A relook into the Maoist violence in West Bengal and non-violent movement in Rajasthan: ideology and ground reality

Abstract

The Maoist struggle in West Bengal championed the ideology of ‘armed struggle against the state and the dominant ruling party’ and ‘the annihilation of the class enemies.’ An important omission in the Maoist agenda lies in its neglect towards the ground realities of development. The Maoists in Bengal have only been using the forest and the rural areas as their suitable hideouts not as grounds for upholding the rights of the forest dependent tribals under the existing governmental programmes. In sum, the Maoist movement in West Bengal which thrives on the ideology of ‘class war’ and ‘class annihilation’ seems to fall far short of the ground realities being encountered by the underprivileged classes. The politics of Maoist violence can also be viewed against the non-violent movement of rainwater harvesting led by Rajendra Singh, a Ramon Magsaysay Award winner to gain some insight into the discourses of the Bengal leftists.