Naxalbari and the continuous rebellion

In May 1967, an abortive peasant uprising in an obscure place called Naxalbari, on the northern tip of West Bengal, gave rise to the present Naxalite movement, now also referred to as the India's Maoist movement. The term 'present' is used in this context because there had also been an earlier phase, during which the Maoist model of agrarian revolution was for the first time adopted as a concept by Indian communist revolutionaries. From 1946 till 1951 in Telengana, in what is today part of Andhra Pradesh, communists led an armed agrarian uprising that freed peasants from feudal landlord rule, ultimately leading to the formation of 'liberated zones' governed by a gram raj system of village soviets in large tracts of the area.

At a time when news of the growing success of the Mao Zedong-led Chinese revolution was filtering into India, a document prepared in May 1948 by the communist leaders of the uprising stated in unequivocal terms: "Our revolution in many respects differs from the classical Russian revolution, but to a great extent is similar to that of the Chinese revolution. The perspective likely is … that of … dogged resistance and prolonged civil war in the form of agrarian revolution, culminating in the capture of political power by the Democratic Front." This first Maoist experiment in Telengana came to an end in 1951 with the withdrawal of the armed struggle by the Communist Party of India, which decided to join mainstream parliamentary politics. This decision was taken partially due to a promise made by the then-ruling Congress party to implement land reforms and put an end to the feudalism still rampant in the countryside.