Consider this. 172 out of the 600 districts in India are affected by the presence of Naxalites. More than 1400 people have been killed in Naxalite-related violence over the past year-and-a-half. The entire tribal belt from Bihar to Andhra Pradesh – which includes Jharkhand, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, as well as parts of Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka – faces an active ultra-left rebellion. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has termed this the largest threat to national security in the country.
There is no easy answer to Naxalism. When an armed group decides to fight the state, it is opting out of the social contract and the political arrangement at which democratic society has arrived. Does a state then deal with them as a force outside the terms of the contract and, in the process, sacrifice basic liberties and values? Or do you engage and seek to bring them into the mainstream without compromising basic rights?
Over the past year, the state government of Chhattisgarh in central India, with ample support from the opposition parties, has encouraged an anti-Naxalite force called the Salwa Judum (Campaign for Peace). The authorities would have everyone believe that this group is an example of 'spontaneous' and 'voluntary' activism by victims of Maoist violence.
A study published in early June by the Independent Citizen's Initiative, comprised of prominent academics, activists and journalists, points to a different reality. Reports the group: "The Chhattisgarh administration appears to have 'outsourced' law and order to an unaccountable, undisciplined and amorphous group." The state has appointed more than 3000 so-called 'special police officers', among them minors, who have been handed .303 rifles. This support of vigilante action has violated every canon of the law, and in pitting tribal against tribal it has exacerbated the conflict.