India, April 2 -- What began as a radical peasant uprising nearly six decades ago and evolved into one of the country's most persistent internal security challenges appears to be approaching its final phase. While the armed movement is nearing its collapse, the ideological battle that underpins the Naxal ideology remains far from over.

The Naxal movement traces its origins to the Naxalbari uprising in West Bengal in 1967, where a peasant revolt ignited the broader Maoist insurgency. By 1969, the formation of the Communist Party of India (Marxist - Leninist) under Charu Mazumdar gave organisational structure to this revolutionary impulse. However, the movement soon faced decline in the 1970s due to state crackdowns, internal divisions and...