Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Monday said Naxalism stemmed from a left-wing ideology accepted and promoted by former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi starting in the 1970s, and not from a lack of development.Replying to a debate on the eve of the national deadline to eliminate Naxal terror from India, Shah said people need to stop glorifying Left Wing Extremism (LWE) as a movement against injustice and start understanding that it was born to destabilise parliamentary democracy and create a political, governance, and security vacuum.Tracing the history of LWE in India, Shah attributed the rise of the movement to Indira Gandhi’s acceptance of Left support for her candidate V.V. Giri against Neelam Sanjiva Reddy in the 1969 Presidential election.“From that year till she came to power after 1977, Indira Gandhi remained captive to the Leftists. This was also the time when Maoist terrorism spread to 12 states and affected 10% of the population. The Red Corridor would not have been possible otherwise. Throughout the history of LWE’s rise in India till 2014, Congress was in power except for four years,” Shah said, attacking “Naxal sympathisers” as “urban Naxals.”He said he had gone through several articles written by intellectuals whom he described as urban Naxals.“None of the articles speak for the mother of a child armed by Naxals, or for farmers who lost their limbs to Maoist terror, or for over 5,000 security personnel who died fighting LWE. I do not accept these double standards of humanism, which seek sympathy for armed rebels but do not talk about those who have suffered due to their violence,” Shah said, adding that the days of urban Naxals are now over.To argue that lack of development is not the reason for the spread of Naxalism in India, Shah cited 1960s literacy and per capita income data for four districts — Naxalbari, Bastar, Ballia and Saharsa — and said: “All these four districts had similar literacy indicators, and in fact Naxalbari had the highest per capita income, yet it became the hotbed of Naxalism. Why did LWE not spread in Saharsa and Ballia? Why only in Naxalbari and Bastar? That is because the geographical conditions for LWE spread were favourable in Bastar and Naxalbari.”Shah also alleged that while Odisha, Bihar, and Jharkhand (barring one district) became Naxal-free before 2024, the Congress government in Chhattisgarh protected Naxals, which is why it took time to root out LWE in the state.