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Article: Recent developments in the Naxalite movement. (communists in India)
- Article from:
- Monthly Review
- Article date:
- September 1, 1993
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1993 Monthly Review Foundation, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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For more than a decade, the Indian media have been printing sensational stories about armed members of the Naxalite movement who run "parallel" governments in the parts of the country in which they have effective control. Paradoxically, the media have at the same time sought to dismiss the Naxalite movement as "infantile terrorism" indulged in by a handful of extremists with no mass base.
Both of the above depictions distort the reality. Most Indian "Marxist-Leninists" (the term commonly used to differentiate them from the two older Communist Parties) would readily agree that the militant struggles of the rural poor which they lead have yet to reach the stage of ...