Chhattisgarh: Union Govt Must Declare Ceasefire With Maoists; Affected Citizens Must Get a Voice

At a time when India and Pakistan have declared a military ceasefire, the Union government seems to be dead against a ceasefire and dialogue with the Communist Party of India (Maoist) (CPI-Maoist) waging insurgency in central India, even though they are Indian citizens, drawn from the poorest sections of the population. 

The Maoists have repeatedly issued calls for ceasefire, with the Telangana unit even announcing a unilateral ceasefire for six months, but the government is adamant that they must surrender unilaterally. Union minister Bandi Sanjay Kumar, in line with home minister Amit Shah’s declaration of the Modi government’s intention to ‘finish’ the Maoists by March 2026, announced that the government will not hold talks with the Maoists, reiterating that it was a banned organisation. 

As several civil society organisations and political representatives voiced their concerns and issued calls for peace talks, the Telangana leadership of Congress and BRS have responded favourably, as have the parliamentary left parties and others. However, Chhattisgarh home minister Vijay Sharma has reacted dismissively saying they had no locus. 

The BJP evidently wants the credit for defeating Maoism to add to the long list of its self-proclaimed achievements, such as abrogating Article 370 or building the Ram Mandir. It is not clear, however, why bringing about peace through talks with the Maoists would not also count as an achievement; moreover, it would be far more decisive and sustainable than a victor’s peace. 

Since the BJP took over Chhattisgarh, 455 people have been killed, making 2024-25 one of the bloodiest years in Bastar’s two decades of sustained counterinsurgency. Even if the majority are Maoist cadre, there have been many cases such as in Pidiya, where allegedly ten out of twelve ‘Maoists’ killed were actually civilians, or in Kummam village in Abujhmarh, where forces reportedly killed five civilians and embedded bullets in four children. There have been brutal sexual assaults. The Chhattisgarh government’s 2025 surrender policy incentivises kills by offering generous rewards going up to one crore to police personnel who bring in Maoists “dead or alive”, as well as a percentage for facilitating surrenders. Naturally, killing is preferable since the rewards need not then be shared with the target. Top leaders like Renuka and Siripelli Sudhakar were allegedly picked up and killed in cold blood when they could easily have been arrested. If nothing else, this corruption of the security forces should worry all thinking Indians.

The Union government may have called off its Operation Sankalp in the Durgametta/Karregutta hills along the Chhattisgarh-Telangana border after 20 days but many questions remain, including the number of casualties and their identities. 

The police claimed that they recovered the bodies of 31 suspected Maoists, but have not yet publicly identified them. On May 7, Chhattisgarh chief minister Vishnu Deo Sai announced that 22 Maoists had been killed but the home minister of Chhattisgarh immediately contradicted him saying that there were no casualties of this order and no Operation Sankalp. All of this naturally fuels suspicion.

Previous attempts at peace talks

Security experts have traditionally been sceptical about Maoist offers of peace talks as simply a means for them to buy breathing space. There is, however, a qualitative change this time in the urgency with which the Maoists are calling for talks. The government is now on a strong wicket and the Maoists have little bargaining power.

Previous attempts at peace talks – such as the efforts of the Concerned Citizens Committee in Andhra Pradesh led by retired IAS officer, Mr SR Sankaran; the peace measures in the Junglemahals after the 2009 Lalgarh movement; a 2009 Citizens Initiative for Peace, and a fortnight long padyatra in Bastar led by the CPI in 2013 – all petered out. A large share of the blame may be attributed to the government, especially when it came to the 2010 killing of Maoist leader Azad who was enroute to discuss peace talks with his comrades. Even in hostage negotiations, such as those over Collector Vineel Krishna in Odisha, the government did not keep its promises. The global experience with peace accords – whether Colombia or Nepal – is lacklustre on implementation. However, the Maoists have hardly been innocent partners in this process, with their scuttling of any truly independent voices.  

The judiciary could have played an important role as a neutral arbiter but has failed to do so. The 2011 Supreme Court judgement by Justice B. Sudarshan Reddy and Justice SS Nijjar banning Salwa Judum and the practice of arming former Naxalites was an important intervention but since then 14 years have passed and the Chhattisgarh government has defied the top court and continued to use ‘surrendered’ Maoists as force multipliers in counterinsurgency. Only the name has changed from Special Police Officers (SPOs) to District Reserve Guard (DRG). 

The government has not prosecuted anyone for widespread human rights violations, including rape, arson and murder, or compensated the victims of state violence, despite court directions to compensate them on par with victims of Naxal violence. June 2025 will mark 20 years since the Salwa Judum started – 20 years of continuing conflict because there was no oversight by the courts. 

People as the essential third party

In this situation where the government is bent on force, the Maoists have no power and the courts are silent spectators, it is essential that the affected people should raise their own demands and define what peace means to them. Talks cannot happen over the heads of the people in whose name both sides claim to be fighting. The majority of Maoist cadre and sympathisers are Koyas, as are the DRG and Bastar fighters, and the conflict is creating a deep rift within the community.

As a first step, there must be a ceasefire. While the government has no problem naming its mediators, guerrilla parties under siege must be given time to hold talks amongst their members and decide on the modalities of talks. Ideally, the Supreme Court should step in and appoint mediators, since India will not agree to third country negotiators. 

For the government, ‘peace’ means infrastructure for mining. Thirty-nine out of 108 proposed mining blocks in Chhattisgarh are in Bastar, with deposits not just of iron but also of corundum, lithium and gold. The forest department is oblivious to the large scale tree felling going on for roads or for corundum mines. While the government claims the conflict is keeping villagers from getting schools, hospitals, electricity etc, they don’t explain why these services are not available for regions without Maoists, or why schools take so long to arrive even after camps and highways have been built.

For the Maoists, ‘peace’ might mean individual breathing space and some alternative mode of politics. In Colombia, the FARC objected to calls for ‘re-integration into the mainstream’ arguing that they “had never been separate from the country’s civilian community” and were  not demobilising, but “mobilising into open politics.” 

Peoples’ ideas of peace are both richer and more conflicted. Peace is not just about the absence of guns but also the absence of everyday structural violence. One reason why Adivasis started supporting the Maoists in the 1980s was that they kept the oppressive forest guard and patwari out, and helped them cultivate new lands. A ‘peace’ that brings back state corruption, displacement and an invasion of outsiders would not count as peace. 

In her book, How People Respond to Violence on post-2009 Junglemahals, Monica Carrer noted that Santhals saw themselves as essentially peaceful people who had been forced into taking up arms. In villages, decisions are made by consensus. Peace also meant freedom from everyday terror, as well as change for the better.  In Colombia, which has strong parallels with Bastar, the idea of ‘territorial peace’ was a key element, including active participation by victims in rural land and resource reform.

Whatever the ultimate dreams of peace, one immediate goal that all the people of Bastar are agreed on is the removal of camps from the region. The whole of Bastar is now one vast cantonment with security camps every 2-5 km, tearing up large tracts of forest, taking over private lands and village commons without their permission. Following peace talks, there will be no official justification for the camps. In a purely military approach, the government can always say that the camps are necessary to mop up the remnants of whatever Maoists are left. People fear that if the Maoists are gone and the camps remain, police guns will turn on villagers who resist mining. Mining will mean not just forest loss and displacement, but a massive influx of outsiders. People also worry about the wide highways built through their lands, emblems of a corrupt state-contractor nexus.

The release of all those arrested on Maoist-related charges – some 16,733 people in the last 25 years – would also be a key component of any peace talks. The ban on the Moolvasi Bachao Manch – a platform of village youth demanding implementation of the 5th Schedule of the Constitution – and the arrest of all its leadership must be revoked immediately. Peace cannot come to Bastar in the absence of its most articulate youth. 

Justice as peace

Apart from camps, the last 20 years of violence – killings, rapes and displacement – have left many questions that need to be addressed in any talks. As of now, there has been no prosecution of any political leader, government officer or police personnel for extra-judicial killings or indeed for sponsoring a vigilante movement like Salwa Judum which resulted in such widespread devastation. 

When it comes to Maoists, the government’s surrender policies note that cases against them may be terminated if the person contributes to eradicating Naxalism (2025 Policy, Section 7.7.3). This effectively serves as a Damocles sword to ensure that surrendered Maoists work as District Reserve Guards or informers. In some instances, people who have surrendered a while ago have had cases against them revived. 

While these double standards in accountability are not acceptable, it is not clear what villagers who have lived through so much violence want. Do they want both security forces and Maoists to be prosecuted for their killings (whether of civilians, security forces or alleged police informers) or will they reconcile to a generalised amnesty for both sides? At the very least, justice would demand a full accounting of all deaths, whether of civilians, Maoists or security forces in the conflict in Bastar since at least 2005, and compensation for them. 

Recently, a Chhattisgarh government team visited settlements in Telangana to facilitate the return of those who had fled during Salwa Judum. But if they are put into camps or separate villages, this would lead to further conflict. The only way is for a people-led peace process inside the villages, and for even SPOs and their families to find their way home. 

Peace negotiations often involve the eventual disbanding of guerrilla fighters, their integration into the regular army or alternative rehabilitation, as in the case of Nepal. In Chhattisgarh, arrested or surrendered Maoists are already being absorbed as special police officers, district reserve group or Bastar Fighters. What will be far more difficult to manage is the disbandment of these state auxiliary forces, who have become a lawless force, poaching, stealing and harassing villagers, and redeployment of these individuals in other occupations.  

‘Peace’ is not a one-off event but a long haul. Nobody is under any illusion that ‘peace’ will yield anything other than an intensified push for private mining. But at least the government will not be able to use the Maoist excuse to suppress all protest – and perhaps the Maoists energy and acumen would strengthen mass democratic movements. 

What is critical is for affected people to find their own voice and define peace on their own terms, without the shadow of guns on either side.

Nandini Sundar is Professor of Sociology at the University of Delhi. 

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