Internal Armed Conflicts in India: Non-State Actors and Regional Stability

India’s internal security landscape is shaped by a long history of armed conflicts that do not involve foreign armies, but rather organised groups operating from within its own borders. These groups, known as non-state actors, range from cross-border terrorist outfits and ethnic separatists to ideologically driven revolutionaries. Their activities have cost thousands of lives, disrupted development, and tested the capacity of the state to maintain order while protecting civil liberties. Understanding these conflicts is essential to understanding the security challenges that continue to influence governance and regional stability across South Asia.

What are non-state actors in armed conflict? 🔗

A non-state actor is an organised group that uses violence to pursue political, ethnic, or ideological goals without being part of any government. In international law, conflicts between a government and such organised armed groups are often classified as non-international armed conflicts. India officially treats these as internal security challenges rather than wars, but the scale and persistence of some of them have invited debate among legal scholars about how they should be categorised.

Broadly, India has faced four major categories of internal conflict involving non-state actors: separatism in Jammu and Kashmir, insurgency in the North-eastern states, left-wing extremism in central India, and sporadic terrorism in the hinterland. Each is driven by a distinct mix of grievances, but they share common features such as the use of guerrilla tactics, the blurring of the line between combatants and civilians, and, in several cases, external support from across India’s borders.

The insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir 🔗

Jammu and Kashmir has been India’s most internationally visible internal conflict. The dispute traces back to 1947, when the princely state’s ruler, Maharaja Hari Singh, acceded to India amid an invasion by tribal raiders from Pakistan. An armed insurgency erupted in the late 1980s, triggered partly by the disputed 1987 state elections, and has continued in various forms since then.

The insurgency has been sustained by Pakistan-based terrorist organisations. The three groups most frequently named are Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), and Hizbul Mujahideen (HM). According to Indian authorities, these organisations have received training, arms, and financial support from across the border, with Pakistan asserting that its involvement is only moral and diplomatic. The aim of these groups has been to challenge India’s authority in the region and keep the conflict alive.

Changes after the abrogation of Article 370 🔗

In August 2019, the Indian government revoked the special status that Jammu and Kashmir had held under Article 370 of the Constitution, splitting the former state into two union territories. The years that followed saw a significant crackdown on the support networks that sustained militancy, including the detention of large numbers of overground workers who provided logistics and shelter to armed militants. Fatalities in the region fell sharply, from over four thousand at the peak in 2001 to around a hundred and twenty-seven by 2024, according to figures cited by the Australian Institute of International Affairs.

The Pahalgam attack and Operation Sindoor 🔗

Despite this decline, the threat has not disappeared. On 22 April 2025, gunmen killed twenty-six people, mostly tourists, near Pahalgam, in an attack linked to The Resistance Front, widely regarded as a front for Lashkar-e-Taiba. The attack prompted India to launch Operation Sindoor on 7 May 2025, a cross-border strike targeting alleged terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. The episode showed how a single attack by a non-state actor can rapidly escalate into a confrontation between two nuclear-armed states, underlining the wider regional stakes of this conflict.

The Naxalite (Maoist) movement in central India 🔗

The Naxalite movement is named after Naxalbari, a village in West Bengal where a peasant uprising began in 1967. Inspired by Maoist ideology, the movement sought to overthrow the Indian state through armed revolution and to establish a system in which land and power would be redistributed to the rural poor and tribal communities. Over the decades it spread across a belt of central and eastern India known as the Red Corridor, covering parts of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Maharashtra, and other states.

Roots in socio-economic grievance 🔗

Unlike the Kashmir insurgency, the Naxalite movement has no significant external backer. Its strength came from genuine local grievances such as land alienation, poverty, lack of education and healthcare, and the displacement of tribal communities by mining and industrial projects. The insurgents, organised mainly under the Communist Party of India (Maoist), built parallel governance structures in remote forest areas, collected taxes, and targeted security forces and government infrastructure. In 2010, then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh described the movement as the single biggest internal security threat facing the country.

The decline and the 2026 turning point 🔗

The movement has been dramatically weakened in recent years through a combination of sustained security operations, road and communication infrastructure in remote areas, and welfare schemes aimed at the grievances that fuelled recruitment. The government’s SAMADHAN strategy, alongside a clear-hold-build approach, sharply reduced the area under Maoist influence.

According to data cited by the Press Information Bureau, the number of districts affected by left-wing extremism fell from one hundred twenty-six in 2014 to a handful by early 2026, and violence declined by around eighty-eight percent. In late March 2026, the Union Home Minister announced in Parliament that armed Maoism had been effectively suppressed, with the government declaring the goal of a Naxal-free India largely achieved. Critics, however, point out that the underlying issues of land, inequality, and tribal rights have not been fully resolved, and warn that unaddressed grievances could give rise to new forms of unrest.

Insurgencies in the North-eastern states 🔗

The North-east, comprising eight states connected to the rest of India by a narrow corridor, has hosted some of the country’s oldest insurgencies. These conflicts are driven by ethnic identity, demands for autonomy or independence, economic backwardness, and a sense of political alienation from the centre. The region’s porous borders with Myanmar, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and China have historically allowed insurgent groups to set up camps, smuggle arms, and receive external support.

The major insurgent groups 🔗

Several armed groups have shaped the region’s conflict history. The National Socialist Council of Nagaland (NSCN), particularly its Isak-Muivah faction, has led the Naga movement, which is among the oldest insurgencies in the country. The United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) sought an independent Assamese state, while the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB) represented Bodo aspirations. Manipur has seen multiple groups such as the People’s Liberation Army of Manipur pursuing separatist goals.

Peace accords and the path to normalcy 🔗

The government’s response has combined security operations with negotiation. A series of peace accords has brought many groups into the mainstream, including the Bodo Peace Accord of 2020, the Karbi Anglong agreement of 2021, and a pro-talks faction of ULFA signing a peace deal. The Ministry of Home Affairs has reported that several important accords signed since 2019 have led to thousands of cadres laying down arms, and insurgency incidents in states like Assam have fallen sharply.

The Manipur crisis 🔗

Peace in the region remains fragile, as the recent crisis in Manipur demonstrates. In May 2023, ethnic violence broke out between the valley-dwelling, mostly Hindu Meitei community and the hill-dwelling, mostly Christian Kuki-Zo tribes, triggered by a court order relating to Scheduled Tribe status for Meiteis. According to government figures reported by multiple sources, the violence killed around two hundred sixty people and displaced roughly sixty thousand. President’s Rule was imposed in February 2025 and revoked in February 2026 when a new state government was formed, though deep mistrust between the communities persists, with Kuki-Zo groups continuing to demand a separate administration.

The role of AFSPA and counter-insurgency 🔗

A recurring feature of these conflicts is the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA), which grants security forces wide powers in areas declared “disturbed.” Enacted in 1958 during the early Naga insurgency, AFSPA has been criticised for alleged human rights abuses that, according to analysts, can alienate local populations and deepen hostility. In recent years the government has withdrawn or reduced AFSPA in parts of the North-east, including its complete removal from Tripura and Meghalaya, signalling a gradual shift towards normalcy in some areas.

Counter-insurgency analysts argue that purely military approaches have limited success against entrenched non-state actors. As studies of India’s insurgencies note, lasting peace depends on addressing the political and socio-economic roots of conflict, not just defeating armed groups on the battlefield. This balance between security enforcement and inclusive development has emerged as the central lesson across all three conflict zones.

Why these conflicts matter for regional stability 🔗

Internal armed conflicts in India have consequences that extend well beyond the country’s borders. The Kashmir insurgency repeatedly brings India and Pakistan to the brink of war, as Operation Sindoor showed in 2025. The North-eastern insurgencies are tied to the stability of Myanmar and Bangladesh, where insurgent camps and cross-border movement complicate diplomacy. Even the largely domestic Naxalite movement affected the development of mineral-rich regions that are economically significant for the wider subcontinent. Managing these conflicts is therefore not only a matter of national security but of South Asian stability as a whole.

What do you think? Should conflicts like the Naxalite movement be treated primarily as a law-and-order problem to be solved by security forces, or as a development challenge rooted in inequality and neglect? And as several of these insurgencies wind down, what should the government prioritise to ensure that the underlying grievances do not resurface in new forms?

References

1. https://www.icrc.org/en/document/internal-conflicts-or-other-situations-violence-what-difference-victims
2. https://www.mha.gov.in/en/page/jammu-kashmir-division
3. https://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/australianoutlook/jammu-and-kashmir-six-years-after-revocation-of-article-370/
4. https://ctc.westpoint.edu/militant-violence-in-jammu-and-kashmir-post-abrogation-of-article-370/
5. https://www.satp.org/terrorism-assessment/india-maoist
6. https://www.drishtiias.com/daily-updates/daily-news-editorials/reimagining-indias-post-naxal-future
7. https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=2120771&reg=3&lang=2
8. https://www.mha.gov.in/en/commoncontent/north-east-division
9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manipur_ethnic_violence
10. https://www.mha.gov.in/en