India: Operation Kagar — The war on Adivasis and for a ‘Maoist-free India’ (plus CPIML Liberation statements)

[Editor’s note: Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation activist N Sai Balaji will be speaking at Ecosocialism 2025, September 5-7, Naarm/Melbourne, Australia. For more information on the conference visit ecosocialism.org.au.]

First published in Liberation.

The escalated war on Maoists under “Operation Kagar”, has seen security forces in Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand and Maharashtra claim the lives of hundreds of Adivasis over the past year, and in particular since January 2025. The use of advanced warfare equipment including Israeli drones, fake encounters, extra-judicial violence by the state, and large-scale proliferation of security camps particularly in Bastar, Chhattisgarh, have to be seen in the context of Home Minister Amit Shah setting March 2026 as the deadline to make India Maoist-free.This alarming militarisation has been met with peaceful and sustained protests by Adivasis against the establishment of security camps in Fifth Schedule Areas without any consultation and consent of the concerned Gram Sabhas, and illegal appropriation of their forests, lands and other resources while also demanding proper schools, health facilities and other basic amenities. The Chhattisgarh government has responded by banning a people's rights organisation like the Moolvasi Bachao Manch, in October 2024, under the provisions of the draconian Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act. More recently, the Chhattisgarh’s police has targeted Manish Kunjam, prominent Adivasi leader in the Bastar region, who has been at the forefront of the struggle seeking investigation into the irregularities of distribution of tendu patta bonus amounting to crores of rupees.

In the name of 'Naxal-mukt Bharat' the BJP-led governments have unleashed a campaign of complete militarisation of resource-rich Adivasi areas like Bastar and launch an unbridled war on the Adivasi people and all kinds of protests and people's rights campaigns. This focus on military operations rather than the socio-economic development of the region is condemnable and lays bare the true intentions of the government to enable corporate take-over of these mineral-rich regions. The reported plans to convert these military camps into so-called “integrated development centres” to provide various welfare services including hospitals, schools, rations and other services, points to a plan of permanent military presence in the region.

Speaking at the Press Conference organised by the Coordination Committee for Peace at Press Club, New Delhi on 9th May 2025, Comrade Dipankar emphasised that Bastar is passing through an entirely new phase which is qualitatively different from earlier ones like Salwa Judum, Operation Green Hunt or encounters. Whatever name the government gives it, this time around it is essentially an extrajudicial extermination campaign which is not acceptable by any democracy irrespective of ideologies. Amit Shah has fixed a March 2026 deadline which translates into a licence to kill indiscriminately. In fact, the increasing numbers of encounters coming now explicitly make it clear that people are being killed one sidedly, and on a large scale.

Com Dipankar urged that, firstly, we must recognise this as an extrajudicial extermination campaign by the government which if continues, will be fatal for the democracy. This violence by the state is a killing spree, which is unacceptable and must be stopped. Such an approach irrespective of what Maoists or any other movement, organisation or ideology have done must be opposed. Com Dipankar hope that the Coordination Committee for Peace will succeed in raising this issue throughout the country and will build enough pressure on the government, recognising the hard task at hand given that the recalcitrant attitude of the Union government which neither listens to the people’s voices nor takes any responsibility and accountability on its shortcomings, and yet efforts must be made in that direction.

Com Dipankar also made the point about Bastar and Adivasis, and that these were Scheduled areas, which are mineral rich, and has a very rich cultural and historical heritage, has been facing complete violations of Scheduled area norms and the rights of the Gram Sabhas only to facilitate militarisation and corporatisation. Com Dipankar also made it clear that mining and land acquisitions in this area cannot take place without the help of military camps even when there were no Maoists in Bastar. It is for this reason that it is not only the Maoists facing repression, but even Gandhiwadis like Himanshu Kumar were forced to leave that area. He added that it is a complete suppression of dissent and whoever talks about Adivasis through whatever angle and means are being jailed.

Com. Dipankar clarified this is not about Maoists versus Indian State, given that we are witnessing the same modus operandi all over the country. We had seen brutal repression in Tamil Nadu’s Sterlite movement where police acted like a corporate army. Fact is the state is serving the corporate interests and working for the corporate plunder in all mineral rich areas in the country. The issue here is about Adivasis and their rights under the Fifth Schedule and their needs and aspirations.

Finally Com Dipankar stated that the Maoists have made it clear that they want peace talks, and when any organisation comes forward with such a proposal, the government should respond. However, this is not the case. In fact, this government has given the slogan of “Naxal Mukt Bharat”, and has also given the “Congress Mukt Bharat” slogan. Congress is a parliamentary party hence a different route of ED and CBI was taken, but Maoists do not go for elections as they have a peculiar mode of operation. Even so, even if the Maoists had not given any offer, even then as citizens for democracy and the Constitution we must hold the government accountable for this ongoing extermination campaign and any other such campaign in any part of the country, since allowing such a campaign will only mean complete extermination of democracy itself.

The civil society as democratic medium of this country should collectively demand this because it is in the common interest of all beyond ideological leanings. Otherwise any future struggle or movement belonging to any ideology will face a similar kind of repression.

Adivasis have become the victims of collective punishment as the state wages a war against them, and the brutality of Operation Kagar is intended to strip Adivasis of any claim over the forests, land and dignity. This policy of militarisation and war on Adivasis has to end, and there must be the guarantee of a democratic space and environment for the deprived and oppressed Adivasis in Bastar and other areas of Adivasi unrest.

On Narayanpur-Bijapur extrajudicial killings

Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation, May 21

CPI(ML) strongly condemns the cold-blooded extra-judicial killing of the General Secretary of CPI(Maoist) Comrade Keshav Rao and other Maoist activists and Adivasis in Narayanpur-Bijapur. 

From the celebratory post of Union Home Minister Amit Shah, it is clear that the state is spearheading Operation Kagar as an extra-judicial extermination campaign and taking credit for killing citizens and suppressing Adivasi protests against corporate plunder and militarisation in the name of combating Maoism.

We appeal to all justice-loving Indians to insist on a judicial probe into the massacre and demand an immediate end to the military operation, especially when the Maoists have declared a unilateral ceasefire. 

The Narayanpur massacre and the BJP’s sinister military campaign for a ‘Maoist-free India’

Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation, May 28

Following the extra-judicial killing of CPI(Maoist) general secretary Comrade Nambala Keshav Rao alias Basavaraju in the Narayanpur massacre on 21 May, the Modi government seems to be in a celebratory mode. While Home Minister Amit Shah called it 'a landmark achievement in the battle to eliminate Naxalism', promptly endorsed as a 'remarkable success' by PM Narendra Modi, the BJP Karnataka unit used a meme showing Amit Shah holding a cauliflower. The symbolism invokes the carnage of Muslims in Bhagalpur in 1989, where killers claimed to have grown cauliflowers on the soil where more than a hundred Muslim victims in a village were reportedly buried. At the moment of the Modi government's claiming its biggest anti-Maoist military success, the BJP was quick to remember and celebrate one of India's ghastliest anti-Muslim massacres.

The Maoist deaths in the Narayanpur massacre have now also been corroborated in a press release issued on behalf of the Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee of CPI (Maoist). According to this release, as many as 28 activists were killed in this massacre including  several women and a number of senior leaders of the party. The release says till January, Basavaraju had an immediate security system comprising more than sixty fighters, but the number was reduced since then to ensure greater mobility. The group was also affected by desertions and betrayals, and this enabled the state to plan and execute the military operation with such success. At the time of the massacre, Basavaraju was guarded by thirty four fighters, seven of whom managed to escape by breaking the encirclement of the security forces.

Basavaraju's mother, and members of families of Nageshwar Rao and other leaders, had approached the Andhra Pradesh High Court seeking custody of the dead bodies of their kin to bring them home for their funerals. The AP High Court gave a favourable order and the Chhattisgarh government had promised to the court to hand over the bodies after post mortem. But while the family members kept waiting for the bodies, the state cremated them calling them 'unclaimed bodies'. Just a few days ago, activist Soni Sori had narrated her experience of accompanying some Adivasi families to Bijapur hospital to collect the bodies of their members killed at Karregutta hills. Thousands of maggots were crawling on those decomposing bodies leaving them unrecognizable. For the Maoists and Adivasis of Bastar, the state's violence continues even after their lives are taken away.

The Modi government has fixed a deadline - 31 March 2026 - to make India Maoist-free. The security forces are being given a licence and an incentive to kill with each killing fetching guaranteed hefty rewards. There is a surrender policy for Maoists who side with the government, but the policy is not intended to rehabilitate them in what is called 'normal, peaceful life' but only to turn them into mercenaries and forcibly pit them against their former comrades, often fellow Adivasis from the same community, locality and families. With more than 60,000 security personnel from the central paramilitary forces like the CRPF and its elite CoBRA commandos and various state forces like the Chhattisgarh police, the District Reserve Guard comprising mostly surrendered Maoists, Bastar Fighters and Special Task Force, Bastar today is among India's most densely militarised regions, where the people are subjected to aerial bombardment and the use of Israeli drones.

More than 300 security camps have turned the region into a military cantonment where there is one security personnel for every eight civilians. And for Adivasis in Bastar, every aspect of life is overshadowed and administered by the security forces. The autonomy promised in the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution and the rights provided under the Forest Rights Act or Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas Act have all disappeared in the eerie environment of the militarised administration of a police state. The militarisation of Bastar has a long history going back to UPA-era anti-Maoist campaigns like Operation Greenhunt and Salwa Judum, which in 2011 was termed unconstitutional and ordered to be dismantled by the Supreme Court. But the Modi era began wirh a renewed offensive with intensified violence. Militarisation today is a 'permanent settlement' to facilitate massive corporate plunder.

Let us also note that in the guise of a battle against Maoism, the Modi regime is out to silence every Adivasi protest in Bastar against this nexus of militarisation and corporate plunder. Gandhian Himanshu Kumar has been banished from Chhattisgarh; writer-activist Bela Bhatia is being harassed and suppressed; long-standing popular voice of Bastar and former CPI MLA Manish Kunjam is being targeted; the anti-militarisation umbrella platform of indigenous people called Moolvasi Bachao Manch has been banned; and indiscriminate cases are being filed and people arrested under draconian laws like the Chhattisgarh Special Public Safety Act and the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act. The Supreme Court has time and again said that upholding an ideology is no crime, there are guidelines for mandatory investigation into every encounter. Today ideological witch hunt and encounter killings, increasingly described chillingly as neutralization, have become pillars of state policy.

The ramifications of Operation Kagaar are not limited to Bastar or the Maoists. They concern every movement for justice, every form of dissent against fascist tyranny. Sooner rather than later, the template being developed in Bastar will be replicated elsewhere against newer target groups. The cauliflower in Amit Shah's hands in the sinister BJP Karnataka imagery must serve as a warning for all. At a time when Maoists had declared a unilateral ceasefire, there must be a broad convergence for a political resolution through peace and dialogue. A judicially monitored probe into Narayanpur and other recent massacres perpetrated under Operation Kagar is a must for the constitutional foundation of the Indian republic to survive. And regardless of how the Maoists deal with the current juncture and try and regroup after this setback, the indigenous people of Bastar and beyond deserve the fullest solidarity and support of all democratic forces in their quest for justice and dignity.