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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation