Paper short abstract:

The present paper investigates India’s state response to the ongoing Maoist insurgency as an example of the dynamic relationship existing between the nature of the state and political violence in the complex security environment of South Asia.

Paper long abstract:

The South Asian region offers an example of a conflict-ridden area where the nature and construction of the state remains problematic, representing the core origin of internal tensions in the majority of the states in the region. Strong nationalisms, secessionist ethnic movements, communalism, and land-based insurgencies are some of the major hostile expressions of a process of state consolidation that still needs to be accomplished and that is challenged by threats that are mostly non-military in nature.

In fact, such internal threats represent non-military sources of national insecurity and imply a direct opposition between the state and its people, whose demands, articulated in the language of political violence, challenge the state's socio-economic and political institutions, thus eroding its legitimacy. Accordingly, the strengthening of the state system in post-colonial contexts mainly depends on how the state deals with the question of political violence and its manifestations in terms of internal armed conflicts.

Given such a context, the present paper aims at investigating the above described dynamics in India, a country that, compared to the other actors in the region, presents a peculiar course of both state-making and nation-building rooted in a democratic political and institutional setting that is still functioning notwithstanding its unresolved internal vulnerabilities. Specifically, the paper will focus on the Indian state's response to the ongoing Maoist insurgency and its securitization, moving from the assumption that ideological violence directly challenges the raison d'être of the state and therefore it cannot be easily accommodated within the existing political space.