Naxalism, Binayak Sen and Kejriwal

Does she look like a terrorist?

I belong to Doordarshan generation who grew up on the staple diet of news @9pm by then familiar faces of C V Raman, Gitanjali Iyer, Rini Simon, Salma Sultan, Manjari Joshi etc. The term 'Naxalites' was very much in use then and has become more common now. Media or govt never made any effort to educate public and discuss this issue as this would have helped in highlighting or may have resulted in public getting sympathetic towards them.

Naxalism or naxalwaad, is a term derived from a West Bengal town called Naxalbari. In simpler terms it means 'militant communism' or 'communist insurgency'. The movement has started from West Bengal but now it has spread to several other states including Chattisgarh, Maharashtra, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh.

The one commong factor in all naxalite affected areas is that they all are poor areas with minimum or no development. Media still avoids this topic and it seems that some kind of censorship is there. My perception of the whole issue changed when I was discussing this with a good friend of mine (Uttam Rawat) and he told me that 'naxals' are mainly tribal people who have lost their land to landlords or govt and are left with no other option to raise arms to fight for their rights, their primary targets are not the general public but the govt officials and politicians (although this has not been the case all the times).

The genral perception (all naxals are terrosrists) is not entirely true however this is what the general public think and when someone like Kejriwal comes out in support of Dr Binayak Sen http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binayak_Sen, the hell breaks lose. Majority of the detractors wouldn't even know that Binayak Sen is a paediatrician who helped tribals for many years (a job which should had been done by the govt). I am not coming out in full or outright support of Dr Sen as I am not privy to all the evidences or documents related to his sedition case, the fact that 'supreme court' has granted him a bail from his life sentence, raises question about the sentence given at the first place. Even after going through pages on internet, I have not found any statement by Kejriwal with regards to naxalites or their struggle, but the propagandists think that they can discredit him by doing this.

My questions to all those propagandists are:

1. Do they know as why 'naxals' are fighitng?
2. Do they know what Dr Sen was doing in forests?
3. Are any talks going on or any efforts have been made to talk to 'naxals'?
4. What will they do, if govt break their houses on the name of development?

In a nutshell, it's the ignorance of the masses and the blind supporters of political parties that they fail to see the truth and questions the integerity of Mr Kejriwal. I am not saying that whatever naxals do is right but both sides of stories must be heard. Tribals and poors are also citizens of India and have a right to be heard. Stop maligning Kejriwal, Binayak Sen and Kishenji, maybe they did what was right in that situation.