Andhra Pradesh offers a good case study of the compulsions that underlie the choice of violent methods of struggle, as well as the unpleasant consequences of the decision to take up arms. The Maoist movement owes its political character to the vicissitudes of its unfolding in both Andhra Pradesh and Bihar. But today, the movement is at its lowest ebb ever in Andhra, pushed to the corners of forest hideouts and into neighbouring Orissa and Chhattisgarh. At the same time, the movement is more prominently in the thoughts of politically active people than at almost any time in the past. Whether that interest can help the movement to truly break the shackles of repression, however, is a question that no close observer can avoid posing.
India's Maoist movement is today the site of multiple paradoxes. On the one hand, many groups that would have unequivocally condemned the movement a decade ago for its violent methods are today increasingly prepared to see whether it has anything of value to offer – keeping open the question of violence. This change of heart has largely been brought around by the extreme insensitivity of the state – a change that ideological persuasion long failed to achieve. On the other hand, by increasingly relying on violence, including more arbitrary forms of it, the Maoist movement is receding farther and farther from any meeting point with such open-minded groups. In the era of neo-liberalism, many activists are not objecting as vociferously to violence in the 'interests' of the people as they once did, given that the current global socio-economic set-up is widely seen as an instrument of visible and invisible violence, the victims of which are the most vulnerable communities. But nearly all would still insist that the use of violent methods is nothing more than an exceptional option. Here is where the Maoists have yet to come around.
Too frequently, the discussion of revolutionary violence proceeds from the theoretical formulation made by the Naxalite movement – the stage of development of Indian society within the Marxist-Leninist paradigm, under which armed struggle is the only path to egalitarian revolution. However, neither the Naxalbari uprising nor any violent struggle undertaken by the Naxalites thereafter arose purely from this political belief. Instead, particular situations on the ground always made the choice a real possibility, and therefore made the theoretical belief more persuasive. Dogmatists on either side of the debate between violence and non-violence rarely understand that the average human being is simply not dogmatic in this particular issue. Moral pragmatism, coupled with abhorrence of any unnecessary or unjust use of violence, would about sum up the common person's attitude. When the very capacity for large-scale violence leads the activist to ignore this attitude, a gap develops – one that the activist will perforce come to rue someday.
Sangham to dalam
In Andhra Pradesh, the Naxalite movement's initial political dogmatism (usually blamed on Charu Majumdar, though he was probably not the only one to be blamed), which branded all mass activity as 'un-revolutionary', gave way to an important realisation. Even for the violent overthrow of the state, there is still a need to organise the people on their immediate social and economic demands, while simultaneously educating them about the preferred long-term strategy of armed struggle.