Struggle for the capture of state power in India

The Battle for Bastar Ramachandra Guha The Telegraph Monday, June 26, 2006

In the last week of May, this writer travelled with a group of colleagues through the district of Dantewada, of whose 11 taluks the Maoists control as many as five. Dantewada used to be part of the princely state of Bastar, the name by which the region is still generally known. Its hilly and wooded terrain is now home to a brutal civil war played out away from the national gaze and mostly unreported by the national press. It is, however, a conflict of the gravest importance to the future of India. For it is in this region that the Maoists have dug their deepest roots. Parts of Bastar are under their complete sway, safe havens from where they can make deadly forays into areas controlled by the Chhattisgarh administration...

We got a sharp insight into the Maoist mind in an extended interview with one of their senior leaders. He met our team, by arrangement, in a small wayside dhaba along the road that runs from the state capital, Raipur, to Jagdalpur, once the seat of the Maharaja of Bastar. There he told us of his party’s strategies for Dantewada, and for the country as a whole.

Working under the pseudonym of ‘Sanjeev’, this revolutionary was slim and clean-shaven, and soberly dressed, in dark trousers and a bush-shirt of neutral colours. Now thirty-five, he has been in the movement for two decades, dropping out of college in Hyderabad to join it. (The profile was typical — the leading Maoists in Chhattisgarh are all Telugu speakers from Andhra.) He now works in Abujmarh, an area so isolated that it remains unsurveyed (apparently the only part of India which holds this distinction), and where no official dare venture for fear of being killed.

Speaking in quiet, controlled tones, Sanjeev soon showed himself to be both deeply committed as well as highly sophisticated. Their sangams, he said, worked to protect people’s rights in jal, jangal zameen — water, forest and land. At the same time, they made targeted attacks on state officials, especially the police. Raids on police stations were intended to stop them from harassing ordinary folk. They were also necessary to augment the weaponry of the guerrilla army. Through popular mobilization and the intimidation of state officials, the Maoists hoped to expand their authority over Dandakaranya. Once the region was made a ‘liberated zone’, it would be used as a launching pad for the capture of state power in India as a whole.

Sanjeev’s belief in the efficacy of armed struggle was complete. When asked about two land mine blasts which had killed many innocent people — in one case members of a marriage party — he said that these had been mistakes, with the guerrillas believing that the police had hired private vehicles to escape detention. The Maoists, he said, would issue an apology and compensate the victims’ families. However, on other (and scarcely less brutal) killings, he said these were ‘deliberate incidents’; that is, intended as such. We spoke to Sanjeev for close to two hours...