ABSTRACT
Social movements have been viewed as a collective mobilization, looking forward to change through institutional or non-institutional means. Social movements come in different sizes and shapes. To some, the civil rights movement in the USA is a social movement, while some others, the German Nazi movement of the 1930s in the USA is in the same category. To some, organized protest groups are social movements, while others favor any spontaneous, largely unorganized group actions to be included in this category. This paper argues that a significant impediment to the sociological understanding of social movements has been the tendency to lump them together with “collective behavior.” While doing so, the paper confines the Maoist insurgency as a social movement. The Maoist insurgency in India shares the left ideology, broadly understood as denouncing class inequalities in a given society. However, development and the growing divide are the critical paradigms. This study proposes two criteria – affirmative solidarity and anti-institutional orientation – as indispensable ingredients of social movements, such as the Maoist insurgency. The paper also briefly maps the terrain on which the conflict occurs, thereby keeping alive the raison d’être of the Maoist movement.
