 India's rapid economic growth has made it an emerging global power but has also created violent militant movements such as the Maoist Insurgency.The twentieth century was remarkable in two aspects: emergence of nation-states in the colonized areas and emergence of social and nationalistic movements in these nation-states. South Asia witnessed both these phenomena: British India was divided into two states and various social movements erupted in these states.
One such movement going on in India, is commonly known as the Maoist Insurgency. It is a low-intensity, classical guerrilla warfare in which support of the local populace is considered pivotal for its continuity and, eventually, success. The insurgency started as a peasant rebellion in the eastern Indian village of Naxalbari in 1967 and has now covers a large swath along the central and eastern parts of the country. In 2004 the Maoist rebel organisation People's War Group and the Maoist Communist Centre of India merged to form the Communist Party of India (Maoist). The primary factors of revolutionary warfare are overwhelming in the favour of Maoists: politics has primacy over militant arms of struggle; support of local population is complete, there is selective use of terror and security personnel are killed, not innocent people.
Naxalites claim to be supported by the poorest rural population, especially Dalits and Adivasis. They have frequently targeted tribals, police and government workers in what they say is a fight for improved land rights and more jobs for neglected agricultural labourers and the poor and follow a strategy of rural rebellion similar to that of protracted people's war against the government. Comrade Vijja, the leader of the Maoist insurgency, sounded a defiant note in the face of a massive assault the Indian government plans to launch against him and his comrades this month. "We are fighting a protracted people's war," he says of India's Maoists. "No matter how many troops you send here, we will not be defeated, because we have the people's support in this war."
The government is also trying to rally public opinion against the rebels. "Naxals are nothing but cold-blooded murderers," screams a half-page advertisement in Chhattisgarh newspapers. The government-paid message features gruesome photos of bloodied youngsters.
As the government intensifies its campaign, human rights groups argue that the problem cannot be solved by brute force. They warn that the military effort will only exacerbate violence in the long run. Rajendra Sail, an activist with Chhattisgarh's People's Union of Civil Liberties, says the Maoists' support comes mainly from India's indigenous tribal groups, who see themselves suffering at the hands of the rich and are displaced by industrialisation. The governments of mineral-rich states have signed lucrative deals with multinationals to build steel mills and power stations. But according to Mr Sail, the economic benefits of these deals never trickle down to the affected villagers. Indeed a government-sponsored committee in 2008 found that most of the Naxalites are tribals and dalits-the people once called "untouchables", at the bottom of the Hindu caste system. Together these groups make up a quarter of India's population.
The burgeoning middle class has seldom viewed the Maoists as a real threat to the country. But more frequent and brutal attacks in recent months have sharpened minds, prompting debate over how the Naxalites should be treated. Last month Palaniappan Chidambaram, India's home minister, offered the main Maoist body a place at the negotiating table, in exchange for a ceasefire. His offer was refused.
The government's strategy of dealing with this festering dispute has been completely flawed and based, by and large, on the military means. When governments use force in unlawful ways, intensity of conflicts aggrandizes. Counter-insurgency efforts have met little success. In 2005, Chhattisgarh's state government set up Salwa Judum, an anti-Naxalite militia and armed it with guns, spears, bows and arrows. But as violence between the Maoists and state-sanctioned gangs has escalated, tens of thousands of tribal people have been forced to flee their homes. Brigadier B.K. Ponwar, the director of Chhattisgarh's Counter-Terrorism and Jungle Warfare College, says the enemy is no longer a ragtag militia. It is now one of the world's biggest and most sophisticated armed extreme-left movements. Brigadier Ponwar calls this "a politico-military-socio-economic-psychological war". But he judges that "military action must be the engine of this effort." Rebel attacks have been growing more audacious and more lethal.
For India, the widening Maoist insurgency is a moment of reckoning for the country's democracy and has ignited a sharp debate about where it has failed. In the past, India has tamed some secessionist movements by coaxing rebel groups into the country's big-tent political process. The Maoists, however, do not want to secede or be absorbed. Their goal is to topple the system.
Once considered Robin Hood figures, the Maoists claim to represent the dispossessed of Indian society, particularly the indigenous tribal groups, who suffer some of the country's highest rates of poverty, illiteracy and infant mortality. Many intellectuals and even some politicians once sympathized with their cause, but the growing Maoist violence has forced a wrenching reconsideration of whether they can still be tolerated.
"The root of this is dispossession and deprivation," said Ramachandra Guha, a prominent historian based in Bangalore. "The Maoists are an ugly manifestation of this. This is a serious problem that is not going to disappear." India's rapid economic growth has made it an emerging global power but also deepened stark inequalities in society. Maoists accuse the government of trying to push tribal groups off their land to gain access to raw materials and have sabotaged roads, bridges and even an energy pipeline. If the Maoists' political goals seem unattainable, analysts warn they will not be easy to uproot, either. Here in the state of Chattisgarh, Maoists dominate thousands of square miles of territory and have pushed into neighboring states of Orissa, Bihar, Jharkhand and Maharashtra, part of a so-called Red Corridor stretching across central and eastern India.
 The rebels have pocketed victories in legions. Since it was founded in the 1960s, the Maoist movement has grown and spread throughout the "red corridor" of India like wildfire. Recruiting the rich and the poor, the educated and the illiterate alike in immaculately structured rank and file lattices, the movement has gained momentum in these areas of the country significantly in recent years.
The roots of the Maoist rebellion in India lie deep down in the social inequality and incompetent governance of the regions where it has flourished. This was inevitable. Living through and realizing this injustice and poverty of their daily lives, a few rebels offered an alternative, however unsustainable, to end it once and for all. Famously dubbed as the "people's war", the struggle at its outset was simply the cries of those who asked for no more than food and work. As with any other struggle of this sort, their leaders capitalized on the plight of the poor for their own greed of power! Exploitative globalization, inefficient governance and rampant corruption, are but a few reasons which led to this rebellion. In effect, the rebellion is against neo-liberalism which the state has started encouraging. The only panacea for this spewing conflict is the re-definition of the nation, based on the principles of equality and social justice. Eradication of, what Marx said, primitive accumulation of wealth is quid quo non for the emergence of the desired state, wherein rebels would lose their cause for fighting once and for all!
Hammad Raza is an independent political analyst and is currently working on a book on the history of revolutions. He holds a Masters degree in International Relations from Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad.
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