Suspected Maoist rebels stormed a police post in the heavily forested center of India early Thursday morning, killing nearly 50 officers and their recruits from a village militia. The attack was one of the biggest since the resurrection of armed leftist rebellion in the last several years.
According to the government, Maoist rebels are present in pockets of nearly half of India’s 28 states. They are largely entrenched in the forest belt, which is rich in natural resources like timber and iron ore but home to some of the poorest communities of indigenous people. Nearly 900 people were killed in the Maoist conflict in 2005, according to the most recent available official government statistics.
In central Chhattisgarh State, where the attack took place, the conflict has turned ever more brutal in the past two years with the emergence of an anti-Maoist counterinsurgency force made up of armed villagers and known as the Salwa Judum.
Hundreds of its young men and women, barely trained, have joined state law enforcement agents as so-called special police officers. In remote rural corners of India, particularly in conflict zones like Chhattisgarh, police ranks are woefully understaffed, and isolated police posts are among the rebels’ favorite targets.
Dozens of those special police officers were killed Thursday when rebels ambushed a makeshift police post with gasoline bombs and other explosive devices near the town of Bijapur around 2 a.m., said Rajinder K. Vij, an inspector general of police in Chhattisgarh State, when he was reached over the telephone. Among the 49 killed, the Indian Home Ministry said in a statement, a vast majority were special police officers. Twelve more people were wounded.
Sort of dissonates you're traditional thinking, right?
Read on:-
Because the Image of Mahatma Gandhi and the ultimate success of his nonviolent methods have dominated western views of the movement for India's independence, many believe that India achieved its freedom without resorting to violence. In fact, violent resistance was preached and practiced throughout the independence movement and had a significant effect on its course and outcome. Gandhi himself was forced to acknowledge the sincerity of revolutionary terrorists. He claimed to admire the patriotism of the terrorists, though he had "no faith whatsoever in their method." Most scholars agree that the existence of terrorism made it easier for Gandhi's nonviolent movement to accomplish its goals.
Violence in the form of terrorism was a significant aspect of Indian resistance to British rule in 1900-47 despite the widespread impression that Mahatma Gandhi's nonviolent strategy dominated the independence movement. Political terrorism developed first in Bengal in the early 20th century and was then disseminated elsewhere in India.
(Source)
Amazing what you don't learn at school.
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