The Naxalite movement reached Punjab from Bengal around 1968 and took hold among students, landless labourers and a section of the Punjabi left with roots in the Kirti and Ghadar traditions.
It was strongest in Jalandhar, Ludhiana, Sangrur and Bhatinda districts. Its actions included attacks on landlords and police and the killing of individuals identified as class enemies.
The state response was severe. A large number of activists were killed in encounters between 1970 and 1972, and torture in custody was widespread and is documented in the writing of those who survived it, including Lal Singh Dil.
The movement collapsed by about 1973. Its personnel scattered into the Punjabi left, into literature, and in some cases out of politics entirely.
It produced a body of Punjabi poetry, by Pash, Lal Singh Dil, Sant Ram Udasi and others, that is more widely read now than the politics that produced it and is still sung at agitations.
The period between 1967 and 1973 in Punjab has been studied far less than what came after it, and the state's practice in those years established methods used again in the 1980s.
The movement in Punjab ran from about 1969 to 1973, concentrated among students and among agricultural labourers in the Malwa and the Doaba.
It was suppressed hard. A number of activists were killed in custody or in encounters, and the poets Pash and Lal Singh Dil both came out of it and were both broken by it.
It left a literature rather than an organisation, and that literature is a substantial part of modern Punjabi poetry.