‘Terrorism’ or the Illegitimacy of Politics in Colonial India

Spontaneous or organised armed resistances in post-colonial India, such as the Telangana revolt, various armed groups in the North-East and the proliferation of the Naxalite movement in various parts of the country were described by the post-colonial Indian state as insurgencies motivated by a perverse ideology that preached the destruction of the state, and thus constituted an internal political problem. The term ‘terrorism’ was seldom used. The concept of insurgency as an internal political problem admits its popular base, a potential of becoming a civil war, which shatters the claims of absolute legitimacy for the democratic state and its law in the affected area, and implicates it as a responsible party in the destruction of order.