1Hellen Sellers, PhD Student, Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis, University of Canberra, Australia
India has been home to various insurgencies since its independence. Some have been separatist in nature while others have been ideological. This paper seeks to consider an insurgency of the latter type. Communist insurgencies have been continuous in India since 1967. The most recent incarnation is the Communist Party of India- Maoist. The CPI-M, also referred to as Maoists and Naxalites, has been described by the previous Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, as the greatest threat to India's internal security.1 The force of the former Prime Minister's claim suggests that the matter is one that deserves study to consider the best way to take steps against such a looming threat.
This paper is comprised of four sections. The first section will be a discussion of the theory of best practices in counterinsurgency operations. This section will discuss the development of counterinsurgency best practice theory and provide an overview of the current features in the theory. The second section will provide a brief description of the Naxalites and their capabilities. It will include a brief history of the organisation, a discussion of tactics and weaponry which is available to the CPI-M and features of the individuals who are recruited to the organisation. Once the insurgency has been explained this paper will turn to the policies of the Indian Central Government under the current Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, and his immediate predecessor. Finally, the policies will be evaluated in accordance to both the counterinsurgency best practice theory and trends which are apparent in the data provided publically by the Ministry for External Affairs. The intent of this paper is to provide an evaluation of the policies of the central government as they relate to the program of combating the Naxalite insurgency. This is a theoretical paper rather than an empirical one which alters the emphasis of the paper.
