A historical introduction to Naxalism in India
India’s remarkable economic development in the last 30 years has earned it the rank of the fastest growing democracy in the world. However, three major issues in the country have threatened its advancement on the international scene, its development and its national unity. These are: the Jammu and Kashmir conflict (as old as independent India itself), the separatist movements in the North Eastern states (which date back to the early 1950s) and the Naxalite insurgency (which started in West Bengal in the late 1960s). The latter insurgency is the focus of this paper.
In 1967, oppressed peasants inspired by the communist movement raised their bows and arrows against the feudal landowners in Naxalbari. In 2019, the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist), known also as Maoists or Naxalites, raised their upgraded, more sophisticated weapons against mining corporations and development projects which threatened to expel indigenous tribes (or Adivasis, an umbrella term to describe tribal populations) from their ancestral lands in order to exploit the mineral-rich soil. Times have changed, but the aim of the Maoists has not: seizing land from oppressors and redistributing it to the people. This armed struggle has resulted in human rights violations, mass displacement and at least 12,000 deaths as of 2018.
The origins of Naxalism
The birth of Naxalism is pinpointed to the Naxalbari uprising of spring 1967. Naxalbari, the village in West Bengal that gave its name to the movement, was the site of a peasant revolt, instigated by communist leaders against land owners of the State. While at this point, India had been independent from the British for 20 years, the country had retained the colonial land tenancy system. Under the British imperial system, indigenous landlords were granted pieces of land in return for their collection of tax revenue and as in Medieval European feudal systems, these landlords subleased their land to peasants for half their yield. As shown by the 1971 census, nearly 60% of the population was landless, the lion’s share of land being owned by the richest 4%.
While this event marked the beginning of the Naxalite movement as we know it today, it is important to understand that its emergence is a result of the various fragmentations of communist ideologies in India over time. Hence, in order to comprehend the nature of the Naxalism, one must first delve into its own tumultuous history.
Communist movements in India
The creation of the Communist Party of India (CPI) in 1925 consolidated the presence of communist ideology in the country. Inspired by the communist movements taking place all over the world, the CPI fanned the flames of a proletarian-led national revolution against British imperials. The political context at the time proved to be favourable for the CPI. Firstly, peasant revolts against imperialist landowners has continuously occurred throughout the history of British India. According to Gupta (2007), at least 110 violent peasant uprisings took place between 1783 and 1900 and while these uprisings proved to be unsuccessful, they planted the seed for future proletariat mass movements against the State. Secondly, thousands of cadres, being disappointed in the failure of Mahatma Gandhi’s non-cooperation movement of 1920-1922 and disenchanted by the nationalist movement, were drawn to the more revolutionary Marxist ideology and would become the corpus of the CPI upon its formation. The success of the October Revolution in Russia became a source of inspiration for the nascent communist movement in India.
While in its initial stages, the CPI remained secure in the idea of a Marxist inspired mass revolution, followed by setbacks that eventually led to the emergence of more radical communist parties. To elaborate, the CPI was inherently tied to foreign communist leaders, such as Stalin. In February 1951, a delegation from the CPI met with Stalin in Moscow and the USSR leader allegedly told the members of the delegation to abandon violent revolution and participate in the democratic platforms of newly independent India. Perhaps Stalin sought to establish a strategic relationship with India that could not be sustained should a violent communist revolt engulf the nation. Not only was India suffering the repercussions of Partition and the first India-Pakistan war over Jammu and Kashmir (1947-1949), but the USSR was at the time also engaged on the side of North Koreans in the Korean War. The economic and demographic consequences of the Second World War for the USSR, its engagements in Korea and the climate of the Cold War settling on the international scene could not have permitted the USSR to facilitate their ideological brethren of the CPI.
Stalin’s encouragement to dismiss the armed revolution proved to be a major blow to the CPI, and likely influenced the CPI’s decision to abort the Telengana movement. This movement, which lasted from 1946 to 1951, sought to liberate the peasantry from the dominance of oppressive landlords and redistribute the land amongst the landless - as would be the root of the Naxalbari uprising 16 years later. The CPI had established a strong presence in Telengana and aimed to organise the peasantry to lead it into revolution against the State. Moreover, the Telengana insurgency led to the CPI promoting guerrilla warfare as a tactic.
The tables turned when the Indian Army augmented their offensive against peasant rebels and called for all communists to surrender. The landlords were returning to reclaim their lands, and thousands of people were imprisoned and placed in camps. As a consequence of this offensive, CPI members were faced with a dilemma, as some felt the necessity to give up arms, while others believed that abandoning the struggle would discredit the CPI in the eyes of the peasantry. The leadership was hence divided; some members opted to surrender while others continued the armed struggle. However, following negotiations with the Indian National Congress, the CPI formally withdrew from the insurgency in October 1951.
Birth of the CPI-M
As feared, this led to a discreditation of the CPI, which seemingly had abandoned the revolutionary ideology that had been their selling point to the proletariat. This sentiment of disillusionment in the capacities of the CPI paved the way for the creation of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI-M) at the Seventh Congress of the Communist Party of India in Calcutta in late 1964. The schism between the CPI and the CPI-M was brought about by the tensions between the two communist giants of the time - the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. In the 1960s, the Soviets advocated for democratic methods and diplomatic relations to spread communism, which lead the Chinese to label the Soviets as revisionists who had abandoned the revolutionary flame. While the older members of CPI stood by the USSR (as they had when Stalin advised them to make use of democratic institutions back in 1951), the younger generation (which still advocated for violent revolution) sided with the Chinese as it considered the older members traitors to the cause for having abandoned the Telangana uprising.
It was not long until the CPI-M itself was faced with yet another separation due to ideological differences. While imprisoned in the mid-1960s, a man named Charu Mazumdar wrote a set of nine essays that would serve the basis for Naxalite ideology. Mazumdar was born into a family of small landowners, but had risen in the ranks of the CPI and later the CPI-M. Frustrated by the failure of a communist takeover in India, Mazumdar turned to the example of the Chinese Communist Party. Not only did Mazumdar denounce the revisionist turn of the Soviet Union and the CPI as being the reason for the failure of communism in India, he also affirmed that the revolution in India must come from the peasants in rural areas rather than the working class - as it happened in China under the leadership of Mao Zedong.
Mazumdar’s pro-China stance resonated throughout the CPI-M at a time when international politics once again played a role in the fracture of Indian communist parties. In 1965, one year after the formation of the CPI-M, India and Pakistan raised arms against each other over Jammu and Kashmir for the second time in less than 20 years. This lead to a clash between patriotism and communist ideology for the pro-China CPI-M, as Mao’s government chose to side with its ‘all-weather friend’, Pakistan. Considering the deep animosity between India and Pakistan, the CPI-M condemned Beijing’s choice to support Rawalpindi (Pakistan’s interim capital between 1959 and 1967). However, this did not sit well with members of the party who felt that the CPI-M had betrayed the allegiance to Chinese communist ideology.
Another issue arose between the CPI-M and its more radical members when the CPI-M participated in the United Front coalition for the 1967 West Bengal Legislative Assembly Elections. The coalition won and ousted the Indian National Congress from the seat of power it had held in West Bengal since independence. However, this meant that the CPI-M was now part of mainstream politics and could no longer sustain faithfulness to its revolutionary goals while swearing allegiance to the Indian Constitution. Additionally, two members of the CPI-M were given important positions in the cabinet, notably in the Home Ministry and the Ministry of Land Revenue.
At the start of the Naxalbari uprising in 1967, barely a few months after the victory of the CPI-M’s coalition in the Legislative Assembly Elections, the seeds for another schism had been planted. The Naxalbari uprising was sparked by the United Front’s inability to implement effective land reforms. The people involved in the Naxalbari uprising put CPI-M leaders in a very difficult situation: the communist party found itself the opponent of a communist movement.
The CPI-M had an obligation to law and order, which it carried out, however, this did not deter the movement which continued to gain momentum. In fact, at its peak in 1969, Mazumdar officially split from the CPI-M by forming the Communist Party of India- Marxist Leninist (CPI-ML). Despite the name, Mazumdar was much more inspired by Maoist ideology than Marxist or Leninist Doctrine. In fact, the slogan of the party was: “China’s Chairman is our Chairman. Chinese path is our path”. Mazumdar and the CPI-ML sought to import a Maoist-style revolution, but the dissemination of Maoist propaganda proved to be an unattractive move on behalf of the CPI-ML, following India’s defeat in the Sino-Indian War of 1962, clashing with patriotic sentiments. Moreover, the CPI-ML was not as concerned with public opinion as it should have been (and as the CPI-Maoists is now). Instead, Mazumdar was convinced the revolution would simply need a spark and the right conditions to ignite. This assumption proved to be the beginning of the end for this phase of the Naxalite insurgency. Furthermore, the situation took a turn in 1971, when the government commenced Operation Steeplechase and sent the army and members of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) into West Bengal. The operation lasted 45 days from June to August, and ultimately crushed the Naxalite movement. Following the retaliation by State forces, the movement saw a decline in activity for the following two decades. However, the insurgency resurfaced in the 1990s, during the liberalization of the Indian economy when the government began granting licenses to private and multinational mining corporations, when splintered Naxalite groups began dialogues and negotiations to recycle the original movement, only this time in a more structured fashion. One of the most famous results of these negotiations is the merger of two of the biggest and most active Naxalite groups, the People’s War Group and the Maoist Communist Center in 2004. This merger resulted in the Communist Party of India-Maoists.
As explained, the CPI and the CPI-M abandoned their armed struggle in favour of mainstream politics. However, the CPI-Maoists, which was declared a terrorist organisation under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act in 2009, tenaciously held on to the protracted people’s war, and aims to bring about a communist revolution as was seen in China in the 1930s and 1940s, while being oblivious to the fact that the political context of modern-day India cannot be compared to the civil-war inflicted China of 80 years past. Technological, social and economic advancements have changed the terrain, and hence led to evolutions in the Maoist tactics and the Indian Government’s counter-insurgency policies.
Modern Maoists
The merger of the People’s War Group and Maoist Communist Center in 2004 resulted in the creation of the Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) and its armed wing, the People’s Liberation Guerilla Army (PLGA), and an upsurge in Left Wing Extremism (LWE) related violence. While this is the biggest operating group, there are still numerous Naxalite factions active in the country’s eastern states, along what has been infamously dubbed the Red Corridor. Some of the states in which the Maoists have a relatively strong presence include Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Jharkhand, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh, where Maoist factions control pockets of territory in underdeveloped areas that are not easily accessed.
The merger prompted an upsurge in violence in numerous Indian states, which led Dr. Manhoman Singh, the Prime Minister of India from 2004 to 2014, to declare that Naxalism was “the single biggest security challenge ever faced by our country”, in April 2006. In the first trimester of 2006, more than 200 people were killed in Naxalite activities. In a context where India was still battling Sikh separatist movements and Kashmir insurgency, labelling Naxalism as the biggest threat showed how seriously officials grasped the menace. At the time, Naxalites were an estimated 20,000 strong group and occupied territory in states that comprised of 20% of the country’s population. Maoist factions, to this day, continue operating in India’s “Red Corridor”, which includes central and eastern states such as Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Telangana, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh. Pockets in these states have been riddled with poverty and underdevelopment for decades, which the Naxalites seek to exploit in order to achieve their aims. The return of this insurgency forced the Indian Government to implement policies that would contain and eventually eradicate the Naxalite threat, resulting in the creation of The Left Wing Extremism Division of the Ministry of Home Affairs in October 2009 to tackle the various Naxalite factions spread throughout the country.
While the Maoists have committed gross human rights violations against the people they swore to protect from the “feudal”, “imperialist” and “capitalist” Indian State, the state authorities have also been accused of crimes against civilians since the beginning of Operation Greenhunt. This operation, as dubbed by the Indian media, began in 2009 when the Indian government sent out troops and formed paramilitary groups such as the Salwa Judum. Due to the guerrilla tactics employed by the insurgents, distinguishing between civilian and Maoist can often be difficult. Some raids on Maoist controlled areas have resulted in extrajudicial killings and executions, thus adding to the mistrust of authorities. One such case is the alleged 2012 killing of 17 Adivasis, including 7 children, by the CRPF who claimed these villagers were Maoists. In 2017, a judicial inquiry found this claim to be untrue, the killing unprovoked and hence extra-judicial. However, the government has yet to take action against the perpetrators.
Conclusion
Seizing land from oppressors and redistributing it amongst the peasants has been the aim of the Naxalites since its creation. Today, they are no longer fighting against imperialist landlords but the State and its development industries. Hence, India’s advancement as a world power, and its integrity, remains challenged by the Naxalite insurgency. By attacking development and infrastructure projects, Naxalites directly impede the development of India’s economy, while themselves perpetuating the cycle of poverty and marginalisation of rural populations. As such, the Indian government has had to adapt to this unconventional warfare. While their counter-insurgency has shown successes, they have also led to human rights violations.
While the erstwhile Maoist ideology is losing its appeal, hard counter-terrorism strategies coupled with an efficacious population-centric campaign by the State, aimed at winning over hearts and minds, seems the answer.