In the name of combating the ‘Maoist menace’ (termed as the ‘gravest internal security threat’ by the Prime Minister), the UPA government has embarked on a massive combat operation. While Home Minister P Chidambaram shies away from describing the operation in terms of an outright war and has even deemed ‘Green Hunt’ to be a media myth, and while on record the Prime Minister has ruled out the possibility of deployment of the Army in the operation, it is clear that a definite operation is underway – the scale and framework of which indicate nothing short of an all-out military offensive. The Home Ministry talks of waging simultaneous operation on eleven theatres covering over 2000 police station areas in 223 districts, and the Defence Minister and Air Chief Marshal talk of deploying IAF’s special force Garuda with powers to fire in ‘self-defence’. A special central force called COBRA (Commando Battalion for Resolute Action) has already been raised and pressed into service. Chidambaram has also spoken of ‘amending’ the draconian AFSPA (presently deployed in Kashmir and the North East) in order to make it applicable in the whole of India.

In tandem with this military offensive, a full-scale propaganda war is also underway. Influential sections of the print and electronic media are working overtime to manufacture a ‘national consensus’ in favour of the military offensive. With the concerned state governments all joining in (divergent political posturing notwithstanding), contours of a grand political consensus are easily discernible. The RSS has expressed its full-throated support to Chidambaram’s ideas. Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee too made it a point to take time off from the CPI(M) PB meeting in Delhi to meet Chidambaram over breakfast to demand more forces and a more intensified and concerted drive. Mamata Banerjee of course conveniently seeks to distance herself from this consensus, expecting everybody to ignore the fact that the ongoing paramilitary offensive in West Bengal is very much a joint venture sponsored by the government at the Centre where she is a cabinet minister.

It can hardly be coincidence that key arenas of the proposed war are precisely those mineral-rich areas on which mining corporations have had their eye. Mr. Chidambaram was himself one of the Directors of Vedanta until becoming a UPA Cabinet Minister, and a favourite lawyer for many mining companies, and it is hard to miss the role of Operation Green Hunt as a pilot operation or precursor to a large-scale state-corporate land grab long being contemplated by several big corporations and the state.

The alienation and anger of the tribal masses does provide the Maoists with some favourable initial conditions, but the latter have no strategy to channelize it to any powerful mass awakening. On the contrary, the Maoists with their reckless actions are of course doing everything possible to alienate large sections of the democratic opinion, enabling the government to sway more and more people in favour of its repressive strategy.

The Government of India and the various state governments are however invoking the ‘Maoist threat’ not only to tackle the Maoists but to suppress every movement of the working people and stifle every democratic dissent. Reports of indiscriminate detention in false cases and on fabricated charges, custodial torture and harassment, cold-blooded executions of activists and ordinary tribal villagers dressed up as ‘encounters’, and attacks on the press and on the freedom of expression are coming in from every corner of the country. The dark days of the Emergency seem to be staging a comeback in so many ways.

The revolutionary Left movement must boldly face this situation in close association with other democratic forces. There can of course be no condoning the reckless acts of the self-styled Maoists, and it is imperative to sharpen the lines of demarcation between anarchism and revolutionary Marxism even as we seek broad-based cooperation to defeat the growing war on democracy.

In the pages ahead, we seek to expose the myth of the ‘Maoist menace’ and the real political underpinnings of ‘Operation Green Hunt’. We also move beyond the attempts to demonise or romanticise Maoism and attempt instead to present a historical overview and a political assessment of the Maoist trend in the Indian communist movement.