Radical Movements Archive

Left-wing radicalism in South Asia is stronger than at any time since the Cold War, with both India and Nepal challenged by Maoist uprisings. Because it impacts one of the world’s emerging powers, the situation in India is perhaps of greater global significance. But the Nepal case is just as instructive, if not more so. For Nepal’s largely impoverished population of 25 million, which lives in a territory the size of Florida, a bloody decade of people’s war has since 2006 given way to “peace.” Yet to call the situation in Nepal peace is appropriate only if one believes that […]

In July 1967, at the height of Mao Zedong’s “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,” an editorial appeared in the Chinese Communist Party newspaper the People’s Daily heralding “a peel of spring thunder” sweeping across India. An uprising of tea-plantation workers led by Maoist militants in Naxalbari, a poor and remote district near India’s Darjeeling region, had come to Beijing’s attention. Inspired by the Chinese revolution, the militants imagined that Naxalbari was to be the beginning of a popular revolt that would end with the red flag flying over New Delhi. Such dreams were premature. Within months, the government had brutally suppressed […]

The 2008 and 2010 Latinobarometro Polls, taken in 18 countries of Latin America, underline the fact that, even though the GDP of most Latin American countries has been improving since 2001, there are deep flaws in democratic political systems throughout the region. The relative popular dissatisfaction stems from deep-rooted socioeconomic inequalities as well as distrust and lack of confidence in police forces, legislatures and political parties. There is also a growing popular consciousness of unfulfilled rights, leading to rising demands for their enjoyment. Peruvians are especially disgruntled. Peru’s economy has grown faster than any of the other bigger countries in […]