised significantly of Maoist rebels who overthrew the royal government earlier in the year, voted to abolish the monarchy. Elsewhere in the subcontinent, the Indian human rights activist, Dr. Binayak Sen, continues to be imprisoned by the Chattisgarh state government for alleged links with Maoists, despite his clear repudiation of Maoist violence. What do you think about the future of Maoist movements in India and of Maoism as an ideology? And what do you think about the future of India?

Permit me to attempt to answer the last question first, and work backwards. I believe India is headed for several years of rural unrest, primarily on account of dislocation in agriculture. This has the capacity of migrating to urban areas. Indeed, this is a history in motion. Caste-related anger, inequity-related anger, rights-related anger, and farming- and landholding-related anger have not been this primed or this vocal for decades. Something has to give. Half a million BPO employees cannot transform 600 million engaged in farming, or 250 million who earn Rs 12 or less a day.

I have mapped an extreme future scenario in Red Sun–one I sincerely wish does not come to pass, but at present there is little reason to rejoice. I believe that, given current dynamics, India will in the not too distant future move into what I call ‘In-Land’ and ‘Out-Land’. In-Land will constitute massive City States (Kolkata and environs; Mumbai and environs, possibly including Pune; Delhi, Jaipur, Chandigarh; Greater Bangalore; Greater Hyderabad; Greater Chennai; and so on) with captive hinterlands for food, commerce, and of course, governance. Outside these gated City States will lie Out-Land, present day rural India, as ever out of sight and therefore, out of mind. It is entirely possible that Maoists or others like them could control this Out-Land. If some turn rogues, they could turn to ‘warlordism’.

This is not far-fetched. It’s already happening; the trends will merely get firmer. Look at the growth of cities, Special Economic Zones or SEZs, patterns of migration, the debilitation and lawlessness of the countryside. We have mapped our future and we are doing everything in our power to validate this future. And the scary part for urban India will be that, unless growth is more equitable, tensions that currently rent Out-Land will steadily move In. And In-Land too could become an unsustainable pressure cooker.

Consider a few points. Rural and urban India will together have will more than 300 million more people over the next two and half decades. Food grain production needs to more than double in the same time. But our landmass will remain the same. Our cities are tinderboxes–Mumbai, for example, is 60 percent slum. Think about it. This is not the time for ‘Shantaram Tours’ of Mumbai’s slums, based on a book by an itinerant Australian ex-thug who spent some years in Mumbai’s slums to write a largely fictionalized work. This is the time to ensure that there is no need for such grotesque display.

As for Binayak Sen, he, journalist Ajay TG, and others in Chhatisgarh will not be released from jail until the Chhattisgarh government can be made to feel less foolish. These people are soft targets. To my mind, Dr. Sen’s imprisonment is nothing but a paranoid reaction of the state. It’s a classic tactic of retaliation to focus on ‘soft’ targets in order to divert attention from real failures–of governance, administration, policing, and socioeconomic development. In addition, there is the grinding exploitation of tribals and the poor that no amount of finessing or propaganda can hide. The government of Chhattisgarh is now engaged in denying legitimate NGOs space to function in rural areas. It’s a stupid, knee-jerk strategy that will bring immense harm. Besides further fracturing society, it will only serve to escalate the conflict. The Chhattisgarh government is quite obtuse; even looking at things from their point of view, they do not appear to realize that the longer they incarcerate Dr. Sen and others like him, the more people who normally would not be empathetic to the cause of Left-wing revolution would be drawn to it. I, for one, hope public pressure leads not only to the release of Dr. Sen and others, but that it leads ultimately to dialogue between the state and Maoists.

As for Maoism in India, as I mentioned earlier it is different from the situation in Nepal in that, Maoists have nearly attained their goal of ruling Nepal, and they have done so rapidly. It took only 10 years for the revolution–in great measure aided by common people–to steamroll the state, the monarchy. For the past two years, Nepal’s Maoists have been in Kathmandu. They are now the single largest party in Nepal’s Constituent Assembly.

The story in India is vastly different, for while Maoist influence is spreading, it’s nowhere near completion with the rapidity of Nepal. But, as I mentioned earlier, India’s Maoists don’t really need to win, they just need to be there, to show us where we have gone wrong.

History shows us that it’s usually easier to rebel than to rule. It has happened in every ancient civilization and nearly every modern one–barring, possibly and notably, the United States. Mao is as good an example as any. He brought off a stunning rebellion, ruthlessly united a country, and then ruled it at whim. Nepal is today dealing not merely with the absence of war, but the chaos of peace, reconciliation, and a scheming monarchy. I expect there will be more trouble in Nepal till things settle down; in some ways it is where India was in 1947.

But history moves on, as it has in Russia, China, and it will in Nepal. In India, Maoist rebellion–indeed, any rebellion, conceivably even a Dalit one–is providing, and will surely continue to provide, impetus to change. The wise ought to see the writing on the wall and ensure socioeconomic, administrative, and judicial delivery so that Mao and his principles needn’t have to show the way in India. Until this happens, rebellion in India is a no-brainer. We have asked for it. It’s all very unfortunate.

At the core, the Maoist or Naxal leadership of today and the 1960s are similar, because what they are angry about is similar to what the educated and privileged were angry about in the 1960s–and that is the true irony of India’s ‘development’. But times have changed, social milieus have changed, the politics has changed, the revolutionary movement and security apparatus too have changed in their methods of reaction and counter-reaction.

The rebels this time around are savvier, better equipped, and more deliberate. The cadre is much more broad-based that in the 1960s. Many grassroots cadre have assumed leadership positions. They don’t like to roll over and play dead.

I call the current state of play in India Maoism Mark IV. This comes after Mark I in the 1960s across West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh; Mark II in the 1980s primarily in Andhra and Bihar; Mark III in the 1990s with the spread into present-day Chhattisgarh and formation of a guerilla force; and the largely consolidated, organized conglomerate of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) of the present day. There will be a Mark V, and many more ‘Marks’, as Left-wing extremism morphs and adapts to the changing contours of sociopolitical and socioeconomic India.

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EXTERNAL LINKS

‘Unification is the only way to advance the cause of the Indian revolution’
Interview with People’s War leader Ganapthy

Karl and the Kalashnikov
82 hours with the People’s War guerrillas

In India, Death to Global Business
How a violent—and spreading—Maoist insurgency threatens the country’s runaway growth

Notes from the Red Corridor
Part reportage and part travelogue, this is an unflinching look at India’s Naxal reality

Free Binayak Sen
An international collaborative effort to seek the release of Dr. Binayak Sen

Shades of grey in red zones 

Himal South Asian’s review of Red Sun

That was the focus of a Fleet Street conference organised by the International Communications Forum, which featured media academics and journalists of repute — among them, Phillip Knightley, Martin Bell, Yvonne Ridley, Rafael Marques, and Professor Stuart Allan.

“The real war and the war reported by the media are different,” said Knightley, author of First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero and Myth-Maker from the Crimea to Kosovo. “Reporting conflicts in foreign lands become an extension of government justification for the war rather than the public reality of war.”

Knightley, Ridley, Marques and Bell were united in their criticism of the limited representation of conflicts by military-controlled ‘embeds’.

Bell, the BBC foreign correspondent-turned-politician, began the debate, saying war correspondents are stuck in the ‘green zone’, unable to reach the people affected by war. If they are not embedded they run the risk of being shot and killed, often by ‘friendly fire’. 

“News is run by the government,” he said, “the news organisations have to be in with the government.”

War reporting — where does a journalist’s duty lie, held at the St Bride’s Church mid-April, focussed on the conflict between the nationalist politics of a journalist and his responsibility towards the people affected by war.

Knightley, who expressed admiration for war correspondent William Howard Russell — Russell brought home the reality of the Crimean War to the British public by way of the Times in the 1850s — said his own reports were criticised because he wrote more like a ‘peace correspondent’, which the establishment found unpalatable.

For his part, BBC World Affairs Editor Jonathan Baker defended the use of ‘green zones’ or ‘roof-top journalism’.

“You can still produce excellent journalism from within green zones,” he said. “The BBC tries to resolve the restrictions in which we are obliged to operate and have to weigh up the expense and risks.”

Press TV presenter Ridley, famously kidnapped by the Taliban when reporting for the Daily Express, said the media is used by the government to endorse conflicts. Un-embedded journalists risk being shot dead by the US military, as has happened in Iraq.

Times columnist Magnus Linklater said it is harder today to maintain high standards than before, because the war situation is more complex than it has been.

Freelance editorial consultant Martin Huckerby, who works for the Institute of War and Peace Reporting, said it was the journalists’ responsibility to be aware of prejudices they may have when reporting foreign affairs.

Bell said independent journalism was virtually impossible in today’s professional media organisations. He expressed concern over how government spin doctors manipulate the media.

But if the conventional media do not tell people what they want to know, they now have the option of turning to citizen journalists. Marques, known for his investigative reports into the diamond industry and government corruption in Angola, said of this struggle over information:

“There are two conflicting wars — the military war and the public opinion war. The public can take more control over the news than the journalists. Citizen Journalism is a real challenge to the authority of professional journalists.”

Bournemouth University Professor Stuart Allan said unapologetic subjectivity in reporting connects with people. User-generated content appeals to readers because it offers them a diversity of perspectives from around the world.

Marques said western news is mostly dictated by the politics of UK and USA and this has to change. International reporting should focus more on the ordinary people affected by war, he said.

Jameela Oberman is a writer at Interjunction. Mail her at jameela.interjunction@gmail.com

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IN TIMES OF WAR, when PR mates unashamedly with frenzied nationalism, heroes are born by the dozen. It is a union the national media facilitates joyfully, never mind the ethical questions ignored therein.

Prince Harry’s rebirth is remarkable even by that standard. If in the past the media had only been passive or active participants in such passions, this time around it has been pronouncedly proactive.

I am all for responsible journalism, but I am not convinced by the ‘responsibility’ the British media showed in Harry’s Afghan adventures. I have three issues with it.

One, like Jon Snow, I believe the decision erodes media credibility. Particularly so, given the premeditated nature of the event. This was no spontaneous episode that had to be contained — Harry didn’t wake up one fine morning and go to Afghanistan on his own, he was sent there — and as such there was no ethical compulsion on the media to agree to an embargo. It agreed because it managed a backroom barter: here is our silence, now you give us Harry in soundbites and videoclips.

As a journalist fairly familiar with military actions, I understand that agreements at the tactical level form the heart of many war reports. I will even say all reports involve some kind of a ‘deal’ — no source talks to you for the pure love of talking, there is always a quid pro quo.

While I am reasonably comfortable with that at a personal level, I am not so with a strategic deal of this sort. It was not as if there was a national peril looming and the media had to close flanks and rush to uphold its responsibility to the society. Even if that was the case, I am not sure that is the best strategy, but that is another argument.

So the media did what it did for a ‘better’ story. I am sure the decision was debated, even “agonized” over, but the point is it went through — and something tells me the editors were thinking more of circulation and audience figures and page views than quality journalism.

All in all, it reminds me a bit of the arms deals you see in movies.

The kind in which regimes buy guns, receive kickbacks — and the public carries on oblivious.

Mr Chomsky, you were right

The public carried on oblivious. That is my second point.

Public opinion is crucial in a democratic society, we all know. We also know the media’s fundamental responsibility is to provide for a public sphere, an arena where citizens can exchange thoughts and ideas and question political will.

By agreeing to a blackout, the British media did exactly the opposite. Not only did it not provide for an informed public sphere, it did not provide for any public sphere.

Worse, it strangled the life out of one. That is first-degree murder.

Result? No debate on a decision of political significance (let me point you to Simon Jenkin’s arguments for why this is significant). Some 15 MoD officials, the media, and the prince’s family and close friends knew of it — and they, I am sure you will agree, do not constitute the general public.

I guess Mr Chomsky was right.

Plugs and princely servings

More alarming is what happened after Matt Drudge did his bit.

Even as the media patted itself on the back for the ‘restraint’ it showed with one hand, with the other it dished out princely servings of Harry topped with every sinful dressing in the spin world.

There was Harry firing a machine gun, Harry on a motorbike; Harry shirtless, Harry tucking into jam and biscuits; Harry playing rugby, Harry ‘patrolling’ on foot; Harry talking of mom, Harry rejecting the ‘hero’ label…

As ‘anti-establishment’ British Parliamentarian George Galloway put it, the media gave him to us “as the pin-up of the armed forces, one of the lads, full of derring-do, a British hero on Afghanistan’s plains straight out of Tennyson or Kipling”.

This is all too slick for my sceptical mind. I can’t believe the boy prone to publicity bloopers till the other day is suddenly doing and saying such pat things all on his own.

I certainly can’t believe the mainstream journalists were taken in by this ‘transformation’ either.

The sheer volume, the all-positive spin, the slickness of it, all points to media management and compliance. Not just on what to cover when, but on how to as well. God help us if this was the “deeper insight into a new side of Prince Harry” that Society of Editors chief Bob Satchell promised us.

The long and short of it is that publicists have managed to turn Harry into a hero overnight. And the media, the mediator of the public, its watchdog, processed — nay, happily assisted — it with no questions asked.

Perhaps Harry is the stuff heroes are made of. Perhaps he isn’t. As of now we have no evidence, bar the words of sources — and the media — recorded in a prearranged PR exercise.

They used to have a word for such reportage in old-fashioned journalism: plug.

The cost of compliance

In postscript, a few questions…

If you are not part of a deal, can you really “blow” it? The “understanding” on the Harry story was between the MoD and British editors. In other words, the “foreign press” — read New Idea, Bild and Drudge Report – were not under embargo. So were they “irresponsible”? Or were they doing their duty to their readers, who, not incidentally, are not British?

Given the extent to which the British army went to ensure Harry’s security (they spent nearly half a year just negotiating media silence), how credible is the claim Harry ran “the same risks as everyone else in his battle group”?

From what I read on discussion boards, the majority of British public appears happy with the blackout. Could this be because the British media supported it and hence took pains to persuade the public to see its way?

If the public is happy with one blackout, will it embolden the media to go for more of such in future?

All in all, was the exercise worth the price of media compliance? Did it achieve something in the larger scheme of things?

I see one positive. This debate.

See also: Whose prince? Whose war?

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