In 1994, the Naxal group People’s War killed Umakanth, a landlord in Aurad, a town in Karnataka’s northernmost district Bidar. This killing marked the start of a cycle of violence that claimed the lives of Maoists, police personnel, people branded as police informants by the Maoists, and other civilians. Now, 41 years later, the government of Karnataka has declared the state ‘Naxal-free’ after eight cadres of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) surrendered recently.

As Karnataka declares itself ‘Naxal-free’, the story of how it got here offers insight into both the limits of violent resistance and the efforts initiated by civil society activists such the late journalist-activist Gauri Lankesh and freedom fighter HS Doreswamy, to bring Maoists such as Noor Zulfikar back into the mainstream. Fourteen years after quitting the CPI (Maoist), Noor helped mediate the surrenders of Karnataka’s last band of rebels. However, internal contradictions within the Maoist movement and the rebels’ realisation that they had been isolated from the very people they took up arms for, also played a role. 

On January 5, more than a month after Maoist leader Vikram Gowda’s extrajudicial killing by the Anti-Naxal Force, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah told the media that the government was in the process of bringing Maoists back into the mainstream. The killing was the last straw for the Maoist party’s Karnataka-Tamil Nadu-Kerala tri-state unit. Over the next few weeks, all the remaining members gave up arms.

The largest batch emerged from their hideouts on January 8, four weeks after Vikram Gowda’s death. This included Sundari from Dakshina Kannada, Mareppa Aroli from Raichur, Mundagaru Latha and Vanajakshi Balehole from Chikkamaglur in Karnataka, K Vasantha from Tamil Nadu and Jeesha from Kerala.

The group of six were feted by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah at his home with roses and a copy of the Constitution.

A few weeks later, Kotehonda Ravi surrendered before the Chikkamagalur Deputy Commissioner. The last of the armed rebels, Tombattu Lakshmi, surrendered before the Udupi Deputy Commissioner on February 2.

With this, the Karnataka government declared that the state was  ‘Naxal-free’.

“The process by which we achieved this in Karnataka has resulted in a model that other states could adopt,” said Noor Zulfikar, a former Maoist. He and other former Maoists worked with the Citizens’ Initiative for Peace (CIP) and the government appointed Naxal surrender and rehabilitation committee in the mediation process. 

Noor however, doesn’t want to call it “surrender”. 

Noor said that when he and others came ‘overground’ in December 2014, the policy of surrender and rehabilitation framed by the previous Congress government came with three conditions: Maoists would have to give a declaration confessing their crimes, provide information about other Maoists and settle into civilian life.

“We were not willing to become betrayers. We also wanted to continue to participate in democratic people’s movements,” Noor said. In response to this stance, the government amended the policy assuring them that they would not be restricted from participating in any democratic political movement. “If the government had not been open to this, even we would not have come overground. We joined the mainstream, we did not surrender and betray the others.” 

The cases against them would, however, continue.

Collapse of idealism, spiralling violence

The Naxal movement spilled over into the districts of Karnataka that bordered undivided Andhra Pradesh in the 1980s. Armed groups had a presence in arid and extremely backward districts of Bidar and Raichur. In these districts, which were in the grip of feudal landlords, the rebels conducted so-called people's tribunals to settle land disputes. The implicit threat of violence ensured that everybody complied with the verdict.

“When the Naxals conducted the praja [people] panchayats, all discussions happened before the people and everyone knew [who had cheated whom]. The landlords were given an opportunity to set things right, or else they would be killed. There was a need for a quick solution,” Noor said of the Naxalite activities in the Hyderabad-Karnataka region. 

Bengaluru-based political observer Shivasundar said the Maoists had killed two landlords in the Hyderabad-Karnataka region. In 1994, they killed a landlord named Umakanth in Bidar, and another named Siddanna Gowda in rural Raichur in 1997. It was after this killing that the police action began. 

The late human rights lawyer and writer K Balagopal, who had closely observed the Naxal movement in Andhra Pradesh, had said the core of the movement until the mid-1980s was still the Sangham and not the Dalam. A Sangham was the basic unit of the party for agricultural workers, which led overground struggles for better wages and other rights. The Dalams, or armed squads, remained in the background.

Balagopal noted that the violence that the Maoists carried out in the late 1970s and early 1980s in Andhra was no more than what the mainstream political parties themselves engaged in. However, the state came down heavily on the Naxals because there was palpable fear that the rural socio-economic structure “would be shattered irreparably by the Naxalite movement”, Balagopal said.  

Faced with police violence, the Naxals in Andhra chose to retaliate, triggering a spiral of violence since 1985, Balagopal wrote in a paper in 2007. The violence “was yet to abate” when it was written.

As the Naxals chose to retaliate with violence, the Dalams’ importance in the party overtook that of the Sangham by the start of the 1990s. “Settlement of disputes by the party in the presence of and with the participation of the people gave way to decisions by the Dalam in the presence of a few villagers,” Balagopal said. Raids for food led by local people during famine gave way to widespread loot carried out by the armed groups with a few villagers in tow. This reversal was never corrected, Balagopal noted. 

The Andhra Pradesh police killed hundreds of Naxals in the 1990s. For several years after 1996, it was rare that the state killed less than 200 Maoists in a year, Balagopal wrote. The police acquired high-end weapons, and the Naxals too upped the ante. Their strategy of blowing up police vehicles turned the whole police force against them en masse. 

Like any other group that claims “a right to retaliate even before an enemy is fully formed”, the Naxals too fell prey to “the logic of terror”. An armed group begins targeting only the enemies of its cause, but eventually, it changes from eliminating individual ‘bad guys’ to creating an “atmosphere of fear in which the enemies dare not function”, he said. 

“Informers, moles and covert operatives are identified and killed ruthlessly but there is often nothing more than mere suspicion against them. Since only the poor have information about a poor people’s movement, it is the poor who get killed in large numbers in the process. Each such killing leaves a very uncomfortable question mark as to the basis of the suspicion.”

Noor saw things a little differently. Asked about the killings of those whom the Maoists branded police informants, he downplayed the issue. “There weren’t many such killings in Karnataka,” he said. However, the fact is that Maoists are accused of killing at least seven people in Karnataka on suspicion of being police informants, including a shopkeeper, a teacher, a basket weaver and farmers between 2004 and 2011. 

Noor said that the police started a major crackdown during the late 1990s on the Maoist party’s activities in the Hyderabad-Karnataka region. “In 1997 there was a lot of police repression. They picked up anyone who they thought was associated with us. People got scared. By 2000, we decided that we could not work in the plains because surviving there was too difficult,” he said. 

Over the next few years, the Naxalite movement in Karnataka was in limbo. The Karnataka unit and the central leadership evaluated their decimation in the plains of Hyderabad-Karnataka. While there was a broad agreement on shifting base to the forests of the Western Ghats in the Malnad region of Karnataka, one faction wanted to intensify armed action and the other called for pursuing mass mobilisation. 

One of the most compelling figures among the group that chose armed rebellion was Saketh Rajan. He had a postgraduate degree in journalism from the Indian Institute of Mass Communication in Delhi. His two volumes on the political history of Karnataka, titled Making History, is considered an all-time classic by scholars. 

“Saketh Rajan’s analysis was that the movement had failed in Bidar and Raichur because we were too soft on the police. He thought we weren’t aggressive enough. He wanted to launch an armed movement in the Western Ghats. The decision would kill the movement in Karnataka,” Noor said. 

Asked why he and others thought so, Noor cited both tactical and ideological reasons. He said that an armed group could not challenge the full might of the state, which was formidable. It would also be difficult to build support for the movement in the Malnad region because it was relatively well-developed in terms of infrastructure and economy. 

Ideologically and politically too, Noor and others felt that while the Maoists’ approach did provide quick solutions to people’s problems, the exploitative social structures remained intact. A mass struggle, not arms, was required to change that. 

“A social movement should lead to social change. You need to look at the conditions of the people and build movements in response to that. There were so many issues in Malnad – the arecanut and coffee prices collapsed and gathering of forest produce was prohibited. We could have built a people’s movement around these issues,” Noor said.

In the late 1990s Noor felt that the People’s War Group was becoming isolated. The PWG and the Maoist Communist Centre of India merged in 2004 to form the Communist Party of India (Maoist). 

“A People’s War is supposed to have lakhs of people in it. It is not supposed to be a small, isolated group of people with arms running around in 20 villages. In all developed areas, the movement saw a setback,” Noor said. 

In 2003, during a special conference which was attended by top Maoist leaders such as Ganapathy, and Cherukuri Rajkumar (also known as Azad), the matter was put to a vote. The Karnataka cadre were split on whether to continue prioritising arms or adopt a different strategy. The central committee chose Saketh’s plan. “It was a suicide plan. Then the encounters started,” Noor said.

The early 2000s saw a lot of violence between the police and the Maoists in Karnataka. It peaked during the agitation against the government’s decision to designate the forests of Kudremukh as a National Park, which threatened the existence of forest dwellers. The police killed 11 Maoists in encounters between 2003 and 2010, the most high profile of these being the extra-judicial killings of Saketh Rajan and Shivalingu on February 6, 2005. 

The Maoists retaliated by targeting the infrastructure of the forest department. 

They are also accused of killing at least seven people on suspicion of being police informants. 

Six personnel from the Karnataka State Reserve Police were killed in Pavagada, Tumakuru district, in a bomb explosion days after Saket Rajan’s encounter in February 2005. A sub-inspector and another policeman were killed in July 2007 and November 2008 respectively during an exchange of fire. A constable was killed in October 2011 in ‘friendly fire’ during combing operations in Belthangady, a death which the police initially tried to pin on Maoists. 

Parameshwar, an anti-Kudremukh national park activist and three other civilians were killed in an exchange of fire between the Maoists and the police in 2007. It is unclear whose bullets killed the four civilians. 

Tribal communities living in the forests bore the brunt of police repression. The Anti-Naxal Force faced widespread accusations of harassment and torture in the Malnad region.

Muneer Katipalla, the Dakshina Kannada district secretary of the CPI (Marxist) and a long-time observer of Karnataka’s politics, said, “When someone picks up arms, it will end up unleashing a cycle of violence. Everyone operates under the shadow of the gun. True free will is not possible under such circumstances. Had those people taken up mics instead of guns, so much death and suffering could have been avoided.”

After Saketh’s killing – he was shot in the head – the leadership of the CPI (Maoist) asked Noor to take charge of the Karnataka unit. “I refused. I told them that I had remained as a party worker despite my differences with the leadership. But how could I lead when I had such deep disagreements?” 

In 2006, while preparing for a national conference of the newly formed CPI (Maoist), Noor and others got access to documents of reviews from all the states that the party was active in. Many of the states reported the same patterns that Noor and others had seen in Karnataka. 

“That’s when we realised that this was a pan-India problem. Instead of trying to develop an Indian model based on Indian conditions, Indian communists were always trying to figure out whether the Russian or Chinese model was more suitable to achieve revolution. We were stuck with the China model.” 

The China model refers to the use of guerilla warfare tactics to capture power, as Mao Zedong did during the Long March (1934-35) in which communist troops trekked 10,000 km across China to defeat the Nationalist forces led by Chaing Kai-shek. The communist forces under Mao then established communist rule in China.

After Saketh’s death, a vote was called to determine the party line in Karnataka. The motion to continue with the armed rebellion in the Malnad region won by one vote. “This meant that there would be no revaluation of tactics for the next five years. There would be too many losses (of life). So we left,” Noor said. Sirimane Nagaraj, Noor and other Maoists quit the party in 2006, even though they remained underground for years due to the cases against them. The armed movement in Malnad continued.

Two years before this, in 2004, the Citizens’ Initiative for Peace had been formed with the goal of attempting to convince Maoists to give up arms. Gauri Lankesh and HS Doreswamy were a part of it. Noor said that they did not consider coming overground at the time because the Janata Dal (Secular)-BJP coalition government was in power with HD Kumaraswamy as chief minister. 

In 2013, when Siddaramaiah became chief minister, Noor and other Maoists considered coming overground. Siddaramaiah formed a committee comprising government officials and civil society members such as Gauri Lankesh, HS Doreswamy and AK Subbaiah to enable the surrender of Maoists. In December 2014, Noor, Sirimane Nagaraj and others officially gave up arms. 

“HS Doreswamy and Gauri Lankesh trusted us, and the government trusted them. Looking at us [former Maoists] for 10 years, the CM believed us. A trust-based approach was needed. A democratic approach from the head of a state is very important [to achieve surrenders],” Noor said. 

Noor said that what Karnataka had achieved could perhaps be attempted in states such as Maharashtra, Odisha, Jharkhand and Bihar, where the Maoists had mostly carried out defensive attacks. 

Resolving the situation in Chhattisgarh however was “far more complex” because of the internecine killings carried out by both the state and the Maoists. “There is too much antagonism on both sides. Even if the union government considers calling for a ceasefire to hold talks, it is not certain whether the Maoists will come forward because they’re very hardcore there. But, if at all the union government considers, it might open up possibilities for civil society to intervene,” Noor said. 

Cornered and cut off

The Maoist movement weakened in Karnataka following the leadership vacuum created by Saketh Rajan’s death, the quitting of several cadres in 2006, and the killing of many Maoists in encounters. Simultaneously, many Maoists were killed in encounters or arrested in Kerala and Tamil Nadu too.

“In 2014, the CPI (Maoist)  attempted a new experiment. The plan was to strengthen the party from one area. They merged about 50 cadres from the three states into six Dalams who functioned in the tri-junction forest area of HD Kote in Karnataka, Wayanad in Kerala and the Sathyamangalam forests of Tamil Nadu. But that too became a failure.” 

Arrests, encounters and surrenders continued in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. When the Kerala police arrested BG Krishnamurthy, a central committee member, in November 2021, the handful of Maoists from Karnataka lost contact with the central leadership. 

According to sources who worked with the surrender committee, BG Krishnamurthy told the state government that some of the remaining Maoists in the forests wanted to surrender. He told the state government that if civil society mediators were appointed, the Maoists were likely to come forward as they had no resources to survive in the forests, no contact with Maoist leadership and were surrounded by the police. 

In early 2024, after Siddaramaiah was back as chief minister, the Karnataka government revived the Naxal surrender and rehabilitation committee and appointed writer Banjagere Jayaprakash, advocate KP Sripal and journalist and social activist Parvatheesha as civil society members. The three of them began to go to villages in Kerala and Karnataka where Maoists had been seen. They spoke to local people, held meetings and left their phone numbers and pamphlets regarding surrender. 

“Since many of them were from Karnataka, they decided to come back, and trekked through the forests from Wayanad and Dakshina Kannada up to Chikkamaglur. It took them several months,” Noor said. 

Around mid-October, the Naxal surrender committee received word that the Maoists had reached the forest ranges of Chikkamaglur-Udupi, said Banjagere Jayaprakash. 

The group reached out to local civil society organisations in Chikkamaglur and through them, former Maoists such as Noor. “The local organisations tried to get them to surrender, but they weren’t convinced. They were not willing to become betrayers, but they knew it was difficult for them to continue,” Noor said. 

While the Maoists were debating how to surrender, Vikram Gowda, a tribal man from Udupi district, was killed in an encounter on November 18, 2024. An independent fact-finding team led by journalist Naveen Soorinje and Muneer Katipalla raised questions about the veracity of the police’s claims that he died in an exchange of fire. Even the government-appointed Maoists rehabilitation committee demanded that cases be booked against the police personnel involved in the encounter.

Final days

On December 1, the Citizens’ Initiative for Peace (CIP) met with the chief minister and urged the government to make an attempt to reach out to the Maoists. The surrender committee ensured that the police stop combing operations in the area where the Maoists were, Jayaprakash said. 

“We sent word through locals asking them to hear us out,” Noor said. 

On December 18, the Maoists handed a letter to Gowramma, a tribal woman living in a village in Sringeri, stating that they wanted to give up arms and asking what guarantees the government was willing to provide. She delivered the letter to a former Maoist who delivered it to Noor, who then contacted the surrender committee and the CIP, said Jayaprakash.  

“It wasn’t as easy for them as it was for us. Each of them had over 60-70 cases against them under the UAPA and the Arms Act spread across several states. So we went back to the government,” Noor said. 

Police sources said the chief minister was in favour of enabling a surrender, and his office told the CIP to go ahead.

The CIP arranged for the Maoists to stay on the farms of three families in a village in the forests of Chikkamaglur. The police escorted the civil society members of the Naxal rehabilitation committee and the CIP to the location. 

“For 11 hours between 8 am and 7 pm, there was a non-stop discussion. I knew four of them. So it was easy to have these discussions,” said Noor, who knew them as new recruits while he was part of the movement. 

The major concerns the Maoists had were that they felt that they would be forced to betray their comrades. “We told them the situation was different here. They could continue to be in movements. We told them we did it. That gave them confidence,” Noor said. 

They had six major demands: they wanted a dignified exit and to be treated as political activists not criminals, they wanted the government to refrain from opposing bail in the cases against them, they wanted to continue to participate in socio-political movements, that the government deliver on assurances to Maoists who had already surrendered, and legal aid for imprisoned Maoists to get bail. They also listed 18 social issues that they wanted the government to act on. Lastly, they also wanted a judicial inquiry to probe Vikram Gowda’s encounter. 

According to Noor, the government was open to all the demands except for the judicial inquiry on Vikram Gowda’s encounter. “We [the CIP] also felt that this demand could not be a precondition for the surrender. We told them they could continue the demand for a judicial probe (independent of the surrender). But for the rest of their demands, we sought a point-by-point reply from the government. We went back to the Maoists with this written reply.” 

At the next meeting a couple of days later, Noor and others gave them the government’s written assurance and told them the risks. They should not forget that they were dealing with the state and not just one government – there was no guarantee that the government’s goodwill would continue. Even though the Karnataka government was open to streamlining the court proceedings, it could not ensure the cooperation of the Kerala government headed by the CPI (Marxist), a cadre-based party that has sharp ideological differences with the Maoists. Despite the state government’s assurances, judicial outcomes couldn’t be predicted. 

“After hearing us out, they told us that staying in the forest was a dead end for them, and that even if there was a risk in giving up arms, there was still [the hope of] possibility,” Noor said. 

The end game realisation

The realisation that they were not as welcome as they were before, was also a strong factor in tipping the scales in favour of giving up arms. “They told us that people in the forests were still happy to see them, but they saw that the longer they stayed [in someone’s house], the more tense their hosts became, wondering what would befall them.” 

Noor said that the Maoists had also noticed that there were several local movements for social change, and felt that their presence would only hinder those movements. “They told us that they would give up arms because they were not part of the solution anymore, that they were the problem,” Noor said. 

Although killings by Maoists were few in Karnataka, Muneer said that the Maoists’ presence had damaged all democratic movements in the state. “There was a split in civil society, a cold war of sorts, between those who opposed the Naxals and those who sympathised with them,” Muneer said. 

One of the biggest victims of this split was the movement against the Sangh Parivar’s campaign claiming that the Bababudan shrine in Chikkamagalur was a temple called Datta Peetha. Those who were opposed to Naxals did not want to collaborate with Maoist sympathisers in the movement against the Sangh. A move to invite the legendary balladeer and Maoist sympathiser, Gaddar, to join the protests widened the rift. 

Muneer said, “Many people left the Bababudangiri movement following this. Until then, all progressive groups and individuals were comfortable with collaborating. Karnataka has still not recovered from this setback.”

Even as this report was being filed, the Q-Branch CID of the Tamil Nadu police and Kerala’s Anti Terrorist Squad tasked with tackling Left extremism, arrested a Maoist named Santhosh, the last person in the wanted list of Maoists in Kerala as per media reports, in Krishnagiri district.

Update on Feb 28: This piece has been updated to further explain the China model.

This story was republished from The News Minute as part of the NL-TNM alliance. It has been lightly edited for style and clarity. 

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