The term Naxal comes from the village Naxalbari in West Bengal where the Naxalbari uprising of 1967 occurred. People who are engaged in the insurgency are called Naxals or Naxalite. The movement itself is referred to as Naxalism. Naxalism is largely active in tribal and rural areas of India which are remote and under-developed.
In May 1967, a movement was initiated in West Bengal to adopt armed struggle to redistribute land to the landless. The leaders of this movement were members of CPI-M (Communist Party of India- Maoist) which had joined a coalition government in West Bengal. Before being part of coalition government, the members believed in militant confiscation of land. However after joining hands with the West Bengal Government, some members did not approve of the armed uprising. This disagreement within the party soon culminated with the Naxalbari Uprising on May 1967, and a group of dissidents revolted.
On 25 May 1967 in Naxalbari, a tribal (Adivasi) who had been given land by the courts under the tenancy laws was attacked by the landlord's men. In retaliation, tribals started forcefully capturing back their lands. When a police team arrived, they were ambushed by a group of tribals 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. After seventy-two days of revolt, the CPI (M) coalition government suppressed this incident. Subsequently, In November 1967, this group organised the All India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries (AICCCR).
The Chinese leader, Mao Zedong became ideological inspiration for the Naxalbari movement, leading to the Naxalite belief that Indian peasants and lower class tribals must overthrow the government of the upper classes by force. A large number of urban elites were also attracted to the ideology inspired from opinions of communist leaders and theorists such as Mao Zedong, Karl Marx, and Vladimir Lenin. Using People's courts, similar to those established by Mao, Naxalites try opponents and execute them with axes or knives, beat, or permanently exile them.
Around 1971 the Naxalites gained a strong presence among the radical sections of the student movement in Calcutta. Students left school to join the Naxalites. Naxals declared that revolutionary warfare was to take place not only in the rural areas as before, but now everywhere and spontaneously. A dictum was set that Naxalites should assassinate individual "class enemies" (such as landlords, businessmen, university teachers, police officers, politicians of the right and left) and others. The West Bengal police fought back to stop the Naxalites.
The early 1970s saw the spread of Naxalism to almost every state in India, except Western India. 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. In 1985 Naxalite insurgents began ambushing police. The governments of Andhra Pradesh and Orissa managed to quell down the rebels with a variety of counterinsurgency measures. Along with taking the help of the Greyhounds, the states established special laws that enabled police to capture and detain Naxalite cadres, fighters and presumed supporters. By the early 2000s, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana have seen very minimal Naxal presence.
On 6 April 2010, the Maoists ambushed and killed 76 paramilitary personnel. On 25 May 2013, the Maoists ambushed a convoy of the Indian National Congress and killed 27 people including many big leaders of the Indian National Congress. On 3 April 2021, twenty-two Indian soldiers were killed in a Maoist ambush in Chhattisgarh state of India.
In September 2009, an all-out offensive was launched by the Government of India's paramilitary forces and the state's police forces against the Naxalites. It was termed by the Indian media as the "Operation Green Hunt". Since the start of the operation: 2,266 Maoist militants have been killed, 10,181 have been arrested and 9,714 have surrendered. In 2020, Naxal activity began to increase once again in Telangana and other areas. By July 2021, the number of districts affected by Naxalism came down significantly as compared to the year 2009.
According to Naxalites, Indian Government took away the homelands of tribal populations just like the British colonial way and made them squatters in their own motherland. Their lands were acquired for infrastructure, industries, irrigation while the original inhabitants struggled for water, electricity, healthcare. The Naxalites recruit people who have a revolutionary personality with qualities like selflessness and the ability to self-sacrifice. Primarily students and youth are recruited. The organisation selected the youth because these students represented the educated section of Indian society. These recruits would be crucial in the duty of spreading the communist teachings of Mao Zedong. In order to expand their base, the movement relied on these students to spread communist philosophy to the uneducated rural and working class communities. Naxalites believe it is necessary to recruit students and youth who were able to integrate themselves with the peasantry and working classes, and by living and working in similar conditions to these lower-class communities. This will enable the recruits to carry the communist teachings of Mao Zedong to villages and urban centers.
Eventually the Naxal movement has turned into a completely anti-India movement wherein the controls of the movement are with enemy nations of India such as China. Under the garb of working for rights and upliftment of poor, lowly, underprivileged and minorities, the Naxalites are leaving no stone unturned to create chaos and disunity in India. They have quietly taken over many important bureaucratic, educational, political positions mainly in government organizations solely to run their agenda. Many prominent TV Channels, newspapers, journalists, writers, poets, painters, actors, film makers, NGOs are working as a part of the Naxalite movement. They do not do this openly. They portray themselves as messiahs of the poor and underprivileged. The fact is they get paid handsomely by their foreign masters such as China and other anti India fronts. A very noticeable point about them is they constantly deride Hinduism. They pick up Hindu festivals and rituals to target them as anti-women, caste based bias, regressive, inhuman, cruel to animals, bad for environment or bad for children. They will never speak against any wrong practice of Abrahamic religions such as Islam or Christianity. Rather they will speak in favour of all wrong things practiced by them. This bias is to make Hindus feel inferior and alienate them from their culture and nation eventually. This will make them easy target to recruit them into the Naxalite movement and destroy India eventually.
Be it Indian or any other national, one should strongly oppose the Naxalite movement as it is not just against India and Hinduism but against humanity and civilization as well.
A good way of knowing and understanding this movement is watching the movie "Buddha in a Traffic Jam" made in the year 2016 by Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri, the make of the famous movie "The Kashmir Files".
Note: Above information largely condensed from Wikipedia
