Boycotts and Violence

Sumanta Banerjee ([email protected]) is best known for his book In the Wake of Naxalbari: A History of the Naxalite Movement in India (1980). The Maoists want a provision in the electoral rules to arm the voter with the right to reject a candidate, but if the voters are granted such a provision, will they allow them to participate in the elections, or still insist on boycotting them? It is high time the Maoists recognise that the vast majority of the Indian electorate, despite their disillusionment with the present political leadership, are not going to boycott elections. The Lok Sabha elections were inaugurated with a fanfare of bomb blasts, killing of security personnel and poll officials, burning of polling stations, and a sensational hijacking of a train, where the hostages were served sattu and biscuits before being let off after about four hours! This mixed display of violence and charity was a demonstration of the muscle power of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) [CPI (Maoist)], which had given a call for the boycott of elections. By disrupting the electoral process through such acts, it managed to make its presence felt in its pockets of influence in Jharkhand, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, and a few other states. Significantly, its activists and guerrillas physically targeted only the candidates and the state’s representatives – the security forces, the poll officials – and thankfully refrained from attacking the voters who came in large numbers (often representing 50 to 60% of the electorate in these areas). The Maoist call for boycotting the elections, the party’s attempts to bring this about by large-scale attacks on the electoral machinery, and yet, the willingness of the villagers in their strongholds to queue up to cast their votes, present a peculiar web of complexities. At one level, the boycott call by the Maoist party may make sense if we follow the arguments that it has put forward in its bulletin released on the eve of the elections. Its spokesperson Azad urges us: