This shows the savage nature of the Maoists—the brutality and savagery they are capable of"—this is what P Chidambaram, Union Home Minister, had to say about the horrific killing of 76 CRPF jawans by Maoists at Dantewada in Chhattisgarh on 6^th April. The fury and anguish that such slaughter generates is quite understandable. But the plain truth is: It takes us nowhere.

For, the Maoists did it simply to provoke the state to react brutally and perhaps indiscriminately too, against them and their sympathizers—Adivasis, tribal people, and marginalized rural folk—and thereby prove why their revolutionary path is right. The State must understand this logic of Maoists rightly with a cool mind and work towards its defeat, resolutely backed by an apt strategy for policing the errant.

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