INTRODUCTION

WHO ARE NAXALITES?

The Naxalites, also sometimes referred to as the Naxals, are a loose word used to describe groups
waging a brutal fight against landlords and others on behalf of landless workers and tribal
individuals. Naxalites are those who fight for freedom of the downtrodden and equal social and
financial status for all, irrespective of class, caste and religion. These people pretend to represent
the most oppressed individuals in India, those who are often left untouched by the development
of India and bypassed by the electoral system. Invariably, they are the Adivasi’s, the Dalit’s,
and the poorest of the poor, who work as landless workers for a pittance, often below India's
minimum wage requirements.

THE NAXALITE MOVEMENT

The Naxalite movement in India owes its origins to a small village in West Bengal called
‘Naxalbari’. It was in 1967 that a tiny group of leaders of the Communist Party of India
(Marxist) led by Charu Majumdar, Kanu Sanyal and Jangal Santhal decided to launch an armed
struggle against big landowners and forcefully remove their land and re-distribute it to landless
people. They have been waging guerrilla warfare against objectives such as landlords,
businesspeople, governments, and safety forces for centuries, and have interrupted infrastructure
by harmful transportation, communication, and power lines.

WHY DID THE NAXALITE MOVEMENT START?

Initially the government and people were unable to understand the actual cause behind these
uprisings. On 24 May, a local sharecropper in a village near Naxalbari was attacked and killed by
goons sent by the local landlord. This incident became the first trigger for a period of violence
that had been to rock West Bengal and other parts of India for a long time.

PARTICIPANTS OF THE MOVEMENT

The Naxalite movement was common in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Local people as well as
there have been reports of brilliant learners, including well-known IITs, leaving college to join
the fight for tribal rights and landless workers. Naxalite violence was at its peak from the
beginning of 1970 to the end of 1971. It is estimated that there have been a total of about 4,000

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events in the nation between the end of 1970 and the middle of 1971. Most of them came from
West Bengal (3,500), followed by Bihar (220) and Andhra Pradesh (70). The political parties
have noticed the development of a fresh power. The government became aware of a fresh
menace not only to law and order, but to the very presence of the democratic structure of the
nation.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
The Naxal name comes from the West Bengal town of "Naxalbari" where the movement started.
Naxalism originated from a gentleman K Sanyal who believed in Communist ideology but
believed that economic freedom would come when you struggle with the wealthy who have
accumulated wealth. Naxalism was led by Charu Majumdar, Kanu Sanyal and Jangal Santhal in
1967.

CPIML
The movement started at first primarily in northeastern India but later more widely in other parts
of the country. The rise of Naxalism corresponded to the growth of militant communism in India,
particularly the creation of the Communist Party of India–Marxist-Leninist (CPI-ML) in
1969, and to the emergence of such rebel groups as the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) and
the Peoples’ War Group (PWG).

AGENDA OF CPIML

Communist party of India (Marxist-Leninist), the extremists, following Mao’s dictum that “if
there is to be revolution, there must be a revolutionary party”. It was declared that “the first
and foremost task of our Party is to rouse the peasant masses in the countryside to wage guerilla
war, unfold agrarian revolution, build rural base, use the countryside to encircle the cities
and finally to capture the cities and to liberate the whole country”.

SUPPORT FROM CHINA AND MAO

Somehow, the rebels quickly found support not only amongst the nearby villages, but also
from the People’s Republic of China. The Communist Party of China’s
representative, People’s Daily, not only called the event “Spring Thunder”, it also
devoted an entire editorial page highlighting the importance of the Naxalbari incident .

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NAXALISM VS MAOSIM

Usually people refer Naxalism and Maoism as same policies. Naxalism is a form of Maoism
which, in turn, is a form of extreme left wing. The difference is purely jargon. Naxalism
originated in Bengal's Naxalbari district. Maoism is the Maoist ideology followed in China. Mao
Zedong supplied the Naxalbari movement with ideological guidance, demanding that Indian
farmers and tribal of the lower class by force, invade the upper class regime. A big amount of
metropolitan elites was also drawn to the ideology that spread through the texts of Charu
Majumdar, especially the' Historic Eight Documents' that created the foundation of Naxalite
ideology. Using People's judiciary, comparable to those developed by Mao, Naxalites seek rivals
and perform, crush or continuously ban them with swords or knives.

THE RED CORRIDOR:

The Red Corridor which is under the control of Maoists is spread across
the districts of Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Kerala, Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya
Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh. Maoists have a strong presence in the

states of West Bengal and Maharashtra as well.

EXPANSION OF NAXAL MOVEMENT

Within a decade, however, the movement made its presence known in other regions of the
country. Notably, when Andhra Pradesh-based Kondapalli Seetharamaiah established the
People's War Group (PWG) in 1980, the mid 1980s saw the resurgence of armed militancy. In
Andhra Pradesh, the armed militia, formed to battle for the cause of the farmers and the landless,
initiated a sequence of bold assaults, assassinations and blasts targeting landlords, upper caste
officials and rulers. In the late 1990s, when the PWG was decimated by the Andhra Pradesh
police, many thought the insurgency's end. Yet again the insurgency proves those analysts
wrong, as it spread into Central India in the early 2000s, particularly the mountainous
Dandakaranya and the adjoining regions covering Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh,
Odisha and parts of Maharashtra. The merging of the Communist Party of India (Maoist-

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Leninist), the PWG, Maoist Communist Centre of India (MCCI) and 40 other armed factions into
the Communist Party of India (Maoist) in 2004 turned the tide in favor of the insurgents.

HIGHEST POINT OF MOAIST INSURGENCY

The development of its economic base was a crucial to the development of the Maoist
movement. By the early 2000s, coinciding with the spread of their geographical impact, the
quantity of funding in the hands of the Naxalites had reached some INR 1,500 crore (around US$
350 million). This increase in economic assets dramatically enhanced their capacity to purchase
guns, attract volunteers and modernize their communications operations schemes, including the
use of data and other tools. The high points of the Maoist insurgency were the Chintalnar
massacre of 76 soldiers in Chhattisgarh’s Dantewada district in April 2010, and the killings of
top leaders of the Congress Party in Chhattisgarh’s Jeeram Ghati area in Sukma district in May
2013. These two incidents, amongst many other daring attacks on security forces, sounded the
alarm for the country’s policymakers that the rebels were posing a serious threat.

INDIA/ GOVERNMENT RESPONSE TO NAXAL MOVEMENT

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In February 2009, the Indian Central
Government announced a new national
project called the "Integrated Action
Plan" (IAP) for wide-ranging,
coordinated activities to address the
Naxalite issue in all impacted countries
(Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Odisha,
Andhra Pradesh, Telangana,
Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar
Pradesh, and West Bengal). Importantly,
this scheme included financing for
Naxalite-affected grassroots economic
development initiatives as well as enhanced
special police financing for stronger containment
and decrease of Naxalite impact in these areas.
Karnataka was withdrawn from the list of
Naxalite-affected countries in August 2010, after
the first complete year of execution of the
national IAP program. Maoist communist organizations declared responsibility for 123 fatalities
in 2013, almost half of all terrorist fatalities in India. The Indian officials describe the motion as
"terrorist," but it is common in the areas where it exists. According to a research by The Times of
India, 58% of individuals surveyed in Andhra Pradesh country had a favorable view of the
militants, 19% against them.

CURRENT SCENARIO

National and state governments in India have continuously marked Naxalite groups as terrorist
organizations and have proclaimed them illegal. 106 districts in 10 states were recognized for
Left Wing Extremism (LWE) or, in other words, impacted by Naxalite-Maoist insurgencies,
according to February 2016 information published by the government of India. Andhra Pradesh,
Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Telangana, Uttar
Pradesh and West Bengal are the major countries listed in this information. It would be

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interesting to note that these are also areas suffering from the greatest levels of illiteracy, poverty
and overpopulation. While the battle between the Naxalites and the governments of the state has
been going on for decades now, here is a timeline of most recent attacks quoted by government
and media:
At least 107 persons have 24 April 2017: 24 paramilitary
been killed in left-wing staff from the 74 Central
STATE: AS Aextremism
RESPONSIBLE FACTOR
(LWE)-linked FOR THE
Reserve Police UPRISING
Force BattalionOF
(CRPF) were murdered in an
NAXALISM violence across the country so attack in Chhattisgarh District of
far in 2019 Sukma.
Despite the Maoists ' declarations of unilateral ceasefire, the Indian government has shown
July
complete rejection to act19, 2016: 10
towards died. and has never reciprocated any Maoist-
peace-building,
CRPF commandos were March 11, 2014: 15
made openings suddenly
of peace. Instead of bargaining
attacked by Naxals with the Maoists, discussing the grievances
policemen killed in the
in the jungles of Aurangabad Sukma districtresorted
of Chhatisgarh
and issues of local people Bihar
district, and insurgents,
with an the IED
Indian state has always to means of
blast. to solve the problem.
brutal and hard power

STATE’S BRUTAL TACTICS AGAINST THE MOAISTS:

During PM Manmohan Singh's government, a unique budget was assigned to districts with
Maoist involvement and fast police militarization began where armories were upgraded and
the police were supplied with high-intensity fighting facilities. Also introduced in 2009 was
Operation Green Hunt against the Maoists. The government even tried to plug into this
war the Indian Army, but luckily the army chose not to get engaged . The Indian government
also supported counter-militias as an alternative approach, bribing local peoples to battle the
Maoists. One such instance is the notorious "Salwa Judum," where the counter-militia
strategy backfired as she went under global scrutiny for gross violations of human rights,
child troops jobs, rape and assassination. The Indian government ultimately had to prohibit
the organization. The Indian security forces are also blamed for carrying out extrajudicial
killings of Maoists and causing mass sexual and rights abuses of Adivasi’s as reported by
independent journalists covering the conflict. From April 22nd to 23rd, 2018, at least 39
Maoists were killed in an alleged encounter with Indian security forces in the district of
Gadchiroli.

The Indian government has deployed more than a 100,000 paramilitary troops in regions
constituting The Red Corridor, to crush the Maoist movement. The mass killings of Maoists

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 and innocent Adivasi’s is being completely ignored in the international media, just like the
Indian state’s atrocities in the Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK) where thousands of innocent
civilians have been and still are being subjected to state oppression and mass killing’s for the
past seven decades.

CONCLUSION
Naxalite movement started as a common peasant uprising against the local landlords. The
movement soon sparked and spread across the different areas of India. It was noted that the areas
that came under the Naxals influence were the areas that belonged to backward mostly the
Adivasi people. The rights of people were not fulfilled. The government only started some
namely development projects. These areas were always neglected. So the people living in these
areas decided to help themselves.

The government later on only tried to suppress the movement but took no steps to end or counter
it or find out what were the actual cause of the problem and demands of the people were. Why
they were fighting for their rights? What development was needed there? The state also declared
it as the biggest internal security threat to India. The red corridor expanded and shrink as in the
begging many areas were added but some were also removed as the government started
insurgency against rebellions.

The conflict is still there. The decrease in number of attacks is only due to stalemate. As soon as
the stalemate will end there is a chance that these rebels will rise once again.

RECOMMENDATIONS
It is recommended that the government should take the problem to international platforms now
as it has been almost 55 years since this all started.

The rebels even though they say that they are on the footsteps of Mao but that’s not certainly
true. These people took up weapons and armaments and got involved in guerilla warfare that
caused many casualties of many people, even their own people at times. The only solution is that
both parties should negotiate this issue on the peace table and drop down the arms.

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  The dialogue is the most preferred method of resolving any conflict. Naxals should stop
the guerilla warfare and negotiate the problems with the government.
 The government needs to look deep down in the problem and find out solutions and
needs of the people.
 If they kept their aims limited to achieving benefits for oppressed people by peaceful and
democratic means, they would have perhaps succeeded to a large extent. They invited the
wrath of the administration and were treated as law and order problems. Their social and
economic grievances were not identified. This trend continues even today.
 Development programs needs to be started in the naxal effected areas so that the people
get their rights and automatically stop this warfare.
 If government is unable to counter this issue, then the state needs to take this issue to
international platform. Stop claiming it is an internal issue and seek international help for
resolving the conflict.

The conflict is as neglected by the state as it neglects the Kashmir issue. The state of stalemate is
not the solution of this problem. These naxal people should be treated as the regular citizens of
the country.

REFRENCES:
https://www.globalvillagespace.com/indias-forgotten-maoist-insurgency-in-the-red-corridor/

Naxalism in India: How It Started And Why It Still Exists | Youth Ki Awaaz

Indian Counterinsurgency: The Decline of Naxalism – Encyclopedia Geopolitica

Naxalite Movement in India | My India

Primer: Who are the Naxalites?

https://www.theweek.in/content/archival/news/india/the-naxal-problem-and-a-possible-solution.html

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