Kadavendi to Bastar: Is This the End of India's Maoist Movement?

Kadavendi village, located in Warangal district of Telangana, looks like a typical Indian village from outside.

But what makes it distinct are the dozens of large red-coloured tombs dotted among the white-painted brick-stone houses. In the heart of the village is a tomb of Doddi Komuraiah, a farmer leader born in Kadavendi.

He was murdered in this village on 4 July 1946. Ramesh Panneeru, Head and Assistant Professor of the Department of History at Nizam College, Hyderabad, writes about the village, "Komuraiya's martyrdom marked the beginning of the armed struggle of Telangana."

The peasant revolt in Telangana between 1946 and 1951 later became the inspiration for the Maoist movement in India. After Komuraiah's martyrdom, hundreds of people from Kadavendi took part in this movement and lost their lives. Their names engraved on the tombs of the village still bear testimony to their 'sacrifice'.

On a hot and humid afternoon in April, Rajasekhar was overseeing the construction of a new mausoleum being built in memory of his sister Gummudavelli Renuka.

Renuka was the media in-charge of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and was a member of the Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee of the banned outfit in southern Chhattisgarh.

Renuka was killed on March 31 during an operation by security forces against the CPI (Maoist).

The government has announced that it will completely end the Maoist movement by March 2026.

Rajasekhar says, "From Komuraiya to Renuka, this journey is of 70 years, in which every year a new samadhi is added in Kadavendi."

But on May 21, this journey reached a new turn and came to a halt, when CPI (Maoist) general secretary Namballa Keshava Rao alias Basavaraju was killed while fighting security forces in Chhattisgarh.

Many people feel that with the death of Basavaraju, the Maoist movement in India may come to an end. Or it may be that this movement has just stopped for some time and then will start again through some other path, as has happened many times before.

Maoist Movement in India

Almost two decades after the armed peasant movement that started in Telangana in 1946, in 1967, a peasant uprising against the landlords took place in a town called Naxalbari in West Bengal. This movement gradually became the foundation of the Maoist ideology in India.

This Maoist movement spread rapidly in the 1970s and reached many parts of Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh and present-day Chhattisgarh.

CPI (Maoist) was formed in 2004. This party was formed by the merger of Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), People's War Group (known as PWG) and Maoist Communist Centre of India (MCCI).

For the last several years, the main activities of the Maoists were being conducted from the Bastar region of Chhattisgarh, which is almost as large as the state of Kerala in area.

Recently, Maoist leader Basavaraju was killed in the interior of Bastar. This indicated that the last strong hold of the Maoists has also been broken and this banned organization is now on the verge of complete extinction.

However, Hyderabad-based social analyst and journalist N. Venugopal does not believe so. He has written more than a dozen books on the Maoist movement.

Venugopal says, "There will definitely be some peace, but even earlier when Maoist leaders were killed in the seventies, the movement did not stop. Even today we are talking about Naxalism."

He believes that the Maoists created self-confidence among Dalits and tribals, opposed caste exploitation and ensured distribution of land among the poor.

Venugopal says, "Even today you will often hear people on TV saying that 'Annalu' (popular term for Naxalites, which means 'elder brother') gave more social justice than the leaders."

A prominent Hyderabad-based businessman, who was a leader of the Naxalite student wing, the Radical Students Union (RSU), in the 1970s, agrees with this view. On the condition of anonymity, he said that in the 70s and 80s, a large number of educated people from 'Telugu land' (Andhra Pradesh and Telangana) were associated with the RSU.

He said, "People of our generation will never forget that we were able to send our children to university because Annalu fought against social evils like untouchability at a time when the government had failed for three decades."

However, by the mid-1980s, Maoist violence in Telangana had been largely curbed. The government adopted a dual strategy, on the one hand, the security system was strengthened and on the other hand, special welfare schemes were launched for backward areas. These included programs like vocational training and financial assistance for self-employment.

In 2016, a retired officer told us that the rehabilitation scheme for surrendered Naxalites played a particularly important role.

Later this strategy was adopted in Chhattisgarh also.

Maoism: From Telangana to Chhattisgarh

Chambla Ravinder has previously been a military commander for the Communist Party of India (Maoist). In 2010, when he was the head of the party's northern unit in Bastar, he told the BBC that the Maoist group, the PWG, had done a lot of good work in the 70s and 80s, "but when the government started taking strict action, they could not save that work."

He said that learning from this experience, the Maoists changed their strategy in Chhattisgarh.

15 years ago he told the BBC, "In Bastar, we emphasized on creating a military organization right from the beginning."

Ravinder surrendered in 2014 and is now working as a security in-charge in a college in Hyderabad.

Last week, he lamented, "Neither the social work done in Telangana sustained nor the guerrilla army created to protect forest dwellers in Chhattisgarh proved effective."

But N. Venugopal says that due to some reasons Maoists have become a big force in Chhattisgarh in the past years.

According to the 2021 report of the Indian Bureau of Mines, the state is the sole producer of tin concentrate and molding sand. It is also a major producer of coal, dolomite, bauxite and good quality iron ore.

Venugopal believes that the biggest success of the Maoists was that they prevented mining companies from accessing these resources.

He says, "The Maoists started the movement on the principle of 'water, forest, land'. With the thought that the forest and land belong to the tribals, not to the multinational companies. Due to this, many multinational companies have not been able to enter these areas till now."

Decline of Maoists in Chhattisgarh

The recent action of security forces against the Maoists, in which the death of Basavaraju was the most important incident, has happened at a time when the Home Ministry had stated in its last report (2023-24) that "Efforts were made to deploy central armed police forces, approve India Reserve Battalion, improve and modernize state police forces, reimburse security related costs, strengthen special intelligence branches and special squads of the states.''

It said, "Steps were taken to better equip police stations, provide helicopters for operations in Maoist areas, assist state police in training, share intelligence, enhance coordination between states and increase engagement with local people."

All these steps were taken under the National Policy and Action Plan to Address LWE, which was approved by the Narendra Modi government in 2015.

M.A. Ganapathy, former joint secretary in the LWE department in the home ministry, said: "Because of this policy, the Chhattisgarh police has developed the capability to carry out 'highly precise strikes'."

Ganapathy, who drafted the national policy to deal with Naxals, says, "The central paramilitary forces carried out holding operations like setting up police camps, maintaining a ground presence and creating a conducive environment for the state police. Meanwhile, the state police gathered intelligence and the special forces conducted operations."

He said, "During the operation, the paramilitary forces laid a siege so that the Maoists could not escape. There was a clear division of responsibilities and good coordination."

Kamal Shukla, a journalist from southern Chhattisgarh who has been observing the conflict closely for years, says the recruitment of former Naxalites into the District Reserve Force (DRF), the anti-Naxal unit of the state police, has enhanced the police's fighting capability.

He said, "The surrendered Naxalites knew the area well and could identify hiding places. They also had a better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the rebels, which helped the police a lot."

The Maoists also admitted in a press release issued on May 25 that some of the surrendered Naxalites played an important role in the killing of Basavaraju.

"In the last six months, some members from Maad (Abujhmar) area got weakened and surrendered before the police. They became traitors," the statement said.

However, the paramilitary forces also took charge and the operation continued with helicopters.

Shukla said, "Helicopters have been used before, but this time a large number of drones were deployed, which was a new aspect of this operation."

Under the National Policy on Counter-Maoism, Rs 765 crore has been given to central government agencies to strengthen the infrastructure required for helicopter operations and security camps in Naxal-affected areas.

M.A. Ganapathy, a former officer in the Union Home Ministry and an expert on anti-Naxal operations, says that the Maoist ideology is no longer attracting the new generation, which is why the number of people joining their organisation has been constantly decreasing.

He said that the Maoists failed to understand the changing thinking and needs of the people.

Ganapati says, "When the era of mobile phones and social media came, people started connecting with the outside world. In such a situation, you cannot remain active for long by sitting in a corner of the forest, cut off from society. Maoists too cannot work in hiding, cut off from the new social realities."

In addition, the central government “launched special schemes to improve infrastructure such as road and telecom connectivity and skill development of local people,” the 2023-24 report states.

A former Naxalite leader, who was active in Bihar in the 1980s, said on the condition of anonymity that the violence was much more severe in Chhattisgarh because the military strength of the Maoists there was much greater than in Telangana.

He said, "In Telangana, the Maoists were successful in forming many squads, platoons, companies and battalions. Whereas in some areas of Bengal, Bihar and Telangana, they were limited to only squads. Some guerrilla platoons were formed in Bihar, but they were also very small compared to the traditional army."

The result of these efforts and strategic changes was that, according to the annual report of the Home Ministry, there was a 48 percent decline in incidents of Maoist violence in 2023 as compared to 2013 (from 1136 to 594 cases), and the number of deaths of civilians and security forces in this violence decreased by 65 percent (from 397 to 138 deaths).