THE ORIGIN AND PRESENT STATE OF THE GUERILLAS IN INDIA (Geneza i aktualny stan partyzantki w Indiach)

The article is an attempt to address the problem of guerrilla movements in India, their history and ideological background and recent developments. The origins of communist organizations in India date back to 1925. The Communist Party of India founded on Marxist ideology, however, did not establish itself as an alternative to other Indian organizations striving for independence and social progress in India. In 1946, the communists led protests such as Tebhaga in Bengal and Telengana in the state of Hyderabad, which can be seen as the forerunners of aggressive and violent campaigns with leftist ideological background that took place at the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s. The events in Naxalbari in 1967 and later actions of terror in Bengal gradually developed into military guerrilla operations that by now have covered significant areas of India from the border with Nepal to south Deccan. Until 2005, Indian authorities considered these activities as a problem of law and order and not as a political problem, although it affected a considerable part of Indian population: the poorest and the most underprivileged agricultural and tribal societies. These groups of leftist guerrillas, however, should be seen rather as firmly rooted in indigenous communities, ideologically motivated military movement responding to the problems of the poorest sections of the society in many parts of India who feel neglected by the state administration and its agencies. At present the Indian authorities tend to see these movements with their growing military potential as an important and long term political engagement, and such an approach is an important shift after the decades of underestimating this leftist guerrilla phenomenon.