Reports from Nepal indicated that a detained Maoist insurgent had admitted on the state-run television on November 17, 2003-nighht that the Maoists insurgents have received training in handling weapons and explosives from the fraternal People's War Group Naxalites of India. This is for the first time that such admittance was made in public on the national media. However, such reports of the nexus between the Nepalese Maoists and the PWG have been available for some time.
Available literature suggests that the Maoists and the PWG had their first meeting in 1995. In fact, one top Indian security official told this researcher during an interview in Hyderabad, the capital of the southern Indian State of Andhra Pradesh, where the PWG was founded in April 1980, that the PWG had envisioned linking up with extreme Left-wing elements in Nepal in late-1989/1990.
Less than a decade later they did meet up with them and a little over a decade later they began the process of laying a corridor that is now widely referred to as the Revolutionary Corridor (RC) extending from Nepal and stretching across at least five, if not six, Indian States cutting across the central Indian heartland to end somewhere on the northern fringes of Andhra Pradesh, or extend further south, as some other reports have indicated. The entire area has been identified in Maoist literature as a Compact Revolutionary Zone (CRZ). Owing to the sparse availability of literature on the issue it is difficult to pin point the exact route of the RC or the expanse of the CRZ. Some indications are that the RC would turn westward after entering the central Indian State of Chattisgarh, traverse through Madhya Pradesh and re-enter Chattisgarh in the south in the Bastar area, before tapering-off into Andhra Pradesh. Some other indications have been that the RC would, instead, extend eastward after entering Chhattisgarh and move along the western borders Orissa and then move into Madhya Pradesh-Andhra Pradesh.
Irrespective of the route the RC would take, its creation and the emergence of the CRZ hold certain advantages to the insurgents and, thus, significant security implications for India. The objective behind forming the RC and the CRZ is to secure unquestioned control over those areas. Thereafter, it would be easy to transport arms across the RC between India and Nepal depending upon which of the two insurgent groups, the PWG and the Nepalese Maoists, would be able to help the other at varying points in their campaign of violence in their respective areas. Besides, it would also facilitate the quick relocation of rebel cadres to safer areas along the corridor in the face of an intensification of security force operations against the guerrillas.
Further, the Indian Naxalites would then look upon areas adjoining the RC to expand their activities and, thus, attempt to bring under their influence to subsequently gain control over those areas. As it is, the PWG Naxalites have been on an expansion spree for the past over two years and have gained a varying degree of presence--intense to moderate--in parts of 12 Indian States. Eventually, their further expansion would bring in larger and vaster areas under destabilisation, and, as a consequence, require various administrative and security measures by the affected States.
The ties between the Nepalese insurgents and the PWG have intensified, over a period of time. The Maoists had sent a delegate to the 2001 March congress of the PWG held at Abuz Marh in the Bastar region of Chhattisgarh. In the local tribal language Abuz Marh means the 'unknown hill'. According to some media reports, further substantiated by security officials, some among the highest leadership--the central committee--of the PWG have established their base in that region to direct the affairs of the outfit from the nearly impregnable forest which is part of the Dandakaranya that stretches across central India.
On January 25, 2002, the politburo of the central committee of the Maoists resolved at its meeting to oppose and campaign against the proscription of the PWG, besides that of the largely Bihar-based Maoist Communist Center, another fraternal group, under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA) by the Indian Government. Subsequently, a central committee member of the PWG belonging to Maharashtra and his Nepalese counterpart, C P Gajurel 'Gaurav', currently (November 2003) under detention in Chennai after being caught with a fake passport, issued a joint statement.
Not only this, both the groups, together with 10 other fraternal outfits from South Asia, have formed in July 2001what is known as the Coordination Committee of Maoist Parties and Organisations of South Asia (CCOMPOSA). The objective of this Maoist front is to 'share experiences' and help the spread of the Maoist campaign of violent revolution to various parts of the South Asian region. Maoist groups belonging to Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka are members of CCOMPOSA. Apart from meeting twice already, this front has recently, in November 2003, issued a joint statement in the name of all its 12 members, in which it condemned what it said what the existence of a joint US-India axis against the Maoist insurgents in Nepal and exhorted Indians to oppose US actions in Iraq, as well as called upon the Indian Government not to send it s troops to Iraq. To place things in the correct context, in fact, the Indian Government has, long before this exhortation, decided not to send troops to Iraq.
Besides, and apart from their joint presence in CCOMPOSA, the Indian Naxalites and the Maoist insurgents, according to media reports, have formed what is known as the India-Nepal Joint Regional Committee in the year 2002 to coordinate activities in the border areas. Further, an Indian Naxalite leader belonging to Bihar is alleged to be on the central committee of the Maoists insurgents of Nepal
It, thus, emerges that the nexus between the two groups is not merely romantic but has operational content and indications are that it would further strengthen. Such an eventuality is neither in the interest of Nepal nor India.
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