Maoist rebel Arun Oraon with his gun. Telegraph picture

Indo-Nepal border, Dec. 18: Arun Oraon is illiterate, but his deftness with the self-loading rifles, Kalashnikovs and sten guns reflects his education in a different field: armed warfare.

The 19-year-old’s “student” days, though, are long over. He now trains a new generation of armed cadre at the CPI (Maoist) camp in this village camp on the Nepal-Bihar-Uttar Pradesh border.

With an expression unusually stern for his age, Arun somewhat reluctantly begins speaking about himself: “I was born in a village deep in the jungles about 20 km from Bokaro. From an early age I found myself joining in the culture of protest by my fellow Oraon tribals. I was trained in arms by a man who came from Dandakaranya (now in Chhattisgarh) in 2003.”

His voice suddenly betrays a hint of emotion. “You can say I was, sort of, born in the organisation ? and will probably die in the organisation.”

The impassive look is back again. “Is Arun your real name?” He doesn’t respond.

He is expressionless also when some of his senior colleagues suggest they would get him married to one of the girls in the village.

It’s the loyal, tenacious and ideologically inflexible youths from tribal belts like Arun who have powered the spread of Maoism in Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and western Bengal in the past two decades, the Naxalite leaders admit freely.

Arun has been moving from one camp to another, along with other men trained in arms, across north Bihar over the past two years. Apart from training tribal youths, he has taken part in several raids that involved the “elimination of class enemies”.

“He is a spark,” says one of his senior comrades.

“The breakaway LTTE group later went back to Sri Lanka to form a communist party. We don’t have any links with them,” said Azad, chief spokesman for the CPI (Maoist).

“The training in precision attacks on the enemy came from them. But after they left, the tribal youths came up quickly to replace them.”

The tribals assumed the grassroots leadership roles, breathing new life into the Naxalite movement that had begun as a short-lived but volcanic uprising in late ’60s Bengal. They remain its mainstay.

The movement, too, is oriented towards them. “Our crusade against the World Bank and multinationals is linked with the interest of the tribals and the backward-caste poor who are displaced from their homes because of the projects,” Azad said. “Recently, one multinational offered us Rs 3 crore to keep quiet. We told them to get lost.”

The Naxalites first tapped the tribals in the far-flung villages of Bastar (now in Chhattisgarh) to form a base in the early ’80s, about a decade after the Bengal uprising had petered out. But the tribals living near bus-stand markets or highways never sided with the Maoists, Azad and his colleague Pravin said.

“When we reached the jungles of Palamau and other hilly districts in Jharkhand, we faced the same problem. It’s the same set of tribals that has now revolted against us in Bastar under the leadership of (Congress leader) Mahendra Karma,” Pravin said.

In the mid-1980s, the Maoists had influence in only five districts of undivided Bihar ? Palamau, Gaya, Bhojpur, Chatra and Hazaribagh. Today, they are entrenched in at least 18 districts of Jharkhand and nine of Bihar.

The Maoists are not ready to lower their hostility towards the Bihar government just because there’s a new ministry in power. “There’s no question of any talks with the new government,” Pravin said.

The Maoists have begun operations also in three districts of Bengal ? Bankura, Purulia and West Midnapore ? and have six units in the Uttar Pradesh districts of Chandauli, Mirzapur and Sonbhadra.

The CPI (Maoist) has an expanded central committee, a politburo and a central military commission manned by several ex-armymen to guide it.