The Naxalites in India are mostly from an indigenous tribal background, and their land and resources have been plundered by the Indian government and multinational corporations.

I had the opportunity to speak with Daiyamani Barla, my uni flew her out from India because she basically advocates for the same things as the Naxalites, but uses nonviolence to protect her tribal lands. The translator wasn’t great but when I asked whether she had criticisms of the Naxalites she didn’t mention the common ones we here in the west, and vaguely supported their cause, something along the lines of “when I’m helping out in the woods, I don’t know whether theyre a Naxalite or not” seemingly showing support so I’m not sure if everything we’ve heard about them is true.

It’s easy to call it “left deviationism” from our westoid ivory tower but when your home is turned into a mine it’s more about fighting for your life, not “how can we best apply Maoist thought”.

There is a big difference between the kind of Maoism that exists in places like India, Nepal or even the Philippines to some extent, and the larpy western “Maoist” Gonzaloites. Yes they all commit left-deviationist errors to some degree, but those Maoist groups that have survived and have had some measure of success in their respective regions are generally not as dogmatic as western “Maoists” and have adapted their tactics to the specific local conditions and to the needs of the local population. Another commenter mentioned the Naxalites in India and i think they are an interesting case study of pragmatic Maoism in action. It is probably not a model that can be extrapolated to the whole of India but it has been able to achieve some victories locally.

Since these groups have decades of experience operating and conducting their struggle in their respective regions, in my opinion the right approach for a national-level Marxist-Leninist party in the initial stages of the revolution is not to actively oppose these groups (unless they commit very serious errors) but to try to court them and incorporate them into the larger national strategy of the party as something like regional autonomous branches that are given considerable freedom over how to organize and administer their respective regions so long as they have the popular support of the masses there. Over time, they will be merged ideologically and organizationally into the main communist party and subordinated to the central proletarian government.

In this we can look at the example of the One Country Two Systems model that China is applying to Hong Kong for the duration of its transitional period of integration. There is no reason why, so long as the national authority of the Marxist-Leninist vanguard party is not challenged by these Maoists groups, they could not also be part of a similar arrangement.

Maoists believe many features of MZT like PPW are universally applicable. Many Global South countries have similar material conditions to pre-revolutionary China, so it could make some sense there even though it wouldn’t work in the west.