A total of 22 security personnel were killed and 30 were wounded in a gun battle with Maoists in a forest along the border between Bijapur and Sukma districts in Chhattisgarh on Saturday, reported PTI quoting police officials. This is not the first time such an incident took place. Maoist extremism has led to the death of thousands of civilians and security personnel in India. So, who are these Maoists and why are they fighting the country’s security forces?

Maoism or ‘Naxalism’ started from West Bengal’s Naxalbari village, where a section of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI-M) initiated a violent revolution in 1967. The movement is now more concentrated in rural parts of Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh.

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The main reason why they clash with security personnel is that they want peasants and lower-class tribals to overthrow the Indian government and upper class by force. They follow the ideology of Chinese communist ideologue and leader Mao Zedong. 

Their other objective is to redistribute the land to working peasants. However, they chose to do so violently.

According to Logical Indian, the fifth and the sixth schedules of the Constitution that protect the rights of tribals over their property have played their part to calm Maoism in certain regions of the country. Although forceful eviction and mining in the areas fuel the violence in other parts.

The central, as well as state governments, believe that social, agricultural and land reforms; state-funded policies and employment schemes can help to bring the ‘Naxal’ problem to a natural end.