NEW DELHI (AP) \u2014 Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Saturday that India\u2019s decades-long Maoist insurgency was nearing its end but warned that the country now faced a new battle against what he called \u201cdimagi Naxals,\u201d or people who align with the movement\u2019s ideology.<\/p>\n
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NEW DELHI (AP) \u2014 Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Saturday that India\u2019s decades-long Maoist insurgency was nearing its end but warned that the country now faced a new battle against what he called \u201cdimagi Naxals,\u201d or people who align with the movement\u2019s ideology.<\/p>\n
NEW DELHI (AP) \u2014 Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Saturday that India\u2019s decades-long Maoist insurgency was nearing its end but warned that the country now faced a new battle against what he called \u201cdimagi Naxals,\u201d or people who align with the movement\u2019s ideology.<\/p>\n
In his address to the nation on India\u2019s 79th Independence Day from the ramparts of New Delhi\u2019s 17th-century Mughal-era Red Fort, Modi said Maoist violence was \u201cbreathing its last\u201d after years of security operations against the insurgency, once described by Indian authorities as the country\u2019s biggest internal security threat.<\/p>\n
Also known as the Naxalite movement, it challenged state authority across large swathes of central and eastern India for decades, leaving thousands of civilians, rebels and security personnel dead.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have succeeded in getting rid of armed Naxals in the jungles, but \u2018dimagi Naxals\u2019 (intellectual Naxals) are looking for opportunities to create violence and unrest,\u201d Modi said. \u201cThey have to be identified and isolated.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey want to drag the society on the wrong path,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Modi also unveiled a series of measures aimed at boosting self-reliance in sectors ranging from defense to agriculture, with a strong focus on youth.<\/p>\n
The outreach to young people comes weeks after a youth-led protest movement, the Cockroach Janta Party, emerged as a rare challenge to Modi\u2019s government and helped force the resignation of his education minister. While Modi did not mention the protests, he repeatedly highlighted initiatives aimed at young Indians, including AI skills training and free online coaching for competitive exams.<\/p>\n
He said India had transformed from a \u201cfragile\u201d economy into the world\u2019s fastest-growing major economy over the past decade and reaffirmed his government\u2019s goal of turning the country into a developed nation by 2047, the centenary of its independence.<\/p>\n
The Naxalite movement, inspired by Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong, began in 1967 with an uprising in the village of Naxalbari in eastern India, and grew into a decades-long armed rebellion championing the rights of landless farmers, the rural poor and Indigenous communities.<\/p>\n
Modi said the Maoist movement had \u201cdestroyed the future\u201d of generations of young people and credited his government\u2019s security and development policies with sharply reducing Maoist violence since taking office in 2014.<\/p>\n
The phrase \u201cdimagi Naxal\u201d echoes the politically charged label \u201curban Naxal,\u201d a term Modi and leaders of his Bharatiya Janata Party have previously used for activists, academics, intellectuals and other critics of his government. Critics say such labels have increasingly been used to stigmatize dissent.<\/p>\n