India's Secret War

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Domestic Violence That textbook description of how an insurgency works was on show in the village we visited — a small collection of huts Deva and his unit of 130 men and women use as an occasional base as they constantly shift around the hills. There, as elsewhere, the Naxalites run a parallel administration, complete with tax collectors, a school and very basic health facilities. Late in the afternoon, seven women militants dressed in tunics and red sashes danced and sang for gathered villagers, preaching the benefits of Maoism, railing against exploitative mining companies and chanting about the evils of New Delhi. Dozens of young kids listened intently. In a mock training drill put on for the visiting reporters, the same kids watched uniformed insurgents practice creeping through thick jungle and assume various attack positions. "Our prime mission is to awake the public and then revolution will happen automatically," a squad commander named Bhima told me.

But Maoism's methods are no gentle wake-up call. India's Naxalites have taken to heart Mao Zedong's maxim that "the seizure of power by armed force, the settlement of the issue by war, is the central task and the highest form of revolution," killing and abducting enemies and using coercion and force to win support among the very same villagers they claim to be liberating. To protest state "exploitation," the Maoists regularly order farmers in their regions to stop growing food or to raise the sale prices for certain items. Farmers who defy such bans have been summarily executed, say human-rights groups such as the Chhattisgarh-based Forum for Fact-Finding Documentation and Advocacy.

Naxalites also regularly terrorize village folk and warn them not to move to government-controlled areas. On our trip into the hinterland it was impossible to ask villagers whether they were happy with the Maoist presence or not. But a few days earlier, in a camp for people displaced by the conflict about 20 miles away, Miriyam Joga, 41, could barely contain his rage. A relatively successful farmer, Joga had owned a few dozen goats and 27 oxen in the southern Chhattisgarh village of Punpalli until a Naxalite raid three years ago. "They said if I leave my village then they will cut me like this," he said, tilting his head back and drawing his finger across his throat. "But I was feeling that they might murder me anyway so I left. They took my animals and now I have nothing."

The Battle to Fight Back To boost the numbers and quality of new recruits and to rearm and retrain existing police officers, New Delhi has massively increased funding over the past few years. But much of this money — 45% last year — goes unspent and coordination between state police and the better-equipped and better-trained paramilitary units sent by the central government to help in the worst-hit areas is weak. "Often, our forces are not even called out [by the state police]," complains A. P. Maheshwari, inspector general of operations for the Central Reserve Police Force in New Delhi. (India's Home Minister agreed to be interviewed for this story but repeatedly canceled appointments with TIME.)

The central government has begun training state police in jungle warfare at a new college in Chhattisgarh. More than 6,500 police officers have learned better shooting skills, how to move in thick forest, how to survive on bush food and how to take on enemy fighters in hand-to-hand combat. But the flamboyant head of the college, Brigadier B.K. Ponwar says that no matter how much police officers improve their skills, the key remains winning the support of the masses. "Look at Iraq," he says. "I tell my students that their most important objective is to win people's hearts."

That would be easier if not for the emergence in Chhattisgarh three years ago of a civil militia known as Salwa Judum, which means either "peace mission" or "collective hunt" depending on who's doing the translating. The movement's backers say it developed spontaneously when local villagers grew tired of the Naxalites' brutal mafia-like tactics. Chhattisgarh police then appointed thousands of young men, some of them still teenagers, as "special police officers," supplied them with weapons and pushed them to fight the Maoists. Human-rights groups say the special police officers use many of the same tactics as the Naxalites, including extrajudicial killings. The Salwa Judum movement has also forced at least 60,000 people out of their villages (to prevent the Naxalites from recruiting them) and into temporary camps: sad, cramped settlements that are quickly taking on the air of permanence.

The Salwa Judum movement has worsened the situation, draining the countryside of potential informants and convincing thousands of people that the Indian state really is as bad as the Naxalites say it is. A central government committee has recommended closing the camps and disarming the special police officers, whom India's Supreme Court recently termed illegal. Salwa Judum supporters say the criticism is proof of how widespread sympathy for the Naxalites is. "Should we stop fighting terrorism?" asks Chhattisgarh opposition leader Mahendra Karma, a member of the Congress Party and a strong backer of the militia. "Even [Mahatma] Gandhi had his dissenters, and Salwa Judum, which is a peaceful movement, is facing attacks by those motivated by political ideology."

Government security officials and independent observers say the Naxalites have begun to reorganize along more formal military lines. The rebels still use bows and arrows, knives and ancient rifles, but have begun to stock up on machine guns, land mines and mortars, and are building increasingly sophisticated roadside bombs. Based on documents seized in the past year, Indian intelligence agencies estimate that Naxalite Inc. now has an annual budget of $250 million, much of which comes from extorting road contractors and mining companies, and from taxing hundreds of thousands of poor villagers. That money, analysts say, is funding the Maoists' efforts to improve their reach into — and ability to strike — urban areas.

Class war is still an unlikely dream, however. Yes, Maoist rebels recently won power in neighboring Nepal. But the Indian state is more powerful and sophisticated than Nepal's defeated monarchy. (The rise of Nepal's Maoists has actually split opinion among their Indian brothers: some believe that the Nepalese group sold out by participating in elections, while others argue it is a legitimate tactical move toward revolution.) And in India's rowdy democracy, the entire political spectrum from far right to the mainstream Communist Party of India have called for the Maoists to be destroyed.

Until that happens, the Maoists will continue to bleed India. "We want every person in India to have equal rights and the Maoist flag flying in New Delhi," Deva told me in his camp, a small group of cadres gathered around him, nodding as he spoke. How long will that take? I asked. A few of his men giggled. "We cannot say," Deva replied. "But in our life we will do whatever is possible." It is a sentiment that captures both the enormity of the Maoists' aims and the huge challenge New Delhi faces in the years ahead.