Charu Majumdar: The Dreamer Rebel 9789391125035

Citation preview

Published by Block D, Building No. 77, Okhla Industrial Area, Phase-I, New Delhi-110 020, INDIA Tel: 91-11-26816301, 26818960 Email: [email protected] Website: www.niyogibooksindia.com Text © Ashoke Mukhopadhyay Editor: Arkaprabha Biswas Layout: Shashi Bhushan Prasad Cover design: Anurag Hira Cover illustrator: Douluri Narayana ISBN: 978-93-91125-03-5 Publication: 2022 Publisher’s note: Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information presented in this book. The images used in this book come from either the public domain or from the public commons, unless otherwise stated. The publisher welcomes comments and feedback from readers, in order to improve future editions, at [email protected]. All rights are reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without prior written permission and consent of the Publisher. Printed at Niyogi Offset Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi, India

     

For   Comrade Krishna Bandyopadhyay

     

   While some of the chapters like ‘Jail Break’ and ‘At Lalbazar’ in this book have been dramatised, they have been set up on a foundation of facts.   I take this opportunity to thank Mr Indranil Bhattacharjee who provided me with some familial information of Charu Majumdar. My thanks also go to Mrs Sahana Ghosh for her unhesitating help and advice. I will be ungrateful if I don’t thank Mrs Shovona Mukherji for her persuasion and tireless support, without which the book would not have been complete during the worrisome days of Covid lockdown.   Ashoke Mukhopadhyay

 Jail Break e Birth of a Red Star How the Steel Was Tempered e New Situation aer 1947 Emergence of an Exuberant Catalyst e Trailblazing Journey A Script of Upsurge e High Tide Youth Revolt—Iconoclasm Struggle in Prisons oughts of Charu Majumdar in 1970–71 Party Literature e Downturn e Voice of Dissent Internal Feud e Underground Trail e Early Morning Knock At Lalbazar Post-death Debates From Close Quarters Tailpiece A Select List of Source Books Life in Images

   

 

T

hey needed to escape the Burdwan Jail, the bastion of the ruling class, at any cost. e planning had started almost a year ago. Asit Baran Chatterjee was a scientist of Central Mechanical Engineering Research Institute of Durgapur, West Bengal, and a leader of the ‘jail committee’ of the party. He, with his disarming smile and irrefutable logic, inculcated in all his comrades a rm political belief that capitalism and imperialism were entangled in a permanent crisis across the world. e Lenin era had given way to that of Mao Tse-tung. e present age would witness the rapid fall and total collapse of imperialism soon. Time for worldwide victory of socialism had come. Mao had declared that world civilisation would enter into a new phase by the turn of 2001. Taking a cue from Mao, Charu Majumdar (CM) said, ‘...I believe that it is by the end of 1975 that the 500 million Indian people will complete writing the great epic of their liberation.’ CM replied to sceptics, ‘...I cannot think beyond 1975. e idea of today’s armed struggle was rst born in the mind of one man. e idea has now lled the minds of 10 million people. If the new revolutionary consciousness, born only in 1967, can permeate the minds of 10 million people in 1970, why is it impossible then for those 10 million to rouse and mobilise the 500 million people of India in a surging people’s war by 1975?’ e vast majority of the Naxalite brand of communists, in prison or outside, lapped up Charu Majumdar’s simple calculations predicting liberation in 1975. As a corollary, it was decided not to waste time in setting up mass organisation and forge mass movements. Neither comrades nor the party had enough power and preparations for armed struggle against the State. So they took the alternative route of guerrilla struggle. If they could win a series of small guerrilla battles, the red army would be able to acquire adequate strength and experience for winning the nal war against the State. Comrades in the prison were convinced that all the systems including economy, bureaucracy, judiciary and the police, raised by the existing state, that is, the ruling class, were bad and anti-people. erefore, revolutionaries

should prepare themselves to defy the existing laws of the land and destroy the same. ereaer, following the seizure of an authoritative autocracy, they needed to set up everything afresh in a new model. Before they had been thrown into the prison, comrades knew that they could not engage a lawyer. ere was the party embargo. ey could not avail of release-on-bail. Release on bond was tantamount to surrender. ey de ed identi cation parade in the gaol; instead, they raised slogans—‘Red Salute to Naxalbari!’, ‘Red Salute to Comrade Charu Majumdar’—at the identi cation parade. ey had totally discarded the legal path, which, in any case, were ‘antipeople’ and framed by the state. But then, would they rot in prison? ere were three possibilities of freedom. Route number one: People’s Republic of India would be formed in 1975, as they dreamt, and set all the comrades in the prison free. Number two: ey could escape from the prison and earn freedom. Number three: Comrades outside could attack the jail and free them. Comrades in Burdwan Jail analysed all the three routes and chose the second option. ey were not ready to wait three long years for their freedom in 1975. So they whispered—‘No bail, break jail!’. Following the decision of jail-escape, comrades were focused on investigating various jail procedure and practice. By roaming around every nook and corner of the facility, Shankar, a teenage comrade, prepared a dra map of the prison. Even by a cursory look at the drawing, one could easily get a bird’s eye view of the set up. Adjoining the eastern boundary wall of the prison, old wards numbering 1, 2, 3 and 4 lay in series while ward number 11 lay in the south-east corner; one of the two kitchens, chouka in the jail parlance, billowed out smoke from the north-east; there was a pond towards the north; close to the western boundary of the prison was the arena for the common bath; an 8feet wall demarcated the area from the boundary wall. Facing the arena for bath were wards 5, 6, 7, 8 and 10. Almost at the centre of the jail, the new wards—1, 2, 3, 4, 9 and a kitchen—popped up. Facing this cluster, to the south, were grim-looking solitary cells; further south, close to the middle of the southern boundary, there were the main gate, ward-boy rooms, jailoffice, offices of the jailor and superintendent and the quarters for the jailor.

To the south-west corner, adjoining the female ward stood the hospital. Bucket-latrines lay in series to the north-west side of the facility. Leaders of the jail committee were impressed with the map and started planning on the mode of escape. Point, counter point, logic, emotion—all were in full ow. It was impossible to sneak out from the main gate. To the east, close to the boundary wall, there was no strong tree tall enough to be used for scaling the wall. Even if there was one, the operation was not feasible. All the twenty-eight comrades would be gunned down by jail guards before the escape action could thoroughly be carried out. Same problems were raised for the escape from the northern boundary. en what could be the modus operandi? Which route to take? Could the escape be planned by digging a tunnel from the old ward number 4 in which they were lodged? It was difficult, given the tight security; plus, the population density outside the prison was not congenial for the action, specially when the party strength was not that robust. To the majority of the leaders, the tunnel route was a bit precipitous. Hence, it was decided to have further inquiry; senior comrades became immersed in the process. Finally, they discovered a route! Like any other district jail built in the British period, Burdwan Jail also followed the waste disposal system through laal dibba or laal gari. ere was a 4/4  square window at the ground level of the boundary wall to the west. Both the inner and outer sides of the square opening were covered with iron doors. e outer wall had a tunnel protruding outside. Inside the tunnel, there was an iron trolley with iron railing on both sides of the carrier. It looked very similar to the hand cart for luggage at Sealdah or Howrah stations. rough the iron trolley, laal gari or laal dibba in the prison lingo, entire jail waste went to the outside dump. is practice was followed also for transport of dead bodies! is square opening, full of lth though, could serve as a path to the much-awaited freedom! But it was not an easy task. Comrades continued to closely study the laal gari routine. It was observed that one of the head warders and a sweeper went to laal gari every morning around 10am. By that time, there would be sweepers standing at the exit point on the outer side of the boundary wall. e sweeper inside the jail unlocked the iron door of the square cavity as soon as he heard the usual knock on the outside door. e carrier slid into the prison via the rail line laid on the ground. Buckets, lled with waste, were then loaded on the

trolley. e carrier was then gently pushed outside the tunnel. Sweepers outside would then overturn the bucket on the waste dump. e laal gari would now go inside and rest in the tunnel under proper lock. It took around ten minutes to complete the entire operation from the beginning to the end. ese ndings needed to be discussed in the jail committee meeting. A senior comrade put forward an idea—‘Let us overturn the trolley the moment it comes inside the jail; immediately we will get a 4/4  tunnel opening outside the prison; a clear route to our escape; everyone, please visualise. Our action has to be sudden, fast, like the blitzkrieg of an organised army, because in reality we will have not more than three to four minutes for all twenty-eight of us to escape.’ ‘Brilliant’, said all the comrades, ‘this plan is far more convincing than the earlier ones we conceived.’ ‘Hang on’, said comrade Asit da, ‘no doubt it’s a very plausible idea, but there are challenges.’ e primary challenge was to act in clockwork precision; in case the team could not follow the discipline; or, if, on getting inkling just at the beginning of the action, the warder–sweeper duo locked the trolley inside the tunnel, the entire team of twenty-eight would be battered to death. erefore, the challenge was to develop a mindset of self-sacri ce, if needed. Secondly, to reach near laal gari, the team needed to run about 90  aer scaling the 8-high  wall near the common bath. On reaching the spot they would have to overpower the warder–sweeper combine and overturn the trolley. For the sudden and rapid action, a physically able squad was of utmost importance. How many of the comrades, suffering from malnutrition, would be able to deliver? Moreover, many of the members of the team of twenty-eight might not be able to cross the 8 -high wall near the bath on their own. So, they had to make arrangements for them to climb the wall. Tushar da alias Nirmal da alias Master da identi ed the third challenge. ‘ose who require support may pretend to be sick and we can take them to the hospital. ere is no barrier near the hospital areas. ey only have to run fast.’ Asit da nodded as a sign of affirmation.

Fourth and h issues were raised by Shankar, ‘In this plan, time is the essence; for the moment we move, warders will start whistling and then they will ring the jail alarm; in the next two minutes, warders, armed with muskets and sticks, will enter the jail from outside. at’s why we need to escape very fast. Moreover, I have observed from the rst- oor window that four armed personnel from the Central Reserve Police Force stand at a distance on the playground outside regularly at the time of opening the laal gari. Immediately on setting our feet outside, we will have to confront the team of carbine and ri es with bare hand. Before we can reach them, we will be riddled with bullets.’ ‘It’s an important point’, said Asit da, ‘we need to address this issue.’ ‘...and the sixth point’, Manik da said, ‘we need to think about our attire too. Here in jail we wear lungi, pyjama, vest, very ordinary, dirty, tattered shirts. Most of us do not wear slippers even. is out t will raise suspicion once we are outside.’ Tushar da smiled, ‘Yes, I agree, we need to have a sartorial change be tting the world outside. But jail authorities will start doubting, if one ne morning, all of a sudden, we all wear new dresses .’ Challenge number seven was spelt out by Manik da—‘Following escape, everyone needs to reach his destination, away from Burdwan town, very fast. How can it be possible without money?’ ‘Yes, it’s also an important point’, said Asit da, ‘somehow we have to supplement the meagre jail breakfast on the day of action. Otherwise, you never know when one will get food aer the escape. Isn’t it?’ Everyone nodded. It was observed, the entire planning and preparation needed to be done under cover. Extreme secrecy had to be maintained at all the vital points so that no thread of suspicion was traced by the jail authorities. And last but not the least, it would take a heavy toll on comrades, if due to some lapse, the core plan was revealed. Asit da was silent for a few minutes. ‘Yes, there are risks. But then, shouldn’t we take risks? Comrades, escape we must and let me repeat, this plan is sensible and not that difficult to implement. Moreover, all of us are now staying together at old ward number 4, getting enough time to interact. is is an opportunity and let us exploit it to the fullest.’

Under the circumstances, the jail commune leaders were responsible for the plot. Keeping the core plan under cover, they had to keep on preparing, nullify all the perceivable threats and instil enthusiasm in the comrades. It was almost like a military training for one and for all. ere was an urgency to infuse courage in the team. e squad had to be self-reliant. Activities started. 22 April 1972. e party was set up on the day, some three years ago. Mass songs were sung at the open courtyard. Slogans were raised. ‘Red Salute to Naxalbari!’. ‘Red Salute to Comrade Charu Majumdar!’. ‘Long Live Chairman Mao!’ Warders were a little shaken but could not fathom their motive; the hordes of these youngsters were a bit unpredictable. At times they were roused and rest of the time they were silent! 1 May 1972. Workers’ day; also, Martyrs’ Day. May Day was celebrated by hoisting a red ag atop the water tank of the jail. Comrades apprehended attack from the jail authorities. Yet, the programme was implemented, as if, to show the world that they were ready to die as martyrs. But nothing happened. 14 May 1972. It was the date on which the Dumdum Jail massacre had taken place a year ago. e day merited a demonstration of ‘revolutionary enthusiasm’. But the jail committee decided otherwise. Comrades were engaged in discussions and songs throughout the day. ey planned to hibernate for the next few days. Silent preparations were on. It was a lull before the storm. 14 May to 25 May 1972. ese eleven days were fully utilised in netuning the action plan. Everyone could source new clothes and slippers from relatives. ey put on the new clothes on the plea that old ones were thoroughly soiled with black stains, dirty, tattered and full of bugs causing skin disease. Old garments were all set on re in the courtyard. e required fund came from outside. Asit da knew where everyone would go aer the escape. Accordingly, the money was distributed amongst all the teammates. Asit da had enforced a drill here too! In the morning, he would distribute the money in small homoeopathic envelopes and collect it at the end of the day. In the event of raid by the jail search party, the entire bundle of notes would be smuggled out to a warder, who was a party sympathiser. Following the search, it would come back to Asit da once again.

Seven leading team members started saving two chapattis each out of the four that were served at dinner. In the process, they could manage to raise a stock of y-six chapattis! What was this for? So that the twenty-eightmember team could eat at least two chapattis each just before the escape! e stale hand-made stuff was exchanged daily with fresh ones. Many had to consume stale chapattis every day. But their goal was xed.   e Burdwan unit of the party took charge of tackling the police outpost and the armed guards present outside at the time of opening of the laal gari. To the west of the jail, on the playground, there was a country liquor shop. at was the place where the armed guards stood in the morning at the time of waste clearance. From 14 May, four comrades of the outside party started appearing there. ey would play cards over country liquor! e guards got accustomed to see them every day; their presence would not raise any suspicion on the day of action. Inside, many groups were set up. A suicide squad was formed to ght against the sweeper–warder combine and keep them busy. During the fracas, two members of the team would topple the trolley and expose the entry point of the tunnel—a barrier-free path for escape! Shanker would be the signalman. He was instructed to give two signals; he would wave his handkerchief from the western window of ward number 7 or 8, on the rst oor.e comrades outside would gear up; the moment Shankar moved down—the second signal—comrades inside would jump into action. 25 May 1972. ‘is is the day’, announced the jail leadership right in the morning around 8 am. ‘We need to escape the jail today itself ’, averred comrade Asit Da. Tushar alias Master da alias Nirmal da seconded, ‘Yes comrades, it’s one year now that we have been planning and rehearsing to escape the jail...in an hour or so from now we have to prove our true mettle.’ Five years ago, on this very day, the brave peasants of Naxalbari in the North Bengal fought against the police, faced their bullets. Eleven peasant women became martyrs. e leaders convened an urgent meeting. e team was informed of the main target, laal gari. One of the comrades would usher the ‘sick’ team of ten to the hospital way. ey did not have to scale the wall. All twelve members of the suicide squad would rst scale the 8  wall and run towards

the target. Remaining ve members would then cross the barrier. e real ght would be done by the suicide squad; the job of the remaining members was to escape. At 9 am, aer having breakfast, all sat silently with volcano within! At around 9:45 am, they got up and trudged to their ‘positions’. Shankar reached the western window as planned; he noticed that arrangements were being made for unlocking the laal gari. But why was there only one comrade outside, instead of four? Shankar was puzzled. Suddenly, Bhai da, a member of suicide squad, surfaced, ‘What happened? Any problem?’ Shankar told him. Bhai da peered out for some time and said, ‘No, it can’t be done today. It will be a op show. I suggest you give negative signal and come downstairs slowly aer me. I am taking care of the ground oor activities.’ Shankar waved a palm-leaf fan. It was the negative signal. Seeing that, a few ordinary convicts gathered. Out of enthusiasm, the fun-loving crowd joined in. While someone started waving his shirt, the other waved hands, another one waved his vest—a thorough confusion! With so many varied signals, the only comrade present outside might have got a bit nervous too! Downstairs, everyone was retreating quietly. Another date had to be xed; had to establish contact with the team outside once again; the stock of chapattis had to be raised. e plan became known to all the teammates. e challenge was to keep it under cover. Everybody was charged up. Compared to the degree of mental preparations they had taken, the plan seemed easy and doable. It was decided, none should go out of the ward as far as possible. e team leaders enforced discipline and kept watching everyone. 28 May 1972. Now the time has come. All the preparations were done. ere was a slight change in the original plan—the ‘sick’ members could not go to the hospital once again. e authorities would not give permission in such a small gap. ey had to cross the wall with the help of the physically t comrades. ere was no mistake this time! Neither inside, nor outside the jail. Within a fraction, Shankar landed himself outside the tunnel! He noticed, the head warder was jumping to avoid injury from stones hurled at him by the suicide squad. Outside, two of the four armed policemen were lying injured; one, the carbine holder, was running helter-skelter; the other dived

into the pond; one of the comrades, with revolver in hand, was threatening him the moment his head popped up! All the twenty-eight members could come out of the tunnel. ey whispered—‘Red Salute to Naxalbari!’. ‘Red Salute to Comrade Charu Majumdar!’. en they started running as planned. Who was this Charu Majumdar? Why were the youngsters in the prison risking their lives for his sake? And what did Naxalbari mean to them?

     

‘I

t will give me the greatest pleasure if you plunge yourselves into the revolutionary struggle here and now instead of wasting your energy in passing examinations… e boys and girls in our country are brought up through the educational institutions in a way that they look down upon the poor masses of workers and peasants; respect everything concerning the imperialist powers and become lackeys or agents of these powers. Moreover, in a man’s life, the age between eighteen and twenty-four is the period when he can work hardest and can be most vigorous, most courageous and most loyal to his ideas. But the students and youth of this age group in our country are forced to pursue anti-people courses of study and try to pass examinations.’ Time and again, he urged upon the students and youth to integrate with the landless peasants and workers; and suggested the way—   Form small squads with students of the schools and colleges in your locality. Each squad should have four– ve students. en make your programmes for going to the villages even when you have short holidays of only four– ve days. No squad should be formed with girls alone. is is because girls would need some kind of shelter for spending the night. Each of you should carry a copy of Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung. Take as little money with you as possible and other articles in a kit-bag. Once you go to the village you are not to seek comforts and good food or shelter. Rather, you should compete with one another in enduring hardship. You should not stop and stay at any one place except for spending the night. You should always be on the move and go from one village to another walking een miles a day on the average. During the journey, make acquaintance only with the poor and landless peasants, learn from them, read out Quotations from Chairman Mao to them and acquaint them with Mao Tse-tung thought as much as you can. Tell them of the heroic exploits of the revolutionary peasant war that is now

raging in India... Make this campaign a festive occasion all over the country’. (Deshabrati, 5 March 1970)

  e y-year-old Charu Majumdar, who churned out these non-conformist words in 1970, had the moral right to say so; he himself practised these principles in his youth. In fact, his life is a graph of unconventional living. He probably knew how to defy death right from his birth! Otherwise, how could he survive when eight of his siblings died young; only his youngest sister Bela survived along with him. Born to Umashankari Devi (popular in her nickname Harani Masima to neighbours) and Bireshwar Majumdar, on a day in the Bengali month of Jaistha (May–June), 1919, Charu moved to their family residence at Mahananda para, Siliguri (Darjeeling district) when he was around eight years old. Bireshwar Majumdar was a lawyer, but due to his penchant for truth, did not practise law. He realised, for winning a case, he at times had to take resort to lies; he preferred assignments at schools to the practice of law at the courts. Bireshwar’s native place was in the Haguria village in Rajshahi district (now in Bangladesh). Aer his parents’ death Bireshwar moved to Varanasi, passed BA and LLB, acquired pro ciency in Urdu, Hindi, Farsi, English and Bengali. Chandramohan Roy got his only daughter Umashankari married to Bireshwar and housed them at his Siliguri residence. Much to the chagrin of Chandramohan, Bireshwar did not practise law; a suitable job was also not available at Siliguri. Father-in-law Chandramohan, a landlord, was not happy at all. Bireshwar somehow managed to get a job as a teacher at a school at Varanasi and le Siliguri along with his wife. Charu was born there. Meanwhile, Chandramohan had gied a part of his property to his only child Umashankari; it was around that time he also brought in his nephews to his Siliguri residence. Rumour had it that the nephews hatched a plot to deprive Umashankari of her legitimate dues, forged documents, and one ne morning Chandramohan went ‘missing’ from the Matigara market in Siliguri. ereaer, the house remained unprotected for a considerable time. Many of the valuables from the house, including gold and silver, went missing.

At the earnest request of some trusted neighbours at Siliguri, Bireshwar and Umashankari returned to their family residence, a traditional wooden house surrounded by jackfruit trees, at Mahananda Para sometime during 1926–27. With them came mejo khoka, Charu and his elder brother, Kamakhya. Unfortunately, Kamakhya was drowned while having a bath, most probably, in the Mahananda river in 1928 (incidentally, Bireshwar used to take bath in the Mahananda river throughout the year). Umashankari gave birth to a few more children aer they came back to Siliguri; none other than the youngest daughter Bela (b. 1940) survived. Neighbours, who were very fond of the Majumdar couple, urged upon them, especially Umashankari to unravel the mystery of the disappearance of Chandramohan, get aer those cousins who were apparently involved in the ‘vanishing act’ and recover her due share of the property. But the Majumdars were indifferent to these earthly objects. Back in Siliguri, Bireshwar, who was an ardent supporter of the nationalist movement led by Gandhi, became the president of the Darjeeling District Congress Committee. An epitome of patience, Umashankari, silently supported her husband in his acts and deeds. She played an important role in shaping Charu Majumdar’s life. Charu was admitted to the Siliguri Boys’ High School in the sixth standard. He was meritorious and a little maverick. In fact, one of his friends at Siliguri said, in a lighter vein though, that the environment at his house was also ‘loose and anarchic’. A teacher had caught a group of students including Charu smoking at the school hostel red-handed. All the other boys hung their heads in shame and handed over the tin container full of y sticks of Carlton cigarettes. ‘Sir, please excuse us, this won’t happen in future.’ e teacher looked at Charu, ‘What about you?’ Charu blurted out—‘Sir, they are amateurs, may give up smoking; I cannot shun away; it’s like a regular meal to me since class three. But, Sir, I promise, I will not smoke in front of you.’ Yet, he was de nitely an above-average student. Aer completing his homework, the boy, sporting baggy shorts and a spotted shirt, would take to the streets and visit one of his friends who needed help to study. But the meritorious boy did not want to get any rank. At an examination in class seven, he submitted his paper in an hour. As soon as he had come out of the hall, he met a teacher—‘What happened! I am sure, you have not answered all the questions; go inside, complete the paper, then submit.’ Charu smiled,

‘Sir, no need. Whatever answers I have written, it will secure me 40 marks; pass mark is covered; Sir, I do not want more.’ e teacher was abbergasted! is ‘anarchy’ happened on the eve of the Matriculation examination. He ranked rst in the school nal examination. Teachers hoped that Charu, if he could keep his ‘sanity’, was sure to get a scholarship. Consequently, the school would also be in the spotlight. A group of teachers had started to monitor him. A few days before the examination, it transpired that the boy had donated all his books to a needy friend. He had memorised all the textbooks. He had no aspiration of getting a scholarship but was con dent that he would secure the rst division. Hurt at this freak act, the headmaster said, ‘Well, then why are you going to secure rst division, no need.’ ‘Sir, if I don’t obtain the bare minimum rst division, my father and you, everyone will be unhappy and hurt...that’s why—’ Charu matriculated in the rst division and in 1937, to pursue his I.Sc, joined Edward College in Pabna (now in Bangladesh).   At college, Charu found an interesting milieu of a group of young students who believed in communism and dreamt of a peasant uprising against landlords and an egalitarian society. Defying the government ban imposed on the Communist Party of India, in 1934 they preached their opinions charged with passion. e youngsters were in the habit of drinking tea; hence they had made arrangements for preparing their favourite drink at the college hostel itself! With cigarettes on the lips, paused by some timely puffs, they would go on discussing history, physics, chemistry, philosophy, literature, probably any subject under the sun, for hours. Charu enjoyed their company and started devouring le-leaning books beyond formal study hours. Charu inherited this reading habit from his father Bireshwar, who was fond of English classics and poems. In their family residence at Siliguri, there was a trunk load of those books. e nal examination neared, but Charu was increasingly getting drawn towards Communism and was dying to apply the theory into practice on Indian soil. Bireshwar got a smell of it; wrote to him requesting to continue the course, at least to appear in the nal examination of I.Sc. But Charu had different plans; he distributed all his books amongst friends, stuffed a cambis bag with the rest of his belongings and came back to Siliguri in 1938.

Both the Indian Congress and the Congress Socialist Party (founded in 1934 by Jayprakash Narayan et al) were active in Siliguri. anks to the in ltration of communists in the party, it had grown its base in some rural areas of North Bengal. At that time, North Bengal included Rajshahi, Baguda, Pabna, Rangpur, Dinajpur and Jalpaiguri. Charu had been in touch with the socialists when he was in the higher classes in the school. He, along with other classmates, had hoisted the national ag of free India inside the school. It drew the attention of the police; thanks to the intervention of the headmaster, the police were not allowed to step inside the premises. Hooked by the Congress socialists, free from the shackles of college, Charu joined the party and started roaming around in the villages. In this process, he was integrating himself with the peasantry. Soon, he became the secretary of the youth wing of the local unit of the Congress Socialist Party. He had a chance meeting with a stoic, so-spoken person, Madhab Dutta, a much-respected peasant leader and a whole timer of the Communist Party of India in North Bengal. Madhab used to lead peasants’ movements in Debiganj, Boda, Pachagarh and some parts of Coochbehar estate. Wherever it was not possible to hoist the red ag of the communist party and address the peasantry, Madhab would raise the Congress tri-colour and start with antiBritish campaign but the sum and substance of his delivery would be directed against the landlord and the feudal system—exactly in line with the communist doctrine! As he was highly under the scanner of the British police, Madhab had to move from one place to another in a surreptitious manner. During one such movement, he came to Siliguri and stayed with Brajen Basu Roy Choudhuri, a doctor by profession. at’s when he heard of Charu Majumdar. Brajen babu told him that though twenty-year-old Charu was a little weird, he discussed communism with his peer group. Madhab went to the Majumdar house at Mahananda Para and met Charu. During the exchange, Charu shed out a book of Ludwig Feurbach from his cambis bag. Feurbach had in uenced generations of thinkers including Charles Darwin and Karl Marx; he was said to be the bridge between Hegel and Marx; and this boy was reading his book! Madhab was pleasantly surpised. He explained to Charu that if he was serious to work for the propagation of the communist activities, then the time was ripe; it was now or never. Madhab clari ed, as there was no party base in Siliguri, Charu would have to move to Jalpaiguri district where there were peasant zones

under the party control. e prevalent practice of the Communist party was that a new cadre had to undergo training through mass organisations and mass movements. In the process, a person could develop their ability to sacri ce and strengthen determination. As the party was the vanguard of the working class, organising those people was the core job of the party. Charu should join the peasant movement, thought Madhab. Following a substantial interaction with Madhab, Charu was convinced, ‘Yes, I shall work for the party.’ It was then decided that Charu would go to Jalpaiguri in four– ve days and meet the party secretary of the district, Sachin Dasgupta. He was provided with the detailed roadmap to Jalpaiguri and the address where Dasgupta would be available. Meanwhile, Madhab Dutta told Sachin babu and other comrades like Shibdas Lahiri of Rangpur about Charu, his family background and his education. Everyone laughed at Madhav. Even Sachin babu joined the jeering, ‘You went there for the rst time and you think that the young man will leave the steady comfort of his home and join the peasant movement? Where he will not even get the minimum daily food? It’s too good to be true.’ But to everyone’s surprise, Charu reached the Jalpaiguri address on the given date. Aer an initial round of discussions, Madhab took Charu to the Debiganj, Pachagarh areas, and acquainted him with the peasants in the party zones. While Charu was touring in villages, his parents got restless, failing to trace their only son. is news also reached Jalpaiguri. Finally, Madhav had to admonish Charu that it was already seven days that he was moving around and that he should visit the Siliguri home at the earliest; it was not fair to put the parents into trouble. Charu went home and returned to the village. Along with a comrade, he went around various party bases including Boda, Pachagarh and Debiganj, covered various places of Dooars in three months mostly on foot. ey used to take shelter in the houses of poor peasants. At times they got food; at times they starved. Sometimes, they had to lie down in the open—on the bridge over the Jaldhaka river, sometimes in cowsheds. In spite of these uncertainties and hazards, Charu, the indomitable spirit, pulled on! By 1940, Charu—a good orator, uent in Bengali, English, Hindi and Rajbangshi, the language of the local tribe— became popular amongst the ranks of the party and the peasantry in the party zones. He could feel the pulse of the peasants and carry them along

with his speech. He could weave magic with words—sometimes he made them laugh, sometimes he drove them into miserable retrospection; oen they would tremble in anger against the enemy on his call. One day, Jatin, a Rajbanshi peasant comrade, who was very fond of Charu, invited him for lunch. e peasants in North Bengal could afford to lunch on boiled rice only three months a year. Rest of the year, they mostly consumed vegetables of very poor quality and edible roots for survival. So, boiled rice was a delicacy for them! Both Charu and his comrade were townsfolk. Even at the worst of times, they never had to live without rice. But, just to integrate themselves with farmers, they had accepted the rigours of village life and were living without rice for days. Charu sprang up to his feet the moment Jatin said, ‘Got some rice, it’s getting cooked... Have lunch with us’. Charu, accompanied by a comrade, went to Jatin’s place. e area was lled with the aroma of boiled rice! e smell mesmerised them and whetted their appetite. Suddenly, Charu spotted a group of children standing at a distance, inching towards the oven with a hungry look. To shoo them away, a senior of the family came forward, ‘Hey! Clear out...not much rice is there...this is for the babus from the town...shall feed you another day...’ Charu rose from the slumber. He realised that Jatin loved them so much that he had offered them lunch depriving the children in the family! Tears lled up his bright eyes. How can he eat depriving them? ‘Give it to your children, please’, Charu said. Jatin insisted ‘No comrade, this is for you...you have to eat’. He went on pleading. By then, Charu had decided his course of action. He dragged his fellow comrade, ‘run...run fast...’. In no time, they almost disappeared from Jatin’s place. Traversing a considerable distance, they stopped. Charu said, ‘What an escape...the great escape I should say.’ His friend raised his eyebrows, ‘Why?’ Charu smiled, ‘Had Jatin pleaded once more, I would have probably given in... Oh! What hunger’. ey had a hearty laugh. In 1941, centering on Charu, a group comprising some middle-class intellectuals was formed in Siliguri. Under the leadership of Madhab Dutta and Charu Majumdar, a hand-written magazine Jagrata Krishak (Awakened Peasant) was released. People like Bhanu Chatterjee and Kshiti Basu were active, and later they helped in printing of Communist literature. Nripen Bose, Dhiren Bose and Souren Bose (who would later join the Naxalbari movement) also joined the group. Under the magnetic impulse of Charu,

many more youngsters joined the circle. Later, in 1944, they would be elevated to the party group and this would become the rst local committee of the Communist Party of India in Siliguri. In 1940–41, Charu got involved in the peasants’ struggle—the Aadhiyar movement. In the aadhiyar system, sharecroppers, or aadhiyars, were supposed to get aadha or half of the crop. But in reality, landlords grabbed the lion’s share of the aadhiyars’ produce, thereby forcing them to borrow from the same landlords at a very high rate of interest. e debt, compounded with interest, could never be repaid and the debt burdens continued to pile up. e peasants of Jalpaiguri, thus were gradually reduced to the status of serfs, led miserable lives consequently. ey took to the path of struggle as soon as they found the Communist party with them. Peasants’ association and resistance squads were formed. With their movements getting stronger, State repressions also scaled up. One day during the Aadhiyar movement, while attending a party meeting, Charu Majumdar was arrested from Jalpaiguri. e police made him walk across the road, handcuffed and a rope tied around his waist! But hardly anyone knew that in jail, a pleasant surprise was awaiting him—his father Bireshwar was imprisoned in another cell! Aer a few months, under the order of the deputy commissioner of Darjeeling, he was interned at their Siliguri home. Bireshwar also followed him. In the early 1942, Charu Majumdar earned the full- edged membership of the Communist Party of India and was already rated as an important district leader.

    

T

he Communist Party of India was the rst political organisation which, in 1924, demanded full independence for India, with even the Indian National Congress satis ed with a call for dominion status for the country within the British empire. But the party suffered from three characteristic shortcomings in its leadership. First, the CPI could not de ne its attitude towards the Congress. In spite of having a band of devoted ranks under its fold, the CPI oen tailed the Congress and could not or did not want to dislodge the latter from the leadership of national movement. In 1944, P.C. Joshi, then general secretary of the CPI, spoke of Congress leaders as the Communist leaders’ ‘political fathers’ and of his partymen as ‘Communist Congressmen’. is adjective was very apt for the CPI leaders but not for the party ranks. Second, the party suffered from indecisions, and perhaps the ‘elite’ leadership was scared of leading a revolutionary struggle involving armed uprising. Whenever any struggle assumed the revolutionary fervour, the party leadership withdrew it, leaving the frontline comrades in the lurch— exposed to repression by the rulers. It was repeated over and over again since its birth in the 1920s to the Royal Indian Navy ratings’1 uprising in 1946, a year before the transfer of power in 1947. ird, it failed to assess the depth of the spontaneous uprisings of workers and peasants that happened under the British rule. Even with all its shortcomings, the British government in India was a bit uncomfortable with the CPI. e government kept a close watch on the growth of communism since the day it had struck its root in the country soil. e government made an all-out effort to check the spread of the Marxist philosophy. At the hint of any communist activity, efforts were on to nip it in the bud. On quite a few occasions, speeches of communist leaders were branded as ‘promotion of feelings of enmity or hatred between different classes of His Majesty’s subjects’, which was punishable under section 153A of the Indian Penal Code, providing for two years’ rigorous imprisonment.

e British tried to arrest the entry of communist literature into India primarily by invoking section 19 of the Sea Customs Act, which provided that the Governor-General-in Council might prohibit the bringing of any particular class of goods into India. In 1934, the British, armed with this act, could hold up 15,000 articles of communist literature that arrived by mails. is comprised some y different papers from no less than ten different countries in Europe, Asia and America. Finally, on 23 July 1934, the Communist Party of India was declared an unlawful association by the Government of India (vide noti cation no. F7/8/34 dated 23 July 1934, Government of India, Home Department, published in the Gazette of India of 28 July 1934 and republished in the Calcutta Gazette on 9 August 1934). But, much to their chagrin, the alien rulers discovered that Marxist ideas found a place very close to the heart of a section of Indian people, especially the intelligentsia. Its ideology also impacted the Indian National Congress and the Congress Socialist Party. e Second World War began on 3 September 1939. e British sucked India into its war organisations. e CPI strongly protested it and maintained that, much against their wishes, the Indian people had been entangled into the British war efforts. e CPI resorted to strikes at different places in the country; on 2 October 1939, there was a strike in Bombay; participated by 90,000 workers, it was a grand success. e British swung into action; they invoked Defence of India ordinance, promulgated on 3 September 1939, and started arresting communists across the country. April 1940 onwards, the top-line leaders of CPI were arrested and lodged in Deoli Camp. e CPI reviewed their anti-British stance and followed the aggression of Germany under Hitler on the Soviet Russia (22 June 1941). e fatherland of communism was under siege by the German army. e international communists decided to support Russia under fascist aggression and branded the Red Army’s ght against Germany as the people’s war. e Indian Communists mechanically followed the slogan of ‘people’s war’. As the British were opposed to the German aggression, the CPI decided to shake hands with them—at a time when a wave of working class strikes swept the country, the party sacri ced all the interests of the working class, agreed for their wage freeze when prices were increasing by leaps and bounds, and persuaded workers not to strike. According to one political historian, the

slogan, ‘people’s war’, ‘was such a big bluff, a deception of the people. As a matter of fact, the communist party did not go anywhere near the people or near the war. It was a “people’s war” without the people and without war...e point is, had the CPI analysed the situation and seen what was coming, it could have easily carried a revolution.’ Instead, the CPI surrendered to the British, pledged unconditional support to the government in all its war efforts. Consequently, exactly aer eight years, the ban on the CPI was lied on 23 July 1942. A day before this noti cation, the British issued a twenty-seven-line press note hailing the CPI’s ‘change of front’ and announced, ‘...the Government of India welcome this…In order therefore that they (CPI) may function legally as a party the Government of India have decided to remove the ban on the Communist Party of India and its organs “e National Front” and “e New Age”.’ On 30 July 1942, Bankim Mukherjee, one of the leading communists in Bengal, wrote to the chief secretary, Political Department, Government of Bengal, Calcutta seeking the release of his comrades lodged in various jails across the Bengal, providing him with two separate lists of comrades. List no. 1 contained only the names of important provincial and district leaders of the Communist Party. List no. 2 contained all the so-far available names of party cadres in Bengal. Charu Majumdar, an important district leader, featured in list no. 1. Following Mukherjee’s letter, the British released all Bengal communists and the internment orders were also revoked. Meanwhile, Bireshwar Majumdar, arrested on 13 February 1942, was also released from jail in July 1942. And in August, the same year, the Congress launched ‘Quit India’ movement. Without giving out any programme, leaders went to jail. Spontaneous outbursts of people rocked the country. However, the CPI was in dilemma: should they be with the people or oppose the country-wide mass movement?   Interned at the Siliguri home, Charu buried himself in reading some important documents on the agrarian problems in India and books by Marx, Lenin, Gorky, Romand Rolland, Tolstoy, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, to name a few; of course, his favourites Rabindranath and Saratchandra were also on the list.

A voracious reader, the young Charu, realised that the party had taken a wrong path. He was busy searching for a new route. In 1943, Umashankari passed away. It was quite a distressing time for Bireshwar, twenty-three-yearold Charu and three-year-old Bela. e same year, the great Bengal famine—the manmade disaster—struck the province; millions of people died. Other than organising relief works in bits and pieces, the CPI did not issue any clear directive to its ranks, rendering sincere partymen like Charu frustrated. But Charu Majumdar did not give up. On his proposal, the party unit in Jalpaiguri launched a militant movement by the aadhiyars. e sharecropper bore most of the cost of cultivation but was entitled to a 50 per cent share of the harvest. e sharing was done in the jotedar’s grain collection yard where the harvested crop had to be transported by the aadhiyar. e lease was oral and on an annual basis. At a time when the landlords were guarding their granaries and the aadhiyars faced starvation deaths, the party raised the slogan—‘We will die from bullets but not from starvation’. e slogan became immensely popular among the rural masses. ey started seizing paddy from the landlords’ granaries and sold it at fair price through the committee. e sale proceeds were offered to the landlords. For those landlords, who refused to accept the system and went to court against them, the share was saved for the legal battle. From the end of 1944, the middle class, especially the middle-class intelligentsia in towns, took to the streets demanding the release of ‘terrorist’ prisoners in the Andaman Cellular jail. Huge processions rocked the streets. e CPI’s Siliguri unit, with the support from the comrades under Darjeeling district committee, organised a massive public meeting. Charu Majumdar was the chief architect of the meeting. Amid slogans reverberating across the venue, Charu enthralled the audience in the inaugural speech. Siliguri-dwellers had not seen this orator Charu on the rostrum ever before. e twenty- ve-year-old Charu red the imagination of the Siliguri youth. In no time Charu became their role model. In May 1945, the Soviet Red Army gave a decisive blow to Germany and captured Berlin. Following the defeat of the fascists, all the imperialists’ forces across the globe became weak. In eastern Europe, eight states including Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Albania and East Germany emerged as People’s Democratic Republics. e

freedom struggles in South-east Asia gained momentum; national liberation movements in some of the African states like Algeria, Nigeria, Tanzania, Kenya and Libya in the Middle East surged ahead; Latin American states did not lag behind either. e freedom movement of India got tremendous impetus out of the liberation wave all around. It created a base for a nation-wide mass movement. Meanwhile, the Congress leaders were freed and they went for a compromise with the British; perhaps they were planning for a peaceful transfer of power. e British captured and con ned millions of soldiers of Subhas Chandra Bose’s Indian National Army at various concentration camps in Burma. e secret trial of INA leaders began in the Red Fort, Delhi. On 21 November 1945, the Calcutta students and youth violated the government ban and staged a procession protesting the trial. e police opened re; two students —Rameshwar Banerjee and Kadam Rasul—were martyred. e British had to reduce the sentences of the defendants in the rst trial. e Congress resorted to false propaganda against the communists. But in North Bengal, they met stiff resistance from the awakened masses. Charu had to stay at the Jalpaiguri party office for three consecutive days, answering students who had fallen prey to the Congress propaganda; he lived on just dry puffed rice! But the CPI central leadership had no policy in place for the post-war period. In the face of Congress propaganda, they were appealing to the Congress itself. at’s the time a ssure was in the open— while a section believed in extending an unwavering leadership to the growing mass movements, the general secretary P.C. Joshi and his followers were in favour of avoiding any confrontation with the Congress. On 18 February 1946, the Royal Indian Navy (RIN) started a mutiny. From the initial trigger point in Bombay, the revolt spread widely and garnered spontaneous support from the masses of Calcutta to Karachi, and 20,000 sailors in 78 ships. While the CPI lent verbal support, it failed to lead the movement to a logical conclusion. In fact, on landing at the Bombay port, the RIN sailors went straight to the headquarters of the CPI and met the party leaders—‘Here you are with a revolution, now carry on with it’. e party leaders were abbergasted. ey went in search of the fathers —‘Father of the Nation’, Gandhi and the other father, Jinnah! ey wanted Gandhi and Jinnah to save India and the Communist Party! at was how

the revisionist leaders of the CPI betrayed the steaming Indian revolution. Close on the heels of the RIN mutiny, a series of strikes involving Royal Air Force, army in Jabalpur and Dehradun followed; the police in Delhi and Allahabad struck work, demanding a salary hike; the Bihar police joined in. A general strike was successfully observed across Bengal in support of post and telegraph workers. But then, there was no proper plan showing the way forward. Late 1946 onwards, under the guidance of the state communist party, peasants of Telangana (then under the Nizam’s rule), had launched an armed struggle. Peasant guerrillas fought successfully against the Razakars, the private militia of the Nizams. eir heroic battle in uenced revolutionaries like Charu Majumdar in the CPI. Back in North Bengal, the Kisan Sabha of the CPI launched Tebhaga movement. Sharecroppers would get two-third of the harvest, while the onethird was meant for the landlord. Charu led the struggle from Pachagarh—a Muslim-dominated area now in Bangladesh—an important nerve centre of the movement. He worked underground and under his guidance, a large area was transformed to semi-liberated zones. In this process, Charu earned a valuable experience which would help him later in leading the Naxalbari armed struggle. Defying severe police repression, the movement spread across the Dooars region. e plantation workers and peasants held joint rallies and seized crops of the landlords. In one such incident, peasants in the Manglabari– Neuramajhari region of Jalpaiguri district snatched ri es from the police; eleven of them died in police ring. e struggle had a positive impact on the railway workers; a strong trade union had sprung up in the Bengal– Dooars Railway (which was then a part of the East Bengal State Railway). Charu felt that in all the villages in Pachagarh, a rudimentary military command was developed; arms were all indigenous—barsha (spear), bhojali (kukri), bow and arrow. A team of peasants were vigilant on the village; conch-shells were blown at the sight of the police; peasants reaped the harvest and brought it to the panchayat yard; it would then follow the Tebhaga arithmetic before being given to the landlord. e police launched a massive repression; peasants went hiding in the adjoining forest, especially at night; womenfolk raised a defence party. e Hindu and Muslim peasants ate together from the community kitchen; the struggle united them. at

was when Charu witnessed a violent expression of class hatred. An agent of a landlord tortured a peasant woman; in retaliation, an angry young Muslim peasant, in front of many onlookers, twisted the neck of the rogue to death. Later, in one of his writings, Charu Majumdar mentioned this saga of protest. As typical of the party, at a time when the party ranks were devising the way forward against all odds, the state committee decided to withdraw the movement because the government insisted that it was for a just cause. Charu Majumdar, along with other local leaders, asserted that this was a wrong move. Instead of rolling back, the state committee should review why the landless and poor farmers could not be integrated with the struggle and guide the cadres on how to surge ahead. By issuing a mandate, the state committee then imposed its decision on comrades in Darjeeling. Comrades felt that the opportunity of a great struggle was nipped in the bud. Charu Majumdar, who had built the struggle brick by brick, suffered a severe mental setback. He knew the police would let loose a reign of terror, and so did it happen. No wonder all these bitter experiences of the revisionist leadership of the mass organisations would later drive him to take the extreme le stance, defying the need of any open mass out t. It was out of this intense agony that Charu, a leading member of the party at that time, repeatedly advised his followers later—‘Learn to hate our past; only then you will be good revolutionaries’.

  1 On 18 February 1946, a section of non-comissioned officers and sailors, known as ratings, serving in the Royal Indian Navy, mutinied against the British officers. e mutiny started as a strike by the ratings to protest against the hardships regarding pay, food and racial discrimination.

    

F

ollowing the transfer of power in August 1947, the inner party struggle sharpened. Meantime, the Joshi leadership had adopted a resolution assuring full cooperation to Congress in building the Indian republic on democratic foundations. A simmering discontent was brewing inside the party against the right opportunistic attitude of the national leadership. e second congress of the CPI, held in Calcutta from 28 February to 6 March 1948, witnessed a revolt in the ranks against the Joshi leadership. Riding on the crest of the revolt, the B.T. Ranadive group seized the power. e political thesis adopted in the congress described the transfer of power as ‘fake Independence’. Disapproving the partition, it called for revolutionary struggle in both India and Pakistan so that these nations could be amalgamated into one country; instead of people’s democratic, it analysed the stage of Indian revolution as socialist. It emphasised on armed insurrections by workers in cities. e seizure of power by armed peasants in villages would supplement the city insurrections. Prior to the congress, a full-scale underground network including office, shelter, press for the mouthpiece of the party was created. As a delegate from the Jalpaiguri district committee, Charu was present at the congress. He, along with other delegates le Calcutta and headed towards their districts in North Bengal before the congress ended. Meanwhile, immediately aer the congress, the CPI in West Bengal was declared as an illegal entity. Repressive laws were invoked, state-wide arrests ensued, the detective department set up by the British was rejuvenated. Even then, the police could not arrest the core leadership team. Defying the repressions, a band of bright young students went to Kakdwip, Bara Kamlapur and Hasnabad to hasten the revolution. A general meeting had been scheduled at the Jalpaiguri party office. Charu Majumdar and other delegates were to report the proceedings of the second congress. ereaer, they would discuss a strike proposal at tea gardens without knowing the party had already been banned. In the dead of the night, the police encircled the party office and arrested almost all in the

Jalpaiguri party! Charu was taken to Dum Dum Central Jail. He could see the stream of comrades entering through the jail gate almost every day; they were caught on ‘action’. In other states also, due to the police repression, the party had gone underground. Aer three months, a group of progressive lawyers could get the Calcutta High Court to repeal the act under which communists were incarcerated. Charu Majumdar, along with others, was freed. But the government was hell-bent on arresting them; they passed an ordinance and arrested Charu in a midnight swoop; sent him again to the Dum Dum Central Jail. e underground party xed 9 March 1949 as the date for the countrywide insurrection in one go. It opped. e party went further. Critics of the Ranadive line were suspended, expelled from the party or even murdered. At the same time, it facilitated numerous creative activities by the le intelligentsia. With the entry of the Indian Army in Telangana in September 1948, two differing views emerged in the Communist Party in Telangana. One section was in favour of calling off the struggle, while the Andhra secretariat of the party held that it was the beginning of the armed liberation struggle and that it was ‘to a great extent...similar to that of Chinese revolution.’ us, in Telangana in 1948, the Chinese tactics were posed as alternative to the Russian tactics for the rst time. e political thesis placed by the Andhra communists, popularly known as ‘Andhra Documents’, also stated that Indian revolution should aim at forming the people’s democratic republic. It laid stress on the role of peasantry, who was the axis of the revolution. However, Ranadive rejected the line advocated by the Andhra secretariat. He also criticised the Chinese tactics, branding Mao Tse-Tung as reformist and un-Marxist. Debating the Andhra Documents in the jail, Charu argued for continuance of the armed struggle. He was amazed to discover that the agrarian armed struggle, which had begun in Telangana in Hyderabad state in 1946, continued even aer the transfer of power and throughout the period of Joshi leadership. All this while the urban actions proposed by Randive failed to sustain the movement. Meanwhile, the international communist leadership sharply attacked the political line adopted in the 1948 congress. ey held—‘the path taken by the Chinese people...is the path that should be taken by the people of many

colonial and dependent countries in their struggle for national independence and people’s democracy.’ is was followed by a reorganisation of high command of the party. C. Rajeswara Rao, one of the advocates of the Chinese line, replaced Randive as the General Secretary. A new thesis was adopted by the CPI in 1951. It re ected a compromise between the rightists and leists in the party. ereaer, the rightist thoughts started gaining supremacy; the CPI policy dried more and more towards the peaceful path of parliamentarianism. In his analysis of the CPI high command, Charu Majumdar later accused them of ‘leading astray the Indian Revolutionaries whenever they were about to tread the correct path’. He added, ‘No assessment was made of the role of the peasantry in the democratic revolution. us, the party ranks were alternately led towards Right reformism and Le sectarianism and nally dragged into the morass of parliamentarianism and revisionism’. In the beginning of 1951, the Buxa jail in Dooars on the foothills of Bhutan, which had been earmarked by the British for ‘special’ prisoners but le closed till then, was re-commissioned. e rst batch of ‘ultra-le’ communists, who were transferred there, comprised Charu Majumdar. e jail had no brick and mortar wall; barbed wires de ned the boundaries; a prisoner could see the vegetation enveloping the Bhutan Mountains. Aer dusk, when the nocturnal chirp of cricket would announce the onset of the night, a sudden roar of a hill bear would make one jump! It was a thrilling experience for Charu Majumdar. Soon, ‘Charu da’ grew popular among the young comrades in the jail. Subhas Mukhopadhyay, the renowned poet, and then in the Buxa prisoners’ camp, reminisced:   …on the cement slab a group of young jail-mates had gathered...they were always immersed in discussions; from the playing of cards to the new democratic revolution...none could remain morose in front of them...suddenly, short in height, a pipe dangling from the lips, the neck swinging like a bird, with a pair of big round eyes Charu Majumdar in half pants entered, ‘what do you understand?’ As if a tough question from an erudite scholar!... e young brigade jumped, ‘we all agree...all agree...’ Charu babu was in a spot...he had to tell stories...real life reports of Tebhaga...aer some initial

hesitations the story began...a vivid account of the poor Jalpaiguri peasants, their hutments, surroundings, foods...then came the story of a simpleton Dukhanti and his aring up in Tebhaga....Charu babu had mastered the dialect of the north Bengal farmers...the characters were brought to life...had someone not spent [a] long time among them and loved them from core of the heart, [only they] could narrate in this manner...I got angry with Charu babu, why couldn’t he write these narratives...while telling stories, suddenly Charu babu would get up and depart...we craved for the company of those unseen poor Jalpaiguri peasants... (‘Kanta Tarer Beray’, Subhas Mukhopadhyay: Godyo Songroho)

  Charu Majumdar was released from jail in the end of 1951.

    

I

n his movements during Tebhaga struggle in Pachagarh and Boda areas, Charu got acquainted with Lila Sengupta. e only daughter of a district board doctor Harendranath Sengupta and Bijanbala debi, Lila was also a member of the CPI, deeply involved in the party work. Lila had migrated to Jalpaiguri before Partition. Charu developed a liking for the bold lady. She too began to nurture a so corner for the frail yet rebrand revolutionary. One ne morning, Charu and his lady love descended on the Mahananda Para home at Siliguri, to take consent from his father, Bireshwar Majumdar for their marriage. Bireshwar had never seen the lady—‘Who is she?’ —‘She is Lila...Lila Sengupta...we want to marry...have come for your permission.’ Bireshwar looked at Lila. She was well built, dark-complexioned, possibly over thirty years. Bireshwar was not impressed. Moreover, the lady belonged to a Baidya (a non-Brahmin caste) family. He looked at Charu. —‘I have already identi ed a girl from a solvent Brahmin family for you.’ —‘No baba, I have already made up my mind... I will marry Lila...that’s my decision.’ Bireshwar was agitated, but he restrained himself. He looked at Lila and started counselling her. —‘Ma, you cannot be happy if you marry this boy...he won’t do any job to earn money and will simply wander around doing political works.’ e session went on for two hours. Meanwhile, twelve-year-old Bela, who had gone to a neighbour’s place, was back. She was quite surprised to see a lady with his elder brother at their house. She looked at them cock-eyed. Lila drew Bela close, exchanged pleasantries and patted her on the back. Leaving for Jalpaiguri, the couple told Bireshwar, ‘We will get married in a few days from now’. ‘en you should get ready to see my dead face’, blurted out Bireshwar. On 9 January 1952, one of the comrades close to Charu and Lila, out of sheer fun, stuck a notice at the party office—‘ere is an important meeting

today to be held at 6pm at the house of comrade Lila Sengupta.’ Initially, Charu and Lila planned only a court marriage, thinking that inter-caste marriage was not valid according to the existing Hindu practice. But to their surprise, the Sengupta family house became the venue of the marriage. Charu was present at the house since morning. In the evening the priest arrived but was not allowed to do any elaborate ritual. e marriage was over in a jiffy. Comrades came for the 6pm ‘meeting’ and were pleasantly surprised to know of the marriage. Sweets were offered to them. Lila’s colleagues gied her a copy of hardbound Sanchayita by Rabindranath Tagore. Next morning, Charu and Lila headed for Siliguri. Lila’s two brothers arranged a hold-all bag containing the bedding set for Lila. ey found Bireshwar was sitting at the entrance. Lila paid her obeisance by pranam. Her father-in-law remained rather unmoved. Lila could not gauge his reaction. She entered the house, changed and started cleaning with a broomstick. News spread around that Charu had come back home with his newly wed bride. Within minutes, neighbours gathered at the wooden house of Majumdars. Lila wondered whether Bireshwar would touch food cooked by her. Surprising her, Bireshwar sent a big sh to the kitchen through a neighbour. Lila heaved a deep sigh of relief —so father-in-law had consent for the food cooked by her. In the aernoon, Bireshwar bought a bright silk saree from Bharati Bastralaya, a big shop on Hill Cart Road, for the bride. He gave it to Bela—‘Ask your boudi (sister-inlaw) to wear it.’ Bela followed the command. Lila came to Bireshwar, the saree in hand, ‘Baba, this is an excellent saree, but I don’t wear any other colour than white’. Bireshwar looked at her. is was a bride, a little different from the rest, ‘Alright you go to the shop tomorrow...take Bela along with you...and buy the saree of your choice’. Lila carried out his instructions. Back at the Siliguri parental home aer a long time, Charu discovered the courtyard was full of shrubs, rooms inside were ill-maintained; they bore an impression of sheer negligence. He looked at Lila—‘When we have decided to live under this roof, let us organise the rooms a bit’. ‘You don’t have to think this...in fact you won’t be able to manage it’, Lila smiled,’ I will do the needful’.

In a few days, the rooms regained lustre. Bireshwar was more than happy; as if it was the touch of Umashankari had risen from the ashes! With unabated enthusiasm in front of neighbours, he would eulogise Lila—‘My bouma is like the goddess Lakshmi’. Both Charu and Lila got their party membership transferred to Darjeeling district. e Darjeeling district comrades were very happy to get Charu among them. Charu expressed his inability to remain a whole timer of the party; however, he would do all the work assigned to him. But in reality, it was observed, Charu would not hesitate to stay at villages for a couple of days in a row. e Terai Tea Garden Workers’ Union was formed around this time with Charu Majumdar as its president. It was under the control of the CPI. Lila also commenced party work under the silent approval of Bireshwar. Prior to marriage, Charu never applied his mind on the family budget. Now, he had to take interest in it, and much to his surprise, he discovered that most of the land which Charu had inherited from his mother was sold benami (under forged documents); someone had even earned compensation by giving a portion of Charu’s plot in town to the Railways! Whatever fragments were le for Charu in 1953 had to be sold in distress, at a throwaway price; because money was needed to make both ends meet. Even in the days of such nancial constraints, Charu did not neglect the party work; rather he delved deep into it.

  

T

he third congress of the CPI was to be held at Madurai from 27 December 1953 to 4 January 1954. Charu Majumdar was selected as a delegate at the provincial conference. Close comrades were enthused at this. But the congress readopted the programme of 1951 with very minor amendment; the emphasis was on the peaceful parliamentary path. While the programme described India as the ‘last biggest dependent semi-colonial country in Asia’, the political resolution spoke of India enjoying ‘sovereignty and freedom’ and described India as a ‘neutral’ Asian nation. On return from the congress, Charu got busy in organising the peasants. Alongside the rural activities, Charu got the Siliguri intelligentsia involved in cultural activities; musical soiree, dance, plays were staged on various occasions like Rabindra–Nazrul–Sukanta birth anniversary and Poila Baishakh.   At a time when militants like Charu were busy in building a robust peasant movement in the north of Bengal, Moscow changed its colour. At the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of Soviet Union (CPSU) in February 1956, Khrushchev announced that the forms of transition to socialism need not be associated with civil war, and that the communists could come to power through a parliamentary majority. e Khrushchev thesis upheld peaceful co-existence of two systems—capitalist and socialist—with peaceful competition between them and the possibility of preventing war even when while imperialism existed. e Communist Party of China rejected this thesis and stated, ‘In the application of the policy of co-existence, struggles between the socialist and imperialist countries are unavoidable in the political, economic and ideological spheres, and it is absolutely impossible to have “all-round co-operation”.’ To Charu Majumdar, the Chinese analysis was logical. In fact, Charu was one of the Indians who came to have faith as early as 1948 in the ideological and political leadership of Mao Tse-Tung, who was then creating history by leading the Chinese people in a new democratic revolution.

  e fourth congress of the CPI, held at Palghat in Kerala in April 1956, welcomed the 20th Congress of CPSU which had repudiated Marxism– Leninism. e Palghat resolution stated that in order to realise its objective, the CPI would build a national democratic front including the PrajaSocialist Party, the Socialist Party and democratic elements inside the Congress and that it would not be an anti-Congress front. It was almost a 360-degree departure from the CPI of 1948–49! A thoroughly disgusted Charu, who was also present as a delegate, realised that the CPI had sunk deep in the morass of opportunism. His opposition to the CPI line grew acute from then on. In 1957, the party leadership asked Charu Majumdar to position at Calcutta and take up the responsibility of guiding peasants’ struggle at the state level. Majumdar never wanted to be away from the peasants and become an armchair revolutionary; so he declined the offer. An extraordinary congress of the CPI was held in Amritsar in April 1958. e party constitution stated, ‘e Communist Party of India strives to achieve full democracy and socialism by peaceful means.’ In other words, it rejected the basic tenets of Marxism–Leninism. ough the leaders were sailing on the same boat of peaceful transition, a controversy raged within the party. e issue divided the party into two factions—whether it should build a National Democratic Front (NDF) or United Democratic Front (UDF). Leaders like Ajoy Ghosh, Dange and their associates proposed NDF, while others like Promode Dasgupta, Harkishen Singh Surjeet, Jyoti Basu voted for the UDF. In absence of any other alternative, Charu supported the UDF. He was gradually growing disillusioned with the leadership of the CPI. e sixth congress of the CPI was held at Vijayawada on 7–16 April 1961. Charu Majumdar did not attend it. e political resolution it adopted was titled ‘National Democratic Front for National Democratic Tasks’. It was an authentic manifesto of NDF supporters of the party. On 20 October 1962, war broke out between India and China. It triggered a crisis in the CPI. Comrades who accused India as the aggressor were all arrested. Charu was arrested in November 1962. He was sent to Dum Dum Central Jail, lodged in a cell on the second oor, ward number 4. Demanding an improvement of the treatment meted out to prisoners, a band of communists including Charu went on hunger strike. Jail guards pounced on them and resorted to baton charge. Unarmed prisoners fought

them with kitchen utensils, clay pots and poles for the mosquito net. In their attempt to force-feed Charu, jail guards broke a series of his teeth. In the solitary con nement Charu rst tried to play patience with a deck of cards but couldn’t continue for long. He preferred to recollect those precious moments of peasants’ struggle, tea-garden workers’ struggle and rickshaw pullers’ bold protests in Siliguri. It was like a revolution on the celluloid. Spreading over an area of 300 square miles, Naxalbari, Phansidewa and Kharibari were three important rural bases in the Darjeeling district, where the peasantries comprised the tribals—Santhals, Oraons and Rajbanshis. Heavily exploited by the jotedars under the aadhiyar system, they were mainly employed under verbal contract. Disputes with landlords, some of whom were armed, over their share of crops was a regular affair. Hence to protect themselves, peasants and workers in the Naxalbari region (which included Phansidewa and Kharibari) had developed a tradition of ghting, at least from the early 1950s. In 1950, Chunilal Goala and Jogen Mukherjee attempted to set up a peasants’ organisation in Kharibari. Chunilal was a servant to a tribal leader of the party. e leader introduced Chunilal to the CPI and gave him due respect as other comrades at the party meetings. In 1949, Chunilal was jailed; on his release he went straight to his village. Jogen Mukherjee was the bankrupt owner of a ‘pice-hotel’ (cheap eatery). He used to shelter leaders when the party was banned. ey could not make much progress. However, the Goala–Mukherjee duo could rouse Jangal Saontal, Kadamlal Mullick and Khudanlal Mullick to peasants’ struggle. With the arrival of twenty-one-year-old Krishnakumar (Kanu) Sanyal, in 1951, on the scene, the movement began once again. Kanu permanently stayed in rural areas with the farmers. Charu depended on Kanu to take the agrarian movement forward. Likewise, Kanu equally banked on his Charu da for resolving various issues of the struggle. Soon, Charu became the mentor of the young team of communists including Kanu Sanyal, Khokan Majumdar, Kadam Mullick, Khudan Mullick and Jangal Saontal. e team organised peasants and workers in Kisan Sabhas (peasant unions affiliated to the West Bengal Krishak Sabha) and tea-garden workers’ unions. As peasants and workers of tea plantations were neighbours, there existed a close alliance between them. While waging action, workers and peasants,

both being tribal, would carry their traditional weapons like bows and arrows. Eventually, Charu would even advise Kanu not to be trapped in the whole-timer wage system of the party—‘Kanu, you better stay with peasants, eat what they offer; in case of urgent need of some modest sum of money, take it from them. If you can adopt these principles in your living, you will be their darling. On the contrary, if you go for being the party whole timer, no doubt, you will get a xed monthly wage but you will be viewed as a servant by a section of elite leaders.’ From 1954 onwards, peasants’ movements got impetus on certain economic demands like loans to farmers, sharing of crops, rights to land, to name a few. e peasants’ struggle had impacted the nearby tea gardens. At the call of Charu, a one-day strike at tea gardens was observed; a union was set up. To organise tea garden movements, town comrades sent money to buy three bicycles. Charu, Biren and Atin, who used the bicycles, would start off at noon and by the time they returned, the clock struck 12 am. At the tea garden meetings or village group discussions, Charu was the chief attraction. But he never spoke at the annual conferences of peasants and workers. He was always of the opinion to ‘allow the organiser peasants and workers to speak, groom them as speakers’. Charu would loiter amongst the audience, probably to read their pulse. Protesting the killing of two women and a boy by the police at the Margaret’s Hope tea garden on 25 June, workers struck work at y-six tea gardens in Darjeeling. Prior to this, a day-long strike was observed in the Terai region of Siliguri on this issue. e Darjeeling strike ended on 29 June. On 1 July, Charu Majumdar was jailed for seven days for abusing a Sub Divisional Officer in the Court on a Kharibari tea garden issue. From 29 August 1955, tea garden workers started observing general strike to press the demand for bonus. Charu led the strikers very wisely in a transparent manner. Finally, the workers got a bonus of Rs 100–130 each. With subscriptions from workers, the Union bought an old Jeep. Women could visit tea gardens and rural areas in the Naxalbari region. Charu told Lila—‘Moving around towns, you won’t understand the organisation. It would be better if you go to tea gardens and villages and have meetings with peasant and working women in the gardens.’ e twoyear-old Anita, their rst child, was also taken on such trips. Subhas

Mukhopadhyay, the poet, wrote a piece on this Union-owned vehicle Amader Gari. From the end of 1955, on Charu’s proposal, a study circle was organised for workers and peasants. In the rst session, Charu spoke on the history of the liberation movement in India and about the Communist Party. In 1956–57, the CPI shunned all militant movements; the refrain was that the goal was to be the largest opposition party in the parliament; the party shied further right. From the mid-1958, the all-pervasive food crisis triggered movements across the country. From the beginning of 1959, the country witnessed a spate of mass protests in Tamil Nadu, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Punjab. In 1959, the Terai peasant movement took a militant turn. Not content with the call of West Bengal Krishak Sabha for seizing benami lands under the possession of jotedars, a conference of the Siliguri sub-divisional krishak Samiti asked peasants to reap the harvest and store it in their own granaries. Peasants were advised to tell jotedars to furnish the proof of ownership of the lands they claimed before asking for its produce. e peasants were all armed; the struggle assumed a militant character involving clashes with jotedars’ hired ruffians and the police as well as snatching of arms. About 2000 peasants courted arrest and many were persecuted in various ways. Charu was closely involved with the struggle. However, on the basis of assurance by the government on seizure of all benami land, the struggle was withdrawn only at the instruction of the West Bengal Provincial Krishak Sabha. Charu recalled later that Kanu was not at all happy with this decision. He knew how painful it was for Kanu who nurtured the movement from day one. By 1960–61, it was quite clear to Charu that the leadership of the international communist movements had changed hands—it had gone from Moscow to Peking; Mao Tse-Tung was the new leader to follow. Charu was elected the municipal commissioner of Siliguri. Soon, he was irritated at the bureaucratic set up and the nature of job. He stopped attending the meetings; in other words, he resigned from the job. A little before this, during an acute phase of misery, he was offered an honorarium for taking party classes in Darjeeling and Siliguri. Charu simply turned down the offer saying he didn’t want to be a privileged comrade. e money would have helped him though. Because around that time there were further additions

to the family. Second daughter Madhumita, and thereaer Abhijit, their only son, was born. Charu started writing a letter. In jail, everything was to follow a format and the prisoner’s letter was no exception. On the top of the printed page, Charu wrote ‘Dum Dum Central’; at the beginning of the ruled line, on the extreme le ‘Lila’, and extreme right ‘25. 5. 63’. On 15 May, he had written the previous letter, Charu recalled. Lila had done a great act by refusing the family allowance granted for political sufferers by the government. It might be to the tune of Rs 150 per month, which could have been a real help to the family at the hour of nancial crisis. But the iron lady did not accept the assistance from the government against which Charu was ghting. Charu praised Lila for returning the sum of money because ‘it seems the Government has no transparent policy on the family allowance’. ereaer, Charu enquired about the well-being of all in the family and suggested that Abhi (Abhijit) be admitted in school so that he would feel better. In August 1963, Bireshwar Majumdar was critically ill. Lila applied for Charu’s release on parole. Bireshwar died on 26 August 1963 and the parole was granted aer that. Charu arrived in Siliguri under police escort. Accompanying the cortege, Charu’s pair of bright eyes lled up with tears —‘at old man was my best friend’. At the sudden death of a Congress MLA in Siliguri, a by-election was announced in November. e CPI elded Charu Majumdar as its candidate. e government released Charu around November. A little before his release, Promode Dasgupta had advised Charu to identify and isolate the ‘revisionist’ elements in the party in North Bengal, especially in Darjeeling and Terai region. Charu nodded and smiled. In the meantime, a leist researcher had shed out three letters signed by S.A. Dange from the collections of National Archives. While one letter was a clear undertaking by Dange that he would not commit any more offences, the other indicated that Dange might serve as a British Police agent. is widened the ssure between two factions of the CPI.

   

I

n the end of 1963, disaffected elements within the CPI were busy with theoretical discourse on revisionism, charging S.A. Dange, the Chairman of CPI, for sinking the party to right opportunism. Charu Majumdar made it clear to his followers in North Bengal, ‘e real ght against revisionism can never begin unless the peasant starts it through revolutionary practice.’ He stressed the need to take revolutionary politics among the peasantry and ‘take in hand the task of building a revolutionary party.’ Amidst a high-decibel anti-Chinese propaganda, Charu Majumdar did not change his pro-Chinese and pro-revolution stand just to win over the middle-class voters. On the contrary, he campaigned for revolutionary politics and consequently, he was defeated in the election. Yet, he garnered 3500 ballots in his favour! At a time when the contradiction between anti-revisionist and proDangeite stands was getting sharpened, the dra party programme of the CPI for its forthcoming congress was circulated amongst the comrades. To discuss the programme, a meeting of the District Committee was held at the house of Ratanlal Brahman in Darjeeling. e next morning, while walking up the steep main road, Charu suffered a heart attack. Kanu Sanyal, Biren Bose and others brought him back to his Mahananda Para home. e doctor advised complete rest for weeks. Besides occasional angina pain, Charu did not feel much difference, but the doctor recommended a consultation with a specialist. Neither the district nor the provincial committee of the CPI showed any concern for his treatment. However, at the initiative of a local comrade, a local cultural organisation, Katha O Kalam, arranged for a charity show for Majumdar and gave some money for the treatment. Members of another renowned cultural organisation in Siliguri, with whom Majumdar was attached, also extended monetary support according to their capacity. Due to his heart ailments, Charu could not attend any of the party conferences. en the split had happened. In November 1964, Indian Communists witnessed two party-congresses—leists holding one in

Calcutta, and the rightists holding a parallel one in Bombay. e former organised themselves into a separate party which came to be known as CPI (Marxist) while the latter retained the old name CPI. e CPI (M) leaders promised to make it a revolutionary party, different from the ‘revisionist’ CPI, but in reality the new party leadership refrained from spelling out their exact views on China, the Sino–Soviet ideological dispute, the role of non-aligned countries, the future of the national liberation movements and violent or non-violent forms of transition to socialism. Radicals in the CPI (M) were highly disappointed. Charu, who buried himself in political books during his recuperation break, realised the new party would also dri away from revolutionary politics. At the same time, he observed that it was signi cant that CPI (M) had emerged out of a stand against revisionism. It would release supressed initiatives in the revolutionary rank and le. He tried to crystallise his thoughts and started writing political essays, which would later be known as ‘Eight Documents’ of Charu Majumdar. From the beginning of 1965, the Congress government started arresting communists, especially those who were under the CPI (M) umbrella, across the country. Charu was not arrested in the rst batch primarily due to his absence in the party conferences. Written on 28 January 1965, in his rst document (Our Tasks in the Present Situation), Charu Majumdar analysed the reason of the large-scale arrests across the country, and stated:   is offensive against democracy has begun because of the internal and international crisis of capitalism. e Indian government has gradually become the chief political partner in the expansion of American imperialism’s hegemony of the world. e main aim of American imperialism is to establish India as the chief reactionary base in South-East Asia.   is crisis, according to Charu, would be deepened. People’s discontent would be translated into bigger struggles and   e Communist Party therefore will have to take the responsibility of leading the people’s revolutionary struggles in the coming era, and we

shall be able to carry out the responsibility successfully only when we are able to build up the party organization as a revolutionary organization.   Majumdar also presented a scaffolding of the proposed revolutionary organisation—   Every party member must form at least one Activist Group of ve. He will educate the cadres of this Activist Group in political education; every party member must see to it that no one from this group is exposed to the police; there should be an underground place for meetings of every Activist Group. If necessary, shelters for keeping one or two underground will have to be arranged; a place should be arranged for hiding secret documents; every Activist Group must have a de nite person for contacts; a member of the Activist Group should be made a member of the Party as soon as he becomes an expert in political education and work. Aer he becomes a Party member, the Activist Group must not have any contact with him. is organizational style should be rmly adhered to. is organization itself will take up the responsibility of revolutionary organization in the future.   As the basis of the Indian Revolution was in the agrarian movement, the main slogan of the political propaganda campaign, according to Majumdar, would be to highlight those factors which ensured a ‘successful agrarian revolution’. Over eight months beginning from 28 January to September 1965, Charu Majumdar exposed his core political thoughts through the second to the h document. Unfortunately, before completion of the h document, Majumdar was arrested. In the second document titled, Make the People’s Democratic Revolution Successful by Fighting against Revisionism, Majumdar spelt out the types of revisionist thinking:   e rst among revisionist thoughts is to regard ‘Krishak Sabha’ (peasants’ organization) and trade unions as the only Party activity.

Party comrades oen confuse the work of peasants’ organization and trade union with the political work of the Party...it should be remembered...that the trade union and the peasants’ organization are one of the many weapons for serving our purpose. …the true Marxists know that carrying out the Party’s political responsibility means that the nal aim of all propaganda, all movements and all organizations of the Party is to establish rmly the political power of the proletariat. It should be remembered always that if the words ‘Seizure of Political Power’ are le out, the Party no longer remains a revolutionary Party.

  Following an analysis of the Tebhaga movement, Majumdar held that the party needed to establish its leadership on mass organisations, however, ‘It should be remembered that in the coming era of struggles, the masses will have to be educated through the illegal machinery….’ What is the Source of the Spontaneous Revolutionary Outburst in India? Charu Majumdar’s third article, written on 9 April 1965, identi ed the postwar liberation movements across the globe as the fountainhead of inspiration. e toiling mass found that no imperialist force could destroy the red ag of hope uttering in Peking. Majumdar raised a call—   Yes, Comrades, today we have to speak out courageously in a bold voice before the people that it is the area-wise seizure of power that is our path. We have to make the bourgeoisie tremble by striking hardest at its weakest spots. We have to speak out before the people in a bold voice—see, how poor, backward China, within a span of sixteen years, has, with the help of the socialist structure, made its economy strong and solid. On the other hand, we have to expose this treacherous government which has, within seventeen years, turned India into a playground of imperialist exploitation. It has converted the entire Indian people into a nation of beggars to the foreigners.   e third document clearly expressed Majumdar’s preference of China’s socialistic structure to others. Meanwhile, as senior comrades of the Darjeeling committee including Kanu Sanyal were behind the bars, Charu recruited a band of new young

comrades—two of them students—for applying his theories in the rst document into practice. e team was sent to Kadam Mullick at Buraganj in the Naxalbari region to set up ve-member activist groups. ey could easily form a number of activist groups. Charu advised them—‘Make the peasantry dream that they are going to get their republic; the land will be theirs, it will be their own government, but they have to ght, and they may not live to see the end’. Charu managed to send his rst three documents to Kanu Sanyal and other members of Darjeeling District Committee in the jail. e fourth document—Carry on the Struggle against Modern Revisionism —pointed out some characteristics of revisionism including Soviet leaders’ support to Indian ruling class, narrow nationalism, the ploy to protect the exploitation by monopoly capital. Majumdar suggested some ways to ght the revisionism:   It should be remembered that no movement of the peasants on basic demands will follow a peaceful path. For a class analysis of the peasant organization and to establish the leadership of the poor and landless peasants, the peasantry should be told in clear terms that no fundamental problem of theirs can be solved with the help of any law of this reactionary government. But this does not mean that we shall not take advantage of any legal movement. e work of open peasant associations will mainly be to organize movements for gaining legal bene ts and for legal changes. So among the peasant masses the most urgent and the main task of the party will be to form party groups and explain the programme of the agrarian revolution and the tactics of area-wise seizure of power. rough this programme, the poor and landless peasants will be established in the leadership of the peasant movement... e programme of active resistance has become an absolute necessity before any mass movement. Without this programme, to organize any mass movement today means to plunge the masses in despondency...   Majumdar also stressed the need of preservation of cadres.  

 

…proper shelters and communication system are necessary. Secondly, teaching the common people the techniques of resistance, like lying down in the face of rings, or taking the help of some strong barrier, forming barricades... irdly, efforts to avenge every attack with the help of groups of active cadres...even if a little success is gained in one case, extensive propaganda will create new enthusiasm among the masses.

In this document, Charu Majumdar also outlined his views on the secret party organisation.   e h document—What Possibility the Year 1965 Is Indicating?—was a logical extension of Majumdar’s rst and the fourth documents. He called for armed resistance against the government attack—   ...in the interest of mass movements, the call should be given to the working class, the ghting peasantry and every ghting people to (1) take to arms; (2) form armed units for confrontation; (3) politically educate every armed unit. Not to give this call means pushing without any consideration the unarmed masses to death.   Before ending the document, in September 1965, Charu Majumdar was arrested and lodged in Jalpaiguri district jail. He fell ill and at the protest of his comrades including Kanu Sanyal, Souren Bose and Biren Bose in Behrampore jail, Charu was transferred to Alipore Central Jail and then to SSKM Hospital for treatment. Charu wrote a few letters to his wife from the hospital. e letters, like previous ones from Dum Dum Central Jail in 1963, had revealed a romantic person in Charu, as well as the fatherhood of Majumdar.   ...perhaps you are very busy. I dream of all of you, while lying in the bed. You know, the annular eclipse was visible in your areas. Tell Anita and Mitu (Madhumita, the second child of Majumdars) to write to me. Convey my love to Abhi, Anita and Mitu; my love for you. Charu Majumdar. (Letter dated 26 November 1965)

  To his three children Charu was jovial and friendly. He would guide them in their studies; religiously teach Anita the school arithmetic, following a debacle in her examination. He wanted them to read English novels without consulting a dictionary, to read the works of Rabindranath, Bankimchandra and Saratchandra. A great admirer of classical music, Charu regularly listened to such radio programmes. At a time when Darjeeling comrades were in jail, a wave of youth rebellion swept across the globe. e youth of France, the United States, Japan, South Vietnam and India revolted against the existing system. In India there was a spate of strikes and gheraos in the industrial sector. Along with others, Charu Majumdar was released from the jail (SSKM hospital) on 7 May 1966. On his release, Charu discussed his documents with his old comrades-inarms. At the local committee meeting, barring Biren Bose, all the remaining eighteen members agreed to Charu’s theory of area-wise seizure of power. In other words, the local committee of CPI (M) adopted Charu Majumdar’s vision. e young brigades were integrated with the senior leaders. In his sixth document titled e Main Task Today is the Struggle to Build up the True Revolutionary Party through Uncompromising Struggle against Revisionism (dated 30 August 1966, issued on behalf of Maoist Centre of the CPI), Charu Majumdar urged upon comrades to revolt against the hypocrite leadership of the CPI (M) who were ushering the party in the trap of revisionism.   e party leadership is raising the hue and cry of adventurism whenever it hears about ‘revolutionary resistance’ or ‘armed struggle’. But at the same time, they indiscriminately use the words ‘dishoarding of stocks’, ‘gherao’, ‘continuous strike’, etc. But whenever there is any talk about resisting the repression that invariably follows these struggling tactics, they regard it as adventurism. e slogan of ‘State-wide continuous strike’ is nothing but a petty-bourgeois like ultra-Leist slogan. On the one hand, this ultra-Leist slogan and on the other, in regard to the political question, a desperate desire to forge unity in the electoral eld which means acting as an appendage of the bourgeoisie.

  When Charu Majumdar triggered rumblings in the party from his Siliguri home, around 600 km away, in Calcutta, a group of senior communists including Sushital Roy Chaudhury, Saroj Datta, Parimal Dasgupta et al formed Anta Party Sangshodhan Birodhi Committee (intra-party antirevisionism committee) and raised ideological issues through various essays. Charu set up connection with the group and a state coordination committee was also formed for exchanging ideas. e anti-revisionism campaign resulted in formation of many groups in Calcutta and all over the state. Around the same time, party comrades in Andhra, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh were regrouping on ideological issues. In the second half of 1966, the state witnessed a chain of aggressive movements involving confrontation with the police. In the Terai tea gardens, workers took to militant movements. At the district secretariat meeting in Siliguri, the CPI (M) central committee member Harekrishna Konar issued a veiled threat to Charu Majumdar for doing ‘anti-party activity’. He was adequately rebuffed by Kanu Sanyal. In the end of February 1967, the West Bengal Assembly election was held. Jangal Saontal and Souren Bose were elded as the CPI (M) candidates from Phansidewa and Siliguri respectively. As on the previous occasion, revolutionary politics were preached in the electoral campaign. e rival parties of Congress, on a post-election alliance, set up United Front government in the state, but the candidates at Phansidewa and Siliguri lost the seat. A month before the election, Charu Majumdar had churned out his seventh document—Build Armed Partisan Struggle by Fighting against Revisionism. In this, Majumdar outlined his thoughts on Indian revolution. It was in this article that Charu Majumdar advocated utilising the election only for furtherance of revolutionary activities.   is era is the era of active resistance movement. Active resistance movement will open up the source of the revolutionary genius of the revolutionary masses. It will spread the tide of revolution all over India. So in this age, to lead legal trade union or peasant association movement can never be the main task before the revolutionary cadres. Trade union or peasant association (Kisan Sabha) movement

cannot be the main supplementary force in the present age of revolutionary tide. It would not be correct to draw from this the conclusion that trade unions or peasant associations have become outmoded. For trade unions and kisan sabhas are basically organisations to build up unity between Marxist-Leninist cadres and working class and peasant masses. is unity will be consolidated only when Marxist-Leninst cadres move forward in the work of building up the revolutionary party among the working class and peasant masses with the tactics of revolutionary resistance movement. …In the present era, our main task will be on the basis of three main slogans...unity of workers and peasants...the revolutionary resistance movement, armed struggle...the building up of a revolutionary Party.

  As part of their planned uprising in line with Charu’s thoughts, organisers held Siliguri sub-divisional peasant convention at Rambolajote on 18 March 1967. It was decided to establish the authority of the peasant committees in all matters of the village, get organised and be armed with the traditional weapons in order to crush the resistance of jotedars and rural reactionaries, smash the jotedar’s monopoly of ownership of land and redistribute their land through the peasant committees. e convention was presided over by Jangal Saontal, Manilal Singh and Khokan Majumdar, to name a few; also present were dear comrades to Terai peasants like Kanu Sanyal, Kadamlal Mullick, Panchanan Sarkar, Keshab Sarkar and Santi Munda. e call roused the peasantry. ey joined the krishak samiti in thousands as never before and many of them became whole-time workers. From March 1967 to April 1967, all the villages were organised. More than 15,000 peasants were enrolled as full-time activists. Peasant committees were formed at every village; dharmagolas (commune granaries for the revolting peasant) were set up for securing food to be had during the days of struggle. In April 1967, Charu Majumdar released his eighth document—Carry Forward the Peasant Struggle by Fighting Revisionism. In this, Majumdar once again exposed the real character of the CPI (M) leadership which professed a communist movement.  

In the post-election period our apprehensions are being proved correct by the actions of the party (CPI-M) leadership itself. e politburo has directed us to ‘carry on the struggle to defend the nonCongress ministries against reaction’. is suggests that the main task of Marxists is not to intensify the class struggle, but to plead on behalf of the Cabinet. …Again and again the unrest among the peasants of India has burst forth. ey have repeatedly sought guidance from the Communist Party. We have not told them that the politics of armed struggle and the gun-collection campaign constitute the only path. is path is the path of the working class, the path of liberation, the path of establishing a society free from exploitation.

  Around this time, on 13 April 1967, Charu Majumdar stressed on a few points in a meeting with cadres. He insisted that the time was already ripe for revolution; India had turned into a dynamite and one would realise its explosive power once the fuse was on. He called for snatching of arms but warned that the enemy would not spare them. He said:   We shall always have to decide—on whose side or against which side we are. We are always on the side of poor and landless peasants. If there is a con ict of interests between the middle peasants on the one hand and the landless peasant on the other, we will certainly be on the side of the landless peasant. If there is a con ict of interests between the middle peasant and the rich peasant, we will then be on the side of the middle peasant...   On expressing his thoughts through eight documents, Charu Majumdar wanted them to be vetted by the Chinese Communist Party. But how would it be sent to them? A Nepalese comrade Krishna Bhakta Sharma came forward. Carrying some Chana Chhatu (chickpea our) and documents in his haversack, he took an adventurous trip by foot through snow-capped slippery mountains and a good number of streams. He escaped the clutch of the Khampas, the tibetan dacoits, as also the Nepali Police before being caught by the People’s Liberation Army in China, who then ushered him to the Chinese party office. It took him y-two days to reach there.

On 7 May at Bandarjhuli, a joint meeting of workers and peasants reiterated the call of 18 March. ey decided not to allow the police to enter into villages, to snatch arms from jotedars and arm the peasant force, and to set all the land documents of landlords on re. By May 1967, the rebels could establish their strongholds—Hatighisha under the Naxalbari police station, Buraganj under the Kharibari police station and Chowpukhuria under the Phansidewa police station. From 8 May, much to the chagrin of Harekrishna Konar, then the central committee member of the CPI (M) and land & land revenue minister of the fourteen-party united front government in West Bengal, the peasants were out to implement the decisions. In hundreds, armed with bows, arrows and spears, they raided the house of several landlords, seized their land documents and snatched their guns. ey held open trials and punished a few of them. Only one landlord, Nagen Roy Chowdhury, a notorious one, who opened re on the peasants and injured some of them, got killed by peasants following the death sentence by the people’s court. e Naxalbari upsurge burst into the Terai and it went on in full rage. e landlords and tea gardeners ganged up to evict the sharecroppers. In spite of a court judgement favouring Bigul Kisan, a sharecropper was attacked for eviction by the gardeners of Sanyasisthan Tea Estate. On 9 May, workers forcibly took possession of the land previously grabbed by the owners. For garnering support from the common people of towns, especially the intelligentsia, against this unjust act, Charu Majumdar draed a text for a lea et—Terai er krishaker Pokshe Daran (Support the Peasants of Terai Region)—printed for circulation. A few copies of the same also reached Calcutta. Shyamal Nandi, a Calcutta comrade, arranged to print it in thousands. Due to some technical reason, and to save time, the original lea et which was printed in black ink, was re-produced in red. e lea et (dated 20 May 1967) was distributed in the city under the signature of Jangal Saontal and came to be known as Jangal Saontaler Lal Lea et (the red lea et of Jangal Saontal).   e police tried to enter into villages a number of times and set up camps in and around Naxalbari region. Yet, the state armed force could not make any headway for more than two months aer 18 March.

Aer some time, the police renewed their effort to enter the villages. First, they tried to enter through Jamidarguri but met with resistance from both men and women who chased them away. On 19 May, the state force crossed the boundary of Bijoynagar tea garden and advanced towards a village. Around 700 peasants thwarted their move. e police made a similar effort on 22 and 23 May, but their attempt was foiled again. On 24 May 1967, the police could push their way through Barajharujote, where they were confronted by a mob of about 300, armed with bows, arrows, spears, sticks, etc. Scared at this, the officer-in-charge sought reinforcement from the Naxalbari police station. Led by Inspector Sonam Wangdi, the reinforcement created a stir among the peasants. A eenmember squad asked the police party for ‘hands up’; they raised their hands. As the team was to search the police whether they had hidden arms with them, a section of aggrieved peasants rushed towards the police and started shooting arrows. Wangdi received three or four arrow shots and fell down unconscious; he nally expired at Siliguri hospital in the same night. In retaliation, on 25 May, a truckload of armed police entered villages like Jaisingh jote, Dayaram jote ghughujhora and Bangaijote before they killed eleven persons including peasant women and a child at Prasadujote village. As the incidents of 24th and 25th had happened at Barajharujote, Bangaijote and Prasadujote, which were under the Naxalbari police station, the upsurge came to fame under the name Naxalbari. But Prasadujote was under Kharibari police station. e murder of women took place just at the border of Naxalbari and Kharibari police stations. Even aer this genocide, the courageous peasants of Naxalbari put up a brave front and continued with their struggle. Finally, on 5 July, revealing the true colour of communists in the government, the police let loose a severe repression code, named ‘Operation Crossbow’. e entire area of the struggle was encircled by a huge contingent of the armed police and paramilitary forces; police camps were set up in villages; combing operations were on; and the order to shoot Kanu Sanyal at sight was issued. By 20 July, Jangal Saontal and some other leaders of the Naxalbari peasants were arrested. Several followers also surrendered by the end of the month. Unable to stay safe in villages, seven of Charu’s followers including Kanu, Khokan, Khudan, Keshab, Phani, Kamakhya and Deepak had to take refuge in Dalka forest on 2 September. ey starved for about thirty- ve hours

before Charu Majumdar could rescue and drop the team to the safe house of Mukti Singh, whom Charu had known since Tebhaga days in Pachagarh. ereaer, four of the team, including Kanu Sanyal, Khokan Majumdar, Khudan Mullick and Deepak Biswas, headed for China secretly. ough an apparent lull had descended on Naxalbari, the waves of the historic upsurge had travelled far and wide.

  

I

n the city, students and youth had been vying for jobs, sending applications along with postal orders to government departments almost every day. ey were tired of listening to the verbiage of the mainstream le politics. e middle-class patriarch, dripping with sweat, quietly stood in the queue to collect his quota of rice from the ration shop. e le intelligentsia belonging to dissident groups like Anta Party Sangshodhanbad Birodhi Committee, Chinta, Commune, Surya Sen Group, etc. in the CPI (M) were increasingly becoming disenchanted with run of the mill political activities happening around. Just then, the news of Naxalbari struggle came to them as a breath of fresh air. ereaer, a series of developments ensued in quick succession. Sushital Roychoudhuri, a member of the West Bengal State Committee of the CPI (M), went to Siliguri and had a discussion with Charu Majumdar on the Naxalbari uprising. Primarily at his initiative, on 14 June 1967, the Naxalbari O Krishak Sangram Sahayak Committee (Committee in aid of Naxalbari and Peasant struggles) was formed at a convention held in Rammohun Library Hall in Calcutta. Promode Sengupta was elected president of the committee; Sushital Roychoudhuri and Satyananda Bhattacharya as vice presidents and Parimal Dasgupta as the secretary. e committee endeavoured to garner support for Naxalbari and propagate its revolutionary politics. It organised numerous meetings in Calcutta and districts of West Bengal, held a workers’ convention besides a food convention on 2 September 1967, since the crisis of food was acute at that time. e Committee was reorganised at a meeting on 21 August—two more vice presidents (Narayan Das, Abani Roy) and three assistant secretaries (Saibal Mitra, Asit Sen and Tarak Das) were added. It was decided to have district representatives in the committee. e CPI (M) resorted to expulsion of its senior members who leaned towards Naxalbari. At its state committee meeting on 20 June 1967, the party expelled nineteen of its members—Sushital Roy Chowdhury topped the list, followed by Parimal Dasgupta. No sooner had the rst phase of

expulsion happened than both Promode Sengupta and Saroj Datta were ousted. Charu Majumdar, Souren Bose, along with three others, were expelled in the second phase on 7 September 1967. Kanu Sanyal and Jangal Saontal joined the list soon. Subsequently, a great purge or resignation from the party across the country followed. In some of the states, the entire committee started supporting the Naxalbari way of struggle. Immediately aer their ouster from the CPI (M), Naxalbari comrades got a reason to celebrate. On 28 June 1967, the Radio Peking described the Naxalbari incident as the ‘front paw of the revolutionary armed struggle launched by the Indian people under the guidance of Mao Tse-Tung,’ and dubbed the United Front Government as a ‘tool of the Indian reactionaries to deceive the people.’ It was further bolstered by an editorial—‘Spring under over India’—in the People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the central committee of the Communist Party of China published on 5 July 1967. In its opening paragraph, the piece stated:   A peal of spring thunder has crashed over the land of India. Revolutionary peasants in the Darjeeling area have risen in rebellion. Under the leadership of a revolutionary group of the Indian Communist Party, a red area of rural revolutionary armed struggle has been established in India. is is a development of tremendous signi cance for the Indian people’s revolutionary struggle.   e article concluded:   ...no matter how well the imperialists, Indian reactionaries and the modern revisionists may co-operate in their sabotage and suppression, the torch of armed struggle lighted by the revolutionaries in the Indian Communist Party and the revolutionary peasants in Darjeeling will not be put out. ‘A single spark can start a prairie re’. e spark in Darjeeling will start a prairie re and will certainly set the vast expanses of India ablaze.   On 6 July 1967, Deshabrati, the weekly tabloid of pro-Naxalite revolutionaries hit the stands. It took up the cause of Indian revolutionaries, disseminating valuable information on militant movements at home and

abroad and organised cultural activities supporting the revolutionary struggle of Naxalbari peasants. It was around this time Ajit Pandey came to fame for his historic song—Tarai Kande Go (Terai is wailing)—dedicating to the martyrs of Naxalbari. Both Utpal Dutt and Jochhan Dastidar, renowned actors, playwright and directors, were regular speakers at mass meetings. Following his visit to the Naxalbari region, Utpal Dutt composed a serious play, Teer (e Arrow), the inaugural show of which was held at Minerva theatre on 16 December 1967. Ten days aer the show, Utpal Dutt was arrested under Preventive Detention Act from Bombay and was incarcerated. Meanwhile, by the end of June 1967, a West Bengal State Coordination Committee of communist revolutionaries was set up to facilitate unhindered ow of communications. However, the activities of the coordination committee and the Naxalbari O Krishak Sangram Sahayak Committee were mostly similar. As in West Bengal, the call of Naxalbari had inspired revolutionaries of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Bihar, Delhi, Orissa, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Jammu and Kashmir, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh to support the peasants’ struggle in the Terai region. Consequently, they had a tiff with the modern revisionist leadership of the party. For adding to the list of dissidents of the CPI (M) across the country and to exchange ideas on the way forward, the revolutionaries thought of a new platform. While Charu was recovering from illness at his Siliguri home, journalists ocked to his place for sensational stories from the brain behind the upsurge. Majumdar was untiring in brie ng them about the armed struggle and keeping things in perspective. With the media coverage, both Charu Majumdar and Naxalbari became synonymous and a familiar name to revolutionaries. Radical students, who were active in the food movement in 1966, formed an All Bengal Students Committee, hailing the Naxalbari upsurge. Some students of the North Bengal University stood by the peasants in their struggle and helped them in getting out hoards of rice and paddy from the jotedars’ houses. Following the martyrdom of peasant women at Prasadujote, the radical students of Presidency College, in the CPI (M), put up posters in the College Street areas yelling—‘Murderer Ajoy Mukherjee must Resign!’

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Russian revolution of 1917, under the auspices of Naxalbari O Krishak Sangram Sahayak Committee, a meeting was convened on 11 November 1967 at the Monument Ground in central Calcutta. Presided by Promode Sengupta, the meeting witnessed a host of speakers including Charu Majumdar, Parimal Dasgupta, Satyananda Bhattacharya, Shiv Kumar Mishra, Satyanarayan Sinha (SNS), Sushital Roy Chowdhury, Saibal Mitra, L. Appu, Ramlal and Utpal Dutt. As both Kanu Sanyal and Khokan Majumdar were in China, and Jangal Saontal in prison, they could not attend the meeting. e last speaker was Charu Majumdar, who had arrived that very evening. His frail body trembling from weakness, Majumdar, propped up by Saroj Datta on his le and Sushital Roy Chowdhury on his right, made the briefest possible speech. Greeting the crowd, an emotionally choked Charu Majumdar said, ‘Please excuse me, for, I cannot deliver any speech. I know you consider me as the leader of Naxalbari. You want to know from me about the Naxalbari peasants’ struggle. But I am not the leader of the struggle. e leaders of Naxalbari are Comrade Kanu Sanyal, Comrade Jangal Saontal, Comrade Khokan Majumdar, Comrade Kadam Mullick and many more peasants.’ e next two days, on 12–13 November, representatives from seven states —Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, Karnataka, Bihar, Orissa and West Bengal—met at Sushital Roy Chowdhury’s place in Ultadanga, where Charu had camped himself. Finally, on 13 November, the like-minded comrades in the CPI (M) decided to form an All India Coordination Committee of revolutionaries and issued a declaration underlying four main tasks—   a. To develop and coordinate militant and revolutionary struggles at all levels, specially peasant struggles of the Naxalbari-type under the leadership of the working class. b. To develop militant, revolutionary struggles of the working class and other toiling people; combat economism and orient these struggles towards agrarian revolution. c. To wage an uncompromising ideological struggle against revisionism and neo-revisionism and to popularise the thought of Comrade Mao TseTung, and to unite on this basis all revolutionary elements, within and outside the party.

d. To undertake preparations of a revolutionary programme and tactical line, based on concrete analysis of the Indian situation in the light of Comrade Mao Tse-tung’s thought.   Charu Majumdar was arrested again from his Siliguri residence at around 4:30am on 22 November 1967, just a few hours aer the United Front Cabinet was dismissed by the governor. Dr Prafulla Ghosh was to form the ministry under the written support from the Congress. Charu fell ill in Jalpaiguri jail. e heart ailments aggravated. He was transferred to Jalpaiguri hospital. e specialist doctor advised the authorities to release him; otherwise the situation might turn worse threatening his life. Charu Majumdar was released from jail on 9 December 1967. e All India Coordination Committee of the revolutionaries of the CPI (M) met on the eve of the rst anniversary of the Naxalbari peasant uprising and reviewed the developments since its rst meeting six months ago. In view of the changed situation, the committee issued a fresh declaration on 14 May 1968 and changed its name to All India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries (AICCCR); the earlier tail of CPI (M) was cut off! e fresh declaration identi ed both CPI and CPI (M) as the ‘enemies of the Indian people’; and maintained, ‘is is the era of Chairman Mao TseTung when imperialism is on the eve of its nal collapse and socialism is marching towards its ultimate, worldwide victory’. At its meeting in May 1968, the AICCCR also adopted a resolution to boycott elections. However, with the campaign for boycott, it was decided to ‘mobilise and organise people in revolutionary class battles’ and ‘try to build up the Naxalbari type of movement leading to People’s Democratic Revolution.’ roughout the period of 1968–69, the communist revolutionaries in All India Coordination Committee propagated their ideology through the committee mouthpieces—Deshabrati and Liberation. ere was a spate of extensive revolutionary struggles in different parts of India—Telengana and Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh, Mushahari in Bihar and Lakhimpur in Uttar pradesh. In Naxalbari, too, the silence set since July 1967 was gradually being broken. On 7 September 1968, a courageous leader, Babulal Biswakarmakar, was killed near Birsingjote, following a four-hour gun duel with the police. en, a jotedar was killed in Kharibari. With the arrest of

Kanu Sanyal on 30 October 1968, the legendary hero of Naxalbari, who had returned from China by then, there was again a set back. But by and large there was optimism among the followers of Naxalbari struggle across the country. In ve out of his eleven writings from November 1967 to March 1969, Charu Majumdar stressed the need to form a revolutionary party.   ...revolution can never succeed without a revolutionary party—a party which is rmly rooted in the thoughts of Chairman Mao Tsetung, a party composed of millions of workers, peasants and middleclass youth inspired by the ideal of self-sacri ce; a party that guarantees full inner-party democratic right to criticism and selfcriticism and whose members freely and voluntarily abide by its discipline; a party that allows its members to act not only under orders from the above but to judge each directive with full freedom and even to defy wrong directives in the interest of the revolution; a party which ensures voluntary job-division to every member who attaches equal importance to all sorts of jobs ranging from high to low; the party whose members put into practice the Marxism – Leninist ideals in their own lives and, by practicing the ideals themselves, inspire the masses to make greater self-sacri ce and to take greater initiative in revolutionary activities; the party whose members never despair under any circumstances and are not cowed by any predicament but resolutely march forward to overcome it. Only a party like this can build a united front of people of different classes, holding different views in this country. Only a revolutionary party like this can lead the Indian revolution to success (It is Time to Build up a Revolutionary Party)   To organize this new-democratic revolution and lead it to victory we need a party of the working class, a Communist Party, whose political ideology will be Marxism-Leninism and its highest development— the thought of Mao Tse-tung. But how can such a party be built? Could we perhaps gather together the various so-called Marxists who profess the thought of Chairman Mao Tse-tung and revolt against the leadership of their party, and declare that a Maoist party has been

 

 

formed? ...merely raising the banner of revolt is not enough to build up a Maoist party. ese rebel comrades must apply in practice the thought of the Chairman and must thereby train up worker and peasant cadres. Only then can we claim to have made progress in building up a genuine Maoist party. (e Indian People’s Democratic Revolution)   ...the working class as the leader and the middle class as a revolutionary class must unite with the peasantry. It is precisely this unity which we call the united front. is is the only Marxist understanding of the united front. e united front can be built up only in the course of an armed struggle led by a revolutionary party. And only such a revolutionary party can unite the uprisings of various nationalities. (e United front and the Revolutionary Party) In India, today, we must combine revolutionary theory with revolutionary practice. e Party must immediately start building up areas of peasants’ armed struggle in the rural areas. So, in order to combine theory with practice we must learn how to make class analysis of the peasants and establish the Party among the poor and landless peasants who constitute the main force of the agrarian revolution... Such a revolutionary party will not be a party to ght election campaigns, nor will it be based in the cities. A revolutionary party can never be an open party, nor can its main concern be to publish Party papers etc., nor can it depend on the revolutionary intellectuals. e revolutionary party must depend on the workers and the poor and landless peasants. Peasant struggles and secret organizations must be built up with the villages as their bases. (Undertake the Work of Building a Revolutionary Party) ‘...It is by following the leadership of the Co-ordination Committee that revolutionaries in different states of India have tried to build up peasant struggles on the Naxalbari line and succeeded in doing so in many parts of the country. is has led to the formation of a centre accepted by the revolutionaries. at is why the international

leadership (China) has been reminding us time and again of the importance of building up a Party. We too realize today that it is no longer possible for the Co-ordination Committee to lead these struggles on the correct line. erefore, we must have a revolutionary Communist Party which will be an all-India organization. It is by following its lead that the revolutionary communists of the different states can advance along the path of class struggle...’ (Why must We Form the Party Now?)   About two months before the mid-term election of the state assembly held on 9 February 1969, AICCCR urged upon the mass to boycott the election. Charu Majumdar wrote one of his famous articles setting out the strategy of the organisation—‘Boycott Election—International Signi cance of the Slogan’. To him, in an era when imperialism was heading towards total collapse, revolutionary struggle had taken the form of armed struggle and world revolution had already entered a new higher phase, where socialism was marching towards victory of the parliamentary road.’ In one of his writings in this phase, ‘To my comrades’, Charu Majumdar clearly advocated for raising the peasant movements through their economic demands, stressing the need of formulating common slogans on economic demands. ‘For, without this, broad sections of the peasantry cannot be drawn into the movement’, their hatred against their class enemy cannot be sustained. “Seize the coming crops” is a slogan which must be propagated from this moment’.   e second united front formed the government on 25 February 1969 and released Kanu Sanyal on 9 April 1969. In early 1969, Charu Majumdar was critically ill; heart ailments compounded. Doctors had given up hope for his survival. But somehow, he could tide over the crisis and le for Calcutta for treatment. In February 1969, with a slight improvement in his health, Majumdar visited Visakhapatnam. e overt reason for the trip was rest and recuperation, while the covert agenda was to meet Andhra comrades. On his return, based on his experience, he wrote ‘Srikakulam—will it be the Yenan of India?’—a piece that echoed Majumdar’s throbbing emotion:  

As the time came for me to leave, I suddenly felt sad. Who knows whether I shall again meet these comrades? ey are revolutionary comrades who are dedicated and not afraid to make even the supreme sacri ce. ey are going back from this meeting to plunge into the struggle again, and nobody knows who would survive. But one thing I know—the people of India will never forget them. Suddenly the India that is enveloped in darkness vanished, and I saw before me my motherland India, a vigorous, throbbing India, sparkling in the bright sunshine; People’s Democratic India, Socialist India!

  At a time when Calcutta was reeling under power cuts, groaning in the sweltering heat of summer, and tired rickshaw pullers somehow plodding through, Kanu Sanyal announced the formation of Communist Party of India (Marxist–Leninist) out of the womb of AICCCR at a public meeting at Monument ground, on ursday, 1 May 1969. In fact, following a four-day meeting of AICCCR from 19 April, the coordination committee had adopted a resolution to this effect on 22 April, which marked the birth centenary of Lenin. With this, AICCCR was dissolved, aer a Central Organising Committee was set up to hold a party congress at the appropriate time. e new party got the Chinese Communist Party’s recognition very soon. In 1970, the CPI (ML) activities hit the zenith. eir footprints had set in the districts of Chotanagpur, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Assam, Tripura and West Bengal, where peasant comrades had already launched a struggle in the Naxalbari way since the AICCCR days of the party. Barring Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh, DebraGopiballavpur and Birbhum in West Bengal, where peasant guerrillas successfully fought the police, paramilitary and military forces for some time and set up semi-liberated zones, CPI (ML) revolutionaries in other areas too annihilated class enemies, snatched ri es from the police camps and stood rm against the police atrocities. In early 1970, China applauded the struggle in Srikakulam in Peking Review—‘Like a beacon light, the red revolutionary area which has come into being in Srikakulam, Andhra Pradesh, is shining brightly on the woestricken land of India.’ While narrating the history of struggle in

Srikakulam, the article mentioned, ‘Charu Majumdar, the leader of the CPI (ML), personally kindled the ames of the armed struggle in Srikakulam.’ e essay added, ‘e CPI (ML) has now more than 100 guerrilla squads under its leadership...turned 300 villages into a red area and set up preliminary organs of people’s political power...’. As in Srikakulam and Naxalbari, in Gopiballavpur and Debra also, people’s court were set up, where select landlords and moneylenders were punished. For the rst time in the history of communist movement in India, the CPI (ML) added two features to it—youth revolt in towns and struggle in prisons.

 —

I

n 1970, his followers found a proli c writer in Charu Majumdar. At least twelve of his forty writings from August 1969–January 1972 red the imagination of comrades, especially the students and youth. e headlines of these essays would later nd a permanent place in the global literary scenario. e struggle launched by students and youth in early 1970 rapidly spread to other cities and towns in West Bengal and its neighbouring states. Apart from participation in annihilation of the police and snatching ri es, the youth and students also started an iconoclastic campaign. It began with Gandhi–Nehru followed by other leaders of the ‘Bengal Renaissance’—Ram Mohan Roy, Vidyasagar, Vivekananda, etc. and then engulfed Subhas Chandra Bose, Prafulla Chandra Roy; even Rabindranath Tagore was not spared. e youth and student judged the ‘household names’ by one yardstick—were they on the side of the Indian people’s genuine struggle for freedom or they stood behind the imperialist forces? Inspired by the peasants’ struggles in Naxalbari and Srikakulam, they went for re-evaluation of the textbook of history and cultural issues; the subaltern studies came to the fore. Besides idol smashing, the students also resorted to book burning, destruction of science laboratories and force the authorities to cancel examinations. Although these programmes were not on the party agenda, Saroj Datta rst welcomed the action in Deshabrati. All other leaders including Charu Majumdar supported it; however, Sushital Roy Chowdhury opposed it.

  

T

he young comrades brought even prisons to the centre of revolt. Following the decision of the party, imprisoned comrades neither opted for release on bail nor did they put up any legal defence. e only way of earning freedom was by escaping from jail. Between December 1970 and November 1972, there were at least eighteen incidents of jail break— fourteen in West Bengal and four in Bihar. Comrades incarcerated in all the infamous jails including Midnapur Central, Kurseong, Siliguri, Behrampore, Dum Dum Central, Suri, Bankipur Central, Alipore Special, Coochbehar, Hazaribag, Asansol, Burdwan, Alipore Central, Jalpaiguri, Hooghly, Bankura and Purulia joined in the challenging ght against the state power, reducing the latter to triviality. Attempts of escaping from prison and prison vans led to clashes, causing deaths to many comrades and serious injuries to many others. Valiant comrades who started viewing the jails as struggle areas like villages, fought to their last and escaped to freedom, short-lived though. Almost in a biblical cadence, Charu Majumdar asked comrades to ‘avenge the massacre in prison’ (Deshabrati, 20 May 1971). On a similar note he urged upon the comrades to ‘avenge the massacre in Midnapur Jail’ (Liberation, September–December 1970); he hailed the struggling ‘comrades behind prison bars’ (Liberation January–March 1971).

     –

T

he thoughts of Charu Majumdar between 1970 and 1971 showed a clear dri from his earlier expressions and writings in 1965–1967. Contrary to his earlier thoughts, in this period, he was laying more thrust on annihilation of class enemies and snatching of ri es. He focussed solely on the leadership of landless and poor peasants. Mass organisations were shunned and emphasis was laid on secret guerrilla actions, thereby establishing peasants’ political power in the countryside. In two of his immensely popular writings in this phase—‘China’s Chairman is our Chairman: China’s Path is Our Path’ (Deshabrati, 6 November 1969) and ‘Make the 1970s the Decade of Liberation’ (Liberation, February 1970), Charu Majumdar revealed his new orientation. In the rst article, while nding the Indian social pattern very similar to pre-1949 China, Majumdar observed, ‘Guerrilla warfare is and will remain the basic form of struggle for the entire period of democratic revolution.’ Majumdar’s concept of forming a democratic front involving all classes of allies of revolution (workers, poor and landless peasants, middle peasants, section of rich peasants, petty bourgeoisie and bourgeois intellectuals, smalland middle-level bourgeoisie) was also unique. To him, for establishing the red political power, none other than worker–peasant combine was required. In the second article, Charu Majumdar strongly advocated for annihilation:   e battle of annihilation, started by our party and led by the poor and landless peasants, must be carried forward for the establishment of Red political power in various areas, and must spread to every state and throughout India... Let us not indulge in aimless political propaganda; the political propaganda must serve the aim of carrying out successfully the battle of annihilation.   Charu Majumdar repeated this view at the rst and the only party congress of CPI (ML) in mid-May 1970, when, he spoke about the ‘New Man’, among

others. All the stress was laid on ‘annihilation’. Only through the annihilation campaign, Majumdar emphasised, could the new man be created—‘the new man who will defy death and will be free from all the thought of self-interest.’ He also justi ed the ‘unnecessary’ sacri ces (the issue which his critics were to raise later) as he believed only the blood of martyrs can bring victory.   ese in ammatory writings of Charu Majumdar had the potential of tonnes of gunpowder and it burst forth on the Indian subcontinent in the 1970s. e toiling people of the country including the students and youth had joined in the festival of masses, the other name of which was the Naxalite revolution!

 

F

ollowing the Sino–Indian border dispute in 1962, the Communist Party of India (CPI) had experienced turbulence inside. A section of the party was of the opinion that China had not attacked India; they were defending themselves. Even Bertrand Russell did not brand China as the aggressor. A pro-China group in CPI had sprung up. Some of them were attached with Swadhinata, the official Bengali mouthpiece of CPI. e group in Swadhinata was on the lookout for a separate organ. Sometime in August 1963, Howrah Hitaishi, a local periodical from Howrah, was made available to the pro-China group in CPI; it was rechristened as Deshahitaishi. Led by Mohit Moitra, the editorial team including Sushital Ray Choudhury, Niranjan Basu, Saroj Datta, Sudhangshu Dasgupta, to name a few, had run the periodical. Following the split in CPI, Deshahitaishi had become the CPI (M) mouthpiece (just aer the 7th congress of the party) and started supporting the leist movement across the country. In 1965, the autumn number of the periodical was banned by the state government for carrying an essay, ‘Sangramer Ekti Dik’ (One facet of the struggle), by Utpal Dutt, the legendary actor, director, playwright. Apprehending a total ban on the party organ, a few members associated with Deshahitaishi, then conceived a new monthly, Deshabrati, and got it registered. To ful l routine formalities, it declared Sushital Ray Choudhury as the president of the editorial board, Gopal Majumdar, c/o Pashupati Dasgupta, as editor, printer, publisher. Under this declaration, Deshabrati, the monthly, debuted in Agrahayan 1372 (November–December, 1965). Its preface stated—‘e centenary day of the French scholar Romand Rolland falls in January 1966. e rst issue of Deshabrati has been dedicated to his noble memory’. e magazine contained articles of Promode Sengupta, Hridayranjan Mullick and reproduced three essays by Romand Rolland. e centrist group (equidistant from both China and Russia) in the CPI (M) were a bit uncomfortable at the militant stance of Deshahitaishi; to counter it they introduced Ganashakti. But the latter could not cut much ice. ey were out to wrest the control of the organ by dubious means.

Sudhangshu Dasgupta, their mole in the magazine, was touted as the editor of Deshahitaishi; however, the editorial team was not disturbed barring Mohit Moitra, who was made ‘in charge’! In the meantime, the Naxalbari upsurge happened. But all the articles (by Saroj Datta, Niranjan Basu and others) supporting the peasant struggle were shot down by Sudhangshu Dasgupta (who represented the centrist lobby—Jyoti Basu–Promode Dasgupta combine). Incidentally, Sudhangshu Dasgupta was not arrested in 1962, when most of the important leaders and a good number of not-soknown workers of CPI were all arrested. ereaer, on 28 June 1967, with the help of a group of ruffians making lightning attack on the office of Deshahitaishi on Dhramtala Road, the Naxalbari Group in the periodical were ousted. Like a perfect dictator, the cigar-chewing party boss Promode Dasgupta resorted to expulsion of Naxalbari supporters at every level, one by one, on frivolous grounds. No political debate was encouraged. At one point, even Utpal Dutt had to incur the boss’s wrath for supporting the Naxalbari struggle. e West Bengal state committee of CPI (M), through a noti cation in Ganashakti, ‘requested’ (read ‘warned’) its ranks and supporters not to invite Dutt or his Little eatre Group at any of their meetings or cultural events!  

Weekly Deshabrati

A new-look Deshabrati, then converted to a weekly, debuted on the ursday, 6 July 1967. From its inaugural number, it became the voice of the Naxalbari group against the official group within the CPI (M). Soon all the expelled members of CPI (M) and silent sympathisers of Naxalbari upsurge in and outside CPI (M) rallied round the weekly. A chunk of buyers of Deshahitaishi soon switched their loyalty to the new weekly. Under the stewardship of Sushital Ray Choudhury (chairman of the editorial board) and Saroj Datta (in fact, Saroj Datta was the life force of the weekly; he was the editor) and with the support from Niranjan Basu (manager of Deshabrati Prakashani), Santosh Basu, Nemai Ghosh, Gopal Majumdar, Dhiren Chakraborty, Gautam Bandyopadhyay and a few others, the weekly grew to be a vibrant periodical in no time. In fact, all 5000 copies of the rst issue were sold on the very rst day. Another 5500 copies were printed. All the issues were exhausted much

before its next issue came out on 13 July 1967. Deshabrati was rst identi ed as the AICCCR mouthpiece in November 1967, when the coordination platform had sprouted. It then became the party organ when CPI (ML) roared its existence on 1 May 1969 at the Monument ground near Esplanade. e weekly rendered invaluable support to Naxalbari politics. Besides the Naxalbari struggle, which had drawn revolutionaries of the other states on the battle eld, it also published reports of other struggles—of workers, peasants, students and youth, office employees. Any kind of militant struggle against the State found a reverberation in the weekly. Almost all the articles by Charu Majumdar were published in it with due prominence. Kanu Sanyal’s famous Terai Report was also given its due pride of place. Later, when the party went on super militant mode, the weekly too, in line with the stance of the party, reported the accounts of annihilation—across the state; across the country. e last ‘legal’ issue of Deshabrati, published on 23 April 1970, carried ‘Khatamer Khatiyan’, a list of annihilations done across the state along with a map where the actions were executed. With its in ammatory language and colloquial style, the ‘Patrikar Duniyay’ column ran by Sasanka (Saroj Datta) became a super hit. Many of the Naxalite ranks used to read the column rst before reading the rest of the paper. e Deshabrati office was raided and sealed by the police on 27 April 1970. e excitement of the 1970s, the fervour of communist revolutionaries, the smell of their sweat and blood and the history of a glorious period lay frozen in the pages of Deshabrati.  

Liberation

At one of the weekly meetings of the editorial board of Deshabrati, in September 1967, it was decided to bring out an organ in English— Liberation. e name was suggested by Saroj Datta. Prof. Suniti Kumar Ghosh was entrusted with the responsibility of editing it. Subhas Ghosh, a person introduced by Saroj Datta, lent an unstinted support to Suniti as long as the journal was published legally. ereaer, in the end of 1970, Bhabani Roychoudhuri joined in the team. Sushital Roy Choudhury was the editorin-chief.

Aer formation of AICCCR of CPI (M), Liberation, like Deshabrati, also became AICCCR’s central organ before it was annexed to the CPI (ML). Liberation received greetings from Marxist–Leninist parties of Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Britain and East Pakistan (Bangladesh); the Communist Party of China extended a generous welcome to the newly born journal. More oen than not the Radio Peking quoted lines from it. Some of Charu Majumdar’s articles were also reprinted in Peking Review. True to its pledge, Liberation supported the just political and ideological struggles against the state, both at home and abroad. Besides all the y-six important articles of Charu Majumdar, which monitored the course of Naxalite struggle, the journal covered a wide range of subjects like ‘Mao TseTung’s philosophical contributions...US and Soviet exploitation of and aggression against different nations...the nature of Soviet “aid” in India...the nature of Parliamentary democracy in India’, among others. At one point, hundreds of copies of Liberation went to subscribers and agents abroad—in the UK, the USA, Hongkong, Ireland, Canada, etc. e last legal issue of Liberation clocked a circulation of 4000 copies, while Deshabrati recorded a new high—40,000 copies. Following the raid on the office and printing press of Liberation, both Deshabrati weekly and Deshabrati Prakashani went underground. e publication of Deshabrati was decentralised. But Liberation continued to be published from one centre. However, the old set-up which would see the journal through the press and was responsible for its circulation, disappeared. Friends, who assisted the journal through contribution or otherwise, dried away. Arranging for a press under the police surveillance was difficult. e journal became irregular; its circulation had dwindled to a little above 1000 copies.   Besides Deshabrati and Liberation, there was a Hindi weekly—Deshabrati Hindi, later Lok-Yuddh—published from Calcutta. Along the same lines as Deshabrati, party organs appeared in other states (eg. Puratchikanal in Tamil).  

Chinese Literature

From 1968 to early 1970, various Chinese literature and periodicals (published by the Foreign Languages Press, Peking, and printed in the People’s Republic of China) found a way into Calcutta. Under cover, these were distributed through the New Book Centre (owned by Suren Datta) in central Calcutta. Earlier, in the 1950s, thanks to the National Book Agency, the Chinese literature hit the Calcutta market (eg. Stories of the Long March, 1958), but in the late 1960s it reached out to a wider audience.  

e Red Book and Tinti Lekha: ree Writings of Mao

Charu Majumdar advised upcoming young comrades to go through e Red Book and his three writings over and over again. With these two books in hand, Majumdar believed, young comrades should go to villages and implement its teachings. Classi ed thematically into 33 chapters, e Red Book consisted of 427 select quotations of Mao borrowed from 4-volume works. Tinti Lekha is a collection of three articles—‘In Memory of Norman Bethune’, ‘Serve the People’, ‘e Foolish Old Man Who Removed the Mountains’.   All these literatures had immensely helped many believe more in Charu Majumdar’s path of revolution. e urban guerrillas resorted to writing on the walls. Soon, it turned out to be an effective tool of communications of Naxalite political thoughts. Political graffiti on the walls of Calcutta and suburbs screamed—Sattorer Dashok ke Muktir Dashoke Porinato Karun (Make 1970s the Decade of Liberation), Banduker Naal thekei Kshamota Beriye Aase (Power comes out of the Barrel of the Gun), Chin-er Chairman Amader Chairman, Chin-er Path Amader Path (China’s Chairman is Our Chairman, China’s Path is Our Path), 1975 Saaler Modhyei Bharatbosher Koti Koti Janata Muktir Mohakabya Rachona Korben (By the End of 1975, Hundreds of Millions of Indian People will Complete Writing the Great Epic of their Liberation).   During the annihilation (of jotedars, usurers and police) and ri e-snatching campaign, these wall writings (one of which was Pulish Maro, Astro Karo—

Kill the Police and Capture their Weapons) had made some parts of Calcutta, its suburbs and some other pockets of Bihar, Orissa and Andhra look like a red-liberated zone.

 

T

he police force, at least the Calcutta Police, was not prepared to face the annihilation and ri e-snatching campaign launched by the Naxalite guerrillas. e combined impact of annihilation of police personnel, throwing of bombs on police vans and murder of informers le the Calcutta Police stunned and on the defensive at the initial stage. Beginning from 1971, the city police strived hard to strengthen its defence mechanism. With the support from the paramilitary and military forces lent by the central government, the city police started consolidating its combat strength from the last quarter of 1970. On 28 July 1971, K.C. Pant, the then minister of state for home affairs stated in the parliament that eighty-seven companies of the Central Reserve Police (CRP) had been sent to West Bengal. is was in addition to the Border Security Force (BSF) and Eastern Frontier Ri es (EFR) personnel already posted there. A number of repressive laws were either revived or enacted to provide the police with legal teeth for ruthless repression of the Naxalite movement. Provisions of a colonial legislation, Bengal Suppression of Terrorist Outrages Act of 1936, were revived on 10 September 1970 to be made applicable against the Naxalites. In November that year, the President of India gave accent to a new bill, the West Bengal Prevention of Violent Activities Bill, which gave wide powers, including arrest without warrant, to the police. Commenting on the West Bengal Prevention of Violent Activities Act, Peter Evans, a legal expert of international repute said that the act was much more cruel for internees in West Bengal than the decrees of the military dictatorship of Uganda were to its victims. In 1971, another repressive law— the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA)—replaced the Prevention of Violent Activities Act. Besides draconian laws, the unchained police force was adequately encouraged to liquidate Naxalites through ‘encounters’. e City police raised ‘resistance groups’, ‘guerilla squads’ comprising lumpen proletariat and the police guerrilla soldiers were paid handsome allowances. Each of them was given ‘a gun and was authorized to shoot down Naxals—of course

always in self-defence.’ Several thousand police guerrilla soldiers were believed to have been posted all over the city. In the late 1960s, when the Naxalite movement spread to Andhra Pradesh, the then home minister of the state, J Vengal Rao, had virtually licensed the police to kill any suspect with Naxalite connections. In the process, on 26– 27 May 1969, youth leaders like Panchadi Krishnamurthy, Dr Chaganti Bhaskar Rao and six others had been eliminated by the Andhra Police. On 10 July 1970, senior leaders of Andhra like Vempatapu Satyanarayana, Adibhatla Kailasam along with Panchadi Nirmala (wife of Panchadi Krisnamurthy), Subbarao Panigrahi (leist poet) were also exterminated. In 1971, this practice had crossed the borders of Andhra and was followed in all other states where the Naxalites raised their heads. e sole motive was to kill the enemy by any means. Legal procedures were given a go by. On getting a green signal from the top, a section of the police force happily turned Calcutta and its suburbs into their hunting ground. An alleged ‘encounter and torture specialist’ at the Calcutta Police, Ranajit (Runu) Guha Niyogi, then a sub-inspector, would later receive the President’s Award (Police Medal) for his ‘gallant conduct’ shown in those days. According to eyewitnesses, the armed police used to raid Naxalite hideouts in north or east Calcutta, select some young boys (who were suspected to be Naxalites), make them stand in a single le and then riddle them with bullets. is scene was enacted in the city over and over again in 1970–71. On 25 September 1970, the police killed four young men in the College Street area of central Calcutta. Following the arrest of eleven young men from central Calcutta on 19 November 1970, the police took the captives to Barasat, 25 km off Calcutta, and killed them. In the early hours of the next day, the police raided a housing estate at Beliaghata, east Calcutta, captured four young men and shot them dead. Soon aer, the police once again killed ve youngsters in broad daylight at Beliaghata. In a statement, Jyotirmoy Bosu and three other MPs said that they had ‘...received letters at Delhi from a sanyasi, who sits in one of the burning ghats in Calcutta. He mentioned in his letter that every day at night he watches the policemen coming between midnight and early morning and burn bodies of young people, aged between 14 and 30.’ But all these deeds were surpassed by the Cossipur–Baranagar carnage on 12 and 13 August 1971, when the so-called

resistance groups, in collusion with the police, butchered more than 150 boys. Saroj Datta, secretary of the West Bengal state committee of CPI (ML), a member of its central committee and Politburo and editor of Deshabrati, became a victim of a cold-blooded murder, when he was taken to the office of the deputy commissioner, Special Branch at Lord Sinha Road, Calcutta, by the police mercenaries on 4–5 August 1971, the very night they captured him. (Interestingly, aer a few months the deputy commissioner was transferred to Delhi and elevated to a higher grade.) Alongside the liquidation, a (paid) news campaign against the Naxalites, equating them with criminals, was launched in the mainstream media; however, it did not cut much ice. As there was no mass organisation to take up the cause of the Naxalites, a sizeable section of the middle and lower middle class in the city, suburbs and the district towns remained silent sympathisers. Naxalites’ over-emphasis on their leaning towards the Communist Party of China had also alienated them from a section of the middle class that was, otherwise, not happy with the prevalent inequality in India. A few years aer mass liquidation of youth across the country, N.G. Goray, a member of parliament belonging to the socialist party, questioned at Rajya Sabha, ‘...I would like to ask you, “How many people have your police and your Border Security Police killed by shooting innocent people?” Will you please publish your records and say how many times aer Independence, police opened re and how many people were killed?’ ‘...in West Bengal’, he observed, ‘the nest ower of youth has been liquidated under the pretext that they belonged to the “Naxalites”.’ However, dissensions in the CPI (ML), in ltration of the lumpenproletariat in the party and series of clashes between the ranks of the CPI (ML) and CPI (M) were increasingly weakening the Naxalite movement in the city. Armed with superior weapons, the Calcutta Police was quick to take advantage of these weak spots of the party. In fact, from early 1971, the city police began to gain a grip of the situation. It was praised by the Director General of Border Security Force, Shri Rustamji, who, in a note to the Calcutta police commissioner, said   I certainly have a good deal of admiration for the manner in which you and your officers and men have reacted to the situation in

 

Calcutta. I can well imagine the difficulties that all of you have faced, and the serious problems that have confronted you at every step. I hope you are now feeling the satisfaction of having turned the situation in your favour aer a good deal of work and sacri ce. Please accept my humble tribute to all those in Calcutta who have laid down their lives in the course of duty, and have faced serious hardships.’ (Vide Calcutta Police Gazette, 14 January 1971) (e letter was read out to all ranks in the city police)

In a further effort to rejuvenate the police, aer having distributed a ‘...large number of revolvers’ to its ‘officers and men’, the Calcutta Police authorities took steps to educate them on ‘safety precautions’ and ‘Do’s and Don’ts’ visa-vis arms. Accordingly, the additional commissioner of Police issued a communication containing eight-point safety precaution measures and sixpoint do’s and don’ts in January 1971. Around the same time, the commissioner of Calcutta Police warned his ranks—‘Any loss of weapon and ammunition will be most severely punished.’ In other words, an effort was still on to further improve the efficiency of the city police force. (Vide Calcutta Police Gazette, 19 January 1971)   Following the 1971 elections, particularly in the second half of the year, the Calcutta Police, in collaboration with the Indian Army and the Central Reserve Police, increased its offensive against Naxalites. According to Lt. General Aurora, GOC-in-C, eastern command, ‘We moved roughly three divisions (approximately 40,000–50,000 men) to West Bengal for the purpose (that the mid-term elections in March 1971 were not upset by Naxalites). e elections went off peacefully but we retained the troops to help the civilian authorities combat Naxalite violence.’ (vide e Naxalite Movement by Sankar Ghosh).   Regular combing of suspected areas, predawn raid on houses, and extermination of sympathisers–supporters of the CPI (ML) by the police became a part of the city life. According to police sources, between March 1970 and August 1971, a total 1783 CPI (ML) supporters and members were killed in Calcutta and the city suburbs. Later investigators claimed the gure was at least double. Between May and December 1971, the police had

opened re on Naxalite prisoners in at least six jails in West Bengal. e newly elected Congress Government also fuelled the counter-revolutionary activities to a great extent. Gripped by the ‘Naxalphobia’, the police resorted to shooting down unarmed naxalites lodged in various jails. On 17 December 1970, at least eight prisoners were killed and sixty injured when the police opened re in the Midnapore Central Jail, where the revolutionaries of Debra and Gopiballavpur were lodged. Two more were killed, and sixty injured, when the police again resorted to ring in the same jail on 4 February the next year. On the same day, the police opened re in Presidency Jail, Calcutta, wounding twenty-four prisoners. On 21 February, again ten died and sixtytwo were injured in police ring in Berhampore Jail. In response, Charu Mazumdar called upon his followers to avenge every murder of his comrades. In an amazing show of fearlessness, they gave everything to put their leader’s theory into practice. But the unequal battle between a better-armed police force and ill-equipped Naxalite in the city did not last for long. By the second quarter of 1972, the movement unleashed by the urban guerrillas in the city had suffered a setback. e number of city shelters for communist guerillas dwindled in the face of police raids; the sympathiser-base eroded as the movement degenerated into a swirl of senseless killings and the much-touted annihilation programme began to wane without yielding any signi cant result. As reported in various issues of the CPG, the number of CPI (ML) actions in the city went down in 1972– 73. If the series of police–military actions was the primary reason for the downturn of the Naxalite movement in the country, the other important reason lay in the combat planning; the party’s military strategy was absent. At the emotional call of Charu Majumdar to avenge murders of comrades by murders, the Naxalite guerrilla, the daring young men pounced upon policemen, killed them, snatched away their ri es, and in the process, many lost their lives. One of the comrades, Ashim Chatterjee had then rightly asked, ‘Why shouldn’t we have the courage to seriously consider whether it was necessary to sacri ce all the lives of heroes in Calcutta?’ It is he who had earlier reported in July 1971: ‘In spite of annihilating 120 class enemies (in rural areas), in spite of our ceaseless efforts, in our guerrilla band the number of landless and poor peasants has not increased. Initially, the large

peasant masses that came forward have been reduced to passive sympathizers.’ Besides, this question pointed out a serious aw in the thesis of Charu Majumdar, which was not properly addressed. Commenting on Charu Majumdar’s underestimation of the enemy strength and strategy, a critic pointed out, ‘...the one-sided stress on political propaganda excluding military training led rst to the imperfect development of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA); secondly, to a naive underestimation of the military strength of the enemy; and nally, to a supercilious indifference to the necessity and possibility of politicizing the Indian troops and winning them over.’ Combined with these weaknesses, the growing factional ghts within the party, which erupted since the end of 1971, further weakened the organisation. From early 1972, the dissidents’ voice grew louder than ever before.

   

L

ike in any other political party or organisation, there were voices of dissent both in AICCCR and CPI (ML) and Majumdar did not handle some of these wisely. It began with Promode Sengupta, the President of Naxalbari O Krishak Sangram Sahayak Committee (formed on 14 June 1967). Later, he became an important member of All India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries (AICCCR). In both the capacities, Mr Sengupta, who was close to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose when in Germany, addressed many public meetings propagating the ideology of agrarian revolution. Being a knowledgeable person in international politics and history, he started writing serially ‘A New Assessment of the History of the CPI’, in Liberation. Promode Sengupta did not approve of the AICCCR decision to boycott the parliamentary election (adopted on 14 May 1968) which was taken without much discussion. When Mr Sengupta reached the venue of the meeting in the evening, it was already over. ‘Charu Majumdar told him in a persuasive manner that the AICCCR had adopted the resolution on the boycott of elections, but that if it proved wrong, it would be changed. Sengupta spoke not a word but dissociated himself from the organisation’, chronicled Prof. Suniti Kumar Ghosh. Following this, Mr Sengupta had submitted articles for Liberation for three more months and then he ceased to write for the mouthpiece of AICCCR. Later in 2009, Suniti Kumar Ghosh, the central committee member of CPI (ML), close to Charu Majumdar, observed, ‘It was possible to work together (with Sengupta). At one of the sessions of Communist International, communist delegates from some countries of Western Europe wanted to leave the International because they wanted to boycott parliamentary elections while Lenin wanted that the elections should be made use of for revolutionary purposes. Lenin said that with all their differences on this issue, they could work together within the Communist international. ere was no need to break away on this issue. Such exibility in tactics on non-

antagonistic issues was very rare among the communist revolutionaries (in AICCCR) and this cost the organisation much.’   Divided in sixteen chapters, in his book Biplab Kon Pathe (published on 1 May 1970; translated into English by Dr Tanika Sarkar), Promode Sengupta clearly spelt out his views on Charu Majumdar and his brand of politics.   ...Lenin had boycotted elections in one situation and in a different situation, had taken part in it...opportunity has to be provided for a discussion of both the views, comrades have to discuss both at every level and then take a decision. But the Co-ordination Committee did not do so. e boycott decision was imposed in a bureaucratic manner from above and leaders also used many dishonest devices to enforce this decision. e article that Stalin once wrote in support of election boycott in Russia appeared in the Deshabrati, but it remained silent about all the later articles that he had written advocating participation in elections. Is this not extreme opportunism?   Mr Sengupta had also found ‘arrogance’ in Charubabu.   ...e arrogance of Charubabu and Sasankababu (Saroj Datta) comes partly from their assumption that the revolution is their monopoly, no one else is a revolutionary except them. Such arrogance is one main enemy of revolutionaries. Mao has warned revolutionaries repeatedly—‘it is wrong to think of oneself as the only revolutionary.’ Mao Tse-Tung, right from the beginning followed a policy which assumed that there are many revolutionaries and their friends in the country who must all be uni ed to attack the real enemy.   With the attack of Czechoslovakia by the rulers of Soviet Union, the difference with Parimal Dasgupta had surfaced. Czechoslovakia was then controlled by two super powers—USSR and the USA. On the night of 20–21 August 1968, the rulers of the then Soviet Union and its four accomplices— East Germany, Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria—made a surprise attack on Czechoslovakia with the intention to occupy it. rough various means like Warsaw pact and Comecon (the Council of Mutual Economic Aid), the

Soviet rulers were actively trying to increase their sphere of in uence and military domination in the Eastern Europe. In 1968, the pro-Soviet Novotny group in Czechoslovakia was thrown out of power by the pro-US Dubcek clique. Dubcek challenged the Soviet hegemony and sought to move into the US orbit and receive aid (i.e. the US loans). e Soviet wouldn’t allow that to happen; hence they invaded Czechoslovakia. Both the US and USSR, as per the assessment of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the majority of Indian revolutionaries under the AICCCR umbrella, were branded as ‘Imperialists’. While the US was a pure imperialist, the USSR had degraded itself to a social imperialist (socialists in words, imperialists in deeds). Both Deshabrati and Liberation condemned the invasion, but Parimal Dasgupta opposed the Deshabrati editorial on the attack of Czechoslovakia. He was of the opinion that the Soviet Union, degenerated though, had attacked Czechoslovakia just to protect its socialist gains; he refused to condemn the Soviet invasion. Despite the fact, as a member of AICCCR, who never disagreed with the organisation’s declaration of May 1968 branding the Soviet Union as the enemy of the Indian people and a revisionist force on the earth, Parimal Dasgupta took a complete U-turn following the Soviet invasion of an independent country. Further, he criticised AICCCR for neglecting trade union work. When Mr Dasgupta’s analysis was rejected, he le AICCCR and formed a separate coordination committee. Refuting Dasgupta’s allegation of neglecting trade union work, Charu Majumdar wrote...‘if one admits that there prevails a revolutionary situation in India, then it must be admitted that the task today in India is to build up the party, not a mass organisation...’ However, to many Marxists, this was also a deviation from Marxism, Leninism and Mao Tse-Tung thought. Due to some ‘basic differences’, at its meeting on 7 February 1969, AICCCR adopted a resolution disaffiliating the Andhra Pradesh State Coordination Committee (APSCC) headed by T. Nagi Reddy but maintained that the latter’s members would be treated as ‘friends and comrades’ outside the AICCCR, and relations with them would be ‘nonantagonistic’. e ‘ rst and foremost’ allegation, according to AICCCR, was that the Andhra Coordination Committee was not loyal to the Communist Party of

China. It stemmed from the fact that Nagi Reddy had issued a press statement on a Kerala incident (a popular attack was made on the Tellichery police station on 22 November 1968 under the leadership of Kunnikal Narayanan and his daughter Ajitha to register a protest against the injustice meted out to Adivasis in the Pulapalli areas), which was at variance with the CPC observation.Despite the Chinese comrades’ ‘clear and categorial’ support to the Kerala incident, Nagi Reddi did not ‘revise’ his stand. Secondly, the AICCCR held that instead of ‘owning and glorifying’ the struggle at Srikakulam, the Andhra Coordination Committee had lent it a ‘most lukewarm support’. e third issue was on the ‘Boycott of Elections’. While the AICCCR considered election boycott to be the basic political line for an entire epoch, the Andhra Committee regarded it ‘as a matter of tactics’. Moreover, Nagi Reddy did not adhere to the earlier AICCCR resolution by not resigning from the Andhra State Assembly within the stipulated time of two months from October 1968 (Reddy resigned from the Assembly on 11 March 1969, more than a month aer this disaffiliation saga). e warm relationship which had begun in October 1968 ended in a whimper on 7 February 1969. Later, Suniti Kumar Ghosh assessed, ‘...we (followers of Charu Majumdar) were guilty of close-doorism, which cost us as well as the Andhra comrades much.’   e formation of CPI (ML) triggered another controversy among the revolutionaries in the coordination committee. A number of active supporters and functionaries felt that the decision to form the party was being taken in haste and in an undemocratic manner, without seeking the views of all the units of the committee. Asit Sen, who had presided over the May Day rally, from where the birth of CPI (ML) was announced, said on record that he got the ‘organisational dra’ very late and did not receive the ‘political programme’ of the party till the last. He was also of the opinion that though the armed struggle in some parts of the country had begun, yet all the pre-conditions of a revolutionary party had not developed till then. He held, ‘e working class, which is the main component of a revolutionary party is still completely isolated from the present armed struggle’. Incidentally, he was opposed to publication of the translated

version of Charu Majumdar’s piece, Parimal Babur Rajniti (e Politics of Parimal Babu),which appeared in Ghatana Prabaha, in Liberation (July 1969). Following these differences, Asit Sen gradually distanced himself from the party. Next in the line was Satyanarain Singh. A few months aer the party congress of CPI (ML) held in mid-May 1970, the Bihar State Committee headed by SNS submitted a document titled, ‘e New Upsurge and Combating Le Opportunism on Some Questions’. Singh had also written to Charu Majumdar asking him to delete the statement that the US invasion of Cambodia marked the beginning of the third world war, from the political organisational report adopted unanimously at the party meet and Charu Babu’s speech on it. As the documents were not published till then, it should be done so that it conformed to Mao Tse-Tung’s declaration of 20 May 1970, where, he addressing the ‘people of the world’ had stated, ‘e danger of a new world war still exists, and the people of all countries must get prepared. But revolution is the main trend in the world today.’ Instead of tampering with both the documents, which were unanimously (including Satyanarain Singh) adopted at the mid-May meeting, Charu Majumdar issued a separate statement titled ‘Chairman’s call of May 20 Ushers in a New Age’. It was published simultaneously with both the documents. e statement had clari ed, ‘By invading Cambodia, the US imperialism has spread its war aggression to the whole Indo–China, as a preparation for the ird World War.’ Charu Majumdar did not want to change unilaterally a document which was agreed upon by all his comrades. Interestingly, much later, in ‘Problems of Indian Revolution and NeoTrotskyite Deviations: Report’, SNS and his fellow travellers claimed that at the mid-May party congress, comrades from Bihar ‘...warned that “Charu and his followers” wanted to establish a parallel line in the international communist movement’ and that their apprehensions had been fully con rmed as the ‘Charu clique was preaching its own line on the question of the third world war and taking this line as the theoretical basis of its practical activities.’ e claim of ‘warning’ at the party meet, according to Prof. Suniti Kumar Ghosh ‘...was ction—not a fact’. However, the ‘le opportunist’ document presented by Satyanarain Singh correctly stressed the uneven and protracted character of the Indian revolution and criticised the leist trend of making no distinction between

the struggle in the town and that in the rural areas. e document was in favour of guerrilla actions of a defensive nature in the town, where rousing and quietly organising the masses were of importance. It also rightly criticised Charu Majumdar’s observation of the period as an ‘era of self-sacri ce’. According to the document, there was no era exclusive of self-sacri ce. War means preserving oneself to defeat the enemy. Selfpreservation and self-sacri ce are like two sides of the same coin. e document also correctly criticised authoritarianism in the party and absence of collective functioning (which raised its ugly head with the Souren Bose thesis of early 1970 branding Charu Majumdar as the ‘revolutionary authority’). Charu Majumdar refuted all the charges levelled by Satyanarain Singh. However, he dried away. In early November 1971, SNS convened a meeting of like-minded comrades. ey formed a parallel CPI (ML); the meeting expelled Charu Majumdar and Prof. Suniti Kumar Ghosh and elected Satyanarain Singh as the General Secretary of the new entity. Singh, as per Suniti Kumar Ghosh’s assessment, ‘…had political ambitions but no political integrity’. Aer the mid-May party-meet, Sushital Ray Choudhury (SRC), secretary of the West Bengal State of the party, initiated criticism of certain features of the student-youth movement. In October 1970, he submitted a document (popularly known as Purna’s Dalil). In this he strongly criticised the attacks on educational institutions, breaking of furniture, damage to laboratories and disrupting examinations. He termed them as Luddite type of actions which were aimed to destroy machines, triggered out of an economic crisis, following Napoleonic wars. He also criticised the destruction of portraits and statues of some famous personalities of the 19th century including Ram Mohan Roy, Vidyasagar, Rabindranath Tagore, Vivekananda, Acharya Prafulla Chandra Roy and Gandhi. While criticising these ‘actions’ of the youth and students, SRC did not receive any support from his comrades in the state or the central committee. In fact, following this criticism, he was isolated. In the state committee meeting in January 1971, he maintained that he would place the approved views of the state committee and in case he was asked his own views, he

would express them too. At this, some members passed ippant remarks and demanded his expulsion. But Charu Majumdar intervened to prevent this. SRC passed away in March 1971. Before his death, he could nish an article titled ‘Resist the Ultra-adventurist Trend Raising Its Head in Our Party’. e document held that the party had begun well under the leadership of Charu Majumdar but subsequently Majumdar changed the party line. Initially, it was decided that the Indian revolution would be protracted, but later, Charu Majumdar proclaimed the revolution would triumph by 1975. e task of arousing and mobilising the masses in the revolution through class struggle was neglected. Economic struggle, a part of the approved programme, was shooed away. e task of building a united front of allied classes was not undertaken; instead some of the potential allies were targets of annihilation campaign. To Charu Majumdar, ‘annihilation’ meant killing whereas for Mao Tse-Tung, it was to deprive the enemy of ‘the power to resist’. e party suffered immense losses by trying to create ‘red terror’ in urban areas. e party committees did not function, as a result of which Charu Majumdar had centralised all powers to himself. e formation of a people’s army was announced by Majumdar without any consultation with party comrades. Authoritarianism had reached its height. ough Charu Majumdar issued a brief rebuttal negating the SRC document (Purna’s Dalil) presented in October 1970 and he could carry the majority with him, yet the words of SRC acted as a whistle-blower and made a few comrades and supporters sit up and think. Worried at the uneasy silence of the Chinese Communist Party (CPC) on CPI (ML) activities a little before its mid-May party meet, it was decided to send a three-member team (Souren Bose, Saroj Datta and Suniti Kumar Ghosh) to Peking for discussion with them. But Datta and Ghosh could not make it. Hence Souren Bose alone le for China via London and Tirana in end-August 1970. Chinese Premier Chou En-lai and the CPC’s politburo member Kang Sheng met Bose on 29 October 1970. According to Souren Bose, he was asked by the Chinese comrades not to take notes or to put in writing anything about the interview before reaching India. He still jotted down some notes in his Peking hotel and those were developed into a report aer he returned to Calcutta, a month aer the interview with the Chinese

leaders. Assuming it was, by and large, a faithful report, the Chinese leaders criticised CPI (ML) on some basic issues. Chou En-lai stressed the fact that all communist parties were equal. e concept of a patriarchal party did not conform to Mao’s thoughts. It was not right to refer to China’s Chairman as the Chairman of CPI (ML). e mass line should be pursued and the party should be puri ed thorough criticism and self-criticism in absence of which it was sure to deviate from the right path. e building of a united front was a process which needed to be followed at different stages of the struggle. e aim should be to include all those whom it was possible to win over and to neutralise some of whom it was not possible to do so. It was not a correct observation that the united front of the allied forces and groups could be formed following seizure of powers in several areas. Kang Sheng, who had spoken aer Chou En-lai, also held that it was wrong to call China’s Chairman Mao the leader of CPI (ML). Some of Charu Majumdar’s formulations about mass organisations, mass movements and trade unions were not correct. He clari ed that Lin Piao’s idea, ‘guerrilla warfare is the only way’, followed by CPI (ML), referred speci cally to military matters, when two armies were of unequal strength. e ‘annihilation of class enemy’, which was actually assassination by secret groups, was dangerous; China had an agrarian programme on the basis of which the CPC had mobilised the peasantry in the struggle for seizure of power. Likewise, Kang Sheng suggested, the CPI (ML) should have an agrarian policy, replace the secret squads by an army raised step by step. However, he appreciated the Naxalbari struggle, its spread to other areas, members’ heroism, the party’s stand against revisionism and imperialism, its support to China’s cultural revolution, and deep respect for Mao Tse-Tung thoughts. He recalled that Mao Tse-Tung had said that the CPI (ML) was India’s hope. He also maintained that the general orientation of CPI (ML) was proper but some policies were wrong; those needed correction, not in a hasty manner, without hurting the sentiment of masses and robbing of their enthusiasm but in phases. But unfortunately, these suggestions of CPC leaders were not placed for discussion inside the party, not even with the leading team, with the tacit support of Saroj Datta and Souren Bose, and of course due to Charu

Majumdar’s unwillingness. Instead, Souren Bose had started dropping broad hints here and there, which roused distrust and suspicion inside the party. In June 1971, the Bengal–Bihar–Orissa Border Regional Committee (BBOBRC comprising Ashim Chatterjee and his associates) submitted a document criticising the party’s viewpoints towards Pakistan. It argued for supporting the struggle in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). But CPI (ML) had supported the Communist Party of East Pakistan (ML) who was ghting on two fronts—against the Pakistani troops and the Awami League’s so-called ‘Muktibahini’ (the liberation army) which was promoted, funded, trained and armed by the Indian government. e party opposed the intervention in the internal affairs of Pakistan by the Indian government. Later, the BBOBRC submitted another document, strongly criticising the leadership for withholding from the comrades the Chinese leaders’ suggestions, of which they had come to know from Souren Bose. It urged upon the party for summing the experience of the armed struggle and to change its tactical line and criticised Charu Majumdar for neglecting the task of building base areas and the people’s army. It pointed out the uneven development of Indian revolution, highlighting the need for linking mass movements and mass organisations with armed struggle. As per the document, the armed struggle meant secret annihilation of the class enemy both in rural and urban areas. It held that the revolutionary authority was necessary for the victory of revolution. Ashim Chatterjee and his associates declared that without any debate on this in the party, they would unilaterally implement their theory into practice. In other words, it meant, they were leaving the party. e next voice of dissent came from the West Bengal–Bihar Border (Murshidabad–Birbhum–Santal parganas) Regional Committee. ey had submitted two reports—the rst one in mid-1971, when their struggle hit the zenith and the second one in March/April 1972 when they met with the reverse result in all the twenty-two police station areas where they could spread the struggle. e report, while paying tribute to Charu Majumdar for his inspiration to Naxalbari upsurge and his relentless ght against revisionism, strongly criticised his theory of class enemy annihilation. Written on the basis of the real life experience, the report pointed that out the annihilation programme could not mobilise the peasants in the struggle

except about ten per cent of them who were young. e tactic isolated the militants from the the peasantry on the face of the enemy-offensive. In the absence of a mass movement and any policy on combating the armed forces of the enemy, they failed to scale up the struggle. e weakness, according to the document, sourced from the awed theory that the class-enemy annihilation was the higher form of class struggle. Party’s non-participation in working class struggle was also severely criticised. In an atmosphere charged with distrust and suspicion, Suniti Kumar Ghosh, on 23 April 1972, submitted his analysis on the track followed by the party. In brief, as per Ghosh, the party line was le-adventurist—very similar to the observations by Sushital Roychoudhuri. He requested Charu Babu to relieve him of all responsibilities; he would like to remain with Liberation as an ordinary worker and not as the editor. ereaer, sometime in June 1972, an ‘open letter’ signed by Kanu Sanyal, Chowdhary Tejeswara Rao, Souren Bose, D. Nagabhusanam Patnaik, Kollah Venkaiah and D. Bhuvan Mohan Patnaik, the six CPI (ML) members in Visakhapatnam Jail, surfaced. Aimed at making ‘comrades’ aware of the eleven-point ‘fraternal suggestions’ of the Chinese Communist Party, the letter lashed out at Charu Majumdar for not initiating any self-criticism and rectifying the party line as suggested. ey too dubbed the party line as leadventurist. Ironically, it was Souren Bose who had elevated Charu Majumdar to the sacrosanct position of the ‘revolutionary authority’! From his letters, notes, essays written between April and July 1972, it was evident that Charu Majumdar had been preparing to change the track of the party line in phases; he had also expressed his desire for self-criticism to some party comrades. But the group, who was up in arms against Charu Majumdar when the struggle hit the nadir, did not undergo any selfcriticism—aer all, they had also given tacit or open support to Majumdar’s incorrect steps in the heyday of the party. Sumanta Banerjee, the socio-political historian, rightly commented—   ...none of these leaders who later so vehemently criticised Charu Mazumdar, was honest enough to admit his own fault. ey refused to acknowledge their own responsibility in transforming Charu Mazumdar into a demi-god... Had they realised their mistakes earlier and cooperated with the rst group of dissenters like Asit Sen and

Sushital Ray Chowdhury, the cult of personality that was growing round Charu Mazumdar would have been curbed and it would have also compelled Charu Mazumdar to have second thoughts about his insistence and over-emphasis on the tactics of annihilation.

  Notwithstanding the criticisms, Charu Majumdar was the rst person in the communist movements in India who could infuse a spirit of self-sacri ce among the youth. He could make them dream of a new horizon of a shacklefree India. He could drag them out of the four walls of their schools, colleges and homes for the sake of the country. He was awed on many counts, but then an ivory awed still an ivory is!

 

D

ominated by the middle class and the lower middle class (‘petty bourgeois elements’ in the party language), the CPI (ML) was riddled with their groupism and a tendency of personality cult since its inception. Before it was transformed into a party dominated by workers and peasants and galvanised into a harmonious team, it had suffered a series of setbacks. With each reverse, instead of solving contradictions through analysis and correcting their stands, comrades indulged in blame-games which, later, turned murky. Ostensibly, they wanted to solve even this issue through annihilation! At the slightest difference between friends, vulgar abuses were hurled. It was only on record that, aer the separation, the Andhra Coordination Committee would be treated as friends and a ‘non-antagonistic’ relation would be maintained with them. In reality, abuses like ‘renegade enemy agents’, ‘intellectuals as cowardly and frightened as rats’ were used in the socalled ideological struggle against them. Probably to infuse more verve in it, Sasanka of Deshabrati started inserting some veritable gems like ‘swine’, ‘renegade’ in his prose and, interestingly, this created a good fan following in the party. e cadres too picked the art of attacking dissenters with the same ferocity. Probably out of its arrogance and a bit of narcissistic attitude, Sasanka’s weekly column got busy in making enemies out of friends without any valid reason or on the slightest pretext. Suprakash Roy, the author of Bharater Krishak Bidroho O Ganatanrik Sangramer Itihas, the pioneering work on the peasant movement in India, was attacked in Deshabrati (21 August 1969) on the pretext that he had equated the peasant movements in Telangana and Kakdwip with Naxalbari in the preface of his booklet Kakdwip Sonarpur Bhangarer Krishak Sangram (1967). e column declared that Suprakash Roy was out to create ‘confusion’ and the party comrades should ‘be careful’ of him. Ashok Mitra, under the pseudonym Charan Gupta, in an article in Frontier, condemned the setting up of police camp at Debra and

Gopiballabhpur and the barbaric repression by the police on the peasantry living in those areas. He criticised the police minister Jyoti Basu for these misdeeds. Although there was no adverse comment on Naxalites, Sasanka challenged Charan Gupta in Deshabrati (13 November 1969).’What right does he have to show sympathy for Naxalites?’ He added, ‘Such advocacy by Jyoti Bose’s tout Charan Gupta may cause confusion among revolutionaries and spread the lure of an easy life in the midst of the harsh life of revolutionaries.’ Mao’s teachings were contrary to Sasanka’s weekly discourse. Mao had taught that in a semi-colonial country (like ours), all who showed sympathy for the peoples’ democratic revolution were also revolutionary; they were friends to the party. Many articles sympathetic towards peoples’ movement were published in the Frontier. But Sasanka, in his fanatic zeal of monopolising the revolution, took pot-shots at Frontier, equating the periodical with the Eastern Frontier Ri es! Following this tradition of monopolistic arrogance, in early 1970, Souren Bose under the pseudonym Observer wrote an article—To Win Victory in the Revolution We Must Establish Revolutionary Authority ( rst appeared in Deshabrati, then in Liberation in February 1970). e summary of the article was clearly spelt out at the end—   Internationally, we must follow Chairman Mao, Vice Chairman Lin Piao and the great, glorious and correct Communist Party of China as well as implement the world lessons of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution; nationally, we must be loyal to Chairman Mao, Vice-Chairman Lin Piao and the Communist Party of China and must fully accept the revolutionary authority of the leadership of Comrade Charu Majumdar.   is thesis was bolstered by Kanu Sanyal at the West Bengal state conference of the party, mid-May 1970 Party Congress, and even in his call to comrades from Darjeeling jail on 2 February 1971.   e seed of the ‘revolutionary authority of Charu Majumdar’, which was sowed in early-1970, had grown to be a poisonous weed by late 1971 and early 1972. e 1970-expression ‘must fully accept’ had by then transformed

to ‘unquestioningly obey’. For being a faithful cadre, one had to give an assent note to the question:’Do you unquestioningly obey Charu Majumdar?’ Dipak Biswas–Dilip Banerjee duo (the then West Bengal state committee secretary and member respectively), the ‘devotees’ of Charu Majumdar would launch a vitriolic campaign against the person, if his answers were to the negative. is authoritarian culture spread across West Bengal. ose who had questions were either purged or driven out of the party shelter leading to their arrest under mysterious circumstances. e duo had a confrontation with Suniti Kumar Ghosh on this issue at a meeting in February 1972. But there was a preamble to it. Following Sushital Roychoudhuri’s death, Souren Bose’s arrest and Saroj Datta’s martyrdom in 1971, Suniti Kumar Ghosh had taken the responsibility of editing Deshabrati in addition to that of Liberation. e West Bangal state committee of the party co-opted both Dipak and Dilip as its members. Sadhan Sarkar was elected secretary. Aer Sadhan Sarkar’s arrest in January 1972, through a series of manipulations, Dipak Biswas elected himself as the secretary. Aer Saroj Datta’s demise, Dipak sent a letter to Suniti Babu giving the gist of ‘Datta’s speech to the North Bengal–Bihar Regional Committee’. In the purported speech of Saroj Datta, the Chinese Communist Party was rated low and Charu Majumdar was ‘the Central Committee of CPI (ML)’, ‘in the present situation in India’. It also proclaimed—‘To establish Charu Majumdar’s line is to destroy the counter-revolutionary revisionist line.’ Dipak wanted the ‘speech’ to be published in Deshabrati. Suniti Babu had serious doubts about the authenticity of the ‘speech’. However, he read it out to Charu Babu, who opined not to publish it. Subsequently, at a meeting in December 1971, Dipak and his associates again pushed for its publication, following necessary editing, if any. Charu Majumdar again reiterated his previous stand when Suniti apprised him of the meeting summary. But aer half an hour, he changed his mind and gave his consent. He also suggested the title of the piece, ‘ere can be no Revolution without Revolutionary Leadership’. e edited note was published in Deshabrati, when Suniti Kumar Ghosh was in its charge. Later, when Suniti Babu gave up all party responsibilties, it was reprinted under the title ‘ere can be no Revolution without Revolutionary Authority’.

Against this backdrop, Dipak–Dilip met Suniti Kumar Ghosh, the central committee member in February 1972. e meeting revolved around the question and relevance of ‘revolutionary authority’ against that of ‘revolutionary leadership’. While the former, preferred by Dipak–Dilip, refers to a body unquestionably obeyed, the latter demands that the ‘communists must always go into the whys and wherefores of anything, use their own heads and carefully think over whether or not it corresponds to reality and is really well founded; on no account should they follow blindly and encourage slavishness’. Suniti Babu, of course, stood rm for the latter. e meeting ended there. It was apparent that the duo was not happy. ey went to Cuttack to meet Charu Majumdar. ey made Charu Babu write a piece attacking Suniti Babu; it was published in Deshabrati, 22 April– 1 May 1972. Later, when Suniti Babu sought permission for its publication in Liberation, he did not permit, saying it was dictated at the importunities of others and it was unimportant. He also did not allow the so-called Saroj Datta piece to appear in Liberation. e internal feud hit the crescendo on 16 April 16 1972 when two very important comrades—Kamal Sanyal, secretary of the South Calcutta Regional Committee and Agni Roy, secretary of Ballygunge–Tiljala Area Committee—were brutally murdered, apparently, by a rival group in the party. A lea et in the name of the party was also distributed claiming both Sanyal and Roy had been police spies. e lea et further declared that more killings would follow. In a retaliatory move, Satish Banerjee, a member of the regional committee and an associate of Kamal issued a lea et calling those responsible for the murder as police agents. On inquiry, it was revealed that lately both Kamal and Agni were expressing their lack of faith in the revolutionary authority doctrine. at seemed to be enough for which they were annihilated. It was not difficult to ascertain who were behind the plot. ‘Full of anger and anguish’, Suniti Kumar Ghosh wrote to Charu Majumdar that whether he (Charu Babu) was a revolutionary authority was a political question. He doubted whether this was at all a way of settling the question. He asserted that those who were responsible for the murders were leading the party to ruin and that to save the party, Charu Majumdar’s open intervention was necessary. Sunitibabu urged him to publicly condemn those who hatched the plot. Sunitibabu was scared—‘I decided to leave my

shelter that very night. It would be no wonder if I was the next victim. But I refused to be one.’ A shaken Charu Majumdar acted on this. He strongly admonished both Dipak and Dilip and forced them to do self-criticism. Charu Majumdar realised that the party was on the verge of extinction. He had to stand rm so that the momentous period of Naxalbari and Srikakulam did not end in a tragedy. If needed, he would rebuild the party from its ruins. He re-invited old comrades who had dried away and thought of making alliances with them—the party required a thorough overhaul. Charu Babu could realise that some comrades, by aunting their proximity to him, was misbehaving with others. Comrades on the ground would have to be encouraged for bombarding the headquarters!

  

I

n 1969, especially aer the announcement of formation of CPI (ML), Charu Majumdar had been restless to go underground. It was pretty clear to his wife Lila and elder daughter Anita at Siliguri home. ey were concerned about his failing health—Majumdar was dependent on pethidine and, at times, oxygen. Even with such a state of health, Majumdar would visit Calcutta every now and then. Ignoring his handicap, Charu Majumdar moved to Calcutta on 18 June 1969 with an intention to lead an underground life. With him came his elder daughter Anita. Asit Sen (of Bally, Howrah) received them at the Dum Dum airport. ey had to wait for a few minutes to spot and board a cab. e car plodded on. Suddenly, Asit had noticed a car trailing them; in all probability, they were sleuths. On reaching their destination—a housing complex near Kankurgachi in east Calcutta—they released the cab. But the cab did not leave the place instantly. Entering through the main gate, they proceeded towards an apartment on the second oor, where they were supposed to stay. Asit mistook the direction. On realising the mistake, they had changed the course and reached the right address. e gatekeeper had not noticed their track-change. Meanwhile, the tracker team arrived at the spot. It was obvious the taxi was a planted one. As Charu Majumdar, Asit Sen, Suniti Ghosh and the host, a college lecturer,were exchanging notes, the host’s sisters informed that a few people were eyeing the housing estate. Soon, there was a knock on the door. It was the Nepalese gatekeeper. He told the owner of the at, a sympathiser of the party, that some outsiders told him a little while ago that a dangerous old man had run away with a teenaged girl and had taken shelter at one of the ats in the housing complex. ey wanted him to track the person and paid him a tip of 10 rupees. e host chided and sent him away. It was found later that the cluster of three housing estates was under police surveillance. From the style of police actions, it was obvious that they did not want to arrest Majumdar immediately. Had they intended, they could

have done so at Siliguri or at Dum Dum airport. Perhaps their intent was to trail Charu till all the well-known leaders from other states were spotted. e Srikakulam struggle was then at its peak. How could they escape the police net? ey were all in a x. Finally, Majumdar devised a plan. As was the common practice, the sleuths would wait till 11 in the night. ey would then depart and return the next morning around 5am. So, if he was shied to a different location in between, the net could be torn apart. Asit le to arrange for a new shelter for Charu Babu. Suniti Ghosh took Anita to his home in north Calcutta. Asit arranged for a shelter, managed to get a car from a friend and took Charu Babu away a little before 4:30 in the morning. e police continued to wait for the next ten days before giving up. e underground life of Charu Majumdar had begun with an adventure like this! ereaer, for the next three years, he operated under aliases like Roymoshai, Chandra da and Kakababu, to name a few. During the rst sixteen months aer his arrival in Calcutta on 18 June 1969, Majumdar stayed mostly at ve places in the city— Raja Basanta Roy Road and Palm Place (the house belonged to Vaskar Nandy’s father, the ground oor was then occupied by Nandy’s sister and brother-in-law) in the south of the city, Chaltabagan near Amherst Street–Vivekananda Road crossing in central Calcutta, at a house near Deshbandhu Park in Shyambazar, at Baghbazar (this shelter was available, thanks to Saroj Datta), at Suniti Ghosh’s apartment at Goabagan in north Calcutta and at a lane opposite the Belgachia Tram Depot, all in the north. ere was a cluster of government quarters in the narrow lanes of Belgachia. Charu Majumdar stayed in one of these apartments for around two-and-a-half months. e room was a bit damp and devoid of sunlight. A patient of myocardial ischaemia with angina, Charu Babu’s health deteriorated; the frequency of angina pain went up. Maybe a change of place would help him, thought a few of his close associates. He was shied to Puri in Orissa on 1 / 2 December 1970. In other words, as Calcutta reverberated with slogans like ‘China’s Chairman is our Chairman’, ‘China’s Path is Our Path’, ‘Political Power Comes out of the Barrel of the Gun’, ‘Make the 1970s the Decade of Liberation’, statues were broken all around and the urban guerrilla was busy

annihilating the police, Charu Majumdar was right there in Calcutta. He conducted the rst party congress on 15–16 May 1970, held at B N Railway Colony (Garden Reach rail colony) on the south-west part of Calcutta. Before this party meet, Charu babu travelled incognito across the country— Assam, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, South India and Jammu—for attending all the state conferences. He travelled by train, mostly in unreserved compartments. At times, he had to sit on the oor of the train coach. In Jammu, as Charu Babu was out of breath due to his cardiac problem, Shyamsundar Basu, an enthusiastic comrade, carried him on his shoulder to the venue of the meeting. In Puri, Charu Majumdar stayed at an old, worn-out house, which bore the stamp of a majestic past, at Chakratirtha Road. It belonged to an aristocrat family in Calcutta, and was made available to Majumdar, thanks to Pitoo (Ashis Sen), a descendant of the clan, who supported the Naxalite brand of politics. Two comrades looked aer Charu Babu. One of them would give him his injections, mainly pethidine, the analgesic, when necessary (and it was oen needed) and administer other medicines for his ailment. e responsibility of the other person was primarily to take notes from Majumdar and maintain liaison with others. Charu Majumdar returned to Calcutta in the last week of December 1970 and stayed in the city for a month before going back to the Puri shelter in the rst week of February 1971. is time he was accompanied by his wife Leela and their three children—Anita, Madhumita and Abhijit. Perhaps, this was the last time that the entire family spent time together. On 7 March 1971, Souren Bose was arrested. Apprehending a police raid at the Puri shelter, Majumdar was quickly moved to Bhubaneswar, where, thanks to the support from a panda (a guide for doing rituals at the Puri temple), two rooms were taken on rent. In the rst week of April 1971, a courier of Charu Majumdar was arrested from Lake Town in Calcutta. He was posted at the nance department, Government of West Bengal. Following a tough interrogation, a police team brought him to the Chakratirtha Road house in Puri. e courier knew that Majumdar had been shied to Bhubaneswar but he did not disclose it to the police.

Meanwhile, in the last week of April 1971, Charu and Suniti came to Puri for an important meeting. Aer the meeting, they went to the Chakratirtha house only to be informed by the caretaker that Dadababu (as he used to address the courier) had come. Charu and Suniti realised that the Puri house was not safe anymore. However, spending the night there, they le for Calcutta the next morning itself. Aer staying in Calcutta for a few days, Charu Babu was taken to Jasidih, Bihar (now in Jharkhand) in the rst week of May 1971. In fact, Jasidih was not in the plan. A young man of the Pal clan (a descendant of B.K. Pal of north Calcutta) helped Suniti Babu to arrange for an accommodation at Deoghar, (now in Jharkhand). As planned, Majumdar and Ghosh reached Caster Town in Deoghar via Doomka by car in the evening. Suddenly, it dawned on Suniti Babu what if the young man blurted out the information to any of his friends by chance? Spending the night sleepless, Suniti rushed to Jasidih and arranged for a shelter. He relocated Charu Babu to Jasidih. Aer three months at Jasidih, Charu Majumdar came to Deoghar again; this time to a new shelter where he spent two months before boarding a car on 6/7 October 1971 for his next destination—Orissa. Meanwhile, as Majumdar’s health was deteriorating and reputed doctors in Calcutta could not help arrest the downfall, a renowned doctor in Siliguri K.N. Chatterjee (known as Kalu daktar to his neighbours) and a friend of Charu, was brought to Deoghar on 2/3 August 1971. Asked about his prognosis, Kalu Babu replied that ordinarily a person with a heart like Majumdar’s would not survive. It was Charu Babu’s mental strength that kept him going. However, he did not foresee any setback in near future. While heading towards Orissa via Purulia(at Balarampur),Charu suffered a sudden heart attack. at was the haat (market) day for villagers; buyers and sellers were all around. It was evening; people were plodding home. His comrades sensed danger; what if someone from the crowd identi ed Charu ? Two comrades stood on the road blocking the view inside and one remained inside to administer the required medicine. ere was an abandoned inspection bungalow of the public works department nearby. e team of adventurers entered the bungalow. ey somehow managed to wriggle out permission for stay from the gateman. ey found an old broken cot too! Majumdar was made to lie down. Next morning, the car had

reached Chowduar, on the banks of the Mahanadi river of Orissa. Across Chowduar was Cuttack. During his underground movements, besides failing health, Charu Majumdar had to face a lot of political issues as well as the shocking news of death of some pivots in the party. Differences with comrades which were affecting the movement cropped up. Moreover, the police adopted a very aggressive route resorting to fake encounters. In the last week of October or in the rst week of November 1971, Charu was again transferred to a new location in Puri. is house was near to Panthanivasa, the Orissa government-owned hotel. It was taken on rent to shelter Charu Babu. Belonging to a tea planter, the sea-facing house, not pretty though, had three rooms. While there was a huge mound of sand on one side near the boundary wall, smaller heaps lay at the other places. Hence, along with the sea winds, residents used to receive a good quantity of sand in their rooms throughout the day! In the beginning of 1972, Charu Majumdar was moved from Puri to Cuttack. Barring a few months at the beginning of his hiding in Calcutta, when both Shyamal Nandi and Shyamal Ghosh had joined Suniti Babu to arrange for Majumdar’s safe houses, Suniti Kumar Ghosh was primarily responsible for arranging shelter for Charu till April 1972. It was no easy task; for, besides being a chronic heart patient, Charu Majumdar’s head then carried a reward of 10,000 rupees. Meanwhile, the Deepak Biswas–Dilip Banerjee duo had insulted Suniti, who had developed differences with Charu on some political and organisational issues of the party. Ghosh was then of the opinion that the party had been suffering from a le-adventurist deviation. e Congress party won the general election. Siddhartha Shankar Roy was sworn in as the chief minister of West Bengal on 19 March 1972. Killings of comrades scaled up. e more the party suffered losses the more it leaned towards the le extreme. In April 1972, Suniti Ghosh, who was then staying at the Chowduar shelter, met Majumdar on a number of occasions. Again, in the evening of 23 April 1972, Suniti met Charu at the Cuttack shelter. At the request of Majumdar, Suniti read out his assessment of the party’s political line—his gradual distrust of the new deviated ideologies of the party. is pushed

Charu to realise the need to address the grey areas, convene an immediate meeting to resolve the issues and a need to reorganise the party. And this time, he openly sought help from Suniti. Under the arrangements of Deepak–Dilip, Charu Babu was brought to Calcutta on 1/2 May 1972. Following a brief spell in some shelters in the city, Majumdar was nally shied to Dattakutir, 107 A Middle Road in the Entally area of central Calcutta. Charu Babu was in deep thought. By the time he reached the Middle Road house, he realised that a revision in the strategy was necessary. He made up his mind to reorganise the party and started interacting with comrades from various zones. In fact, he was trying to change the track, in his own way though, since April 1972. Majumdar advised the Tripura comrades to take the lead even in the economic struggle in which masses were involved, win over all those honest comrades who had earlier fought against revisionism (of Communist Party of India-Marxist)—they needed to be dealt with great patience before being brought to the CPI (ML) fold, he felt. At the Middle Road shelter, in the early June 1972, he wrote the famous article—‘e People’s Interest is the Party’s Interest’. In the concluding paragraph of the piece, he clearly spelt out his new outlook.   It is our duty today to carry forward the work of building the Party among the basic masses and set up a joint front with the broadest sections of the people on the basis of struggle. It is possible to build the broadest joint front against Congress rule. Today the ‘leist’ parties refuse to provide leadership to the common people in the struggle against the oppression the Congress perpetrates on them. e worker-peasant masses who are within the folds of those parties feel resentment against their leadership. We have to carry on efforts to unite with them on the basis of united struggle. Even those who once acted as our enemies will come forward in special circumstances to unite with us. We must have the largeness of mind to unite with such forces. Largeness of mind is a quality of the Communists. Today, it is the people’s interest that demands united struggle. It is the people’s interest that is the Party’s interest.  

is essay revealed a new Charu Majumdar, his thoughts aligned to the changed environment of 1972. He reiterated the same stand when he met comrades from Bihar on 13 July 1972. He stressed the need for mass movement and highlighted the importance of a strong united front amongst various classes of peasants. ere was no point in totally ignoring the middle level peasant as was done in the past. Among others, he said that it was possible to forge a unity with the comrades belonging to the folds of Satyanarain Singh and Ashim Chatterjee on the basis of united struggle. He urged upon the comrades to pull on. Only on sustained effort, they would emerge as the winner. Fight, fail, ght, again fail... ght again...till victory. Charu Majumdar’s letter to his wife on 14 July 1972 (which was intercepted by the police) also bore the signs of recti cation—   ...It has been decided to bring out a procession on the Vietnam Day. It will be a procession of worker comrades. e date is 20 July. e news will surely appear in the papers. We have been conducting very few anti-imperialist struggles as too much importance has been given to annihilation. is is a deviation and we are overcoming it. It is being increasingly criticised within the party and so it will be recti ed. Ours is a very young Party with not much experience; so deviation is natural. It is a good sign that it has been detected by comrades...   At a time when Charu Majumdar had been preparing the party for undergoing a change, something untoward had happened.

   

T

here was a pounding on the door—‘Open the door...quick, quick...open the door’. Arabinda was sleeping on the oor. He woke up, startled. It was the wee hours of the morning and who could have come now! No comrade would come at this hour. Arabinda looked through the window—darkness still loomed large over the horizon. It would take an hour or so to be dissolved in the dawn. e ceiling fan was at its full speed, yet it couldn’t help make the night’s heat and humidity bearable. e person on the cot, under the mosquito net, was sleeping quietly. Arabinda was a little relieved, for, the person needed a bit of rest. He was not well and did not eat anything in the last twenty-four hours. In fact, he had been suffering from tremendous breathing trouble. Interestingly, the person could make out the trigger point—there would be an all-pervasive pain on the le hand, which would spread all over the body, lead to breathing trouble, followed by heavy sweating. Quite acquainted with all those symptoms, the moment the pain ashed, he would press his hand and say, ‘Need an injection.’ Arabinda would push a 400cc pethidine and the frail person would be stable aer two–three hours. Ever since he was brought here from Cuttack in May, he had not been keeping well. In fact, over the last een days, his condition had deteriorated. Arabinda had no choice but to increase the dose of pethidine from 200 cc to 400 cc. Again, there was a banging. ‘Hey! Open the doors, who all are inside, open the door.’ e baritone voice permeated the room. Arabinda sprang to his feet, started thinking aloud, ‘Where were they located?... Yes, they were at Duttakutir, ground oor...adjoining the building there was Sealdah– Ballygunge rail lines...’ e person under the mosquito curtain was still sleeping. Prabal Kumar Roy and Nilima Banerjee, the couple in whose name the room had been taken on rent, were sleeping in the next room. It was Sunday, 16 July 1972. By this time, Arabinda had come to his senses. e voice outside got louder, it could be heard through the ventilator above the door, ‘Can’t you hear? Please open the door...’. ‘A thief might have been trapped’, thought Arabinda, ‘it must be the neighbours’ uproar.’

e moment Arabinda opened the door, a few men, in ordinary clothes, barged into the room, caught his hands tight and made him immobile. ‘Who all are here? Who else?’, said one of them. By that time, Prabal and Nilima were awake and the person under the mosquito net had also opened his eyes. One from the gang howled, ‘Who is under the net?’ He tore the net away and said, ‘Get up Charu Babu, your game is over.’ He picked up the denture kept in a small bowl and said, ‘Charu Babu, please x it.’ e frail man followed the instruction quietly and said, ‘Who are you?’ ‘We are the police and my name is Debi Roy’, he said with a smile, ‘You are —’ ‘Yes, I am Charu Majumdar.’ Meanwhile, Arabinda was taken to the adjoining corridor. A policeman thundered at him, ‘Hey jonnie, bring a chair...’ Pat came the reply, ‘It’s not my duty.’ ‘Bastard, who will bring it then? My father?’ e police party began to ransack the house. ey called in the owner of the house and said, ‘Look you have rented your house to Charu Majumdar.’ ‘No Sir, it’s not right.’ e person vehemently opposed and identi ed Prabal Kumar Roy as his tenant. Suddenly, one of the policemen turned to Arabinda politely, ‘What do you do?’ ‘I stay with Charu Babu...’ ‘Are you a physician? Who gives injection?’ ‘Yes, I give him injections.’ ‘Show us all the tablets he swallows every day and the injections he has been administered’, said a police honcho. Arabinda detailed the list by showing all of it kept in a box. ‘Oh my God! so many of these…’, groaned the invader. Soon he sported his street-smart look and said, ‘So gentleman, get ready, we will take you all.’ It was still dark, when all the four were ready to go. Debi Roy said, ‘Wait a bit.’ Arabinda was tormented by two questions: ‘Who had disclosed the address, which was a highly guarded secret? Only one comrade at the Deb lane shelter, Dipak Biswas, knew of this house. Secondly, would the police kill Charu Babu, the way they had murdered Saroj Dutta?’

It was morning. ere was a so touch of dawn all around. All four were brought out on the road. Arabinda looked around; balconies of the adjoining houses were crowded. ere was a sizeable number of people. Just to alert them, Arabinda raised a slogan, ‘Charu Majumdar Zindabad.’ A policeman kicked Arabinda on his buttock, ‘Let us see who saves your Charu Majumdar.’ en he dragged Arabinda into the Black Maria standing at a corner. ey were taken to Lalbazar Police Headquarters. Charu Babu was escorted to Debi Roy’s room upstairs, by the elevator. Arabinda had to climb the stairs. Debi Roy welcomed them with sarcasm, ‘Yes gentleman, please take your seat, would you mind to have some tea?’ ‘Yes’, Arabinda replied. e pair of eyes focussed on Charu Babu. He said, ‘Yes.’ Aer a while, the police doctor arrived and wanted to know about the medicines on which Charu had been surviving. Arabinda briefed him aer which he was separated from Charu. A few hours later, while he was taken to the central lock-up, Arabinda spotted Charu Babu sitting in the adjoining cell.

 

T

he interrogation team swung into action. Arun Khasnabis (name changed) red the rst volley of questions: ‘Tell something about your identity rst.’ Smiling, Charu, in bush shirt and trousers, did not open his lips. ‘Well, even if you don’t tell us, we know all about you; correct me if I am wrong.’ Khasnabis started pouring out his ‘knowledge’. A junior officer went on writing; he had to adhere to the official format. Name with aliases: Charu Majumdar, Chandra da Father’s name: Late Bireshwar Majumdar. Address: Permanent: Mahananda para, Siliguri; present: Middle Road Entally, Calcutta. Age: 54 years. Height: 5  2 inches/2.5 inches. Build: in. Nose: sharp and pointed, almost touching the lips. Complexion: Once upon a time it was fair, now it was sun-tanned; Khasnabis directed his junior to write ‘wheatish’. Date and place of arrest: e officer looked at his senior. Khasnabis started dictating, while taking a stroll in the cell. ‘He was arrested on Sunday 16 July 1972 early hours from the at of Prabal Kumar Roy at 107 A Middle Road, Calcutta 7000 14 (eastern side at on ground oor)’. As if he had been the ghost writer of the autobiography of Charu Majumdar, Khasnabis continued—   I originally hail from village Harua, district Rajshahi (now in Bangladesh). My grandfather migrated from Rajshahi to Siliguri some time in the latter part of the 19th century. In 1930, when I was a student in Siliguri, I became a member of the All Bengal Students Association (then affiliated to the Anushilan group) at the instance of Sewmangal Singh and Brojen Basu Roy Choudhuri.

e ABSA was formed some time in 1928 which at later stage was divided into two groups. While ABSA remained affiliated to Anushilan Group, the other part Bengal Provincial Students Association (BPSA) owed its allegiance to the Jugantar Group. rough the ABSA, I remained attached with the Anushilan Group. In 1931, with the arrest of Satyen Mazumdar, then an executive committee member of the ABSA and a professor of Rajshahi College, the link of Siliguri students with the ABSA was virtually paralysed and all connections were cut off. I however continued studies...

  Charu Babu wondered how much time the police honcho had spent on doing research on him!   ...I discontinued studies in or about 1937. During my college days, I got addicted to liquor and consumed liquor regularly at the college hostel. I used to get Rs 25/- per month from my father of which I used to spend Rs 6/- as college fees, Rs 7/- as hostel charges and the rest Rs 12/- for liquor...   ‘What?’ with a cynical glance Charu Babu commented, ‘you mean I was immersed in liquor during those days and the hostel superintendent of the Edward College was so liberal that he had accepted the nuisance? I am not impressed. Please engage a better-paid informer!’   ...At later stages, I also became addicted to ganja, bhang, opium, charas and siddhi which I continued for long—   ‘A bland concoction of the police variety’, Charu Babu clapped and burst into laughter. Khasnabis le the room in a huff.   In the evening came Mr Subrata Mukherjee, Minister of State for Home Affairs. With him were his disciple, Kumud Bhattacharya of Chhatra Parishad and the Commissioner of Calcutta Police, Mr R.N. Chatterjee. e staff reporter of the Hindustan Standard led a report headlined ‘Subrata Meets Majumder’ for his newspaper of 17 July 1972—

 

...if anyone had really supposed that there was an element of pathos in the meeting—the older politician seemed to be at the end of the road, the younger tasting the fruits of victory—he was mistaken. For even as Mr Mukherjee remarked that the political mistakes committed by both the older and the younger generations were responsible for the deaths of hundreds of youths, Mr Majumdar quietly observed that perhaps they had not died in vain. is was the cue for Mr Mukherjee to request Mr Majumdar for a lengthier political discussion. Mr Majumdar agreed. ‘If you can convince me that your politics are correct, I may even join your party’, he told Mr Majumdar. Mr Mukherjee went on to assure the CPI (ML) chief that his needs would be taken care of. He also paid tributes to his greater political experience. Apart from expressing a wish to see his daughter, who studies at the Calcutta National Medical College, Mr Majumdar said very little. en, as Mr Mukherjee was on his way out, he quietly told the minister, ‘Do not think our movement has ended.’ e Commissioner had accompanied Mr Mukherjee all through the brief interview. He apologised to Mr Majumdar for bringing in so many visitors. Mr Majumdar acknowledged this with a twitch of his lips that resembled a smile.

  At around 11am on 17 July, Anita reached the central lock-up at Lalbazar. As arranged by the party, between 1970 and 1971, Anita, along with others in the family, had met her father secretly twice or thrice. e last she had met him was in February 1971. At the sight of Anita, Charu Babu’s face lit up, ‘Anita you have now become a full-grown lady!’ Anita smiled. An incident of her childhood days ashed in her mind. She was then a little more than two-and-a-half years old. Her father had bought her a glass jug. ‘is is yours, from now on you have to use this container when you feel thirsty; pour water from it in a glass and drink’, father had said. e girl was so happy at this! She was allowed to have water like any other adult she had seen. Anita had realised later that it was a lesson for becoming self-reliant. She smiled again and looked around.

ere was no oxygen cylinder in the cell and father did not appear to be especially sick; in fact, she had seen him in much worse condition before. ‘How are you?’ Anita had asked. ‘Not bad’, smiled her father. Charu Babu then inquired about all the members of the family. Anita briefed him about everyone. All their conversation about their domestic and personal affairs was conducted under police presence. Hence, it could not proceed beyond ve minutes. With each passing day, the pressure of grilling was mounting. Apart from Khasnabis, there were three more members in the interrogation team— Haripada Bose, Chaitanya Sen and Naresh Roy (all names changed). It was 2pm. Charu Babu was sleepy. Haripada entered the cell along with an assistant. e session went on as usual—a heterogeneous mixture of truth and ction. By this time, Charu Babu could make out the ingredients of the would-be police report on him. e fruits of investigation by the police intelligence, a very poor grade though, gleaned from statements of some of party comrades and inventions of the fertile police brain. ‘Do you still believe in annihilation of class enemies?’, Bose stared at him. Charu babu nodded, ‘Yes I do...by class enemies I mean feudal enemies, the landowners. I fully endorse the annihilation of moneylenders besides the jotedars and landowners. I never meant annihilation indiscriminately...and I am, however, not against the annihilation of police personnel... is is inevitable as police is the striking force of administration...here I would like to mention that the police also did not spare my cadres and killed them indiscriminately.’ ‘ese annihilations of class enemies are meant for the countryside, isn’t it?’, the fox-eyed Bose questioned. Charu babu could see through the officer’s trick. He was trying to extract a statement which would go against the comrades in urban action. ‘...it does not, however, mean that there will be no annihilation in urban areas. When there is a programme of snatching of arms, annihilation automatically nds its place there...hence, please write...’, averred Charu Babu, ‘annihilation of police personnel even in the urban areas will also continue.’ A visibly upset Bose remarked, ‘Do you have any idea, how many charges ranging from murder, conspiracy to bank loot are being framed against you?’

‘Please add three more to it—I believe Mao Tse-Tung is the greatest leader under the sun. In 1962, it was India which attacked China and the Naxalbari path is the way of emancipation of the toiling masses of India’, answered Charu Babu. ‘Alright, you will have it’, Bose cut the interrogation short. In the gruelling heat of July noon, Charu Babu had to bear the so-called interrogation. He understood the police intention—they wanted to get him excited, which was strictly prohibited at this state of his health. Chaitanya Sen looked sheepish. ‘Charu babu, my information is that you insulted Sushital Roy Chaudhuri at the West Bengal State Committee meeting in August 1970.’ ‘All bogus’, Charu babu’s voice touched the higher chord, ‘Sushital babu was the most well-read person amongst all of us.’ But Sen continued on the same note ‘...Sushital Roy Choudhuri, I mean SRC rst raised his contradictions and demanded clari cation on the party’s movement in urban areas...’ Sen’s face melted out. Charu clearly visioned a mirror image of SRC sitting and staring into his heart. SRC smiled, ‘Charu Babu, if you remember, in the rst party congress when the issue of your authority was raised, I simply quoted Mao to highlight the supremacy of politburo over an individual; in other words, I stressed the importance of collective leadership.’ ‘Right, Sushital Babu.’ ‘But thereaer, all the important party decisions were all your individual decisions. ey were never discussed in the party committees.’ Charu Babu was silent. ‘I don’t want to discuss about the ransacking of schools and colleges, which you must have realised by this time, was improper, but tell me Charu Babu, why did you attack Satyanarain Singh’s thesis with such harsh language as if you were targeting an enemy?’ ‘Really? Did I do that?’ ‘Yes, Charu Babu, your concluding remark on Singh’s document was that it was a nasty thesis. He might have been wrong but is this the way we should address your comrades?...and moreover, by raising the issue of forging an alliance with the rich peasants, did he commit any crime?’ Charu babu said, ‘No, but those laying emphasis on landless farmers...’

‘But that doesn’t mean we will ignore the section 30 of our adopted party programme, which, among others, says “e working class...even wins over a section of the rich peasants while neutralizing the rest.” It will be a tiny section of the rich peasants that will join the enemy camp’. ‘You are right, Sushital Babu’. ‘What’s your assessment of Satyanarain Singh?’ Chaitanya Sen asked. Charu babu soon came back to his self. ‘Even if I don’t consider SNS as an A grade leader, I cannot and will not deny his organisational ability so far as Bihar is concerned. e sad demise of Sushital babu and departure of SNS from us were losses to the party...and Mr Sen’, Charu babu took a pause. ‘...don’t expect any foul words from me against my comrades.’ Chaitanya Sen made a hasty retreat.   25 July. Lila Majumdar, Charu Babu’s wife along with their children Anita, Madhumita and Abhijit, visited the central lock-up at Lalbazar. is was their third visit since the arrest. ey did not notice any special sign of abnormality in Charu Babu’s health. ey had talks on family affairs. As usual, Charu was keen to know the well-being of all his relations, acquaintances and neighbours at Mahananda Para. What else could they discuss under police surveillance? ‘It’s noon. Won’t you sleep or take rest?’ Charu looked up. Knowing Lila, Charu instantly deciphered the question. She wanted to assess the kind of torture he had been subjected to. Charu pointed his ngers at the special branch honchos and smiled, ‘ey come to me in the noon...probably to learn a few points about our struggle.’ Anita asked, ‘Baba, how are you?’ He didn’t reply. He placed his exceptionally bright pair of eyes on Anita. Suddenly, the elder daughter had an uncanny feeling—the state won’t let her father live much longer. Charu looked at Lila, ‘How many days will you be here? Your job is suffering; you better return to Siliguri.’ e time of the meeting was up. Charu had to be taken to the Police Court. e staff reporter of the Hindusthan Standard wrote a small piece scheduled to appear on Wednesday 26 July 1972.

 

Mr Charu Majumdar, the CPI (ML) leader, was produced before Mr A.K. Mitra, Magistrate, Police Court on Tuesday. e Magistrate remanded him to police custody till July 29. Police arrested 37 persons, suspected to be Naxalites, in different parts of Calcutta on Tuesday.

  Now it was the turn of Naresh Roy. e moment Roy entered into the cell, Charu Babu got a stinking smell of sweat. e person was a bit eshy and he walked like a trained elephant. ‘You have had serious differences with Professor Suniti Ghosh; why did he distance himself from you?’ Roy smiled. Charu Babu was a bit shaken at the question. How did this nasty fellow come to know of this? Knowing Suniti Babu, he would not give out this information. It must be the handiwork of the comrade at the Deb lane shelter. Roy sported a raunchy look; as if he had check-mated Charu babu. e re brand revolutionary recovered within minutes and said, ‘Whatever be the differences, I am sure, Professor Suniti Ghosh cannot remain aloof aer my arrest. I am con dent, he will come back and will be able to organise the party anew.’ Roy did not expect this volley from his opponent. He was a bit unnerved. en he played the last card under his sleeves. ‘What about your Vietnam Day rally; why did it not happen the way you had wanted?’ It rang a bell in Charu Babu. On 14 July, he had sent a letter about this to Lila through his courier. In a ash, Charu could unravel the mystery of his arrest. e police, somehow, intercepted the courier; but the courier did not know about the Middle Road shelter. Extracting information from him, they reached Deb lane shelter. ere too, only one comrade, hand-picked by himself, knew about the Middle Road location. It must have been he who had divulged it to the police. It was quite clear to Charu . ‘What happened? What about the Vietnam Day rally?’ ‘Yes, we did change the tactics...and the police cannot expect that the party guerrillas would mobilise at a place where police had already concentrated.’

It was dusk when Khasnabis entered into cell. He forwarded a sheaf of paper to Charu Babu. ‘What is this?’ Charu looked at the stack. It was the ‘Statement of Charu Majumdar.’ It ran into twenty-seven single-space typed pages, larger than the foolscap size. ‘Please sign at the end, we have to keep your specimen handwriting’, smiled Khasnabis. ‘is statement is yours, not mine and I will neither sign nor will I give you any specimen of my handwriting’, Charu babu thundered. ‘You have to give...’, Khasnabis insisted. Suddenly, Charu babu developed tremendous pain in the hand. It was the known symptom but this time it seemed insurmountable. He muttered the Regis Debray lines to himself—‘e underground has its own aristocracy—an aristocracy of absence—and the highest title of all is conferred by death, by murder or execution.’ Mr Charu Majumdar was moved to SSKM hospital, Calcutta as advised by Dr C.C. Kar, a specialist. He was admitted in the hospital at 7:30 pm on 27 July 1972. He expired at 4:50 am on 28 July 1972. e ‘official’ cause of death as written in his certi cate of death was: ‘Ischaemic Heart disease with Congestive Cardiac failure.’ e police fully knew what the fate of Charu Majumdar would be—a heart-patient suffering from angina pain, subjected to a prolonged interrogation in the lock-up. ere was no oxygen cylinder in his cell; Pethidine was also not made available easily. At times, a die-hard optimist, Majumdar had to bear the angina pain with his tremendous will power.

- 

F

ollowing the death of Charu Majumdar, political debates ensued; some of his prominent devotees shirked their responsibilities on the set-back of the struggle. ey started putting the entire blame of the failure on Charu Majumdar instead! Curiously enough, Kanu Sanyal (KS), an ardent devotee of Majumdar, as if to celebrate the death anniversary of his guru, put forward a thesis—More about Naxalbari—in 1973, in which he blisteringly criticised Majumdar. Sanyal’s allegations may broadly be summarised into three planks:   a. Sanyal alleged that he was not given his due importance, though it was he (and not Majumdar) who planned and organised the Naxalbari struggle; Charu Babu’s line practised at Chaterhat—Islampur areas was a failure; a group of political careerists projected Majumdar as the face of the Naxalbari struggle; and that KS was not projected in AICCCR. b. Sanyal maintained his Terai Report was not duly publicised among the party members across India; that Majumdar’s Eight Documents had no role in the creation of the Naxalbari struggle; and leaders involved in waging a struggle in the Naxalbari areas were not aware of Eight Documents. c. Sanyal observed the struggle at Naxalbari areas could have been preserved had Majumdar followed the Naxalbari cadres’ proposed dialogue with the United Front Government and that it was Majumdar’s rigidity that caused the setback. KS claimed—‘But Charu Majumdar did not agree and said that any dialogue with the United Front Government was revisionism. In this complex situation, subjective tactical mistakes, absence of subjective preparation and absence of exibility in policy by keeping rm on principle led to setback on Naxalbari uprising.’   While levelling accusations bordering on abuse at Charu Majumdar just nine months aer his demise in More about Naxalbari (April 1973), Kanu Sanyal, among others, exposed his vainglorious self.

Right from Khokan Majumdar, Santi Munda to Santi Pal, the comrades of KS in the Terai struggle chronicled a different story altogether. Writings of Suniti Kumar Ghosh and Satyanarain Singh, senior members of the central committee of the then CPI (ML) also demolished the Sanyal thesis. First of all, to put the record straight, notwithstanding the criticisms that Terai Report was heavily indebted to Mao Tse-Tung’s report on the peasant struggle in Hunan province of China, ‘Report on the Peasant Movement in the Terai Region’ by Kanu Sanyal was rst published in Deshabrati on 24 October 1968. Its English version appeared in Liberation, November 1968. Hence, Indian revolutionaries within and outside of AICCCR were quite familiar with the Terai Report and was open for discussion by them including Sanyal. Khokan Majumdar’s observation on Charu Majumdar’s role in the Naxalbari struggle revealed that Majumdar was the most respected guide and leader of the movement launched by peasants and tea garden workers in the Terai region since its inception in the early 1950s; also his writings played a pivotal role in transforming those movements into the Naxalbari struggle. ‘Following the partition of India, Charu Majumdar engaged himself in developing the party work in Darjeeling district. From 1952, he started leading the peasants’ and tea garden workers’ struggle in the Terai Region in Darjeeling district. From then he tried heart and soul to position peasants’ struggle as the key to emancipation as against the parliamentary path politics. From 1954, peasant movement in the Terai region turned aggressive and in 1959, the movement for acquisition of benami (lands held by landlords under ctitious names to evade the land ceiling laws) lands was transformed to almost a mutiny. ousands of acres of benami lands were forcefully acquired and distributed amongst peasants. Class struggle was on high tide.’ ‘e rst document by Charu Majumdar appeared in 1965...from then comrade Charu Majumdar initiated preparation for organisational and political base for armed struggle...his relentless campaign for armed struggle and Mao Tse-Tung thoughts from 1965 to the beginning of 1967 created a ery atmosphere in the (Terai) region. For developing this (revolutionary) situation, the role of Majumdar’s Eight Documents was very important...in short the ideological and theoretical foundation of the peasants struggle in

the Terai region was laid by Charu Majumdar; also his (CM’s) instructions were very effective and right in running the organisation and the struggle...’ ‘Comrade Charu Majumdar led the ideological and political ght against revisionism (read politics professed by CPI) and neo-revisionism (read politics professed by CPI M) and also led to the creation of a party which would act as the central force of revolution. Had these activities not happened, where would we have been today? In 1967 itself, out of our lust for a seat of power in parliamentary politics, we would have joined the neo revisionist camp. We (including Sanyal) would have been lost in the pig sty of parliamentary politics, drowned in its heaps of dung and waste.’ In his t of rage and jealousy, Kanu Sanyal forgot that it was just the other day he blatantly displayed his obeisance to Charu Majumdar. On 15 May 1970, at the rst Party Congress of CPI (ML), ‘... there was almost a scramble, among the West Bengal delegates particularly, for demonstrating their loyalty to Charu Mazumdar. Ashim Chatterjee, who was in charge of leading the movement in Debra-Gopiballavpur, was reported to have told the Congress that if disputes arose between the Central Committee and Charu Mazumdar, he would always follow Charu Mazumdar...Kanu Sanyal had a t of repentance and said that he should be criticized for having failed to refer to Charu Mazumdar’s authority in his Report on the Terai Peasants’ movement.’ Sanyal also forgot that his devotion to Majumdar was intact on 2 February 1971, when he, in a communique to his comrades titled ‘Be Aware of ose Who Want to Demolish the Authority of Comrade Charu Majumdar’, wrote, ‘Today, armed struggle has become buzzwords to many in India. But in the Indian soil comrade Charu Majumdar was the pioneer of armed guerrilla struggle and liquidation of class enemies under speci c conditions and state of the movement, rst in Naxalbari, then to Srikakulam, Mushahari, Lakhimpur kheri, Midnapore and then to some other states of the country. His campaign for liquidation of class enemies opened the ood gate of guerrilla struggle in various states of India.’ Probably, while writing More about Naxalbari, Sanyal suffered from selective dementia. Otherwise, how could he forget that he attended an important four-day meeting of AICCCR (at the inaugural meeting of the forum, Sanyal was in China, that’s why he couldn’t attend) held in Calcutta between 19 April and 22 April 1969? In the meeting it was decided to

announce the formation of the party i.e. CPI (ML) at the forthcoming May Day rally being held at Calcutta Monument ground. It was also decided that Kanu Sanyal would make the announcement and that Asit Sen would be required to preside over the meeting. It was in this meeting the name of the party was coined. While, interestingly, Charu Majumdar suggested CPI (Maoist), majority opposed it and wanted CPI (ML) and the latter was adopted; there was no voting. A ten-member central organising committee of the new party was formed with Charu Majumdar as the general secretary and Kanu Sanyal was also there in the central committee. On conclusion of the meeting, AICCCR had dissolved itself. Kanu Sanyal branded Charu Majumdar as the face of political careerists. Interestingly, it was Majumdar on 11 November 1967, while addressing a huge gathering at the Monument ground, who had said, ‘...if you expect me to give an account of the Naxalbari struggle you are mistaken; because I am not the leader of Naxalbari; Naxalbari’s leaders are Kanu Sanyal, Jangal Santhal, Khokan Majumdar and many more peasants...’ One wonders, was this the utterance of a political careerist! Suniti Kumar Ghosh analysed—‘What would “a dialogue with the United Front Government” at that stage, as keenly desired by Sanyal in the name of “ exibility in policy”, really amount to? At that stage the revolutionaries of Naxalbari had two alternatives before them to choose from (there was no third alternative)—either to continue with the uprising till the end, or to withdraw it. Withdrawal would have meant total surrender to the United Front Government, which would push the revolutionaries to divert the revolutionary agrarian struggle into a reformist economist movement within the boundaries of the bourgeois law. e Naxalbari uprising would then be killed; it would not be preserved. It appears that it is Charu Majumdar’s intervention that saved the revolutionary character of the struggle which, though crushed within a short time, raised waves of struggle both in the ideological and in the practical eld throughout India.’ Following the demise of Charu Majumdar, the party was fragmented into various groups. In 1975, there were ten Naxalite groups of which two groups —CPI (ML), Charu Majumdar group pro-Lin Piao and CPI (ML), Charu Majumdar group anti-Lin Piao—were prominent. e pro-Lin Piao elements had earlier organised the Second Party Congress from 30

November to 2 December 1973 at Kamalpur, a village near the border of Burdwan and Hooghly, West Bengal. e Congress triggered the formation of CPI (ML) pro-Charu pro-Lin faction of the party. e pro-Lin Piao faction gave birth to the CPI (ML) ‘Second Central Committee’ in the second half of 1978. On 6 July 1982, some close associates to the Second Central Committee group allegedly killed Dipak Biswas whose reported confession led to the arrest of Charu Majumdar. While CPI (ML) people’s war group following a number of recon gurations formed CPI (Maoist), the pro CM anti-Lin faction of CPI (ML) is now known as CPI (ML) Liberation. Of more than twenty- ve groups at present, these two are prominent.

  

V

askar Nandy (1938–2018), an old acquaintance and in-charge of the party in Assam had a series of fond memories of Charu Majumdar, whom he rated ‘as the world class leader in calibre’. Incidentally Vaskar, thanks to his long stint in Europe and the US, had the privilege of meeting a good number of intellectuals across the globe, including Bertrand Russel. Vaskar observed, ‘e communists in India had a set pattern in discussion but with Charu da, we never followed the archaic type...we used to discuss literature, politics, music, in fact, any subject under the sun’. ‘Charu da, have you read Satre? e Chinese communists have branded him revisionist; what do you say?’ ‘I have read only one...a drama...e Condemned of Altona...not that good, but I liked e Mandarins by his wife Simone de Beauvoir...it gives you solid information on France...but we also need to understand, why the couple stood by the armed struggles that happened in the world across.’ An enthused Vaskar made him read Beauvoir’s Second Sex and ‘Charu da read it with a lot of interest...thereaer I made him read Being and Nothingness by Satre...Charu da devoured every book he could nd...’ ‘Charu da understood Indian classical music pretty well...could quickly identify the structure of the piece, and its consonance...he told me that the pattern of the Indian classical music was linear...it traversed from incomplete to complete sound...however he did not have any exposure to Western classical...as he was eager to learn, I made him listen to some of the samples which I had with me...to my utter surprise I found he developed his understanding within two or three months.’ ‘Once I made him listen to the symphony of Bach...three to four melodies were on play...I could not make out the signi cance of a melody at lower scale, Charu da made me realise its importance in the harmony..’.   Souren Bose, a politburo member of CPI (ML) and an admirer of Charu since his College days, recounted, ‘...on many occasions Charu da had debated with Saroj da (Saroj Datta) on Saratchandra Chattopadhyay. Charu

da would say, Saratchandra’s Mahesh failed to attain the quality of a proper story. He liked the Tarashankar Bandyopadhyay creations. Saroj da would retort, “Don’t you know Tarashankar is a Gandhian, a Congressman in his political belief ”. Charu da stuck to his guns, “I don’t care whether he is a follower of Gandhi...show me a parallel to his socially sensitive novel like Hansuli Banker Upokatha in Bengali literature”.’ Manjusha and Debiprasad, the Chatterjee couple of Raja Basanta Roy road of south Calcutta, made their home available to the leaders of CPI (ML). In his early Calcutta visit, Charu Majumdar stayed with them a couple of times. Aer the arrest of Saroj Datta from this house, this shelter was shunned. Manjusha recalled, ‘One day, a glass container was broken...pieces strewn all over the oor...Kakababu (Charu Majumdar) became terribly nicky about its cleaning, because it might hurt my daughter, then a little girl, and me...he went on saying, “Here is a piece, and there lies one...why are you barefoot? Please make your daughter wear a sandal, and you also put on one”...aer the oor was cleared off the shards of glass, he started walking on the oor barefoot, “let me play the role of pioneer...it’s good to be cautious, but that does not mean one has to be over cautious”, he smiled.’ ere are many more recollections from his followers who had spent time with Charu Majumdar. All of them spoke about his humane faculty, emotions, presence of mind and con dence in his comrades-in-arms.



C

haru Majumdar once said, ‘Our words will not die, it will live on; today a section of the people may not accept it, but it doesn’t mean there is no value to our sayings; it will remain forever.’ Yes, words do not die. ough, it is now over a hundred years since Charu Majumdar was born and more than y years since the Naxalbari upsurge took place, yet people have not forgotten Naxalbari and its creator, Charu Majumdar. e name continues to shine—from the hills to the plains, from the Himalayas to the Sunderbans—and will stay so, at least till peoples’ struggle continues.

      In the Wake of Naxalbari, Sahitya Samsad, Sumanta Banerjee Naxalbari Before and Aer, New Age Publishers, Suniti Kumar Ghosh e Historic Turning-Point, A Liberation Anthology (Volume 1&2), Edited by Suniti Kumar Ghosh Charu Mazumdar, the Man and His Legacy, A CPI (ML) Publication e First Naxal, Sage, Bappaditya Paul Revolution Unleashed, Sampark, Amar Bhattacharya Naxalbari and Indian Revolution, Research India Publications, Promode Sengupta e Naxalite Movement, Firma K L Mukhopadhyay, Sankar Ghosh Maoist ‘Spring under’, K P Bagchi & Company, Arun Prosad Mukherjee Le Extremist Movement in West Bengal, Firma K L Mukhopadhyay, Amiya K Samanta e Naxalites, through the Eyes of the Police, Deys, Edited by Ashoke Kumar Mukhopadhyay Communism in India, Secret British Documents, National Book Agency, Edited by Ashoke Kumar Mukhopadhyay Naxalbari and Aer, A Frontier Anthology, Kathashilpa, Edited by Samar Sen et al Selected works of Mao Tse-tung (Volume 1&2), Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1965 Red Book, Quotations of Mao Tse-tung, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1968 Undesirable Alien, Radha krishna, Regis Debray Roopkathar Deshe, Uttarbanga Natya Jagat Prakashani, Snehalata Mukhopadhyay Charu Majumdar Samagra, Ghas Phul Nodi, Dhaka, Edited by Abu Salek Charu Majumdarer Katha, Peoples Book Society, Souren Basu Antaranga Charu Majumdar, Radical Impression, Compiled by Amit Roy Naxalbari, ‘Bharater Buke Basanter Bajronirghosh’, personally published by Narayan Chandra Roy, Siliguri, Khokan Majumdar Naxalbarir Prakito Ghatana o Itihas, Pulished by a faction of CPI (ML), Santi Pal Shikal Bhangar Gappo (An account of Burdwan Jail-break), Ebong Jalarko, Sankar Sanyal Joarbhatay Shat-sattor, Pearl Publishers, Amalendu Sengupta Smriti Satta Saroj Datta, Jalarka Prakashan, Edited by Swapan Dasadhikary Liladi: Ek Anyo Rajnaitik Japan, Rhito Prakashan, Edited by Moushumi Bhowmik Charu Majumdar Rachana Sangraha, Naya Istahar Prakashani Charu Majumdar Sankhya (Issues No 1 to 13), Ebong Jalarka, Editor: Swapan Dasadhikari Bartika, July-December 2003, Publishers, Editor: Mahashweta Devi Various issues of Deshabrati, the CPI (ML) mouthpiece (from a personal collection)

Various issues of Liberation, the English organ of the CPI (ML) (from a personal collection)

    

Charu Majumdar and Saroj Dutta waving the Red Book (1970)

A letter of appreciation from Charu Majumdar (25 May 1963) in prison to his wife Lila on her refusal to accept family allowance granted by the government

In front of Majumdar’s Siliguri ancestral house. (L to R) Kumkum Bhattacharya, Nirmal Guha Roy (Little eatre Group), Utpal Dutt, Charu Majumdar, Pabitra Sengupta (One of the rst recruits of Charu Majumdar), Tapas Sen and Souren Bose (1967)

(Sitting L to R) Snehalata Mukhopadhyay (a neighbour of Majumdars and the author of the rst memoir on Charu Majumdar), Annakali Chattopadhyay, mother of Snehalata, S.A. Dange, Sudhir Chattopadhyay (Nedu), (younger brother of Snehalata) (Standing L to R) Tejesh Chandra Mukhopadhyay, husband of Snehalata, Kishorimohan Mazumdar, Dr Khirodenath Chattopadhyay (house physician of Majumdars, eir well-wisher and brother of Snehalata), Biren Bose, Charu Majumdar (1940s)

At a public meeting at Monument Maidan celebrating the 50th anniversary of October Revolution (November 1967)

 

Ashoke Mukhopadhyay made a foray into literature with a host of startling articles and insightful documentations like Terrorism—a colonial construct, e Naxalites: rough the Eyes of Calcutta Police, etc. Mukhopadhyay won the coveted Ananda Snowcem Award twice for his articles. His zeal for seamless stitching of facts with imagination is also re ected in his novel Abiram Jwarer Roopkatha (A Ballad of Remittent Fever), long-listed for the JCB Award 2020.