The history of post-1947 India can be divided into two, one leading to the events of 25th May, 1967 in the Naxalbari village of North Bengal that sparked the Naxalbari uprising in different parts of the subcontinent, and the years that followed. The peal of spring thunder that crashed over a nondescript village, continues to shape India’s destiny, its polity, and remains a thorn in the flesh for the state. As Naxalbari turned into a prairie fire, the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) was formed on 22nd April, 1969 to lead the struggles towards the achievement of a new democratic revolution in India. Organised revolutionary movement inevitably invited organised state violence leading to the entire central committee being either killed, jailed, or surrendered. In July, 1972, Comrade Charu Majumdar, the first general secretary of CPI-ML, was martyred in police custody. However, the state failed to kill the ideology that aimed to overthrow an exploitative class rule to establish people’s democracy in India. It continued in the form of divergent streams. This is how one can trace the origin of the ‘single biggest internal security threat’ of India, the ‘Maoist insurgency’.
The affected areas have been the mineral rich districts across the eastern to central part of India, predominantly inhabited by the Adivasi communities, dubbed by the media as the ‘red corridor’ or the ‘Maoist corridor’. Both foreign and domestic capitalists have long since vied for this wealth. The Adivasis here have a legacy of anti-British resistance that was directed against the exploitation of the free market since the 90s. The government in its own analysis of ‘Extremist affected areas’ states absence of self-governance, forest policy, cultural humiliation, political marginalisation, land alienation, forced evictions, and displacement as factors behind Adivasis joining the Maoists. A major part of these forested areas comes under the Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act (PESA), that grants autonomy to the Gram Sabhas on paper. While innumerable Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) signed away the vast mineral wealth of this region to corporate giants, the consent of Gram Sabhas was either ignored or coerced.
This naturally fueled resistance in the ‘red corridor’ against the mining giants, forest department, police, paramilitary, and the state-sponsored militia. The most violent of these militias was the Salwa Judum (purification hunt in Gondi) that was created in Chhattisgarh in 2005 to counter the Maoists. The recruits were locals, vested with unlimited power, alcohol, and arms. Their reign of terror left a trail of mass rapes, burnt villages, and refugee camps for the internally displaced. As the outrage against the Judum started intensifying, the Supreme Court in a 2011 judgment declared the outfit unconstitutional. Parallely, the finance minister P Chidambaram, backed by US imperialists, oversaw the ‘Operation Green Hunt’ to successfully implement the MoUs,at the cost of human and nature. This operation starting around July, 2009 was retracted around 2014 after massive Adivasi resistance and campaigns from democratic activists in the cities.
In 2015, militarisation started in Gadchiroli of Maharashtra to help acquisition of iron-ore mines for Lloyd metals. In 2017 the Operation SAMADHAN-Prahar was started in other parts of the MoU-ist corridor (as dubbed by Arundhati Roy). It continued for five years with a stated aim of ending the Maoists and a real aim of implementing the MoUs. After this operation failed to meet its objective, the Surajkund Chintan Shivir was organised in Surajkund, Haryana on 27th and 28th October, 2022. Home Ministers of all states, top-level civil and police bureaucrats, and UT administrators joined this meeting to hatch a plan to end both ‘pen-wielding’ and ‘gun-wielding’ Maoists. Operation Kagar, starting in January, 2024 was a direct outcome.
Operation Kagar came with an escalation in attacks on innocent civilians as well as combatants. On the 1st of January, 2024, Mangli, a six-month old was killed by the security forces starting a dark chapter of absolute breakdown of law and order in the remaining ‘red corridor’. Till Amit Shah’s deadline of 31st of March, 2026, more than 600 people, both civilians and Maoists, were killed under this operation. Simultaneously, democratic activists fighting against the plunder of jal-jangal-jameen, labour exploitation, displacement, Hindutva fascism, etc., are being hounded under the UAPA. Organisations operating within constitutional bounds (like the Moolwasi Bachao Manch) have been banned. In the past ten months, students and democratic activists from Delhi have twice been detained and tortured extra-judicially for opposing Operation Kagar.
Amit Shah’s 31st March Lok Sabha speech claimed near complete elimination of Maoists and weakening of their organisational structures. Use of brute force, aerial bombing, fake encounters, abduction of democratic activists, banning of democratic organisation, and psychological warfare; every weapon in the state’s arsenal has been deployed through Operation Kagar. Even then, can the state truly rest easy while the conditions that created the ideology of Naxalbari continue to exist and deepen? Its spectre continues to haunt them as exemplified by the recent targeting of CPI-ML (Mass Line), Mazdoor Bigul Dasta activists as Naxals for voicing people’s concerns, crushing of movements for jal-jangal-jameen at Sijimali, and Ken-Betwa region in MP. The remaining strands of communists are perhaps the marinating chicken.
