Has the jungle rebellion in India finally approached it for decades?
Last week, Nambala Keshava Rao, popularly known as Basavaraju, the country’s most popular Maoist, was killed along with 26 others in a major security operation in central Chhattisgarh. Home Minister Amit Shah called it the “most decisive strike” against the rebellion in three decades. A policeman also died during the encounter.
The death of Basavaraju not only marked a tactical victory—it marked the Maoists’ last defensive trajectory of Bastar, the heart of the forest, which had carved its most ferocious stronghold since the 1980s.
After the uprising in Nassalbari village in West Bengal in 1967, Maoists, also known as the “Naxals”, have been reorganized in central and eastern India for decades, extending a “red corridor” from Jharkhand – from Jharkhand to the east to the east to the west, and occupying a third of the land. Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh described the rebellion as India’s “biggest internal security threat.”
According to the South Asian Terrorism Portal, communist rule armed for communist rule has claimed nearly 12,000 lives since 2000. The rebels said they fought for the rights of indigenous tribes and rural poor, citing decades of state neglect and land deprivation.
The Maoist movement – formally known as Left-wing Extremism (LWE) – was formally formed in 2004, combining the major Marxist-Leninist groups into the CPI (Maoist). The party traces the roots of its ideology to the peasant uprising in the southern Telangana state in 1946.
Chhattisgarh saw most Maoist violence in 2023, making it the worst [AFP via Getty Images]
Now, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government pledge to end Maoism in March 2026, the tenacious rebellion in the battle stands at the crossroads: Is this really the doomsday – or is it stopping again in its long, bloody arc?
“When the Naxals’ supreme leader was killed in the 1970s, the Marxist-Leninist movement had surpassed this challenge, but we are talking about Namasism,” said N Venugopal, a journalist, social scientist and long-time observer of the movement, which was both a criticism of the Minsaists and a criticism of women.
One of the top officials of the Indian Ministry of Interior, responsible for the anti-Most operation, Ma Ganapathy holds a different view.
Mr. Garnapasi said: “Essentially, the Maoist movement is an ideological struggle – but ideology has lost its appeal, especially among the younger generation. Educational young people are no longer interested.”
“As Basavaraju neutralized, morale was depressed. They were on the last leg.”
The latest report from the Federal Ministry of Interior notes that violence related to Maoism has dropped by 48% – from 1,136 people in 2013 to 594 in 2023, the related mortality rate dropped from 397 to 138.
However, it acknowledged that the number of casualties in security forces increased slightly in 2023 compared to 2022, due to increased operations in the Maomao core areas.
The report said Chhattisgarh remains the worst affected state in 2023, accounting for 63% of all left-wing extremism (LWE) incidents and 66% of related deaths.
Jharkhand followed closely behind, accounting for 27% of violence and 23% of deaths. The remaining incidents were reportedly from Maharashtra, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar.
Onlookers at the site of a 2023 Maoist attack in Chhattisgarh, bombing killed 10 policemen [AFP via Getty Images]
The collapse of Maoism in the rebellious stronghold Chhattisgarh provided a key clue to the broad decline of the movement.
According to Ganapathy, police in the state were seen as weak a decade ago.
“Today, the precise state-led strike supported by the central paramilitary forces has changed the game. While the paramilitary sector remains on the ground, the state forces gather intelligence and launch targeted operations. It is clearly role demarcation and coordination.”
Mr Ganapathy added that access to cell phones, social media, roads and connectivity made people more aware of less inclined to support armed underground movements.
“People have become aspiring, mobile phones, social media have become widespread, people are exposed to the outside world. Nor can Maoists hide in remote jungles while being out of sync with the new social reality.
“Without massive support, no rebellion can survive,” he said.
A former Maoist sympathizer who did not want to be named pointed out the deeper flaw in the movement’s collapse: political disconnection.
“They achieved real change – social justice in Telangana, uniting tribes in Chhattisgarh, but failed to forge it into a cohesive political force,” he said.
He believes that the core of failure is an outdated revolutionary vision: to establish an isolated “liberated zone” outside the scope of “theory of attacking the state through protracted people’s war.”
“These pockets only work until the country is pushed down. Then, the area collapsed and thousands of people died. It’s time to ask – Can the revolution really come from the cut-off woodlands in India today?”
CPI (Maoist) 2007 political documents adhered to the Mao era strategy: creating “liberated areas” and “cities surrounding the countryside”. But the sympathizers are blunt: “That doesn’t work anymore.”
Ongoing operations by security forces significantly weaken Maoists [AFP via Getty Images]
The party still retains some popular support in some isolated pockets, mainly in tribal areas in eastern Maharashtra, southern Chhattisgarh, and parts of Odisha and Jharkhand – but there are no strong military bases.
Ongoing actions by the state army significantly weakened the Maoist military infrastructure in the southern strongholds of Chatisgarh. Cadres and leaders are now killing regularly, reflecting the increasingly inability of insurgents to defend themselves.
Mr Venugopal believes that the strategy needs to be rethinked – not abandoned.
He said underground struggles have a place, but “the real challenge is to integrate it with electoral politics.”
By contrast, Mr. Ganapathy held a meaningful counterattack against Maoists in the near future and believed that the time had reached a different approach – dialogue.
“Now, it’s wise, maybe unconditional, they’re going to talk now, and even giving up the conditions and let the government consider them. It’s time to get close to the government, rather than sacrificing their cadres unnecessarily, without purpose,” he said.
Maoists enjoy support in Andhra Pradesh and in the mainstream party Telangana. In Telangana, the ruling Congress and the main opposition Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) have supported the call for a ceasefire, as well as 10 smaller leftists – an effort widely believed to protect the rest of the group’s leaders and cadres.
The Maoist movement was rooted in past struggles with caste oppression, and in some of these states still had social legitimacy. Civil society activists have also joined the push for a truce.
“We, together with other civil rights organizations, demanded a two-step process – an immediate ceasefire and then a peace negotiation,” said Ranjit Sur, secretary general of the Association of Democratic Rights Protection Group, a Kolkata-based Democratic Rights Protection Group.
The Maoist-influenced countries still have resilient strongholds, partly because they are rich in minerals – making them a fierce resource war. Mr. Venugopal believes that this is the key to the persistence of CPI (Maoist).
For example, Chhattisgarh is India’s only producer of tin concentrates and molded sand and is also a major source of coal, dolomite, bauxite and high-grade iron ore.
It accounts for 36% of the country’s tin, 20% of iron ore, 18% of coal, 11% of dolomite and 4% of diamond and marble reserves. However, despite a strong interest, mining companies around the world and in the country have long struggled to obtain these resources.
Mr Venugopal said: “Multiple-national corporations cannot enter because the Maoist movement was built on the slogans of Jal, Jangal, Jameen, Jameen (water, forest, land).
But with Maoists now weakening, at least four Chhattisgarh mining will enter the “first bidder” after a successful auction in May, according to official notice.
Mr Venugopal believes that resistance will not die with the death of Maoist leaders.
“The leaders may fall, but the anger remains. Wherever there is injustice, there will be action. We may no longer call them Maoism – but they will be there.”
