Book excerpt: Maoism in india is an attempt to study and analyse the movement. already a number of left intellectuals and scholars have studied the movement and written about it. my attempt has been to find out the difference between the naxalite and cpi (maoist) movements. is there any difference as such? though the naxalite movement took birth in naxalbari in 1967; it is still striving to find a sustainable support base. the naxalite movement got its name from naxalbari village where the first major uprising took place. also; through the merger of the people’s war and the maoist communist centre (mcc); communist party of india (maoist) was formed in 2004 which aims to overthrow the government of india through people’s war. why an organization which was perceived as the forum of the “deprived and alienated sections of the population” was described as “the single biggest internal security challenge”. usually; people confuse themselves over maoists and naxalities and cannot exactly trace the difference between the two terminologies. media simply adds to the confusion. the communist party of india (maoist) aims to overthrow the government of india through people’s war. i also tried to find out the reasons which made the maoists in recent times to focus more on arms intervention than taking to organizing mass resistance movement.