As soon as the Maharashtra Special Public Security Bill, 2024, tabled in the state legislative assembly on July 11 this year, becomes a law, the state government will have another draconian legal instrument to use against protesters, dissenters, critics and opponents. Like other such laws, this one too has strict provisions making an individual’s arrest non-bailable.
Since the need for such a law is being justified on the grounds that the “menace of Naxalism is increasing in urban areas… through Naxal frontal organisations”, dissenters being framed up as ‘urban Naxals’ is imminent. This bill proposes a jail term even if a person is “not… a member of an unlawful organisation”, but “contributes/receives/solicits any contribution or aid or harbours” its members as well as those who “promote or assist in promoting a meeting of such groups”. All offences under this law, that grants the state the authority to declare organisations, groups and individuals unlawful, along with the new criminal laws enforced on July 1, will unduly empower the police and enhance the chances of its misuse. Notably, such existing laws have been misused by the Indian state and its units – the incarcerations of activists in the Bhima Koregaon case is a recent vivid example.
Naxalism and urban Naxals
The convoluted nomenclature ‘urban Naxal’ is credited to controversial Bharatiya Janata Party-inclined filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri in an essay in Swarajya magazine in May 2017. It got an official stamp becoming a part of the party’s political lexicon after Prime Minister Narendra Modi used it in the chintan shivir of police leaders at Surajkund (Haryana) in November 2022.
Expanding the cover of the term, he brought under it pen-wielding supporters along with gun-wielding ‘revolutionaries’, making it easier for the state to arbitrarily round up those who have been speaking for the rights of the tribals, Dalits and other dispossessed people. Since the pen-wielding analysts have linked the rise and expansion of left-wing extremism to the exploitation of the poor and dispossessed by the rich, they are being typified as urban Naxal.
The term was used in the notorious Elgar Parishad/Bhima Koregaon case that put behind bars over a dozen lawyers, the intelligentsia, social and human rights activists in 2018 under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA). Their fault: participation in the Elgar Parishad (conference) at the Shaniwar Wada in Pune on the eve of Bhima Koregaon bicentenary. First the Maharashtra police and later the NIA did not have much problem in keeping them under detention for years without bail. It is only in the past couple of years that some of them have been released by the higher courts, which also questioned their detention in strong words. Tragically, Father Stan Swamy, the 83-year-old tribal rights activist from Ranchi, suffering from Parkinson’s disease, lost his life in detention, after contracting Covid-19, without any social murmur.
The well-studied phenomenon of left-wing extremism has an intriguing history beginning 1946, when the Communist Party of India began its ‘revolution’ in the Telangana region of the Hyderabad state. From Telangana (1946-51) to Naxalbari (West Bengal, 1967-72) where Naxalism got its nomenclature, to Srikakulam (Andhra Pradesh, 1967-70) exploitation of the landless peasants by the landlords has been the common factor. Either the Communist Party or a communist leader mobilised the deprived and an indiscrete episode triggered a violent movement in each case. While the Telangana movement subsided following Acharya Vinoba Bhave’s initiative to start Bhoodan movement, in case of the Naxalbari, the land reforms introduced by the CPM-led government helped. However, none of these had an urban repercussion.
Neither its spread in the 1980s-90s nor the consolidation of the three warring factions into a united Communist Party of India (Maoist) in 2003 saw any significant urban spillover. The movement, which covered one-third of the districts of India from north to south, remained largely confined to forested tribal and rural areas. Studies on the Naxal movement clearly show that the map of the Naxal spread coincided with the areas with mineral and forest resources, making the conflict over rights clearly visible.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty
After a decadal run, this spread began shrinking with the onslaught of the security forces, causing severe losses to the movement and eliminating several leaders. The Institute of Conflict Management that tracks and maps left-wing extremism, says it has shrunk to 77 districts of 10 states with only five districts in the severe category. The elimination, ageing of competent leadership and dwindling cadres have reduced the possibilities of their urban foray.
Urban empathy
Naxalism does not attract genuine urban empathy because there is little comprehensive understanding beyond the image of misguided gun-toting tribals and ideologues. The socio-economic understanding of its origins – in the physical and economic exploitation and inequity in land distribution, going back almost eight decades – does not exist in urban areas. It is true that the leadership that guided the Telangana and Naxalbari movement had an urban background, but they devoted themselves to the cause of the rural peasants and tribals. Vempatapu Satyanarayana, who mobilised the tribals of the Srikakulam area of the north-west Andhra Pradesh, married women of the two prominent tribes to live, understand and merge into the social ambience.
However, several among the urban intelligentsia raised their voices for an effective resolution of the living conditions of the people in the affected areas. The government also took steps by constituting an expert group under the erstwhile Planning Commission. Its report in 2008 broke several myths and suggested a roadmap to resolve the matter. The Supreme Court judgement by Justices B. Sudershan Reddy and S.S. Nijjar on the Salwa Judum case of July 5, 2011 highlighted several studies (including one of this writer) on how impoverishment and exploitation have fuelled left-wing extremism.
The legislation
Shockingly, the Maharashtra government finds the UAPA (1967) and the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act, 1999 (MCOCA) insufficient to deal with imagined extreme situations precipitated by the persons it dubs as urban Naxals. The proposed legislation, if it comes into effect, will authorise state police and other security agencies to arrest an accused person without warrant, and therefore without letting them know of their offence. The nebulous and legally undefined urban Naxal will bring anyone criticising the ruling party and the state government under its ambit. That these arrests would be non-bailable clearly means that an arrested person may rot in jail for years without trial.
No wonder, there are worries amongst the civil society concerning the law’s potential misuse, as has happened under similar laws in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha. Tushar Gandhi, the great-grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, described it as “an anti-people Bill. If the opposition does not stop it, the Bill must be fought on the streets. It will turn Maharashtra into a police State and outlaw dissent and portray protesters as urban Naxals.”
Ajay K. Mehra is a political scientist. He was Atal Bihari Vajpayee Senior Fellow, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, 2019-21 and Principal, Shaheed Bhagat Singh Evening College, Delhi University (2018).
