Question

Trace the developments leading to the rise of the Naxal Movement in West Bengal.

Answer 1

The term Naxalites comes from Naxalbari, a small village in West Bengal, where a section of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) CPI (M) led by Charu Majumdar, Kanu Sanyal, and Jangal Santhal initiated an uprising in 1967. On 18th May 1967, the Siliguri Kishan Sabha, of which Jangal was the president, declared their support for the movement initiated by Kanu Sanyal, and their readiness to adopt armed struggle to redistribute land to the landless. The following week, a sharecropper near Naxalbari village was attacked by the landlord’s men over a land dispute. On 24th May, when a police team arrived to arrest the peasant leaders, it was ambushed by a group of tribals led by Jangal Santhal, and a police inspector was killed. This event encouraged many Santhal tribals and other poor people to join the movement and to start attacking local landlords.

1. A large number of urban elites were also attracted to the ideology, which spread through Charu Majumdar’s writings, particularly the ‘Historic Eight Documents’ which formed the basis of Naxalite ideology.
2. Practically all Naxalite groups trace their origin to the CPI (ML).
3. Around 1971 the Naxalites gained a strong presence among the radical sections of the student movement in Calcutta. Students left school to join the Naxalites.
4. Majumdar, to encourage more students into his organisation, declared that revolutionary warfare was to take place not only in the rural areas as before but now everywhere and spontaneously.
5. Majumdar declared an “annihilation line”, a dictum that Naxalites should assassinate individual “class enemies” (such as landlords, businessmen, university teachers, police officers, politicians of the right and left) and others.