Raipur: Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday said the country needs to get rid of the “destructive” communist ideology at the earliest and appealed to Naxalites to lay down their arms, assuring them a red carpet from the government.
Addressing a conclave titled ‘Chhattisgarh@25 Shifting The Lens of Organiser Weekly’ in Nava Raipur, Shah said the Maoist problem cannot be linked to the lack of development or considered merely as a law-and-order issue.
“Left-Wing Extremism is an ideology-driven challenge,” he added.
Shah said the people of India should understand the truth of this ideology.
“Wherever communists remained in power, they could not bring development. Communist ideology is an ideology indicative of destruction, and the country is required to get rid of it immediately,” he added.
Shah said the communist ideology is no longer present in democratic politics.
“It does not exist in Tripura and Bengal (both of which had several communist governments in the past). In Kerala (currently ruled by the CPM-led LDF), it is surviving to an extent; however, people have started the change from Thiruvananthapuram (referring to BJP winning civic polls in the Kerala capital),” he added.
Shah appealed to Maoists to lay down their arms, saying the government doesn’t want to fire a single bullet and will welcome those who surrender “with a red carpet”.
Mounting a strident attack on Left Wing Extremism, he said the failure to correctly assess the Maoist problem would amount to injustice to future generations.
Some thinkers have spread the misconception that the Maoist problem is linked to development and that it is an issue of law and order, Shah added.
He cited development data and statistics of the 1980s, when the Maoist problem emerged and spread in areas in Telangana, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, especially Bastar, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha’s border districts, to drive home his point.
“At that time, there were more than 100 districts more underdeveloped than Bastar. If the root cause of the problem is development, then when the problem grew, why did it not grow in those 100 districts that were more underdeveloped than Bastar? Some people call it a law-and-order issue. I do not agree with this either,” he said.
Before the emergence of the Maoist problem, Bastar’s law-and-order statistics were much better than those of many districts of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, Shah pointed out.
“This is not linked to law and order and development. I can debate with anyone and prove with facts and evidence that this is an ideology problem. Those who say there is no ideological problem should explain why this movement was named Maoism. Because within this ideology lies the belief that solutions to problems emerge from the barrel of a gun,” he said.
This ideology is not in keeping with the spirit of the Indian Constitution, in which the solution to every problem emerges through debate and democracy.
“They (Communists and Naxals) handed weapons to poor tribal youth and raised the slogan of a Red Corridor from Tirupati to Pashupatinath. And for four-and-half decades, they blocked development in the region,” he said.
Shah said he has no hesitation in saying that if Bastar was not affected by the Maoist problem, it would have been the most developed district in the country.
“After 10 years, look at Bastar. It is going to become the most developed tribal region,” Shah asserted.
Hailing the fight against Naxalism, he said 90 per cent of the area influenced by them had become free and the menace would be uprooted completely by March 31.
