Press Statement issued by Shri L.K. Advani

Leader of the Opposition (Lok Sabha)
At a press conference in Bilaspur (Chhattisgarh) on April 23, 2006

Today, I conclude my journey in Chhattisgarh, which I entered from Maharashtra on April 21 as part of the 35-day Bharat Suraksha Yatra. I am overwhelmed both by the magnitude and enthusiasm of the response that the Yatra evoked in this state. This was evident not only in the three big meetings I addressed in Rajnandgaon, Raipur and Bilaspur, but also in over a dozen rousing roadside receptions all along the route. Right from Wagh Nadi on the Maharashtra-Chhattisgarh border to Bilaspur, it was an uninterrupted human chain. I sincerely thank the people of Chhattisgarh, state unit of the Party headed by Shri Shiv Charan Singh, and Chief Minister Dr. Raman Singh and his colleagues for this.

Yesterday, I had to take a five-hour break from the Yatra in order to rush to Mumbai, where my colleague and Party general secretary, Shri Pramod Mahajan, has been hospitalized after an attack on his life. I join all my Partymen and others in praying for his early recovery.

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Before, I embarked on the Bharat Suraksha Yatra, jointly with my Party president Shri Rajnath Singh, I had stated in a press conference in New Delhi on April 4 that the principal aim of this undertaking is to educate the people about the multiple threats to "Bharat Suraksha". Topping the list was the threat to India’s national security from jehadi terrorism and left-wing extremism.

Since, I am in Chhattisgarh, I wish to focus my comments on the threat of left-wing extremism (commonly known as naxalite violence), of which this state has become a major target. Recently, while addressing a conference of chief ministers of six states most affected by naxalite violence, Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh has called this menace as "the biggest threat to India’s internal security".

When the threat is so menacing as this, I am both dismayed and alarmed at the failure of the UPA government to educate the people of India about the ideological basis of left-wing extremism, its nature of operation, its international connections and the crimes against humanity perpetrated by it around the world. I do not expect the Communist parties to do this, since the ideological genesis of the CPI(ML) and its various factions such as the People’s War Group and MCC is the same as that of the CPI and the CPI(M). But I find it unforgivable that the Congress party, which is its main constituent the UPA, is doing little to educate the people about the "bio-data" of left-wing extremism – both in India and worldwide.

From my journalistic days I recall here the concerns that were frequently expressed by Sardar Patel and Govind Vallabh Pant (both were Union Home Ministers) on the dangers inherent in the communist ideology. Indeed, one of the best speeches I have heard in Parliament was that delivered by Pant in reply to veteran communist leader S.A. Dange.

Naxalites are endeavouring to establish a "Red Corridor" starting from Nepal border and extending southwards to Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, where they are challenging the rule of the Indian State with their murderous campaign. Their ultimate aim is to overthrow the democratic system in India and replace it with communist dictatorship, of the kind that prevailed in erstwhile Soviet Union (under Stalin), China (under Mao Zedong), Cambodia (under Pol Pot) and in other former communist-ruled countries. It must be noted here that in each of these three countries, communist extremism was responsible for some of the worst genocides in the history of mankind. Experts have estimated that together communist mass killings in these three countries account for nearly half of all deaths by atrocity in the 20th century.

Under Joseph Stalin, who ruled the Soviet Union with an iron fist from 1924 to 1953, nearly 20 lakh died in gulags, executions and inner-party purges. Nearly 20 lakh people reportedly died due to "unnatural causes" during the so-called "Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution" (1966-76) in China, which was unveiled by Mao Zedong himself. Over 40 lakh people were detained and investigated. The Cultural Revolution was characterized by political zealotry, purges of intellectuals, and the worst social and economic chaos in modern Chinese history. Another 20 lakh people died earlier in what is probably the worst man-made famine in human history, the result of fanatical policies of China’s communist government.

In addition to killing people within China and inside the Communist party, Maoists also sought to export the "revolution" to other countries, including India. The worst victim of this was Cambodia, where between 1975-1980, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime turned the country into a “Killing Field”. More than 20 lakh people were killed in this small country, which had a population of only 80 lakh people. The mass murder of nearly one-fourth of the country’s population was a human catastrophe rarely paralleled in human history.

It is rightly said that "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." India must wake up to the catastrophic consequences of letting naxalism go unchecked. As is already clear, communist extremism not only endangers India's national security and our democratic system, but also our precious cultural and spiritual heritage. The rabidly anti-Hindu propaganda of naxalites must

be noted in this context.

I therefore call upon the Congress party to shed its soft and capitulationist approach towards naxalism, guided solely by anti-BJPism and narrow vote-bank considerations.