Police patrol a national highway on the outskirts of Ranchi during a bandh called earlier this year by the People’s War and the Maoist Communist Centre. (PTI file picture)

New Delhi, June 26: Is there anything Left in the left-wing extremism that keeps law enforcement agencies on tenterhooks?

With a Left-backed United Progressive Alliance government in power at the Centre, the home ministry appears to be debating if it should continue using “left-wing extremism” to refer to the problem that affects nine states in the country. Or settle for politically correct “Naxalism” instead.

That is what President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam did when he spoke about “the growth of Naxalite violence in various parts of the country” when he addressed Parliament earlier this month. Officials say the home ministry could soon follow suit and end the practice of using “left-wing extremism” and “Naxalism” interchangeably.

A senior ministry official says “left-wing extremism”, which is how the home ministry has described Naxalite violence for decades, is a misnomer. “There is certainly nothing Left in the senseless killings and extortion rackets that are going on in 55 districts across nine states,” he said.

The official would not say what prompted the rethinking in the home ministry, but stressed that the debate was not sparked by the change of government at the Centre.

Rajya Sabha MP and CPM leader Nilotpal Basu agrees with the home ministry officials that there appears nothing ideological in the massacres that Naxalites have been involved in. “It is extremism. We are opposed to use of violence,” he said, adding that his party did not provoke the rethink.

Rather, a home ministry official said, this is not the first time the ministry is trying to strip the Naxalite movement of the respectability that its ideological moorings gave it. As part of this exercise, the ministry had in recent years begun referring to Naxalism as “ideology-clad left-wing extremism” in official documents on the internal security situation.

Basu said the UPA government has not raised this issue with the Left at any forum. But he suggested that in violence of this kind, it might be better to name the organisations involved than use a generic term.

Officials said there already is a shift in the UPA government’s response to Naxalism compared to the NDA regime’s approach, as can be glimpsed from Kalam’s address. “Rather than being an ordinary law-and-order problem, such violence is symptomatic of a much deeper socio-economic malaise, which needs to be treated systematically,” the President had said.

Home ministry officials said the shift in approach could level out if the dialogue with the People’s War Group in Andhra Pradesh does not bear fruit.