The Indian government has ordered hundreds of paramilitary troops into eastern parts of the country where Maoist rebels have increasingly been taking control. This year, 669 people have died in violent incidents involving the Maoists. October was a particularly humiliating month for the Indian police. First, members of the Communist Party of India [Maoist] captured an Inspector and beheaded him. Then, a police station was attacked and two policemen killed....

A fact finding team of many civil society organizations has reported widespread occurrences of murders, tortures and cases of police atrocities in Chhattisgarh in the name of combating Naxalism. It is also being alleged that in the name of their own security, journalists are being stopped from going to so called “combat zones” where security forces have launched an Operation Greenhunt to flush out armed Maoists.  Fifteen members of the...

As the Union government prepares to launch an offensive on Maoist revolutionaries, I am reminded of three conversations that I heard or had in Chhattisgarh in the summer of 2006. The first took place in the state capital, Raipur, at the home of the leading Congress politician, Mahendra Karma. Karma was the begetter of the Salwa Judum, a vigilante army that has been responsible for a wave of killings, rapes...

Irom Chanu Sharmila, who continues her relentless fight against State led violence using Gandhian values of non-violence, is about to complete nine years of hunger strike on November 4. She continued with her ‘fast unto death’ campaign for nine years against the Armed Forces Special Power Act which has been in force in Manipur under the garb of fighting the separatists. In order to keep her alive, she has been...

It is rare nowadays to come across people of unflinching and unquestionable integrity. It is even rarer to find in such people a strong sense of personal and intellectual honesty that demands that they interrogate their own actions and arguments with as much sincerity as they turn on others. And it is rarest of all to find such people engaged in public life, where they would constantly have to face...