The facts speak for themselves, and they unambiguously expose the Maoist insurgency for what it is: a brutal, murderous, illegal war against the state of India. It is moulded in utter cynicism, so lacking in common human sympathy that it destroys those it purports to champion and negates the logic of “moral support” that certain sections of urban civil society may tend to profess towards it, whether the environs of a Kobad Ghandy or sundry “intellectuals”. For years now, Naxalites have been killing security personnel and civilians continuously and consistently, with a ruthlessness that doesn’t culminate in the beheading of Jharkhand Special Branch Inspector Francis Induwar on Tuesday, but one that is epitomised in that act of murder and that could exert itself even more ferociously if it is not countered urgently. Maoist violence is not about any ideology or socio-economic cause. It is the country’s gravest law and order problem. Let there be no equivocation on that.

As Home Minister P. Chidambaram stated last month, left-wing extremism affects 20 states, and over 2000 police station areas in 223 districts in those states. He also catalogued that, in 2008, 1591 incidents of Naxalite violence resulting in 721 deaths were reported. By end-August this year, that figure already stood at about 580. While 231 security personnel were killed in Naxalite violence in 2008, 250 had already died this year at the time of the home minister’s statement. Induwar was the 339th policeman killed by Maoists in Jharkhand since 2003. If those figures don’t speak up for the thankless, risky job that security personnel do — how they burn both ends left beyond a doubt by the Nalco siege of April in Orissa, when their squalid living conditions made headlines — then what will? And figures of civilian deaths closely mirror those of security personnel. This is a war against the idea and existence of the democratic Indian state and its people — and that includes the poor tribals and farmers in whose cause the Maoists claim to fight.

... contd.