Covenant with evil: Mamata can rely on Maoists as allies

What is happening in the country? We remember trainjacking in Wild West movies. The latest it was attempted was in the movie Sholay—and even that was thwarted by a brave police officer (Sanjiv Kumar) and a couple of convicts (Amitabh Bachchan and Dharmendra).
And, on top of that, the person in charge of Railways, Mamata Banerjee, is accused of being in alliance with the miscreants who took hostage the Bhubaneswar-New Delhi Rajdhani Express at Banstala Halt Station near Jhargram in West Bengal. In this context, the questions raised by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) about the trainjacking of Rajdhani Express cannot be dismissed as political sparring. CPM politburo member Sitaram Yechury has asked, “How did the train stop despite running at a speed of 110-120 kmph? How did the train slow down so early?”
Against the backdrop of Mamata’s not-very-secret ties with the Maoists, these are relevant questions. It has also been reported that she offered to negotiate the release of Maoist leader Chhatradhar Mahto. Further, for taking hostage the Rajdhani the Maoists used the People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCPA). It is a well-known fact that the PCPA was Mamata’s major ally in her campaign against land eviction in West Bengal.
In order to distance herself from the Maoists, she demanded military deployment in Maoist-affected areas of West Bengal. Her Cabinet colleague, Defence Minister AK Antony promptly rejected the demand, saying, “Whether in West Bengal or any other area, our view is that employing armed forces for internal security should be the last, the very last resort, only when the other agencies have failed. Police and paramilitary have to deal with Naxalism.” Mamata’s insistence on the use of armed forces smacks of disingenuousness as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh ruled this out a few days ago.
Meanwhile, conspiracy theories are floating. CPM central committee member Nilotpal Basu has alluded to Trinamool leader and Union Minister of State for Rural Development Shishir Adhikary’s in the trainjack. Wheels within wheels, plots and schemes, accusations and counter-accusations—this is what the Mamata brand of politics is all about. She is increasingly veering towards the ends-justify-means approach. So far, this approach has yielded rich dividends for her. Marginalised in the 2004 elections and routed in the state Assembly polls in 2006, she bounced back on a shrill anti-business, anti-development agenda. Success in the general elections this year has whetted her appetite and zeal for the post of chief minister of West Bengal. The Maoists have been a great assistance in her comeback; and she apparently believes that they can be used as tools to capture power. These guys have an ideology, (more radical than that of her archrival CPM), they have the cadre, they are not averse to violence (in fact, Maoism is all about violence, about power emanating from the barrel of the gun).
What she has overlooked, though, is the fact that the Maoists also have the nasty habit of eliminating everybody else. They do not believe in peaceful coexistence; in fact, they do not believe in the existence of anybody other than themselves. It happened in China, where the Great Helmsman liquidated all opposition. His followers tried to do the same in Nepal recently, but were checked by other forces.
For the Maoists, an alliance with Mamata is tactical and opportunistic. They will snap it at a time of their convenience. They will try to maximize their gains by their alliance with Mamata. They may end up planting their moles and sympathizers in important offices in West Bengal—the veritable Trojan Horses and sleeper cells that would wreck the system from within. The covenant with evil is not without consequences.