Interview

From ‘‘Red Hunt’’ to ‘‘Green Hunt’’

[Andhra Pradesh Public Security Act, 1992—Revolutionary Democratic Front (RDF), a front organisation of Communist Party of India (Maoist)—declared as unlawful association—notification—issued.
In exercise of the powers conferred by sub-section (1) of section 3 of the Andhra Pradesh Act 21 of 1992, the Government of Andhra Pradesh declared the Revolutionary Democratic Front (RDF), as an unlawful association for its being an alleged frontal outfit of Communist Party of India (Maoist) in August, 2012. Indiensolidaritet, however, spoke with G N Saibaba, Joint Secretary of RDF, in Sweden, before the promulgation of BAN, in April, 2012, to get an overview of the ongoing war by the Government of India, on its own people. We publish below some edited excerpts :]

The Operation Green Hunt is highly orchestrated and well planned military campaign against the people of India. This operation is modelled by the Indian state and the imperial forces led by the US along the line of what was called the Red Hunt in the 18th century in North America. Through the Red Hunt campaign, the land of indigenous tribal people in that continent was usurped and violently taken over by the European explorers and invaders. They also planned and executed the systematic elimination of the tribes of Red Indians who chose to resist this genocide. The history of the US makes it clear that this process of extermination of an entire population of indigenous people in North America was termed as Red Hunt. The invading Europeans believed that a good Red Indian is a dead Red Indian. The Red Indians had to be annihilated to establish the country which came to be called the US. There was no place for the tribal people in this New World created by the colonial explorers from Europe. Thus the country called US was constructed on the dead bodies of the Red Indians. Very much the same concept of annihilation and extermination of an entire population operates in this military campaign called Operation Green Hunt. The ruling classes of India call it Green Hunt for two reasons. Firstly, the military experts, strategists and authors who are on the payroll of the Indian state say that the hunt—or in more political terms the Indian state's war on people—is taking place in the greenest regions of the Indian subcontinent. Central India and Eastern India have high hills and expansive forests, and is one of the greenest areas of the subcontinent. From the perspective of environmental concerns, one can call this the lungs of the earth. The ecosystem of this region consisting of mountains, forests, rivers, minerals, vulnerable ecology—they sustain life on earth and in this sense are the protectors of all of human beings. This is one of the very few regions of the world which have still remained untouched by capitalism and therefore are very important for people’s survival as well as for the earth to survive. So it is in this green region that the Operation Green Hunt is being conducted. If successful, one can well imagine that this operation will turn greenery into barrenness. By forcibly evicting or exterminating the tribal people and thereafter facilitating the entry of multinational, private and government corporations, this war will destroy the very lungs and threaten people’s existence itself. So one can very well imagine the self-destructive nature of this Green Hunt.

Secondly, at another level the security analysts claim that Operation Green Hunt is termed so because the revolutionary fighters wear olive green uniform and are the targets of this hunt. But this mode of thinking too reflects the same 18th century ideology behind the Red Hunt in the US. It is interesting to note that in September-October 2009, one of the ministers in the Indian government who is leading this Operation Green Hunt went to Afghanistan and the US and soon after his return announced this Operation Green Hunt. He did not explicitly term it Operation Green Hunt. He said it is a paramilitary operation. Later the same minister denied that there is anything called Operation Green Hunt. But lower level officers in each of the regions where this operation is being conducted exposed his lie by frequently referring to Operation Green Hunt. Government of India still denies it by saying that there is no Operation Green Hunt. The reason for that denial is not difficult to see. In 2009 when the Indian interior minister announced this operation there was a massive protest from the intellectuals and the democratic forces from all over India. They immediately withdrew the nomenclature, though the operation has continued with ever greater intensity in different parts of India from then till now. Nevertheless, the resemblance of India's Operation Green Hunt and US's Red Hunt goes deeper than just the name—in intent, purpose and intensity they are very much similar. "Mr Chidambaram's war" (the interior minister), an essay by Arundhati Roy describes how Operation Green Hunt has three objectives : 1. Occupy 2. Dominate 3. Hold. If one goes to the website of the India's interior ministry one can see these words. It is interesting to note that it is the same terminology that the US is using to describe its strategy in Afghanistan. It doesn't matter whether Indian state acknowledges or denies the term or the war it is waging on the people because the war is there on the ground. The entire people of India call it Operation Green Hunt.

Progressives understand Operation Green Hunt as a "war on the people of India" as well, and this is the main focus of the campaign. The ruling classes may play as much with words, but the truth is that it is a "war on the people of India". What is this war about? The US and other imperial powers from European Union have sent military forces to Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and other places and are fighting aggressive wars of occupation against the people of these countries. In India too the they have the same designs as in Afghanistan and Iraq, and elsewhere, i.e., to grab all the natural resources, be it natural gas, petroleum, bauxite, coal or any other available resource. They have not yet sent in their military forces to India, even though Uncle Sam and his allies are aiding the Indian government with military strategists, army generals, intelligence input, weapons, surveillance equipment, and so on. These warmongers think that these resources which belong to the people of India can be grabbed without directly involving themselves in a war. This is because Indian rulers are completely subservient to the US and its allies and are fighting this war on behalf of them. The Indian government is fighting a war for the US and European powers and others by .using the army of India and the paramilitary of India. The servile Indian rulers are sending their own army against their own people.

The Indian government, the rulers of the country and India's big corporations too are eagerly playing to the tune of America with a hope of earning some crumbs as spoils of war thrown at them. It is shameful for all the citizens of India to see that the army and paramilitary forces, which are supposed to protect Indian "sovereignty" and the Indian people's freedom are being used to completely sell-out India's "sovereignty" and to kill poor Indians in millions through genocides and massacres.

So it is a strange thing for the people in this part of the world, but this is the reality today. The campaign for the poorest of the poor in India who are fighting and resisting the neo-liberal onslaught is important to the people all over the world because the fight of the Indian poor people is not merely to defend themselves. It is against hegemonism and against the multinationals. This is a fight not to save the people of any particular country, but to save humanity and the entire earth, the only known place for human existence which is threatened by monopoly capital. There is a larger reason for unity and a larger ground for solidarity. Therefore the solidarity across the borders and the building of a common fight is something that is the need of the hour.

The solidarity movement for the Indian peoples' struggles which is to be internationally established is very important and has the same significance today as the solidarity movement for the people of Vietnam during the sixties and seventies and for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan in the past decades. The Indian government's war on the people is planned in a large scale and involves carefully planned genocides of the indigenous people of India who constitute a population which is larger than the population of Germany and Sweden put together. It is the indigenous people in the eastern and central India—the adivasis—who are targeted by the Indian rulers with active aid from the imperial forces and the corporate sector. The biggest of the corporate houses from Europe and the US have deep interests in this area. But they know that their interest will not be served unless the people, hundreds of millions of people, are removed from their ancestral land. Not coincidentally, these areas are also the areas which figure among the strongest resistance struggles in the world today. This massive war on the people by the Indian rulers together—threatens to massacre these people and as defenders of democracy and peace progressives cannot afford to allow this to happen. In the 17th, 18th and 19th century the European bourgeoisie eliminated millions of indigenous people of Africa, North and South America, Australia and New Zealand. This could happen at that time because an international solidarity of democratic forces was absent or extremely weak. But in the present, at least since the days of the Second World War, there is a conscious international democratic solidarity which effectively raised their voices against the American war in Vietnam. They supported the democratic resistance against the US military campaign in Vietnam and launched several campaigns that helped the Vietnamese people to gain strength and confidence. Similarly, an international campaign today will strengthen the resistance struggle of the people of India and will give them the confidence. They would be assured that the democratic voices of the world are with them and that the people of India are not alone in their struggle for a just society. Indeed, a new society is already taking shape in these areas of struggle in India. So is the significance of the international solidarity campaign. This is the need of the Indian people and also of the people of the democratic society at an international level. It is a historical task of the democratic forces of the world to defend and stand in solidarity with these fighting forces.

Frontier
Vol. 45, No. 13, -Oct 7-13, 2012

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