Union Home Minister Amit Shah has promised that he will eliminate the `Naxals’ (otherwise known as Maoists) within the next three years. He claims that his government has brought down the number of Maoist-affected districts from 96 to 45, and incidents of Naxal violence have gone down by 52% in the past ten years. At this rate of suppression and marginalization of the Maoists, he estimates that they will disappear from India by 2027. (Re: THE TIMES OF INDIA, January 22, 2024)
His claim seems to be supported by reports from the Maoist-affected districts during the recent assembly elections, which indicate a decline in popular support for the Maoists. Reports of the election campaign and the final results of the assembly elections in Chhattisgarh and Telangana indicate that the voters inhabiting constituencies there, which are officially designated as LWE (Left Wing Extremism) affected territories, have rejected the call of boycotting elections that was given by the LWE’s political party, CPI(Maoist). Neither its posters urging them to boycott the polls, nor its threats against the voters, could deter these people from casting their votes in favour of candidates of their own choice. People from the SC (Scheduled Caste) and ST (Scheduled Tribes) communities – who constitute the main base of the Maoist movement in these two states – overwhelmingly participated in the electoral process.
In Chhattisgarh, in the seats reserved for them, 42% of the SCs and 43% of the STs voted for BJP. This indicates not only the weakening hold of the CPI(Maoist) on its followers in these constituencies, but also the much larger dangerous portent of these sections of the poor gravitating towards the BJP, which is alluring them with freebies and promises of integrating them into the fold of Hindutva. This shifting trend among their followers suggest that the Maoist leaders in their campaign never emphasized the wider ideological issue of the need for a long standing struggle to change the basic socio-economic structure of the state, and instead motivated them by raising their immediate self-centred material problems only – which are now being addressed to by the BJP rulers who are satisfying them with freebies.
Similarly, in Telangana, in those areas which are designated as LWE-affected (i.e. controlled by Maoists), 48% of the SCs and STs participated in the elections. Bhadrachalam and Pinapaka in Bhadradri Kothagudem district recorded almost 80% voting. They voted for the Congress. This was a politically progressive option for them, unlike the pro-Hindutva choice of their counterparts in Chattisgarh who voted for BJP. The erstwhile followers of the Maoists in these areas of Telangana voted for the Congress, expecting that Revanth Reddy, would solve their land problems in a peaceful way instead of the violent internecine warfare and killings that the Maoists resort to.
Meanwhile, adding a feather to its cap of successful anti-Naxalite operations, the Union Home Ministry has ensured the unfurling of the Tricolor this Republic Day in those tribal villages in Bastar in Chhattisgarh and Gadchiroli in Maharashtra, which were once regarded as Maoist strongholds where such government-sponsored national celebrations were discouraged by the Maoist guerilla squads. The police IG P. Sundarraj, claimed that the latest flag-hoisting ceremony in these Bastar villages was a sign of the death of the Maoist party’s hegemony over the villagers. Attributing its death to successful police operations, he said: “The fight against Left-wing extremism has reached its final and decisive phase. We are hopeful of establishing a positive and vibrant identity in the region.” (TIMES OF INDIA, January 28, 2024). So, are the sporadic acts like the killing of paramilitary forces in Dantewala in Chhattisgarh in April 2023, sound like the parting death rattle of the Maoist movement ?
If so, we have to recognize at the same time that it is not only the police operations that have compelled the villagers to give up their allegiance to the Maoists. It is some practices followed by the Maoist guerilla squads themselves that have alienated these people.
A look at the past
Yet, till about a decade or so ago, in the years of 2008-2010 the main base of the CPI(Maoist) was embedded among these very Adivasi poor in Bastar, and the forest area bordering Chhattisgarh and Telangana, some parts of it known as Dandakaranya. A large number of them joined the party-led armed struggle to resist state-sponsored plans to take over their forests to set up industries in the name of development, which threatened their dependence on forest resources. Instead of depending on elections (which invariably brought to power a political elite that collaborated with the private industries in the exploitation of forest resources), they preferred the option of armed resistance to protect their villages from such incursions. Through their persistent resistance all through that period, they managed to stave off the implementation of such plans. They succeeded in setting up alternative power centres known as janatana sarkar (`people’s government’ – the term used by the Naxalites to describe the local administration that they had established in the villages). These centres while ensuring and protecting the rights of the Adivasi forest dwellers, also provided them with health and educational facilities.
In 2008, even the central government had to recognize the popularity of these Maoist-ruled janatana sarkars among the rural poor. An Expert Group was set up by the Planning Commission in 2006, consisting of some senior retired bureaucrats, academics and social activists as well as police officials, who visited the Red Corridor and interviewed the villagers there. They submitted an exhaustive report to the government in March 2008. In their report, the Expert Group acknowledged that “… it is a fact that in some cases the Naxalite movement has succeeded in helping the landless to occupy a substantial section of government land ….In Bihar all the Naxalite parties have attempted to assist…the landless Musahars, the lowest among the dalits, to take possession of a sizeable extent of such land… …have intervened and determined fair wage rates …” The Expert Group went on to state: “…the (Naxalite) movement has given confidence to the oppressed to assert their equality and demand respect and dignity from the dominant castes and classes.” ((Re: Development issues to deal with Causes of Discontent, Unrest and Extremism. 2008).
Some two years later, the internationally acclaimed writer Arundhati Roy visited Bastar in the forest area of Chhattisgarh in the Red Corridor, and narrated her experiences in an article entitled: Walking with the Comrades (2010). She spent several days and nights in the villages that were then controlled by the Naxalites. To her surprise, she found that some 45% of the Naxalite armed outfit PLGA (Peoples Liberation Guerilla Army) were women, who joined the movement after having suffered brutal attacks by the police. She also gave an eye-witness account of the functioning of the janatana sarkars and how they provided economic and social security to the rural poor.
In January in the same year of 2010, Gautam Navlakha, a well-known journalist and civil liberties activist, spent a fortnight in the guerilla zones of Bastar. He went into the heart of the conflict – examining every nuance in the functioning of the janatana sarkars , and the guerilla squads. He came out with a meticulously documented account of his experiences in an invaluable book entitled DAYS AND NIGHTS IN THE HEARTLAND OF REBELLION (Penguin Books. 2012). Navlakha was accompanied by the 83-year old Jan Myrdal, a famous Swedish author who gave a separate account about his own experiences in the Maoist guerilla zones in a book entitled Red Star Over India that was brought out by Setu Prakashani of Kolkata in the same year. These books constitute the most exhaustive history and prognostic analysis of the Indian Maoist movement. They narrate the achievements of the CPI(Maoist) administration, both in terms of agrarian benefits and social welfare for the rural poor, which are confirmed through extensive interviews with the villagers, both men and women.
Premonitions of a deadly future of the Maoist movement
But signs of a bleak future were also looming over the movement even in those days of its popularity. Gautam Navlakha ended his book with a note of warning. He referred to `heinous crimes committed by (Maoist) squad members’ like beheading of a trade union leader who belonged to an opposite Left party, and several other such killings of opponents carried out by kangaroo courts in the guerilla zones. He drew attention to similar acts of criminality by the Maoist cadres in Jangalmahal (forest region) in eastern India which eroded its mass base. He made a very significant comment while observing the contemporary situation there: “Today if Maoists have been virtually vanquished in Jangalmahal it is not only due to the superior war machinery of the State but in no small measure due to their own conduct which alienated sections of people with some turning against them.”
It is surprising that the popularity enjoyed by the Naxalites in certain parts of Bihar and Jharkhand that the Planning Commission Expert Group observed during 2006-2008, totally evaporated over the next two years, as evident from the `virtual vanquishing’ of the movement in the Jangalmahal area. How do you explain it ? What happened during these two years ? It was what Gautam Navlakha described as the heinous practice of reckless killings by Maoist guerilla squads which “alienated sections of people with some turning against them.” Turning to similar incidents in Bastar, which Navlakha was visiting in 2010, he made the important observation about the duties of Maoists: “If revolutionaries fight for life, they must fight honourably. Having taken root and aroused hope they cannot afford to destroy it through indiscipline, intolerance and dishonourable conduct.”
Some six years later after Gautam Navlakha’s book was published, another perceptive observer of the Maoist movement, Bernard D’Mello came out with his book INDIA After NAXALBARI: unfinished history (2018) . After a sympathetic account of the movement, at the end, Bernard came to the sad conclusion: “The movement has witnessed many setbacks, and many mistakes have been made by the revolutionaries…The Maoists are nowhere near winning over the majority of the oppressed and the exploited in rural India.”
Today, looking back at the track record of the Maoist movement in India during the last two decades, we find that the premonitions and warnings voiced by Gautam Navlakha and Bernard D’Mello have come out to be true. The tragic happenings today in what was once known as the Red Corridor (spread across the forest areas bordering the states of Chhattisgarh and Telangana in the south, and running through Orissa, Bihar and Jharkhand in the east) are a far cry from the achievements that the Maoists made there more than a decade ago. In fact, from 2011 onwards, some Maoist leaders themselves started admitting that they had lost control over their cadres. In an interview with a select group of journalists in a secret hideout, Sabyasachi Panda, the then Odisha Organizing Committee Secretary of the CPI(Maoist), admitted that many of its cadres were getting trigger-happy since “those joining the movement do not know its objectives….the organization (i.e. CPI-M) does not have the strength to give these cadres proper perspective about the revolution…not much attention is being paid towards [orienting] cadres.’ (Re: THE HINDU. February 2011). Panda wrote several letters to the top brass of his party pointing out at the dangerous trends. But instead of correcting the mistakes, the CPI(Maoist) leadership expelled him from the party in 2011.
Some three years later, describing the situation in the party’s base area in Chhattisgarh, the central committee of the CPI(Maoist) had to admit that “the intensity and expanse of the resistance of the PLGA (People’s Liberation Guerilla Army) and people decreased; non-proletarian trends increased in party and the PLGA, recruitment decreased; [the] number of people leaving the party and PLGA increased.” (Re: THE HINDU, March 12, 2014). In February that year, a journalist Ashutosh Bharadwaj, in the course of his investigation, reached the forests of Abujhmaad in Chhattisgarh, and spent 23 days in the camps of the Maoists, observing the violence as well as idealism, and the deceit that marked the operations of the guerillas there. In an extremely well-documented and movingly sensitive account (published in THE SUNDAY EXPRESS, May 3, 2015) he acknowledged that the “Maoists freed the tribals from the excesses of forest guards and patwaris , educated them about their rights..” A woman activist 30-year-old Ranita who was put in charge by the party to oversee the local village councils in the Maoist controlled zones said: “The party has done a lot for women….”, and then added: “Remember the Delhi gang rape ? You will never hear about such incidents here.”
But at the same time, Ashutosh Bharadwaj noted that by imposing on them the party’s discipline, the tribal cadre was “forced to shun his family, gods and ghotuls (community centres),” leave his home and join the underground.
The only major anti-state operation carried out recently by the Maoists, which perhaps could earn some support from the oppressed tribals, was their offensive in Chhattisgarh’s Dantewala in April 2023, where they killed ten personnel of a paramilitary unit which had earned notoriety among the inhabitants of the area for their oppressive behavior. As for the rest of their acts, they amount to personal vindictiveness against their local neighbours. Their leaders and armed squads have brought down the movement to the level of the criminal underworld “through indiscipline, intolerance and dishonourable conduct,” and are “nowhere near winning over the majority..” – to quote Gautam Navlakha and Bernard D’Mello.
Present operations of CPI(Maoist) groups
The Maoist groups which are still operating in the fast dwindling areas of their influence in the territories bordering Maharashtra, Telangana and Chhattisgarh, have degenerated into gangs of extortionists, who survive by threatening road-building contractors with planting IED landmines if they do not cuff up money, or wreak vengeance upon villagers who do not accede to their personal demands. Incapable of confronting the armed goons of Bajrang Dal and other Hindutva militant outfits (which pose the main threat to democracy), the Maoist armed squads are carrying out petty acts of vengeance against their local rivals in their villages. To take some of the latest incidents, in Chhattisgarh’s Kanker, a villager Ramsu Kachlam who happened to be a sarpanch, was sentenced to death by a kangaroo court by the Maoists in the forests, and was killed by their armed squad. In another village, Kandadi (near the Maharashtra border), the Maoists killed three villagers because they attended an election rally of Narendra Mody’s. (Re: Times of India. December 2, 2023). A day later, on December 3, in a village in Gadchiroli in Maharashtra (a district designated as LWE), Maoists picked up Chamra Madavi, who at one time was their arms supplier, and strangled him to death, leaving behind a handwritten note in Hindi accusing him of being a police agent. (Re: Times of India. December 4. 2023) .
That the Maoists are losing their base is also evident from cases of growing surrender of their cadres, who are escaping from the hard underground life which they have to cope with in the forests, by responding to the alluring appeals of the government which is offering them cash payment and promising them jobs.
The trajectory of the leadership of CPI (Maoist) – from ideological commitment to expertise in explosives
When reviewing the recent developments in the Maoist movement as described above, it is important to analyze the changes that had taken place in the nature of its leadership during the last four decades. To start with, in 1980 a veteran Communist leader with experience in mass movements, Kondapalli Seetharamiah (1919-2002) formed the CPI(ML) PWG (People’s War Group) in Andhra Pradesh, which initiated a phase that combined armed struggle planned from the underground, with mass movements organized at the over ground public space. This galvanized the oppressed poor and empowered them with striking capacity to win their rights through legal means also. Seetharamiah, as the general secretary of the CPI(ML) PWG led the movement till 1992, after which he was expelled by his opponents in the party on some flimsy ground of ideological deviation.
Kondapalli Seetharamiah was succeeded by Muppala Lakshmana Rao (known as Ganapathi) as the general secretary of the party. As for his political background, he was ideologically drawn to the Maoist movement during his days as a science student, and later as a college teacher in Karimnagar in Andhra Pradesh. Ganapathi led the movement for twenty five years from 1992 till 2017. It is significant that during these two decades of his leadership the movement attracted attention and earned reputation both at home and abroad. In November 2018, he was succeeded by Nambala Keshava Rao (known as Basavraj). According to both the police and inside sources in the Maoist movement, Basavraj’s speciality is in making and handling of explosives. This explains the rise in the use of landmines in Maoist operations in Chhattisgarh and other areas in recent times. The guerillas plant them on roads, hoping that they will explode when police jeeps and trucks pass through them. But the police intelligence people are one up above them, alert enough to inspect the roads before any convoy is allowed, and remove the landmines. Not so fortunate are the common pedestrians, mainly villagers, who unaware of the explosives, tread on them and lose their lives. In fact, more civilians have been killed by the landmines planted by the Maoists, and few policemen have been known to have been affected. Thus at the end, it is the common innocent people who are becoming victims of Maoist operations.
Without sounding pompous, I may point out that some fourteen years ago, in an article `End of a Phase` in Economic and Political Weekly, (November 13, 2010) I sounded the warning in these words: “…the indiscriminate violence of the CPI(Maoist) is repelling civil society and alienating its peasant supporters. This makes it easier, and plausible, for the Indian state to stamp out popular protests by unleashing a reign of terror that is more formidable….than the noisy violence of the Maoists.” It is sad to find that the Maoist leadership has not learnt from past mistakes, and is still continuing on the same suicidal path, inviting the `more formidable…reign of terror’ by the Indian state, which it is incapable of resisting.
Time for `Two steps backward’
The above developments have also been accompanied by the dwindling number of their ranks, many of whom being killed by security forces, some surrendering to the police, being allured by offers of monetary rewards, and others leaving the forests to go back to their homes in search of security. These trends indicate (i) the CPI(Maoist) leadership’s alienation from the people; (ii) popular resentment against their activities; and (iii) their fast evaporating base in the forests of Chhattisgarh, Telangana and the border areas of Gadchiroli in Maharashtra.
It is time for the CPI(Maoist) leadership to introspect and think about the need for revising their strategy. The current existentialist and circumstantial pressures – both from the state and from within their ranks and followers – require them to adopt a flexible strategy.
Way back in the early 1900s, Lenin advised his cadres to take `two steps backward’ in times of crisis, as a strategic retreat from direct confrontation with the ruling powers that would otherwise wreak havoc on them. Mao followed his advice when he resorted to a military retreat by his Red Army (known as the Long March) from the advancing Kuomingtan forces all through 1934 and 1936.
But while Mao had a Yenan to retreat to, the present day Indian Maoists have no place in India where they can find shelter if they are ousted by the police from their forest hideouts in Chhattisgarh, Telengana and other neighbouring states. They had remained satisfied all these years with their dominance over the tribal poor in these areas, and failed to expand their influence outside by refusing to join popular struggles that were taking place – like the Narmada Banchao agitation, human rights movement and other regional demonstrations of adivasi and dalit self-assertion. By joining these mass movements, the CPI(Maoist) could have gained allies from outside their restricted fold. These allies would have rallied to their defence now when they are facing a ruthless offensive by the state. The Maoists today stand totally isolated, with no Opposition parties willing to shred a drop of tear to sympathize with them.
What can be the way out for the CPI(Maoist) to overcome the crisis that it is facing – mainly due to the ruthless oppression unleashed by the state, but also partly caused by its own mistakes and misdeeds that have alienated them from the people ? How can its leaders survive and save their cadres ? It is time to stop pressing the accelerator and shift to the reverse gear. A respectable face-saving device can be one way.
Following Lenin’s advice and the strategy of retreat adopted by Mao – whose name they swear by as a religious `mantra’ – the Indian Maoist leaders can offer a proposal for peace talks with the government, promising withdrawal of their armed struggle (which anyway is on the decline, as enumerated earlier) in exchange of release of their cadres and departure of security forces from the villages which are designated as LEA (Left Extremist Affected) areas, where poor villagers, who are uninvolved in the conflict, face regular harassment by these forces. By making a public announcement on these lines, the CPI(Maoist) will gain respectability among vast sections of our people, including intellectuals and liberal-minded politicians. It will also be accepted as a partner in mainstream politics.
History of negotiations between Maoists and the government
The model of a peaceful end to the conflict between two political groups through negotiations that is described above, was exactly sought to be implemented in November 2002, through mediation under the auspices of a neutral organization – the Andhra Pradesh-based Committee of Concerned Citizens. Consisting of eminent people like the retired IAS officer S.R. Sankaran, leaders of human rights movement like K.G. Kannabiran and Professor G. Haragopal, academics like Professor K. Jayashankar, former Vice-chancellor of Kakatiya University, the Committee mediated between the then Maoist PWG (People’s War Group) and the Andhra Pradesh government, by bringing both on the negotiation table. It was agreed that the Maoists would stop their operations in exchange of a guarantee from the state government that it would on its part stop anti-Maoist operations. Following the negotiation, while the PWG declared cease fire, the government failed to keep its promise. Taking advantage of the cessation of armed confrontation by the PWG, as agreed to earlier, the government unleashed its security forces on the PWG, catching unawares their cadres (who having been reassured of safety under the agreement, had stopped being cautious) and killed them. As a result of this act of betrayal, the PWG resumed its armed struggle.
Coming down to the present situation, an end to the current conflict again depends on the sincerity of both the two forces facing each other across the fence – the Indian state and the Maoists. The Indian state appears to be determined to continue the conflict to the end, hoping to flush out the Maoists from their base areas through military operations, even at the risk of indiscriminately killing common villagers in those areas. Some of the recent `encounter killings’ reported by the police have turned out to be the murder of innocent Adivasi villagers who went out to collect forest produce that were a source of their livelihood, but were suspected as Maoists by an ill-informed and paranoid police force. The villagers identified the dead bodies as those of their own kith and kin who had nothing to do with Maoists.
As for the Maoists, they also appear to follow the same path of a fight till the end that has been adopted by the Indian state. They are determined to carry on their futile war, even at the risk of endangering the lives of these villagers, exposing them to the state’s military operations. Instead, they can follow the strategy adopted by their comrades in Nepal – who headed by the Maoist leader Prachanda withdrew armed struggle and chose to stand for elections – a strategy that not only helped them to emerge as a powerful political force in Nepal, but also brought relief to the Nepali people from the sufferings that they had to undergo during the long years of civil war. Even in India, a section of the Maoists who at one time took to arms have formed the CPI(ML) party under the leadership of the late Vinode Mishra and now headed by Dipankar Bhattacharya, has joined the parliamentary mainstream. They have been able to send their representatives from Bihar (where they enjoy popularity among the rural poor) to the Lok Sanha, where they fearlessly articulate the demands of the poor and oppressed of their state, and have often succeed in gaining some concessions.
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But then, can we expect this alternative strategy of diplomatic temporary retreat from the present leaders of the Indian CPI(Maoist) ? Given the caliber of its present leaders, as described above, we hardly expect them to rise up to the occasion. They appear to be a bunch of stubborn ostriches burying their heads in the dry sands of an outmoded and anachronistic tactics of so-called Maoism – which is inapplicable in present day India. They are experts only in making bombs and exploding them – and that also in an inexpert way – which instead of targeting the police, kill innocent people. The explosives will soon implode within their party, putting an end to their actions that betray the cause of Communism.
Sumanta Banerjee is a political commentator and writer, is the author of In The Wake of Naxalbari’ (1980 and 2008); The Parlour and the Streets: Elite and Popular Culture in Nineteenth Century Calcutta (1989) and ‘Memoirs of Roads: Calcutta from Colonial Urbanization to Global Modernization.’ (2016).
