REC Warangal: The Cradle of India’s Maoist Leadership and Insurgency
The National Institute of Technology (NIT) Warangal, formerly Regional Engineering College (REC) Warangal, was a key hub for radical student politics in the 1970s and 1980s that gave rise to prominent leaders of India’s Maoist insurgency. Many Maoist leaders, including Nambala Keshava Rao (Basavaraju), emerged from this institution, which played a pivotal role in shaping the ideology and leadership of the People's War Group and CPI (Maoist), India’s longest-running insurgency.
REC Warangal, now NIT Warangal, became a significant ideological center for the Maoist movement in India during the 1970s and 1980s through vibrant and radical student politics. This root nurtured many influential leaders who became central to the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and the People's War Group, both critical to the Naxalite–Maoist insurgency, the country’s longest-running armed left-wing extremist struggle. Students from REC Warangal, attracted by leftist radicalism, joined movements like the Radical Students Union, which campaigned actively in the rural areas nearby. One prominent figure from this milieu was Nambala Keshava Rao, also known as Basavaraju, who completed his B.Tech at REC and became a top Maoist leader and General Secretary of CPI (Maoist). He was known for his role in directing armed militancy and was considered a master strategist until his death in a security operation in 2025. The influence of REC Warangal’s student activism extended to shaping key Maoist cadres from the Telugu-speaking regions, making the college a crucial node in the insurgency’s leadership network. This insurgency, rooted in agrarian and social exploitation grievances, escalated after the 1967 Naxalbari uprising and developed into an armed conflict focused on rural rebellion and people's war against the Indian government, involving intense cycles of violence, counter-insurgency, and decline in recent years.
