South Asia: India, Giant of the Subcontinent - Dragons and Tigers: A Geography of South, East and Southeast Asia - page 227

carrying Hindu activists on their way back from Ayodhya,
caught fire in a Muslim neighborhood. Muslims were
blamed for the many deaths and in the pogrom that
followed, 2,000 people died. Also, to embed the atrocities
in the minds of Muslims forever, some Hindus poured
kerosene down the throats of Muslim women and
children and set them afire.
A good part of anti-Christian animosity derives from
the fact that the vast majority of Christians are either
converted Dalits or tribal people trying to escape their
low status under the caste system. Many Christians,
including missionaries, have been burned alive, especially
in remoter areas of the country .
Even under the Congress Party government,
internecine violence is ongoing with riots, bombings, indi-
vidual and mass killings, and rape on the part of both
Muslims and Hindus. Many Muslims carry the burden of
past and ongoing injustices compounded by religious
fundamentalism.
Hindu fanatics do not have faith in the institutions
of Indian democracy . They see the state as “soft” and
pandering to minorities out of a misplaced and Western
secularism. Hindu author Shashi Thakoor (2007), who
is proud to belong to a religion that has taught the
world both tolerance and universal acceptance, says
that Hindu fanatics are not fundamentalists (like Muslims)
because they do not root their Hinduism in the spiritual
underpinnings of the faith. “They seek revenge in the
name of Hinduism-as-badge, rather than Hinduism-
as-doctrine.”

police that are available in Naxalite-controlled
areas, hundreds have been killed and the rest are
terrified to do anything.
In Jharkhand, to fund their operations, the
Naxalites are encouraging the cultivation of opium
poppies in hundreds of villages. Many poor farmers
find this very lucrative because they get high prices
from local heroin traders who also train them in
heroin refining and packaging.
The Naxalites also recruit child-soldiers. First,
they bomb schools and threaten teachers, then they
force the students into their army . In one region of
Chhatisgarh, officials estimate that the Maoist mili-
tancy has denied at least 100,000 children their
education.
An estimated 20,000 Naxalites are present in
varying degrees of strength throughout a swathe
of eastern India known as the “Red Corridor”
(Figure 8-9). Due to the ineffectiveness of authorities
to address severe regional and local inequities, the
group has millions of sympathizers.
National and state policies have been incon-
sistent and spotty in their conception and appli-
cation. Consequently , the spread of Naxalism is
causing justifiable alarm. While their power base
remains on the margins of Indian society , in the
ever-deepening holes of poverty and destitution
in the remote countryside, the movement is
growing.
Naxalism attacks wherever the system is
weakest—delivering on never-kept promises.
They do not threaten the government in New
Delhi but they do deter investment into some of
the country' s poorest regions, which also happen
to be rich in vital resources such as coal and iron.
Ironically , their presence, in effect, sharpens
inequity .
In a speech in 2006, India' s Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh observed that Naxalism is
India' s prime security threat. Many Indians are
appalled that he would grant the movement such
a high-priority position. They see Naxalism as a
primitive, peasant rebellion based on an out-
moded ideology that has no room in an India of
soaring economic growth, Bollywood dreams, and
call centers. Even so, according to the BBC, more
than 6,000 people had died up until 2010 in the
ongoing strife.

The Naxalites

The term “Naxalite” comes from the village name of
Naxalbari in West Bengal, where the movement
originated around 1967. The Naxalites are a group
of far-left, radical communists who support Maoist
ideology . The Naxalites claim to fight poverty and
injustice while providing poverty-stricken villages
with facilities and services that the federal and state
governments are unable or unwilling to provide.
For example, they have installed wells and electric
lines, and built houses and roads in some areas.
However, they act with force and anyone who
denies them is brutalized and murdered. Of the few