Conflict of narratives

A people's movement. India's greatest internal security challenge. Struggle for the rights of the poor, Adivasis, Dalits, landless. Compact Revolutionary Zone with influence in 180 districts. A socio-economic problem rooted in exploitation and idealism. A law-and-order threat. The revolution that will smash the Indian state. The Maoists are ants and can be crushed at anytime.

Neat black-and-white portrayals have come to characterise one of the most complex stories of our times: the Maoist as the saviour, the state as the oppressor; the state as protector, the Maoist as villain. Numbers and scale of action are considered sole markers of Maoist spread and activity: 1608 incidents of Maoist violence and 677 people killed in 2005; 1509 incidents and 678 killed in 2006; 249 people killed till June 2007.

But this narrative hides more than it tells. Such as the fact that, in reality, there is no one Maoist movement in India. Likewise, there is no unified state response. The Communist Party of India (Maoist), born in 2004 after the unity of the People's War Group (PWG) and the Maoist Communist Centre, is at the forefront of the Maoist movement in India, also commonly referred to as the Naxalite movement. Spread across several states in varying degrees, with a common political and military outlook, the Maoist movement is clearly national in character, with the party organised into a command structure with the stated aim of taking over state power.

Yet the Maoist movement nowadays looks significantly different from Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh, Raipur in Chhattisgarh, Ranchi in Jharkhand and Patna in Bihar. Go further, deeper in each state, and Warangal, Dantewada, Hazaribagh and Jehanabad – datelines that punctuate India's decades-long Maoist war – have more than their share of differences. Like any other political formation, the Maoists may adapt themselves to a specific set of dynamics, but the stark variations remain significant. Indeed, they pose difficult questions for those who portray the Maoist cause as a single movement, bent on destroying the Indian state, and advocate a homogenous approach to deal with the issue. Likewise, the Maoists themselves might not be able to substantiate the claim that they represent the unified upsurge of India's deprived and marginalised.