‘Peace Talks’ as strategic deployment: The state, maoists and political violence in India

Abstract

The Maoist movement in India traces its history in the emergence of armed peasant insurrection in the late 1960s and early ’70s. From its inception the leaders of the movement made their ideological commitment for an armed ‘agrarian revolution’ and ‘destruction of state power’ explicit. The movement was drawn into an incessant conflict with the state forces and civilian vigilante groups. Interventions from civil society to de-escalate violence and engage the two principal actors in ‘peace talks’ failed in reaching any progress. This paper analyses various such instances of negotiation and ‘talks’ with Maoist guerrillas and argues that both ‘peace talks’ and ‘violence’ are part of rhetoric deployed by state agencies in its counter-insurgency strategies. The paper shows that at the same time, a philosophical engagement with the idea of ‘just peace’ is absent in the ideological arsenal of the Maoists. Thus all such peace initiatives have resulted in further escalation of violence. In this context, the fundamental issue at stake is the comprehension of ‘peace’ itself. Is cessation of hostilities a guarantee for ‘perpetual peace’? Or is peace necessarily a compromise? The paper invokes the ‘just peace’ framework in critically analysing such efforts at conciliation between the Maoists and state agencies.