In face of the advance of the Maoist guerrillas and the growth of mass mobilizations in many parts of the country, the Indian State responded two years ago by launching an all-out crackdown, known as “Operation Green Hunt.”

Already in 2006, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh described the Maoists as “the gravest internal security threat faced by the nation.” At this time, his government was meanwhile busily multiplying India’s “special economic zones,” which give transnational corporations the tax-free right to plunder the vast mineral and forest resources of the country. Two years later, in response to the uprising of peasants and Adivasis (indigenous people) in the area surrounding the village of Lalgarh in the State of West Bengal, the government decided to act in order to safeguard the interests of the big bourgeoisie.

Operation Green Hunt is first and foremost the deployment of more than 100,000 soldiers, police and paramilitaries, who are in charge of “sanitizing” the main areas of influence of the “Naxalites.” (Maoists are called Naxalites in India in reference to the village where a historic peasant uprising began in 1967.). The strategy is simple and is reminiscent of what US imperialism and the reactionary regime in South Vietnam did against the Viet Cong: to decapitate the head of the resistance movement, proceeding if necessary to selective killings (it is reported that about half the members of the Central Committee of Communist Party of India [Maoist] were arrested or killed since its founding in 2004); and then, if that is not enough to eradicate the movement, to practice a scorched earth policy, that is to say to destroy the people themselves who are the backbone of the guerrilla.

Independent sources report the disappearance or death of 30 to 40 people weekly since the launch of Operation Green Hunt in areas where indigenous populations are concentrated. The army has set up camps in the forests and has closed schools and took control of public buildings, which it uses as bases of operation. There are numerous testimonies of the atrocities committed by the army, police and paramilitaries, particularly in the use of rape as a war weapon.

The novelist Arundhati Roy, who has always been critical of the Maoists, spent several weeks in a guerrilla zone in early 2010 to gather testimonials and see for herself what is going on. Outlook magazine published her article in March 29, 2010 edition, entitled “Walking With the Comrades.” The famous author recounts with great detail the sordid repression suffered by the tribal people and the intolerable living conditions they face. Having found how deep and popular the Maoist guerrilla is, she refutes the claims of those who say the masses are “caught between two fires.”

Arundhati Roy concludes: “By institutionalising injustice in the way that it does, the Indian State has turned this country into a tinderbox of massive unrest. The government is quite wrong if it thinks that by carrying out ‘targeted assassinations’ to render the CPI (Maoist) ‘headless’, it will end the violence.”

While it counts for about 17% of the world population, it is estimated that India has over a third of all poor people. According to the World Bank, 42% of the 1.2 billion Indians survive on less than $1.25 per day. For its part, a study by the UN concludes that 72% of the population lives on less than $2 per day.

It is this situation and the horrible conditions that plague the country that feed the Maoist People’s War. Operation Green Hunt is spreading terror and will probably end with thousands of victims, but ultimately, people’s aspirations for their liberation, as it is already expressed in a deep revolutionary movement, will prevail.