Those who supported Maoist ideals of anti-imperialism and the overthrow of landowners and landlords attempted to spread radical Communist ideology throughout the territory. The movement, which grew out of the CPI(ML)’s support for the peasants of Naxalbari-sharecroppers who rose up against the unfair and predatory practices of the upper classes who drove them off their land yet forced them to continue working it without profit-threatened the city of Calcutta and the state of West Bengal more widely.
The extreme physical and ideological violence of the period resonates throughout the lives of Subhash, Gauri, and indeed their daughter, Bela, though she is raised in a foreign country, ostensibly removed from the painful truth of her family’s very personal involvement with the violence and terrorism of the Naxalites.
The turbulence of 1960s and 1970s India is at the forefront of The Lowland-even as the novel moves temporally past the early days of the Naxalite movement and the splintering of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) into the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist).
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