New Delhi: Left Front leader Prakash Karat on Saturday said the Maoists were not his party’s “comrades in arms” and Home Minister P Chidambaram was wrong when he made that allegation.
“Far from being the CPI-M's 'comrades in arms', the Maoists have always been unremittingly hostile (to the CPI-M)," party general secretary Prakash Karat said in a statement.
"After they (Maoists) split away from the CPI-M in the late 1960s, the ultra-Left elements in West Bengal targeted the party and hundreds of CPI-M cadres and supporters lost their lives due to their depredations in the early 1970s," Karat said.
Karat said it was "amusing to see Mr. Chidambaram claiming that the CPI-M saw the Maoists as their allies in fighting the bourgeois Congress". He said Chidambaram had "chosen to ignore the history of the Naxalite/Maoist movement".
Taking a political swipe at the CPI-M, Chidambaram on Friday said: "Till the last session of parliament, CPI-M had different views of Maoists. They thought they (Maoists) were comrades-in arms fighting the bourgeois Congress. They have woken up now."
Karat refuted the home minister's claims saying they were "misplaced" and the "fact is that the earlier (United Progressive Alliance) UPA government led by the Congress was propped up for four years with the support of the CPI-M."
Maoists are not terrorists
Karat said Maoists "cannot be equated with the Laskhar-e-Taiba or the Jaish-e-Mohammed" militant groups.
"We have always held that the Maoists have to be fought ideologically and politically apart from resort to firm administrative measures when they indulge in violence," CPI-M general secretary Prakash Karat said in a statement.
"The Maoists cannot be equated with the Laskhar-e-Taiba or the Jaish-e-Mohammed. The fact that Home Minister (P. Chidambaram) has offered to talk to the Maoists, if they stop the violence, itself recognises this difference," Karat said.
Criticising the laws that have "draconian provisions", Karat said such laws "have been used against hundreds of innocent people, mainly from the Muslim community in the name of fighting terror".
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