# Red Terror or Dead Terror | Ft. Sandeep Unnithan | IOD S3 Ep 10

An episode of [In Our Defence](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1617244439), 13 Jun 2025, 58 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/66546992/13_jun_25_iod_mix_12_june_128.mp3

Inside India’s Fight Against Naxalism | Is This the End of Red Terror? | Ft. Sandeep Unnithan  In this deep-dive episode of In Our Defence, veteran defence journalist Sandeep Unnithan joins host Dev Goswami to unpack India’s decades-long battle with Left Wing Extremism (LWE) — often called Naxalism or Red Terror — and the recent decisive push to eradicate it by March 2026. Dev and Sandeep explore the evolution of the Naxal movement from its origins in Naxalbari in 1967 to its spread across India’s infamous “Red Corridor”, and the multi-pronged strategy that has brought the insurgency to its lowest levels in decades. Key topics include: The historic neutralisation of CPI (Maoist) General Secretary Basavaraju in Operation Black Forest The spike in encounters and surrenders in 2024–25 Why counter-insurgency in jungles is as deadly — and complex — as high-tech border warfare. Why the Indian Army was never deployed against Naxals — and what could have happened if they had. The role of urban intellectual support in sustaining the movement — and why that’s now faded. This episode is an eye-opening look at one of India’s longest-running internal conflicts, now seemingly entering its final phase. Tune in. Produced by Garvit Srivastava Sound mixed by Rohan Bharti

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: This is India Today Podcasts. Welcome to Season three of
[0:07] Speaker 1: Another Defense, the podcast that takes you inside the world
[0:10] Speaker 1: of conflict. I'm your host, Deve Goswami, and every week
[0:14] Speaker 1: I sit down with experts and retired officers from the Army,
[0:18] Speaker 1: Navy and Air Force to decode all things to do
[0:21] Speaker 1: with India security and explore what it truly means to serve.
[0:26] Speaker 1: Get ready for stories of strategy, sacrifice and strength. This
[0:33] Speaker 1: is in our Defense. Welcome to Another Defense. India's borders,
[0:38] Speaker 1: whether along with the China or Pakistan, are relatedly quiet
[0:42] Speaker 1: for the last couple of weeks, but there's a war
[0:45] Speaker 1: that's raging inside, a war that's been raging for over
[0:48] Speaker 1: five decades now. Cluxialism, maoism, red terror, leftist extremism, you
[0:52] Speaker 1: call it whatever. This all fits into what the Government
[0:56] Speaker 1: of India officially calls left being extremism, and of India
[1:00] Speaker 1: has said that this left wing extremism will be eliminated
[1:04] Speaker 1: by March to zero two six. Funny deadline to have.
[1:07] Speaker 1: It's like the end of the financial end the water
[1:09] Speaker 1: sort of thing. But what we've seen in the last
[1:13] Speaker 1: few weeks is a sport. Last few months actually is
[1:16] Speaker 1: a sport in encounters that's led to surrenders of several
[1:20] Speaker 1: actualtes or eliminations in encounters, and to sort of decode
[1:25] Speaker 1: that and help us understand what's happening right now in
[1:28] Speaker 1: the war against left wing extremism and what's been happening
[1:32] Speaker 1: in the last few years and what we can expect
[1:35] Speaker 1: in the upcoming months is with me, Hey, they're good.
[1:40] Speaker 1: Good to be back once again. A topic I think
[1:42] Speaker 1: Sande that you must have spent almost your entire career
[1:45] Speaker 1: covering in bits and pieces of the parts of my career,
[1:48] Speaker 1: but substantial part of part of your career, because I
[1:51] Speaker 1: think the problem is such, the problem that India has
[1:53] Speaker 1: faced with this is such uh, And that's exactly why
[1:57] Speaker 1: I'm going to actually ask you to give us a
[1:59] Speaker 1: crash course into the history of left being extremism in
[2:02] Speaker 1: India because we were discussing this is before we began recording.
[2:06] Speaker 1: You met me in the capitala downstairs and you asked
[2:08] Speaker 1: me whether this topic gets a lot of traction online.
[2:11] Speaker 1: And when we in the media talk traction, what we
[2:14] Speaker 1: mean basically is whether we get to readers interest into
[2:17] Speaker 1: subject matters like these, And had said that Honestly speaking,
[2:22] Speaker 1: it's not as much as you would expect with some
[2:24] Speaker 1: other very very popular topics for many obvious reasons that
[2:27] Speaker 1: the two of us know about. So, which is exactly
[2:30] Speaker 1: why I want you to sort of explain to our
[2:32] Speaker 1: listeners and viewers what is left wing extremism, how it
[2:36] Speaker 1: sort of took shape and evolved? Now I know it
[2:40] Speaker 1: began in West Bengal. Nor in West Bengal, in a
[2:44] Speaker 1: village called Naxcel Naxlebury, which is where the word Naxilism
[2:47] Speaker 1: comes from, Naxlebarry, which was basically a farmer's movement, a
[2:50] Speaker 1: farmers uprising. How did we start from there? Which was,
[2:54] Speaker 1: if I'm not wrong, in nineteen sixty seven decades later,
[2:59] Speaker 1: where you had what was known as the Red Corridor
[3:01] Speaker 1: that spanned West Bengal, chats Got Bihar, parts of Dark
[3:06] Speaker 1: more than a dozen Indian states, exactly exactly. Yeah, So
[3:09] Speaker 1: give us an overview of how did it begin from Naxalbari,
[3:13] Speaker 1: how did it reach the peaks it did before we
[3:16] Speaker 1: kind of dive into what's happening right now with India's
[3:18] Speaker 1: fight against and mission to end it.
[3:20] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[3:21] Speaker 1: Absolutely, they've a good question and great to be back.
[3:24] Speaker 2: Now. The thing is that you have to understand the
[3:26] Speaker 2: thing about naxialism or Maoism, whatever you call it, left
[3:29] Speaker 2: wing extremism, is that this is an ideology. You know,
[3:33] Speaker 2: it is not something about peasants who being discriminated suddenly
[3:37] Speaker 2: you know, picked up arms and challenged the might of
[3:41] Speaker 2: the state. All of this can be traced back to
[3:46] Speaker 2: the revolutions in Russia and in China, specifically China, because
[3:50] Speaker 2: the MAOIs in India are actually more heavily influenced by
[3:55] Speaker 2: Mao Zidong. What he did in China in the twenties
[3:57] Speaker 2: and the thirties and finally captured power in China nineteen
[4:00] Speaker 2: forty eight. He expelled the nationalists, and the Chinese Communist
[4:04] Speaker 2: Party still rules until some time. The Chinese were actively
[4:08] Speaker 2: supporting all of these revolutionary movements all across the world,
[4:12] Speaker 2: and you had all of these leftist guerrilla movements, whether
[4:15] Speaker 2: it's a Shining Path in South America, you have the
[4:19] Speaker 2: you know, the Philippines Red movements there in Cambodia. So
[4:24] Speaker 2: all of these are actually all far left militant groups
[4:29] Speaker 2: who overthrow, who advocate the overthrow of the ruling government.
[4:35] Speaker 2: And this is also what the Maos of India plan
[4:39] Speaker 2: to do when they began their insurrection in West Bengal Naxalbaria.
[4:44] Speaker 2: As you mentioned, the plan was to overthrow the state
[4:47] Speaker 2: and to establish red rule exactly the way Chairman Mao
[4:51] Speaker 2: had done. So it is an ideology and this ideology
[4:56] Speaker 2: has remained in one form of the other. Now it's
[4:59] Speaker 2: come in several waves. Now, you had these movements in
[5:02] Speaker 2: Telangana in nineteen forty six when you had an uprising.
[5:06] Speaker 2: There were genuine reasons for that, the kind of operation
[5:10] Speaker 2: of the villagers and all was but it was pretty
[5:12] Speaker 2: devastating for people over there in what was then the
[5:16] Speaker 2: Nizam's territories nineteen forty six, where you had peasants uprisings
[5:21] Speaker 2: and a lot of you know, communists movements were across
[5:27] Speaker 2: the countryside in India. One of like I mentioned in Telangana,
[5:30] Speaker 2: you had investment all Kerala. Of course they formed a
[5:33] Speaker 2: government there so that you can say the revolutionary power
[5:37] Speaker 2: was converted into electoral power. And it was an unusual
[5:41] Speaker 2: thing that you had the first communist government in Kerala
[5:45] Speaker 2: in using an elected democracy, you know, parliamentary democracy to
[5:50] Speaker 2: come to power. But you had all of these little
[5:52] Speaker 2: fringe movements in the countryside, flickering in Telangana. In and
[5:56] Speaker 2: A Pradesh, of Courseesh was undivided in those days. And
[5:59] Speaker 2: then West Bengal. The uprising in Naksalbari in nineteen sixty
[6:04] Speaker 2: seven was crushed very brutally by the force of the state.
[6:09] Speaker 2: By nineteen seventy two it was completely wiped out. It
[6:12] Speaker 2: was the government, it was the police, the paramilitary and
[6:17] Speaker 2: even the Indian Army. Not much as spoken about this,
[6:20] Speaker 2: but the fact is that the Indian Army did not
[6:22] Speaker 2: want while it was focused on East Pakistan, did not
[6:25] Speaker 2: want this insurgency in its backyard. So which is why
[6:29] Speaker 2: I have spoken with General Jacob who was then the
[6:31] Speaker 2: Chief of Staff of the Eastern Command, and he said
[6:34] Speaker 2: that they proceeded to act against the Maos the Naxals
[6:39] Speaker 2: with brute force and that uprising was crushed brutally. And
[6:44] Speaker 2: then in two thousand and four, what you have is
[6:48] Speaker 2: all of these remaining groups, which is the Maoist communist
[6:51] Speaker 2: center in Bihar, the peoples who are group of Adhdesh,
[6:56] Speaker 2: the complete die hard leftist MAOIs revolution. They met somewhere
[7:01] Speaker 2: in the middle in the jungles of Chatti's Gud, and
[7:04] Speaker 2: they formed this party called the CPI MAOIs Communist Party
[7:07] Speaker 2: of Indian MAOIs. And low and behold, they started controlling
[7:12] Speaker 2: large tracts of land in areas where the state was absent,
[7:16] Speaker 2: completely missing, like in the forests of dante Vada and
[7:19] Speaker 2: Chatti's God. You have this place called Abujmard, which is
[7:23] Speaker 2: which means impenetrable forest, like four thousand kilometers of forest,
[7:28] Speaker 2: which which had never been you know, surveyed even in
[7:32] Speaker 2: the times of the British. It is completely unsurveyed territories.
[7:34] Speaker 2: And all of the Maos when there, they established their
[7:38] Speaker 2: bastions there and lo and behold. By two thousand and six,
[7:41] Speaker 2: just two years after this unification of all of these
[7:45] Speaker 2: fringe groups into the CPI MAOIs, you had what was
[7:49] Speaker 2: called the Red Corridor stretching from Nepal right down to
[7:53] Speaker 2: Andhra Pradesh. So they used to call it the Pashupati
[7:56] Speaker 2: to Tirupathi Corridor, almost a dozen Indian states, and it
[8:00] Speaker 2: was also called a Compact Revolutionary Zone, which allowed for
[8:04] Speaker 2: free movement of men and material across this corridor.
[8:07] Speaker 1: It was literally like a.
[8:08] Speaker 2: Corridor, you know, an expressway for the Maos to move freely,
[8:12] Speaker 2: and they controlled at that point more than one hundred
[8:15] Speaker 2: and fifty Indian districts. They had a presence in all
[8:18] Speaker 2: of these districts. Right out of the six hundred or
[8:20] Speaker 2: so Indian districts they controlled almost one hundred hundred and fifty.
[8:23] Speaker 2: They had a presence in all of these districts. They
[8:26] Speaker 2: were very strong. They had a guerrilla army of more
[8:29] Speaker 2: than ten thousand carters. That's almost a division sized force.
[8:34] Speaker 2: And you know, when I was here in India today
[8:37] Speaker 2: in twenty ten, we received the most bloodshilling account of
[8:43] Speaker 2: a massacre in Dante Vada in Chattis Guard where an
[8:47] Speaker 2: entire company of the CRPF were massacred. Now a company
[8:53] Speaker 2: is one one hundred plus troopers. Seventy six of them
[8:57] Speaker 2: were murdered. They were encircled by the Maos who came
[9:00] Speaker 2: in large numbers, one thousands. So they had these fighting
[9:02] Speaker 2: formations which they used to call the battalions, which are
[9:06] Speaker 2: actually companies. But they could a mass mass and they
[9:10] Speaker 2: moved like regular militaries. They were not like guerrillas in
[9:14] Speaker 2: that sense. They would mobilize, they would move march encircles
[9:18] Speaker 2: and they encircled an entire crp of company and they
[9:22] Speaker 2: massacred them with utter brutality. I remember, you know, flying
[9:26] Speaker 2: down there, we went there, took us almost a day
[9:29] Speaker 2: to reach that place where the survivors were pulled out.
[9:32] Speaker 2: They were just about eight survivors from that massacre, and
[9:35] Speaker 2: most of them were shaking when they were describing this
[9:38] Speaker 2: thing of literally hundreds of mouse converging and you know,
[9:41] Speaker 2: literally shooting them like you know hens in a coop.
[9:45] Speaker 2: They were encircles, surrounded and killed. So that was the
[9:48] Speaker 2: military power of the mouse at their peak, somewhere in
[9:51] Speaker 2: the mid twenty tents, which is just about six years
[9:54] Speaker 2: after they'd formed the CPI mouse, and you had the
[9:59] Speaker 2: none other than the Prime of India. It's moment seeing
[10:02] Speaker 2: in two thousand and six April two thousand and six,
[10:04] Speaker 2: I still remember that where he says that they are
[10:06] Speaker 2: the gravest internal security problem for India. And at that time,
[10:11] Speaker 2: let's not forget that you had a situation in Jamun Kashmir,
[10:14] Speaker 2: a very active situation there. You had militancy, you had.
[10:18] Speaker 1: Cross bordered terrorism.
[10:19] Speaker 2: We were two years away from Mumbai, but you already
[10:22] Speaker 2: had a couple of very high profile attacks in Mumbai
[10:24] Speaker 2: ninety three and of course two thousand and six, and
[10:26] Speaker 2: here was a Prime minister saying that, look, they are
[10:29] Speaker 2: the biggest internal security threat. And in a sense they
[10:32] Speaker 2: were far more potent because they were in the They
[10:38] Speaker 2: are what is called a heartland insurgency, which is in
[10:41] Speaker 2: the heart of your country, in the middle of India.
[10:44] Speaker 2: They're not a rim land insurgency, which is something around
[10:47] Speaker 2: the borders, which you can mean, you know, you can contain,
[10:50] Speaker 2: you can put your military there, you can you know,
[10:53] Speaker 2: seal the border. What do you do with an insurgency
[10:55] Speaker 2: that's burning in your in the middle of your country.
[10:58] Speaker 2: So those were very dark times then where we actually
[11:01] Speaker 2: thought it's going to take a while to get all
[11:04] Speaker 2: of this under control. And this was in areas where,
[11:07] Speaker 2: like I mentioned, the state had no presence. There was
[11:09] Speaker 2: no one going there. There was surveyors there, there were
[11:12] Speaker 2: no roads, there was no electricity, there was nothing. So
[11:15] Speaker 2: this was the void that the Maoist chose to incubate
[11:19] Speaker 2: their movement and they used to run. They would run
[11:23] Speaker 2: these liberated zones. They would provide the services, they would
[11:26] Speaker 2: run schools, they would run hospitals, they would hold courts
[11:31] Speaker 2: where they would administer justice. So it was like a
[11:33] Speaker 2: state within a state, and things began to change. I
[11:36] Speaker 2: feel after that massacre in twenty ten, when suddenly you
[11:41] Speaker 2: woke up just four years after what the Prime Minister said,
[11:44] Speaker 2: the Home Ministry said, look, we have a serious problem, gentlemen,
[11:48] Speaker 2: so let's get moving and do something about it. And
[11:51] Speaker 2: which is when they started expanding the paramilitary force. So
[11:56] Speaker 2: the CRPF, the BSF, all of them started to be
[12:00] Speaker 2: expanded till a time that they were almost half a
[12:02] Speaker 2: million strong. A lot of them were deployed in Chatti's Gut.
[12:06] Speaker 2: They helped the state government, you know, they bolstered the
[12:10] Speaker 2: state government capacity to fight the mouse and they got
[12:15] Speaker 2: There's a friend of mine, a very interesting man, Brigaded
[12:17] Speaker 2: Buson Ponver who as a nineteen seventy one war veteran,
[12:21] Speaker 2: he was at the jungle Warfare school in Aranti, and
[12:24] Speaker 2: I still remember in two thousand and five he was
[12:25] Speaker 2: literally airlifted and brought into Churchi's gut and he set
[12:28] Speaker 2: up this college of jungle warfare in the middle of nowhere.
[12:32] Speaker 2: And I Si is a very exceptional man. I mean
[12:34] Speaker 2: at the time when people play golf and you know,
[12:36] Speaker 2: have a nice beer in the afternoon. You had Brigadive
[12:39] Speaker 2: Pon were riding a horse in the middle of nowhere,
[12:42] Speaker 2: you know, and building this college of Jungle.
[12:45] Speaker 1: Warfare's officer who helps it trained the cobra inso of
[12:47] Speaker 1: the CRPF.
[12:48] Speaker 2: Well, no, actually the he trains the police units. The
[12:52] Speaker 2: cobras they have their own training. So he was doing
[12:54] Speaker 2: it more for the state police formations and all that,
[12:58] Speaker 2: so he helped greatly. So I mean, yeah, what I
[13:01] Speaker 2: said was that what I meant to say is that
[13:02] Speaker 2: it is an all of government effort, the center, the states.
[13:05] Speaker 2: All of that happened, and then of course twenty ten
[13:07] Speaker 2: you had that very horrible massacre when the entire Congress
[13:11] Speaker 2: leadership was wiped out, Jiramgati massacre as it's called, where
[13:16] Speaker 2: they literally again they carried out a massacre. Was it
[13:19] Speaker 2: twenty eleven I think or not ten, but it was
[13:22] Speaker 2: after twenty ten where they surrounded and massacred the Congress leadership.
[13:26] Speaker 2: I think it was twenty thirteen if I'm not mistaken.
[13:29] Speaker 2: Memories failing me, but this was the MAOIs at their peak.
[13:34] Speaker 2: They were, you know, completely in control of Central India.
[13:39] Speaker 2: That red corridor was a reality, and I think what
[13:43] Speaker 2: emboldened them was the fact that you had a very
[13:45] Speaker 2: successful uprising in Nepal. You had the Maos of Nepal
[13:51] Speaker 2: who had beaten back the state and they in fact
[13:54] Speaker 2: then finally came out of hiding and they became a
[13:57] Speaker 2: political party, and of course they're now in power in Nepal.
[14:00] Speaker 2: So I think that's where the Mouse also got, you know,
[14:05] Speaker 2: a boost for their thing. Of course, they didn't believe
[14:07] Speaker 2: in the political process. They plan to fight it from
[14:11] Speaker 2: the you know, just like Mao had done. That they
[14:14] Speaker 2: would surge from the forests into the countryside and from
[14:17] Speaker 2: the countryside into and finally encircle the cities and then
[14:21] Speaker 2: take power. They plan to capture power. But I think,
[14:24] Speaker 2: if my memory serves me right again, is in the
[14:27] Speaker 2: twenty forties they wanted to raise the flag of the
[14:31] Speaker 2: Mouse in Beli.
[14:32] Speaker 1: Right, to sort of extent on that point, before we
[14:35] Speaker 1: come to what's happening in the present day. Fighting nux
[14:39] Speaker 1: lights at the tactical level, how different is it compared
[14:43] Speaker 1: to your regular army operation. And the reason I asked
[14:45] Speaker 1: that is because on this podcast I happen to talk
[14:49] Speaker 1: a lot about wars involving armies. We talk about you know,
[14:54] Speaker 1: long reach missiles, fighter jets, submarines, warships, high ting equipment.
[15:00] Speaker 2: Ah.
[15:01] Speaker 1: But the fight against naxialism sort of I think goes
[15:04] Speaker 1: under appreciated, not just on this podcast but also generally
[15:07] Speaker 1: widely speaking in the media because I don't want to
[15:09] Speaker 1: use that word, but I think it's less glamorous, you know,
[15:11] Speaker 1: if you can, if you can see if you can
[15:13] Speaker 1: call it that. Let's take the example of operations, and you know,
[15:16] Speaker 1: after that you had all these fancy s afrat image
[15:18] Speaker 1: to sort of you know, for people to play around
[15:19] Speaker 1: with and sort of talk about, Casey, that's what the
[15:21] Speaker 1: strike happened. You don't really see that really happening happening
[15:25] Speaker 1: with the with the fight against axtualism, which I think,
[15:29] Speaker 1: based on what you've described and what I've read, is
[15:31] Speaker 1: equally if not more dangerous and deadly. So when it
[15:35] Speaker 1: comes to fighting carders of nexill and naxialism, when it
[15:38] Speaker 1: comes to fighting a unit of Naxillites, what is it
[15:43] Speaker 1: like for the troops who are engaged in how dangerou
[15:45] Speaker 1: is it? Dangerous is it? And how does it compare
[15:48] Speaker 1: When I said, like a normal army operation.
[15:52] Speaker 2: So very good question, Dave. And you know, my sense
[15:55] Speaker 2: is that it's the way the mouse fight.
[15:59] Speaker 1: Uh.
[16:00] Speaker 2: They train like regular militaries or militias. I've seen their
[16:05] Speaker 2: you know, literature, We've got some captured literature which I
[16:11] Speaker 2: helped translate, and then to study their tactics and all that.
[16:15] Speaker 2: These tactics are just like regular military. They believe they
[16:18] Speaker 2: are a military. They are the People's Liberation Guerrilla Army,
[16:21] Speaker 2: so they are the military wing of the CPI MAOS
[16:25] Speaker 2: and they trained, their organized, They drill exactly the way
[16:29] Speaker 2: regular militaries do. So it's not like in j and
[16:32] Speaker 2: K where you have you know, terrorists operating in small
[16:36] Speaker 2: teams two terrorists or four terrorists. Here, they are organized
[16:39] Speaker 2: like a regular military. They have battalions which they call
[16:45] Speaker 2: they have battalions which actually companies, right, the one hundred
[16:48] Speaker 2: plus strong battalions, and they you know, they move like
[16:52] Speaker 2: regular armies. They're very disciplined, they have good marksmen. They'd
[17:02] Speaker 2: train exactly like regular army units do so, which is
[17:05] Speaker 2: why I remember when I was interviewing the survivors of
[17:09] Speaker 2: that horrible massacre in twenty ten, what if the survivors
[17:12] Speaker 2: told me this and that's still stuck in my mind today,
[17:16] Speaker 2: even after fifteen years, is that I said, you know,
[17:19] Speaker 2: why didn't you guys form up and fight these guys
[17:22] Speaker 2: when they were you know, I mean, that's of course
[17:24] Speaker 2: a lay person's view, but you know, what he said
[17:27] Speaker 2: to me was that when the firing began, the CRP
[17:32] Speaker 2: of guy told me the survivor that see, we were
[17:35] Speaker 2: deployed in j and K now we had seen militant
[17:37] Speaker 2: attacks over there. We thought they'd shoot and then they
[17:40] Speaker 2: would run away. And he said, then the firing just
[17:43] Speaker 2: kept intensifying and intensifying, and then numbers grew. Then we
[17:47] Speaker 2: realized we'd all been surrounded from all sides. And then
[17:50] Speaker 2: there was panic and they ran and they you know,
[17:52] Speaker 2: and that's how they all were massacred. Normal thing is
[17:54] Speaker 2: that when you come under fire, immediately take positions, You
[17:57] Speaker 2: dig in or you take cover, and then you return
[17:59] Speaker 2: the fire. And you know, company is a very very
[18:02] Speaker 2: powerful thing. A company can dig in and protect itself
[18:05] Speaker 2: for a week, two weeks even so, here is a
[18:08] Speaker 2: thing of not appreciating how the maos were trained. They
[18:11] Speaker 2: were trained exactly like regular militaries, and they were training
[18:15] Speaker 2: to encircle and then fight, and a lot of emphasis
[18:18] Speaker 2: given on marksmanship and all of that thing. So I
[18:21] Speaker 2: think the beginning early years were really deadly for the
[18:27] Speaker 2: police and the paramilitary and the capfs, where they didn't
[18:30] Speaker 2: understand how the maose train and how they moved. And
[18:34] Speaker 2: Plus the other challenge is that they're not outsiders. They're
[18:38] Speaker 2: not coming in from Pakistan or Afghanistan or something. They're
[18:40] Speaker 2: all locals. So in a sense they are locals who've
[18:43] Speaker 2: been brainwashed with an idea, ideologically brainwashed and their tribals
[18:48] Speaker 2: they're all sons of the soil. They know the forests
[18:52] Speaker 2: better than the policemen or the paramilitary guys were brought
[18:56] Speaker 2: in from all over the country, and for them the
[18:59] Speaker 2: jungle is a strange place. But for the mouse gilla
[19:02] Speaker 2: over there, he is from that place. He knows that village,
[19:06] Speaker 2: he's prepared to fight. Whereas and you know, knowing the
[19:11] Speaker 2: thing being from that particular for ut that's a big
[19:14] Speaker 2: disadvantage for the paramilitary forces, for the police force, and
[19:18] Speaker 2: which is why it has taken us this long, almost
[19:21] Speaker 2: two decades to come to where we are today in
[19:24] Speaker 2: twenty twenty five. And I think that was the big
[19:27] Speaker 2: learning that they said, it's a slow fight, it's not
[19:30] Speaker 2: going to happen overnight. So you had to actually employ
[19:35] Speaker 2: this strategy which has been used in every counterinsurgency scenario
[19:41] Speaker 2: in the world, starting from the Malay insurgency in the
[19:44] Speaker 2: nineteen fifties, which is clear, hold and build, which means
[19:50] Speaker 2: that you enter a place, you clear the area of
[19:54] Speaker 2: the MAOIs or the insurgents. You hold that territory, you built,
[20:00] Speaker 2: build bases, You reach out to the people. You ensure
[20:03] Speaker 2: that the maos are not able to move them like
[20:05] Speaker 2: as Chairman Moose had, move like a fish among water.
[20:09] Speaker 2: You know, maos are supposed to gila are supposed to
[20:12] Speaker 2: move among the people the way a fish moves in water.
[20:15] Speaker 2: So you're supposed to impede his movements by this clear
[20:18] Speaker 2: hole built strategy, which is what the whole ministry then did.
[20:22] Speaker 2: And you know, there was a lot of pressure on
[20:25] Speaker 2: the army they back in twenty ten. I know because
[20:28] Speaker 2: there's a friend of mine who was handling this deployment
[20:30] Speaker 2: of the from the Northern Command of the Indian Army
[20:35] Speaker 2: because they wanted the Rushtia rifles to deploy into Chatti's gut,
[20:39] Speaker 2: and there was so much pressure on the army, but
[20:41] Speaker 2: the army resisted. They said, no way are we going
[20:43] Speaker 2: to deploy into the Chatti's gut, because then it becomes
[20:47] Speaker 2: a black hole. Because you send one sector of the
[20:50] Speaker 2: ARA over there, the following year, there will be a
[20:53] Speaker 2: second sector, there will be a third sector, and before
[20:56] Speaker 2: you know it, the Indian Army will be deployed in
[20:59] Speaker 2: the northeast, in the north, in the center, everywhere. So
[21:02] Speaker 2: that is a very very wise decision the army made
[21:06] Speaker 2: at that time. I think not enough credit is given
[21:08] Speaker 2: to them where they said, no, we are not going
[21:10] Speaker 2: to deploy and fight the this is a police and
[21:13] Speaker 2: a paramilitary and a CAPF operation. You should only deploy them.
[21:17] Speaker 2: And I think that is a very good decision because
[21:19] Speaker 2: can you imagine this thing, because then it just becomes
[21:21] Speaker 2: unind the army is not really fighting on the borders,
[21:25] Speaker 2: but they're also fighting in the heartland. So it's a
[21:29] Speaker 2: big challenge. And I think what we're seeing around us
[21:33] Speaker 2: today fifteen years later, after that massacre, fifteen years later,
[21:38] Speaker 2: it's been a slow and a steady climb and a
[21:42] Speaker 2: very successful on one of that against the mouse and
[21:45] Speaker 2: the Red Terror right.
[21:47] Speaker 1: I would not turned toward an event that took place
[21:50] Speaker 1: in May this year, an event that was supposed to
[21:53] Speaker 1: be a trigger actually for this episode, but then I
[21:55] Speaker 1: think we had something else to discuss, so we sort
[21:58] Speaker 1: of pushed this topic down. On May twenty one, if
[22:02] Speaker 1: I'm not wrong, there was an encounter in chat this
[22:03] Speaker 1: Gadah in which twenty seven Maoists were killed. Among them
[22:07] Speaker 1: was the General Secretary of CPI, Maoist Bassa Raju. Yeah,
[22:13] Speaker 1: I want to focus only on this person right now
[22:15] Speaker 1: before we expand into the larger fight against against Turnaxilism.
[22:18] Speaker 1: This the Government of India said was the biggest kill
[22:22] Speaker 1: in the last forty years.
[22:23] Speaker 2: Why the first time that a Mao's chief has been killed.
[22:27] Speaker 2: There have only been two chiefs so far. There was
[22:29] Speaker 2: Ganpati before him. Yes, and you have this gentleman who
[22:35] Speaker 2: was killed in May. And it's very significant because if
[22:39] Speaker 2: you have managed to kill the leader of the Maoist
[22:41] Speaker 2: movement uh and the leader is is heavily guarded, the
[22:47] Speaker 2: most protected. Of course, Ganpati took voluntary retirement and he
[22:52] Speaker 2: stepped aside and he asked for A Basavaraj to take
[22:56] Speaker 2: over from him. Bassavaraj is a hardcore military ops guy.
[23:02] Speaker 2: He's from Undhra Pradesh, like the entire mouse upper echelons. Now,
[23:10] Speaker 2: he was trained by the LTT, believe it or not,
[23:13] Speaker 2: in the jungles of Chatti's Guard, not Chatika, I think
[23:16] Speaker 2: in the jungles of Andhra Pradesh where the LTT had
[23:20] Speaker 2: come down in somewhere in the late eighties and they
[23:22] Speaker 2: trained a few Maoist garters. Then they were called the
[23:25] Speaker 2: People's War Group in using IED's improvising IDs improvised explosive devices,
[23:32] Speaker 2: and Basavarajo is one of those people's he's an explosive expert.
[23:37] Speaker 2: So it was that LTT training in the late eighties
[23:39] Speaker 2: that helped the MAOIs perfect a whole range of explosives,
[23:43] Speaker 2: and they've improved, you know, improved on those i DS
[23:48] Speaker 2: making till the time that they could blow up even
[23:51] Speaker 2: armored personnel carriers, heavily protected vehicles, bulletproof vehicles and mine
[23:56] Speaker 2: protected vehicles. So there've been numerous such instances. So Bassavaj's
[24:02] Speaker 2: killing was really significant because the MAOIs that I've spoken
[24:06] Speaker 2: with surrendered MAOIs of course in captivity. They said that
[24:10] Speaker 2: the chief at that time it was Gunpati. He always
[24:13] Speaker 2: travels and he's protected heavily guarded. He has a very
[24:17] Speaker 2: crack team of MAOIs protecting him. Is a detail of
[24:21] Speaker 2: about twenty twenty five bodyguards at all times, and I
[24:26] Speaker 2: believe that the people who were killed with Bassavaj were
[24:30] Speaker 2: were his bodyguard detailed and they probably died fighting when
[24:33] Speaker 2: they were cornered. So this is a very very significant
[24:36] Speaker 2: blow that for the first time you've gone and you've
[24:39] Speaker 2: killed the leader. And today we don't know who the
[24:41] Speaker 2: leader of the mouse are. It's been almost a month
[24:44] Speaker 2: since Bassavaraj is killing. There are at least three names
[24:48] Speaker 2: that are doing the rounds of possible successors. But given
[24:51] Speaker 2: the fact that the utter disarray in the MAOIs rangs today,
[24:56] Speaker 2: that after they've been decapitated, so to speak, there's no
[25:01] Speaker 2: communication from them about who the leader is. And they
[25:04] Speaker 2: are also the very hierarchical organization. If you've studied them
[25:08] Speaker 2: that you see how they are driven by the Central Committee,
[25:11] Speaker 2: which at one point fifteen years back was fourteen members
[25:16] Speaker 2: or so. It then came down to about fifteen members
[25:19] Speaker 2: and today I believe there are just about four members
[25:21] Speaker 2: left in the the Central Committee, which is one of
[25:24] Speaker 2: the top most decision making bodies of the MAOIs. They
[25:28] Speaker 2: are about four of them. Gunpati of course, the former
[25:31] Speaker 2: leader is there, but he's really old and he's getting
[25:34] Speaker 2: he's not in great health. You have someone called Tippiri
[25:37] Speaker 2: Tripati whose house I've been to in karim Nagara district.
[25:42] Speaker 2: And you have Kishenji's younger brother, Malojula Vinugopal Rao, who's
[25:50] Speaker 2: Kishenji was this very famous Maoist leader who was gunned
[25:53] Speaker 2: down in West Bengal of all places, very very bright
[25:58] Speaker 2: and upcoming and a very hardcore mouse leader who was
[26:03] Speaker 2: ambushed and killed in an operation in West Bengal. So
[26:07] Speaker 2: it's now down to these three old men, three or
[26:09] Speaker 2: four and the fourth. So one of them could be
[26:13] Speaker 2: the next Maos chief. Nobody really knows, but you know,
[26:17] Speaker 2: it's it is a leadership that is really old. Uh,
[26:22] Speaker 2: it's aging. And this is the problem of the mouse
[26:26] Speaker 2: that they've not found young carters. They've not found young leaders.
[26:32] Speaker 2: At one point in the seventies and the eighties, when
[26:35] Speaker 2: there was a lot of revolutionary fervor, used to find
[26:37] Speaker 2: a lot of carters coming in. But today the only
[26:40] Speaker 2: new carters are coming in are the tribals, and there
[26:44] Speaker 2: is a certain hierarchy in the Mouse that all the
[26:47] Speaker 2: top leaders are from ah Pladesh. Even today, the three
[26:52] Speaker 2: leaders that I mentioned are the four leaders I mentioned,
[26:54] Speaker 2: three are from and Pladesh. All three incidentally are from
[26:58] Speaker 2: kareem Nagar. This is a district that I visited about
[27:01] Speaker 2: eleven years back just to find out why is it
[27:04] Speaker 2: that fifty percent of the Mause central compantee comes from
[27:07] Speaker 2: one district of then undivided and Pladesh. But the foot
[27:11] Speaker 2: soldiers are all the tribals, but they never allow the
[27:14] Speaker 2: tribals to command the movement. Yes, the tribals are always
[27:19] Speaker 2: the foot soldiers. The officer krter is all andre Telugu.
[27:24] Speaker 2: They speak Telugu. And it's very interesting. When I've seen
[27:27] Speaker 2: some of these videos that the Mouse have shared of
[27:30] Speaker 2: encounters with the police forces, you will see two languages
[27:33] Speaker 2: being you know used. You'll have Telugu people shouting orders
[27:37] Speaker 2: in Telugu and people shouting in Gondhi. So it's two
[27:40] Speaker 2: languages there. So but now it's now come down to
[27:45] Speaker 2: literally there back to the wall twenty twenty five. There,
[27:50] Speaker 2: that revolutionary corridor has become you know, a dead end.
[27:55] Speaker 2: Now it's just a couple of square kilometers in Chatti's
[27:58] Speaker 2: goad and you know it. As you said the financial
[28:03] Speaker 2: year ending match thirty first, twenty twenty six, the government
[28:06] Speaker 2: wants to close the case on the CPI mouse.
[28:09] Speaker 1: Yeah, kind of ironic what you said about the hierarchy
[28:12] Speaker 1: for a people's movement, for there to be a hierarchical
[28:14] Speaker 1: like that. So yeah, talking about the government's mission to
[28:18] Speaker 1: end naxialism, I have some numbers, just some rough numbers.
[28:23] Speaker 1: So according to the Government of India in twenty ten,
[28:28] Speaker 1: there were one twenty six districts affectedly by nxialism. This
[28:31] Speaker 1: number has come down by over eighty percent thirty eight
[28:33] Speaker 1: in April two zero two four. Violence has declined from
[28:38] Speaker 1: one nine hundred incidents in twenty ten, which was the
[28:40] Speaker 1: highest in the history of naxialism, to around three seventy
[28:44] Speaker 1: five in twenty twenty four, which is a drop of
[28:47] Speaker 1: around eighty one percent. Now, I haven't been able to
[28:49] Speaker 1: collate the numbers for the last let's say a year
[28:51] Speaker 1: or so, but empirically speaking, because I work in the
[28:54] Speaker 1: media and I come across news reports and I come
[28:56] Speaker 1: across headlines, sometimes I give those auditions. I can tell
[28:59] Speaker 1: it to you for a fact that I have seen
[29:00] Speaker 1: more inputs and more headlines of Naxles as a surrendering
[29:04] Speaker 1: or being killed in encounters in the last year e
[29:06] Speaker 1: and a half or so, especially in the starting a
[29:09] Speaker 1: few months or of this year. What's really happening something
[29:12] Speaker 1: on the ground And a very naive question, if I
[29:15] Speaker 1: may or a silly question. This seems very easy now.
[29:19] Speaker 1: You know, every other day you have an encounter where
[29:21] Speaker 1: you have a next number of Knaxles being either killed
[29:24] Speaker 1: or you know, surrender or be arrested. If it was
[29:27] Speaker 1: so easy, then what was it? What was making it
[29:29] Speaker 1: so difficult in the past.
[29:31] Speaker 2: Well, you know, the fact is that the presence of
[29:34] Speaker 2: the security forces has gone up enormously for fifteen years.
[29:38] Speaker 2: Back in twenty ten, Abujumart was an area that nobody
[29:42] Speaker 2: went into. It was like the no go zone right
[29:44] Speaker 2: and Brigade upon Ver used to call us that nobody
[29:47] Speaker 2: has been there in ages. It's like one part of
[29:49] Speaker 2: India that has been completely unsurveyed outside of that one island,
[29:54] Speaker 2: Sentinel Island where you have the last centeniaries living. I
[29:58] Speaker 2: didn't think there was any part of it India that
[30:00] Speaker 2: was unsurveyed, but Abujmad was one such place. The MAOIs
[30:03] Speaker 2: were there, the entire central committee, the leadership is there.
[30:07] Speaker 2: And today what you have is something like two hundred
[30:11] Speaker 2: forward operating bases that the police and the paramilitary and
[30:14] Speaker 2: the capfs have built into this Abujmad and roads have
[30:18] Speaker 2: come up there. The Border Roads Organization is building thousands
[30:21] Speaker 2: of kilometers of roads criss crossing the forest areas. So
[30:25] Speaker 2: you have telecommunication towers coming up, mobile phone connectivity has
[30:29] Speaker 2: gone up, roads communication. When all of this comes up,
[30:32] Speaker 2: then the security forces are able to operate very easily
[30:37] Speaker 2: through the linked and breadth of this red corridor, and
[30:40] Speaker 2: the Maos are encircled, and then you have informants coming
[30:44] Speaker 2: up right when you have presence there, presence translates into
[30:49] Speaker 2: intelligence gathering. You have villagers coming up and volunteering. Look
[30:53] Speaker 2: there is this MAOIs leadership here, or there's a camp
[30:57] Speaker 2: over there. So I suspect that a lot of these
[31:00] Speaker 2: recent successes have to do with a lot of ground intel.
[31:03] Speaker 1: That's coming in.
[31:04] Speaker 2: And plus there's an exodus of mouse cards. As you mentioned,
[31:07] Speaker 2: last year there were some nine hundred odds surrenders and
[31:10] Speaker 2: this year there've been something like seven hundred surrenders in
[31:12] Speaker 2: the last five or six months, which is devastating for
[31:18] Speaker 2: a leadership, for a movement that's built on Carter's Their
[31:22] Speaker 2: fighting strength is from ten thousand plus fifteen years back,
[31:25] Speaker 2: it's down to just about fifteen hundred people, which is
[31:28] Speaker 2: just a little more than a battalion. So right now
[31:31] Speaker 2: they're in survival mode. Their leaders are scattered. There's no
[31:36] Speaker 2: clarity on who the next leader is, so it's every
[31:39] Speaker 2: man unto himself and they possibly all they can do
[31:42] Speaker 2: now is to carry out a couple of ied attacks,
[31:46] Speaker 2: delay Harry, distract all of that. But it's just the
[31:50] Speaker 2: writings on the wall for them. It's just another couple
[31:52] Speaker 2: of months. And this is what you will see now
[31:55] Speaker 2: is mopping up operations where they're already in the heartland
[31:58] Speaker 2: of the mouse. They have nowhere else to go. There
[32:00] Speaker 2: is no border that they have taken cross and run,
[32:03] Speaker 2: and a lot of states are already starting to plan
[32:06] Speaker 2: what they plan to do with all these forces that
[32:08] Speaker 2: they've raised to fight the Mouse, which may not be
[32:11] Speaker 2: needed from twenty twenty six onwards. So there are some
[32:14] Speaker 2: forces which have converted them into anti communal forces, and
[32:17] Speaker 2: you know those kinds of things. That are going on.
[32:19] Speaker 2: But it's the end of the road for the mouse.
[32:21] Speaker 2: And it's not very unusual what's going on with them,
[32:24] Speaker 2: because you know they're at the end of the day.
[32:27] Speaker 2: You cannot go on fighting endlessly. When your carters don't
[32:31] Speaker 2: see this movement going anyway, then like any other movement,
[32:34] Speaker 2: they start deserting in droves, like any other political party
[32:38] Speaker 2: or any movement which just fighting without any clear goals.
[32:44] Speaker 2: That the goals are nowhere close to be achieved to
[32:47] Speaker 2: being achieved. And plus all of the things that you
[32:50] Speaker 2: promised them, which was development and peace and prosperity. Now
[32:54] Speaker 2: the government is bringing. Yes, the government is bringing the
[32:57] Speaker 2: fruits of economic progress down to the people. It's pulling
[33:01] Speaker 2: people out of poverty. Un let's we can argue about
[33:05] Speaker 2: this all day, but the fact is that a road
[33:07] Speaker 2: can transform the lives of people like nothing else in
[33:11] Speaker 2: this country. A good road will mean access to health,
[33:15] Speaker 2: to education, It can bring in, you know, relief, it
[33:20] Speaker 2: can uplift the lives of people. And that is what
[33:23] Speaker 2: has happened in all of these areas. And when that happens,
[33:26] Speaker 2: you see a lot of people moving away from the
[33:29] Speaker 2: part that the maos promise or that thing of oppression.
[33:33] Speaker 2: So when the fruits of you know, development start reaching
[33:36] Speaker 2: the grassroots, that's when you see a kind of transformation. Today.
[33:39] Speaker 2: Why are they not getting any recruits because every recruit
[33:42] Speaker 2: either wants to be part of some state government scheme
[33:45] Speaker 2: or a central government scheme, always looking for a job, right,
[33:48] Speaker 2: So when that happens, the movement collapses. And this has
[33:52] Speaker 2: happened across the world. People join movements out of livelihood,
[33:57] Speaker 2: not so much for ideology. It's the leadership that drives this.
[34:00] Speaker 2: Because of ideology, they build up this thing of you know,
[34:03] Speaker 2: victim mood and that you've been oppressed and you've been
[34:05] Speaker 2: you know, uh suppressed, and you're being exploited and all
[34:08] Speaker 2: of that. But when the people see for themselves the
[34:11] Speaker 2: fruits of that progress reaching them, when they see all
[34:14] Speaker 2: your the government schemes, the free food and you know,
[34:17] Speaker 2: all of those dolls that are being given out, which
[34:20] Speaker 2: is a very good thing to think. It's ever happened
[34:22] Speaker 2: in the history of humanity where half a billion people
[34:25] Speaker 2: are being given free food. I mean, that's a big achievement.
[34:28] Speaker 2: When all of these things happen, the movements start collapsing.
[34:31] Speaker 2: And that's exactly what's happening to the mouse? It's been
[34:34] Speaker 2: a generation, you know, and every gerrilla movement, if you
[34:37] Speaker 2: look at it, it has its peaks and it's truffs.
[34:40] Speaker 2: And today I think the mouse are in that truck.
[34:42] Speaker 2: It's twenty years they've been fighting and now it's time
[34:45] Speaker 2: to wrap.
[34:46] Speaker 1: Up, right, we'll talk more on this topic, but after
[34:50] Speaker 1: a quick trick.
[34:50] Speaker 3: What is the coolest back of the two thousands?
[34:53] Speaker 1: Oh?
[34:53] Speaker 3: For me, it was the Pulse Pulse one say also
[34:57] Speaker 3: two hundred that no?
[34:59] Speaker 1: Actually no? What else? Other? So the CBC was the coolest.
[35:02] Speaker 1: What else could you have?
[35:03] Speaker 3: Piero Pharo that's one motorcycle. That's one motorcycle from TVs
[35:10] Speaker 3: which was so underrated. Hero Honda sleek. Why do you
[35:15] Speaker 3: always pick the most eighties?
[35:20] Speaker 1: What is that pic? What is ALEX hundred? ALEX hundred
[35:25] Speaker 1: came in nineteen.
[35:26] Speaker 3: What are you talking about?
[35:28] Speaker 1: My uncle uh booked a hero Honda CD hundred s
[35:32] Speaker 1: S in the eighties. Yes, that's a fourth row.
[35:36] Speaker 3: Yes, no, yes, he booked a CD hundred s S
[35:42] Speaker 3: late eighties. I'm talking about eighty six eighty seven.
[35:45] Speaker 2: ESD created the enthusiast in India at some level or
[35:49] Speaker 2: maybe at a very big level.
[35:51] Speaker 1: Yes, I think so. What about the pulser one thirty
[35:54] Speaker 1: five ls.
[35:55] Speaker 3: That that was that that at the gene.
[36:05] Speaker 1: Welcome back. Something we've been talking about the fight against
[36:08] Speaker 1: actualism in terms of the military aspect of it, as
[36:12] Speaker 1: not military military, but in terms of the use of
[36:14] Speaker 1: force when it comes to using police and paramilitary forces,
[36:18] Speaker 1: stuff like that. I want to briefly also touch upon
[36:22] Speaker 1: the politics of it because I think this topic is
[36:24] Speaker 1: such that even though this podcast is about defense and
[36:26] Speaker 1: it's about you know, the militaries, but the topic of
[36:30] Speaker 1: left wing extremism cannot be talked about without the politics
[36:32] Speaker 1: of it because, like you said, the way to fight
[36:35] Speaker 1: this is, like you said, to clear, hold and build, right,
[36:41] Speaker 1: So your forces can only do the clearing bit of it,
[36:43] Speaker 1: and perhaps the holding bit of it. They can clear
[36:45] Speaker 1: a place of the an axillies present over there, they
[36:47] Speaker 1: can sort of secure the paraphter to hold it, but
[36:50] Speaker 1: the building has to be done by the governments with
[36:52] Speaker 1: the district administration, which is where the politicians come in. Also,
[36:55] Speaker 1: this problem is something that spanned several states, so you
[36:59] Speaker 1: have the in displace state disputes. This problem is something
[37:02] Speaker 1: that spanned several government at the center, so you have
[37:04] Speaker 1: different parties in the rule. I don't want to right
[37:08] Speaker 1: now do sort of a blame analysis of you know,
[37:10] Speaker 1: Party A or Party B was better, Party eight did
[37:12] Speaker 1: that wrong? That is right, But I want your perspective
[37:16] Speaker 1: of what you've seen over the course of a career
[37:19] Speaker 1: in terms of how important was the politics of it
[37:22] Speaker 1: all to this movement and perhaps the mistakes we made
[37:28] Speaker 1: because of the politics of it all.
[37:30] Speaker 2: Well, I think the biggest mistake, if you asked me there,
[37:34] Speaker 2: was that we began economic liberalization so late in the day,
[37:38] Speaker 2: and it should have happened much before. We should probably
[37:43] Speaker 2: have been in the seventies. You probably wouldn't have even
[37:46] Speaker 2: seen the mouse movement pick up, you know. So we
[37:50] Speaker 2: were late in the game as far as liberalization went,
[37:53] Speaker 2: and we moved only when there was no other alternative.
[37:56] Speaker 2: We tried everything, including socialism, and by ninety one the
[38:00] Speaker 2: coffers were empty, and that's when they decided that we
[38:04] Speaker 2: had to look at another path of development, which is
[38:07] Speaker 2: now the only path as far as any political party
[38:10] Speaker 2: is concerned. And today I can take a bet on
[38:12] Speaker 2: this that even if in the unlikeliest of scenarios, which
[38:17] Speaker 2: is the Left Front coming to power in Delhi. They
[38:21] Speaker 2: will continue the economic reforms that have been started in
[38:24] Speaker 2: nineteen ninety one. They have no option but to do
[38:27] Speaker 2: that because the kind of the fruits of development that
[38:33] Speaker 2: liberalization has delivered to India, the unchaining and the unleashing
[38:39] Speaker 2: of the animal spirits of Indian entrepreneurs, could not have
[38:44] Speaker 2: been possible in any other situation. And that is the
[38:46] Speaker 2: larger political framework that I'm looking at when you're looking
[38:51] Speaker 2: at this Maoist problem. And to see an example of
[38:56] Speaker 2: a country that has not liberalized itself, that has not
[38:59] Speaker 2: created a middle class, a vibrant middle class, you just
[39:02] Speaker 2: have to look across the western borders at Pakistan, which
[39:05] Speaker 2: has not had any kind of liberalization, which has not
[39:07] Speaker 2: had any green revolution.
[39:09] Speaker 1: Which has never felt the need to do that.
[39:10] Speaker 2: They are still today, after almost eighty years of being
[39:15] Speaker 2: around as an independent country. They are still feudal and
[39:19] Speaker 2: in parts a tribal country which is ruled by a
[39:23] Speaker 2: very crooked elite, which is a robber baron elite, as
[39:30] Speaker 2: used to say in the West, the robber barons. The
[39:32] Speaker 2: robber barons are the Pakistan military. Right. So there is
[39:36] Speaker 2: this example, and you have India's example, where we are
[39:39] Speaker 2: trying to do all the right things because you know,
[39:44] Speaker 2: how much ever people may score at it, the first
[39:46] Speaker 2: lines of the constitution are we the people right? So
[39:49] Speaker 2: that has been the guiding force as long. You know,
[39:52] Speaker 2: as far as any political party goes, they may not
[39:56] Speaker 2: be fully committed to it, or they may not have
[39:58] Speaker 2: the political power to come out themselves fully to it,
[40:01] Speaker 2: but by and large you see a very large percentage
[40:04] Speaker 2: of the political parties looking at doing things that will
[40:07] Speaker 2: benefit the people. And in this case, the fact that
[40:11] Speaker 2: you did not bring in the infrastructure that was needed
[40:16] Speaker 2: in all of these places. You did not build the schools,
[40:18] Speaker 2: you did not build the hospitals, you didn't bring the
[40:21] Speaker 2: roads or the infrastructure. I think those were the biggest
[40:24] Speaker 2: feelings that we as a nation have inflicted on ourselves
[40:30] Speaker 2: that you know in the year just about ten years back,
[40:33] Speaker 2: remember they when the first UPI started to be popularized.
[40:40] Speaker 2: You had in one page you had the government ads
[40:45] Speaker 2: telling people how to build toilets and how to use toilets,
[40:48] Speaker 2: and on the next page you're asking them how to
[40:50] Speaker 2: use the UPI.
[40:52] Speaker 1: You know, the.
[40:56] Speaker 2: Patms and you know the bar pays and all that
[40:58] Speaker 2: So this is the kind of gap that you have
[41:01] Speaker 2: to actually cover that you not only have to build
[41:03] Speaker 2: your tokil heads, but you have to also get people
[41:06] Speaker 2: onto a digital economy. So that's the kind of gap
[41:09] Speaker 2: that we've not been able to build over the last
[41:13] Speaker 2: couple of years. But now I think things are changing.
[41:15] Speaker 2: There's a pace of reform that's accelerating. And it's not
[41:19] Speaker 2: just any political party, it's all political parties have taken
[41:22] Speaker 2: this conscious decision from ninety one onwards that they may
[41:27] Speaker 2: differ on the way that liberalization has to be brought
[41:30] Speaker 2: in or you know, how it has to be done,
[41:32] Speaker 2: but everybody agrees to the last member of Parliament that
[41:37] Speaker 2: this is the only way out. And I think that is,
[41:40] Speaker 2: to my mind, the only political argument that you can
[41:43] Speaker 2: make for the fact that the Maoists were as powerful
[41:48] Speaker 2: as they were at one point, that the fruits of
[41:50] Speaker 2: India's progress and prosperity had not reached the most distant,
[41:56] Speaker 2: you know, parts of the country. The last man is
[42:00] Speaker 2: the line, you know that was that the last mine
[42:02] Speaker 2: in the line was clearly the tribals of central India.
[42:07] Speaker 1: Right. One more point on the topic of the factors
[42:11] Speaker 1: behind the decline, in nuxialism in India is the civil
[42:15] Speaker 1: society support for the longest time, and this especially during
[42:18] Speaker 1: the time and I was sort of growing up, I
[42:19] Speaker 1: saw a lot of support when it came from urban centers.
[42:23] Speaker 1: You had lawyers, activists, not support from them for the movement.
[42:28] Speaker 1: These days you have a pegerative term to describe them.
[42:30] Speaker 1: I don't want to use that. But you've also seen
[42:33] Speaker 1: that support winding GWS. Is that the term you're looking for?
[42:36] Speaker 2: Overground workers?
[42:37] Speaker 1: No, not really, I was looking for something to do
[42:39] Speaker 1: with urban The world happened urban axl Yes, yes, right right,
[42:44] Speaker 1: I said it. They yeah, but yeah, but you've also
[42:48] Speaker 1: seen that support winding over the years. What do you
[42:51] Speaker 1: think has contributed to that? And uh, parallelly to sort
[42:56] Speaker 1: of take your point of what you just described right
[42:59] Speaker 1: now forward, has the support also declared on the ground
[43:02] Speaker 1: in the bridges as well?
[43:03] Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely, And you know, if you're looking at it,
[43:06] Speaker 2: like I mentioned in the beginning that this was essentially
[43:09] Speaker 2: a battle of ideologies where you have the left parties
[43:14] Speaker 2: they profess a certain ideology. You have the far left
[43:17] Speaker 2: that professes another ideology. The left parties, the CPI the
[43:21] Speaker 2: CPN they want to bring in power, but through electoral means. Yes, right,
[43:27] Speaker 2: they the CPI mouse say that we want a violent
[43:31] Speaker 2: overthrow of the state through force of arms. That's the difference,
[43:34] Speaker 2: and that tells you how one side is prepared to do.
[43:38] Speaker 2: The maos hold the CPI, and the CPI am in
[43:42] Speaker 2: utter contempt. They say, these are you know, they're compromised
[43:46] Speaker 2: because they're part of the political mainstream. Right. So it
[43:51] Speaker 2: is it is basically an ideological battle. And you will
[43:55] Speaker 2: have communists of all shades. You will have you know,
[43:58] Speaker 2: uh communists or overground workers who are in academia, intelligency,
[44:04] Speaker 2: in the media, all of those things, and they will
[44:07] Speaker 2: be the maoist that the far left guys who are
[44:10] Speaker 2: actually there in the fields or in the jungles of Chatis.
[44:14] Speaker 2: So you had very clear, very very very bright individuals
[44:18] Speaker 2: like Kobad Gandhi, he and his wife an Rada, who
[44:22] Speaker 2: were you know, they're very very bright, intellictuals who were
[44:27] Speaker 2: middle class and upper middle class even who gave everything
[44:30] Speaker 2: up and moved into the forests because they believed in
[44:33] Speaker 2: the movement and they said this is the only way
[44:35] Speaker 2: to bring about change. So it is literally a battle
[44:40] Speaker 2: of ideologies and I think the turning point was in
[44:43] Speaker 2: nineteen ninety one when you saw the Soviet Union, which
[44:47] Speaker 2: was the found of that ideology, the leftist ideology, collapse,
[44:51] Speaker 2: and between ninety one and two thousand you saw communists China,
[44:56] Speaker 2: which feared the same thing would happen to them. They
[45:00] Speaker 2: had to They were at a crossroads, and they figured out,
[45:03] Speaker 2: what do we need to do. Now do we also
[45:05] Speaker 2: become market oriented? But if we become market oriented, then
[45:09] Speaker 2: you know, we might cease to exist because we cannot
[45:12] Speaker 2: be communist and capitalists at both at the same time.
[45:15] Speaker 2: But they've managed to do that. That's the most incredible thing.
[45:17] Speaker 2: I think in post the Second World War, the most
[45:21] Speaker 2: astounding transformations of our country has happened in China, which
[45:25] Speaker 2: is the communist dictatorship at the same time is a
[45:28] Speaker 2: capitalist paradise. If you look at it, It's never happened
[45:33] Speaker 2: anywhere in the history of the world. So I think
[45:35] Speaker 2: the Chinese in that sense, they studied this what happened
[45:38] Speaker 2: to the Soviet Union, and they figured that the Soviets
[45:41] Speaker 2: bankrupted themselves because they started spending a whole lot of
[45:45] Speaker 2: their thing on the military. The Chinese said, we're not
[45:48] Speaker 2: going to make that mistake. We will become economically strong first,
[45:52] Speaker 2: then we will become militarily strong. So you have Chairman
[45:57] Speaker 2: Maos well being shopping not Chirman Mao deannger being talking
[46:02] Speaker 2: about hide your strength and bide your time. And then
[46:05] Speaker 2: those four developments that China must do, the last of
[46:08] Speaker 2: which was the military aspect, which Chi Jinping is now
[46:11] Speaker 2: pushing in the last decade or fifteen years or something.
[46:15] Speaker 2: So China built itself into this economic behemoth which it
[46:19] Speaker 2: is today. By the end of this decade, they say
[46:21] Speaker 2: China is going to account for fifty percent of global manufacturing.
[46:25] Speaker 2: I mean that is they've become a manufacturing superpower, whether
[46:29] Speaker 2: you look at automobiles or you know, fifth generation and
[46:32] Speaker 2: sixth generation fighter aircraft, warship, submarines, all of that. They've
[46:36] Speaker 2: pretty much got it in a very very compressed timeframe
[46:40] Speaker 2: of just about less than half a century. So it
[46:45] Speaker 2: was actually a battle of ideologies, and I think the
[46:49] Speaker 2: MAOIs were a simple They were a bit simple minded
[46:54] Speaker 2: folk where they thought that what Mao did in nineteen
[46:58] Speaker 2: forty eight, we can do in India in twenty two
[47:02] Speaker 2: thousand and four or two thousand and fourteen or twenty
[47:05] Speaker 2: twenty four times change. You know, try showing someone today
[47:09] Speaker 2: in twenty twenty five a movie that was shot in
[47:11] Speaker 2: nineteen forty eight. I mean, I've had trouble in my
[47:16] Speaker 2: previous organization trying to get my colleagues to watch Cerguliu
[47:20] Speaker 2: in Westerns. And they would say, I saw it because
[47:23] Speaker 2: you asked me to watch it. But such a slow movie,
[47:26] Speaker 2: I said, but it's a classic. It's like Segulione, mix
[47:29] Speaker 2: cinematic classics. So try and get someone today to watch
[47:32] Speaker 2: a movie that's shot in nineteen sixty eight, even if
[47:34] Speaker 2: it's a classic, one of the spaghetti westerns. They say,
[47:37] Speaker 2: for me, so, why do you think ideology that's you know,
[47:41] Speaker 2: dates back to the nineteen thirties and the forties and
[47:43] Speaker 2: all it's going to work nearly a century later. So
[47:45] Speaker 2: I think they are complete bunch of misfits. They didn't
[47:50] Speaker 2: read the room, they didn't read the country. And India
[47:53] Speaker 2: is moving in a certain way and the Maoists are
[47:56] Speaker 2: not part of that. So, I mean, the beauty of
[47:58] Speaker 2: India is that we are a land of multiple ideologies.
[48:03] Speaker 2: You can have all kinds of ideologies, uh, and you
[48:06] Speaker 2: known yet be part of the mainstream. So I think
[48:08] Speaker 2: it's only a matter of time now before the Maos
[48:11] Speaker 2: give up their ideologies and just joined the mainstream.
[48:15] Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess so. Apart from the the governments in
[48:17] Speaker 1: the state's efforts, it's also as much as that it's
[48:20] Speaker 1: a natural slow death per se for the movement. All right.
[48:24] Speaker 1: A couple of last points. UH. One is something that
[48:27] Speaker 1: you talked about earlier on this episode and something that
[48:30] Speaker 1: I had in my notes anyway to talk to you about.
[48:32] Speaker 1: Was this time under the Upa government when the government
[48:35] Speaker 1: briefly flirted with the idea of uh calling in the military,
[48:39] Speaker 1: calling in army and I didn't I don't remember about
[48:43] Speaker 1: the army as much as as I do about the
[48:44] Speaker 1: Air Force, where there was a serious talk about using
[48:47] Speaker 1: Air Force helicopters to bomb the jungles where there were
[48:52] Speaker 1: next lights. Never ended up happening, thank god, Thank God
[48:56] Speaker 1: asked that. So with the benefit of hindsight now when
[48:59] Speaker 1: you look back at that time when this sea and
[49:01] Speaker 1: this was a very very seriously but I remember that
[49:04] Speaker 1: this debate was happening. What do you think would have
[49:07] Speaker 1: happened if India had gone down that path? And I'm
[49:10] Speaker 1: not just talking logistics. I'm not talking about the army's
[49:12] Speaker 1: challenge or for the challenge of maintaining the borders and
[49:14] Speaker 1: also having to have this battle in there in the
[49:17] Speaker 1: center of your country. But I'm talking about the very
[49:20] Speaker 1: idea of your own military fighting your own people on
[49:24] Speaker 1: its own land. And this becomes even more significant if
[49:27] Speaker 1: you think about the fact that we're talking about this
[49:29] Speaker 1: when in the US you have an apprate, or when
[49:31] Speaker 1: you have a protest happening in Los Angeles, where the
[49:34] Speaker 1: US President has ordered Marines, which is one of the
[49:36] Speaker 1: four arms of the US military, to be deployed in
[49:38] Speaker 1: the city to quell those protests. So what do you
[49:41] Speaker 1: think would have happened if we have done well?
[49:43] Speaker 2: I mean they firstly, I mean we're very different from
[49:45] Speaker 2: the Americans, right right. And secondly, I mean, like I
[49:50] Speaker 2: said before, one of the best things that the military
[49:53] Speaker 2: did was to stay out of this conflict. They said, look,
[49:55] Speaker 2: it's not our battle. Do not deploy us for this.
[49:58] Speaker 2: We are not meant for fighting insurgencies in the heartland.
[50:02] Speaker 2: The air Force was brought in there was, but only
[50:05] Speaker 2: for logistics. Yes, there was an argument that they should
[50:08] Speaker 2: be used to as gunships, helicopter gunships and to shoot
[50:12] Speaker 2: the moose. But the point again is that how can
[50:15] Speaker 2: you tell who a maoist is from the air? Everyone
[50:18] Speaker 2: looks the same. I mean, if you were just to
[50:21] Speaker 2: do target acquisition is going to be a problem because
[50:25] Speaker 2: you see a large body of people in the ground.
[50:27] Speaker 2: You would end up doing the same kind of mistakes
[50:30] Speaker 2: that the United States made in Afghanistan where they've massacred
[50:33] Speaker 2: wedding parties, you know, just based on the fact that
[50:36] Speaker 2: their sensors picked up this huge group of people in
[50:38] Speaker 2: a village who they thought to be were you know,
[50:41] Speaker 2: planning some kind of a military offensive or there was
[50:44] Speaker 2: some girilla gathering or something like that, and they would
[50:46] Speaker 2: just go and bomb and machine gun them. You would
[50:49] Speaker 2: end up doing that to your own citizens, because you know,
[50:52] Speaker 2: at the end of the day, they are our own people, right.
[50:55] Speaker 2: They may be a tribal or they may be villagers,
[50:57] Speaker 2: or they may stay in some of the most remote
[51:00] Speaker 2: and inaccessible part of the country, but at the end
[51:03] Speaker 2: of the day, they are our own people, and you
[51:05] Speaker 2: can't unleash the air force and the military on them.
[51:08] Speaker 2: All you can do is to send people on the ground. Police.
[51:11] Speaker 2: Of course, the police didn't have the capabilities then they
[51:14] Speaker 2: didn't do. Now, you can send the police, you can
[51:17] Speaker 2: send the paramilitary, but you certainly can't send the army,
[51:20] Speaker 2: and god forbid, the air force against your people. And
[51:23] Speaker 2: the Indian Air Force has deployed just once in the
[51:27] Speaker 2: northeast in the nineteen sixties, but that was it. We've
[51:29] Speaker 2: never deployed the air force after that because you would
[51:33] Speaker 2: end up making horrible mistakes. You would end up massacring people.
[51:37] Speaker 2: Because these are weapons of war. They meant to kill
[51:40] Speaker 2: large numbers of soldiers, to destroy fortifications and do all
[51:44] Speaker 2: of that thing. If you use them against tribals, I mean,
[51:47] Speaker 2: the most vulnerable of India's people. You can't tell firstly
[51:51] Speaker 2: from the air who are tribalist and who are soldier.
[51:53] Speaker 2: A moost guerillais everyone looks the same and most of
[51:57] Speaker 2: the time they don't even wear those uniforms obvious reasons,
[52:00] Speaker 2: and because that's how guerrillas operate, right They merged amongst
[52:04] Speaker 2: the people and they operate. So it's in hindsight it
[52:08] Speaker 2: is one of the best decisions that we made, never
[52:10] Speaker 2: not to deploy the military and all this it had
[52:12] Speaker 2: to be fought in the way it has been fought
[52:15] Speaker 2: in the last fifteen years slow intelligence based ground operations
[52:20] Speaker 2: where you clear old build you bring in the roads,
[52:25] Speaker 2: you slowly search, you take in, you take losses. There
[52:29] Speaker 2: have been a lot of security forces who have died,
[52:31] Speaker 2: thousands of them in fact, in the last fifteen years.
[52:33] Speaker 2: But that's the only way to do it, because what
[52:37] Speaker 2: would have happened if you had deployed, say large forces,
[52:40] Speaker 2: You possibly would have you know, brought those areas under control,
[52:44] Speaker 2: but you would have also probably created a new generation
[52:48] Speaker 2: of maos with a kind of bombing and the you know,
[52:52] Speaker 2: staffing that.
[52:52] Speaker 1: You would have done then exactly. I think what people
[52:55] Speaker 1: sometimes argue had the US has done when it comes
[52:58] Speaker 1: to it's terrorism, because it's kind of bobbing they've carried
[53:02] Speaker 1: out that it's in Afghanistan or Iraq. That's kind of
[53:04] Speaker 1: led to that sentiment staying and led to more radicalizations.
[53:07] Speaker 2: Well, the US is up against ideologies again, and they've
[53:11] Speaker 2: not won any war if you look at it, even
[53:14] Speaker 2: the Gulf after Gulf Storm one, which was in nineteen
[53:17] Speaker 2: ninety one. The US has never won any war. And
[53:19] Speaker 2: look what happened in Afghanistan where you went into destroy
[53:24] Speaker 2: al Qaeda and then you ended up fighting the Taliban,
[53:26] Speaker 2: and then you ended up, you know, into a nation
[53:28] Speaker 2: building which was never your original goal, and you ended
[53:31] Speaker 2: up staying there for twenty years, and all you did
[53:34] Speaker 2: was to replace Taliban one point two with Taliban two
[53:37] Speaker 2: point two. You know, it's as crazy as that. So
[53:40] Speaker 2: insurgencies are very complex phenomena, and especially if it is
[53:46] Speaker 2: a state that is fighting its own people, then it
[53:48] Speaker 2: becomes all the more complex. And this is I think
[53:52] Speaker 2: something that the Indian state has done very well since
[53:54] Speaker 2: nineteen forty seven, our model of not employing heavy weaponry,
[53:58] Speaker 2: for instance in Kashmir, except very very rare occasions, nothing
[54:04] Speaker 2: other than you know, a recoil less you know, a
[54:08] Speaker 2: car Gustaf has been used, which is in eighty four
[54:12] Speaker 2: mm rocket propelled round. Nothing else has been used. No
[54:18] Speaker 2: artillery has been used, no gunships have been used. With
[54:21] Speaker 2: that very rare exception of the hill Kaka Sarvinash in
[54:26] Speaker 2: two thousand and three, very very few instances have happened
[54:30] Speaker 2: for the military force to be used. But that's the
[54:33] Speaker 2: way to fight insurgency. You can either do that this
[54:36] Speaker 2: way or you can do it the way the Americans,
[54:38] Speaker 2: like you just mentioned, you know, you go all gung
[54:40] Speaker 2: ho and you deploy gunships and you know, attack captas
[54:45] Speaker 2: against the tribals.
[54:47] Speaker 1: Right, So one final quick point, we're running short of time,
[54:51] Speaker 1: so we'll just quickly wrap this up. Keeping everything in
[54:53] Speaker 1: mind of what you've just said the whole episode, the
[54:55] Speaker 1: whole everything that you've said over the course of this episode,
[54:58] Speaker 1: is it then practically possible at all to overthrow any
[55:04] Speaker 1: government of India except for the election.
[55:06] Speaker 2: Overthrow government in India, you mean, the central governments. It's
[55:11] Speaker 2: next to impossible because for overthrowing a government, you would
[55:16] Speaker 2: have to fight the military, you'd have to fight the paramilitary,
[55:21] Speaker 2: all of that thing. So it's not as easy as
[55:23] Speaker 2: that that in the old days you could march on
[55:25] Speaker 2: to capitals and seize it and stuff. Year it's nothing
[55:28] Speaker 2: like that. I mean, you could possibly move into Delhi
[55:31] Speaker 2: and capture a few suburbs. How long are you going
[55:34] Speaker 2: to hold it? You know, so a country like India
[55:38] Speaker 2: can't be you know power you can overthrow, you know,
[55:44] Speaker 2: an elected government. You possibly could do it in the
[55:48] Speaker 2: United States, you know, which is what we've seen in
[55:52] Speaker 2: Capital in a few years back. You could just you know,
[55:58] Speaker 2: hold the entire Capital hill hostage and you know, have
[56:02] Speaker 2: a civil war kind of movement there. But the United
[56:05] Speaker 2: States is a very it's a very interesting case study
[56:09] Speaker 2: of what happened in the past. If we look at it,
[56:12] Speaker 2: where this thing of the right to bear arms and
[56:17] Speaker 2: militias and all being created, that is something that it's
[56:22] Speaker 2: a bit unsettling for a country to allow such large
[56:25] Speaker 2: numbers of people to carry infantry weapons around, but that's
[56:30] Speaker 2: the way the United States was formed. I mean, it
[56:34] Speaker 2: is a country that was born through force of arms,
[56:37] Speaker 2: and it was a country that again once again resolved
[56:40] Speaker 2: its differences through force of arms. So it's a very
[56:43] Speaker 2: violent it has a very violent history. In our case,
[56:46] Speaker 2: we're generally a very pacifist lot, peace loving lot. We've
[56:52] Speaker 2: just seen one very very violent phase of nineteen forty seven,
[56:57] Speaker 2: which is our birth as a nation state, and after
[57:01] Speaker 2: that we've never seen the kind of blood letting We've
[57:03] Speaker 2: possibly seen it in phases and insurgencies, in terrorist movements
[57:07] Speaker 2: in Punjab and Jamun Kashmia and of course the Maoist insurgency.
[57:12] Speaker 2: We're tens and thousands of Indians have been killed. But
[57:17] Speaker 2: in the long run, I think we are a civilizational
[57:20] Speaker 2: state and there is a sense that you know, we
[57:21] Speaker 2: have been here for five thousand years, so you know
[57:25] Speaker 2: that common joke is that you say twenty years, MAOIs
[57:28] Speaker 2: had their you know, peak and their trough in twenty years.
[57:31] Speaker 2: What's twenty years and five thousand in a five thousand
[57:34] Speaker 2: year civilization, which it's nothing. It's a blip. It's a
[57:37] Speaker 2: little blip like that. So that's the kind of thing
[57:39] Speaker 2: that we've been So I think it comes from being
[57:41] Speaker 2: the status quist part. They're very happy where we are.
[57:44] Speaker 2: We don't want any more territory than we already caught.
[57:49] Speaker 2: We are not you know, a disruptor in that sense.
[57:52] Speaker 2: We don't want to capture any country or overthrow any other.
[57:55] Speaker 2: We are very happy with the way we are. I
[57:58] Speaker 2: think that is India civilizational course.
[58:01] Speaker 1: We learned there. Then, thanks and the great Chat has
[58:03] Speaker 1: always had a lot of fun on this on this
[58:05] Speaker 1: episode with you.
[58:06] Speaker 2: Thanks very much, Stave, good to be back with you.
[58:09] Speaker 1: That's it then for this FIE's episode. For more tune
[58:11] Speaker 1: in next week till then, stay safe and not cross
[58:13] Speaker 1: any boundaries that passport by

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