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| People's Liberation Guerrilla Army | |
|---|---|
| जन मुक्ति सेना | |
 | |
| Leader | Muppala Lakshmana Rao |
| Dates of operation | 2 December 2000 – present |
| Allegiance |  Communist Party of India (Maoist) |
| Ideology | Marxism-Leninism-Maoism |
| Status | Active |
| Size | ~12,000 |
| Opponents |  Republic of India |
| Battles and wars | Naxalite insurgency in India |
The People's Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA) is the militant arm of the CPI (Maoist).
The Naxalite movement operates heavily in the Adivasi (scheduled tribe) belts of Central and Eastern India. However, the dominant CPI (Maoist) line historically subsumes Adivasi land and forest rights under the broader rubric of "agrarian class struggle." The CPI (Maoist) condemns the People's Republic of China and Vietnam as "social-imperialist" and "revisionist." Despite calling themselves Maoist, they diverge sharply with many of Mao's and Lenin's theories, and believe in the supremacy of armed struggle (with contempt for other forms of struggle).[1] By cutting themselves off from existing socialist and anti-imperialist states, the Naxalite factions limit their ability to challenge the global, transnational structure of settler extraction. Furthermore, their obsession with "annihilation of class enemies" has at times alienated the very Adivasi communities whose ancestral lands they claim to defend, due to their inability to center tribal self-governance (jal, jungle, zameen – water, forest, land) as the primary political horizon.[2][3][4]
Social chauvinism
The Naxalite movement presents itself as a revolutionary struggle for Adivasi liberation, yet its fundamental flaws reveal a movement that parasitizes rather than serves Indigenous communities.
The movement is led by upper-caste, educated, non-Adivasi Hindus, while the fighting force is drawn overwhelmingly from young Adivasi populations who formed emotional bonds with the recruiters.[5][6][2] Unlike Che Guevara, an outsider who came to serve local revolutions on their own terms, the Naxalite leadership comes to command, demanding Adivasi subordination to the Party's central command rather than supporting Adivasi self-determination.
The Maoist party's ultimate objective is the "seizure of political power through protracted people's war", replacing the Hindutva state with a Maoist state. The Adivasi struggle for jal, jungle, zameen is not merely local or defensive. It is a revolutionary challenge to the foundational property relations of the bourgeois state and a refusal of the Indian state's governance. It is in the Adivasi interest that the state is captured, but not by the Naxalites, who offer a change of management, not a change to the system. The slogan "jal, jungle, zameen" is raised by Adivasi-Maoists, yet the party's practices do not align with Adivasi sovereignty. Lenin was emphatic that the right to self-determination for oppressed nations is a precondition for socialist revolution,[7][8] yet the Naxalites, like Sendero Luminoso and the CPP-NPA, refuse to recognize their rights, and that refusal is the root of their betrayal. The Naxalites reduce everything to class struggle and ignore national oppression. Their dogmatic adherence to a "semi-feudal" analysis disables them from recognizing the relatively egalitarian economic systems already existing among Adivasi communities; they dismiss Adivasi spiritual beliefs, kinship systems, gender equality, and communal governance as "feudal" or "superstitious" obstacles to revolution.[2]
Maoist activity is greatest where Adivasis retain land control, revealing that the movement depends on Adivasi territorial sovereignty as a base for operations, rather than fighting to establish it.[6] The movement uses Adivasi communities as fuel for a political project designed and led by others. CPI(Maoist) commander Sabyasachi Panda admitted the leaders have "moved away from ideology to make money" and confessed the party system "has degenerated into a feudal democracy."[5]
The conflict has claimed at least 40,000 lives, with Adivasi communities caught between Naxals and police. Civil society reports document extrajudicial killings, sexual violence, forced relocation, and mass displacement. The state has sponsored militias like Salwa Judum, in which Adivasi youth were deliberately drawn to conduct violence on their own communities. Yet the Naxalites themselves have also killed Adivasi civilians.[5][9][10][2]
The Hindutva state and the Naxalites both treat Adivasi communities as objects to be extracted, managed, or sacrificed for their own homogenizing project. Neither treats them as subjects of their own history.
Assassination of CPI(M) members
They also, in collaboration with the Trinamul Congress, assassinate CPI(M) members "on a frequent base" who are "specifically targeted", many of whom are from the most oppressed sections of society. No political party anywhere in India has lost as many activists and supporters to Maoist terror, as has the CPI(M) in West Bengal since 2008. Of the over 190 members and supporters of the CPI(M) killed, more than half were murdered by the Naxalites.[1]
See also:
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Prasenjit Bose, Convenor of the Research Unit of the Communist Party of India (Marxist); P.M.S. Grewal, Secretary of the Delhi State Committee, and member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of India (Marxist); Nilotpal Basu, member of the Central Secretariat of the Communist Party of India (Marxist); Vijay Prashad, the George and Martha Kellner Chair in South Asian History and Professor of International Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, USA (2010). Maoism: A Critique from the Left: 'Indian Maoists: Flawed Strategy and Perverted Praxis'. New Delhi, India: LeftWord Books; www.leftword.com. ISBN 978-81-87496-61-8
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Shah, A. (2018). Nightmarch: A journey into India's Naxal heartlands. University of Chicago Press / Verso.
- ↑ Sundar, N. (2016). The burning forest: India's war in Bastar. Juggernaut Books.
- ↑ The Naxalite movement, the oppressive state, and the revolutionary struggle in India (2018). Springer Academic Chapter.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Bhattacharjee, K. (2017). An unfinished revolution: A hostage crisis, Adivasi resistance and the Naxal movement. Pan Macmillan.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Kennedy, J., & King, L. (2013). Adivasis, Maoists and insurgency in the central Indian tribal belt. 54, vol.1 (pp. 1–32). European Journal of Sociology.
- ↑ Lenin, Vladimir (1914). The Right of Nations to Self‑Determination. [MIA]
- ↑ Lenin, Vladimir (1916). The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self‑Determination (Theses). [MIA]
- ↑ InSAF India et al (2025). Denial of constitutional, legal and fundamental human rights and justice to families of Adivasi Indigenous victims of extrajudicial killings in Bastar Division, Chhattisgarh, India [Submission to the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances]. [PDF] OHCHR.
- ↑ InSAF India et al (2025). Submission to the UN Human Rights Council, 60th session [Civil society submission]. [PDF] OHCHR.