She knows its name came from a small village—Naxalbari—in West Bengal. The peasants there, after slaving for the landlords, were given so little back of the harvest that they were starving. In desperation they took the harvest from the land they had tilled for generations. Armed police who were in the landlords’ pay arrived and fired on the peasants who had assembled for a dialogue, and a dozen or more, including women and children, were killed. That’s what she recalls. It dominated the news. Outrage at the massacre in Naxalbari spread like cholera all over India, and the “Naxalite” movement
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