Expansive Vision

"…..with great determination we will strive to advance and expandthe Guerrilla war to establish Base Areas in the strategic areas; we will refineand develop our tactics to rebuild, consolidate and expand the revolutionarymovement in the vast plains of India, to advance the People’s War to drown theenemy in the great ocean of the class struggles of the vast masses" 

-- Mupalla Laxmana Rao @ Ganapathy 
in an interview on October 14, 2004

***

This Maoist vision, articulated by the ‘GeneralSecretary’ of the Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist), remains intactand is being actively operationalised. The dream of "expanding into the vastplains of India", follows a strategic framework located in Mao Tse Tung’slarger scheme of ‘Protracted War’. The first step in the war is devoted toorganisation, consolidation and preservation of ‘regional base areas’situated in isolated and difficult terrain. Such organisational building, invaried forms, is now increasingly visible in areas that hitherto remained at themargins of Maoist influence or that were completely devoid of such influence.

Although the state of Andhra Pradesh registers a Maoistpresence in all 23 of its districts, focused counter-insurgency operations overthe past few months have forced the Maoists to scurry into those areas wherethere presence was traditionally marginal. With the police making inroads in the‘heartland’ Telangana districts – Adilabad, Karimnagar, Warangal andKhammam – and the Nallamala Forest area stretching across parts of Guntur,Prakasam, Kurnool and Nalgonda districts, the Maoists are now trying to shifttheir bases to the Nellore district as well as some of the North coastal districtsbordering Orissa, including Srikakulam, Vishakapatnam, Vizianagaram and EastGodavari.

In Nellore, the relatively insignificant Maoist faction, the Communist Party ofIndia–Marxist-Leninist-Janasakthi (Janasakthi, for short) has been operatingfrom the Rapur Forest area. The district provides good road, rail and seaconnectivity, besides its proximity to Tamil Nadu. Police have been alerted onreports of Maoist cadres being active in remote villages of the Sitarampurammandal (Block), which borders the Nellore, Kadapa and Prakasam districts, andsome cadres have stayed in certain villages of the Rapur, Venkatagiri,Pattapupalem and Allur mandals.

In the neighbouring state of Orissa, the administrationdisclosed, in March 2006, that as many as 14 out of the 30 districts registereda Maoist presence, though under the union government’s Security RelatedExpenditure (SRE) scheme, only seven districts – Malkangiri, Rayagada, Koraput,Gajapati, Keonjhar, Mayurbhanj and Sundargarh – have been declared Maoistaffected. 

In March 2006, a ‘white paper on the law and order situation’ prepared bythe state government had mentioned that "after spreading their influence inbordering districts such as Sundargarh, Keonjhar, Sambalpur, Deogarh andMayurbhanj, the Naxalites were trying to establish their foothold in Dhenkanal,Jajpur and other districts… The ultras were trying to link Bhubaneswar andCuttack with southern part of the state through central districts such asKandhamal and Boudh." 

On March 27, 2006, the state government admitted that Maoists had spreadroots to Kandhamal, Dhenkanal, Jajpur, Ganjam and Nabarangpur districts.

To establish their foothold, the Maoists have been quick to take up localissues, which pit inhabitants of a particular district against theadministration. For instance, in Jagatsinghpur district, leaflets signed byMaoist cadres have been recovered from various parts, protesting the setting upof industries, arguing that these would adversely affect the livelihood of thepoor.

Appreciating the growing threat, the Orissa Home Department has reportedlydecided to open three marine police stations in Jagatsinghpur district to checkthe entry of Maoists through waterways. Earlier, in the tribal protests atKalinganagar that led to the deaths of 11 tribals on January 2, 2006, in policefiring, apprehensions were raised on the role of Maoist front organisations ininstigating the protestors. Tribal issues have been systematically exploitedelsewhere as well, and a senior police official disclosed, "their increasingpresence in Jajpur has been established by now. The radicals instigating thetribals cannot be ruled out."

In Karnataka, the state home minister M.P. Prakashclaimed on August 25, 2006, that Maoist activities in the state had beencontained and their presence was limited to just four districts, DakshinaKannada, Udupi, Raichur and Bellary. Ironically, the same night, Maoistsattacked the Divisional Forest Office (Wildlife), about 13 km from Sringeri inChikmagalur district, on the border of the Udupi district. The PoliceSuperintendent of the Anti-Naxalite Force (ANF) Chennaiah said, "beforeransacking the office, the gang pasted bills and pamphlets of Maoist literatureand also warned the authorities to remove the nearby Thanikod checkpost".

The administration is apparently turning a blind eye to previous incidents inChikmagulur and is unwilling to declare the district ‘Maoist-affected’. Somepast incidents in the district include:

May 17, 2005: A group of about 15 Maoists killed a Congress partyactivist, Seshappa Gowda, who was also a member of the Koppa Taluk Panchayat (alocal self-government body), at Menasinahadya in the Chikmagalur district.

November 6, 2005: Maoist cadres blew up a forest check post afterthreatening the guards at Thanikod in the Chikmagalur district

November 15, 2005: A woman Maoist was arrested from the forest areanear Sringeri in the Chikamagalur district.

Incidents of intimidation and abduction have also been reported from other districts,including Udupi and Tumkur, and political mobilisation by the Maoists have beenwidely noticed.

Former home minister M. Mallikarjun Kharge (Congress Party) speaking in the statelegislative assembly on July 13 stated that 5,000 families in Bangalore wereinvolved in Maoist activities. Coming from a former home minister, who wouldhave had, during his tenure, unlimited access to intelligence feeds, this claimcannot be ignored.

Karnataka has always remained in the Maoist scheme of things, although theysuffered a temporary setback in February 2005, when their ‘state committeesecretary’, Saket Rajan @ ‘Prem’, was killed in an encounter inChikmagalur district. However, brushing aside the setback, the Maoistsrestructured their ‘state committee’ in Karnataka and appointed NoorZulfikar alias Sridhar in place of the deceased Prem, in addition to six othermembers on the new Committee.

Recovered Maoist documents, including the 2001 ‘Social Conditions andTactics’ survey of selected villages in Karnataka, elaborate on a detailedstrategy of mobilisation in the state. Prepared by the erstwhile People’s WarGroup (PWG) in October 2001 (which merged into the CPI-Maoist in September2004), this is an exhaustive study of the "Perspective Area" in the Malnadregion (Belgaum, Uttara Kannada, Dharwad, Shimoga, Udupi, Chickmagalur, DakshinaKannada, Kodagu, Mysore and Chamarajnagar districts) to "accomplish thetransformation of the Perspective Area into a Guerrilla Zone, to organize thepeople in class struggle, build mass organizations, set up party cells, formmilitia, establish Special Guerilla Squads (SGSs) and conduct guerrilla warfarein about a dozen Local Guerilla Squad (LGS) areas."

Similarly, in Maharashtra, Gondia district iswitnessing increasing Maoist mobilization and consolidation, due to operationscarried out by security forces in the neighbouring Gadchiroli district. InNovember 2005, Maoists pasted posters in many villages of Deori tehsil of Gondia,announcing a recruitment drive. While, in the Nagzira Wildlife Sanctuary,Maoists set ablaze a protection hut at Tippat in January and at Mangezara onFebruary 24, 2006. Over the past months, they have become active in thesanctuary and have threatened forest department employees against moving in theforest. They have also instructed villagers around Nagzira not to venture outduring the night. The sanctuary is convenient for Maoists to sneak intoChhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand.

The Maoists in Maharashtra are not just spreading their network in ruralenvirons. An assessment report prepared by the state intelligence departmentindicates that 57 non-government organisations (NGOs) and social action groupsin Mumbai have been short-listed after being found to fund and help Maoists. Theorganisations arranged for medical treatment for Maoists, often in nursing homesin cities. According to state Director General of Police, P.S. Pasricha, "We arekeeping close tabs on the activities of functionaries belonging to a section ofthe NGOs. A couple of recent arrests and subsequent interrogation ofoffice-bearers of these groups have made us more aware of the security threatthey pose." 12 NGOs and social action groups short-listed for funding andhelping Maoists have been found to be extremely cash-rich. Funds may have beentransferred to guerrilla units inside jungles through "informal money remittancesystems", a senior intelligence officer disclosed.

The Maharashtra state Committee of the Maoists comprises four‘divisions’: North Gadchiroli-Gondia, Chandrapur, Mumbai, and Surat. Policereports also add that the Maoists have been building up front organisations inMumbai and Surat in Gujarat, identifying the potential of these places aseconomic strongholds. Police officials revealed that "the Maoists are actuallyconducting a sort of preliminary survey in Mumbai, Surat and other areas tobegin their systematic infiltration in urban areas. In fact, they are makingfront organisations to facilitate their goals of creating a space for them inthese major urban areas." This is entirely consistent with the projections ofthe 2004 "Urban Perspective Document" which identified two principal "industrialconcentrations" as targets of Maoist expansion: theBhilai-Ranchi-Dhanbad-Calcutta belt in the East; and theMumbai-Pune-Surat-Ahmedabad-Surat belt in the West.

In neighbouring Madhya Pradesh, three Maoist squads ordalams, the Paraswada, Tanda and Malajkhand dalam have been active in four districts– Balaghat, Dindori, Mandala and Sidhi. According to state Police records,violent Maoist activities have been taking place in Madhya Pradesh since 1990and, at least 33 police personnel, 37 civilians and five government servantshave been killed, while the police have shot dead 12 Maoists in 53 shootoutsbetween 1990 and June 2006.

In Uttar Pradesh, although the casualties in Maoistviolence over the past years have been low, Maoist presence in the eastern districtsbordering Bihar are a cause of concern. 26 villages of the Gorakhpur divisionhave been identified as Naxalite-affected, twenty-five of these in Deoria districtand one in Kushinagar district. After a survey, a list of 680 Maoist-affectedvillages across the state was handed over to the state government. In additionto the 26 in Gorakhpur division, there are 226 villages in Chandauli, 88 inMirzapur, 254 in Sonbhadra, 33 in Ghazipur, 54 in Ballia and two in Mau district,which are reportedly Maoist affected.

Carved out from Uttar Pradesh, the mountain state ofUttaranchal has remained vulnerable due to its difficult and sparsely populatedterrain and porous border with Nepal. The state administration, in recent times,has been concerned over the mushrooming of Left Wing organisations in the threeborder districts of Pithoragarh, Udham Singh Nagar and Champawat. districtMagistrates and senior police officials in these areas have been asked to visitvillages once a month along with officials of other departments, to discussproblems faced by people in an effort to counter mobilization by Left Wingextremists.

In the eastern state of West Bengal, the Maoistscarried out their first ‘direct action’ in the Nadia district, afterconsolidating their presence in the neighbouring Purulia, Bankura and WestMidnapore districts. On July 15, 2005, a Maoist 'central committee' member hadremarked that, apart from these three districts, "our mass base in Murshidabad,Malda, Burdwan and Nadia is ready. After five years, we will launch our strikes."On June 20, 2006, two ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist tribal leaders,Uttam Sardar and Swapan Sardar, were killed by a group of Maoists at Chandpur inNadia. The Maoists have also threatened at least a dozen CPI-Marxist leaders inNadia. According to police officials, areas where Maoists are active in the districtare Phasilnagar and Nasirpur villages in Karimpur, Teghari, Badbillo andDurgapur villages in Nakashipara and parts of Chapra and Kotwali Police Stationareas.

Closer to the nation’s capital city, intelligenceagencies have warned of the mushrooming of various Maoist front organisations inJind, Kaithal, Kurukshetra, Yamunanagar, Hisar, Rohtak and Sonepat districts ofHaryana, in the recent past. While speaking to reporters in Jind, Chief MinisterBhupinder Singh Hooda stated that the Maoists would not be allowed to grow theirroots in the state, but police officials are of the opinion that Maoists appearto have chosen to take advantage of caste conflicts in the state as a part oftheir strategy of consolidation in Haryana. The backward caste communities,dalits and other oppressed communities have been chosen because the middle classin Haryana is reasonably strong and the number of landless and poor iscomparatively smaller than states such as Andhra, Bihar and Orissa. Besidesraking up local caste conflicts, they have also staged plays aboutrevolutionaries, to exploit the sentiments of the youth. The August 31, 2005,incident at Gohana where dalit houses were set on fire by upper caste jats wasseen as an opportunity for these outfits to make attempts to spread theirinfluence, according to intelligence sources.

Even as the security establishment counters the Maoistsin a fragmented, disoriented and incoherent fashion, the latter remainsystematic in their approach, working strictly according to clearly articulatedplans. The Maoists clearly recognize that they are up against a powerful statethat has the resources to counter them, and that the challenge lies ineffectively utilizing guerrilla strategies and tactics, working around the state’sstrengths – rather than against these - planning and executing operations withminimum losses, and spreading their network to areas, both rural and urban,where the state is evidently in a slumber.

Saji Cherian is Research Associate, Institute for Conflict Management.Courtesy, the South Asia Intelligence Review of the South Asia TerrorismPortal