In Dantewada, in the heart of the world's biggest democracy, civil war is flaring, claiming nearly 1,000 lives in the past two years. Gethin Chamberlain reports from the jungle hideouts of the Naxal rebels who are ordering villagers to boycott the election - and whose increasing strength is straining the Indian security services to breaking point
In the heart of the Indian jungle, someone has built a war memorial, a stepped cement pyramid rising out of the red dirt. The names of three residents of the village of Pedda Korma are etched into it. They are not soldiers or police, but martyrs of the Maoist Naxal insurgency. Kursam Lakhi and Sukki Modiyam, raped and killed by the police and Salwa Judum militia on 6 February 2005; Comrade Korsa Bhima, martyred in the March 2007 attack on Rani Bodli, when 55 policemen died. "The martyrdom will not be in vain," it proclaims. "Long live the people's liberation guerrilla army."
This is the Naxal heartland, Dantewada in the southern end of Chhattisgarh, in the centre of India, the front line of a war that receives little or no attention outside India. And for all the fear generated by last year's Islamist bombings in Mumbai and the anger directed at Pakistan, the most potent threat to the world's largest democracy is internal.
For the reason why India will not be hosting the lucrative IPL Twenty20 cricket tournament is simple: the Indian government cannot provide enough security to cover the month-long general election campaign - which begins on 16 April - and the cricket. India's available internal security forces will be required to combat the Naxalite threat to the elections.
What it means for democracy in large areas of India is described by Ram Singh Oyam, who watched the Naxalites walk into the village of Pandewar the first time the state tried to hold local elections last November. "They brought out the voting machine and broke it with a knife and threw it in the river," the 27-year-old said. "You need to understand this area. We have been told that, if we vote, our hands will be cut off."
A policeman walks through the village holding a kukri, the curved Nepalese knife popular with Gurkhas. "In case he runs out of ammunition," Dhar explains. But the Naxalites have weighed up the odds and instead hit a convoy of election vehicles leaving Parden village, farther into their territory. Later, news filters through that eight policemen have been killed in an attack to the north.
At Kathia polling station, head constable Dinesh Kumar says his men walked for 20 miles to reach the village of Koilibeda, only to discover that it was empty. They trekked through jungle and over hills, fighting off a Naxal ambush, but found the village school locked. The Naxalites were waiting in the next village, and again they came under fire. "The officials decided it was not worth it," he says. Voting was abandoned.
The Naxalites - villagers call them dada, Hindi for older brother - get their name from an uprising in the Naxalbari area of West Bengal in 1967. Playing on the frustrations of India's hundreds of millions of rural poor, they have won support by redistributing the wealth of the landowners and opposing industrialisation. They are estimated to have a strong presence in at least 170 out of India's 602 districts and have warned that they will use violence to block the elections in those areas.
In Chhattisgarh alone, in the past two years, 578 civilians have died in Naxal-related violence. The police and special police officer death toll stands at 231, against 142 dead Naxalites. According to police figures, in the past eight years in the Dantewada district alone 72 roads have been destroyed, 18 banks, 291 public vehicles, 87 schools, two hospitals, 24 railway lines and 56 electricity stations.
To counter their influence, the Salwa Judum militia emerged in 2005, ostensibly out of the frustration of those who had suffered at the hands of the Naxalites. The result was more killing, as the SJ members turned on those they accused of harbouring and supporting the Naxalites. Caught in the middle are the tribal people who live in the forests. There was no voting in the state elections in November in once prosperous Nendra: it has been attacked three times; 145 houses have been burned down, 16 adults and nine children killed.
The few villagers who have since returned huddle together around the one building that still has a roof. Its pink walls are covered with neatly painted Hindi script. The message the Naxalites left would be unequivocal, were the villagers able to read Hindi: "Don't take part in elections. Don't listen to the Hindu fascist members of the BJP [the Hindu nationalist opposition party]. Throw away their leaflets, don't help the police."
Scared at first, they relax as night falls, the trees around come alive with fireflies and the local hooch emboldens them. Yes, the dadas come from time to time, they say, but what can they do? They feed them and send them on their way. Then the SJ comes and burns their houses and kills those who cannot run away. "We are just living and surviving," says a voice in the darkness.
In the foggy morning, Mutti Muchaki, in her 50s, is preparing the breakfast. She was with her husband, Rama Pula, and two grown-up sons, Ganga and Veko, when the SJ came the first time. "They tied our hands behind our backs. They took away the men. Later we heard they had been killed with a knife and their bodies thrown into the drain."
The headman, Timmaia Muchaki, says the Naxalites take the young people into the jungle to their own meetings. "One side is here, one side is there; we are caught in the middle. We just want to get on with our lives," he says.
The map on the wall of Rahul Sharma's operations room shows the extent of the insurgency. Sharma is superintendent of police for Dantewada. He points to the pieces of pink string glued to the map, which mark the roads known to be mined, encircling a huge area controlled by the Naxalites. "This is totally out of our command," he says. Around 40% of Dantewada is in Naxal hands; 40% is held by the police: they are fighting over the rest.
"It is the biggest casualty theatre for the Indian government in the country. It is a full-blown war and the Naxalites are migrating from guerrillas to a conventional army." Driving south into Naxal territory, the car passes a small group of policemen hiking along a dirt track. One is playing with a grenade, tossing it from hand to hand.
The Salwa Judum camp and police base at Errabore appears out of the dust. On the evening of 16 July 2006, 600 Naxalites attacked Errabore. A plaque on the wall of the main police building lists 24 police officers killed. Another 32 people in the camp also died.
Three young special police officers (SPOs) are on guard duty, sharing one rifle, which is chained to a log, to make it more difficult for the Naxalites to steal. The SPOs are young tribals, paid to augment the police presence. For this they receive 2,150 rupees (£30) a month.
Inside their watch tower, a couple of old .303 rifles are propped against the concrete wall. A radio playing Hindi tunes in the corner fades in and out. Raju Soyam, 20, recalls the night the Naxalites attacked. "We fought with bows and arrows. They burned all the houses and threw people in the fire and killed them. They killed children and old people.
"We had search-lights and could see them. They looked like us, not like a lion or a fox, they had two hands and two legs." It is hot and the boys lounge around lethargically. "I don't know who will win this war," he says. "I think they have the upper hand at the moment."
The road into the Naxal heartland winds through the forest, over the Bailadila Hills and on and on through little villages.
It takes six hours of walking through the jungle before the clearing and the memorial appear. Finally, here are the Naxalites. "In this area, two or three hundred villages and thousands of houses have been burnt by the Salwa Judum," says 27-year-old Lakhmu Ram Mudiyam. He is the local Naxal leader in Pedda Korma, the village that was home to the young women whose names appear on the memorial.
"Our force is fighting for the poorest of the poor, the people who have nothing. We are fighting for the poor people and the people who are dying of hunger.
"I can tell you this. My force does not kill anyone without a reason. If someone makes a mistake, they are killed, but no one is killed who does not make a mistake. If you are in the police or a police informant, then that is a mistake and you will be killed for that."
He and his friends draw on their cigarettes, and there is no sound but the birds in the trees. "They are fighting for us, for the people, not for themselves," another man says, staring down at the red earth. "We are proud of them. They are our elders now."
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The Naxalites' rise
The Naxalites take their name from the Naxalbari district in West Bengal where the movement began in 1967.
They started by organising uprisings among landless workers in West Bengal, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh. They then moved into the mineral-rich areas of Orissa, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand.
The movement, whose aim is violent revolution, has now spread to 170 of India's 602 administrative districts.
The Naxalites consider themselves the heirs of Mao Zedong, although China has denounced the movement.
With a force of up to 15,000 soldiers, it controls a fifth of India's forests.
Two wings, People's War Group and the Maoist Communist Centre, combined several years ago to form the Communist Party of India (Maoist).
How Maoist guerrillas threaten Indian poll from their jungle lair | World news | The Observer
I am honestly lost here... Explain please and other then that, What is their dispute anyways or there problem in simple words
