The Politics of Resistance and Representation

People always try to protest against and resist any kind of oppression in one way or another. This can be seen throughout history across the world. While Naxalism/Maoism and the use of violence as a means to achieve one’s political ends have once again taken up the most space on our political media, one is compelled to delve more into the politics of resistance and different kinds of protests.

Was it Engels who said it that theft is the most primitive form of protest? Marcel Proudhon, the anarchist, famously declared that “Property is theft”. Jean Genet, the renowned French playwright, was one such person who considered the act of theft to be a form of protest and a means to achieve what was denied to him. In a larger perspective, theft of something that has been denied to a class/section of people for generations becomes a political struggle. Recently, one could see this in the case of the Chengara Land Struggle in Kerala where thousands of landless families illegally encroached upon an estate demanding land to the landless.

Can we say it like this: “One man’s protest is theft in another man’s view.” Does it sound similar to what is usually said as “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter”? However, it’s not the act which determines its own truth or falsehood, but essentially the context and situation of that act. Thus the question, “What do you think about suicide bombers?” often elicits a long sigh: “I’m not the one to talk about this because I haven’t ever gone through such situations where my father is being shot and my sister is being raped”.

Again it’s problematic when the resistance is not from the victim but it is represented by someone else, often for the victims or on their behalf. Nowhere else is it as visible as in the case of Muslim clerics being compelled to issue a fatwa against terrorism. The representation (if at all terrorism represents the Muslim cause) here becomes an embarrassment to the represented themselves.

The question whether Naxals represent the downtrodden people of our country thus becomes very crucial in this debate. It’s not the spontaneous violence of the victims that is being questioned here but the situation where violence is shaping an ideology and a movement. Violence of resistance is legitimate, but violence to capture State power is not, which is unfortunately what the Maoists stand for. While criticizing the Maoist violence, Nivedita Menon makes her point very clear: “I’m not arguing that violence as such is ’inherently anti-democratic’. I am not a pacifist. Spontaneous violence against the structural violence of the state and structure of private property, violence in self-defence, even pre-planned violent action designed to redress a specific situation – all of these possibilities always simmer just below the skin of normal society, and must be understood within the context of hideous, unrelenting, never-addressed injustice.”

Many think that the Maoist line has been singularly pre-occupied with violence as the core of their philosophical understanding. They believe that the movement lacks political understanding. A statement issued by the Progressive Students Union in Jawaharlal Nehru University declared that “the Maoists have become victims/prisoners of their own limited understanding of the nature of the Indian State. This has led them to universalize their localized experiences and resort to strategies of armed struggle which may see them gaining the upper hand in isolated skirmishes but fails to hold good even ten kilometers outside the jungles.” And the same thing is asserted by KPS Gill in his interview with Ajith Sahi where he has said that “Naxals have a worldview which is at odds with reality.” State’s violence provokes Maoists often and vice versa. The common man suffers both.

On the other hand, Arundhati Roy is correct in her position that we have an oppressive-capitalist State for which poor and indigenous people are seen to be the burden of corporate men (remember the colonial motto: “Take up the white man’s burden”). According to reports from Chhatisgarh, the state sponsored Salwa Judum has displaced more than three hundred and fifty thousand adivasis in the old Bastar area. Fifty thousand have moved to neighbouring states, another fifty thousand are living under the surveillance of paramilitary forces in state-controlled camps, the remaining two hundred and fifty thousand have moved deeper into the jungle to escape the violence and pillage of Salwa Judum. And a declared Operation Green Hunt would do nothing but further alienate these people from the State.

The emergence of another voice is the need of the hour – a strong critic of the state, its violence and of its co-operation with the corporate world; a voice which no longer sounds strange to those it represents. A new movement must emerge which will formulate appropriate strategies to overthrow the existing system, without lowering its understanding of politics to mere engagement in anarchic violence. In a democracy where even the mainstream Left has abandoned the cause of the oppressed, can one hope for a “legitimate dissenting voice within the dissent from the state?”