From gunfire to Tricolour: Bastar’s first fearless Independence Day

For nearly six decades, the forests of central India carried a sound that no Independence Day parade could drown out — the sound of gunfire. It echoed through the sal and teak forests of Chhattisgarh’s Bastar, through the hills of Bijapur, through villages that appeared on no tourist map and, for years, barely appeared on the map of the Indian state at all. Here, in a region the world came to know only through headlines of ambushes and encounters, the Tricolour was, for entire generations, a rumour more than a right.

This Independence Day, something changed. As the nation marked its 80th year of freedom, Prime Minister Narendra Modi stood at the ramparts of the Red Fort and made an announcement that would once have sounded impossible: naxalism, he said, “does not have even the strength for breathing” left in it. Two hundred and thirty kilometres away in Bijapur district, on a hilltop once so feared that maps simply marked it as enemy territory, villagers and security personnel hoisted the national flag at a place called Karreguttalu Hills — for the first time since Independence.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah, on the 80th Independence Day, lauded the achievement and shared a video of the Tricolour flying high over a ground that was once plagued by Naxal violence. In a post on X, Shah wrote, “The hill of Kurregutta, which was once a stronghold of Naxal terror, now proudly flies the Tricolor, and the festival of independence is being celebrated with great pomp. Where once guns roared, now patriotism echoes. The Tricolor waving over the red soil is a symbol of the strength, progress, and self-confidence of a Naxal-free new Bastar,” कुर्रेगुट्टा की पहाड़ी जो कभी नक्सल आतंक का गढ़ थी, आज वहाँ शान से तिरंगा लहरा रहा है और आजादी का पर्व धूमधाम से मनाया जा रहा है। जहाँ कभी बंदूकें गरजती थीं, वहाँ राष्ट्रभक्ति गूँज रही है। लाल माटी पर लहराता तिरंगा नक्सलमुक्त नए बस्तर की शक्ति, प्रगति व आत्मविश्वास का प्रतीक है। https://t.co/geuGaX38YA — Amit Shah (@AmitShah) August 15, 2026

The Decades-Long Shadow of Naxalism

It is a story of two flags. For decades, a black flag flew here, planted by men with guns who told frightened villagers that the Indian state would never come. This August, the Tricolour flew instead. And with it came something Bastar had almost forgotten how to imagine: an ordinary, unafraid Independence Day.

To understand what has changed, it helps to remember what was lost. The Left-Wing Extremism movement traces its roots to the 1967 Naxalbari uprising in West Bengal, a peasant revolt inspired by Maoist doctrine and built on a simple, violent creed: power flows from the barrel of a gun. Over the following decades, it metastasised into India’s most serious internal security challenge — by 2009, the government of the day was compelled to publicly admit that Naxalism outstripped even Kashmir and the Northeast in the sheer geography of its reach.

The numbers from the peak years are staggering, and behind every one of them is a family that was never the same again. In 2010 alone, the country recorded 1,936 Naxal-related incidents and over a thousand fatalities. Across the decade between 2004 and 2014, the Red Corridor swallowed 17,542 violent incidents, killed 1,913 security personnel and claimed 5,019 civilian lives. Schools were burned. Banks and dispensaries — the most basic instruments of a functioning society — were reduced to rubble, and then the same men who destroyed them told villagers that the state had abandoned them.

More than 3,500 security personnel were eventually martyred in the effort to reclaim these forests for the republic — a toll, as PM Modi reminded the nation this Independence Day, higher than the number of soldiers India lost in several of its wars. “This naxalism had kept a large part of India and population as a hostage for four decades with the barrel of a gun, they had destroyed the Constitution,” the Prime Minister said in his address from the Red Fort, describing how the movement had “stolen the sons of numerous mothers” and “crushed the dreams of numerous mothers.”

A New National Strategy: Vishwaas, Nirman, Jan Kalyan

What makes the Bastar story remarkable is not just that the guns eventually fell silent — insurgencies across the world have ended in stalemate or in silence born of exhaustion. What sets this apart is the scaffolding that was built, deliberately and patiently, to ensure that silence turned into something durable: peace with a future attached to it.

The first decisive action came in 2015 with a National Policy and Action Plan that, for the first time, replaced a fragmented, state-by-state response with a unified national strategy built on three pillars — Vishwaas (restoring faith in the state), Nirman (building a new future) and Jan Kalyan (people’s welfare and dignity). It was designed as an unbroken chain: security created the space in which development could happen; development deepened the trust that security alone could never buy; and that trust, in turn, made welfare delivery possible in villages that had not seen a government official in living memory.

Vishwaas: Rebuilding the State’s Presence

Vishwaas — rebuilding the state’s presence. Where in 2014 there were just 66 fortified police stations across the Red Corridor, there are now 597. Police stations reporting Naxal-related incidents have fallen from 333 to just 16. Over 408 new camps of Central Armed Police Forces were established in the last seven years, along with 68 night-landing helipads that allowed troops to be moved — and the wounded to be evacuated — in terrain where roads simply did not exist. Elite forces were woven together into a single fighting fabric: the CRPF’s CoBRA commandos, the District Reserve Guard, and state units such as Jharkhand Jaguar and Andhra Pradesh’s legendary Greyhounds, trained jointly and deployed under a unified command.

Technology became, in the words of the campaign’s own architects, “the game changer” — drones, satellite imagery, AI-driven data analysis and scientific call-log tracking turned what had once been guesswork into precision. A doctrine known simply as “Trace, Target, Neutralise” guided a string of operations with names that read like a campaign map of the Red Corridor’s retreat: Operation Black Forest, Operation Octopus, Operation Double Bull, Operation Thunderstorm. Operation Black Forest alone dismantled a major Maoist stronghold and eliminated over 30 Naxalites, triggering a wave of arrests and surrenders that followed. Operation Double Bull freed the districts of Gumla, Lohardaga and Latehar in Jharkhand from Naxal influence entirely.

And crucially, the state chose not only to hunt those who carried arms, but to starve their financial roots. A dedicated vertical within the National Investigation Agency (NIA) seized assets worth over Rs 40 crore; the Enforcement Directorate attached a further Rs 12 crore; state agencies confiscated another Rs 40 crore. By mid-2026, 112 cases had been probed with 100 chargesheets filed — the quiet, unglamorous paperwork of dismantling an insurgent economy.

For those who chose to lay down arms rather than face the end of the barrel, the state extended what officials describe as “a red carpet”: an immediate grant of up to Rs 5 lakh, a monthly stipend of Rs 10,000 for three years, and additional incentives for surrendering weapons. It worked. In 2025 alone, 2,337 Naxalites surrendered; between 2024 and March 2026, the figure touched 3,927.

Nirman: Building a Future

Nirman — building what should always have existed. It is easy, from a city, to underestimate what a road means to a village that has never had one. In the forests of Bastar, a road was not infrastructure — it was the first proof that the Indian republic considered these villages part of itself. Since 2014, over 12,249 kilometres of roads have been built across LWE-affected areas, with a further 17,319 km approved at a cost of Rs 20,557 crore. In the Bastar region alone — spanning Bastar, Bijapur, Dantewada, Sukma, Narayanpur, Kanker and Kondagaon — more than 3,240 kilometres of new roads now connect villages that were once cut off entirely from markets, schools, hospitals and each other.

Alongside the roads came signal. More than 9,600 mobile towers were installed nationally under various telecom schemes; in the most severely affected areas, 96 percent of villages — 44,728 of 46,592 — now have mobile connectivity where once there was none at all. In Bastar specifically, 889 towers were installed, turning isolated hamlets into places a child could, for the first time, video-call a relative in the city, or a farmer could check the day’s market price before selling his produce.

Banking followed the towers. Between April 2015 and March 2026, 1,804 bank branches opened their doors in these districts, along with 1,321 ATMs, 74,720 banking correspondents and 6,025 post offices — the unglamorous plumbing of an economy finally reaching villages that had, for decades, existed entirely outside it.

And then came the schools. Two hundred and fifty-nine Eklavya Model Residential Schools were sanctioned, 179 of them already built, alongside 46 Industrial Training Institutes and 49 Skill Development Centres — an investment of nearly Rs 800 crore in the one resource an insurgency cannot survive: an educated, employed generation of young people with something better to do than carry a gun.

Jan Kalyan: Welfare with Dignity

Jan Kalyan — welfare, but with dignity attached. Perhaps the most human dimension of this transformation is what happened to those who chose to walk away from the forest and back into society. Surrendered cadres were not merely disarmed; they were offered a pathway — skill training, livelihood assistance, housing support under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY), and free education up to Class XII for their children. Villages that shed Naxal influence and elected their own panchayats were rewarded with development grants, turning the return of democracy itself into something tangible and visible.

The 2017 formation of the Bastariya Battalion captured this philosophy in a single institution: 1,143 personnel recruited, nearly 400 of them local youth from Bijapur, Sukma and Dantewada — young men and women from the very communities the insurgency claimed to represent, now wearing the uniform of the state instead of standing against it. Their presence did something no outside force ever could: it rebuilt trust from within.

In May 2026, the government launched the Shaheed Veer Gunda Dhur Seva Dera initiative, converting nearly 70 erstwhile security camps into service centres offering healthcare, banking, agricultural support and skill development — literally repurposing the architecture of conflict into the architecture of welfare. A Common Service Centre now stands in Netanar, the birthplace of tribal freedom fighter Veer Gundadhur, a symbolic homecoming of governance to the very soil from which resistance to injustice — real injustice, not the insurgents’ — first rose.

Cultural life returned too. The Bastar Pandum and Bastar Olympics have drawn lakhs of tribal youth and artists back into public life, proof that a region once defined by fear could still produce dancers, athletes and craftspeople with dreams that had nothing to do with the jungle.

Symbolic Victories and A Region Transformed

Nowhere is the change more visible than at Karreguttalu Hills — Kaali Pahaadi, the Black Hills, a name earned from years under Naxal control. In 2025, security forces launched Operation Black Forest here, part of the final push toward a Naxal-free India. This Independence Day, for the first time since 1947, the Tricolour was hoisted at its summit.

“Ask about its significance from anyone in Chhattisgarh who understands Naxalism even a little,” said Chhattisgarh Deputy Chief Minister Vijay Sharma, describing the moment. “Tiranga has finally been hoisted at Karreguttalu Hills. This is a big thing,” he added.

A few kilometres away lies Minpa village in Sukma — a name that carries its own grief. On March 21, 2020, a joint team of District Reserve Guard and Special Task Force personnel was ambushed here by Maoist fighters; 17 soldiers were killed in the encounter that followed. This year, Minpa held its own Independence Day flag-hoisting ceremony, deliberately, at that very location.

“Specifically, I want to mention Minpa village, where we know a major incident was carried out by Naxalites… in which 17 of our STF and DRG soldiers were martyred. We are holding a special Independence Day celebration at that very location,” said Sukma Superintendent of Police Mayank Gurjar, who noted that this year, 50 villages that had once lived under the shadow of Naxal violence hoisted the flag for the first time in the collective memory of their residents.

The villagers themselves describe the change in the plainest, most powerful terms. One resident of Minpa recalled how the tradition of flag-hoisting had simply stopped after Naxals destroyed the local school. “The Naxalites’ black flag used to fly,” he said. “Now, just recently, the school flag hoisting has started again.” Another put it even more simply: “Previously, due to fear of Naxalites, we used to live in constant fear. Now, we’re carefree.”

Naxal-Free India: An Official Declaration

Speaking in the Lok Sabha earlier this year during the Parliament Budget session, Union Home Minister Amit Shah was unambiguous about what the milestone meant to the government that pursued it. “Naxal-free India is one of the biggest successes of the Modi government,” he told Parliament, adding pointedly: “This is the Modi government — whoever picks up arms will have to face the consequences.”

Shah offered a state-by-state accounting of the transformation: Bihar naxal-free before 2024, Maharashtra naxal-free barring a single tehsil, Odisha entirely free, and Jharkhand free of Naxal influence in all but one district. Nationally, the number of LWE-affected districts has fallen from 126 in 2014 to just two by 2026; the districts classified as “most affected” have fallen from 35 to zero.

The violence curve tells the same story in numbers that once seemed permanent fixtures of India’s internal security landscape. Naxal-related incidents fell from 870 in 2014 to 234 in 2025. Fatalities fell from 310 to 100 over the same period — each of those hundred still a tragedy, but a fraction of what the Red Corridor once extracted from India every single year.

For Shah, the human cost of the old silence around this violence was never abstract. “I have read many articles by intellectuals who talk about the human rights of Naxalites,” he told Parliament, “but not a single one of them was written for the mother whose child was forcibly taken away by Naxalites or for the widows of those killed by Naxalites.”

Case Study: Jharkhand’s Success in 2026

Jharkhand Police has significantly weakened the challenge of Naxalism in the state. As a result of the dedication, sacrifice, and continuous efforts of the personnel, a total of 103 Naxals were arrested between January and August 2026 (up to 05.08.2026)–including Politburo member Misir Besra, who carried a reward of Rs 1 crore announced by the Jharkhand Government. Additionally, 46 Naxals surrendered, and 22 were killed in police encounters–including Central Committee member Anal alias Patiram Manjhi, who carried a reward of ₹1 crore announced by the Jharkhand Government. Furthermore, a total of 98 weapons, 7,470 cartridges, 11 kg of explosives, 3 IEDs, and levy money amounting to approximately Rs 6 lakh were recovered: Director General of Police (DGP), Jharkhand

The state-level numbers from Jharkhand illustrate just how far this campaign has been pressed in 2026 alone. According to the Director General of Police (DGP), Jharkhand, Jharkhand Police has significantly weakened the challenge of Naxalism in the state. As a result of the dedication, sacrifice, and continuous efforts of the personnel, a total of 103 Naxals were arrested between January and August 2026 (up to August 5, 2026) including Politburo member Misir Besra, who carried a reward of 1 crore announced by the Jharkhand Government. Additionally, 46 Naxals surrendered, and 22 were killed in police encounters including Central Committee member Anal alias Patiram Manjhi, who also carried a reward of 1 crore announced by the Jharkhand Government. Furthermore, a total of 98 weapons, 7,470 cartridges, 11 kg of explosives, 3 IEDs, and levy money amounting to approximately 6 lakh were recovered.

There is a discipline to how PM Modi framed this victory on Independence Day — he did not let the nation forget what it cost. Even as he announced that the “hathiyari naxal,” the armed insurgent, had been defeated, he was careful to distinguish this from complacency, warning of what he called the “dimagi naxal” — people with naxal thinking — who, he said, still needed to be “identified and isolated” so that India’s youth could move forward united.

But the abiding image of this 80th Independence Day will not be a warning. It will be simpler than that: schoolchildren in villages that once had no school, standing in the thin monsoon light of mid-August, watching a flag climb a pole that a black flag once occupied. It will be the Bastariya Battalion — young tribal men and women who could just as easily have been recruited into the forest — standing guard now in the colours of the nation they once had no reason to trust. It will be a former insurgent’s child, sitting in an Eklavya school, free until Class XII, learning a version of India that was never described to their parents.

For eighty years, Independence Day has meant different things in different parts of this vast country. In Delhi, it has always meant a flag on the Red Fort and a speech carried live into a hundred million homes. This year, for the first time in the memory of entire villages, it meant the same thing everywhere. A flag. A crowd unafraid to gather beneath it. And a promise — made in blood by more than 3,500 martyred security personnel, and kept, finally, in roads and schools and bank branches — that no forest in India would be allowed to remain outside the republic forever.

Where guns once ruled, dreams now rise. Bastar, on its eightieth Independence Day, finally got to celebrate one exactly like the rest of the country did — without looking over its shoulder. (ANI)

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by Asianet Newsable English staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)