Excerpts from an interview with Swedish writer Jan Myrdal at the opening of his book Red Star over India at Kolkata Book Fair in January 2012

1. Maoist groups now extend support to people’s movements in defence of right to land and forest in tribal areas and have reoriented their politics. Does that make the movement stronger than before?

32 years ago, I visited India and at that time I knew some Maoist leaders like Chandra Pulla Reddy. He was responsible for armed groups in Andhra Pradesh at the time. My wife, daughter and I travelled with them and reported of their underground activities, which came out as a book in India. At the time Maoist groups were splintered. Chandra Pulla Reddy told me that this was due to the fact that there were no national leaders, there were all local leaders with their own movements. Today you have a unified movement. There still are different groups but you have one movement, that is a rather strong all India movement. That goes on to change the whole situation. But they are very strong primarily among dalits and adivasis. But even if they were to gain (the support) of all these groups, that would only be 25 per cent of the entire Indian population. If you go to United States of America in 1830 they brought in Congress the Indian Removal Act that was instrumental in wiping out Indians, Red Indians and aborigines from their land. These groups were made to disappear; their land was taken over or given away to settlers. Dalits and adivasis are only 25 per cent. If they disappear or are brought to disappearance, the upper class in India would not mind. What is necessary for Maoists of course is to reach out to Calcutta, for instance, with policies that are broad and reasonable.

2. Do Maoist groups continue to aim overthrowing parliamentary democracy in India? Is such a political agenda practical in the current context?

It is not so simple. If you look at suicides of poor farmers, that’s a mass phenomenon. India above a certain level is extremely nice. It (aim of overthrowing Indian state) is practical but whether it will be – that’s a different thing. Let’s say the vision is reasonable. But whether it is going to develop that way is a different thing. Remember I mentioned the peasant wars of northern Europe. In most of Europe they were lost. In Sweden and in Switzerland to a certain extent they didn’t lose where they won though not always. But it meant that serfdom was never established. You got a different society. There was extreme violence. But when the peasants won Swedish politics changed course and we got a society that was different from the rest of Europe. While the peasants in Germany were serfs, in Swedish politics they were an estate. You had four estates, aristocracy, bourgeoisie, priests and peasants. And normally the king worked together with peasants against the others. It was a different situation though not ideal. Things can happen, things can change.

3. Do you condemn the violence perpetrated by the Maoists?

If you take the violence of the revolutionary left. I saw it. Mainly dalits were hurt in villages. Women were raped, beaten up and paraded through the village. Then people’s court was held by the party where those accused of the crimes were condemned, held, and ordered to be beaten up but not killed. But the accused was killed. And in such cases there was tremendous rise of feelings among people. Violence like that has happened where annihilation theory was not very useful. Whereas, in the beginning of the 70s they annihilated individuals. That was very close to what Russian Narodniks had done. It is not an efficient way of doing a revolution. But it happened in Russia, in Italy, in Spain during the 19th century. That violence is understandable and in some cases I think is necessary. But that’s not the main thing. For instance, if you have a civil war situation violence is part of it. If you ask me do you like when people are killed, I’d say I am absolutely against it. But during World War II I became a member not only of the Communist party but of what we had in Sweden called the home guard to kill invaders. Well one can be a Tolstoyian or Gandhian and be against all violence. But unfortunately that did not help. During the Quit India movement 70 British and some 50,000 Indians killed.

4. Can one say that violence is intrinsic to Communist parties that stay in power for long?

No, no. If you take the forces they were fighting against in China they were extremely violent. The situation was extremely violent. In such cases if you get violence it is little bit difficult to say that the victims are not to defend themselves. I don’t think the answer is simple. The Communists normally don’t prefer violence, as Ganapathi said when I spoke to him. In certain cases it becomes necessary. Then you always have incidents where you can say this was not necessary. As a principle I wouldn’t say that the Maoists are extremely violent. But an armed struggle is going on. And the situation is difficult. When it comes to Communist regimes and if you take Russia the civil war was extremely long, violent and there were starvation and famine. I can say one thing that Soviet Union and other eastern states were known for censorship. And so is China today. For example, the fact that German Nazi mass murders in Soviet Union against Jews and gypsies were helped by native forces, especially in Latvia and Ukraine, was never discussed officially. They were afraid that publishing this would create new conflicts. The only one way to address this would be to talk about in a rational way. The result is that anti-Semitic violence spreading. So I think if the Naxalites were to follow that tradition of stopping discussion then that would be difficult for them.

5. How do you respond to critiques that there has been a growing disconnect between Maoists and civilians in some cases?

The disconnect is given by the situation. They are trying to overcome this of course. The situation is different in different parts. At the same time the interest of the ruling circles of course is to hold it down. When I came two-three days in ago I saw the headline in The Hindu that the Supreme Court has gone out against fake encounters. This is also interesting about India. On one hand, the government is conducting very erratic criminal killings, fake encounters. On the other hand, the same state machinery – the judiciary – is coming out against this. In a country like Chile under dictatorship you didn’t have this situation. If you want to see what is happening in India you can also go to official records.

6. What does it speak about the nature of democracy in India?

It speaks about a tradition. They took over state machinery that works in this way. Democracy is a very loaded word. It can mean anything. If you say that democracy means that the government expresses the will of the people – that of course is rubbish. You know how politics works. But it speaks something about the state structure and information in India. Some newspapers and magazines like Tehelka and The Hindu are more open than others but in India you can get a fair and reasonable picture of what is happening. The fence is on the other side. The European media don’t want to know about this.

7. How have the European media responded to recent people’s movements in India? Have the latter been adequately reported?

I don’t think it can be. There are of course small independent papers and magazines but they are very small. But there are no longer papers in a country like Sweden owned by labour unions. They are owned by monopoly capitalists. If you take the main Social Democratic papers and the main Conservative papers in Stockholm they are both owned by the same monopoly capitalist in Norway. There is a certain amount of freedom to criticise your own government and internal policies. But when it comes to bigger stories, you won’t get different opinions. If you take the formerly big left movements, the Swedish Social Democrats, the Norwegian Socialists, British Labour, French Socialists. On one hand, they are crumbling. The second thing is they are all aboard on new colonial wars. The anti-war movements do not influence the big parties. The majority of people in Sweden were against the Iraq war and we have had some of the biggest demonstrations. But that did not change the policy unfortunately. During Vietnam War, the anti-war movements in Sweden and Norway were very strong. We were so strong that we managed to change policy. They (media) do give coverage when the movement becomes large enough. For example, in 1967 on December 20 we had big demonstrations in Stockholm. The government sent mounted police and was very harsh. But we were so strong that three weeks later the government walked with us. If you take India and what is happening in Dandakaranya with the Naxalites, we tried to organise a solidarity movement with the people of India in Sweden. It is of course still not very strong. We tried to organise it very broadly. The idea is not to fight for the rights of Naxalites or even fight for new democracy but to protest war against people. Still we are very weak. Even in the best of cases it will take you long work to get to a point where the media begin to take interest.

8.What is the nature of international solidarity towards the Maoist movement in India?

We are trying to organise but we have to be clear about what we are doing. One can organise a movement – as you say – for Naxalites – but it becomes limited. But one can organise a movement against cruelty on adivasis and against the Indian people. That makes for a much larger struggle and that is necessary. I know there are small revolutionary groups in Europe that want to have it on a principle level. But that would weaken the solidarity. It would be a long and uphill struggle. Sweden is an iron ore exporting country. If it really comes to the question of iron, they (Swedish government) will show solidarity with the government and not with the people.

 

9.Where are parliamentary left parties in India headed considering that they are losing relevance?

What the CPIM did politically was in many ways similar to the European left. The Swedish left, the British Labour party for example made historical compromise with monopoly capital, big capital to carry through certain reforms. That has proved itself very dangerous in all circumstances. It can give some years of stability or development. In our countries it gave what we call a welfare state during a certain time. Today of course that is disappearing. Why they (the CPIM in West Bengal) were defeated in the election is the same reason why the Swedish Social Democrats were defeated. They made a compromise, they had got certain benefits but in the next phase they lost. The British Labour is another example.

(By Suruchi Mazumdar. Suruchi is a doctoral candidate at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.)