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The Naxalite-Maoist uprising in India has for fifty-one years continued almost unabated. Today Maoist rebels have a substantial presence in at least ten of India's twenty-nine states and the Indian government has repeatedly stated that it remains the most potent threat to stability that the Indian state faces. This research note examines the existing literature and local primary sources to explore the economic, social, and military factors that have influenced the longevity of this conflict. It details how a fifty-one year conflict has continued almost unmitigated in a country that has the military might that India commands.
Keywords India, Naxalites, Maoism, conflict, longevity
Introduction
May 2018 marked the fifty-first anniversary of the peasant revolt in a little village called Naxalbari, in the Indian state of West Bengal. What seemed like a local uprising soon spread rapidly throughout India and took on a Marxist and Maoist character. As the uprising began in Naxalbari, the insurgents were nicknamed Naxalites, a name which has stuck to this day. The Maoist rebellion has continued almost unabated and today Maoist rebels have a significant presence in ten of India's twenty-nine states (Ministry of Home Affairs 2016). At the height of the Naxalite rebellion in the 2000s it is estimated that they controlled nearly 10 million hectares of mainly forested land. This accounted for about one-seventh of the total forested land in India (Ahuja and Ganguly 2007). Around this same period, it was estimated that the Naxalites had a collection of 15,000 elite men and women under arms (Videl-Hall 2006), a people's militia of 25,000, and 50,000 members in village level units (Navlakha 2006). They have been significantly weakened since then but there is no sign that the conflict will end anytime soon. In fact, throughout this conflict's history, every time the Naxalite movement has appeared to be defeated, or in fact physically exterminated, they have recovered and rebuilt themselves stronger, deadlier, and more influential (Roy 2010).
In 2006, Manmohan Singh, then Prime Minister of India, famously stated that the Maoists' pose the "single biggest internal security challenge ever faced by our country" (Ghosh and Das 2010, 2). It was not a ground-breaking acknowledgement because between 2005 and 2009 Naxalites killed more than 900 Indian security personal (Vardley 2009), but...