Indian PM said the Maoist-influenced Naxalite armed rebellion is largely gone, but its ideological backers still pose threat.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said the country has largely eliminated a Maoist rebellion which it battled for decades but still faces a threat from the movement’s ideological backers.

Speaking on India’s Independence Day on Saturday, Modi said India had succeeded in “getting rid of armed Naxals” – referring to members of the Maoist-influenced Naxalite movement that challenged state authority across swaths of central and eastern India.

However, he said “dimagi Naxals” (intellectual Naxals) are looking for opportunities to create violence, and need to be “identified and isolated”.

The phrase “dimagi Naxal” echoes the politically charged label “urban Naxal,” a term Modi and leaders of his Bharatiya Janata Party have previously used for activists, academics, intellectuals and other government critics.

The remarks come weeks after a youth-led protest movement, the Cockroach Janta Party, emerged as a rare challenge to Modi’s government and helped force the resignation of his education minister.

While Modi did not mention the protests, he repeatedly highlighted initiatives aimed at young Indians, including AI skills training and free online coaching for competitive exams.

He said India had transformed from a “fragile” economy into the world’s fastest-growing major economy over the past decade and reaffirmed his government’s goal of turning the country into a developed nation by 2047, the centenary of its independence.

India’s Naxalite movement began in 1967 with an uprising in the village of Naxalbari in eastern India, and grew into a decades-long armed rebellion championing the rights of landless farmers, the rural poor and Indigenous communities. Thousands of civilians, rebels and security personnel died in the fighting.

Modi said the Maoist movement had “destroyed the future” of generations of young people and credited his government’s security and development policies with sharply reducing Maoist violence since taking office in 2014.

Rights groups have for years accused India’s government of using anti-terror laws, sedition-related provisions and foreign-funding rules to squeeze civil society and target activists, journalists and groups critical of its policies.