The Third Dimension

Air Power in Combating the Maoist Insurgency

Gp Capt A K Agarwal

• Publisher: VIJ Books (India) Pty Ltd
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9789382573722
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Terrorism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Maoist Insurgency has been born out of long periods of social discontent, economic hardships and state apathy towards the neglected masses. Anti-Maoist operations have to be based on a strong political will, aggressive anti-guerrilla tactics and economic and social development of affected areas to win back the confidence of the people. A common perception is that in these operations, the role of air power is normally overlooked. History differs and tells us that air power has been used extensively to quell past insurgencies. This book explores the nature of insurgencies and air power lessons from past insurgencies. After analysing the Maoist insurgency, the employment of air assets in supporting the security forces is examined.

The Maoist Insurgency

A Short History

The Maoist insurgency draws its name from a brand of Communist radical ideology based on the political ideas of Mao Tse Tung. This insurgency in India can be traced back to the Telangana struggle. Telangana is the eastern part of the former princely state of Hyderabad. Any study on the Maoist Insurgency in India cannot ignore the importance of the rise and fall of the Telangana Movement (1946-51). Telangana is remembered by the Indian Communists as a notable period in the history of peasant struggles for Indian communists. It was the first serious effort by sections of the communist party to understand and learn from the experiences of the Chinese revolution and to develop a comprehensive line for India’s democratic revolution.

The movement started when oppressed peasants revolted against the atrocities of their landlord in Jangaon Taluka. The landlord, Visnuru Ramachandra Reddy had been prevented by the peasants from seizing the lands of a lowly washerwoman. On the 04 July 1946, a group of people marched towards the landlord’s house, where their leader was killed by the landlord’s henchmen. Not in keeping with their normal behaviour of submission, the enraged peasants, swelling to a mob of over 2,000, charged towards the landlord’s house, surrounded it,baying for Visnuru Ramachandra Reddy’s blood. This was the starting of the Telanganna struggle.¹ This struggle or movement had three lines of thought. The first one drew inspiration from the teachings of Stalin, denouncing Mao. The second one was influenced profoundly by the methods of Mao Tse Tung. The third group was more central in their thinking and professed a parliamentary democratic approach.²

This movement was supported by 2000 to 3000 villages, where peasant rule was established. To defend this rule, there was a guerrilla army of 2000 regulars and over 10,000 supporters.³ The movement was brought under control by the Indian army which marched in to the State of Hyderabad with the intention to merge it into the greater state of India.

In 1957, the Communists succeeded in forming a government in Kerala, which was subsequently overthrown. After the Indo - China war, the Communist party split into two, namely, the Communist Party of India (CPI) and Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI [M]). While the CPI professed a theory of ‘peaceful road to non-capitalist development’, the CPI (M) adopted the centrist line. Though there were serious differences on ideological and tactical grounds, both the parties went ahead with their parliamentary exercises and formed the United Front government in West Bengal.

The next phase of the Maoist Insurgency was seen in West Bengal in the small village of Naxalbari, neighbouring the Indian borders of Nepal. The trigger for the Naxalite Movement, the name of which is derived from the village, was once again a land related bone of contention. A tribal, having obtained a judicial order, went to plough his land on 02 March 1967. The local landlords attacked him with the assistance of their henchmen. The villagers of the area retaliated and started forcefully recapturing their lands. What followed was a rebellion, which left one police sub inspector and nine tribals dead. Within a short span of about two months, this incident acquired great visibility and tremendous support from cross sections of Communist revolutionaries belonging to the state units of the CPI (M) in West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) initiated a violent and bloody uprising in Bengal. One of its leaders, Charu Mazumdar was influenced by the teachings of Mao. He encouraged the peasants and lower class tribals to overthrow the government and upper classes by force. The United Front Government of West Bengal, headed by the CPI (M) was able to contain the insurgency within a short span of 72 days with all the harshest measures possible. The state police collaborated with a strong intelligence network and were able to track the movements of the leaders. The Naxalite Movement in West Bengal culminated with Op Steeple Chase (July 1971), a joint police and military operation.⁴ This movement was an expression of the anger of the poor farmers of West Bengal due to the lack of land reforms. After this movement, West Bengal devised a plan to address the issue of land reforms, which resulted in the movement subsiding.

The 1980s saw the resurgence of Naxal violence in Andhra Pradesh in the manifestation of the Peoples War Group (PWG). This group was officially designated the epithet of Communist Party of India—Marxist Leninist (People’s War) was formed on Lenin’s birth anniversary on 22 April 1980. By the early 1990s, this movement also proliferated to Orissa, Bihar, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. The aggrandizement of militarisation became the characteristic feature of the PWG. The formation of People’s Guerrilla Army (PGA), special guerrilla squads, Permanent Action Team (PAT) and Special Action Team (SAT) were the distinctive features of PWG.

A United Front

There were three major groups which formed the Naxalite operations. They were the Communist Party of India (Marxist – Leninist) [CPI (M-L)], the Peoples War Group (PWG) and the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC).⁵ On 21September 2004, it was perceived that these three parties merged to form a new entity, the Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist). According to a CPI-Maoist press release issued by the ‘General Secretary’ of the Party, the merger was aimed at furthering the cause of “revolution” in India. The new party also pledged to work in close collaboration with the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist). As part of its strategy, the CPI-Maoist would fiercely oppose the Central Government run by the Congress and its mainstream communist allies, the Communist Party of India (CPI) and the CPI-Marxist. The General Secretary also announced the formation of a ‘People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army’ and extended support to “revolutionary struggles” in Nepal, Peru, the Philippines, Turkey and “other places”.⁶

Causes for the Insurgency

Rural India has a long history of social hierarchy and discrimination through casteism and communalism, with the poor landless farmers being oppressed by high caste landlords. Whenever the landless peasants were driven against the wall and they reached their breaking point, India experienced sponsored uprisings like the Telangana and Naxalbari ones, with the Communists finding space to manoeuvre.

As per the census of 2001, there are 84.3 million tribal people (also known as Scheduled Tribes) in India. Tribal India inhabit the jungles and hilly areas, abundantly found in central India, which are also termed as Scheduled Areas (SA).⁷ Several specific legislations have been enacted by the Central and State Governments, such as the Fifth Schedule (FS) and Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act (PESA) 1996, for the welfare and protection of tribal people and their tribal domain. These legislations have not been implemented in the desired manner.⁸ Since times immemorial, the tribals have relied on the forests for their livelihood. In the 1980s, there were two developments which affected these people.

India’s major source of power was from coal powered thermo-electric plants. The country was facing power shortage. In order to increase the generation capacity, the government resorted to opening new thermo power stations, simultaneously increasing the production of coal. Coal was found abundantly in central India. New coal mines were commissioned, leading to the displacement of a number of tribals from the states of Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and southern Uttar Pradesh. This large scale displacement of economically weak tribals which relied primarily on the forests for their livelihood is in all probability, the largest displacement of people, mandated by the government’s development programmes.⁹

The second development was in the passing of the Forest (Conservation) Act 1980, which was legislated in order to provide a higher level of protection to the forests and to regulate diversion of forest lands for non-forestry purposes, which can be concluded to imply commercial projects. This Act gave sweeping powers to the forest officials to prevent encroachment by the forest dwellers into the forests, which was their domain on which they relied for their sustenance. These poor tribal forest dwellers, who till now were law abiding citizens of the country found themselves to be on the wrong side of the law. This Act did not permit habitations to exist inside the forests, even if they existed before the law was passed. On the other hand, there was large scale mining activity in these mineral rich areas which further displaced the tribals.

As per a Report by an Expert Committee to the Planning Commission, the majority of Scheduled tribes still live in conditions of serious deprivation and poverty. The tribal people have remained backward in all aspects of human development including education, health, nutrition, etc. Apart from socio-economic deprivation, there has been a steady erosion of traditional tribal rights and their command over resources.¹⁰ As a result of these aspects of neglect, poverty and the lack of access to the traditional means of livelihood the people came to be disenchanted. The Maoist found a fertile ground to sow the seeds of their ideology and foment an insurgency.

Maoist Strategy and Tactics

In a press statement dated October 14, 2004, General Secretaries of the Central Committee of the two outfits, the MCC and the PWG, declared:

“The immediate aim and programme of the Maoist party is to carry on and complete the already on-going and advancing New Democratic Revolution in India as a part of the world proletarian revolution by overthrowing the semi-colonial, semi-feudal system under the neo-colonial form of indirect rule, exploitation and control… This revolution will be carried out and completed through armed agrarian revolutionary war, i.e. protracted people’s war with the armed seizure of power remaining as its central and principal task, encircling the cities from the countryside and thereby finally capturing them. Hence the countryside as well as the Protracted People’s War will remain as the “centre of gravity” of the party’s work, while urban work will be complimentary to it.” ¹¹

The Document - Strategy & Tactics of the Indian Revolution’

The Maoists or namely the Naxalites, are also referred to as Left Wing Extremists. The CPI (Maoist) continue to be prevalent as the most dominant among the various Left Wing Extremist groups, accounting for more than 90% of total Left Wing Extremist incidents and 95% of resultant killings.¹² The Central Committee of the CPI (Maoist) have prepared and released a document titled ‘Strategy & Tactics of the Indian Revolution’ in September 2004. Five draft documents were prepared between February 2003 and September 2004 before the present text took shape. The document is divided into two parts comprising a total of thirteen chapters. Part I deals with ‘Strategy’ and comprises eight chapters. Part II deals with ‘Tactics’ discussed in five chapters. When this document is analysed there are a number of salient points which highlight the seriousness of the intent of the Maoists to overthrow the Government of India and establish their rule.

Analysis of the Document

Chapters one to five trace the history of revolutions which have occurred in the past and proceed to explain the situation in India as seen...