The Beginning of a War Within

Deep within the thick forests of central India, where the Sal trees cradled tales older than the Republic, an invisible war has loomed large for decades: state counter-insurgency operations – most prominently Operation Green Hunt (2009) and its successor in the summer of 2023, Operation Kagar – to suppress the now-mainstream Maoist insurgency in the heartland, extending from Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Maharashtra, and Telangana. While the official rationale for these (and other similar campaigns) has been presented as committing to “restore law and order," for millions of Adivasi inhabitants, the arrival of armed soldiers did not provide the expectation of humanity returning, but ushered in and exacerbated a moment in history where insecurity would now reign.

These are paradoxical spaces: they boast vast, rich deposits of minerals, forests, and honourable volume of rivers – but severely lack basic economic infrastructure and dominant or everyday items such as roads, schools, and hospitals. The irony of India's development story is located here: while the mines help to power the "nation's cities," the people of those villages remain darkened without light or worth. From there, the state was able to militarize the area, fortifying a multi-use "strategic corridor" by constructing state camps, sending in paramilitary forces, and declaring large swathes of entire districts "red zones."

In doing so, India’s democracy confronts a moral contradiction. The Constitution promises equality, liberty, and dignity, but these promises fade where the barrel of a gun becomes the interpreter of the law. Militarization in these tribal zones thus reveals a national dilemma — how to secure the nation without wounding its soul. The story of counter-insurgency in India’s forests is not just about security; it is about the uneasy boundaries between protection and oppression, sovereignty and humanity.

The Logic of Militarization: Security State vs. Citizens

The Indian state has long described the Maoist or Naxalite movement as the “greatest internal security threat”, a phrase repeated in Parliament and policy documents by the Ministry of Home Affairs. This framing transforms a complex social and political problem into a military one. Once labelled a “threat,” the geography it inhabits, the forests of Bastar, the plateaus of Jharkhand, the tribal hamlets of Odisha, becomes a battlefield. Security logic takes over civic logic. The presence of grievance and poverty becomes secondary to the presence of insurgents.

Under this logic, the counter-insurgency operations Operation Green Hunt and, more recently, Operation Kagar have justified the deep penetration of CRPF battalions, COBRA commandos, and the District Reserve Guards (DRG) into rural tribal zones. The result is not simply security enhancement but a transformation of everyday life into a kind of permanent surveillance. Security camps rise like concrete islands amid fields and forests; villagers walk past with visible caution, sometimes needing to show identification cards to reach their own farmlands. Schools, too few already, are sometimes converted into paramilitary barracks, their classrooms echoing with the sound of boots instead of children’s laughter.

This normalization of militarization reveals a troubling shift in the security state, treating its citizens as potential suspects rather than participants in democracy. What is called “restoring order” often means imposing silence. In these zones, development arrives in the form of checkpoints and curfews rather than clinics and teachers.

The pattern is not unique to central India. It echoes the experience of Kashmir and the Northeast, where militarization became a governing habit justified as exceptional, but practiced as routine. The peripheries of the Indian nation are thus policed differently from the heartland: governed not through trust but through control.

The logic of militarization may secure territory, but it fractures belonging. It breeds a citizenry that fears the state’s gaze rather than draws strength from it, a paradox for any democracy that claims to rule through consent, not coercion.

Human Impact: Fear, Displacement, and Erosion of Trust

When militarization invades a village, it does not simply bring guns and uniforms; it brings a slow, suffocating change to everyday life. In the dense forest paths of Bastar and Sukma, the buzz of insects now blurs together with the drone of army vehicles. The soundscape of harvests and songs is now replaced by the echo of command. For India’s tribal citizens, the state’s counter-insurgency efforts have not just redrawn territory, they have also redrawn the limits of trust.

Reports by human rights organizations such as PUCL, Amnesty International, and journalists from The Hindu and Economic and Political Weekly are consistent in documenting the grim recurrence of arbitrary detention, sexual violence, fake encounters, and extrajudicial killings covered with some notion of success. The 2013 Edesmeta encounter remains a dramatic example, when police killed eight tribal villagers in Bijapur, supposedly for being Maoists. Investigators later found out the victims were unarmed civilians, including three children. Officials heralded the operation as a success and gave medals to those involved. No apology was ever made to the grieving families.

In May 2021, the small village of Silger in Sukma district erupted in protest against the construction of a CRPF camp on their farmland. Villagers demanded a school, not a fortress. The state responded with bullets; four protestors were killed, and dozens were injured. Their demand was simple: “Let the forest breathe.” Instead, it was fenced by sandbags and surveillance towers.

The pattern continues under Operation Kagar (2024–25), with accounts from Bastar’s interior villages describing nightly curfews and restrictions on forest access. Tribal families who once relied on collecting tendu leaves and mahua flowers are now forbidden to enter “sensitive” zones. One elder told a visiting reporter, “The forest has always protected us. Now it watches us in silence as men with guns decide when we can walk.” His lament captures a deeper truth: the forest, once mother and shelter, has been turned into a border.

Women suffer doubly, economically displaced and exposed to gendered violence. Testimonies from Dantewada and Narayanpur recount security raids where fear lingers long after the forces leave. The militarized zone transforms women’s bodies into battlefields of intimidation.

The human toll of militarization is thus not collateral; it is central. Fear becomes governance, displacement becomes policy, and silence becomes the measure of peace. When the state’s presence feels indistinguishable from occupation, the promise of democracy erodes, not from rebellion, but from resignation.

National Importance and Broader Ethical Reflections: Militarization as a Mirror of Indian Democracy

Militarization in India’s tribal heartlands is not a regional tragedy confined to Dantewada’s forests or Gadchiroli’s hills; it is a national mirror reflecting the moral health of Indian democracy. The barbed wire that now cuts across these jungles also cuts across the conscience of the Republic. The question is not whether the state has the right to defend itself; every sovereign state must, but what kind of state it becomes in doing so.

When the Indian Constitution was drafted, its architects imagined a democracy rooted not merely in elections but in dignity. Article 21 promises the right to life and personal liberty, not only the right to exist, but to live with safety, freedom, and respect. The Fifth Schedule, designed specifically for tribal areas, envisions autonomy, self-governance, and protection from external exploitation. Yet in many parts of central India, these constitutional promises have been traded for the logic of permanent emergency. The very regions meant to enjoy special protections now live under special suspicion.

This contradiction exposes a deeper crisis of governance. To call Bastar or Korba “exceptional zones” is to admit that the Constitution itself bends in certain terrains. What happens in these forests is, therefore, not peripheral to India’s democracy; it is its stress test. When a tribal woman must pass an armed checkpoint to reach her field, when schoolchildren in Bijapur learn to identify uniforms before alphabets, when silence replaces song, democracy itself is diminished.

Democracy’s Fractured Image

India positions itself globally as a beacon of democracy and pluralism — a contrast to the global authoritarian powers. However, within India’s borders, the images emerging from the militarized tribal belts are starkly different: homes burned as a result of security-related raids; young men labelled as Maoists because they own mobile phones; women sharing stories of assault behind bamboo fences. These are not propaganda stories from foreign adversaries, but testimonies collected by journalists and rights organizations in India.

This contradiction, and others, undermine India's credibility internationally. A country that wants to be one voice for the Global South, or oppressed people and nations, must not only reflect but also resist the oppression it broadly normalizes on its territory. When democratic values are suspended for the sake of security — as has been the norm in the contexts in which Indian sovereignty is claimed to protect the nation-state's oppressive structure - the moral basis upon which democracy itself sits, dissolves. The world looks to a democracy not based on how powerful its military is, but how that power, the military, is used against the most vulnerable citizens of the democracy.

The Developmental Paradox: Prosperity over People

The heartlands under the heaviest militarization, Dantewada, Korba, Sukma, Gadchiroli, and Kanker, are also India’s mining frontiers. Beneath their forests lie veins of iron ore, bauxite, and coal powering the nation’s energy ambitions. The paradox is bitterly clear: development here wears the uniform of extraction. To secure these resources, the state builds roads, deploys forces, and clears land, often displacing the very people who have lived there for generations.

For tribal communities, “development” has too often meant eviction. Villages vanish into mining leases; rivers are dammed and renamed “projects.” The forest, once a source of food, faith, and culture, becomes a restricted zone patrolled by armed men. It is not merely insurgency but economic hunger that drives militarization, the need to ensure uninterrupted industrial access. When bulldozers follow battalions, it becomes difficult to distinguish whether the state is protecting citizens from rebels or protecting corporations from citizens.

This fusion of militarization and market ambition produces a moral fog. A democracy that defines national interest only in terms of GDP risks mistaking extraction for progress. The constitutional promise of equality begins to sound hollow in villages where the hum of drones replaces the rustle of mahua leaves.

Can Security Be Human?

The challenge, therefore, is not to reject security but to redefine it. Can national security be pursued without alienating the nation’s own citizens? The answer lies in shifting from a militarized model to a developmental-security approach, one that treats governance, dialogue, and social justice as forms of protection.

There are glimpses of such approaches. The “Surrender and Rehabilitation” policy for former Naxalites has helped many reintegrate into civilian life through employment and education, proving that compassion can achieve what coercion cannot. Likewise, genuine implementation of the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 (PESA) and the Forest Rights Act, 2006 would return agency to local communities, allowing them to manage their resources and security on their own terms. Empowerment, not occupation, is the foundation of lasting peace.

A democratic state must recognize that fear cannot substitute for loyalty. When citizens see the government only through checkpoints and raids, the idea of the nation itself becomes abstract. True security grows from justice, not from dominance; from inclusion, not intimidation.

Constitutional Morality and the Federal Fabric

The militarization of tribal regions also tests the principle of federalism. Law and order is a state subject, yet counter-insurgency is directed largely by the Centre through paramilitary forces. This overlapping jurisdiction creates tension and diffuses accountability. Who answers when civilians die in crossfire? The erosion of state autonomy in these zones reflects a creeping centralization that undermines the spirit of cooperative federalism.

At its core, this is a crisis of constitutional morality, the shared belief that state power must always be exercised within the bounds of empathy and justice. Dr. Ambedkar warned that democracy is fragile when the state’s moral compass weakens. Militarization, when unrestrained by accountability, turns the republic inward against itself.

Development Ethics and the Measure of Progress

The deeper question is philosophical: who benefits from peace achieved through fear? The number of surrendered rebels or seized weapons may rise, but can a democracy count success while its citizens live under surveillance? If progress is measured only in kilometres of road built or tonnes of ore extracted, the ethical dimension of development disappears.

Development ethics demands that we ask not just how much we grow, but how we grow. If growth requires silencing voices, criminalizing dissent, and uprooting cultures, then it is a betrayal of India’s civilizational values — ahimsa, satya, and seva. A nation cannot mine its way to peace.

The Road Back to Humanity

In the forests of Bastar, development now walks in boots. The hum of drones has replaced birdsong. Yet somewhere, a village teacher still reads the Preamble to a group of children — reminding them that liberty and dignity were meant to reach here too. These children may not know the word “sovereignty,” but they understand what it means to live without fear.

If India is to remain the world’s largest democracy, its promise must echo even in the quietest forests. Security must not come at the cost of belonging; development must not trample the dignity it was meant to uplift. The true strength of a nation is not in how hard it strikes its insurgents, but in how tenderly it guards the innocence of its people.

In the end, the question that haunts the red-soiled heartland is the same that haunts the Republic itself: can we build a modern India without losing the moral imagination that once built its Constitution? The answer will decide whether the forests of Bastar remain battlefields — or finally become what they were meant to be: homes of peace.

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