Beyond Naxalbari: Maoist Insurgency & Counterinsurgency in India నవంబర్ 4, 2012

Comparative Studies in Society and History 2012; 54(4): 832–862

Beyond Naxalbari: A Comparative Analysis of Maoist Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Independent India

JONATHAN KENNEDY, Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge
SUNIL PURUSHOTHAM, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge

Abstract

This paper demonstrates that there have been three distinct waves of Maoist insurgency in India since 1947. We construct an ideal typical model of Maoist insurgency that is used to compare the roles played by local populations, insurgents, and state counterinsurgency measures across space and time. This allows us to demonstrate that the commonly accepted narrative of Indian Maoist insurgency must be fundamentally rethought. The Naxalbari outbreak in 1967 and the subsequent insurgency in West Bengal is generally agreed to be the central point in the history of Maoist insurgency in India. But our analysis demonstrates that it was comparatively short-lived and atypical. We instead trace the genealogy of Indian Maoism to Telengana in the late 1940s. The common feature linking all three waves is the persistence of insurgent activity among various tribal or adivasi communities in the central Indian “tribal belt.” Their overriding grievances are the historically iniquitous relationships produced by the processes of state and market expansion that have incorporated and subordinated adivasi populations who previously had a large degree of socioeconomic and political autonomy. The state’s counterinsurgency strategy has consisted of violence combined with developmental and governance interventions. This has pushed Maoist insurgency to the margins of Indian political life but has been unable to eliminate insurgent activity or address the fundamental grievances of adivasis. We conclude by arguing that Maoist insurgency in India should not be considered as crime to be resolved by state violence, or as an economic problem requiring the intensification of developmental measures, but as a matter of politics.

INTRODUCTION

Over the past two decades, as the political influence of Marxism has declined in most of the world, Maoist insurgency in India has not only persisted but expanded. Union Minister of Home Affairs P. Chidambaram (2009) estimates that Maoist insurgents are active in 223 of India’s 626 districts – although only 90 are consistently affected by insurgent violence—and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh (2006) has stated that the insurgency poses “the single biggest internal-security challenge” India has ever faced. Maoist insurgency is not, however, a recent phenomenon: although the insurgents have failed to seize state power, insurgencies involving various combinations of left-wing organizations and rural inhabitants have occurred in ebbs and flows since independence. Table I uses data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program/ Peace Research Institute Oslo (UCDP/PRIO) “Armed Conflict Database” to demonstrate that there have been three distinct waves of Maoist insurgent activity. These were not necessarily referred to as Maoist insurgencies at the time, but they all involved an armed conflict between the state and a political organization that legitimized its activities with reference to communist and Maoist ideology and strategy. (more…)