India’s Maoist insurgency stretches back to 1967 when an armed uprising exploded in West Bengal state’s remote Naxalbari village and set off the spread of Communist rebels — commonly known as Naxalites — to other parts of the country.
The largest and most active is the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist), which is an amalgamation of many splinter groups. Formed in 2004, it aims to capture state power through a “protracted people’s war” directed by the goals of late Chinese leader Mao Zedong.
This month, clashes between Indian security forces and Maoists in central Chhattisgarh state, a focal point of the fighting, left 31 rebels dead in what officials called a “major success.”
Hours after the deadly battle, Home Minister Amit Shah vowed to make India “Naxal-free” by next year, in an apparent bid to end one of the world’s longest-running communist insurgencies.
“By March 31, 2026, we will eradicate Naxalism from the country, so that no citizen has to lose their life because of it,” he wrote on social media.
India’s Home Minister Amit Shah has vowed to crush the country’s Maoist insurgency by March 2026. © ReutersSo far, the CPI (Maoist) has remained defiant.
“The central and state governments are trying to eliminate our organization, but it’s impossible,” the group said in a rare public statement to local media last year, as it accused officials of stealing from poor and tribal people.
Shah’s latest eradication pledge — one he has made on several occasions — comes after Delhi said that almost 300 Maoists were killed by security forces last year, including more than a dozen top leaders, while nearly 1,000 more were arrested.
Maoist-linked violence had declined by 73% in 2023 from 2010 levels with deaths of civilians and security personnel down by 86% to 138 over the same period, according to government data.
A decade ago, the government rolled out a policy and action plan that envisaged stronger federal and state cooperation on counter-terror measures and to ramp up development activities, including road building, jobs creation and stronger telecom networks, in mostly rural areas affected by the Maoist “menace.”
“It would not be an exaggeration to say that the problem of Naxalism is the single biggest internal security challenge ever faced by our country,” late former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in a 2006 speech, a theme he repeated frequently during his tenure.
By late last year, some 38 districts across the country were impacted by left-wing extremism, down about 70% from 2013, said N.C. Bipindra, a New Delhi-based security analyst and editor of online defense news site Defence.Capital.
Bipindra credited the decline to India’s national policy blueprint and economic development goals which eroded support for Maoist groups.
“These proactive efforts of Indian and provincial governments have reduced the geographical reach of the left-wing extremists,” he told Nikkei Asia.
“It is now more than possible for India to fully eliminate left-wing extremism, which seeks as an ideological core the annihilation of democracy and governance systems in India,” he added.
According to Ministry of Home Affairs data, some 6,460 civilians had been killed in fighting over the two decades between 2004 and late last year. A total of 720 civilians died in 2010, the highest such number during the period.
India’s Maoist movement has “substantially weakened in last 10 years” under the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, said Raj Kumar Sharma, a senior research fellow at NatStrat, an independent think tank focused on strategic and security issues.
“Left-wing extremism has been one of the main hurdles due to which benefits of development have not … reached the affected states in India,” Sharma told Nikkei, adding that officials have moved to disrupt the flow of funds and weapons to far-left groups.
“Maoism has no relevance to India and the current government’s ideological emphasis on nationalism works to politically discredit left-wing extremists’ ideology. Similar insurgencies in countries like Peru, Malaysia and Colombia have been defeated [and] India too will join this list, in all likelihood,” he said.
The article appeared in the asia.nikkei