The Political Failure of Maoist Line in India: A call for Rethinking | Pallab Sengupta

Since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) returned to power in Chhattisgarh in December 2023, there has been a significant increase in anti-Maoist operations. In 2024, security forces eliminated 194 Maoists, arrested 801, and witnessed the surrender of 742 insurgents.

As of the first quarter of 2025, approximately 103 Maoists have been killed in various encounters across the state. Just hours before the Prime Minister’s visit to Chhattisgarh, fifty Maoists surrendered in Bijapur.

While these incidents demonstrate the Maoists’ willingness to make supreme sacrifices, these sacrifices have not yielded any positive results. Instead, situation call for a sincere introspection regarding their failed strategies and tactics.

The CPI believes that the time has come for a critical reassessment of the Maoist line—not just on strategic grounds, but on political and ideological ones as well.

The Flawed Historical Parallel: India is Not China

For decades, Maoist insurgents in India have pursued an armed revolutionary struggle, seeking to replicate the Chinese Communist Party’s success in overthrowing the state through protracted people’s war.

The Maoist strategy hinges on the belief that India’s conditions mirror pre-revolutionary China, where a weak state, foreign occupation, and a peasant-based armed-struggle paved the way for a communist takeover. However, this analogy is fundamentally flawed for several reasons in India.

Unlike feudal China, India has a functioning parliamentary democracy with regular elections. Whatever imperfect present parliamentary system is, it provides legal avenues for leftist movements to organize, agitate, and influence policy—something Maoists have systematically rejected.

Moreover, India’s caste, religious, and regional diversities make a monolithic armed revolution impractical. The Maoist movement’s inability to forge broad alliances beyond tribal pockets in central India highlights its failure to grasp the country’s socio-political realities.

Unlike China in the 1940s, India’s post-liberalization economy has created a growing urban working class and rural aspirational populations who seek reform, not violent upheaval. The Maoist focus on agrarian revolution ignores the changing class dynamics that have diminished the possibilities of continuing peasantry’s line of armed struggle.

State Repression and the Collapse of Maoist Influence

The Indian state has brutally countered Maoist insurgency through a combination of police suppression, intelligence operations, and developmental outreach. As results of that, high-profile encounters (e.g., the killing of Kishenji in West Bengal) and mass surrenders (as seen in Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh) have crippled the movement’s operational capacity.

At the same time Maoist violence—including attacks on security forces, civilians, and even tribal dissenters—has alienated potential sympathizers. The movement’s authoritarian internal purges (e.g., executions of alleged “police informers”) have further eroded trust.

While Maoists claim to fight for the oppressed, their tactics have often harmed the very people they claim to represent. Security forces operations in Maoist-affected zones have displaced thousands of Adivasis, who bear the brunt of both state repression and Maoist extortion. Also, by rejecting electoral politics, Maoists have ceded ground to right-wing forces. In states like Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, their violent tactics have allowed the BJP and other parties to frame leftist activism as "anti-national," weakening broader Left and democratic struggles.

International Experiences of failed Maoist line

This is the high time for the Maoist to reconsider their politics re-calling what happened for the Maoist groups in different parts of the world. The Maoist strategy of armed revolution has faced repeated failures across multiple countries, forcing many groups to abandon violence and join mainstream communist politics. In Nepal, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) waged a decade-long insurgency but ultimately transitioned into a political party, contested elections, and even led the government—proving that democratic participation could achieve more than armed struggle.

In Peru, the Shining Path’s brutal insurgency collapsed after the capture of its leader Abimael Guzmán, with remaining factions marginalized due to extreme violence against civilians.

In Turkey, the Maoist TKP/ML and other far-left armed groups failed to gain mass support and were crushed by state forces, while legal left parties continued to operate within the political system.

Even in the Philippines, where the Communist Party (CPP) and its armed wing (NPA) have fought for decades, the movement remains stagnant, with many cadres surrendering due to military pressure and lack of popular backing. These examples demonstrate that Maoist movements, when isolated from broader leftist alliances and democratic processes, either disintegrate or are forced to adapt. The lesson is clear: armed struggle without mass political support leads to defeat, while integration into mainstream communist and progressive movements offers a sustainable path for advancing socialist goals.

CPI’s consistent Call for reconsidering the failed strategies and tactics

The CPI, from the beginning of the Naxalite movement, has consistently condemned police atrocities and fake encounter killings of Naxalites. At the same time, it has urged the leadership of the then CPI(ML), and now CPI(Maoist), to reconsider their failed strategies and tactics and join the mainstream communist movement.

After the brutal killings of Vempatapu Satyanarayana and Adibhatla Kaliasam of AP in a fake encounter on July 11, 1970, as well as the murder of Bhooja Singh of Punjab and several others in different states, the CPI National Council passed a resolution condemning these killings. It also called upon the CPI(ML) leadership to abandon the misguided and harmful approach of individual and group terrorism adopted by its leaders and cadres.

Everyone is aware of how CPI MPs have repeatedly raised these issues in Parliament to put an end to such killings. CPI also opposed Salwa Judum, a militia group formed in 2005 to mobilize local Adivasis and deploy them as part of counterinsurgency operations in Chhattisgarh, aimed at countering Maoist activities in the region. CPI was highly vocal in advocating for a ban on such state-sponsored vigilante movements against the Maoists.

As part of its consistent policy, CPI once again raised the issue of fake encounters. In its most recent statement on February 11, it asserted that these killings are primarily intended to facilitate the transfer of vast natural forests and mineral resources to corporate houses. CPI Rajya Sabha MP Sandosh Kumar also raised concerns in Parliament about fake encounters targeting Adivasis.

CPI strongly believes that the Maoist movement’s decline is not merely a result of state repression but a failure of political vision. By clinging to an outdated revolutionary model, Maoists have isolated themselves from India’s working classes, progressive intellectuals, and even sympathetic activists who reject their violent methods.

The CPI’s call for Maoists to join the mainstream communist movement is not a surrender but a pragmatic realignment. If the goal is genuine social transformation, then the path lies in mass organizing, electoral participation, and policy advocacy—not in a futile armed struggle that only invites state violence and public disillusionment.

History has rendered its verdict that in India at least in present condition, political engagement, not guerrilla warfare, is the only viable path for the left. The Maoists must heed this lesson before their movement collapses entirely.

(Author: Pallab Sengupta is Secretary, National Council Communist Party of India)