Bastar Files: Basavaraju May be Gone, But the Naxal Movement Still Lives

It's too early to write off the Naxals who have survived over 50 years of state-run military ops & fratricide.

Besides losing 58 cadres, the most significant loss for the banned organisation is the death of Nambala Keshav Rao alias Basavaraju, the topmost leader of the Communist Party of India (Maoist).

(Photo: Vibhushita Singh/The Quint)

“The bloody massacre in Bangladesh quickly covered over the memory of the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, the assassination of Allende drowned out the groans of Bangladesh, the war in the Sinai Desert made people forget Allende, the Cambodian massacre made people forget Sinai, and so on and so forth until ultimately everyone lets everything be forgotten.”

- The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kundera     

When Verrier Elwin, a brilliant Oxford scholar and anthropologist, moved to Bastar in 1940 with his Gond wife Kosi to write about the tribes of the region, it was truly an idyll. He built his home overlooking the Chitrakote Falls on the river Indravati.

Over the next half century, the Bastar tribals in the subcontinent’s richest region were rendered virtually stateless, dispossessed, and fighting for basic rights. By the eighties, the Maoists moved in where governance was absent, finding a haven for their operational base, and mobilising the villagers for armed action. What followed were conventional state tactics and extra-judicial methods of raising vigilantes and alleged repression.

From time to time the Maoists struck hard, and the retaliatory war carried on. Till last month the Indian forces claimed to have made major advances. 

Basavraju Gone but Naxals Remain

The 21-day-long bloody “Operation Black Forest” across the spectacular range of the Karreguttalu Hills at an altitude of 5,000 feet in peninsular India, followed by another deadly encounter inside Abujhmad in Bastar, have been the Indian state’s most successful gains into the Maoist heartland that has remained “liberated” for several decades.

Besides losing 58 cadres, the most significant loss for the banned organisation is the death of Nambala Keshav Rao alias Basavaraju, the topmost leader of the Communist Party of India (Maoist).

It is unlikely that the 70-year-old was in combat across these inhospitable hills—and sources suggest that the surrender of a cadre closely associated with Basavaraju may have led the police to him.

The strategy this time was targeting leaders and not cadres. The government also claimed that 54 Maoists have been arrested and 84 have surrendered across Chhattisgarh, Telangana, and Maharashtra. 

In my previous piece, I had argued how this could just be the beginning of the end of these “liberated zones”. But maybe not.

No one really knows the true strength and influence and spread of the Maoist groups and for Indian security forces, this is a war that is not anywhere close to an end.

With a blow to its top leadership, the Home Minister may imagine getting closer to his pledge of erasing Naxal/Maoist forces by March 2026.

However, this is still early to write the obituary of a movement that spread from a tea garden in North Bengal in 1967 across 20 states of this country and managed to survive through half a century of state-run military operations and fratricide.

Counting Victories & Losses

Though considerably weakened, the orgnisation was concentrated mostly in these dense unmapped, ungoverned areas across the forested tri-junction of Narayanpur, Bijapur, and Dantewada districts.

The commander in chief of the much talked-about Battalion 1 of the  People's Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA), Hidma, is still at large and there are no leads on where he is hiding.

He, along with Basavraju, is believed to have been responsible for some of the most daring ambushes over the last decade, including the 2010 killing of 76 CRPF personnel in Chintalnar and the 2013 Jhiram Ghati ambush in which the state Congress leadership was wiped out. 

In a recent communication, the ‘Dandakaranya Special Zonal Committee’ of the CPI(Maoist) admitted large-scale surrenders that helped the state forces in encircling them and carrying out the encounter claiming 27 cadres.

They also admit this has weakened them, but they reiterated what their general secretary said when the operations were underway: “The movement will emerge afresh with many times more strength from the cities.”

This is a cautionary note for the government that by now knows a military onslaught may not be the end game. 

According to the Maoist communique, “along with those who were martyred in this massacre, CC Staff State Committee level Comrade Nageshwar Rao alias Madhu alias Jung Naveen, CC Staff Comrades Sangeeta, Bhumika, Vivek, CPYPC Secretary Comrade Chandan alias Mahesh, CPYPC member Sanjanti along with Guddu, Rame, Lalsu, Surya, Mase, Kamala, Nagesh, Rago, Rajesh, Ravi, Sunil, Sarita, Reshma, Raju, Jamuna, Geeta, Hungi, Sanki, Badru, Nilesh and Sanju”. They say they have many more cadres and are not ready to give up yet.   

For a guerilla organisation that has been in operating from the shadows for so long, it is the element of unpredictability that is their greatest strength.

The Indian forces have crossed a major roadblock of breaking into their intractable hideouts and navigating the landmines spread over the area. But what next?

Mining Issue Remains at Large

It is well known that Chhattisgarh is the “mineral heart” of India, having 19 percent of the country’s iron ore reserves. It has 28 minerals including limestone, bauxite, graphite, dolomite, glauconite, and tin ore. Additionally, there are 39 coal mines in the state.

Two of the world’s largest coal mines are here. The Government of India’s Ministry of Mines data from 2023-24 shows 43 million tonnes of iron ore production in the state valued at Rs 180 crore (at the time). But how does one transport this mineral?

Only last month Bastar has been sanctioned with a new railway project, Rowghat-Jagdalpur New Line of 140 kilometres, that must cross this militarised zone.

The project is estimated to cost Rs 3,500 crore. Clearing the route of Maoist activity is surely but a necessity. This link will connect Jagdalpur to Raipur and onwards to Mumbai-Howrah railway line that will facilitate connection between northern and western parts of the country. The state already accounts for 18 percent of railway freight, and the new connectivity will add to a whopping revenue for the Indian Railway. 

Till March 2025, 2021mining projects were about to start, and 20,798 projects are ongoing. Of the 51 mineral leases in Bastar, 36 are held by private companies.  

It is not lost to anyone who studies Left Wing Extremism or LWE (the more common term used during the previous government) that the fight for natural resources and minerals lies at the heart of the Adivasi resistance against the state. Numerous protests against mining companies were underway in the state but with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) coming to power, most of them have been suspended. The Amadi mines in 2023 and Silger in 2021 are examples.

The Hasdeo woods are said to be the largest contiguous stretch of dense forestland in central India, spanning 170,000 hectares or 1,700 sq km that cuts through an elephant reserve and an open cast mine operated by the Adani Group.

Anyone protesting mining is reportedly labelled as a Maoist and it is believed that the mining companies sponsor security around the mining zones with a ratio of one soldier per 9 tribals. The state has taken this battle right to the tribal doorstep.

The Maoist leaders once admitted to me that the movement would have been long lost but for the alleged state repression of tribals and the prevalent disparity and inequality that is for anyone to see.

Attractive surrender packages may split up the movement for now but if the underlying causes for its existence aren’t addressed, they may regroup in another formation.

Bastar & its People

Bastar has led amongst the fiercest resistance wars against British forest policies—and the oral history of Bhumkaal Rebellion led by Gunda Dhur is still alive in the forests. 

Stereotyped over a century as rebellious, scores of tribes named as the first citizens of this land (Adivasis) have been in continuous battle with the state on one hand and appropriated by the Maoists on the other.

The war in the oldest and deepest forests and hills of India isn’t for the people who live there.

The protracted conflict and the state’s “development projects” have forced them out of their homes like the Dorla tribes who lost their home because of a dam on the Godavari. Displaced homes are rarely rehabilitated. Though there are independent international monitoring reports on large-scale displacement here, there are no government records or register for the internally displaced people (IDPs) across the Maoist areas. India has no federal policy or legal framework for IDPs.

After the government forces making the significant breach, I tried speaking to the people in Maad, but they wouldn’t say much. They, however, didn’t forget to remind me that the people inside these forests are Indian citizens. "Who will speak up for the Gond?", they asked me.

Bastar needs many more Elwins who will understand them, speak up for them because, "there are many elements in the Gond ethos which should be conserved", writes Elwin in his diary in 1936. "Their simplicity and freedom, their love of children, the position of their women, their independence of spirit... their freedom from many of the usual oriental inhibitions."

The tribal indeed "has a real message for our sophisticated modern world which is threatened with disintegration as a result of its passion for possessions and its lack of love".  

(Kishalay Bhattacharjee is a journalist and Dean, Jindal School of Journalism and Communication and author most recently of Where the Madness Lies: Citizen Accounts of Identity and Nationalism. This is an opinion piece. The views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for them.)