Naxalite–Maoist insurgency

Go back to 1965 when the first United Democratic Front, a byword for a non-Congress government in Calcutta in West Bengal was formed after Dr. B.C. Roy.

The Naxalite

movement in Bengal began in 1968 on the fields of Presidency College, fired by two people, Charu Mazumdar and Oshim Charaji.

It was later also mentioned beautifully and evocatively in a book by Jhumpa Lahiri.

What was the Naxalite movement? Urban menfolk were leaving villages and moving, rural menfolk were leaving villages and moving to urban centers.

Starving rural India of development.

That's how the Naxalite movement

began.

Everyone knows about Shining Path and I'm, and I'm also like, "We know them 'cause they're weird-

Yeah

... and violent." [laughs] Like, like they, like, it's kinda like how people forget that the Naxalites aren't even the only Maoist party in India, not just the only Marxist party in India.

Like [laughs]

Yep.

The Home Minister and the Prime Minister have publicly declared that India is Naxal-free.

The Naxals had their own Sarkar.

They'll do instant justice.

If they would get any informer, they'll be slaughtered right in front of the people.

I just know the word and I know the political slogan it has become now.

I do know a little bit about the FARC and the guerrilla armies of South America.

I don't think the Naxals are...

They're similar in some ways, but I'm not too sure.

If we look at the meaning of Gurbani, then we will clearly find out that there should be no discussion of Comrade thought in the Sikhs, nor is there any place in the Sikhs for this thing, where we can say that you can be a Sikh or a Comrade.

Now, it is also said that when they finished the 84 bills and the Lihar puri in Asik Pak, JL Singh's family left their big comrades in the district who were in the Naxalites, and took them to Amrit Shukak or Khande Kirtani where the families were living in the organization.

Now, everyone knows what the people of Pakistan are talking about.

Many of the Harmandar Singhs were like Sandu, who went to the house of their comrades and trained there.

And this is taken from the book as well.

Ajmer Singh, born 1948, abandoned his study of BE electrical midway and joined the Naxalite movement in 1970.

He served as a Naxalite activist remaining underground for 14 years and experienced the communist revolutionary movement firsthand.

Completely shaken by the Indian Army's sacrilegious breach of the Golden Temple in June 1984, he was inclined to explore his glorious Sikh roots and gradually became a sympathetic commentator of the contemporary Sikh struggle.

Being an activist, he not only has direct experience of two major armed struggles of the land but also a deep understanding of revolutionary movements around the world.

He enters political life and political activity as a young man.

He was arrested 13 times, as this book demonstrates, between 1973 and 1982.

His movement from communist Naxalite activism towards Sikhi transformed the way he understood history, political power, the state, justice and Pakistan.

And he used some highly specific, rather provocative framing.

He deployed the term Dimagi-Naxal, which translates roughly to intellectual Naxalite.

And he compared this mindset to a homeopathic pill that initially exacerbates a disease before curing it.

He also referred to his critics as naras fupa, which essentially means calling them grumpy, dissatisfied uncles who complain at weddings.