ABSTRACT
This chapter explores specific aspects of globally oriented thinking among Naxalite political activists in the Indian state of West Bengal in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It gives special attention to the militant circles organized under the leadership of Charu Mazumdar. By focusing on a limited space, and interrogating the nevertheless expansive globally oriented and connected worlds produced from such a space, the chapter use the Naxalite case study to argue for re-centring the local at the heart of global history. The chapter focuses on political, economic, and discursive forces that shaped Naxalite thought. It explains the transformative ambition of Naxalite conceptual militancy. The chapter focuses on globalized definitions of the political among Naxalites, on their specific notions of violence, and on their tropes of heroism, leadership, and martyrdom. The planetary dissemination of capitalism certainly explains in part the globality of Naxalite politics.
