>>1595341Ah, it's a bit more complicated than that. Mao himself actually distanced himself from the rebels after the initial 1967 rebellion, believing that India had to make its path to revolution. However, some of the Maoists' original leaders to visit China shortly afterward.
Some members of the Indian security community have accused Pakistan and China of providing arms, funds ans training to Maoist militants. There's probably some truth to that, but brushing it off as a Chinese proxy is reductive.
By and large, many Maoist food soldiers are not hardcore ideologues--they're tribal peoples who have dispossessed of land by state actors and state enabled actors. Many of them have faced displacement and state-sponsored violence, too. It took six years for the Indian Supreme Court to outlaw a Chhattisharh-sponsored paramilitary group called the Salwa Judum, which burned hundreds of villages, summarily executed innocent people and raped countless women.
The Maoist movement in India may have outside political support, but it persists because the state, historically, hasn't given two shits about development in backwards regions. Then mining companies identify rich sites, and suddenly the state wants nothing more than to give villagers jobs and educations, albeit by forcing them off their land and into walled-off, guarded camps.
