A. Y. YAKOVLEV Candidate of Political Sciences Keywords: India, the Naxalites, terrorism On May 28, 2010, a horrific terrorist attack was committed in the state of West Bengal. 138 people were killed and more than 160 people were injured in the mangled carriages of a train traveling from Kolkata (Calcutta) to Mumbai (Bombay). 1explosion was caused by the so-called Naxalites, who are waging an armed struggle in the name of"social justice". Shortly before that, they set up 2 large ambushes. In one, more than 30 policemen and civilians were killed in an attack on a bus, while in another, 76 government troops were killed. The radical social and political movement of the Naxalites, which emerged in the late 1960s in the Indian state of West Bengal, during the 30 years of its existence turned from the" movement for social justice", operating under the auspices of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party (CPI-ml), into a terrorist organization. The movement spread rapidly and has now covered a significant part of the country's territory. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called naxalism "the most serious threat to the country's internal security"2. Moreover, according to him, the Naxalites are potentially "more dangerous than the militants of Jammu and Kashmir and the terrorists of the north-east of the country" 3. "BLACK REDISTRIBUTION", OR THE STRUGGLE FOR LAND The Naxalite movement emerged quite unexpectedly - in March 1967-after a large (about 150 people) group of members of the Communist Party of India "expropriated" the grain reserves of a local landowner in the village of Naxalbari, located near Darjeeling in the state of West Bengal. A small incident in a small village gave rise to a movement whose members began to call themselves "Naxalites", and the movement itself - "naxalism". Indian researcher Sumanta Banerjee compared the events in Naxalbari to "throwing a stone that caused numerous ripples on the water" 4. Naxalism is most widespread in the poorest areas of t ... Read more