Naxalite

Map showing the districts where the Naxalite movement is active (2007)

The Naxalites, Naxals or Naksalvadis are a Maoist communist group in India, leaders of the Naxalite-Maoist insurgency.

The Naxal name comes from the village of Naxalbari in the Indian state of West Bengal where the movement originated. The Naxals are considered far-left radical communists, supportive of Maoist political sentiment and ideology. Their origin can be traced to the split in 1967 of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), leading to the formation of the Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist). Initially the movement had its centre in West Bengal. In later years, it spread into less developed areas of rural central and eastern India, such as Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh through the activities of underground groups like the Communist Party of India (Maoist).^[1]

As of 2009, Naxalites were active across approximately 220 districts in twenty states of India^[2] accounting for about 40 percent of India's geographical area,^[3] They are especially concentrated in an area known as the "Red Corridor", where they control 92,000 square kilometers.^[3] According to India's intelligence agency, the Research and Analysis Wing, 20,000 armed cadre Naxalites were operating in addition to 50,000 regular cadres^[4] and their growing influence prompted Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to declare them to be the most serious internal threat to India's national security.^[5]

The Naxalites are opposed by virtually all other Indian political groups.^[6] In February 2009, the Indian Central government announced its plans for broad, co-ordinated operations in all affected states (Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal), to plug all possible escape routes of Naxalites.^[7]

History

The term Naxalites comes from Naxalbari, a small village in West Bengal, where a section of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM) led by Charu Majumdar, Kanu Sanyal and Jangal Santhal initiated a violent uprising in 1967. On May 18, 1967, the Siliguri Kishan Sabha, of which Jangal was the president, declared their readiness to adopt armed struggle to redistribute land to the landless.^[8] The following week, a sharecropper near Naxalbari village was attacked by the landlord's men over a land dispute. On May 24, when a police team arrived to arrest the peasant leaders, they were ambushed by a group of tribals led by Jangal Santhal, and a police inspector was killed in a hail of arrows. This event encouraged many Santhal tribals and other poor people to join the movement and to start attacking local landlords.^[6]

Charu Majumdar, inspired by the doctrines of Mao Zedong, provided ideological leadership for the Naxalbari movement, advocating that Indian peasants and lower class tribals overthrow the government and upper classes by force. A large number of urban elites were also attracted to the ideology, which spread through Majumdar's writings, particularly the 'Historic Eight Documents' which formed the basis of Naxalite ideology.^[9] In 1967 Naxalites organized the All India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries (AICCCR), and later broke away from CPM. Violent uprisings were organized in several parts of the country. In 1969 the AICCCR gave birth to the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) (CPI(ML)).

Practically all Naxalite groups trace their origin to the CPI(ML). A separate offshoot from the beginning was the Maoist Communist Centre, which evolved out of the Dakshin Desh-group. The MCC later fused with the People's War Group to form the Communist Party of India (Maoist). A third offshoot was that of the Andhra revolutionary communists, mainly represented by the UCCRI(ML), following the mass line legacy of T. Nagi Reddy, which broke with the AICCCR at an early stage.

During the 1970s the movement was fragmented into disputing factions. By 1980 it was estimated that around 30 Naxalite groups were active, with a combined membership of 30,000.^[10] A 2004 Indian home ministry estimate puts numbers at that time as "9,300 hardcore underground cadre… [holding] around 6,500 regular weapons beside a large number of unlicensed country-made arms".^[11] According to Judith Vidal-Hall (2006), "More recent figures put the strength of the movement at 15,000, and claim the guerrillas control an estimated one fifth of India's forests, as well as being active in 160 of the country's 604 administrative districts."^[12] India's Research and Analysis Wing, believed in 2006 that 20,000 Naxals were involved in the growing insurgency.^[4]

Today some Naxalite groups have become legal organisations participating in parliamentary elections, such as the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation. Others, such as the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Janashakti, are engaged in armed guerrilla struggles.

On 6 April, 2010 Naxalites launched the biggest assault in the history of the Naxalite movement by killing 76 security personnel. The attack was launched by up to 1000 Naxalites^[13][14] in a well-planned attack, killing an estimated 76 CRPF policemen in two separate ambushes and wounding 50 others, in the jungles of Chattisgarh's Dantewada district. On 17th May naxals blew up a bus on Dantewda-sukhma road in Chhattisgarh, killing 15 policemen and 20 civilians. In third Major attack by Naxals on 29th June, at least 26 personnels of Indian Centre Reserve Forces (CRPF) were killed in Narayanpur district of Chhattisgarh.

Violence in Bengal

The Naxalites gained a strong presence amongst the radical sections of the student movement in Calcutta.^[15] Students left school to join the Naxalites. Majumdar, to entice more students into his organisation, declared that revolutionary warfare was to take place not only in the rural areas as before, but everywhere and spontaneously. Thus Majumdar declared an "annihilation line", a dictum that Naxalites should assassinate individual "class enemies" such as landlords, university teachers, police officers, politicians and others.

Throughout Calcutta, schools were shut down. Naxalites took over Jadavpur University and used the machine shop facilities to make pipe guns to attack the police. Their headquarters became Presidency College, Kolkata. The Naxalites found supporters among some of the educated elite, and Delhi's prestigious St. Stephen's College, alma mater of many contemporary Indian leaders and thinkers, became a hotbed of Naxalite activities.

The Chief Minister, Siddhartha Shankar Ray, instituted counter-measures against the Naxalites. The West Bengal police fought back to stop the Naxalites. After suffering losses and facing the public rejection of Majumdar's "annihilation line", the Naxalites alleged human rights violations by the West Bengal police, who responded that the state was effectively fighting a civil war and that democratic pleasantries had no place in a war, especially when the opponent did not fight within the norms of democracy and civility.^[6]

Large sections of the Naxal movement began to question Majumdar's leadership. In 1971 the CPI(ML) was split, as the Satyanarayan Singh revolted against Majumdar's leadership. In 1972 Majumdar was arrested by the police and died in Alipore Jail. His death accelerated the fragmentation of the movement.

Reasons for failure of naxalite movement

In a methodical study Dr. Sailen Debnath has surmised the consequences and reasons of failures of the Naxalite Movement organised by Charu Majumdar and Kanu Sanyal. He writes "The Naxalite movement, though continued intensively from 1967 to the middle of 1970s and resurfaced after some years, could not go a long way achieving anything commendable because of the following reasons:-

1. The Naxalites wanted to surround the towns and cities by the villages, i.e. they wanted to encircle the urban centres with organized peasant forces of the villages. If the peasant militia could have occupied the cities, according to Majumdar, the so-called bourgeois government would fall making the passage to the coming of a socialist government; but the Naxalites could not and did not come up to a stage capable of organizing the peasants and thereby encircling the towns.

2. Majumdar gave sole importance to secret organization and armed training of its members for the purpose of eliminating the class enemies. As the Naxalites did not have mass level organization, they lacked mass support. Only with select few armed elements not properly educated in political line no big thing could be done.

3. "Khatam" or the action of eliminating the so-called class enemies in villages was a wrong principle of political mobilization by individual murder of select few people whose political class- character was never adjudged by their socio-economic conditions, and the properties they possessed, but very often only by their political affiliation or by the name and colour of the party or parties they directly or indirectly belonged to for a long or a short period of time. As for example in Jalpaiguri and Alipurduar they killed some petty jotdars who otherwise could have been comrades in action against the capitalists or could be friends in a revolution for radical change.

4. Recruitment in the Naxalite party was never done on proper judgment and scrutiny of the political characters and behaviours of the recruits. It so happened that many people only to feast on their animosities with their personal enemies got recruited in the Naxalite party only to utilize the help of the Naxalites to have their personal enemies in the neighbourhood killed on the basis of pseudo-identification of them as class enemies.

5. In many cases dreaded criminals too enrolled themselves in the Naxalite party with the objective of getting fire arms and to train themselves in the manufacture and use of fire arms. Thus very soon the party turned to be an organization of professional criminal outfits who soon deserted the party after their training period had been over or the cherished objective of owning armaments had been met or realized. Many of these criminals with fire arms soon turned to be dacoits and in many cases they informed the police all about the hidden training centres of the Naxalites and their main purpose in doing so was to have the original Naxalites arrested or else they themselves might fall victims of the Naxalites’ targets as approvers in favour of the government..

6. The ruling Congress party inserted their supporters inside the unguarded and porous Naxalite organization for the purpose of knowing and finishing its secret bases and arresting its supporters, and in the same way, the personnels of the government intelligence branch and police too in disguise of Naxalite sympathizers got into the party’s inner organization and rounded most of its leaders including Charu Majumdar into the jail. Thus police had information all about the movements of Majumdar after he had gone underground in 1970, and he was nabbed in Calcutta in July, 1972. The end of his life came in the jail in some days after his arrest; and how he had to pass through the gate of death, most probably in the night of 27th or 28th July, 1972, nobody except the police and the government could know properly, of course, it was told from the side of the government that he died of heart attack.

7. Ordinary people in villages were terrified at the brutal and gruesome ways they killed the fellow villagers vilifying them as class enemies. As for example, at Bholardabri in Alipurduar they killed Rajen Pandit who was a refugee from East Pakistan and arduously was running a family of 12 dependents. By any means he was no class enemy at all. In another case they killed a person, chopped his head off the torso and hanged the head and the torso down the brunches of trees with ropes in two separate places, the horrible sights of which cast a gloom on the faces of bemoaning villagers. Certainly after that they could count no support from the villagers at all.

8. Unbridled repressive measures of the government proved to be more than capable in exterminating the Naxalites in the Districts of Northern Bengal as well as in the whole of West Bengal. Hundreds were slaughtered by the police and paramilitary forces in fake encounters, in jails and in police custody. Many perished because of third degree punishment. The suppression of the Naxalites did not mean to be a heavy task for a government whose objective was to run things smoothly with the help of the British penal code of colonial era under the command of the bureaucrats, police and military who inherited the attitude of their predecessors under the British imperial Government".(Ref. Sailen Debnath, West Bengal in Doldrums, ISBN 9788186860342).

Lalgarh violence

In late May, 2009 in Lalgarh, West Bengal the Naxalites threw out the local police and staged attacks against the ruling communist government. The region came under assault by Maoist guerrillas. The state government initiated a major operation, with central paramilitary forces and state armed police, to retake Lalgarh in early June. Maoist leader Kishenji claimed in an interview that the mass Naxalite movement in Lalgarh in 2009 was aimed at creating a "liberated zone" against "oppression of the establishment Left and its police". He stated this had given the Naxalites a major base in West Bengal for the first time since the Naxalite uprising in the mid-1970s and that "We will have an armed movement going in Calcutta by 2011".^[16]

Cultural references

The British musical group Asian Dub Foundation have a song called "Naxalite", which is featured on the soundtrack to the 1999 film Brokedown Palace. A 2005 movie called Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi, directed by Sudhir Mishra, was set against the backdrop of the Naxalite movement. In August 2008, Kabeer Kaushik's Chamku, starring Bobby Deol and Priyanka Chopra, explored the story of a boy who is brainwashed to take arms against the state.

In the novel The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, there is a reference to a character joining the Naxalites.

In the novel The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, the Naxals (sic) are mentioned often by the poor and the rich alike.

The 1998 film Haazar chaurasi ki Maa (based on the novel, Hazar Churashir Maa^[17] by Mahasweta Devi) starring Jaya Bachchan gives a very sympathetic portrayal of a Naxalbari militant killed by the state. The 2009 Malayalam movie Thalappavu portrays the story of Naxal Varghese, who was shot dead by the police during the 70s.

The Kannada movie Veerappa Nayaka directed by S. Narayan portrays Vishnuvardhan, a Gandhian whose son becomes a Naxalite. The 2007 Kannada movie Maathaad Maathaadu Mallige, directed by Nagathihalli Chandrashekhar, again portrays Vishnuvardhan as a Gandhian, who confronts a Naxalite Sudeep and shows him that the ways adopted by Naxals will only lead to violence and will not achieve their objective.

Eka Nakshalwadya Cha Janma, (Marathi: The birth of a Naxal), a novel written by Vilas Balkrishna Manohar, a volunteer with the Lok Biradari Prakalp, is a fictional account of a Madia Gond Juru's unwilling journey of life his metamorphosis from an exploited nameless tribal to a Naxal.^[18]

See also

• Chhatradhar Mahato
• Naxal Varghese
• Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist)
• Compact Revolutionary Zone
• Naxalite-Maoist insurgency
• Salwa Judum
• Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)

References

Further reading

• Naxalite Politics in India, by J. C. Johari, Institute of Constitutional and Parliamentary Studies, New Delhi, . Published by Research Publications, 1972.
• The Naxalite Movement, by Biplab Dasgupta. Published by , 1974.
• The Naxalite Movement: A Maoist Experiment, by Sankar Ghosh. Published by Firma K.L. Mukhopadhyay, 1975. ISBN 0883865688.
• The Naxalite Movement in India: Origin and Failure of the Maoist Revolutionary Strategy in West Bengal, 1967-1971, by Sohail Jawaid. Published by Associated Pub. House, 1979.
• In the Wake of Naxalbari: A History of the Naxalite Movement in India, by Sumanta Banerjee. Published by Subarnarekha, 1980.
• India's Simmering Revolution: The Naxalite Uprising, by Sumanta Banerjee. Published by Zed Books, 1984. ISBN 0862320372.
• Tribal Guerrillas: The Santals of West Bengal and the Naxalite Movement, by Edward Duyker. Published by Oxford University Press, 1987.
• The Naxalite Movement in India, by Prakash Singh. Published by Rupa, 1995. ISBN 8171672949.
• Sailen Debnath, West Bengal in Doldrums, ISBN 9788186860342
• Sailen Debnath, The Dooars in Historical Transition, ISBN 9788186860441
• Sailen Debnath ed. Social and Political Tensions in North Bengal Since 1947,ISBN 81-86860-23-1

External links

• "Walking With The Comrades" An extensive 32 page essay by Arundhati Roy on her interactions with naxalites
• Articles and Research Reports on Naxalite Violence in India and Pakistan
• Edward Duyker, Tribal Guerrillas: The Santals of West Bengal and the Naxalite Movement
• 'History of Naxalism', Hindustan Times
• Maoist Resistance (pro-Naxal Blog - The former blog at Resistance India has been hacked )
• Naxal Terror Watch (anti-Naxalite, alleges that Naxalites are supported by both Pakistan and China)
• India's Naxalite Rage (neutral blog that provides analysis of the tactics and strategy of the Naxals by Shlok Vaidya)
• India's Forgotten War (neutral blog analysing Naxalite insurgency)
• Status Paper on the Naxalite problem - South Asia Terrorism Portal
• West Bengal, districts affected by Naxalite violence - South Asia Terrorism Portal
• Economist magazine article
• Guardian article
• Vice article
• Naxal Issues page of Peoples Website of Chhattisgarh
• Red Sun: Travels in Naxalite Country (Hardcover)
• Stop the Battle, Start the War by Samar Halarnkar, Hindustan Times, April 19, 2009