[Ixa]

News Online looks at the People's War Group, linked to an attack that has left 26 police dead.



The People's War Group (PWG) was formed in 1980 by a school teacher, Kondapally Seetharamaiah, in southern India.


An outlawed group, it began as an armed peasant movement that advocated revolution in the Indian countryside

It is mainly active in Andhra Pradesh state but also has a presence in Orissa, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand.

It has also developed links with other Maoist rebel groups in Bihar and Nepal.

The PWG was inspired by the Naxalbari movement of West Bengal - a student-led communist agitation of the late 1960s.

Seetharamaiah left his job at a school in Andhra Pradesh to become a left-wing activist.

He chose to follow the Maoist dictum of bringing about a "revolution from the barrel of a gun" and started recruiting men for his group.

The group then projected itself as the voice of the poor and landless and fought oppressive landlords.

But over the years, it graduated to a level where it started targeting the state and the security forces.

Turning point

The PWG enjoys a stronger presence in areas which have seen little economic development and are dominated by dalits, or those on the lower rungs of the Hindu caste hierarchy.

It draws much of its support from the landless poor. But critics say the majority of PWG victims too are poor.

The rebels, however, say they were killed because they were helping the police and security forces.

1987 was a turning point for the PWG when its activists kidnapped a group of senior bureaucrats.

The PWG also acquired sophisticated weapons and expertise in laying landmines around this time.

It declared an armed struggle against the government and demanded that an independent communist state be carved out of Andhra Pradesh and some neighbouring states.

In October 2003, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, Chandrababu Naidu, narrowly escaped a landmine attack blamed on the PWG.

Spreading links

The group declared several areas under its sway, calling them "guerrilla zones".

It still maintains several of these in the Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh, the Dandakarneya region in Chattishgarh and in Orissa.

The PWG also acquired sophisticated weapons and expertise in laying landmines around this time.

It declared an armed struggle against the government and demanded that an independent communist state be carved out of Andhra Pradesh and some neighbouring states.

In October 2003, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, Chandrababu Naidu, narrowly escaped a landmine attack blamed on the PWG.

Spreading links

The group declared several areas under its sway, calling them "guerrilla zones".

It still maintains several of these in the Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh, the Dandakarneya region in Chattishgarh and in Orissa.

MOVED

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[Eliamar]

The PWG enjoys a stronger presence in areas which have seen little economic development and are dominated by dalits, or those on the lower rungs of the Hindu caste hierarchy.

It draws much of its support from the landless poor.

It makes sense that it would enjoy a stronger presence in areas which have seen little economic development or those on the lower rungs of the Hindu caste hierarchy. Poverty creates a need to have more property be communal rather than private. Poverty breeds communalism. A person will be more likely to afford buying a house if he pays part of the payment for it and another person pays another part of the payment for it and they both share the house by living in it together.

Thus the sharing of property allows lower income people to have the same technology as higher income people but the difference is that they are sharing it while the higher income people have their property to themselves.

The PWG also acquired sophisticated weapons and expertise in laying landmines around this time.

It declared an armed struggle against the government and demanded that an independent communist state be carved out of Andhra Pradesh and some neighbouring states.

In October 2003, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, Chandrababu Naidu, narrowly escaped a landmine attack blamed on the PWG.

Landmines. Uh oh. I hope that they are keeping track of where they lay their landmines and removing them once there is a risk of innocent bystanders stepping on them. If not, I fear that they may be living by the evil "ends justify the means" concept. Under this concept, any atrocity is justified if mankind eventually benefits from it. It's pretty scary.