India’s experiment with revolution, beginning in 1946 in Telangana by the Communist Party in India, reappeared after a lull in northern West Bengal in 1967, which China described as “Spring Thunder over India”. This 79-year-old ‘revolution’ grew to be ferocious since the beginning of the millennium. However, facing a fierce assault from the Indian state lately, it is up against the Narendra Modi regime’s promise of a “Naxal free” India by March 2026.The recent debilitating blows to Maoists after the elimination of their top leaders Basavaraju in Chhattisgarh and Pappu Lohra in Jharkhand, along with several prominent ‘revolutionaries’, begs the question that having survived for nearly eight decades, why this ‘people’s movement’, or ‘revolution’, has been seen as a threat to India’s public security.The beginning and the riseThe leaders of the Communist Party of India (CPI) organised the impoverished and exploited peasants in the Telangana region during the 1940s. The domination of the entrenched Deshmukh (revenue collectors) over decades, culminated in the first Marxist-Leninist-Maoist ‘revolution’ in India since 1946. The region’s social fabric and political economy was ripe for the CPI to mobilise the local population for the uprising. India’s independence in the process then, came on 15 August 1947, but was declared a sham independence by the communists. The Deshmukh, the feared Doras, had comprehensive control over their ‘parganas’ (administrative units), as also over the lives of the peasants in their domain. Naturally, it became the decisive factor in the uprising in the Telangana countryside, which had a consolidated exploitative structure and a perpetuated servile labour. The merchants and usurers extracted free service from the various service castes under the vetti (forced labour) system. The Doras also physically exploited the women of their ‘subjects’.The Indian state intervened after independence, using force, diplomacy and ‘imagination’ to end the ‘revolution’. Still, under the ideological influence of the Soviet leaders, the CPI ended the ‘revolution’ on the personal advice of Joseph Stalin, who counselled them to participate in the forthcoming election in the nascent democratic republic. As the Indian state used the army to crush the movement, they invited Gandhi’s disciple Vinoba Bhave. Interacting with the local populace, he discovered the ‘bhoodan’ (gift of land), transformed this into a movement, which influenced the landless who ended the first revolutionary movement in 1951-52.The parliamentary foray of the CPI was successful; it secured the second place in the Lok Sabha, with 16 seats and consolidated itself in the second general election in 1957 with 27 seats. This eventually created differences between the parliamentary and the revolutionary factions of the communist movement in India and finally a split in 1964. Beginning with two letters written in 1924 by S.A. Dange and emerging ‘revisionism’ in the party polarised the factions around the differences between the USSR and China. Thus emerged Communist Party of India (Marxist) in 1964. The CPI(M) was the new axis around which the peasants organised in Naxalbari in West Bengal’s Darjeeling district. Charu Majumdar, Jangal Santhal, and Kanu Sanyal were the three key leaders who mobilised the tribals and peasants against the jotedars (the landowners who had been leased lands by the British government under the Acts of 1859 and 1879). An attack on a jotedar’s granary by the exploited peasants and tribals on March 3, 1967, flared up after clashes with the police in Naxalbari, Phansideva and Kharibari police stations of the Siliguri subdivision. Since the CPI(M) also participated in the 1967 elections and became a part of the West Bengal government, having emerged successful along with their coalition partners, the party witnessed another split. Now, the CPI (Marxist-Leninist) became the vanguard of the Naxalbari movement. What followed was a paradoxical engagement with each other of the two communist parties – one part of the government and the other leading a revolution. The movement emerging from Naxalbari was eventually crushed by the early 1970s. It nevertheless succeeded in effecting land reforms that were carried forward by the CPI(M) that participated in the government. However, what sprouted in Srikakulam (Andhra Pradesh), was carried till the 1980s and spread in much larger parts of the country. In this case, also the exploited hill tribes (the girijans) were mobilised by a non-party school teacher, Vempatapu Satynarayana. The communist parties stepped in later. The Srikakulam movement remained locale-specific and despite spurts of violence in the tribal areas in eastern Madhya Pradesh (now Chhattisgarh) and central and south Bihar (now Jharkhand) in the 1990s, the militarised activities of the People’s War Group in Andhra Pradesh remained the main causes for concern for the state and Union governments.This movement also lost its punch within a decade – by the mid-1970s. First, in a concerted action, the police declared Srikakulam a disturbed area and succeeded in killing and arresting a number of Naxalites including Satyanarayana. Second, the Maoists’ annihilation tactics proved disastrous in the plains, where the movement was organisationally weak. In the hills, it did not remain confined to dalams as hundreds of girijans participated in brutal killings. Aside from reeling under heavy police repression, the Naxals defeated themselves by alienating a portion of the population, including the girijans. The movement had succeeded in setting an agenda for development and welfare that the government followed. However, the programmes did not succeed due to departmental corruption.During the 1970s and 80s, the movement became highly doctrinaire in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana region, causing debates and sharp divisions among the leaders and their cadres. They got organized as dalam(s), who were often involved in violent conflicts. As a result, with concerted action, the police succeeded in killing and arresting a number of Naxalites. In the hills, it did not remain confined to dalams as hundreds of girijans participated in brutal killings. Aside from reeling under heavy police repression, the Naxals defeated themselves by alienating a portion of the population, including the girijans. However, their agenda succeeded as a total of 527,000 acres of the Integrated Tribal Development Agency Project Area of Srikakulam 5,543.67 acres (3.9 per cent of total cultivable land) was restored by 1979. The story of the movement during the 1980s and 1990s is full of contradictions, including fratricide, brutal clashes with the police and the use of different dalams by political parties for electoral gains.Consolidation and afterOn 21 September 2004, the two most militant groups – CPI-ML (People’s War) and the Maoist Communist Centre of India – merged to form CPI (Maoist), which is the largest and the most-powerful Maoist group. With the formation of People’s Liberation Guerilla Army, nearly 3,500 fighters equipped with sophisticated arms and well-formed organisational structure, the CPI (Maoist) developed an edge with which, according to the Ministry of Home Affairs Report (2005-06), they controlled nearly 76 districts in nine states. In fact, at one point their influence expanded in one-third of the districts in the country.The government response to such an expansion was confused. The raising of a militia named Salwa Judum in Chhattisgarh in 2005 to counter the Naxals resulted in avoidable violent conflicts with the local population. A group of intelligentsia filed a writ petition for its dissolution in the Supreme Court in 2008. In its judgment in 2011, the court-ordered disbanding of the militia, pointing out that poverty and exploitation that have led to the rise of left-wing extremism need to be attended to.The erstwhile Planning Commission appointed an expert group to look into the causes of left-wing extremism. It concluded:There is no denying that what goes in the name of “naxalism” is to a large extent a product of collective failure to assure to different segments of society their basic entitlements under the Constitution and other protective legislation. There is also no denying that the nation is now caught in a vicious circle of violence and counter-violence. (p. 83).Yet, in October 2009, the Union government ended up launching what was eventually unsuccessful ‘Operation Green Hunt’. This witnessed a massive deployment of the central paramilitary forces in the affected districts to eliminate left-wing extremism. The militants would still organise very successful guerilla operations against the security forces.Since 2014Since the regime change in 2014, both at the centre and in several affected states, the Modi government has focused on the use of force. Since the extremist groups have also been weakened due to the elimination of top leaders and cadres – many have surrendered, too – their influence has shrunk. Moreover, over the years, the movement has not been alive to the democracy question, causing their influence on the ground to wane. Economic development in the affected areas has also diminished the lure of the gun.Excessively febrile on the use of force, the Modi government has to focus on development and the questions of rights in the resource (forest, minerals, etc.) rich areas. One of its avoidable strategies is the use of the ambiguous category of “Urban Naxal”, under which dozens of intellectuals and social workers have been put behind bars under anti-terror laws. The judiciary also has to be fair in considering bail for them.Ajay K. Mehra is a political scientist and a visiting professor at the Centre for Multilevel Federalism. Earlier, he was Atal Bihari Vajpayee Senior Fellow, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, 2019-21 and Principal, Shaheed Bhagat Singh Evening College, Delhi University (2018).