The Naxalbari Movement

The term "Naxal" comes from the village of Naxalbari in the West Bengal district of Darjeeling, where the movement began in 1967 under the leadership of Charu Majumdar and Kanu Sanyal. It refers to the use of violence by various communist guerrilla groups to destabilize the state. It quickly fell out of favor in its home state of West Bengal, but the outfit's underground operations continued. 

•    Naxalites are far-left radical communists who derive their political ideology from Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong's teachings. Since the early 1970s, they've been operating in various parts of the country. 

 

•    Various areas of the country have been severely impacted at various times due to overt violence perpetrated by Naxalite groups operating in those areas. 

 

•    Naxalism, according to former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, is the country's most serious threat to internal security today. The threat has been present for a long time, with many ups and downs.

 

•    Throughout history, violence against the ruling elite has been perpetrated primarily by the peasant class, motivated by leftist ideologies. Marx and Engels' writings provided the ideological foundation for these violent movements. This ideology is known as Marxism or Communism. 

 

•    Lenin and Mao Zedong later backed this up. Leftist ideologies believe that in an elitist/capitalist society, all existing social relations and state structures are exploitative by nature, and that only a revolutionary change through violent means can end this exploitation. Marxism advocates a violent class struggle to expel capitalist bourgeois elements.

 

•    Maoism is a doctrine that teaches the use of armed insurgency, mass mobilisation, and strategic alliances to seize state power. This was dubbed the "Protracted Peoples War" by Mao. 

 

•    According to Maoist insurgency doctrine, the ‘bearing of arms is non-negotiable' because Maoist ideology glorifies violence. The industrial-rural divide is a major division exploited by capitalism, according to Maoism. Maoism also refers to the egalitarianism that prevailed during Mao's time, as opposed to free-market ideology.

 

•    The political orientation of Maoism emphasises the vast majority of people's "revolutionary struggle against the exploiting classes and their state structures." Its military strategies have included guerilla war tactics aimed at encircling cities from the countryside, as well as a strong focus on political transformation through mass participation of the lower classes. 

 

•    The Maoists' slogan is "Political power rows out of the barrel of a gun." They use guerilla warfare to mobilise large segments of the rural population to revolt against established institutions. 

 

•    Unlike political mass movements in border areas with violent underpinnings, Naxalites do not seek to secede from the Indian Union in order to establish a sovereign independent state of their own; rather, they seek to capture political power through armed struggle in order to install a so-called "people's government."

 

 

•    The Naxalite movement began in Darjeeling district, West Bengal, in May 1967 in the three police station areas of Naxalbari, Khoribari, and Phansidewa. In 1969, the CPI Marxist–Leninist (ML) party, based on Maoist ideology, was founded. 

 

•    The Naxalite movement quickly spread across the country, particularly in West Bengal, Odisha, Bihar, and Andhra Pradesh. 

 

•    Peasants and adivasis, or tribals, were their main supporters, who often faced discrimination and exploitation from state authorities. 

 

•    Several young unemployed and unemployed students were also drawn to the Naxal ideology. The peak period of violent activities by Naxalites was from 1970 to mid- 1971. In 1971, a joint police-army operation in the worst-affected areas of West Bengal, Bihar, and Odisha resulted in the arrest and death of nearly all of the movement's top leaders. 

 

•    Charu Majumdar was apprehended and died in police custody in 1972. Approximately 40,000 cadres were imprisoned during the emergency in 1975, dealing a severe blow to the movement.

 

•    Following the Emergency, the movement resurfaced in a more violent form. As part of its "protracted war" strategy, it continued to expand its base. 

 

•    From West Bengal to Bihar to Odisha, as well as Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, their base grew. In 1980, the CPI (ML) was renamed the People's War Group (PWG), which was based in Andhra Pradesh and had a large number of police casualties. 

 

•    The Andhra Government banned PWG in 1992, but it continued to operate. Simultaneously, in Bihar, the Maoist Communist Centre of India (MCCI) grew in strength and launched large-scale attacks on landlords and other upper caste groups. The naxal movement continued to spread across the country at a steady rate.

 

•    The problem became more serious after the Peoples War Group (PWG) and the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) merged in September 2004, resulting in the formation of the Communist Party of India (CPI) (Maoist). Today's left-wing extremist movement is a complex web that spans multiple countries. 

 

•    According to the Ministry of Home Affairs, ultra-left extremism is currently afflicting 88 districts in the ten states of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, Telengana, and West Bengal, forming an almost continuous Naxal corridor. 

 

•    The CPI (Maoist), along with all of its formations and front organizations, has been listed on the Schedule of Terrorist Organizations under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act of 1967, and is responsible for the majority of incidents of violence and killing of civilians and security forces. 

 

•    Since the formation of the CPI (Maoist), there has been an increase in Naxal violence, to the point where the Prime Minister had to declare Naxalism the single most serious internal security threat facing India in 2006. 

 

The Naxalites, estimated to number 10,000, have posed a threat to the country's security forces and a roadblock to development in the vast mineral-rich region of eastern India known as the "Red Corridor." It runs through Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, and Odisha in a narrow but continuous strip. Naxal influence was seen spreading from ‘Tirupati to Pashupati' during the peak of the Maoist movement in Nepal.

 

•    Extremist violence has increased and spread over the last decade, claiming a large number of lives in the countries affected. The majority of the affected areas are forest areas populated primarily by tribal peoples. The Dandakaranya Region, which includes parts of Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Maharashtra, and Andhra Pradesh, contains the majority of these areas. 

 

•    In the Dandakaranya region, the CPI (Maoist) has deployed some battalions. Local Panchayat leaders are frequently forced to resign, and Maoist Jan Adalat meetings are held on a regular basis. In these areas, they have maintained a parallel government and judiciary. However, violence alone cannot be used to gauge Maoist expansion. 

 

•    In terms of indoctrination and consolidation, Maoists are also growing. They are also attempting to spread their ideology in the ‘Golden Corridor,' which runs from Pune to Ahmedabad and is dominated by the Bheel and Gond tribes. They are attempting to profit from new areas, various social groups, and marginalised groups such as Dalits and minorities by actively participating in their grievances against the government. Maoists have also established themselves in western Odisha, Upper Assam, and Arunachal Pradesh.

 

•    Given the incidents of violence and the casualties that have resulted, the movement's capacity to challenge the state has greatly increased. The most serious incident occurred in April 2010 in Dantewada, Chhattisgarh, when they ambushed a whole CRPF Company and killed 76 CRPF armed personnel, demonstrating the extent of their strategic planning, skills, and armament. 

 

•    In 2013, the left-wing extremist movement made international headlines when it killed 27 people in the Sukma District of Chhattisgarh, including some high-ranking politicians.

 

•    With the exception of a brief period in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the left extremist movement has been largely agrarian in that it seeks to exploit rural discontent and misgovernance to achieve its goals. 

 

•    It has emerged as the greatest internal security threat. 

 

•    By mobilising dispossessed and marginalised groups, it has gained people's trust and grown in strength, particularly in forest and tribal areas. 

 

•    It creates conditions that prevent the government from functioning and actively seeks to disrupt development activities in order to achieve its goal of wresting control. 

 

•    It instils fear in law-abiding citizens.

 

While these characteristics are present in the activities of all terrorist organizations, left extremism has had a significant impact on the country's conflict scenario due to its wider geographic reach.

 

•    The Naxalites' goal is to undermine the state's legitimacy and build a mass base that is acceptable to a certain extent. The ultimate goal is to use violence to gain political power and establish what they call "The India People's Democratic Federal Republic." 

 

•    The Naxalites primarily target the police and their facilities. They also target specific types of infrastructure, such as rail and road transportation, as well as power transmission, and they obstruct development projects, such as critical road construction. 

 

•    Naxalite activity is also manifesting itself through various civil society and front organizations on issues such as SEZ policy, land reforms, land acquisition, displacement, and so on, with the goal of broadening their mass base and gaining intellectual elite support.