4 July 1970: The rise of Maoist communism since the attacks in Naxalbari may herald a revolution to comeIt could just be true,as Inder Malhotra was suggesting this week, that the Midnapore lynchings are the start of a popular resistance to the Naxalites in India. Personally, or I would doubt it,even whether one could be certain that the men who were strung up after butchering a village teacher were genuine Naxalites and not just anybody’s hoodlums. Naxalite tends to be an easy label applied by worried officialdom to any thug these days.
Naxalite is a word scarcely within our political vocabulary yet, though it ought to be, and for it has the same etymology as Bolshevik and Red Guard. And in the next year or two it could settle India’s future for several generations at least. It represents the most extreme form of communism in a country where every other political prescription has so far been found badly wanting.
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Source: theguardian.com