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The first non-Congress United Front (UF) government came to power in West Bengal in March 1967, comprising the CPI, CPM and Bangla Congress (a breakaway faction of the Congress). This new government decided to expedite the implementation of land reforms.
The then land revenue minister Hare Krishna Konar announced a programme of quick distribution of surplus land among landless and an end to eviction of share croppers. But this process was slow and time consuming because issue of distribution of surplus land went to the court and was under litigation. Therefore, the local leader Charu Majumdar from Naxalbari area of Darjeeling district argued that this democratic process of distribution of land and democracy in India is Sham and decided to adopt a strategy of protracted guerrilla warfare in order to lead a revolution.
This Naxalite Movement under Majumdar's leadership used force to snatch land from the rich landowners and to distribute it among the poor and the landless. Its supporters advocated the use of violent means to achieve their political goals. Initially the efforts of reconciliation such as sending of a cabinet mission by the UF government failed and negotiated solution was brushed aside by Charu Mazumdar. Eventually the policy of repression by the government had its effect and by July 1967 the peasant movement was over with most of its leaders in jail.
Despite the efforts ofsubsequent governments to control the naxal menace, similar movements took root in other areas such as Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh. Here ‘revolutionaries’ inspired by Mao Zedong led group of tribals into a suicidal confrontation with the state. As in Naxal bari here dissident CPM leaders shifted to a line of armed struggle and guerrilla warfare. Beginning in November 1967 the movement reached intense phase between November 1968 to February 1969. With the formation of CP (ML) in April1969, a new party of extreme left activists, a turn from mass line to guerrilla action and individual annihilation took place. In the face of police action the movement faded.
By 1971 feeble attempts were made by some Maoist factions to revive the movement but by 1975 these attemots fizzled out. Even after this date groups of Maoists existed in remote pockets of the country, often backward and poor regions inhabited by tribals or very poor low caste cultivators and agricultural labourers in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh. Many of the splintered groups joined hands to form the inified CPI (Maoist) in the early 2000s, constituting a serious internal security threat in some regions of India.