Assembly Should Refrain From Paying Obituary Respects To Uniformed Personnel

It is all right for Assemblies and Parliament to pay obituary tributes to their former members.

But, it is sad that they have started paying individual obituary respects to uniformed personnel died in fight against Naxalites or left-wing ultras, as on 17th has happened in Orissa Assembly.

The left-wing ultras are political revolutionaries in active pursuit of a economic philosophy that opposes capitalism. When Capitalist State uses force against them, how should they react?

This question and the answer to it has made us witness loss of lives in both the sides.

Revolutionaries have died in the hands of the state forces and perpetrators of state terror on them have also succumbed to their counter attacks.

Any loss of life in any side is a loss to our motherland and we feel extremely sorry over such losses.

In recognizing the political nature of the Naxals and/or left ultras, the capitalist state has started taking up steps for welfare of the wretchedly poor that are neglected by administration so far and looted by money lenders and/or fund hijackers under the very nose of the government, or as the Prime Minister in his Independence Day speech has confessed, by official functionaries.

So, instead of confrontation with the political ultras, the State should gain by co-operating with them to bring in a desired economic well-being of the people perishing below the poverty line and living under the mercy of fate. It is, therefore, wrong on part of the government to try to extinguish them by bullets.

This is why the police/ paramilitary/ military personnel, who are engaged to use bullets on revolutionaries of our own soil that are risking their lives for the wretchedly helpless and exploited people, do not deserve to be granted martyr status by the state. The uniformed men are paid to kill in confrontations as a duty. So getting killed in confrontations is also a part of the duty paid for. Such death cannot be a gateway to martyrdom.

If these uniformed gunmen, drawing their salaries from the state exchequer, engaged against our own countrymen by their political antagonists in power, in discharging a duty for which they are paid by the State, are respected as martyrs by our legislative houses, it would be nothing but an ugly affront to the martyrs of our country that had voluntarily joined the battle against the foreign invaders and had sacrificed their lives for the independence of our motherland.

Let the patriots brood over this matter.