CHAPTER 9

Insurgency, Counter-insurgency,
and Democracy in Central India

NANDINI SUNDAR

The Naxalite movement began in India in the late 1960s as a peasant

struggle (in Naxalbari, West Bengal, hence the name Naxalite). It
represented the revolutionary stream of Indian Marxism which did
not believe that parliamentary democracy would lead to the requisite
systemic change and argued for armed struggle instead. While the
Indian state managed to crush the movement in the 1970s, causing
an already ideologically fractured movement to splinter further
(currently 34 parties by official estimates),1 in 2004 two of the major
parties, the Communist Party of India (CPI) (Marxist-Leninist)
People’s War (formed out of the merger of the People’s War Group
with Party Unity) and the Maoist Communist Center (MCC) of
India, united to form the Communist Party of India (Maoist).2 The
CPI (Maoist) is currently a significant political force across several
states, especially in rural areas where state services have been
inadequate or absent.3
Since about 2005-6, the Maoists have become the main target of
the Indian state, with thousands of paramilitary forces being poured
into the areas where they are strong, and the prime minister repeatedly
referring to them as India’s biggest security threat. As a consequence,
armed conflict is occurring across large parts of central India and is
taking several hundred lives on an annual basis. In the state of
Chhattisgarh, which is the epicentre of the war, sovereignty is
contested over large parts of terrain.

COMPETING PERSPECTIVES ON THE MAOIST ISSUE

There are three main perspectives on the Maoist issue. The first,
which is the security perspective, equates the Maoists with terrorists.
150 NANDINI SUNDAR

India’s home ministry has put out half-page advertisements in all the
national newspapers, proclaiming alongside photos of corpses that
‘Naxals are nothing but cold-blooded murderers’. This perspective,
which is held by the police-dominated home ministry as well as by
many ‘security experts’, argues that the Maoists no longer have a
revolutionary ideology and are a self-seeking group of extortionists
out to destabilize the country and impede ‘development’, by which
they mean industrialization. This perspective is blind to the history,
ideology, and actual practices of the Maoists.
The second, which is the dominant liberal perspective, epitomized
by an expert group constituted by the Indian government’s Planning
Commission, might be labelled the ‘root causes’ perspective. 4
According to this view, poverty and lack of ‘development’ (here
meaning employment), and the want of primary services like
education, are to blame for pushing people to support the Maoists.
This view ignores the absence of a Maoist movement in other poor
areas as well as questions of Maoist theory, organizational presence,
and local agency. It also ignores the fact that while the bulk of the
Maoist cadre are from adivasi or Dalit communities, middle peasants
and upper castes play a significant role, especially in leadership
positions.
The third, which is the revolutionary perspective held by the
Maoists themselves and their sympathizers, portrays the movement
as a product of structural violence. While they describe people as
forced into resistance and armed struggle, there is equally an emphasis
on active agency and sacrifice, contrary to the root causes perspective
that sees people as mainly passive victims. While long-term state
capture is an important goal that certainly influences party strategy,
in practice, the Maoists also emphasize more concrete economic and
social objectives like land distribution, drought relief, farmers debts
or caste atrocities. In particular, since 2003-4, they have posited
themselves as the only bulwark against mining and land acquisition.
This perspective blurs over the history of non-violent but militant
struggles elsewhere in India, including against mining, as well as over
the contradictions between the long-term demands of a guerrilla
struggle aimed at state capture and immediate economic benefits for
the people in whose name this struggle is being waged.
A nuanced analysis that seeks to explain the strength of the Naxalite
movement in any particular area needs to take into account several
factors. These include the specific socio-economic context; the nature
 INSURGENCY, COUNTER-INSURGENCY AND DEMOCRACY 151

of stratification; the specific political history of the area (both in terms

of parliamentary parties and social movements); the issues of agency
that explain why certain individuals join the Naxalites; Maoist and
state ideology; as well as the logics of Maoist and state militarization
which create their own momentum. Geographical factors—e.g. the
suitability of territory for guerrilla struggle—also matter. But above
all, it is questions of injustice and impunity which best explain the
overall trajectory of the Maoist movement in India.

OVERALL CONTEXT FOR THE CURRENT CIVIL WAR

The driving forces for the current civil war are sharpening inequality,
the creation of the new states of Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand in 2001
which strengthened rent seeking among the local bourgeoisie and
political actors, a liberalized national mining policy in 2003, and a
growing emphasis on industrialization, as well as Maoist unification
in 2004. Faced with growing resistance to land acquisition, militarism
has become the preferred state option to ensure rapid
industrialization.

POVERTY

Since India started liberalizing in the early 1990s, inequality has

grown. Depending on the formula, anywhere between 28-80 per
cent of Indians were below the ‘poverty line’ in 2010,5 and the latest
UNDP figures reveal acute poverty in eight states, all of which (except
for Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh) have a strong Naxalite presence.6
While the size of the Indian middle class is debated, it is commonly
estimated to account for merely some 300 million people. Meanwhile,
national newspapers report on the globally acquisitive abilities of
Indian companies,7 and the fact that India has the highest number
of billionaires in Asia.8
However, it is fallacious to argue that it is inequality, poverty, or
lack of development per se that leads to people joining the ranks of
the Naxalites (the root causes argument), or conversely, that it is
Naxalites who are impeding development (the security perspective).
While there is no doubt a strong correlation between areas of high
poverty and Naxalism, a causal link or direction has not been
established. For instance, Jhabua, in western Madhya Pradesh, has
roughly similar socio-economic and demographic indicators as
152 NANDINI SUNDAR

Dantewada in Chhattisgarh. According to the 2001 census, the

population in Jhabua is 85 per cent tribal, with 47 per cent of the
population living below the poverty line and only 36.87 per cent
literate (2001 census). But unlike Dantewada, which is the heartland
of the Maoist movement, Jhabua has been the site of a remarkable
non-violent movement for many decades now (the Narmada Bachao
Andolan), apart from other local struggles over land and forests.
Similarly, the region of Bundelkhand in central India is one of the
poorest areas of the country, and while there is a high degree of
stratification, there are no Naxalites. Furthermore, in order for people
to support the Naxalites (or any other social formation), they have
to be present, and historically, the Naxalites have not made much
headway in western India, despite the presence of a sizeable adivasi
or Scheduled Tribe population in Gujarat, Rajasthan, and western
Madhya Pradesh.9
It is also important to remember that in each of the states where
the Naxalites are present, the local configuration of power as well as
Naxalite demands vary. In states like Andhra Pradesh or Bihar, a
feudal set-up and sharp social stratification (in terms of both caste
and class) have meant that the Naxalites have been pitted against
local landlords in their defense of the poor. Meanwhile, in the adivasi-
dominated tracts of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Orissa, the main
concerns of the people have been exploitation by the government’s
police and forest departments, pitting the Maoists directly against
the state.
Security experts claim that ‘development’ is possible only once an
area is within government control, and hence ‘area domination’
through military measures is necessary before people’s rights can be
recognized. However, high-poverty areas like Jhabua and Bundelkhand
have always been within government control and nobody has
prevented the government from implanting whatever welfare schemes
it wishes. On the contrary, one often sees more welfare services being
implemented in areas under Maoist influence, if only because of their
purported usefulness in low-intensity counterinsurgency. The large
financial packages sanctioned to insurgency-affected areas by the
Planning Commission (which allocates funds between government
departments and states) may as well be seen as the success rather than
the failure of a model of armed struggle in terms of getting benefits
for people. The passage and implementation of the Scheduled Tribes
and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights)
 INSURGENCY, COUNTER-INSURGENCY AND DEMOCRACY 153

Act of 2006, which aims to provide secure land tenure to adivasis,

is officially conceded as arising out of the need to undercut the core
constituency of the Maoists.

INDUSTRIALIZATION

If poverty is the context rather than the direct cause for the growing
strength of the Naxalite movement, then the same must be said about
India’s industrialization regime, which is threatening to displace large
numbers of people without providing commensurate employment.
Industrialization provides the background not so much for
understanding why the Naxalites are active—after all, the major
struggles against land acquisition are led by non-Maoist local
campaigns, and the Maoist’s own roots lie in land reform—but instead
as a reason for why the government is interested in finishing off the
Naxalites.
The formation of the CPI (Maoist) in 2004 coincided with the
liberalization of India’s mining policy in 2003, and with the SEZ Act
in 2005, which set-up SEZs. In 2001, the formation of the states of
Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Uttarakhand also provided an incentive
for the ruling parties in these states to intervene more actively in
areas which had hitherto been relatively neglected in the larger parent
states of Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Both Chhattisgarh
and Jharkhand, states with large mineral and forest areas predominantly
inhabited by Scheduled Tribes, explicitly set out to promote
industrialization, signing a number of Memorandums of Understanding
(MOUs) with industrial houses. Several of these MOUs are suspect,
with local politicians and industrialists colluding to make quick
money.10 Occasionally, the loot becomes so glaring that face-saving
legal action is required for state legitimacy—leading, for example, to
a former chief minister of Jharkhand, Madhu Koda, being charged
by the Central Bureau of Investigation for corruption. The emphasis
on mining has made it important to vacate the areas of Maoists,
whose de facto control over the region constitutes an obstacle to
rapid industrialization and land acquisition.11 Industry associations
have explicitly supported the government’s offensive against the
Naxalites, and have called for the involvement of the private sector
in this effort.12 Predictably, these associations have also opposed a
government proposal to give tribals a 25 per cent share in mining
profits, on the grounds that a lower profit margin would adversely
154 NANDINI SUNDAR

affect investment.13 Ironically, however, while industry is opposed to

any government regulation, it is happy to have the government
acquire land on its behalf.

GOVERNMENT REPRESSION

Forcible land acquisition has been an ongoing irritant in the Indian

government’s relations with village communities, leading to often-
violent clashes in which villagers are killed by the police, who act
almost as private agents for companies.14 While these struggles are
not led by the Maoists, and are usually local campaigns with activists
taking care to keep their distance from any armed action, the repression
against the Maoists provides an occasion to arrest and harass the
activists in all these campaigns. The charge of being a Maoist
sympathizer is easily levelled, and once arrested, even without the
application of extraordinary law, legal redress takes time, effort, and
money. The protests against land acquisition have also encouraged
the Maoists to believe the situation is sufficiently ripe for them to
expand, and to exploit in order to gain support. This belief is only
strengthened when the government uses force against peaceful
protestors—even at a time when it is exhorting the Maoists to come
to dialogue.15
Above all, Maoists owe their growing support to the form and
brutality of the government counter-insurgency campaign. This has
effectively elevated a movement with local roots into one with a
national presence. In West Bengal, the People’s Committee against
Police Atrocity (PCPA), which is widely seen as close to the Maoists,
originated as a reaction to police repression after a Maoist attempt
in November 2008 on the life of the state’s chief minister. In
Chhattisgarh, government responses have taken the form of state-
sponsored vigilantism and between 2005-7, strategic hamletting. In
this phenomenon known as Salwa Judum (purification hunt) which
has carried on till 2011, the security forces and special police officers,
who are locally recruited youth, together go and burn houses, loot
property and kill people, initially in an effort to drive them into
camps, and later, simply to keep up pressure on the Maoists through
their base. Officially over 600 villages are affected. When this
boomeranged by increasing civilian support for the Maoists, New
Delhi started Operation Green Hunt in 2009. The controversial
nature of this operation—a very visible one, spread across several
 INSURGENCY, COUNTER-INSURGENCY AND DEMOCRACY 155

states—has turned some sections of Indian civil society against the

government.
Security experts often concede that state response is a critical factor
in explaining Maoist activity; indeed they place all their faith in a
military response wiping out the Maoists. But their narrative usually
centres around the so-called success story of Andhra Pradesh, which
has used a mixture of local development and a no-holds-barred police
response in which several Maoists have been killed in extra-judicial
‘encounters’ by a specially trained force called the Greyhounds. In
Bihar, on the other hand, before the crisis of September 2010 in
which the Maoists held four policemen hostage in exchange for eight
of their comrades, the trajectory has been quite different. Bihar used
to have a high incidence of Maoist-state-vigilante conflict, but during
the Rashtriya Janata Dal regime, relative quiet was bought through
a tacit understanding between the Maoists and the RJD.16 In either
state, however, agrarian crises continue to be a problem showing,
once again, both that ‘objective conditions’ do not necessarily find
expression in Maoist politics; and conversely, that it is not Maoist
presence which is impeding welfare, but the state’s own
indifference.
It is also important to note that the Maoists are not internally
homogeneous. Differences between the MCC and People’s War
Group (PWG) persist even though they have merged and cadre are
transferred between states. For example, the MCC is widely considered
more militarist and doctrinaire than the former PWG. In Jharkhand,
police have been successful in encouraging breakaway Maoist groups
like the Jharkhand Liberation Tigers, as compared to Chhattisgarh,
where not only is there a larger and more homogeneous tribal base
in the party, but the party has established much stronger roots through
its mass struggles for land and remunerative prices for forest produce.
The balance between militarization and mass politics has a variety of
spin-off effects in terms of which demands get taken up and how.

THE BATTLE OVER PUBLIC PERCEPTION

For both the government and the Maoists, proving local support is
critical. For the government, this is because its claim to being a
democracy rests on a version of social contract theory, which in turn
presumes legitimacy among the public at large. For the Maoists, local
support is necessary for a movement that claims to be fighting for
the people.
156 NANDINI SUNDAR

But it is precisely in such situations of civil war and conflict that

support can never be gauged accurately. Indeed, apart from the perils
of voicing an opinion in times of conflict and the safety-driven impulse
to under-report support for the Maoists, people themselves often do
not know what they want, because the present is so bad, and the
alternative so dim. But even taken at face value, what emerges from
media polls is a strong preference for developmental solutions over
military ones, for unconditional dialogue, and for reform of the
existing political process.17
This is especially remarkable given how hard the government has
tried to securitize the problem. Until recently, official pronouncements
on the Naxalites located the movement largely in a ‘socio-economic’
context, as not ‘merely’ a law-and-order problem, but one born out
of a development deficit.18 In the last three or four years, however,
in what Huysmans calls the performative function of security labelling,
noting that ‘the signifier “security” does not describe social relations
but changes them into security relations’,19 the Indian government
has converted the Naxalite ‘problem’ almost exclusively into a security
issue, with an ‘effective police response’ overriding all other solutions.20
Even normal development and administrative processes are
‘securitized’— as seen in the use of the Border Roads Organization
traditionally deployed in frontier areas to build roads in the heart of
India, and in the proliferation of smaller administrative and police
units.21
Much of the discourse around Naxalism in India today is akin to
what Stuart Hall identified as the creation of a ‘moral panic’ around
mugging in 1970s’ Britain:
When the official reaction to a person, group of persons or series of events
is out of all proportion to the actual threat offered, when ‘experts’ in the
form of police chiefs, the judiciary, politicians and editors perceive the threat
in all but identical terms, and appear to talk ‘with one voice’ of rates, diagnoses,
prognoses and solutions, when the media representations universally stress
‘sudden and dramatic’ increases (in numbers involved or events) and ‘novelty’
above and beyond that which a realistic approach would sustain, then we
believe it is appropriate to speak of the beginnings of a moral panic.22

This moral panic, created by the government’s response and its

amplification by the media, is primarily responsible for giving the
Maoists a visibility they did not possess earlier.
What is then at stake is the government’s image of being firm and
taking action; action which may have no direct relevance or efficiency
 INSURGENCY, COUNTER-INSURGENCY AND DEMOCRACY 157

in tackling the problem at hand. The ‘Naxalite problem’ is not so

much about violence in absolute terms, as it is a reflection of the
threat posed by Naxalites to the status quo. It is also a function of
the security establishment’s need to project a ‘threat’ that justifies
more—often unaccountable—funding and forces. In fact, states are
compensated by the federal government for any anti-Naxalite
expenses, including those expended on ‘local resistance groups’. This
gives many cash-strapped states an incentive to project a greater threat
from Naxalites than they actually pose.23
This is not to say, however, that the Maoists do not see armed
challenge as the only serious alternative to the state.24 The Maoist
fetishization of militarism is connected to their goal of capturing state
power through armed struggle, and establishing, in a slogan commonly
attributed to them, Lal Qile par Lal Jhanda (Red flag on the Red
Fort).25 The combination of Maoist self-projection as a significant
military force and government projections of them as a military threat
makes it difficult for independent observers to insist that both sides
go beyond the logic of war. While the government brands any critic
of its counterinsurgency policies as pro-Maoist, the Maoists have
declared that those who criticize their acts of violence are ultimately
‘apologists for the oppressors, in spite of their good intentions and
sincere attitude’.26

MAOIST ORGANIZATION,
MILITARIZATION AND FINANCING

The Communist Party of India (Maoist) is organized like every other

communist party, with a politburo and central committee, which
oversees various state committees or special zonal committees. These
state/zonal committees straddle existing state boundaries. For
instance, the Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee has seven
divisions under it, which include Bastar in Chhattisgarh and Gadchiroli
in Maharashtra. Below this are regional, divisional, or district
committees, area committees, and so on down to local cells in villages
or factories.
There are also various mass organizations that have units in villages.
In the Dandakaranya region, these are known as sanghams or
collectives—like the women’s organization, the seed-sowing
cooperatives, and the village defense committee. These collectives
are supervised by a visiting squad or dalam comprising some 10 to
158 NANDINI SUNDAR

15 people, which carries arms but is not primarily involved in military

action. There is a separate military wing, the People’s Liberation
Guerrilla Army, which is assisted by people’s militias (made up of
village defense committees) for specific actions.
The Maoists are estimated to have 7,300 weapons for 10,500
armed cadres nationwide, a 25,000-strong people’s militia, and 50,000
members in village-level units.27 According to police sources, they
also have ‘AK-series assault rifles, carbines, 7.62 [millimeter] self-
loading rifles, grenade launchers, mines, improvised explosive devices
and mortars’, and are manufacturing their own weapons.28 Despite
occasional police claims that Maoists get their weapons from China
or Sri Lanka, in its saner moments the security establishment
recognizes that most of this weaponry is looted from the police
themselves or from raids on government armories. The Maoists have
engaged in some major military actions—breaking open jails, as in
Dantewada and Jehanabad; looting ammunition depots and explosives
from the National Mineral Development Corporation warehouses in
Dantewada; blasting transformers; and attempting assassinations of
prominent politicians. In 2008, they ambushed and killed 38 members
of the elite Greyhound forces on the Balimela reservoir in Orissa,
while in April 2010 they killed 74 personnel of the Central Reserve
Police Force (CRPF) in the Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh. These
deaths were memorialized by the state in ways similar to those who
died in the Kargil war between India and Pakistan, with at least one
television commentator calling for a war between ‘India’ and the
Maoists.
The actual violence by the Naxalites belies the threat they
supposedly pose in military terms. Even in Chhattisgarh, the state
affected the most by government-Naxalite conflict figures prior to
the current counter-insurgency offensive suggest no need for the 16
companies of special armed police that were sent there in 1998, or
for the 10 battalions of paramilitary forces that are currently posted
there. While Naxalite killings have certainly gone up since 2005, and
especially in Chhattisgarh, this spike is seen by both sides as an
expression of retaliation against the Salwa Judum militia, and hence
cannot be used as a causal justification for counter-insurgency.
According to the Ministry of Home Affairs, there were 908 Naxalite-
related deaths in the country as a whole in 2009.29 However, much
of this data, as well as data published by the South Asia Terrorism
Portal (SATP), which are drawn from open-access sources like news
 INSURGENCY, COUNTER-INSURGENCY AND DEMOCRACY 159

reports and are widely cited, are inaccurate and misleading. For
instance, the SATP lists 518 civilians, 608 security forces, and 491
‘terrorists’ killed in Chhattisgarh between 2005 and 2010, coming
to a total of 1,617.30 However, during the initial two years of Salwa
Judum, there were also a number of people killed by security forces
and vigilantes whose deaths were simply not recorded, or they were
recorded as killed by Naxalites since state compensation is available
only to those killed by Naxalites.31 In later years, due to public
pressure, these extrajudicial killings have been recorded as
‘encounters’.
The overwhelming establishment focus on Naxalite violence also
casts into stark relief the double standards espoused by India’s ruling
parties. The Congress and the BJP have each been responsible for
the deaths of thousands of citizens.32 The BJP, especially, but not
uniquely, has several fronts which are openly engaged in vigilante
violence against the vulnerable, including artists, filmmakers, and
authors whose views are deemed unpalatable, as well as Christians,
Muslims, and others.33 The BJP’s mother organization, the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh, openly disavows India’s secular constitution.
Violence or killings alone, therefore, cannot account for the
government’s anxiety about Naxalism. What frightens New Delhi is
the fact that the violence is primarily directed against security forces
and those in power, rather than against the poor, who are already
daily objects of violence in India.
The Maoists finance their operations through what they call levies
on industries and forest contractors, enabling the rise of dynamics of
corruption, patronage, and protection. Indeed, industrialists often
work out private bargains with the Maoists. For instance, this author
was told by a surrendered Maoist from Orissa that a senior official
of the Essar Group appealed to him to allow a pipeline to pass through
his territory. This pipeline is meant to pump iron ore from mines at
Bailadilla in Chhattisgarh to Vishakapatnam port. The Essar official
said: ‘Since you are the local government here we will pay you the
same rate of royalty we pay the government.’ Given that this rate is
abysmally low (considerably less than US $1, or Rs. 27 per ton), and
given that the market rate for iron ore is US $120 (about Rs. 5,600)
per ton,34 this did not constitute much hardship for the Essar Group.
The Maoists decided to divide the Rs. 2.8 crore they got annually
between party funds and local development, but in the first year they
spent it all on roofing tiles for 60 villages. The following year, however,
160 NANDINI SUNDAR

the Chhattisgarh state unit of the Maoists objected to the mining by

Essar on the grounds that it devastated the local environment and
provided no benefit to the people of Chhattisgarh. Consequently,
the Maoist Central Committee called off the deal with Essar, and
ordered the Orissa committee to break the pipeline. The Maoists
repeatedly claim that their deals with companies and contractors do
not come at the expense of their own constituency, e.g. even when
they have a deal with a contractor, they insist on minimum wages.
However, this scarcely enables transparent alternatives to the system
of industrial capitalism.
Maoist levies (the government calls these ‘extortion’ schemes)
must, however, be placed alongside other parallel systems of informal
taxation that routinely operate without government censure. Regular
levies extracted by forest and police staff to facilitate illegal tree-felling
or tin mining are routine in mineral-rich and forested states like
Chhattisgarh. State facilitation of private accumulation is extensive,
ranging from ‘sweetheart deals’ between politicians and corporates
over disinvested public sector enterprises, or the licensing of scarce
natural resources and government contracts to government doctors
and teachers who, because of their failure to work, push people toward
private health care or tuition.35

DEMOCRACY AT WAR: INSTITUTIONAL

RESPONSES TO THE MAOIST CHALLENGE

Almost as remarkable as the coming to centrestage of the Maoists

between 2005 and 2010 has been the timidity of India’s democratic
institutions when faced with what is termed a ‘national security’ issue.
This is of course hardly unique to India, as demonstrated by the
failure of statutory checks on excesses committed during the US-led
‘war on terror’ worldwide. While the main ruling parties, the Congress
and the BJP, colluded in sponsoring the Salwa Judum in Chhattisgarh,
the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which ruled West Bengal,
conducted a war there through its own armed gangs, locally called
the Harmad Vahini. Parliament has thus offered little protection for
the people. While adivasi legislators have been generally opposed to
a militaristic solution, they are dependent on their parties for tickets
and funding and have been unable to provide an alternative voice.
Independent statutory commissions have also failed the victims of
vigilante and state violence. The National Human Rights Commission
 INSURGENCY, COUNTER-INSURGENCY AND DEMOCRACY 161

did not respond to repeated pleas from victims in Chhattisgarh, and

when directed by the Supreme Court in 2008 to undertake an inquiry,
sent a team of 16 police personnel who went to villages in armoured
tanks, accompanied by some of the very SPOs who had been
responsible for the violence. The National Commission for Women
has not taken up the cases of rape victims, while the National
Commission for Scheduled Tribes has been silent. The only commission
which has displayed any enthusiasm or integrity is the National
Commission for the Protection of Child Rights, but it is relatively
new and powerless.
Within the government, the Home Ministry calls the shots on this
issue, with the Ministry of Tribal Affairs completely irrelevant. The
Home Ministry Naxal Management Cell is dominated by policemen
or ‘security experts’, and the home minister himself, P. Chidambaram,
has made the war against the Maoists his own. While elements in the
Congress party have been uncomfortable with this approach, with
party colleagues calling the home minister ‘intellectually arrogant’
and his ministry ‘paranoid’, the Congress party leader, Sonia Gandhi,
has acquiesced in the war on adivasis.
The Supreme Court has been the only institution to uphold its
mandate of protecting the rule of law, but court processes are tortuous
and the writ petitions against vigilante violence and abuses of human
rights have already lasted three years. In any case, repeated judicial
directions to the state of Chhattisgarh to carry out elementary tasks,
like registering First Information Reports (FIRs) or rehabilitating
those whose houses were burned, have been met with outright refusals
to act.
In the initial years of Salwa Judum (2005-8), the media were
largely quiet, especially in Chhattisgarh. This was enabled through a
combination of government censorship and threats against the media;
the enactment of the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act 2005,
which penalized anything that could be construed as support for the
Maoists; and a language and reality disconnect between journalists
and adivasis. The strategy of arresting the secretary of the People’s
Union for Civil Liberties, Dr. Binayak Sen, had a mixed effect. On
the one hand, his release became a cause célèbre, bringing some
media attention to the issue. On the other hand, it focused all civil
society attention on his person, at the expense of the wider issues
involved. In West Bengal, a much stronger democratic tradition; an
active opposition party, the Trinamool Congress, intent on winning
162 NANDINI SUNDAR

elections (which it did); and the national media’s virulent anti-

communism ensured that the ruling CPI (Marxist)’s handling of the
Maoist issue got sufficient coverage. Since Operation Green Hunt
started, Maoist attacks escalated, and with prize-winning authors like
Arundhati Roy having adopted the Maoist cause, the issue has finally
become front-page news.
Despite repeated exhortations to the Maoists to agree to peace
talks, the central and state governments are clearly unwilling to engage
with them in practice, on the grounds that Naxalites’ willingness to
talk is merely a ploy to buy time. The nadir was the police arrest and
killing of the Maoist leader Cherukuri Rajkumar, aka Azad, in June
2010, precisely at a time when he was about to confirm dates for
peace talks to begin. In early 2011, the high-profile kidnapping of a
collector in Malkangiri district of Orissa led to mediators negotiating
a number of demands, including that ordinary villagers accused of
Maoist crimes be released, and festering land issues in Koraput be
addressed, but after the release of the collector, the government
appears to be reneging on all its agreements.
The latest in the saga is the proposal to flood Maoist areas with
funds, largely for the building of roads, but also for ‘basic social
infrastructure’. Despite reservations by the Planning Commission
which allocates money between schemes and states, and which
originally drafted an ‘Integrated Action Plan’ for ‘Left wing-extremist-
affected’ districts, the Home Ministry pushed through a scheme
which allocates Rs. 55 crore per district for two years to a committee
comprising the collector, the superintendent of police and district
forest officer. But it is unlikely that this money will yield much that
is useful, given the basic structure of exploitation in which the local
administration in collusion with industrialists, traders, and contractors
makes all decisions, without consulting the villagers. And compared
to the Rs. 800 crore that the Chhattisgarh government has spent on
housing and feeding the paramilitaries to repress people in the past
few years, the idea that hearts and minds will be won with Rs. 55
crore is laughable.36
Above all, there is no appreciation for adivasi lifestyles or any
attempt to build upon existing strengths, and tired versions of
modernization theory continue to be espoused by India’s ruling
politicians. Such stale rhetoric is clearly apparent in this reportage
from the Hindu, citing comments made by the Home Minister P.
Chidambaram: ‘The Minister indicated that while implementation
 INSURGENCY, COUNTER-INSURGENCY AND DEMOCRACY 163

of laws such as PESA and FRA might give rights to forest dwellers,
the long-term solution lay in the basic development which would
bring them out of the forests.’37
What I.F. Stone wrote decades ago about Vietnam rings as true
today of India’s blinkered political classes:
In reading the military literature on guerrilla warfare now so fashionable at
the Pentagon, one feels that these writers are like men watching a dance
from outside through heavy plate-glass windows. They see the motions but
they can’t hear the music. They put the mechanical gestures down on paper
with pedantic fidelity. But what rarely comes through to them are the injured
racial feelings, the misery, the rankling slights, the hatred, the devotion, the
inspiration and the desperation. So they do not really understand what leads
men to abandon wife, children, home, career, friends; to take to the bush
and live gun in hand like a hunted animal; to challenge overwhelming military
odds rather than acquiesce any longer in humiliation, injustice or
poverty.38

Justice. Political overtures instead of mere economic packages.

Development to benefit citizens, not corporates. Apologies for the
past rather than homilies for the future. These would all go a long
way toward negotiating peace.

NOTES
1. Subhashis Mitra, ‘Terror Tentacles’, Force, August 2007, p. 38.
2. For the first phase of the Naxalite movement, see Manorajan Mohanty,
Revolutionary Violence: A Study of the Maoist Movement in India (New
Delhi: Sterling 1977); Sumanta Banerjee, India’s Simmering Revolution:
The Naxalite Uprising (New Delhi: Select Book Service Syndicate, 1984);
for the more recent phase in Andhra Pradesh, see Committee of Concerned
Citizens (CCC), Third Report: A Detailed Account of the Committee During
the Five Years to Intervene in the Climate of Turmoil and Social Violence
in Rural Andhra Pradesh (Hyderabad: CCC, 2002); CCC, Negotiating
Peace, (Hyderabad, 2006); Bela Bhatia, ‘The Naxalite Movement in Central
Bihar’, Economic and Political Weekly (henceforth EPW), 9 April 2005.
See also articles in the special section on the ‘Maoist Movement in India’,
EPW, 22-8 July 2006, and response by Azad, ‘Maoists in India: A
Rejoinder’, EPW, 14 October 2006.
3. In the rest of this article, while I generally use the term Maoist, I occasionally
use the term Naxalite, especially if a generic use is called for.
4. See the report of the Expert Group to the Planning Commission,
Development Challenges in Extremist Affected Areas (New Delhi: Planning
Commission, 2008).
164 NANDINI SUNDAR

5. The economist Jean Dreze writes: ‘At least four alternative figures are
available: 28 per cent from the Planning Commission, 50 per cent from
the N.C. Saxena Committee report, 42 per cent from the Tendulkar
Committee report, and 80 per cent or so from the National Commission
for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector (NCEUS). Jean Dreze, ‘Poverty
Estimates vs. Food Entitlements’, The Hindu, 24 February 2010, http://
www.hindu.com/2010/02/24/stories/2010022456271200.htm.
6. ‘There are more MPI [Multidimensional Poverty Index] poor people in
eight Indian states alone (421 million in Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand,
Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal)
than in the 26 poorest African countries combined (410 million).’ ‘Oxford
and UNDP Launch a Better Way to Measure Poverty’, Oxford Poverty
and Human Development Initiative and United Nations Development
Program, 14 July 2010, http://hdr.undp.org/en/mediacentre/
announcements/title,20523,en.html.
7. In 2007, Tata Steel of the Tata group bought British steelmaker Corus
for $12 billion, Hindalco of the Aditya Birla group bought US aluminium
sheetmaker Novelis for $6 billion, and Jindal Steel acquired the
development rights for the El Mutun mine in Bolivia for $2.3 billion.
‘The value of takeovers by Indian firms has risen sharply, from less than
$1 billion in 2000 to an estimated $8 billion in 2006. Acquisitions in
the first six weeks of 2007 added up to more than $18 billion.’ See
‘Indian Companies Become Major Players in Overseas Acquisitions’,
HULIQ, 19 February 2010, http://www.huliq.com/11617/indian-
companies-become-major-players-in-overseas-acquisitions.
8. Narayanan Madhavan, ‘India’s Band of Billionaires Biggest in Asia’,
Hindustan Times, 10 March 2007, http://www.hindustantimes.com/
India-s-band-of-billionaires-is-the-biggest-in-Asia/Article1-209306.
aspx.
9. There are several reasons for this. They include the origins of the Maoist
movement in Andhra Pradesh and Bengal, from where they spread to
neighbouring states, as well as the dominance of Hindu reform movements
in adivasi areas in western India. In Gujarat, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangh has recently appropriated these populations for a Hindu chauvinist
agenda, although adivasi movements fighting for land and forest resources
continue to be active.
10. Supriya Sharma, ‘Iron Ore Mines Going for Rs 1 Lakh in Chhattisgarh?’
TNN, 2 August 2010, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Iron-
ore-mines-going-for-Rs-1-lakh-in-Chhattisgarh/articleshow/6245781.
cms.
11. However, contrary to much activist hype, there is no direct co-relation
between two proposed steel plants for mining in Dantewada and the
forcible evacuation of villages under the state-sponsored vigilante
 INSURGENCY, COUNTER-INSURGENCY AND DEMOCRACY 165

movement called Salwa Judum. Salwa Judum specifically targeted Maoist

strongholds, not villages which are situated in mining areas. This is clear
if one maps the progress of Salwa Judum.
12. ‘The growing Maoist insurgency over large swathes of the mineral-rich
countryside could soon hurt some industrial investment plans. Just when
India needs to ramp up its industrial machine to lock in growth and
when foreign companies are joining the party—Naxalites are clashing
with mining and steel companies essential to India’s long-term success.’
FICCI (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry) Task
Force Report on National Security and Terrorism (New Delhi: FICCI,
2009), http://www.ficci.com/SPdocument/20032/terrorism-report.
pdf. This report also calls for private security agencies to be given arms
licenses, which is dangerous given that hired goons are already being
used against villagers.
13. ‘FICCI Opposes Mining Bill, Debunks Tribal Compensation Scheme’,
Economic Times, 25 July 2010, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/
news/economy/policy/FICCI-opposes-mining-bill-debunks-tribal-
compensation-scheme/articleshow/6214184.cms.
14. See, for instance, police firings at Maikanch village in Rayagada district,
Orissa, where three people were killed while protesting against land
acquisitions for bauxite mining (2001); at Tapkara in Ranchi district,
Jharkhand, where nine were killed while protesting against the Koel Karo
dam (2001); at the Khuga dam site in Churachandpur district, Manipur,
where three were killed (2005); at Kalinganagar in Orissa, where 12 were
killed while protesting against a Tata Steel plant (2006); at Nandigram
in West Bengal in 2007, where 15 were killed while protesting against
land acquisitions for a special economic zone. This is by no means an
exhaustive list of recent police firings related to land acquisitions. The
police usually claim that they were attacked first and were forced to
maintain law and order; this is contested by the human rights groups
that have conducted independent investigations into the incidents.
15. On 15 May 2010, the police fired upon and injured protestors peacefully
demonstrating against a proposed POSCO steel plant in Orissa. On
12 May 2010 they killed one protestor at the Kalinganagar industrial
complex.
16. Arindam Sen, ‘Anarchism or Revolutionary Marxism’, prepared for
‘Resurgence’, a symposium on the Naxal/Marxist challenge to the state,
March 2010, http://www.india-seminar.com/2010/607/607_arindam_
sen.htm.
17. An August 2010 survey by an academic agency and two media houses
(The Week-CNN-IBN-CSDS) across the ‘red belt’ claimed that 49 per
cent support the government, and 60 per cent have faith in the democratic
process, although 76 per cent want the political system to be reformed.
166 NANDINI SUNDAR

A month later, according to a Times of India poll in the five districts of

Telengana in Andhra Pradesh from where the Maoists have reportedly
been wiped out, 58 per cent said Naxalism was good. (Rupashree Nanda,
‘State of the Nation: Government Preferred Over Naxals,’ IBN Live,
9 August 2010, http://ibnlive.in.com/news/people-in-Naxalhit-areas-
prefer-govt-poll/128447-37-64.html?from=tn; http://articles.
timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2010-09-28/india/28244131_1_toi-poll-
Naxalism-maoists) (accessed 13 April 2011.)
18. ‘Naxalites operate in a vacuum created by inadequacy of administrative
and political institutions, espouse local demands and take advantage of
the prevalent disaffection and injustice among the exploited segments
of the population and seek to offer an alternative system of governance
which promises emancipation of these segments’, Ministry of Home
Affairs, Internal Security Division, ‘Status Paper on the Naxal Problem’,
18 May 2006, 1.
19. J. Huysmans, ‘Security! What do You mean? From Concept to Thick
Signifier’, European Journal of International Relations, 1998, 4(2), 226-
55, p. 232.
20. For the police, ‘effectiveness’ means huge expenditure, for instance, on
mine-protected vehicles, helicopters, the fortification of police stations,
etc., rather than simply greater professionalism and courteous treatment
of the public. This, despite the fact that police behaviour and contempt
for villagers is a major cause of support for Naxalism.
21. On 13 July 2010, the Government of India proposed a Unified Command
to carry out anti-Naxal operations. ‘The Centre also offered more
helicopters, logistical support and intelligence sharing to the States to
fight the Maoist menace. It sanctioned about 16,000 additional Special
Police Officers, taking the total number of such posts to about 30,000.
It also decided to fund the establishment or strengthening of 400 police
stations in the affected districts at the rate of Rs. 2 crore a police station
on 80:20 basis over two years. The States were asked to set up an
empowered group, chaired by Member-Secretary, Planning Commission,
to modify the norms and guidelines to implement development schemes
having regard to the local needs and conditions in the affected districts.
It was decided to improve road connectivity in 34 worst affected districts.
A number of roads and bridges are proposed to be included at a cost of
Rs. 950 crore by the Road Transport and Highways Ministry. The Chief
Ministers were told that the Planning Commission was considering a
Special Development Plan for the affected districts with focus on primary
education, health care, drinking water and road connectivity.’ Vinay
Kumar, ‘Centre Proposes Unified Command to Fight Naxals’, The Hindu,
15 July 2010, http://www.hindu.com/2010/07/15/stories/20100
71557350100.htm.
 INSURGENCY, COUNTER-INSURGENCY AND DEMOCRACY 167

22. Stuart Hall, et al., Policing the Crises: Mugging, the State and Law and
Order (New York: HM Publishers, 1978), p. 16.
23. Author’s interview with Shivraj Patil, India’s home minister, February
2007.
24. In a reply to an open letter written by the Independent Citizens Initiative
(a six-member group that visited Dantewada to carry out an investigation
into the Salwa Judum, and of which this author was a member), Ganapathi,
the Maoist General Secretary, asks: ‘Can you show us one instance from
the pages of Indian history where the rights of adivasis were ensured
through non-violent and open means? And not just in India, but anywhere
else in the world for that matter?’ Ganapathi, ‘Open Reply to Independent
Citizen’s Initiative on Dantewada’, Economic and Political Weekly,
6 January 2007.
25. The Red Fort in Delhi has been the symbolic seat of India’s power from
Mughal times onwards.
26. Ganapathi, ‘Open Reply’.
27. Gautam Navlakha, ‘Maoists in India’, Economic and Political Weekly,
3 June 2006, p. 2187.
28. Rahul Bedi, ‘Maoist Insurgency Spreads in India’, Jane’s Intelligence
Review, 1 July 2006, pp. 21-5.
29. Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, Annual Report 2009-
10, http://www.mha.nic.in/pdfs/AR%28E%290910.pdf.
30. ‘South Asia Terrorism Portal (SATP) Fatalities in Left wing Extremist
Violence, Chhattisgarh 2005-2010’, http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/
countries/india/maoist/data_sheets/annualcasualtieschhatisgarh.asp.
31. Nandini Sundar, ‘Pleading for Justice’, prepared for ‘Resurgence’, a
symposium on the Naxal/Marxist challenge to the state, March 2010,
http://www.india-seminar.com/2010/607/607_nandini_sundar.htm.
32. Two thousand seven hundred thirty-three people officially died in Delhi
in the anti-Sikh pogroms of 1984 (see www.carnage84.com/official/
ahooja/ahooja.htm), and 1,254 in the anti-Muslim pogroms of Gujarat
in 2002 (answer in Parliament, provided by Minister of State for Home
Affairs, August 2005).
33. Nandini Sundar, ‘Vigilantism, Culpability, and Moral Dilemmas’, Critique
of Anthropology, 30 (March 2010), pp. 1-9.
34. ‘Should India Ban Iron Ore Export?’ Zeebiz.com, 30 July 2010, http://
biz.zeenews.com/interviews/story.aspx?newsid=109.
35. In late 2010, four major scandals surfaced showing the collusion between
ministers and corporates: the allocation of mobile telephone spectrum
to cherry-picked companies for an estimated loss of $ 40 billion to the
treasury, overpriced contracts for the Commonwealth games favouring
associates of the chairman of the organizing committee, the illegal
diversion of government land to the Karnataka chief minister’s sons,
168 NANDINI SUNDAR

which was then resold for a huge profit, and the Adarsh housing society
scam in Mumbai in which flats meant for war widows were given to
influential politicians and senior members of the armed forces.
36. Chhattisgarh Seeks Waiver on Anti-Maoist Forces Expenditure’, Zee
News, 19 January 2011, http://www.zeenews.com/news681662.html,
(accessed 14 April 2011).
37. Ibid.
38. I.F. Stone, In a Time of Torment, 1961-1967 (New York: Little Brown
& Co, 1967), p. 173.