IF you happen to visit the flaming fields of Bihar, you will perhaps hear a landlord or a well-off peasant saying : ‘It’s horrible ! The harijans have gone astray. The lives and property of the peasants are at stake. It’s all Naxalite menace’. And if you are fortunate enough to meet a minister or a government official, he will tell you, ‘These are all extremist activities. The extremists are taking the law into their own hands.’ He will further add, ‘Yes, it’s also a socio-economic problem. The government is aware of that and measures are being taken. But Naxalites will be sternly dealt with.’ Many small and middle landowners, particularly those belonging to the upper castes who do not till their lands themselves, also get carried away by this sort of propaganda. Liberals, ‘Socialists’, and ‘Communists’ of the CPI-CPI(M) variety, too, echo more or less the senti­ments of the rural gentry and the officials.

Now turn to the other side of the fence. You will find labouring women, ill-fed and ill-clad, sowing and singing with full vigour, ‘ab na sahab ham gulamiya tohar ...’ (no more shall your chains of slavery bind us), or your attention will be attracted to roaring voices ‘Jote boye kate dhan, khet ka malik wahi kisan’ (those who till and sow and harvest, only they are the owners of the land). And agricultural labourers and poor peasants will argue : ‘What’s wrong in it if we refuse to be oppressed and exploited, if we get organised for our rights and fight out the tyrants who have made the society a living hell ?’ They will further add, ‘Landlords and their musclemen threaten us with their guns, and the government and its police side with them and protect them. That has been our fate since ages. What alternative is left to us ? Of course, it is the Naxalites and the Kisan Sabhas who have taught us to get organised and fight out the oppressors. Don’t we have the right to self-defence and to manage and control our own affairs ?’

In fact, these two reactions reflect two diametrically opposite class positions, two diametrically opposite ideo­logies — one reflects the interests of the landed gentry and the ideology of status quo, the other mirrors the interests of the oppressed peasantry and the ideology of revolution.