- The Maoist insurgency is more of a law-and-order problem than an ideological one. It is always so in areas in the throes of insurgency of any kind.
- One shouldn’t overstate the tribal support for Maoists being ideological rather than being a largely forced one or one that has to do with their daily struggles of life during which the state hardly plays an assuaging role.
- On the contrary, the state inflicts or tends to inflict what many non-Maoist and even anti-Maoist activists call state violence.
- The tribals still feel unsafe when the police enter their villages during ANOs.
- Clearly, support for the Maoists, forced or voluntary, is a product of state’s failure to reach out to them rather than being one born out of some commitment to the Maoist ideology.
- Interviews by journalists, including this writer, with several former high-ranking Maoist cadres have underscored their naive understanding about the basic tenets of Communist or Maoist thought.
Conclusion
There is only one way out and it is that the government of India and the Maoists should sit across the table and sort out their differences. The harsh truth is that the tribals are today sandwiched between the two warring groups of State Police and Central Armed Police Forces on the one hand and the Maoist guerrillas on the other. The government of India is today in a position for reconciliation. Such a gesture would not be an admission of weakness. The government today holds the upper hand and, therefore, any such move would be considered magnanimous. There has been much blood-letting. It is time to heal the Naxal wounds, time to usher in a new dawn.
