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Volume Two
NAXALBARI AND AFTER a frontier anthology Edited by Samar Sen Debabrata Panda Ashish Lahiri
Kathashilpa CALCUTTA 700 073
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EDITORS’ NOTE The planning of Yol. II has been a little different froim that of Vol. I.
Instead of maintaining a general chronological
order, the articles in the DEBATES section have been arranged topic-wise. heads :
This section has been sub-classified under two
Strategy and Tactics and Appraisal.
As in Vol.Ir
the articles have, in some cases, been edited. The articles in the section, DOCUMENTS, however, have been arranged chronologically.
A number of documents not
published in Frontier—one of them hitherto unpublished any¬ where—have been incorporated.
With the exception
of the
‘Immediate Programme’ the sources of all other documents have been clearly mentioned. In printing the ‘Immediate Programme’ we have mainly followed the translation supplied to us by Mr. Moni Guha, one of the editors of the journal, Proletarian Path.
Minor changes of language have been made in the text
by comparing this translation with a different one published in New Democracy No. 1 (March, 1972). Where there is no men¬ tion of the source, the date given at the end of the document is that of the relevant issue of Frontier.
Beyond certain
grammatical corrections, no liberty has been taken with the text. To enable the general readers to properly appreciate the significance of the documents included, a brief account of the background and the cross-currents of the Naxalbari movement is presented below. The history of the influence of Mao Tsetung on the Indian communist movement can be traced back to the Telengana armed struggle, 1946-51.
The communists of Telengana had
then, in the teeth of bitter opposition from the central leadership of the Communist Party of India [CPI], upheld the relevance of Mao Tsetung’s theory of New Democracy in the Indian con¬ text.
Since then, the communist movement in India under¬
went significant changes.
The undivided CPI later accepted
the path of peaceful transition to socialism as charted out by?
-the Communist Party of the Soviet Union [CPSU] in its 20th Congress.
Discontent within the CPI came to a head with
‘India’s China War’ in 1962.
In 1964, the Party split and the
Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] was formed, which dubbed the CPI ‘revisionist’. In March
1967, in the Fourth General Elections, non-
Congress governments were formed in eight of the seventeen states.
The CPI(M) joined the United Front governments in
Kerala and West Bengal.
In May 1967, Naxalbari, till then
an obscure spot in North Bengal, suddenly became an object of widespread attention, with an armed peasant uprising. this, Charu
Before
Majumdar [CM] had written ‘Eight Documents’,
which, according to the leadership of the Communist Party of India
(Marxist-Leninist)
[CPI(ML)], formed later in 1969,
were the ideological basis of the uprising.
CM’s article ‘Carry
Forward the Peasant Struggle by Fighting Revisionism’, inclu¬ ded in this Volume, is the last of the ‘Eight Documents’.
In
his ‘Report on the Peasant Movement in the Terai Region’, Kanu Sanyal [KS], one of the chief architects of Naxalbari, gave an analytical account of the uprising. In a later document, ‘More About Naxalbari’, written from jail in 1973, Sanyal, however, pointed to some lacunae in his earlier report. Meanwhile, in an editorial ‘Spring Thunder Over India’, published in the July 5, 1967 issue of the People's Daily, the Communist Party of China [CPC] had come out in support of the Naxalbari peasant movement. All this had had its share in accentuating the contradic¬ tions within
the
CPI(M).
disowned Naxalbari.
The leadership of the CPI(M)
And the U. F. Government in West
Bengal let loose severe police repression. Then came the parting
of ways.
A large number
cadres of the CPI(M) and a section of the pelled from the Party. disbanded.
of
leaders were ex¬
The Darjeeling District Committee was
Thousands of members left the Party.
The dis¬
sident and the expelled members branded the CPI(M) leader¬ ship ‘neo-revisionist’ and started Deshabrati, a Bengali weekly, aud Liberation, an English monthly.
A ‘Declaration of the
Revolutionaries of the CPI(M)’ was issued by the All India Co¬ ordination Committee of Revolutionaries [AICCR], formed -on November 13, 1967, in Calcutta. The exodus continued to gain momentum.
In April 1968,
at the CPI(M) plenum held at Burdwan, West Bengal, the -draft ‘For Ideological Discussion’, placed before the members back in August 1967, was approved.
The draft criticized the
CPSU, but at the same time charged the CPC with interfer¬ ence in the internal affairs of the CPI(M).
The Jammu and
Kashmir and the Andhra State Committees opposed this draft. Some of the contentions of the latter were that the draft rejected people’s war as the universal form of struggle in back¬ ward countries like India and abandoned agrarian revolution as the principal line.
The Andhra State Committee walked
out of the CPI(M). With the Burdwan Plenum the breach was final.
On May
14, 1968, the AICCR enlarged itself into the All India Co¬ ordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries [AICC¬ CR], under the leadership of CM.
On that same day were
issued the ‘Second Declaration’ and a ‘Resolution on Elections’. The process of consolidation of revolutionaries, however, made little headway.
A large section of the communists in
Andhra Pradesh formed the Andhra Pradesh Revolutionary Communist Committee
[APRCC] in September 1968, which
acted as the Andhra State Committee of the AICCCR until February 7,
1969, when the latter decided ‘to part with the
Andhra Committee’ and to ‘maintain non-antagonistic relations’ with them as ‘friends and comrades outside the AICCCR’. The causes of the discord were that the Andhra Committee and Nagi Reddy were not unconditionally loyal to the CPC ; that instead of owning and glorifying the Srikakulam struggle, they accorded it at most a lukewarm support; that while
the
AICCCR considered boycott of elections a basic question for an entire period, the Andhra Committee maintainted, it was a tactical question.
Breaking
away from the AICCCR, the
APRCC adopted the ‘Immediate Programme’ in April 1969. On the other hand, the
AICCCR had decided to form
itself into a party, and the CPI (ML) was born on April 22y 1969. On that day, the Central Organising Committee of theCPI(ML) adopted the ‘Political Resolution’, and the hithertounpublished document, ‘Resolution on Party Organisation’. A year later, by the middle of May 1970, the Party held itsFirst Congress—which was termed the ‘Eighth Congress of the
CPI(ML)—the
First Party Congress
after
Naxalbari’
claimed to be in continuity with the seven congresses of the Indian communist movement prior to the formation of the CPI(ML). The ‘Political Organisational Report’ and Majumdar’s note ‘On Political Organisational Report’ were adopted at the Congress. Tremendous police repression led to the killing and arrest of a large number of cadres and leaders. In this context, CM wrote two ‘Notes’, specifying some concrete tasks in the rural and the urban areas. About the guidelines of the ensuing phase of struggle, CM left very clear indications in his ‘Last Writing’ before his arrest and subsequent death in police custody. All this time, Majumdar had been having ideological differ¬ ences with a number of prominent leaders. Parimal Dasgupta, Asit Sen, Promode Sengupta, Sushital Roy Chowdhury [SRC] —all of them had, at one time or another, lashed out at CM’s policies.
SRC’s document, ‘Problems and Crises of Indian
Revolution’ gives a glimpse of his points of difference with CM’s line. In September 1970, the Bihar State Committee led by Satyanarain Singh [SNS] had levelled charges of “Left” sectarianism against the Party Central Committee headed by CM. This subsequently resulted in the expulsion of the Bihar State Committee led by SNS, who later, on November 7, 1971 formed a new, parallel Central Committee. Things, however, came to surface with the ‘Open Letter* written by six prominent leaders from jail. In another docu¬ ment, ‘More About Naxalbari’ criticised CM. Lessons
written from jail, KS bitterly
In his document, ‘Hold High the Genuine
of Naxalbari’,
written in November
1975, Ashim
Chatterjee was also in complete agreement with KS’s line of criticism. Some of the major points raised by KS
were again
subjected to serious criticism by K. Venkaiah [KV], who had been one of the signatories to the
‘Open Letter’, in his
document ‘New Controversies in the name of More about Naxalbari’.
KV’s contentions have been supported by two
■other signatories to the ‘Open Letter’, Naga Bhushan Patnaik and D. Bhuban Mohan Patnaik. Meanwhile, disintegration had affected the APRCC too. Following the arrest of leaders like Nagi Reddy and D.V. Rao in 1969, the
active
leadership had to be reconstituted.
This reconstituted leadership of APRCC, by then renamed the Andhra Pradesh Revolutionary Communist Party [APRCP] ■came under fire both in jail.
in
1970 from Nagi Reddy and D.V. Rao—
Replying to charges of ‘Left Deviation’ levelled
against them by Nagi Reddy and D.V.
Rao, the new leader¬
ship headed by Chandra Pulla Reddy [CPR] accused the former of‘Party-splitting activities and capitulationist policies’.
The
position of this group is contained in the document ‘The First Conference of the APRCP’. group SNS
Subsequently, in early 1975, this
merged with the Central Committee, CPI(ML) led by (vide ‘Unite to Build A Single
Party’).
The
Unity
Committee of the CPI(ML) also joined in, and the Central Committee, CPI(ML) led by SNS, came to be known as the Provisional Central Committee, CPI(ML).
The CPI(ML) led
by SNS opposes the ‘Gang of Four’, supports the leadership of Hua Kuo-feng and the Three Worlds theory. '‘Resolution on Elections’
Their document
reviews the stand of the AICCCR
and the CPI(ML) on the question of boycott of elections. The section which share of divisions. then became the
remained loyal to CM also had its
CM died on July 28, 1972 and Sharma General Secretary of the Party.
Mahadeb
Mukherjee [MM], a member of the Central Committee led by Sharma, formed a parallel Central Committee in late 1973. MM is known as the leader of the pro-CM pro-Lin Piao group of the CPI(ML).
Loyal to CM, the Bhojpur Committee along
with others that did not join the SNS-group had worked for some time with MM.
But when MM supported Lin Piao,
this Bhojpur Committee along with others dissociated itself
from the MM group.
This group supports Hua Kuo-feng and
opposes the ‘Gang of Four’
and is known as the pro-CM
anti-Lin group of the CPI(ML).
In November 1975, Subroto
Datta (Jahar), its first General Secretary, was killed by the police.
Since then, Vinode Mishra [VM] has been the General
Secretary of the group.
The documents, ‘Editorial, Desha-
brati' and the ‘Present Situation and Immediate Tasks’ reveal the positions of the MM-
and the VM-led groups of the CPI-
(ML) respectively. In addition to these we have included two other documents. One is that of the Maoist Communist Centre [MCC], formerly known as the ‘Dakshin Desk’ group, which never joined the CPI(ML).
Their document ‘How the people can be mobilised
in Guerilla Warfare’ CPI(ML).
gives their points of difference with the
The other is that of the Unity Centre of the Com¬
munist Revolutionaries of India (Marxist-Leninist) [UCCRI (ML)] entitled ‘On United Front’. UCCRI(ML) had its origin in the APRCC led by T. Nagi Reddy and D. V. Rao.
Many
groups formerly belonging to the CPI(ML) also joined it later. The three organisations—West Bengal Co-ordination Com¬ mittee of Revolutionaries [WBCCR] and the All India Prepa¬ ratory Committee, Communist Unity Centre (Marxist-Leninist) [AIPC, CUC(ML)] and APRCC merged together in April 1975 to form the UCCRI(ML).
During the Emergency, because of
differences within the organisation regarding the role of its General Secretary,
D. V.
Rao—most of the UCCRI(ML)
members outside Andhra dissociated themselves from D. V. Rao group and now function under the same name. The document is of this latter section.
An important inclusion in
the Appendix is Subroto Datta’s ‘One divides into two’. We have tried to make the representative as possible.
DOCUMENTS section as
Still, however, we lay no claim as
to the total representation of all the groups and of all their view-points.
We are also aware that shortcomings may have
crept in, not only because of the inexperience of the editors in this field but also because of the lack of a predecessor work of exactly this nature.
CONTENTS
DEBATES
Strategy and Tactics Indian Maoism—Two Shades ? —Mallikarjuna Rao
...
f
...
8
...
12
Letter—A Reader
...
21
The Srikakulam story—Narayana Murthi
...
23
Letter—A Kisan worker
...
27
...
28
Vote and Revolution—Arun Kumar Roy
...
37
Letter—Sudarshan Chatterjee
...
47
Letter—Morris Roy The general line in Colonial Revolution —Rafiqul Islam
Andhra Pradesh : Analysis of a Split ■—A Correspondent
Communists—Simple, Marxist and Revolutionary —Arun Kumar Roy
...
50
...
66
...
71
Individual terrorism & Marxism—Ashim Mitra ...
76
Letter—Chandranath Chakraborty
...
80
The Naxalite Tactical line—Abhijnan Sen
...
82
Naxalite Tactics in cities—Abhijnan Sen
...
88
CPI(M)’s Revolutionary Teaching—Digvijay On the Thoughts of Charu Majumdar —B. Upadhyay
Two Deaths (Letter)—S. Roy
...
96
Two Deaths (Letter)—Arun Majumdar
...
99
*«
100
Appraisal Naxalbari : between yesterday and to-morrow —Sumanta Banerjee
109
CPI(ML) : the twilight hour—A Correspondent Naxalbari and After : An appraisal •••
117
The Main danger—Baburaj
•••
129
‘The Main danger’—Prabhat Jana
•••
137
‘The Main danger’—Arun Goswami
...
145
—Prabhat Jana
148
What’s to be done'—K. G. Class Struggle—Moni Guha
•. •
152
Letter—Arun Goswami
...
155
...
157
...
169
...
177
•••
188
Declaration of the revolutionaries of the CPI(M) ...
193
Second Declaration of A1CCCR
...
196
Resolution on Elections (AICCCR)
...
201
...
203
It is time to form the Party (AICCCR)
...
227
I mmediate Programme (APRCC)
... ...
The main dangers and the main errors —Rafikul Hassan Continuity of Naxalbari—Bhabani Chowdhuri
DOCUMENTS Carry forward the peasant struggle by fighting revisionism—Charu Majumdar Spring Thunder over India —People's Daily editorial
Report on the peasant movement in the Terai region—Kanu Sanyal
Political Resolution, CPI(ML) Resolution on Party Organisation, CPI(ML) A Critique of the Political Resolution
231 251 263
(• • •
274
•••
275
•
285
...
291
...
296
Programme of the CPI(ML), Party Congress May 1970 Political Organisational Report, Party Congress May 1970 On the Political Organisational Report —Charu Majumdar Problems and Crises of Indian Revolution —Sushital Roy Chowdhury
How the people can be mobilised in Guerilla warfare
>m
313
...
318
...
319
...
320
...
322
...
326
...
347
The first conference of the APRCP
...
371
Present situation and immediate tasks
...
374
...
380
...
383
On the Situation and our Tasks
...
393
Resolution ‘On Elections’
...
400
On United Front
...
410
Editorial, Deshabrati
...
412
...
419
A note on Party’s work in Urban areas —Charu Majumdar A note on Party’s work in Rural areas —Charu Majumdar Majumdar’s last writing—Charu Majumdar Open Letter —Kanu Sanyal, Chowdhary Tejeswara Rao, Souren Bose, Nagabhushan Patnaik, Kolia Venkaiah, D. Bhuban Mohan Patnaik More about Naxalbari—Kanu Sanyal New controversies in the name of ‘More about Naxalbari’—Kolia Venkaiah
“Unite to build a single party’ —S. N. Singh,
P. Vasudeva Rao,
Ramanarsiah,
Chandra Pulla
Reddy Hold High the Genuine Lessons of Naxalbari —Ashim Chatterjee
Appendix One Divides into Two —Subroto Datta (Jahar) Index
DEBATES
Strategy And Tactics
INDIAN MAOISM—TWO SHADES ? MALLIKARJUNA RAO
The first recorded debate in the world communist move¬ ment on the legitimacy of Mao Tsetung’s theories as part of Marxism-Leninism took place in India in 1948-49 and the first open denunciation of these theories as alien to Marxism-Lenin¬ ism came from the General Secretary of the Communist Party of India, B. T. Ranadive, in 1949. sectarian”
In the wake of the “Left
deviation at the Calcutta (Second) Congress of the
CPI, early in 1948, the Andhra communists, who were already leading an armed struggle of the Telengana peasantry, turned to Mao Tsetung’s New Democracy (published in 1944) in their •search for revolution based on a four-class alliance and the tactic of peasant partisan warfare.
Ranadive, who advocated
the new-fangled theory of the “intertwining” of the two stages of revolution and wanted the entire bourgeoisie to be fought, had to extend his polemic to reach the very source of the Andhra communist heresy—Mao Tsetung himself.
Ranadive
wrote : “...we must state emphatically that the Communist Party of India has accepted Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the authoritative sources of Marxism. new sources of Marxism beyond these.
It has not discovered Nor for that matter is
there any communist party which declares adherence to the socalled theory of new democracy alleged to be propounded by Mao and declares it to be a new addition to Marxism.” Rana¬ dive was equating Mao Tsetung with Tito and Earl Browder when he said it was “impossible for communists to talk lightly about new discoveries, enrichment, because such claims have
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
2
proved to be a thin cloak for revisionism.”
VOL IP
The Andhracom-
munists were invoking Mao Tsetung in June 1948, when what now is regarded as Mao’s theories or known as Maoism had not been formalised under this nomenclature.
The Chinese
revolution had not yet triumphed fully and the People’s Re¬ public of China had not been founded when the Andhra com¬ munists hailed Mao Tsetung’s New Democracy and regarded him as a new source of Marxism. Twenty years later, the wheel has turned a full circle. Communist Party of India split into two in 1964.
The
The Com¬
munist Party of India (Marxist), formed in 1964, rejected at its Eighth Congress (December 1968) an amendment to its political
resolution
requiring it to accept
Mao
Tsetung’s
thought as the Marxism-Leninism of the present epoch. Later, in May 1969, its Politbureau suggested that the analysis of the world situation contained in the main document of the Eighth Congress of the Communist Party of China had nothing to do with Marxism-Leninism. With this the polarisation in the Indian communist move¬ ment was complete.
The CPI and the CPI(M) constitute the
non-Maoist or anti-Maoist wing.
The Communist Party of
India (Marxist-Leninist), formed in April 1969, is the only organised Maoist party in India though it cannot claim to represent the majority of Maoists in the country.
The Revolu¬
tionary Communist Committee of Andhra Pradesh as well as other formations have chosen to keep out of the new party. The Communist Party of China conferred “recognition” on the CPI(ML) by reprinting excerpts from its political resolution in the People’s Daily (July 2 1969).
But there are two principal
shades of Maoism in India—one represented by the CPI(ML) and the other by the Andhra Maoists. There is broad agreement among the various Indian Maoist groups on the international general line.
There is also broad
agreement among them on the stage of the Indian revolution, though the CPI(ML) identifies it as the people’s democratic stage [semantically this is in agreement with the CPI(M)’s] while
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
J
the Revolutionary Communist Committee of Andhra Pradesh calls it the new-democratic stage. The first point of difference begins with the very beginning. The manner in which the CPI(ML) was formed has not met with approval of many of the Maoist groups.
The first coun¬
trywide co-ordination of Maoists took place in the form of the All-India Co-ordination
Committee of the Revolutionaries of
the CPI(M) in November 1967 and it included Maoists who had left the CPI(M) or had been expelled, as well as those still in the party.
The Co-ordination Committee was not a party^
or even the nucleus of a party, and its
sponsors
party and programme through a process of struggles.
wanted a
revolutionary
After the Burdwan plenum of the CP1(M) in April
1968, the majority of the party’s membership in
Andhra
Pradesh was in revolt and the Andhra Pradesh Co-ordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries was formed.
It
sought affiliation to the All-India Co-ordination Committee a few months later. But in February 1969, following serious differences with the Andhra Pradesh unit, the All-India Co¬ ordination Committee disaffiliated the unit. Alongside, at the same meeting (February 1969), the AICCCR decided to go ahead with the formation of a new party, contrary to its own views earlier against any hasty step towards the goal.
For instance, in May 1968, the AICCCR, reviewing
the year since Naxalbari, renewed its call for building a “true communist party” in the course of Naxalbari-type struggles, for “revolution can not be victorious without a revolutionary party”.
But Charu Majumdar, the principal theoretician of
the AICCCR, was not sure that the time had come for the formation of a new party.
He wrote that “the primary condi¬
tions for building up a revolutionary party is to organise armed struggle in the countryside” and that a Maoist party cannot be formed merely by gathering together “the various so-called Marxists who profess the thought of Chairman Mao Tsetung and revolt against leadership of the party...” But in February 1969, the AICCCR leadership decided on
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
4
the immediate formation of the party.
VOL II
Its resolution said that
an excellent revolutionary situation existed in the country and there was growing unity of revolutionary ranks.
The political
and organisational needs of a fast developing struggle could no longer be met by a co-ordination committee because “without a revolutionary party, there can be no revolutionary discipline and without revolutionary discipline the struggles cannot be raised to a higher level.”
Its earlier idea that a party should
be formed only “after all the opportunist tendencies, alien trends and undesirable elements have been purged through class struggle is nothing but subjective idealism.
To conceive
of a party without contradictions, without the struggle between the opposites, i.e. to think of a pure faultless party is to indulge in idealist fantasy.”
Thus the CPI(ML) was formed
from above. Kanu Sanyal said at the Calcutta Maidan rally on May 1, 1969, that those who speak of building a party through struggle are indulging in petty-bourgeois romanticism. In contrast, the Revolutionary Communist Committee of Andhra Pradesh (formerly the State Co-ordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries) believes in building a party in the course of revolutionary struggle.
It has taken a decision
in principle to form a party but thinks, as its journal, Jancisakti, made it clear, that revolutionary action should precede the formation of a revolutionary party. But the differences between the CPI(ML) and the Andhra Maoists relate primarily to the tactical line. The first difference is over the principal contradiction in India. The second differ¬ ence, obviously an off-shoot of the first, relates to the form of struggle.
Or, more specifically, to three sub-issues : Is guerilla
warfare the only form of struggle in the present stage in India ? Is there any need for mass organisation to carry on the demo¬ cratic struggle ?
Should a Maoist party be a secret organisa¬
tion ? These are the issues being debated within and among the various Maoist groups in India, including the Andhra Maoist group.
5
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
The CPI (ML)’s political resolution identifies the principal contradiction in India as between feudalism and the masses of the peasantry, and the immediate task as people’s democratic revolution, the main component of which is agrarian revolution to end feudalism.
“Comprador-bureaucratic capitalism and
United States and Soviet imperialism”, being the main props of feudalism, have to be fought too.
Some of the other groups
think imperialism is the main enemy and feudalism and com¬ prador bourgeoisie survive only with the help of imperialism. The Immediate Programme of the RCC of Andhra says that India is a “neo-colony” exploited by the U.S., British and Soviet imperialists and along with imperialism, feudalism also an exploiting force.
is
“The task of the new-democratic
revolution is to destroy imperialism, feudalism, comprador bourgeoisie and the bureaucratic capitalism i.e., the big bour¬ geoisie and then to establish a new-democratic State”. The CPI(ML)’s class strategy is one of a “revolutionary front of all revolutionary classes” according to its political resolution, which commends Mao Tsetung’s theory of people’s, war as the only means of struggle.
It says, “If the poor and
landless peasants, who constitute the majority of the peasantry,, the firm ally of the working class, unite with the middle peasants, then the vast section of the people will be united and. the democratic revolution will inevitably win victory.
It is the
responsibility of the working class as the leader of the revolu¬ tion to unite with the peasantry—the main force of the revolu¬ tion—and advance towards seizure of power through armed struggle.
It is on the basis of worker-peasant alliance that a
revolutionary united front of all classes will be built up.”
But
the party does not seem to be clear as to how to achieve the task of building a “revolutionary front of all revolutionary classes”. The CPI(ML)'s
documents
repeatedly
emphasise
guerilla
warfare waged by the peasantry against the landlords as the only form of struggle in the present stage of revolution.
There
is little mention of the need for mass organisations or for an agrarian programme as a concommitant of peasant struggle.
6
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
To go by published material, an article by Charu Majumdar in Ghatana Prabaha (Vol. II, No. 1) is revealing.
Rejecting
the ideas of a mass organisation, he advocates the building of a secret organisation
through
which
the poor and landless
peasants can establish their leadership of the peasant move¬ ment. “Obviously all the peasants do not at first wage guerilla war ; it is started by the advanced, class conscious section. So at the beginning, it may appear to be the struggle of a handful of people.
It is not the Che (Guevara)-style guerilla
war because this war is started not by relying on weapons but on the co-operation of the unarmed people.
So this
struggle could be started only by propagating the politics of seizure of power among the peasantry and this task can be achieved by the party unit formed of poor and landless peasants. The party unit can fulfil this task only by organising guerilla war by poor and landless peasants ...Guerilla war is the only tactic of the peasants’ revolutionary struggle.
This cannot
be achieved by any mass organisation through open struggle.” (Italics added) The main criticism by other Maoist groups is that the CPI (ML)’s line of thinking is opposed to Mao Tsetung’s thought because by considering armed struggle by the peasantry as the only form of struggle, it is minimising or even ignoring the role of the working class and the tasks in the urban areas and the role of mass organisations. As for the Andhra RCC, the emphasis is not on armed clashes with the landlords and the State authority through a handful of revolutionaries but on mass armed struggles. statement on armed struggle (July
A
1969) notes that “only
through mass revolutionary rallies, revolutionary organisation and mass armed struggle we can dissolve the present big land¬ lord-big bourgeois imperialist system.” The contours of the revolutionary front the Andhra RCC has in view are : “The working class will lead the united front. Along
with workers and peasants, middle classes and (the)
national bourgeoisie will also be in this united front”, to
7
IDEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
achieve the new-democratic revolution.
The line is based on
the inseparable relationship between the party, armed struggle and united front. A document, devoted to examining the RCC’s differences with the Srikakulam unit affiliated to the CPI(ML), on the conduct of the Girijan
armed struggle
in
Srikakulam tribal
tract, clearly declares that to begin guerilla struggle partici¬ pation of the masses is a necessary condition. programme is the basis of all peasant struggle. to the RCC, the starting, development,
An agrarian According
consolidation and
extension of all the struggles of the peasantry would have to be based on an “agrarian revolutionary programme”.
Liberation
for the peasantry means liberation from the landlord-imperia¬ list system. Though complete liberation is possible only after the establishment of base areas, seizure of power throughout India
and after
government, struggles,
the
establishment
“liberation
with the
the starting, of
of
a
new-democratic
begins with the starting of class
starting of anti-landlord struggles, with
the Agrarian
Revolutionary Programme”,
according to the document. On the call for boycott of elections the RCC’s Immediate Programme urges
action to implement the RCC’s earlier
decision to boycott the panchayat elections in Andhra Pradesh. It is not a mere question of the Revolutionary Communists boycotting the poll but one of persuading the people not to participate in the elections.
“To achieve this we must
mainly depend on the consciousness and organising capacity of the people.
No short-cut
methods are to be allowed
or treaded”, it warns, because “we must specify that the issue at hand is not mere boycott of elections by the people” but one of convincing them that people’s war is the path for them and that the village soviets and people’s committees would constitute the foundation of the “new people’s
democratic
revolutionary State” in the villages and provide the leadership ifor implementing the agrarian programme. The RCC thinks that its attempt to give a positive content
8
NAXALBARIAND AFTER
VOL U
to the slogan of election boycott at the grassroots level gives a new dimension to the concept of organising the peasantry for action.
Where the RCC commands the majority following in
a panchayat village, boycott of elections would lead to an unprecedented situation.
The majority will be outside the
government-sponsored panchayat committee and form their own parallel “people’s committee”. The people’s committees in the “boycott” villages will function in competition with the govern¬ ment-sponsored committees, the sanction coming from the majority of the people.
These committees will undertake law,
revenue, village defence (against attacks of landlords or govern¬ ment machinery) tasks and when the peasant struggles move to higher forms, would become the village soviets. These com¬ mittees would also work as the united front committees, initiate and carry out agrarian reform and will play their role in the armed struggle.
Revolutionary Communists would dominate
these committees and provide the leadership but these would have the participation of agricultural labour and the poor peasants and others.
As the movement goes ahead, a few
representatives of the rich
peasants might be taken in.
But
these committees are to have a clear class outlook and ideo¬ logy. The Immediate Programme clearly emphasises the role of mass organisations for the peasantry, working class, students and other sections of the people.
In contrast, the CPI(ML)
seems to have a distrust of mass organisations and urban areas in general. July 4, 1970
Letter Apropos Mr Mallikarjuna Rao’s “Indian Shades ?” (July 4)
Mr Charu Majumdar, in
Maoism—Two 1968, said that
“the primary condition for building up a revolutionary party is to organise armed struggle in the countryside.” Even in 1968,. armed guerilla struggle was started in Srikakulam and other
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
9
‘
parts of Andhra Pradesh. But Nagi Reddy and his groups, the principal initiators of the Revolutionary Communist Com¬ mittee of Andhra Pradesh, refused to join this struggle and in every possible way discouraged it. As the political and orga¬ nisational needs of a fast developing struggle could no longer be met by a Co-ordination Committee, the party was formed at the initiative of the struggling comrades. As Nagi Reddy and his group did not join the struggle and, in fact, opposed it, they were naturally excluded from the party. Secondly, Mr Rao has described the CPI(ML)’s stand about the principal contradiction in India as between feudalism and the masses of peasantry, but the ‘Immediate Programme’ of theRCCof Andhra, as described by Mr Rao, fails to present any concrete analysis of the principal contradiction in India. Regarding the building of a “revolutionary front of all revolutionary classes,” the CPI(ML) has made it clear that only in the course of struggle can such a revolutionary front be achieved. Further, Mr Rao said that contrary to the thesis of the CPI(ML) that guerilla warfare waged by the peasantry against the landlords as the only form of struggle in the present stage of revolution, the Andhra RCC’s emphasis is not on armed clashes with the landlord and the State authority thro¬ ugh a handful of revolutionaries but on mass armed struggles. But the problem, which I presume the Andhra RCC has for¬ gotten, is to establish red political power and base areas in the countryside. About this particular matter, the CPI(ML) said that armed guerilla struggle and annihilation of feudal lords and their henchmen is the only way. Is the accusation of the Andhra RCC that clashes with the landlords and the State authority are indulged in by a ‘handful’ of revolutionaries true ? Take the case of armed guerilla stru¬ ggle in Srikakulam, Mushahari, Lakhimpur-Kheri and DebraGopiballavpur which are going on under the leadership of the CPI(ML). The participation by hundreds of people in giving shelter and food, in collecting intelligence and information
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
10
VOL II
about the enemy’s position, guarantee of passage for retreat and advance of the guerillas and the participation of the peo¬ ple in the attack and celebration of victories after a successful attack, the functioning of the Krishak Samitis and People’s Courts—are all these manifestations of isolated actions by a handful of revolutionaries and virtual withdrawal from mass organisations ?
The establishment of red political power in
these areas is a clear indication of the fact that the CPI(ML) has done intensive political propaganda and mass work before any action. The Andhra RCC said that “only through mass revolu¬ tionary rallies, revolutionary organisation and mass armed struggle we can dissolve the present big landlord-big bourgeois imperialist system”.
But how will this mass armed struggle
against the landlord-bourgeois-imperialist The Andhra
system be effected ?
RCC lacks any cohesive analysis on this point.
Do they mean that a revolutionary mass upsurge with sponta¬ neity will be directed against the landlords ?
But then the
open nature of this struggle would expose the party apparatus and defeat the purpose of secret political propoganda by the party units. The Andhra RCC should learn the lessons of the Naxalbari upsurge which was something of a mass upsurge in which spontaneity and mass initiative far outweighed the planning and discipline of a revolutionary movement.
With¬
out proper politicalisation, military experience and discipline, the movement suffered setbacks in the face of police repres¬ sion.
The very open nature of the preparation for armed
struggle must also have exposed the party apparatus. Sanyal,
Kanu
drawing the necessary lesson, suggested that in the
next phase of struggle the revolutionaries will set up party units which will not only be armed but will also be “trained to maintain secrecy.”
Such units will propagate Mao’s thoughts,
-intensify class struggle and as guerilla units strike and annihi¬ late class enemies. They will follow the basic tactics of guerillawarfare as enunciated by Mao. statement of the RCC,
Significantly enough, in the
detailed by Mr Rao,
there is no
11
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
mention of the annihilation of class enemies.
Mao laid it
-down that the fundamental guiding principle of all military operations should be “war of annihilation.” The CPI (ML) never disregarded any mass organisation or economic movements.
As Mr Charu Majumdar has pointed
out, “...We do not say that we shall never wage struggles for economic demands.
What we say is that political propaganda
and building party organisations are the foremost and main tasks before us.”
(Fight against Revisionism, Liberation No.
11, Vol 2, September 1969.) Read also his “Our Party’s Tasks Among the Workers.”
Regarding the work in the urban
areas, the CPI(ML) has clearly given directions to launch demo¬ cratic movements in support of armed agrarian revolution in the countryside.
Contrary to the allegation that the CPI(ML)
is minimising or even ignoring the role of the working class, its Political Resolution said, “It is the responsibility of the working class as the leader and vanguard of the revolution to unite with the principal force of revolution i.e., the peasantry and to seize power by way of armed struggle.”
Mr Charu
Majumdar, in his article ‘To the Working Class,’ (Liberation, No. 5, Vol. 3, March 1970) said, “Today the masses of workers should think of the hundreds of millions of poor and landless peasants who have been exploited and oppressed for centuries and who now find their conditions unendurable.
The working
class can earn for itself a status of dignity in society, a status which it is entitled to as the producer of wealth, only by over¬ throwing the
crushing
burden of
exploitation...Once the
workers and the peasants, the producers of wealth, are united, a tremendous force will be
generated which will make it
possible to accomplish the People’s Democratic Revolution, and then to establish the socialist system in India by destroying the exploiters and the system of exploitation. It is the working . class that must shoulder the responsibility of realising this possibility and must assume the leadership.” How can political consciousness be instilled among the • working class who are
infatuated with
economism ?
This
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
12
will not happen automatically.
VOL JL
This can be effected only by
intensifying the armed struggle in the rural sector, by which the capitalist-agent nature of the CPM and the CPI will be exposed before the urban workers.
Reference may be made
to the penetration of the CPI(ML) among the working class of Jamshedpur, which has become possible only because of its armed guerilla struggle in the rural areas of Bihar. August 1, 1970
MORRIS ROY
THE GENERAL LINE IN COLONIAL REVOLUTION RAFIQUL ISLAM
Mao Tsetung’s leadership over the revolutionary war now being waged in Asia, Africa and Latin America has been firmly established through the experiences of the people themselves. The general principles of the Chinese path to revolution have been found to apply equally to all colonial countries and any attempt to
evade them has inevitably led the revolutionaries
to defeat or to capitulation. But that does not mean that all colonial revolutions must be carbon
copies of the Chinese revolution.
not permit this kind of ritual.
Marxism does
As Mao himself said :
“...how to turn Marxism into something
specifically
Chinese, to imbue every manifestation of it with Chinese characteristics i.e., to apply it in accordance with China’s characteristics, becomes a problem which the whole Party must understand and solve immediately.for the fresh and lovely things of Chinese style and Chinese flavour which the common folk of China love to see and hear.” (The Role of the National War)
Chinese
Communist
Party in the
13
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
Similarly the Indian revolutionary must of necessity “imbue every manifestation” with Indian characteristics, and clothe the theory of revolution in Indian style and Indian flavour. The Red political power can exist in a liberated zone, and that such a zone must necessarily be created for protracted civil war, and that such a zone is an inevitable feature of ■colonial revolution, can no longer be disputed.
But the five
conditions listed by Mao for the emergence and survival of such parallel
Red power in China must be carefully studied,
and differences with our country taken note of, rather than— as a wag commented recently—“passing off dung-heaps in Sonarpur as mountain hideouts.” The first condition was China’s semi-colonial state and that she was under indirect imperialist rule—a -satisfied in the Indian situation today.
condition
fully
But Mao goes on to
qualify this condition with reference to “prolonged splits and wars within the White regime” (See Why is it that Red politi¬ cal power can Exist in
China ?).
Chinese revolutionaries
took brilliant advantage of these splits and wars.
Now, even
by stretching sophistry to its limit, one cannot find a parallel of the wars among the
Chinese warlords in this country.
The
splits and miniature coups of the Indian ruling classes hold no promise yet that an uprising will not immediately unite them. The sinister unity at all levels
from
suppressing Naxalbari and brutally
Delhi
to Calcutta in
murdering women and
children proves that the reactionaries also learn from experi¬ ence and the Indian rulers today need not behave as their Chinese counterparts did in 1927. Mao’s second condition refers to the strength of the bour¬ geois-democratic revolution in the areas where Red power rose, the formation of trade unions and peasants’ associations “on a wide scale” prior to armed uprising.
This is an aspect
almost entirely rejected by several groups, and notably, the CPI(ML).
Their resolutions refer
the “only” form of struggle.
to “guerilla warfare” as
(They attribute it to Lin Piao,
who had merely used the expression in the military sense.
14
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL IT
describing guerilla warfare as the only method of mobilizing the masses when the people’s army is already in action.) They have repeatedly declared through their organs that they consider the economic struggle of the peasantry to be a “revi¬ sionist” diversion of revolutionary energy ; currently they are dubbing trade unions as part of the capitalist establishment. But Mao Tsetung never said that armed struggle is the “only” form of struggle.
He said :
“Our Party was able to co-ordinate directly or indirectly the armed struggle, the principal form of struggle, with many other necessary forms of struggle...the struggle of the workers, the struggle of the peasants (this is the main thing), the struggles of the youth, the women and all other sections of the people, the struggle for political power, the struggle on the economic front, the struggle on the espionage front, the struggle on the ideological front, and other forms of struggle.” (Introductory Remarks to the ‘Communist'. Italics added.) Thus, Mao Tsetung has been surreptitiously revised, the word “principal” has been removed and the word “only” slipped in ; and this has been done in order to justify the total rejection of work on all other fronts, the virtual withdrawal of our comrades from mass organisations, and the disastrous tendency, carefully cultivated, of “starting action” somewhere, somehow, even though no preliminary work has been done there to turn the “action” into a struggle for building abase area.
The precondition for Red political power in any area
is “peasant association” etc. according to Mao.
By rejecting
all frontal work, our comrades here have openly announced that they do not want the so-called “actions” to lead to Red political power.
Or they are trying to tell us that Mao Tse¬
tung is wrong and
that they have discovered a new method
of jumping over frontal work straight at armed struggle and Red power ! While Mao’s third condition'—the development of nation¬ wide revolutionary situation—obtains even more acutely today
15
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
'
in every country, the fourth and fifth conditions are cons¬ picuous by their absence in India : the existence of a Red Army, and a strong and correct Communist Party.
We have
no Red Army yet, and we have the beginnings of a Party that has already begun to revise Mao. But does this
mean that Red political power cannot be
established in India ?
Certainly not.
However, the condi¬
tions for the rise of Indian Yenans must be calculated from Indian conditions and the present epoch.
Herein is the first
necessity of looking for Indian characteristics, the study of peculiarly Indian contradictions. The CPI(ML) has once more solved misquoting Mao.
this
question by
It has declared :
“In the present stage, the principal contradiction in our country is between feudalism and our peasant masses.
In
this stage, the Indian revolution is the new type of democra¬ tic revolution—people’s democratic revolution...” (Translated from Bengali) Two misrepresentations
in
one paragraph !
Never has
Mao said that at a stage when imperialism is indirectly exploi¬ ting a country the principal contradiction is between “feuda¬ lism and the peasant masses.”
On the contrary, he explicitly
states that at such times the principal contradiction is between “the masses” on the one hand and “the alliance of imperialism and the feudal classes” on the other. Lin Piao also
(On Contradiction)
stresses “the Chinese people” as a whole,
and probably never imagined that anyone calling himself a revolutionary could distort this into “peasant masses.”
(See
Long Live the Victory of the People's War). Mao’s “masses” has-become “peasant masses” in our comrades’ formulation, and “the alliance of imperialism and feudal classes” has become simply “feudalism” ! country
and
How they can talk about a semi-colonial
in the same breath exclude all
reference to
imperialism as an enemy is a mystery. Furthermore, it is gross distortion of the thoughts of Mao to say that “in the present stage...in the stage of people’s
16
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
democratic revolution,” the principal contradiction constantly remains the same.
Mao has pointed out, how the imperialists
will inevitably pass into direct aggression and then the princi¬ pal contradiction of the previous period will become non¬ principal, and the contradiction between imperialism and the entire
people
will
become
principal.
To assert that the
“feudalism-peasant masses” contradiction will remain principal right through the stage of people’s democratic revolution is to deny that imperialism is bound to pass into naked aggression when its lackeys fail to suppress revolution. Why has it been necessary for them to replace Mao’s “masses” with “peasant masses” ?
Naturally to exclude all
other classes from the struggle, to deny the necessity of a democratic, revolutionary front, without which, Mao, there can be no revolution.
according to
It is obvious to any one that
the entire crisis in India springs from the feudal system. It is obvious that this system keeps about seventy per cent of the people of India deprived of purchasing power, with the result that industries retrench and close down, the worker is thrown out of employment, the student faces the prospect of starvation and the commuter that of losing his job tomorrow.
It is obvious that even
the smaller producers
can not market their goods and the shopkeeper can not sell his ware, as long as the vast majority of the people, the peasants, do not buy. It is obvious therefore that feudalism is the enemy not only of the peasants, but of all classes and therefore the broadest
possible front can be built against this common
scourge.
That is exactly what our CPI(ML) comrades have all
along rejected—the necessity of building a united front.
Hence
their abstruse, negative slogans scribbled on city walls :
Agri¬
cultural revolution is the way to liberty !
Naturally therefore
the petty bourgeois of the city fails to understand how the peasants’ struggle concerns him.
No one is bothering to tell
him that his job depends on the victory over feudalism, that he should join this struggle not to help the peasant to a plot of land, but for his own economic survival.
debates and documents
17
Why have our comrades, twice in one paragraph, tried to shield the role of imperialism in the forced backwardness of India ?
Why are they going to the length of revising Mao to
obliterate all references to “the alliance between imperialism and the feudal classes”,
when everyone knows the sordid
history of American fertilizer-factories to strengthen the feudals in India ? Everyone knows the disgrace of a Five Year Plan held up at U.S. orders. Everyone is familiar with the abolition of export duties on iron, manganese and jute, for the sake of American exploiters. Everyone knows the economics of food shortage so that the USA can sell wheat to India.
It is obvious that the feudal
economy in India is primarily in U. S, interests so that she remains
a
supplier of raw materials.
And therefore the
principal contradiction, according to Mao, even when imperia¬ list exploitation is indirect, is always between the people on one side and “the alliance between imperialism and the feudal classes” on the other, and never abstract “feudalism”. It is being frequently said that only during direct aggression by imperialism ( a phase totally ignored by ML theoreticians ) does imperialism make its appearance at one end of the con¬ tradiction ;
and that during indirect exploitation it is only
feudalism that is the enemy. Mao never said so. He said, even during indirect exploitation, imperialism is still the enemy, the Lidden enemy behind the feudal classes, but that during direct aggression by imperialism, “foreign imperialism and domestic reaction stand quite openly at one end of the pole...” Clear, one would think. The difference between the phases of indirect and direct aggression is not one of absence of im¬ perialism from the principal contradiction, but only that of whether it is hidden or “standing openly.” To the ML comrades, of course, all this has no meaning. To them the entire people’s democratic revolution can be com¬ pleted without any thought of imperialism. To them LinPiao’s clear instruction that any country that wants revolution, freedom and peace must necessarily aim its spearhead at U. S. imperiaVol II—2
18
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
lism, is nonsense.
VOL IP
To them, the Chinese Communist Party’s
repeated warning like the following are mere phrases : “Two outstanding facts since World War II are that the imperialists and
the
reactionaries
are
everywhere
reinforcing their apparatus of violence for cruelly suppress¬ ing the masses and that imperialism headed by the United States is conducting counter-revolutionary armed interventi¬ on in all parts of the world.” (The
Proletarian Revolution
and
Krushchev’s
Revi¬
sionism). The ML comrades are not interested in such assessments of the role of the imperialist “gendarmerie.”
They are sure there
will be no direct aggression, and while there is only indirect exploitation, feudalism is the only enemy ! But if we are aware of imperialism as the real master behind the feudals and the big bourgeoisie, we would at once be conscious of another major contradiction which is peculiarly Indian.
This is a multinational federation of States, and the
people’s struggle is increasingly assuming the form of asserting the right of self-determination, of struggle against the central power.
It is obvious that the principal instrument whereby
imperialism exploits India is the Central Government, and the retention at all costs of the federal structure is meant to serve the interests of imperialism.
The armed forces, with which a
parallel Red power must at once come into conflict, is under the control of the Centre, and even talk of secession can be puni¬ shed by 15 years in prison. tion
It is obvious that the disintegra¬
of this federation will immediately force the hidden
imperialist into the national
patriotic
open, and we shall enter the phase of war
Communist Party has Kashmiri people’s
against
imperialism.
The Chinese
repeatedly come out in support of the
rights and even the Telengana struggle.
Our comrades in Calcutta have merely repeated these declara¬ tions, but have scrupulously refrained from applying the lessons in the country at large.
They have nothing to say about the
Punjabi, or the Maharashtrian, or the Bengali people’s rights.
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
19
In fact, the ML political resolution has not a word to say about national rights and the role of communists in a people’s struggle for self-determination, in spite of the clear general line of colonial revolution. If the communists fail to seize the leadership of these movements, the fascists will.
But the leading theoretician of
the CPI(ML) has declared in print that communists should not lead movements for national self-determination (.Deshabrati, May 30, 1968, P. 5).
What has this in common with
Mao’s teaching that “in the final analysis national struggle is class struggle” (See Peking Review, No. 16 of 1968, P.
13) ?
What has this in common with the general line laid down by the Chinese Party ? History has entrusted to the proletarian parties in these areas (i. e. Asia, Africa and Latin America) the glorious mission of holding high the banner of struggle against imperialism..., of standing in the forefront of the national democratic revolutionary movement...
It is of primary
importance for advanced members of the proletariat to work in the rural areas, help the peasants to get organized and raise their class consciousness and their national selfrespect and self-confidence. (General Line of the International Communist Move¬ ment, C.C., C.P.C., 1963.
Italics added)
But of course, if imperialism does not even exist in our assessment
of the whole period of democratic revolution,
naturally China’s lead will fall on deaf ears and the ML Party can set itself up against Mao Tsetung. But if at the present stage we recognise “the alliance of imperialism and the feudal classes” as the enemy,
and if we
are sure that direct aggression by imperialism is inevitable in the near future, a little more humility will assert itself, and we shall not have the audacity to reject outright the experi¬ ences of the Chinese Communist Party.
We shall then see
that the feudals in the Indian countryside can be exposed before the peasants not only as class enemies, but also as
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
20
VOL II
national enemies ; not only as exploiters, but also as traitors. All classes then will rally against the reactionaries, who are not only impoverishing the masses, but have also sold the country’s freedom to the imperialists.
Class struggle and
patriotic struggle will then merge into one, under the hegemony of the proletariat.
It can then take the road—a road already
taken spontaneously by the masses—of organized destruction of the federal structure that serves the interests of imperialism. Only in this manner can people’s democratic revolution be the continuation of the long freedom struggle against British tyranny.
Only in this manner is it possible to release a mass
upsurge of all exploited classes in defence of national interests. Only in this manner can guarantees be created for the emer¬ gence and survival of Red power in liberated zones in India. Armed struggle must be the spearhead of a vast movement of the masses, led by the working class, for people’s demo¬ cracy as well as national independence.
Without a people’s
army the people have nothing, said Mao. not created by so-called somewhere ;
the
Such an army is
mobile units “starting” something
guerilla grows out of the people and is
sustained by the people, sheltered and nurtured by them.
The
guerilla must symbolize the highest aspirations of the people in order that the people may rally round him.
In short, the
guerilla, and finally the soldier of the people’s army, must be the man who defends not only the people’s home, land, food, democracy, but also their “national self-respect.” The struggle in Srikakulam fills us with hope that the party which is leading it will sooner or later establish itself on the road to revolution which has been lit up by the thoughts of Mao Tsetung.
But their activities and quixotic tilts at Mao in
this part of the country stand in sharp contrast to the war-cry of the guerillas of Andhra. October 18, 1969
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
21
Letter Mr Rafiqul Islam distorts the political resolution of the CPI(ML).
This
resolution
clearly states that “the Indian
people will have to wage a bitter, protracted struggle against U.S. and Soviet social-imperialism too.
By liberating them¬
selves from the yoke of feudalism, the Indian people will also liberate themselves from the yoke of imperialism and comprador bureaucratic-capital, because the struggle against feudalism is also a struggle against the other two enemies.” Mr Islam in his translation tries to omit the question of U.S.
and Soviet imperialism from the original resolution and
starts his impeachment that the resolution guards and shields imperialism from the masses and he misquotes Mao to help him in his game. What Mao said was : “When imperialism launches a war of aggression against such a country, all its various classes, except for some traitors, can temporarily unite in a national war against imperialism.
At such a time, the contra¬
diction between imperialism and the country concerned be¬ comes the principal contradiction while all other contradictions among the various classes within the country (including what was the principal contradiction between the feudal system and the great masses of the people) are temporarily relegated to a secondary and subordinate position”.
Does it not prove
that before direct imperialist aggression, the principal contra¬ diction in China was between the feudal system and the great masses of the people ? The CPI(ML) leader, Mr Charu Majumdar, has also made it clear that the Indian people can liberate themselves by over¬ throwing the “four major contradictions in our country today, contradictions between the Indian people on the one hand and U.S. imperialism, Soviet social-imperialism, feudalism and bureaucratic-capital on the other”.
(Liberation, Vol. 3, No \).
Rafiqul Islam attempts to vulgarise the entire history of Marxism-Leninism on the question of national liberation in a semi-colonial
and semi-feudal country.
The question in India
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
22
VOL II
is one of peasants’ armed struggle under the leadership of the working class.
In 1925, Stalin,
in a speech concerning the
national question in Yugoslavia, said, “...the peasantry consti¬ tute the main army of the national movement—there is no powerful national movement without the peasant army, nor can there be.
That is what is meant when it is said that in
essence the national question is a peasant question.” these lines, New
Quoting
Mao Tsetung also says in his famous thesis On
Democracy—“...the Chinese revolution is essentially a
peasant revolution...” In spite of all these facts, Rafiqul Islam alleges
that
the
CPI(ML) has “nothing to say about the
Punjabi or the Maharashtrian or the Bengali people’s rights”. He takes a superficial approach to the problem, which fits parties like the DMK, Shiv Sena etc.
As Mao says, “In
the final analysis a national struggle is a question of class struggle.”
So when Rafiqul
Islam
raises the question of
Punjabis,
Bengalis and Maharashtrians without the question
of class,
it should be well understood which network he
belongs to. Again, Rafiqul Islam charges that the CPI(ML) is destroy¬ ing every possibility of building a democratic front and that it is abandoning and disturbing mass organisations in defiance of Mao’s instructions. organising mass
He starts abusing the CPI(ML) for not
organisations.
He starts with an apology
that as there is no Red army there cannot be any Red base. So the CPI(ML) should now organise mass organisations. This is the same old cry of the revisionists of all hues. Accord¬ ing to Mao, through guerilla struggles and guerilla activities a regular army and base area can be established.
He says,
“Thus the transformation of a guerilla zone into: a base area is an arduous creative process, and its accomplishment depends on the extent to which the enemy is destroyed and the masses are aroused.” The CPI(ML) will adhere to the teachings of Chairman Mao and will tell its cadres, “We are now living in a time when the principle of ‘going up into the hills’ applies ; meetings.
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
23
work, classes, newspaper publications, the writing of books, theatrical performances—everything is done up in the hills and all essentially for the sake of the peasants.” A READER
February 7, 1970
Calcutta
THE SRIKAKULAM STORY NARAYANA MURTHI
The struggle in Srikakulam has been caught in the vortex of a controversy between a group of young enthusiasts encou¬ raged and egged on by the All-India Co-ordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries (now called Marxist-Leninist party) directly leading the struggle in Srikakulam on the one hand and the State Revolutionary Co-ordination Committee led by Mr T. Nagi Reddy on the other, guiding the struggle with his experience of the historic Telengana struggle. The trouble seems to have started when the All-India Com¬ mittee, while carrying on a discussion with the State Committee over the ideological and political issues, overran the State Committee, gave some local enthusiasts the status of a State Committee and asked it to take the
resistance movement
forward to the stage of an armed guerilla struggle without adequate preparation and without rousing the people to a level when they can act as an effective cushion against the onslaught of the police. It was, however, not merely the organisational controversy but the very philosophy of armed struggle itself that was involved. Here is a published interview with Mr T. Nagi Reddy about the points of difference : Q :
What are the main differences between the CPI(ML)
and the Andhra State Committee of Revolutionaries ?
24
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
A :
VOL IT
The first issue is the question of tactics in relation to
people’s war.
When does an armed struggle start ? It starts
only as a resistance to the landlord goondas and government repression and this resistance is in the form of people’s resis¬ tance.
Out of this resistance alone, resistance squads are to be
formed.
But the CPI(ML) does not bother about this aspect
of people’s participation as a form of resistance to landlord goondas and police repression.
Formation of squads even in
areas where there is no people’s movement at all is their methodology, which isolates the squads from the masses. The second difference :
People’s war always starts only as-
a form of resistance, not as a form of offensive.
Therefore, it
is a battle in defence of their demands, be it for land, be it for wages.
It is a struggle for economic demands, it organises
people to resist the landlord goondas and the government offensive and it is through this form of resistance that a real people’s army could be built up in future. But the method of the CPI(ML) has no relation to people’s demands and people’s struggles.
Without any such relation,
they go in for offensive actions against any and every landlord even in places where there is no mass movement of any type. To put it simply, for us it is a matter of resistance, and for them it is a matter of offensive. The third difference is on the question of other forms of struggle.
Even though armed struggle is a basic struggle and is
the most important struggle, it is not the only form of struggle in all places.
For example, if Srikakulam can go into armed
struggle to prepare the ground, organisation of people’s cons¬ ciousness towards armed struggle in other areas may have to be pursued. We will have to take to various forms of struggle,, according to conditions prevailing in particular places.
It
might be a question of wages for agricultural labourer or the question of share of tenants or a question of distribution of cultivable waste lands of the government or even a question of occupation of government lands which are under occupation of landlords or have been converted into seed farms.
In the:
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
25
process of these struggles for these demands, we would use various
methods
of
struggle
including the lowest form of
struggle such as signature campaigns, deputations and demon¬ strations, just as we participate in the labour courts and in the industrial tribunals in the cities.
Eventually, all these various
forms of struggle should be conducted in such a manner as to develop
better
organisation,
consciousness
of the
people
towards people’s direct participation on the question of land and other issues, leading to resistance against landlord and government repression. But the Marxist-Leninists do not believe in any form of struggle other than armed struggle in all areas, irrespective of the strength of the party or the people.
It is for this reason
that they gave the call for party units to form themselves into squads in the coastal districts and to take action against the landlords. This type of action, according to the Andhra Committee,, does not help build up a mass movement even in an area where such actions
take place.
Such actions are against the funda¬
mental principles enunciated by Mao in relation to peasants’ armed struggle. Q :
In this background, how do you evaluate the armed
actions in Srikakulam ? A :
Every action in the Parvatipuram Agency area and
Agencies of similar type is real people’s action on the basis of a movement, which has been built up over a number of issues including the basic question of land. People’s participation is evident there and action against landlords is selective. But in the plains areas, generally, there is neither a people’s movement nor people’s participation which can sustain those actions to develop a people’s movement there in future. Q :
Do you agree with the view of the CPI(ML) that the
Srikakulam armed struggle is a national liberation struggle ? A :
Not
every
armed struggle is a national liberation
struggle immediately, even though every struggle is an em¬ bryonic form of such struggle.
To characterise every peasant
26
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
struggle as a struggle for power and for national liberation is to divert the attention and consciousness of the people from the basic demands of the people.
National liberation struggle
becomes a fundamental form of struggle only after a series of peasant armed actions in various places get coordinated into a people’s army to fight for national liberation and People’s Democracy. Even Peking Radio has characterised the Naxalbari move¬ ment in Bengal as mainly an armed struggle of peasants for land and as an embryonic struggle for national liberation. Q :
Will actions of the Srikakulam type lead to armed
struggle ? A :
No.
There are two reasons :
Without a people’s
demand being focussed and people being organised to get those demands implemented by their own actions, mere actions by squads divert the attention of the people from the issues on which they will have to fight. Secondly, the people leadership of the
are their own liberators under the
Communist Party.
That means they them¬
selves must form part and parcel of the squads.
But the man¬
ner in which this is being implemented by the Naxalites makes the people feel that liberators are someone else and not them¬ selves.
They look to someone for liberation.
In consequence,
instead of taking to actions on the basis of their own unity and organisational strength,
they will look to others to do this job
for them and save them from the exploitation of landlords. The views expressed in this interview indicate that differences are pretty serious but very clear.
Attempts to discuss these
differences with the All-India Co-ordination Committee appear to have proved futile.
It is perhaps this that has made the
section led by Mr Nagi Reddy and like-minded people in other States including West Bengal to think in terms of forming another party.
It is a sad but stark reality.
September 20, 1969
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
27
Letter Mr T. Nagi Reddy cynically refuses to see the difference between
submitting
memoranda
and
armed
struggle for
liberation. These days, bourgeois reformists, including • revisionists of all hues, are caught in the vortex of a serious controversy over the governmental measures of repression and of economic reform while the heroism of hundreds of youth and thousands of peasants in Andhra Pradesh is being tested in the concen¬ tration camps at Nuziveedu, Musule, Narasaraopet (Guntur district) and in the forests and hills.
Only in a struggle against
the heavily armed police and in the concentration camps and bearing in their stride coldblooded tortures inflicted by the ruling classes, can the revolutionary mettle of the fighting people be tested.
This process will throw out the weakminded
from the revolutionary ranks. Unlike the Telengana peasant armed struggle of 1946-51 which stands apart for its monumental betrayal by the central leadership of the then CPI, the bright
feature of present
situation in Andhra Pradesh is that such leadership is kept out of the picture by the revolutionary people themselves. The points made by Mr Nagi Reddy
were
raised by
Marxist leaders in their resolutions on left adventurism or left opportunism of
August 1967.
The
whole controversy was
whether the Naxalbari peasants’ armed struggle could be treated as a struggle for liberation, whether an armed struggle could be resorted to before a phase of partial struggle, and parlia¬ mentary struggle etc. Apparently Mr Reddy wants to confuse issues with economism and reformism.
Contrary to international experience
and the experiences of the Telengana struggle Mr Reddy and his associates tried their best to
dissuade
the
Srikakulam
district comrades from overcoming economism and reformism and taking the road of armed struggle for liberation.
While
Mao Tsetung has taught that in people’s war, as in all wars.
28
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
attack
is
primary,
Mr Reddy
and
his
IF
associates started
teaching that people’s war is “a battle in defence” economic demands.
VOL
of people’s
International experience proved correct
and stands vindicated ; the Srikakulam peasants’ armed struggle is a struggle for liberation from feudalism and semi-feudalism ; though it was initiated in a small area with a small force, it has engulfed the whole of the district including the plains areas in Sompet, Bobbili and Takkali taluks. tracts in Telengana and
It has spread to Agency
to some plains in Visakhapatnam,
West Godavari, Krishna and Guntur districts. November 22, 1969
a kisan worker
ANDHRA PRADESH : ANALYSIS OF A SPLIT A CORRESPONDENT
Though the police sources are reluctant to say anything about the differences between the two groups of the State Revolutionary Communist Party led by Mr Tarimela Nagi Reddy, and Mr Chandra Pulla Reddy, party circles told this correspondent that while efforts were being made to bring about a rapprochement between all the revolutionary groups in the State, their party (The Revolutionary Communist Party of Andhra Pradesh) was on the verge of a split. The polemics in the party started mainly in the last part of
1970,
particularly between
Provincial Committee outside. look that
the
differences
the Jail Committee and the Though on the surface it may
between
the jail leaders and the
Provincial Committee started on the correct implementation of the ‘Immediate Programme’, in fact it had several other reasons. It may be recalled here that the members, realising that it was not possible for them to effectively function as PC and lead the party and the people’s movement from inside the jail.
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
29
resolved to dissolve the PC and ceased to function as PC. They asked the Committee to
party outside to
form
a new Provincial
shoulder the responsibilities of the party and
the people’s movement.
Accordingly, a new PC (with the
remaining two members of the old PC and one new member) was proposed and the proposal was unanimously accepted in two separate meetings, one being the joint meeting of the forest area and of all the armed squads, and the other of representa¬ tives of the district committee of the plains area. came into existence in July, 1970.
The new PC
For a few months, close
co-ordination between the newly-formed PC and the arrested leaders was maintained. But by the end of 1970, the jail leaders began to circulate their own documents without consulting the PC, and belittling the armed struggle in the Telengana Agency area.
The jail leaders in their document ‘Left Devia¬
tion’ accused the PC that it had violated the line enunciated in the ‘Immediate Programme’.
Volumes of documents were
issued by both sides, each defending its stand. The
Revolutionary
Communist
Committee
of Andhra
Pradesh functioning outside the jail in a document ‘Defeat the capitulationist
policies of T.
Venkateswara Rao’, says :
Nagi Reddy and Devulapalli
All the comradely efforts to reconcile
with the jail leaders proved futile and the whole ideological discussion with them was of no avail. The jail leaders who are now on bail are openly criticising in public the revolutionary movement in the Telengana Agency area and have denounced it when the enemy was employing every means, political and military, to suppress the armed struggle and at a time when the situation demands the utmost unity in the party to strengthen the revolutionary people’s movement in the State. to sow confusion,
They tried
doubts and a sense of no-confidence in the
minds of party members and people about the future develop¬ ment of the people’s armed struggle.
“With fabricated baseless
charges and utter lies about the armed struggle and about the Provincial Committee leadership who were in the thick of the movement, the two leaders wrote documents and distributed
30
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL IF
them from jail on their own without the knowledge of the PC and without any discussions in the party at any level.
In gross
violation of principles of party organisation and party discipline,, they established a rival PC inside jail and tried to form rival committees in the State and thus are trying to split the party and the people’s movement.” The document further alleged that the jail leaders never objected to the political line and to the principles of armed struggle followed by the PC though all the documents on poli¬ tical and ideological issues and on problems facing the armed struggle
prepared by it were sent to them.
Moreover, the
jail leaders upheld the armed struggle of the Agency areas of Warangal, Khammam and Karimnagar districts in their docu¬ ment distributed in June, 1970, ‘Present Situation—Our Tasks’ and described the Agency movement as a “struggle being waged in self-defence of the cadre and to defend the people’s move¬ ment”, and also wrote in that document that “the movement had the people’s support and it did score many successes and that it was surging forward”, the present document claimed. The document at length explained the points of difference, between the PC and the jail leaders. About the split in the Indian ruling classes into pro-American and pro-Russian groups, the document said that India is a semi-colonial and semi-feudal country subjected to neo-colonial exploitation by imperialists, especially by U.S. imperialists and Soviet
social-imperialists.
The Indian big bourgeoisie and
big landlord classes were split into pro-American and proRussian groups and the two groups were locked in a dogfight for power.
While political parties like the Syndicate Congress,.
Jana Sangh and Swatantra represented mainly the pro-American group, the private sector in India, the Indira Congress and her friends represent mainly the pro-Russian group, the public sector.
The Indian ruling classes were split on policies to be
followed and were beset with internal contradictions and as a result were getting weakened.
While it was the stand of the
PC, Nagi Reddy and Venkateswara Rao held that there were
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
31
no differences among the Indian ruling classes on policies and they were not split into pro-American and pro-Russian groups. The jail leaders further argued that the Indira Congress itself did represent the whole of the Indian ruling classes—the big bourgeoisie and big landlords—and safeguards the interests of both American imperialism and Russian imperialism and thus they came to the conclusion that the Indira Government was an independent power, the document alleged. In this connection, the document quoted the views of the Chinese Communist Party and said that the view of the PC were in accordance with those of the CPC while those of Nagi Reddy and Venkateswara Rao went against the CPC’s views. Due to the policies of exploitation pursued by the Congress for the last 25 years, the country is in the grip of serious econo¬ mic and political crises, the people of various classes are fighting against the policies of exploitation of the ruling classes; in different parts of the country armed peasant struggles have broken out under the leadership of Communist Revolutionaries. As a result of people’s struggles developing throughout India the ruling Congress party was split into two ; the ruling classes and their political parties are facing a serious political crisis and the political situation in the country is unstable. instability is a permanent one.
This
The document said that the
PC was of the opinion that a permanent political instability prevailed in the country. Contrary to this political estimation, Nagi Reddy and Ven¬ kateswara Rao argue that after the spectacular election victory of the Indira Congress, there exist no groups or split in the ruling Classes and that their differences have disappeared. They also argue that the instability which existed before the parlia¬ mentary elections of 1971 has changed into stability.
The PC
argued that the successes of the Indira Congress in the elections to Parliament and State Assemblies (by false promises, by using military and police forces and by making most opportunistic agreements with other political parties) did not alter the insta¬ bility among the ruling classes.
The conditions which created
32
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
the permanent political instability did not disappear with the election victory of Indira Gandhi.
The so-called stability is
only a temporary phase within the frame-work of the perma¬ nent political instability and this will not continue long. On the assessment of the revolutionary situation also the two groups give different accounts.
While the PC saw an excellent
revolutionary situation and its development day by day and felt that the “present revolutionary situation” nationally and inter¬ nationally was more favourable than the situation at the time of the Telengana armed struggle (1946-51), Nagi Reddy and Venkateswara Rao said that the existing revolutionary situation was not more favourable “for armed struggle” than in that period. Though no auspicious day can be fixed to start armed struggle,
the
Revolutionary
Communist
Committee
in its
‘Immediate Programme’ fixed ‘muhurat’ for the start of such struggle.
“With the onset of the rainy season i.e. in the month
of June wexcan start the armed struggle...Rainy season provides the favourable climate for resistance movement,” the ‘Imme¬ diate Programme’
stated.
This fixing of ‘muhurat’ was ridi¬
culed by the CPI(ML), and PC later could note the mistake they committed.
Nagi Reddy and D. Venkateswara Rao in their
document ‘Left Deviation’ tried to defend the fixing of the date, saying that when they formulated the ‘Immediate Pro¬ gramme’ there was an exodus of
party
members into the
Marxist-Leninist Party and to stop it and give confidence to the rank and file of the party they had to fix a time !
But
later, Nagi Reddy and Venkateswara Rao accused the Agency leadership for starting the armed struggle in the name of selfdefence “before the people were prepared for occupation and distribution of the land of landlords”.
The PC contested this
line of thinking and explained that the landlords and the government would not sit with hands tied till the people were prepared to seize their lands.
But at the same time, the PC
did not forget the importance of the preparedness of the people to come forward to occupy the landlords’ lands.
The
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
33
document explained, in the following lines, the PC’s stand on the issue : When the people launch mass struggle on their own issues against feudal exploitation, the landlords and the reactionary government come down heavily on the movement using the armed police to suppress it.
In such a case, if the people, in
defence of their movement, are prepared to resist the armed repression of the government with arms, the communist revolu¬ tionaries should lead such a struggle,
and must strive to
develop the movement which had started on partial demands into agrarian revolution.
If and when people are not prepared
to resist the brutal armed suppression and repression to which the people’s movement is subjected in the process of its deve¬ lopment, we must adopt necessary
tactics for self-defence of
the cadre and the mass movement to develop the movement Into agrarian revolution.
We have to decide upon the forms
of struggle for self-defence taking into consideration the degree of the preparedness of the people for armed struggle, their support, geographical conditions (contiguity) of the area con¬ cerned etc. In the forest areas of Warangal, Khammam and Karimnagar districts, when mass struggles were developing against feudal and other exploiting classes, the reactionary Congress Government unleashed heavy police repression to suppress the people’s movement.
In order to safeguard this movement
and its gains and to save the cadre, the people and the party were forced to take up arms in self-defence. were formed.
So, armed squads
The party and the armed squads have put
forward before themselves the main task of mobilisation of people for armed revolution. The
document mentions
propagation
of revolutionary
politics of people’s war, mass mobilisation on their immediate issues, necessary actions against the enemies of the people who actively
oppose and
movement and
work against the development of the
self-defence
against the
police, as the main
principles that guide armed struggle at the given phase. Vol II—3
34
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
The document criticised Nagi Reddy and Venkateswara Rao for the change in their attitude towards the Marxist Leninist Party from non-antagonistic to antagonistic. The April convention of the State Revolutionary Communist Committee decided to conduct political and ideological struggle against the “left sectarian” and “adventurist” policies of the Charu Majumdar group on the one hand and on the other to treat them as revolutionaries and to resolve differences with them by fraternal discussions on ideological and political issues. It was also decided to maintain non-antagonistic relations with them, the document added. The PC also claimed that its approach, in accordance with the decisions taken at the April convention, had yielded certain results and many people belonging to the CPI(ML) were in the process of rethinking and some of them had joined their party. But the jail leaders argued that the Charu Majumdar group should not be treated as revolutionaries and no attempt should be made for unity with them. The aim should be to defeat them, the document alleged. The PC felt that all legal opportunities, legal mass move¬ ments and mass organisations should be utilised for the development of people’s armed struggle. Civil liberties move¬ ment was also a part of the mass movement and it should help to strengthen the mass movements and armed struggle. It should expose and condemn the brutal repression of the government and should rouse the masses to demand the restoration of all civil liberties, including the release of the leaders. The PC said that it should not have any truck with revisionists and neo-revisionists even in the name of civil liberties movement. But Nagi Reddy and Venkateswara Rao wanted to unite not only with the old and neo-revisionists but even with the reactionary elements in the name of fighting for civil liberties. They also wanted to make the release of arrested leaders the central issue of the civil liberties movement, the document said. The document severely criticised Nagi Reddy and Venkates-
35
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
wara Rao for commenting on Mao’s strategic slogan “political power grows out of the barrel of the gun” as simply a “figura¬ tively given slogan”.
“Where is the difference between these
comrades and the neo-revisionist party leader, Basavapunnaiah, who joked that “not only power but smoke also comes from the barrel of the gun” ?—the document questioned. The document also stated that immediately after the April convention (1969), Nagi Reddy brought before the then PC his request that he be allowed to get arrested because he could not lead underground life and because he had no confidence in himself to lead armed struggle.
The April convention had
decided that party membership should be given only to those “who are prepared to go underground”.
Nagi Reddy refused
to honour the party decision and remained legal till he got arrested while he was in a hotel in Anantapura, his native district, in September 1969 under the Preventive Detention Act. The document criticised Devulapalli
Venkateswara Rao,
the Secretary, for not taking steps to organise a secret under¬ ground party machinery and for not making any efforts to send the leading comrades in the plains areas underground.
He got
arrested in Madras eight months after the April convention without setting up any secret party machinery. “One is surprised to know that in the eight months before their arrest in Madras the two leaders never cared to visit the forest area where the armed struggle was going on and did not help the movement in any way.” “Even
after
putting forth these arguments and
openly
disowning the armed struggle in the Telengana Agency area, it is ridiculous for them to try to convince the cadre and the people that they are for armed struggle.
It is also ridiculous
for them to say that they are for armed struggle when they advocate unity with the revisionists and neo-revisionists but refuses any unity with other revolutionary groups which are leading armed struggle.” The document claimed that the movement
which
was
36
NAXALBARI AND AFTER VOL
II
started with one taluk had extended to nine taluks in the forest area of Khammam, Warangal and Karimnagar districts and in hundreds of villages people occupied more than 100,000 acres of Reserve and other kinds of land.
In most of the
forest area, the people have ‘done away’ with setti (free labour), corruption and bribery of forest officials, contractors and patels (village officers) and freed themselves from the feudal exploitation of exorbitant rates of interest and nagu (debt in the form of grain).
People in the forest area are
freely enjoying and utilising the forest produce. “As a result of continuous propaganda of revolutionary politics and mass mobilisation on their immediate issues, poli¬ tical consciousness of the people is growing.
People see armed
-struggle as the only way for their liberation from the age-old and inhuman exploitation.
That is why a large number of
Girijan and other youth, men and women, are volunteering to join the armed squads. organised.
People’s village committees are being
The people are doing everything to support and
safeguard the armed struggle, braving the fascist method of suppression, inhuman torture and raping of women by the po¬ lice of the reactionary government.” The government has burnt down several villages in the interior of the forest area “to wean away the people from ■the extremist influence” and set villages in the pattern of Viet¬ namese ‘hamlets’. The
document
explained
the steps that the PC had
taken to safeguard party unity.
It had proposed to hold a
•State plenum of the party to discuss and resolve the political and ideological issues, and on the basis of the discussions and decisions to Venkateswara
elect a new PC.
Rao turned
down
But Nagi Reddy and
these proposals, the PC
-document added. It further alleged that the two leaders had formed a rival PC inside the jail with the arrested members of the old PC (except one secretariat member who criticised them for anti-party acti¬ vities and capitulationist policies and extended his support to
37
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
the Agency area armed struggle and the PC) which they them¬ selves had dissolved.
“The two leaders gave a call to fornv
rival party committees in the State and thus caused a split in the party”. The PC solemnly declared that they would fight till the end1 and carry forward the armed agrarian revolution until the rea¬ lisation of the great hopes of ‘our martyr comrades’—the esta¬ blishment of New Democracy—and the PC would steadfastly adhere to and follow Marxism-Leninism and Mao Tsetung Thought and implement the people’s war path. January 27, 1973
VOTE AND REVOLUTION ARUN KUMAR ROY
Universal suffrage, supposed to be no mean achievement' for a newly independent country like India, has become ans¬ werable, as is clear from the weariness writ large on the faces of the people during the election campaign.
Increased per¬
centage of polling does not indicate victory of the politics of polling but only greater consciousness and less inertia, narrow¬ ing the zone of the non-political. tion : this is
The vote means no revolu¬
the bomb the Naxalites have thrown in the
politics of India. History does not help much.
No country with universal
suffrage has faced revolution or handled “vote boycott”. Lenin opposed the 1905 Duma election no doubt, but only in the context of armed uprising, and there was no universal suffrage. However, when the “deliberative” Duma was replaced by the legistative Duma, Lenin considered its boycott a mistake in his Leftwing Communism, An Infantile Disorder.
“The
boycott of the Duma by the Bolsheviks in 1906 was, however,, a mistake, although a small and easily remediable one.”
38
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
And the Bolsheviks decided to take part in the elections to the Second Duma, though : “The Tsarist election law was, of course, anti-democratic. Elections were not universal.
Over half the population—for
example women and over two million workers—were deprived of the right to vote altogether. Elections were not equal.
The
electorate was divided into four curias : the agrarian (land¬ lords), the urban (bourgeoisie), the peasant and the worker curias.
Election was not direct but by several stages.
There
was actually no secret ballot.” {The History of the CPSU-B, page 89) Thereafter in Russia the struggle for the vote was com¬ bined with that for revolution as its logical continuation and conclusion so that even six months
before the November
Revolution in 1917, the Bolsheviks participated in the Soviet and Duma elections. In the pre-war Germany, the
communists
participated
several times in elections between 1920 and 1933 till that country was handed over to Hitler.
But the Comintern under
the guidance of Lenin and then Stalin never asked for the boycott of elections.
The communists were the chief architects
of the “Popular Front” ministry in France creating a revolu¬ tionary upsurge through elections,
though
slipped into capitulation under Petain. to the Civil War.
ultimately
that
In Spain, elections led
Even the liberation struggle in Vietnam
started not by boycotting vote but only when the referendum assured at the Geneva conference was denied.
The bour¬
geoisie believes in the vote so long as it serves its interest.
So
the USA opposed elections in Vietnam. There was no vote in Cuba and a dozen of people landed there to make revolution.
The same was the case with China
except that the civil war there was long-drawn.
But elections
were “treason” to the cause of revolution in France in 1968 when a near-insurrection fizzled out at a
poll which pulled
the country further to the right. To sum up : in Russia there was election and revolution ;
39
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
in Germany and France (pre-war) election and capitulation ; in Spain election and counter-revolution ; in Vietnam denial of election and liberation struggle ; in China and Cuba no election but revolution ;
and
in
France
election and no
revolution. So no easy generalisation is possible except that the vote is revolutionary if it sharpens struggle, reactionary if it dampens it. It is curious to note that Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao do not endorse the theory of “vote boycott” or counterpoise the vote with revolution.
In the article, “The Boycott,” Lenin
wrote : “It would be ridiculous to shut our eyes to realities.
The
time has now come when the revolutionary Social-Democrats must cease to be boycottists.
We shall not refuse to go into
Second Duma when (or if) it is convened.
We shall not
refuse to utilise this arena, but we shall not exaggerate its modest importance ; on the contrary, guided by the experience already provided by history, we shall entirely subordinate the struggle we wage in the Duma to another form of struggle, namely strikes,
insurrection etc.
In the
event
of election
taking place, it will be necessary to enter into an election agreement
with
the
Trudoviks.”.
(Selected Works, Vol. II, page 177) The Trudoviks were a petty-bourgeois group formed in 1906 in the First State Duma headed by the Socialist Revolu¬ tionary intellectuals.
So the tactics of the UF today have the
sanction of Lenin. Lenin even refuted the contention that the communists could not participate in a bourgeois committing
the
same
mistake
government
that the
French
without Socialist
Millerand made : “In France it was a question of socialists taking part in a reactionary bourgeois government at a time when there was no revolutionary situation in the country, which made it incum¬ bent upon the socialists not to join such a government ; in Russia, on the other hand, it was a question of socialists taking
40
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL IB
part in a revolutionary bourgeois government fighting for the victory of the revolution at a time when the revolution was in full swing, a circumstance which would make it incumbent upon the Social-Democrats to take part in such a government in order to strike at the counter-revolution not only ‘from below’, from without, but also ‘from above,’ from within the government.”
(The History of the CPSU-B, page 77)
However, every time the objective should be clear.
The
Bolsheviks should join the Second Duma, for “History has shown that when the Duma assembles opportunities arise for carrying on useful agitation both from within the Duma and outside.”
(Selected Works, Vol. Ill, page 396)
And,
“The Bolsheviks did not go to the Duma for the purpose of carrying on ‘legislative’
work
with
the
Constitutional
Democrats but for the purpose of utilising it as a platform in the interest of the revolution. (The History of the CPSU-B,. page 94) Stalin was very harsh with those who refused to use the legal
cover available
number
to build up mass bases.
of Bolsheviks
demanded
the
“In 1908, a
recall of the Social
Democratic deputies from the State Duma.
Hence, they were
called Otzovists who started struggle against Lenin and Lenin’s line.
The Otzovists stubbornly refused to work in the trade
unions and other legally
existing
societies.
The Otzovists
were driving a wedge between the party and the working class, tending to deprive the party of its connections with non-party masses ; they wanted to seclude themselves within the under¬ ground organisation.The Otzovists did not understand that in the State Duma, and through the State Duma, the Bolshe¬ viks could influence the peasantry and could expose the policy of the Tsarist government and the policy of the Constitutional Democrats, who are trying to gain the following of the peasan¬ try by fraud. inside out.”
The
Otzovists
were therefore
“liquidators
(Ibid, page 143)
Lastly, Mao Tsetung’s thought also does not approve of vote-boycott.
According to Chairman Mao, revolution is the
41
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
product of counter-offensive retaliation by the masses that loses battles but wins war.
Mao’s concepts of “liberated zone” and
“people’s war” are also based on defensive battles.
The out¬
fitted shell is to be shattered by the developing content only in defence of its growth.
The idea is : the offensive of the
rulers provides the moral compulsion to the masses to rally behind the revolutionaries to strike back. repression, the more
So the more the
resistance and more struggle, and fish
would always remain in water.
On this footing, denial of
vote and not the boycott of it should be the starting point of the revolutionary struggle rallying the non-committed behind the party. In this respect Naxalites are more an Indian variety of the New Left of the West rather than a serious communist party,, and their vote-boycott slogan is the slogan of the offensive. The revolutionaries must create it by taking the initiative. bourgeoisie may not wind up its vote show, we have to it.
The smash
The very existence of exploitation is a perpetual offensive
of the ruling class. So, why await a new blow before striking ? Strike the iron while it is hot.
But now, times have changed.
The call of the day is : strike the iron by making it hot. boycott the vote, do not wait until it is denied.
So
Fifty years
back this would have been an “infantile disorder” in the words of Lenin or
“liquidators inside out” to quote Stalin, but with
man on the moon and one-third of the world under the Red flag, the whole thing deserves serious rethinking. scriptures whether
from Lenin,
Stalin or
Quoting
Mao has
little
meaning where the quantity of time has changed the quality of the situation.
Revolution is an international phenomenon,
and today international capitalism, in crisis and turmoil, is on the defensive. offensive.
So the
revolutionaries
should
swing
into
The defensive struggle on the Chinese model needs
a vast country, vast numbers of people and a vast period of time in possession.
But today everything is in a hurry. Speed
is the most important
factor.
With
war
technology the
“political technology” of the Establishment has also advanced;.
42
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
making it more elastic, manoeuvrable and shockproof. to be on the defensive is to invite defeat.
Now
It is suicidal to
wait for all the symptoms of an ideal revolution to appear before striking.
The non-committed mass is already commit¬
ted in favour of revolution as it has learnt from the historic events of the last fifty years.
So what is needed is not so
much generation of circumstantial pressure to set it on but to provide the new light and conviction.
Terror is the only
deterrent left
And power begets
terror.
with the Establishment.
And so power is to be smashed, and offence is the
best defence.
And so the vote must be boycotted.
Arms
are to be snatched, guerilla zones created and power captured. A shadow of benevolence is the biggest shield for the existing order, and the status quo is only disturbed when the brute comes out in its brutalised form as is the case in West Bengal with the army,
the CRP and the PVA Act.
Today, any
attack helps revolution, and so what is needed is the initiative to attack. The speed and vigour with which Naxalism has spread in India and the stir and impact it has produced speak unmista¬ kably of its vitality, and vitality is always associated with truth. Classical Marxism changed in the hands of Lenin ■“problems of Leninism” after Mao Tsetung,
and the
were answered by Stalin, and now
who knows this New Left may be the
real representatives of the
revolutionary communists out to
change the world in this rocket age while others are busy interpreting it ? So it is easy to negate Naxalism with the help
of classics
but it is not so easy to answer the questions it has raised, spe¬ cially on the vote and revolution. The modern State is a three¬ storeyed building : ministry, bureaucracy and the army. vote can change the ministry but not the others.
Despite po¬
pular swings the class-composition remains the same does the class character of the machinery.
The
and so
So even if the
ministry starts intensifying class struggle, the bureaucracy militia are bound to be at loggerheads with it.
and
And in no
43
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
time there would be an Indonesia or at least another Spain. In the ultimate analysis, State power means essentially the politics of the armed forces.
The vote cannot smash it.
the contrary it can only alert it. uniformed peasant.
On
Lenin called a soldier only a
This is true, but even that peasant is se¬
lected from the ruling section of the village society, conserva¬ tive in outlook and unenthusiastic about any radical change, that is, the stronger section of the society, the dominant minority always makes up the bureaucracy and the armed forces.
Mr Jagjivan Ram may be the Defence Minister but
the proposal to have a “Chamar Brigade” created furore and was strongly resented by the Establishment.
So there can be
only “Rajput Brigade” but no “Chamar Brigade”.
The per¬
centage of the backward Harijan, Adivasi and other sections of the society who create wealth by dint of their physical labour, is very small even among the sepoys.
So the Esta¬
blishment wants to part with neither the pen nor the sword. This is not the case with semi-feudal countries like India alone. In the U. K., the traditional birthplace of capitalism, Attlee may be the Prime Minister but the Army remains under Lord Mountbatten. However, this does not mean that the poorer strata of the ruling class constituting the militia are immune to class stru¬ ggle.
Militant peasant movements have no doubt an effect on
them, but the defection and disintegration of the militia starts only after it has been hammered and put to pressure by the people’s militia.
And the people’s militia cannot be formed
without starting partisan warfare.
Polls and partisan war are
poles apart. The difficulty with the vote is that it tells how to mobilise the masses but does not tell how to mobilise force. force is the midwife of any change.
And
What is more, elections
expose the party organisation before the enemy so that at any moment it can swoop on it.
And what is most important,
the vote is a non-class instrument and its users are bound to develop a non-class outlook and organisation.
Even if
44
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
everything goes alright, by the time state power is exclusively in the hands of the communists,
the
communists would
change into bourgeoisie, making fundamentally no change. Are not Marx’s nearest Social Democrats ruling Europe today living farther from Marxism ? The fundamental difference between reform and revolution is not the quantity of benefits available for society but the extent of structural change effected in society.
Reforms do not
change the ruling class but only induce it to tackle differently the ruled, may be, more
benevolently.
But revolution over¬
throws the ruling class first, substitutes it by another and then settles down for reforms as the new order of the new class of rulers with a new philosophy.
The struggle for the vote may
be carried to revolution, but the vote as such only empowers reform.
The very aim
differs.
Armed struggle aims
at
“through Revolution to Reforms,” while the vote “through Reforms to Revolution,” occurs.
but, for the latter, revolution never
The time needed for the quantity of reforms to bring
about qualitative changes amounting to a revolution in society through the vote and various legislation is sufficient to enable the old ruling class to adjust itself to the new wind, penetrate into the new ruling class and halt the march of quantity before it is transformed into quality to satisfy ideal conditions of classical Marxism.
Revolutionaries participate in elections to
“wreck the Constitution from within” but it mostly results in “wrecking the Party from within.”
The vote transforms the
Party before the Party transforms the State. Participation in the parliamentary system moulds the class character of the party.
The vote gives the party an essentially
middle class character, as a basic sophistication is needed to handle the rules, procedure and techniques of parliamentary politics. When the party approaches power, its class character changes to upper middle class.
And when it assumes power
the bourgeois and feudal lords penetrate and gradually usurp the leadership.
During the second UF government, many
jotedars turned Marxists
and butchered refugees in North
45
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
Bengal.
One of the reasons why the land-grab movement in
India failed is that most of
the middle
landowners
are
communist leaders. In the ultimate analysis the struggle is between the domi¬ nant minority and the dormant majority.
Feudal lords, at
least many of them, would not mind if they are allowed to rule the society as capitalists, socialists, communists or revolutiona¬ ries.
What is important, they must rule.
They must have the
authority and amenities of the rulers in any system.
They
must get the time and opportunity to change the signboard and adopt the new code to rule in a new way.
The vote gives
them time.
The dominant
Reforms help in transformation.
minority remains dominant for ever.
To be precise, reforms
benefit the society from the top, while revolution from the bottom. them.
Reforms relieve the ruled, while revolution liberates The vote is the road through reforms.
What are the compulsions to discuss revolution today be¬ fore heading for the polling booth ?
The conditions for any
revolution, as Lenin put it are: (a) that the rulers should not be able to go on ruling as they used to ; (b) that the ruled, in their misery, despair and fury, should refuse to go on living as before ; and (c) there should exist a revolutionary party determined and able to seize the chance.
The very fact that a
midterm poll is to be held, the PVA Act had to be introduced, the CRP had to be called, indiscriminate shooting is resorted to, shows that the rulers are unable to rule in the old way— brutalisation is the barometer of their weakness.
Secondly,
the bourgeois system never necessitates direct intervention of the masses in social events but only indirectly through their representatives and an offer of choice in elections.
It may be
noted, changes of a minor nature can be accommodated in this way within the normal flexibility of the social system. But when the social base itself is to be changed, it requires direct participation of the masses.
In the words of Trotsky :
“The most indubitable feature of a revolution is the direct intervention of the masses in historic events.
The revolution
46
NAXALBARI AND AFTER VOL
II
is there in their nerves before it comes out in the street.” (The History of the Russian Revolution).
In India today,
the questions of land reforms, bonus or pay commissions demand direct action by the masses.
Gherao is the midwife
of social justice denied cunningly by the “rule of law”.
The
people have refused to be ruled in the old way. So the vote, if considered a type of war, is to be boycotted when the ruling class wants it and is to be fought when the ruling class wants to avoid it.
In this manner the vote in
Pakistan was revolutionary ; so it would be in West Bengal where the Establishment is hesitant.
In Tsarist Russia even
the limited franchise was revolutionary as it had to be snatched from the reluctant Tsar.
But in France under de Gaulle in
1968 the vote was reactionary as it was desired by the Esta¬ blishment to prevent the upsurge from becoming an insurrec¬ tion.
In India, whether the mid-term poll is revolutionary or
reactionary deserves some serious analysis, for here although a part of the Establishment under the Congress (R) has offered elections, only haltingly, as a leap in the dark, finding no wayout, the other section of the Establishment led by the SwatantraJana Sangh-Congress (O) distinctly opposed it and wanted an alternative government at the Centre instead, removing Mrs Indira Gandhi.
There was a clear indication of uneasiness
that the status quo might be disturbed. However, the duty of a revolutionary party does not end only in ascertaining the context for contesting polls. guide the contest. arms have their logic.
It must
Those who boycott elections and take up Those who boycott arms and take to
polls have their logic too.
But for those who would take up
arms, use the vote in the cause of revolution, the task is like “walking on razor’s edge.”
There should be a distinct differ¬
ence in the mode and code of the election campaign by the revolutionaries. Clearly the stress on the federal system instead of the present unitary one, curtailment of the power of the President, weakening of the Centre,
discrimination against West Bengal
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
47
etc. are not slogans that would polarise the people for the higher struggle ahead.
It may be noted that there is a funda¬
mental difference between India and Pakistan.
In a Marxist
definition of a nation, as clearly stated by Stalin, Pakistan can not be a nation because of the geographical discontinuity ; and so, the sooner it disintegrates the better for the develop¬ ment of the revolutionary forces.
So there regional autonomy
would focus the revolutionary cause, and a struggle for auto¬ nomy would soon change into a liberation struggle. is not the
But this
case with India where it will only strengthen the
hands of the reactionaries by inciting regionalism. The only slogan that can put this vote to the cause of revo¬ lution is the call to the people to reject the Constitution based on the right to property as the fundamental right and to substitute it by one based on the right to work fundamental
right.
This
will bring
as
the
forth a revolutionary
polarisation : on the one side people with property, and on the other people without work. All the political parties will be exposed.
As the Naxalites have divided Indian politics into
two—Vote or Revolution—the issue of private property would divide the parliamentary politics into two—Vote for Revolu¬ tion or Vote for Reform—and would turn this election into a referendum. March 6, 1971'
Letter Vote
and
revolution are not opposed to each
Rather adult franchise is an argument for revolution.
other. In his
preface to Marx’s The Civil War in France, Engels writes that universal franchise is “an index of the maturity of the working class.
It cannot and never will be anything more in the
modern State.”
On this and other statements of a similar
nature by Engels, Lenin comments in State and Revolution, “Engels repeats here in a particularly emphatic form the funda¬ mental idea which runs like a red thread throughout all of
48
NAXALBARI AND AFTER VOL
Marx’s works, namely, that the democratic
republic is
nearest approach to the dictatorship of the proletariat. such a republic without in the least setting aside the
II
the For
domina¬
tion of the capital, and therefore the oppression of the masses the class struggle inevitably leads to such an extension, deve¬ lopment, unmasking and sharpening of that struggle that, as soon as the possibility arises of satisfying the fundamental interests of the oppressed masses, this possibility is realised inevitably and solely in the dictatorship of the proletariat, in the guidance of the masses by the proletariat.” Then, it might be asked, why does the socialist revolution not take place in the democratic republics of Western Europe and why did it take place in autocratic Russia and semi-feudal semi-colonial China ?
The principal answer will be found in
that the imperialist Europe could avoid the revolutionary crisis bursting asunder by bribing a section of workers from its plunder from Asia, Africa and Latin America, while backward Russia and China could not afford to do it. The proletariat utilises democracy and the vote to hold the bourgeois to their word, to educate the minds of the masses for revolution, especially the backward strata of the population, to systematically expose those smug “Marxists” who
talk
of “exploring limited opportunities to give modest relief”, for under capitalist relations of production the so-called progressive measures
only
proletarianises the masses still more.
The
reasons why the communists go in for elections has been explained but it is clear that forming a government in a capita¬ list state is not one of them.
In his famous letter to Turati,
dated 26 January 1894, Engels warned socialists against parti¬ cipation in the government because that would completely para¬ lyse the revolutionary action of the working class they were supposed to represent.
While advocating united front with
the radicals and the republicans he said in the same letter “that from the very moment of victory our paths will separate ; that from the same day onwards we shall form a new oppo¬ sition to the new government, not a reactionary but a progre-
49
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
ssive opposition, an opposition of the extreme left
which will
press on to new conquests beyond the ground already won.” This is why Lenin in his Left Wing Communism,
An Infan¬
tile Disorder asking the German Communists to participate in elections, warned that “they should not at all strive to ‘get seats’ in parliament.”
The Indian ‘Marxists’ tediously chew
the cud over that portion of the book which is acceptable to the bourgeoisie. One might still argue that if they get more seats as they have won in West Bengal, can they help it ? Should they renounce them ?
The answer is that they get or are allowed to get
them because they adopt a petty-bourgeois standpoint on class struggle and revolution.
They try to show petty reforms as
partial realisation of socialism and succeed in bluffing for
a
while.
Second,
people
even this petty-bourgeois-dominated
parliament is not tolerated for long.
Because, behind the bulk
of petty bourgeoisie stand other classes and groups which come out more energetically and take the loudly-proclaimed assu¬ rances more seriously than the leadership likes. Since World War II, communists in various countries have participated in elections and governments, but nowhere could they
achieve dictatorship
of the proletariat or socialism.
Normally the communists may participate in elections but they must not join any government.
They can join the govern¬
ment in a State, not yet socialist, under special conditions. What are they ?
In The History of the CPSU-B (Arun Roy does
not properly grasp it) Stalin writes that the Social Democratic Party in
1905
should have joined a provisional revolutionary
government as the result of a successful uprising in order to carry the revolution to its conclusion.
Dimitrov, in his famous
thesis United Front and the Working Class, asked the commu¬ nists to support anti-facist united front governments but told them that they themselves should remain outside. The commu¬ nists are permitted to join a goverment, according to him, only on the morrow of revolution in order to distribute arms and subvert the bureaucratic State-machinery from within. Vol 11—4
50
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL lit
The boycott was one of the firmest traditions of the most eventful and heroic periods of the Russian revolution but Lenin warned that to regard the boycott slogan as being: generally applicable to every bad and very bad representative institution would be an
absolute mistake.
The slogan is a
specific slogan of a specific period and not an immutable tactic. What is the fundamental condition for proclaiming a boycott T Lenin wrote that the meaning of the agitation for a boycott was mainly to combat constitutional illusions.
The condition
for the success of the boycott was a “wide genuine rapid and powerful vise of the revolution.” SUDARSHAN CHATTERJEE
April 3, 1971
'
Calcutta
COMMUNISTS—SIMPLE, MARXIST AND REVOLUTIONARY ARUN KUMAR ROY
The three varieties of communists in India proclaim three lines and claim three cheers.
In the words of Lenin, “The
main question of every revolution is the question of State power”; and in the words of Stalin, “In the hands of which class or which classes is power concentrated, which class or which classes must be overthrown, which class or which classes must take power—such is the main question of every revolution”. According to the CPI, the State power in India is essentially concentrated in the hands of the national bourgeoisie—may be represented
by
Indira Gandhi—who are under increasing
pressure from the big bourgeoisie—may be represented so far by Morarji Desai—who are in turn progressively collaborating with foreign imperialists.
So the CPI advocates ‘National
51
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
Democracy’ in which it would share power with the ‘first’ by displacing the ‘second’.
So, yesterday there was the Gandhi-
Desai Government, next would come a Dange-Gandhi Govern¬ ment and then a pure Dange Government.
This spells a
stepwise substitution process through partial struggles as the road to socialism.
As the national bourgeoisie have the State
power, there is bourgeois democratic freedom in the country, and the scope of parliamentary politics negates any need for extra-parliamentary methods and underground activities. The CPI(M) holds that the State power essentially rests with the big bourgeoisie and their junior partner—landlords— who are in the process of surrender to the imperialists.
The
national bourgeoisie, if any, are of only subsidiary importance. That means, both Desai and Indira Gandhi are only the two containers of the same content.
So the struggle will be not for
sharing power but for wresting power from the present ruling class and for putting the workers not as a partner but at the leadership as conceived in ‘People’s Democracy’.
But as the
reactionary big bourgeoisie have not yet surrendered but are in the process of surrendering, so there is still some bourgeois democratic freedom left, permitting a limited scope to parlia¬ mentary methods, though the laws of diminishing return have already started operating so far as constitutional means are concerned.
So the obvious line of action would be a. cautious
mixture of parliamentary and
extra-parliamentary methods
with the latter steadily increasing. The CPI(ML) differs with the CPI(M) intensely, but only in tense.
There can be no two opinions that the big bourgeoisie
are firmly saddled in the country but the process of surrender¬ ing has reached its end and they have in essence a comprador character.
There is no independent bourgeoisie ; so there is
no bourgeois domocratic freedom.
And so election is treason,
parliament a farce.
scope or utility of election
politics. tary.
There is no
The line of action should be solely extra-parliamen¬
The organisation is to be built only underground.
CPI Stand : Each of the three
varieties
seems equally
52
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
confident
about
the
correctness
of its stand.
VOL II
The Indian
bourgeoisie are the most sophisticated, powerful and consolida¬ ted “haves” in entire Afro-Asia, comparable only with those of Japan.
They not only hold small or medium-scale indus¬
tries, but also giant basic industries like iron and steel.
They
keep today an army of technical experts and run standard research institutions for indigenous development.
The biggest
of the Indian capitalists has the “accounted capital” of nearly Rs. 500 crores which is definitely a dignified figure.
Here
industrial capital has already combined with banking capital to give birth to big finance capital which is not only assertive on the native market but also out for international exploitation, i.e.,
assuming
a
small
imperialist
character.
The Indian
capitalists are out to set up industries like soap, textile, rayon and chemicals in the underdeveloped countries of Afro-Asia, and not less than Rs. 100 crores have already been invested. Are all these respectable achievements possible for a compra¬ dor bourgeoisie ? So, the CPI maintains, there may be inherent tendencies within the Indian bourgeoisie to collaborate with the imperia¬ lists as a junior partner but not to be their subordinates. Indian bourgeoisie accommodate many business interests,
The
desires of Western
but they are also in a bargaining position to
force some of their own desires on them.
Did not India play
an effective role in preventing Britain from joining the Euro¬ pean Common Market ? So foreign big business magnates have only some influence over Indian big business magnates but nothing more. Similarly, the latter have only some influence on the Indian State power but not control.
That, despite turns and twists, the grip still
remains with the national bourgeoisie is proved by the Five Year Plans and the increase in the share of the State sector in the national economy from one plan to another, nationalisa¬ tion of transport, the Imperial Bank, LIC, Banking, etc., and the continuation of the Industrial Policy Resolution of 1956. The Planning Commission may not lead the country to socia-
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
lism, yet
it
constitutes
53'
the
organised brain of the national,
bourgeoisie to find indigenous capital to counter the thrust of the big bourgeoisie and to complete the bourgeois democratic revolution.
That is why, at every annual general meeting of
Chambers of Commerce, the spokesmen of the big bourgeoisie pour venom on Planning Commission.
But the very fact that
despite the dislike of the Chambers of Commerce, the Planning Commission prevails is a clear indicator that the national bourgeoisie prevail over the big bourgeoisie in India. This economic analysis can also be substantiated by various political data.
India is no less than one of the big three of the
non-aligned world, flanked only by the UAR and outflanked only by Pakistan.
and Yugoslavia
Even our Minister without
portfolio always has one of the busiest foreign tour program¬ mes, indicating our political respectability.
India has always
maintained very cordial relations with the socialist braved Western
displeasure
world,,
from Suez to West Irian, and
earned praise for her peace efforts from Korea to Indo-China. India scrapped the VO A deal, refused a nuclear umbrella, opposed bases in the Indian Ocean, asked for the cessation of bombing of North Vietnam, aspired to fill the gap likely to be created by the probable British withdrawal from the Far East, and lastly sent her beaming Prime Minister to the top of Lenin’s tomb on no less an occasion than the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution.
What more do you want ?
CPI(M) and CPI(ML) Stands :
All this logic makes the
Marxists smile and the Maoists laugh.
They contend that it is
not the nineteenth, century, but the latter half of the twentieth. Gone are the golden days of capitalism.
It is the era of its
crisis and decadence which is a world phenomenon. Last year’s turmoil in France and the march of the poor in Washington indicate that the wealth of the West is not the barometer of its health.
Even the classical and assertive independent bourgeois
countries of the
West are moving towards inter-dependence
through various forms of economic bondage.
The house of
the West is a house with one pillar and that pillar is the USA..
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
54
VOL II
Between the socialist bloc and the USA, various capitalist countries constitute an intermediate zone, all dependent on the USA, though in various degrees—perhaps France the least. South Vietnam the most. In India, because of British colonial rule, the growth of an independent bourgeoisie could not take place in a real sense even during the independence movement when the bite of the internal class
struggle was less and emergence of capitalism
was a world phenomenon.
So, when the thing did not grow
properly when it should have grown, how can we expect its growth and development at such a late hour when Great Britain, our
previous master, herself is being called the 38th
State of the USA ? This theoretical analysis can be tested by examining the political economy of the country and
any such inspection
must start with a correct evaluation of the State sector. This sector as such does not carry much meaning if it is not clearly explained which class or classes control the State power. The State sector means socialism if State power remains with the working class ; it means “national capitalism” if it is in the hands of the national bourgeoisie, but it means only taking an industry from an individual capitalist and keeping it with a bureau of capitalists parading as the Government if the State power lies in the hands of the big bourgeoisie.
That the State
power vests in the big bourgeoisie is explained from the fact that even the State sector has been formed to serve them only keeping the real authority of the State in the hands of the big bourgeoisie.
This so-called State sector gives a unique handle
to tap the people’s money as a compulsory indirect tax which was in the
Second Five year Plan Rs.
11,000 crores, Third
Five year Plan Rs. 2,880 crores, and in the Fourth Plan expected to be Rs.
3,000 crores, to strengthen the position of
the big bourgeoisie by compensating the inherent weakness of the country’s capitalist
economy.
So, nationalisation of
the consumer goods industry, whether paper mill or sugar .factory, takes place only in cases of losing concerns which
5b
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
may be again handed back to the private owner after the take-off stage, i. e. after it again becomes profit-making. public sector may be started with
heavy industries which
require high initial capital but which, return on the capital in the beginning, private enterprise. these mammoth
The
because
of the low
do not attract any big
The design is also there to hand over public
sector
projects to the
capitalists after they become profit-making.
individual
Even bourgeois
philosophy permits the freedom to purchase shares or not, but here one must be a shareholder with no share in the profit or in the authority.
The sole purpose is to nourish the
limping capitalism and feed the inflated
officialdom or the
fooard of directors who come invariably from the class of the big bourgeoisie, sometimes being their direct relations. Secondly, the public sector may be utilised to corrode the very foundation of socialist philosophy by demonstrating its discouraging performance.
The public sector is
based on
socialist principles but in India it is governed by capitalist principles, so naturally it is found uneconomic, less efficient, wasteful and what not. torted
show
Ultimately, this discredited and dis¬
would make the people shudder at socialist
-economy. That the public sector is nothing but a political wing of the big bourgeoisie, that the State power is firmly concentrated in their hands, with the landlords as the junior partners, becomes obvious if one reads the Monopoly Commission’s report headed by Mr P. C. Mahalanobis.
Between 1947 and 1964 the paid-
up capital of the joint stock companies increased from Rs. 480 .crores to 1,400 crores ; even in 1960, five big capitalist families Tata, Birla, Mafatlal, Walchand and Mahindra, controlled 539 companies, and 10 leading Rs.
families in
1958 used to have
1,600 crores out of the total private capital of Rs. 2,300
-crores.
From 1953 to 1961, the Reserve Bank of India has
shown, while the top 10% of the people have increased their share of the national income from 28 % to 37%, for the bottom 40% it decreased from 20% to 13%.
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
56
VOL II
The same dismal figure of monopolistic concentration isalso visible in respect of land where, despite various caricatures of reform and legislation, 58% is concentrated in the hands of 10°/o of the top rural families while the bottom 20% of the agricultural families own less than 1% of cultivable land.
This
is besides the huge army of landless labourers who constitute less than 22% of the rural population.
Between
1950 and
1960 there was not even any marginal change in this abnormal picture of land concentration. The so called
controversies between the
Chambers of
Commerce and the Planning Commission are more a show than a reality.
On every precipitated issue where the big bour¬
geoisie mean business the Chambers of Commerce can get their object through ; think, for instance, of the dilution of the Industrial Policy Resolution of 1956, the fertiliser deal, libera¬ lisation of import licenses, free hand in investment etc. The routine cry of the Planning Commission for land reform could not give land to the tiller because the big bourgeoisie did not want to annoy their junior partners, the landlords. The relation between the big
bourgeoisie and
foreign
monopolists comes out from economic data which show that the penetration of private foreign capital increased threefold, from Rs. 750 crores in 1960, out of which 64% was British and 27.6% American.
Britain increased her investment twofold
after “leaving” her Empire.
Today the percentage of foreign
capital in Indian economy is, mineral oil 97%, match box 90%, jute 89%0. Even our economic planning could not make us economic¬ ally
independent.
The
proportion
of
foreign
“aid”
has
steadily increased from the First Five Year Plan to the pro¬ posed Fourth constituting now, even officially, 30% of the total wished investment. Total investment in Rs. crores
I 2100
II 4800
III 7200
IV (For 65-66) 2225
57
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
Foreign aid in Rs. crores 188
1049
%9.6
22.5
2200
669
While our foreign exchange reserve came down from some Rs. 1,400 crores, our foreign debt increased from nil in 1948 to, this day, Rs. 4,000 crores (U.S. Loans alone Rs. 2,600 crores) without considering devaluation. gross national income.
This is 35°/0 of our
It is calculated that 20% of our total
foreign exchange earning through our dwindling export market is sucked out as interest on our loans. The myth of a self-generating economy can be clearly exposed by examining closely each individual item.
At the
annual general meeting of the Indian Statistical Institute in Madras in December, 1956, Mr P. C. Mahalanobis explainedthe thesis of self-generating economy thus : Suppose we are im¬ porting six million tons of foodgrains a year, i.e. some 8% of our total production at the cost of foreign exchange, this would employ our people only in loading and unloading it.
If
instead, we would import 1 ton of fertiliser for 10 tons of food grains, we might have to wait for a year before we can use that fertiliser on the soil and get the additional crop but that would cost much less foreign exchange and employ a series of persons from port to field.
If, instead of importing fertilisers
we import all the equipment making a fertiliser factory to produce that additional fertiliser, we
would spend still less
foreign exchange and employ more people though we might go even further by machines.
importing fertiliser
equipment-making
This would produce the equipment first to make a
factory, employing more people at various stages and using even less foreign exchange but one will have to wait for eight years. those
Lastly, the best way would be to import only
machines
which
would
first
produce
the
machine
producing machines, i.e. multiply itself, which would produce the fertiliser equipment which would go to make the factory, and the factory would produce the fertiliser equivalent to the
58
NAXALBARI AND AFTER _VOL II
additional food to be grown in the field.
For this, one has to
wait for ten hard years, but the country will have a completely self-generating economy, giving large-scale employment and using minimum foreign exchange, and the food problem would be solved once for all. But twelve years (1956-68) after the ushering in of the Second Five Year Plan what has happened to this self-generating economy ?
Whether it is a steel factory at Durgapur or an oil
refinery at Barauni, each public sector industry has come to this country as a gift, not as a starting point of technological independence as was the case even in the era of evolution of a capitalist economy in Japan at the beginning of this century. Bhilai was the first steel factory in the public sector built by Russia, Bokaro will be the fourth one, also by Russia, but the contribution of indigenous ingredients and talent has not made any qualitative headway and the coming up of the fifth steel plant would depend again on the availability of foreign help. The same is the case with fertiliser.
Durgapur is the seventh
fertiliser plant coming under the State sector but it would require Rs. 13 crores foreign exchange out of a total invest¬ ment of Rs.
37 crores, i.e. in the same proportion as was
needed for the earlier units, while expert opinion says that not more than Rs. 2'25 crores of foreign exchange should be needed for a same-capacity plant at present.
Fertiliser Industry Total Investment
Foreign Exchange
31 Five year Plan
47
Trombay
25
55
13
55
Gorakhpur
18
55
8
55
Nahar Katiya
12
55
7
55
Neiveli
15-60
55
11-50
Barauni
35
55
18-40
Cochin
31-25
55
11-05
crores
17-5
crores
55
55
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
59
Steel Plant (II Five year Plan) Total Investment Rourkela ... Durgapur Bhilai Bokaro
...
50
crores
200
„
Foreign Exchange 20 crores
100
Steel Plant Expansion Rourkela Durgapur Bhilai
...
284
crores
133
crores
Between 1960 and 1966 Total Investment Iron and Steel Machine Tools Heavy Machinery ... Fertiliser [Source :
640 40 119 225
crores
Foreign Exchange 305 crores 27 81-5 100 5?
J?
Third Five year Plan]
Our dependence has become so bad that even today our whole Plan is drafted, not keeping in view the needs, either present or future, of the country, but the designs of others who are supposed to give us “aid” and our draft Plans always lead to foreign tours to finalise the pattern of invest¬ ment, i.e. fixing the proportion of light and heavy industries etc. With the Fourth Plan we have faced a climax—we are having a “Plan holiday” because we did not get the green signal from “outside”. The Indian Republic now is no more than a private limited company like the ICI (India) whose immediate management is the Chamber of Commerce while the real shareholders are across the ocean, exercising remote control. But things are not so simple as they seem, the Marxists caution. The spectre of class struggle may be sufficient to compress the big bourgeoisie into a coherent class but not
60
NAXALBARI AND AFTER VOL
enough to conceal their inherent cracks. tions at every step.
IE
There are contradic¬
First, there is the contradiction between
an individual monopolist and the group guiding the Govern¬ ment.
As pauperisation unites
divides the ‘haves’
the
so that even
‘have-nots’,
property
within the Chambers of
Commerce the members look at each other with suspicion despite repeated assertion of “solidarity”.
So, whenever the
bureau of the big bourgeoisie is forced to keep certain vital industries under its collective control in the name of the public sector, that puts all the constituent members under very uneasy strain, each fearing that the other will get the upper hand in the
melee,
endangering permanently their future, specially
when they are sure that this show is transitory while the rule of the big fish swallowing the small ones is an eternal truth of capitalist economy.
The second contradiction is between the
native big bourgeoisie and their foreign masters.
No doubt
the “subsidiary alliance” is certainly for survival, but in fixing the degree of servility there are always differences.
While
from this side there is an ambitious preference for the Britishtype of refined inter-dependence, from the other side invariably there is decisive insistence on the Saigon model. farce, even this limping public financiers who often
Though a
sector discomfits the foreign
look at these
heavy
industries as a
potential threat to their capital goods. The third contradiction is between the theory and practice of the public sector.
While it is still declared from the house
tops that it is an exercise in socialistic pattern, in practice it is designed to feed and strengthen the big bourgeoisie only. This is always dangerous specially in view of the socialist ideas. However limited the “liability” and however insignificant the authority, the unsuppressable fact that such giant industrial concerns can grow and run on the small savings of the people gives them a sense of respectability and confidence in their own means, always feared by the bourgeoisie. inherent
Moreover, the
contradictions within the big bourgeoisie and the
inevitable lack of individual interest render these concerns less-
61
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
•oppressive, giving the working class breathing time to consoli¬ date itself for struggle so that, paradoxically, in the public sector there is more labour unrest.
This again helps the
propagation of socialist ideas. The fourth contradiction and perhaps the most important one is that between the public sector units built with the help of socialist countries and those by the capitalist countries. The image of socialist construction combined with the efficiency of the industries made by socialist countries in India, the behaviour of their technical experts with the workers of this country, the liberal business terms and rate of interest, their readiness to take up heavy industries like Bokaro left by the USA, all this has constituted the biggest check on complete surrender by
the Indian bourgeoisie,
providing them with
bargaining power against the West, and by creating public opinion against such surrender. No wonder India sends Telco trucks to South Vietnam, sugar to the USA at the cost of Cuba and so on and so forth ; nevertheless
she
has always
kept good relations with the
socialist countries. India may be doubly obliged but the two sides are at loggerheads with each other preventing complete surrender to either side, because even in this changed context, among all the contradictions the maximum one is still that between the socialist and the capitalist world. And it is here that the Maoists thunder.
If the CPI logic
is a revolting over-simplification, the CPI(M) thesis is a dis¬ graceful deceit. The
Soviet
The pilgrimage to Moscow means nothing.
Union
and
all
the
East
European
countries
(Albania excepted) today constitute the revisionist world and cannot be taken as a socialist force.
What is more, the CPSU
is no longer a communist party and the Soviet Union has only become another imperialist country. an exploiter.
The Soviet Union is also
If Soviet participation in the State sector had
contributed really to a self-generating economy, after fifteen years we could have got Bokaro simply out of Bhilai without spending a farthing of foreign exchange, as was the case with
62
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL
IF
China whose production of steel today, after starting from scratch—she had
no
times that in India.
Jamshedpur before liberation—is four So, India is a neo-colonial country with
two masters, the USA and the USSR. The controversy is even more interesting in determining the actual strategy and tactics of Indian Revolution.
The
CPI have carefully put revolutionary means as an alternative in their programme, but even a cursory glance at their concep¬ tion of National Democracy shows that they do not actually mean it. The
stress
on
‘People’s
Democracy’
shows that
the
CPI(M) at least thinks that the road to socialism in India is noisy. When forcible overthrow of the ‘haves’ is still the general line for the emancipation of the ‘have-nots’, the question is how that overthrow is to be effected.
The Naxalites suggest the
Chinese way, i.e. concentrating in the remote villages, pre¬ ferably
encircled
by
hills
and
forests where the limits of
administration are the weakest, and then developing a people’s army for an armed showdown. should
work
underground,
In the town area, the party
concentrate
only
on
political
propaganda, and recruit cadres to be sent to villages.
Armed
political bases are to be established in villages to encircle the town,
the concentrated points
of reactionary might.
The
revolutionary rings would be gradually assertive around the reactionary
points
leading
to
their
ultimate
elimination.
Participation in elections is decried so as to focus attention on the harder path of armed struggle, to dispel illusions about bourgeois democracy and also to keep the organisation un¬ exposed, which is impossible in election campaigns. Though this path is straightforward, easily understandableand clear-cut, the Marxists reject it, pointing out its over¬ simplifying nature. China 1929.
India 1969 is qualitatively different from
In China, the parties, whether Communist or
Kuomintang, were formed with arms, but in India only on alms (subscription).
The people here are disarmed while the
63
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
ruling class operates through the military and police as a more or less smooth, centralised
power.
Communication facilities
are infinitely better here than in China.
There is hardly any
“remote village’' which the government machinery is unable to reach with its full
might within twentyfour hours.
More¬
over in the pre-war China there was practically no centralised industry but this is not the case here. like
pre revolution
India today looks more
Russia in the growth of the industrial
proletariat. In short, if the Communist party wants to seek a seclusion of the Chinese-type in India to-day, a Chinese-type revolution would not occur.
The party would be isolated from the people
and the current of political life. abstentionism.
Marxism never advocates
Why should we abstain ?
Why should we
boycott elections ? Though there are major elements of deception in bourgeois elections, they are not a farce. farce the
Had the whole thing been a
bourgeoisie would not have fought it so seriously,
spending crores of rupees through their agents. do polarise the
Even elections
people, politically dividing them into two or
more antagonistic groups, generally the have-nots favouring the left, the haves the right.
That is why every victory of the
left enhances the people's movement, making the ruling class panicky.
Even Naxalbari could become a reality and a political
force in India because the UF was in power.
There is a vast
difference in physical strength between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ of the country, discouraging the latter from any largescale showdown with the former beyond some economic bargaining.
By victory in elections the working class cannot
wrest power, it is true, but it can definitely weaken the grip of the owning class, creating
some additional
contradictions.
The Congress party of 1969 is qualitatively different from that of 1947.
And the weakening of the main pillar of reactionary
politics in India through four elections has definitely helped revolutionary politics, and this process of erosion must continue at least for some time.
^64
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
It is true, Lenin objected to the participation in the Duma election of 1905 in the and armed struggle. election
midst of a nationwide political strike
But he criticised boycotting the Duma
in 1908 and asked his party to participate in elections
even in February 1917, i.e.
eight months before the October
Revolution. That means the communists seldom
boycott
elections.
When the revolutionary situation comes it is the bourgeoisie who abandon elections or at least prevent the communists from participating.
This revolutionary situation can only be created
by aggressively participating in the various political avenues available ; by progressively widening the cracks and fissures of bourgeois society.
The party that cannot force the bourgeoisie
to abandon their deceptive democratic veil will be far from ousting them from power by inviting an open show-down. So the main task of the communists is neither to participate An elections nor to abandon them but to mobilise, politicise and militarise the people. adopted.
Any action contributing to this may be
The mid-term election in Bihar taught the people
armed mobilisation and exposed the ugly character of the owning class much more than any Naxalbari.
People have
realised that they need arms even to go to vote, that those who profess most by non-violence can adopt the worst form of violence if their interest is affected.
The main positive content
of Naxalite politics is its stress on the villages, and if one per cent of what is preached is practised that would fill a long¬ standing gap in Indian politics. The slogan “boycott elections” has also its progressive bearing if it does not aim only at discouraging the voters of the CPI(M), thus paving the way for the Congress to win.
This slogan, if used without malice
and with prudence, can very well engrave a big question mark in the people’s mind about the whole process and can show them that the owning class would never abandon its vested economic interests simply by losing in elections, and progressive forces remain unprepared, turn into an Indonesia, sparing nobody.
if the
India may very
well
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
65
The first UF Government in West Bengal created Naxal¬ bari ; the second UF Government has helped to create a third communist party.
So the Naxalites should perhaps be
:grateful to the UF or the Marxists or at least should not have much
to quarrel with them.
On the progress of one
-publicity of the other depends.
Naxalbari is a force and even
■Chavan is disturbed if the Marxists rule. curiosity if the Congress comes.
the
Naxalbari is a mere
So if the Marxists remain in
the cities and villages for general mobilization and for creating a specifically progressive political climate and the Naxalites go to the remote parts of the country to concentrate on serious politicalisation
and selective militarisation, then there is no
problem, as the two operating among different layers of people and zones would not physically meet each other to quarrel. Apart communist
from
possibilities
of mutual
movement, which may
come
adjustments
in the
as a compulsion
because of the sharp political polarisation, the correctness of individual lines can only be tested with the coming events.
If
the bourgeoisie still have the power to yield concessions, the present show of limping democracy would continue, the CPI(M) would come near to the CPI in its actions.
If the owning class
does not have the means, it would steadily start disintegrating and the political crisis would deepen, taking a fascist turn with all the consequences.
The CPI would be caught napping, the
CPI(M) would have to go underground, and the difference with the Naxalites would be lessened.
But if the country is already
an the neo-colonial stage, then at any time at one stroke the present balance would go and then the CPI completely and the major part of the CPI(M) would be eliminated and only the underground Naxalites would surface to direct the communist movement in India. aOctober 18, 1969
Vol II—5
CPI(M)’S REVOLUTIONARY TEACHING DIGVI JAY
In the
historical
background of
opportunism
and
the
struggle of two lines the attack* by Mr Basavapunniah (CPM) on the revolutionaries needs examination.
Although criticising
the CPI as well, his main attack is on the revolutionary Left. We do consider it necessary to expose the ‘Marxist’ arguments of Mr Basavapunniah in order to identify the opportunism where it really lies.
Mr Basavapunniah stated in his article
that : (a) the USSR and China represent respectively the right and left deviation in the international communist movement and their Indian counterparts are the CPI on the right and the ‘Naxalites of all hues’ on the left, with the CPM being the genuine Marxist party free of deviations. (b) although the bourgeoisie will never surrender power peacefully, the strategy of people’s war is not feasible in India as the counter-revolution has made enormous technological advance and has consolidated itself ; and (c) the Soviet Union is not imperialist even though the leadership has turned revisionist and there are serious mistakes, distortions and deviations in its policies. 1.
Nature of the Indian State The Right CPI’s position identifies the State as basically
progressive (anti-monopolist, anti-landlord and anti-imperialist) led by the national bourgeoisie ; it seeks to achieve socialism through joint hegemony of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat peacefully.
In other words, it sees no need for revolutionary
overthrow of the State.
The CPI is clearly revisionist and has
all but faded from the revolutionary front. *See “Revolutionary Techniques with Special Reference to India.” Social Scientist, June 1974.
6?
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
The real threat to the CPM position now, therefore, is not from the CPI but from the CPI(ML) and other revolutionaries. It is with this in view that Mr Basavapunniah develops his ‘critique’ of the Left.
He referred to ‘the Naxalite position’ on
the character of the State which, according to him, is that the State is a puppet of U.S. imperialists ; the bourgeoisie which is in power is comprador and a lackey of U.S. imperialism. He compares this to the position of the CPM, which holds that the State is a bourgeois-landlord one led by the bourgeoisie in alliance with landlords.
monopoly-
According to the CPM,
the bourgeoisie is also collaborating with foreign monopoly with a view to developing capitalism in India. Before examining the two positions further, it must be noted that Mr Basavapunniah’s position is grossly incomplete.
version
of the CPI(ML)’s
The CPI(ML)’s actual position
holds that the Indian State is semi-feudal, led by compradorbureaucratic bourgeoisie in the interest of U.S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism.
The CPI(ML) identifies
semi¬
feudalism as the main contradiction and claims that the bour¬ geoisie is incapable of independent development.
The CPM
holds that the bourgeoisie is capable of independent capitalist development in India. Let us briefly examine the nature of the industry leaders— the
monopoly bourgeoisie
which is
interested in ‘building
capitalism’ in India. Whether or not the monopoly houses represent independent capitalists depends on (a) the control of product and techno¬ logy ; (b) the extent of foreign participation in Indian industry ; and (c) the export and import relations and terms.
The extent
of foreign participation in Indian industry measured in terms, of reproductive capital is rather small (less than 1 °/0).
The
important thing, however, is not the quantum of capital but the amount
of control
it
exercises
on the products, processes
(technology) and the direction of growth.
The Indian mono¬
polists have now become the national counterparts of foreign monopoly which uses advanced technology for spreading its.
■68
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
influence.
VOL II
These linkages and an elaborate system of control
of the direction and nature of growth of several developing countries have been evolved by the imperialist monopolies over a period of time.
The system consists ot advancing ‘loans’,
‘grants’ and ‘aid’ to the government of the recipient country for encouragement of a particular pattern of industrial and agricultural growth there.
The pattern that is encouraged is
the one that subserves the needs of imperialism.
This reduces
the local monopoly bourgeoisie to mere users, promoters and clearing houses of foreign technology which is rapidly becom¬ ing obsolete in the country of their origin.
This technology
is still ‘advanced’ from the view-point of developing countries like India.
This has been amply documented.*
One may,
therefore, state that the monopolist bourgeoisie of the country has got its interests firmly linked with those of the imperialists. It would be wrong to consider the monopoly
bourgeoisie as
capable of independently building capitalism in India. Thus Mr Basavapunniah not only seems to ignore the real character of the State, he seems to want to mislead the cadre by referring to an incomplete statement of what he called the “Naxalites’ position”.
While the positions of the CPI and the
CPI(ML) are widely different, they are sharply defined.
The
position of the CPM on the other hand is not so sharply defined and is vacillating. 2.
Soviet Social-Imperialism and Ideological‘Independence’ of the CPM Mr Basavapunniah’s ideological confusion is not confined to
the question of the State alone.
He claims that his party is
neither pro-Moscow nor pro-Peking and will pursue its own programmes.
Once again let us see how the CPM leaders
have demonstrated their ‘independence’ in practice.
In 1967,
the Chinese leaders criticised (through the radio) the
brutal
repression of the Naxalbari uprising by the CPM Ministry. *See for instance Sau R.K. Problem and Prospect.
Indian Economic Growth :
69
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
This criticism was taken by the ‘Marxists’ as an ‘interference in the internal affairs’ of the CPM. They vehemently opposed the Chinese stand.
A year later, in 1968, when the Soviet Union
sent troops into Czechoslovakia to put down the movement there, the CPM leaders gave their unqualified support to the Soviet move which was opposed even by a section of the CPI. Evidently, according to CPM leaders, sending troops across the border is no interference, but ideological criticism through the radio is.
Such is the ideological ‘independence’ of Mr
Basavapunniah and the CPM leaders. The CPM leaders in order to assert their neutral stand ignore the facts and criticise the characterisation of the Soviet Union as social-imperialists.
Mr Basavapunniah argues that
since the means of production in the Soviet Union have still not regressed back to private control, it can never be imperia¬ list.
But there are some known facts about the foreign and
domestic policies of the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union has
not only denied the Chinese access to nuclear technology and other help, it has collaborated with the U.S. in the ‘contain¬ ment of China’.
It has sought to impose the nuclear ‘non¬
proliferation treaty’ on other nations, specially China. On the domestic side, it is now known that the social recon¬ struction programmes suffer from revisionism.
The benefits of
socialist reconstruction in the Soviet Union are not shared by different social groups equitably.
The gap between the wages
of workers and other functionaries is not only there, monetary incentives have been reinstalled as desirable.
All these fit into
a pattern and one can state that revisionism has captured the leadership of the State. Revisionism, as Lenin points out, is “promoted by the bourgeois in working class movement which omits, obliterates and distorts the revolutionary side of Marxism and its revolu¬ tionary soul ; they push to the foreground and extol what is acceptable to the bourgeoisie”. Soviet Union today ?
Is this not the case in the
The bourgeoisie which has survived the
ruthless suppression by hiding within the party for decades
70
VOL II
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
has now captured power.
It has adopted the policy of colla¬
boration with U.S. imperialism in dividing the world into spheres of influence where each can effectively exploit the economic resources and the market.
It is for these reasons
that the Soviet Union which is revisionist is characterised as social-imperialists. 3.
Question of Tactic and Tasks Mr Basavapunniah has “exposed” a series of other issues
which he calls the‘fallacies’ of‘Naxalites of all hues’. These relate to the tactic and current tasks of Indian revolution. On the one hand he states that ‘he does not have any parliamentary illusion’ and believes that ‘the State power cannot be attained through peaceful means’,
on the other hand he states that
‘counter-revolution has unified itself, advanced technologically, militarily
and
has acquired
transport facilities’. possibility.
enormous
communication
and
Therefore, people’s war is no longer a
If one believes Mr Basavapunniah’s claim of no
parliamentary illusion, one may infer that the real determinants of people’s victory are the military hardware, transport facilities and
communication equipment.
This amounts to gross dis¬
respect to the people’s war waged successfully by the Vietnamese who have defeated the most sophisticated counter-revolutionary war
machine
in
the
Mozambique, Angola, •rules.
Similar
(Malaysia,
world.
People’s
war
liberated
Guinea-Bissau from fascist-imperialist
struggles
are on, in other places
Burma, Cambodia, Thailand) and
American countries.
has
in
several
Asia Latin
Ignoring such struggles would mean that
Mr Basavapunniah has come to believe more in technological hardware than in the people, despite his occasional lip service ■to the latter. Again, despite his reservation about the success of people’s war, he states that revolutionary conditions are not yet ripe in India.
One wonders
why he bothers about
revolutionary
conditions if he does not believe in the possibility of people’s war, to start with.
On the other hand, if he seriously thinks
.that conditions are not yet ripe for people’s
war,
he
may
71
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
have indicated his method of gauging the situation.
He lists
three places where armed uprising took place and was suppres¬ sed and uses these to substantiate his argument. It is interesting to note that the failure of two Ministries of the CPM has not convinced its leadership of the futility of elections whereas two examples
have
convinced Mr
Basavapunniah
about
the
unfeasibility of people’s war. Mr Basavapunniah
however
rationalises
his
theory of
continued participation in elections on the plea that “they don’t wish to give the bourgeoisie an alibi that CPM believes in the ‘cult of violence’ and is not striving to achieve political power peacefully.”
It was the CPM leadership which had the control
of the West Bengal Home Ministry (that is, control of the police force etc.), when the Naxalbari uprising took place.
And later
again during the uprising at Debra-Gopiballavpur (Midnapore). Mr Jyoti Basu deployed the BSF after the
police failed to
suppress the uprising and greatly appreciated the work of the BSF.
Brutal repression
of the uprising
and
slaughter of
cadres has certainly established the CPM leadership’s creden¬ tials with the bourgeoisie. April 12, 1975
ON THE THOUGHTS OF CHARU MAJUMDAR B. UPADHYAY
To begin with, although Charu Majumdar himself was responsible to a great extent in laying emphasis on ‘khatam’ or ‘annihilation’ as the only means to mobilise the peasantry [cf. his speech at the first congress of the CPI(ML) in 1970 : '‘Only annihilation can solve all our
problems’], in his later
writings he sought to restore the balance “the fundamental political power.
point
of class
by reiterating that
struggle is the seizure of
The fundamental point
of class struggle is
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
72
VOL IF
not annihilation, though annihilation is a higher form of classstruggle”
(Unpublished
note
written towards the end of
1971). During the same period, in another note to his comrades, he wrote :
“Today the landless peasant, the poor peasant
must be told about the need to attack the State machinery,. about our total politics.To tell them only about the annihilation of class enemies will be economism.” Unfortunately, the main aim, of creating base areas and mobilising the peasantry there around harvesting and other economic activities to enable them to taste the sense of power and inspire them to protect and enlarge those base areas, was lost sight of in the craze for getting rid of the
immediate
objects of reprisal—the notorious landlords and moneylenders. Yet, Charu Majumdar urged his followers on November
18,
1971, to rally all sections of the peasantry in the base areas for harvesting :
“The movement is to make even the backward
peasants participants in our
struggle.
Without conducting
this mass movement we can in no way realise our objective— the objective of making every peasant a fighter.”.
In a
warning against indiscriminate annihilation, he laid down the rules :
“This movement wiff be directed against the class
enemy, i.e. the jotedar class.
It will also be conducted against
such rich peasants as may be actively cooperating with the police.
All other classes are our allies in this struggle.”
The other issue which divided Charu Majumdar’s staunch followers from their critics in the movement in 1971-72 was the question of revolutionary authority, the former insisting that everyone would have to accept Charu Majumdar as the revolutionary authority, and refusal to do to treachery.
Charu
so would amount
Majumdar himself had a more sober
approach to the question.
In a letter to
some comrades in
Tripura at the end of 1971, he wrote:
“It is incorrect to
mechanically bring to the forefront the question of authority during any difference of opinions. back. of
That pushes the politics
We shall never impose authority through methods
commandism.
Comprehension of the
vast
number of
73-
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
comrades gradually grows only through experience and political discussion.” Charu Majumdar also stressed the need for uniting with the other revolutionary groups towards the end of his life. In the well-known article,
‘It is people’s interest that is the
party’s interest’ (June 9, 1972), excerpts of which were carried by Frontier at that time, he reminded his comrades : those who
once practised enmity towards us will
“Even also in
special circumstances come forward to unite with us.
We
must have such largeness of mind as to be united with all such forces.” The slogan “China’s Chairman is our Chairman” which created a lot of resentment among revolutionaries here and embarrassment for the Chinese, was, as is fairly well-known among Majumdar’s close comrades, withdrawn by Majumdar towards the end of his life. Paradoxically enough, during the phase that followed the 1972
setback
and
Charu Majumdar’s
death, his devoted
followers courageously rebuilt the party and created bases, but ignored his last warnings and advice and went on stressing the same old divisive features that had split the movement earlier. The second congress of the party, held in December,
1973,
insisted on everyone accepting the revolutionary authority of Charu Majumdar, reiterated the slogan “China’s Chairman is our Chairman,” rejected talk of unity with other groups and laid emphasis on annihilation as the main means of achieving the goal. But in spite of these unfortunate
sectarian lapses, the
second congress was an important landmark.
The leaders of
the congress (most of whom have been arrested during the last few months), took up the challenge of rebuilding the party and
resuming the
situation
looked
movement at bleak.
a time
Charu Majumdar
when the whole had
died, the
central committee was in disarray, the cadres were either in jail or killed. and
From almost scratch, through patient discussions
contacts, the organisation was gradually
rebuilt.
An.
74
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
important
feature of the
new organisation
was
VOL II
the large
proportion of landless peasants and workers in the leading committees.
The leaders of the second congress throughout
1973-74 sought to implement Charu Majumdar’s directive : “Unless the
poor
and
leadership, however
landless peasants
much revolutionary
might be, they are bound to fail”
are elevated to possibilities there
(July
14,
1970).
The
success that they achieved was because of their firm adherence to this belief.
That the second congress could be held in a
village in Burdwan under the
protection of armed
peasant
guerillas is itself an indication of the progress made by these leaders of the CPI(ML).
(The first congress was held in 1970
in an office building in a middle-class locality in Calcutta.) The base in that village could be retained for six months, and when the police encircled it in June 1974, the entire population of the village, with guns, bows and arrows fought the police, managed to make a dent in the encirclement and make a safe passage for the guerilla squads to escape. participation.
This indicates mass
But Kamalpur was an isolated village.
The
base there could not be extended to the neighbouring areas, since there was little time to build up the organisation in the outlying
areas, as
well as
mentioned before—refusal
because of the sectarian
to unite with other groups, etc.
There were also mistakes of another nature. ..among the leadership
lapses
an over-optimistic
There was often evaluation of the
possibility of advancing rapidly and underestimation of the enemy strength. journals,
where
This attitude wishful
was
thinking
reflected
in the
often replaced
party
objective
reporting, the justification being the need to rouse the people by flowery and emotional language.
In fact, the party suffered
from the three mistakes against which Mao Tsetung warned the Chinese Communist Party during the revolution there— subjectivism, sectarianism and long-winded style of writing. Writing as early as 1967, asserting the primary importance of armed struggle, Charu Majumdar reiterated .time :
at the same
“One may naturally ask then whether the peasantry
75
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
should not wage mass movements for their partial demands in this period.
Certainly the need for such movements is
still there and will remain there in future. country,
and
segments.
the
peasantry
is
India is a vast
also divided
into
various
So the level of political consciousness can never
be the same in all
classes and
in all areas.
So there will
always be the possibility of peasant movements on partial demands and Communists will always have to take advantage of such possibilities.”
(Document No.
8—‘It is only by
fighting revisionism that the peasants’ struggle can be taken forward.’ 1967.) The need for such struggles has assumed more importance right now, when a fascist dictatorship, much more sophisti¬ cated than Hitler’s or Mussolini’s, is controlling the country. Any open platform,
however
minimal it
might be in its
effectiveness, should be utilised to fight for propagating the message of the revolution and mobilise the masses. Majumdar said :
“In spite of the
revolution, the peasants
As Charu
propaganda of armed
might decide
to
organise
deputation, and we will have to lead such struggles.
mass In the
era of white terror, we should never minimise the importance of such mass deputation, for it is the mass deputations which will rally more and more peasants round struggles.” ment No.
(Docu¬
8—‘It is only by fighting revisionism that the
peasants’ struggle can be taken forward’. strikes in the industrial areas,
1967.)
Workers’
movements for civil rights,
struggles for higher wages or land can thus be canalised into militant armed confrontation with the government. June 7, 1975
INDIVIDUAL TERRORISM & MARXISM A SHIM MITRA
Armed struggle is central to the whole idea of MarxismLeninism. tion.
To Lenin it was an object of passionate absorp¬
He said, “An
oppressed class which does not strive to
learn to use arms, to obtain arms, deserves to be treated as slaves”.
When Plekhanov, after the failure of 1905, categori¬
cally said, ‘they should not have taken up arms’, Lenin angrily retorted that, on the contrary, they should have taken to arms more resolutely, energetically and aggressively.
“Those who
do not prepare for armed uprising must be ruthlessly cast out of the ranks of the supporters of the revolution and sent back to the ranks of its enemies, traitors and cowards.” In a remarkable theoretical defence of guerilla fighting, Lenin said, armed struggle pursues two different goals... “in the first place the goal of the killing of individual persons, higher officials, and subalterns in police and army ; second, the confiscation of funds both from the government and from private persons.”
The common opinion about this struggle
of 1906, he described, old terrorism etc.
was that it was anarchism, Blanquism,
But he contemptuously treated them as
‘trite labels’. Killing of individual persons is not ipso facto a terrorist act.
Acts of individuals isolated from the
masses,
having no direct bearing on mass movement and insurrection, not ennobled by the enlightening
and
organising
idea of
socialism, in other words without politics in command, are inexpedient and harmful.
Referring to a political assassina¬
tion in Vienna, Lenin wrote to Franz Koritschoner on October 25,
1916,
“As regards the political assessment of the act, we
maintain, of course, our old conviction confirmed by decades of experiences that individual terrorist acts are inexpedient methods of political struggle”.
77
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
“Killing is no murder’, wrote our old lskra about terrorist acts.
We are not at all opposed to political killing but as
revolutionary tactics, individual attacks are inexpedient and harmful.
Only the mass movement can be considered genuine
political struggle.
Only in direct immediate connection with
the mass movement can and must individual terrorist act be of value....In Russia the terrorists (against whom
we always
struggled) carried out a number of individual attacks, but in December 1905, when matters almost reached the stage of a mass insurrection, when it was necessary to help the masses to use violence then were missing.
just at that moment the
‘terrorists’
That is where terrorists make their mistakes,”
said Lenin. Left CPI readers will harp Lenin understood it differently. dated February 3,
on mass movements ;
In a letter to Inessa Armand
1917 he wrote :
movement is not bad,
but
“The slogan of a mass
but it is not completely correct.
Be¬
cause it forgets the revolution, the conquest of power, the dictatorship of the proletariat.
N.B. this !
or more correctly
the support and development (at once) of every kind of revolu¬ tionary
mass
movement,
the revolution.
with
the
object of bringing near
Individual terrorist acts are not immoral as
such (mark the word inexpedient), rather necessary in a parti¬ cular juncture to help the masses to use violence.” In the exciting weeks and months after Bloody Sunday, Lenin had spent days in the library in Geneva studying tary tactics.
He had sent from Switzerland endless streams
of instructions with “Give every
mili¬
the
most
company short
detailed practical directions : and
simple bomb formulae.
They must begin their military training immediately in direct connexion with practical fighting action. Some will immediately kill a spy or blow up police station, others will organise an attack on a bank, in order to confiscate funds for the uprising.” A few days later he wrote on weapons : “rifles, revolvers, bombs, knives, brass knuckles, clubs, rags soaked in oil to start fire with, rope or rope ladders, shovels for building barricades.
78
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
dynamite cartridges, barbed wire tacks against cavalry. There were further precepts concerning passwords, the value
of
mobility and surprise, use of women, children, and old people, duties
of unarmed contingents who might disarm a lone
policeman or climb and shower troops with
stones, acid,
boiling water.” These were the features of partisan warfare in 1905-1906.. Naxalites claim to be attempting precisely these things in the conditions obtaining after 1966 to unleash the initiative of the masses for a violent struggle in the days to come.
“Partisan
warfare”, Lenin said, “is an inevitable form of struggle at a time when the mass movement has actually reached the point of insurrection and when fairly large intervals occur between the big engagements in the civil war.”
Were not the unpre¬
cedented violent food struggle of 1966, the general strikes that swept West Bengal and India, the Congress debacle in the 1967 elections, the minority Left CPI victory in Kerala and West Bengal, sure signs that the mass movement had reached the point of armed struggle ? confrontation
Was not the recent armed
between CPM-led peasants at Alladpur and
Congress hoodlums a sure index that we are in the midst of civil war ?
This phenomenon is not perceptible in the case of
India as whole, but it exists. The argument that Naxalite activities disorganise the mas& movement must be regarded critically. struggle,
accompanied
Every new form of
as it is by new dangers and new
sacrifices, inevitably disorganises organisations which are un¬ prepared for this new form of struggle.
Lenin again said : “It
is not partisan actions which disorganise the movement, but the weakness of a party which is incapable of taking such action under its control.
Being incapable of understanding
what historical conditions give rise to this struggle, we are incapable of neutralising its noxious aspects.
He continued
“...What we have said about disorganisation also applies to demoralisation.
It is not partisan warfare which demoralises
but unorganised, irregular, non-party partisan acts.
We shall
79
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
’
not rid ourselves of this most unquestionable demoralisation by condemning and cursing partisan actions, for condemnation and curses are absolutely incapable of putting a stop to a phenomenon which has been engendered by profound eco¬ nomic and political causes.” Moreover, “A Marxist stands by class struggle and not social peace...Any moral condemnation of civil war would be absolutely
impermissible from the standpoint of Marxism”.
{Partisan Warfare).
In 1906, a large number of actions were
taken by the vagabond elements of the population, the lumpen proletariat and anarchist groups ; but Lenin never condemned them from a high moral standpoint ; on the contrary, he went into the essence of the problem and noted its significance : they were the product of powerful economic and political causes.
It was not in anybody’s power to eliminate these
causes or to eliminate the struggle. When Plekhanov published his Our Differences, Engels wrote to express his approval of the contents but his dislike of the intolerent
attacks on
the
revolutionary
wing of the
Narodniks ‘the only people who are doing anything in Russia at present.’
He was pleased that the Russian Social Democrats
accepted so much of his and Marx’s doctrine but he never ceased to disapprove of their relegating the courageous and revolutionary Narodniks to the lake of fire and brimstone, “with other reactionaries”.
Stalin urged the workers to be
on guard against economic terror, then (1906-1907) very much prevalent in
Georgia for it would
recoil upon organised
labour. But when the local ‘liberal’ newspaper—the mouth¬ piece of the oil magnates, began to preach morals, he retorted with an angry philippic on the wretched condition of the oil proletariat which accounted for their despair and violence. He scorned a Menshevik suggestion that socialists should up to a point cooperate with authority in preventing economic terror. By its own
means
and in its
own
interests
the
proletariat should curb despair and sporadic violence, Stalin concluded, but it would never denounce the culprits to the
80
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
authority.
Here people
who celebrate
Engels’
VOL II
birthdays,
people who call themselves ‘Stalinists’ are doing the exact opposite. The bourgeoisie and their servants accuse Naxalites of resorting to terror. 1649, and 1793.
The
bourgeoisie have forgotten
Terror was just
their
and legitimate when the
bourgeoisie resorted to it for their own benefit againt feudalism. Terror becomes monstrous and criminal when the workers and poor peasants dare to use it against the bourgeoisie and the feudalists. Terror is just and legitimate when used for substituting one exploiting minority
for another exploiting
minority. Terror becomes monstrous and criminal when it begins to be used for overthrowing every exploiting minority, to be used in the interests of the vast majority. and legitimate against the Naxalites
Terror is just
but is monstrous and
criminal when the Naxalites return it. Not that the Naxalites are not committing grave mistakes— the
so-called
cultural revolution, the reckless tactics in a
number of cases are wasteful of human life and energy.
These
must be corrected through merciless criticism and self-criticism. All the difficult dilemmas of partisan warfare which Russia, China, Cuba, Algeria, Vietnam, the European resistance in the Second World War had to grapple are there.
But people
should understand that mistakes are being committed in course of revolutionary work. August 7, 1971
Letter The article “Individual Terrorism and Marxism” is an effort to idealise the Naxalites. The lengthy quotations from Lenin, being so very out of context, help in no way to prop up the argument he advances. Can any one draw a parallel between the situation in Russia in 1905 and the situation now in India ?
Individual terrorism,
divorced from mass movement, seen in Europe during the
81
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
19th century and in Russia during the early part of the 20th century, at a time when Marxism was being developed in practice, cannot be compared with terrorism today, after the experience of so many successful revolutions.
In the Indian
situation a tremendous scope is opening up not only in West Bengal and Kerala but in all movement, more effective
the States to develop mass
and broadbased, on a scale not
witnessed before. During half a century in India we have seen the activities of terrorists ; they showed their mettle in devotion, idealism, self-sacrifice and heroism drawing admiration from and applause of the educated people but they could not arouse the masses or build up revolutionary bases. much inferior even though •ideology.
In fact, they are
claim to follow.
The stuff of the Naxalites is
they profess to follow a superior nowhere near the ideology they
They professed rejection of the parliamentary
path and gave the ‘boycott election’ call but in practice they joined hands with the CPI,
Congress (O) and Congress (R) to
defeat the CPI(M) in the
elections.
And how
could Mr
Mitra show his reliance on elections where he said, “the Congress debacle in West Bengal in the 1967 elections, the minority Left CPI victory in Kerala and West Bengal (were) sure signs that the mass movement had reached the point of armed struggle” ?
If the fundamental premise is wrong, one
mistake leads to successive mistakes.
“Boycott of elections”
is a wrong slogan and it will be equally wrong to rely on the election results as an indication of the maturity of the revolu¬ tionary situation. Naxalites
do not understand in what situation
Lenin
formulated “boycott of election” as a correct policy and in what situation he advised participation in the Duma elections. For the same misconception the advancement of the struggling people in West Bengal and Kerala is taken as a surer sign of the maturity of the revolutionary situation for the whole of India.
This
misconception is due to a mechanical approach
do try to repeat the experiences of other countries in India Vol II—6
82
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL ID
without having any consideration for the peculiarities of the Indian situation.
Naxalites claim to follow the Chinese pathi
but in actual practice they have even perverted the Chinese formulation.
The essence of Lin Piao’s thesis is to organise
the masses to organise
guerilla warfare but the Naxalites.
controverted it as “organise guerilla warfare to organise the masses.” CHANDRANATH CHAKRABORTY
August 21,1971
Behala, Calcutta
THE NAXALITE TACTICAL LINE ABHIJNAN SEN
The tactical line of mobilising and rousing the peasantry through “annihilation
of class enemies” which was finalised
around April 1969 had, however, been taking shape for quite some time.
One of the first important attempts in this regard
was made by Kanu
Sanyal in his “Report on the Peasant
Struggle in the Terai” (Deshabrati, Oct. 24, ’68). The report dealt not only with the tactics actually the
employed by the
revolutionary peasants
of
Naxalbari,
Kharibari
and
Phansidewa areas but
made some general observations about
the tactics to be employed in the next phase of the struggle. The broad strategic objective of the Communist revolu¬ tionaries who launched the Naxalbari struggle is to liberate the countryside by waging a protracted people’s war and then encircle the cities.
Naturally, one of their principal tactical
problems relates to the mobilisation of the peasants for armed struggle and creation of liberated areas.
Kanu Sanyal des¬
cribed in detail the way the peasants were drawn into the struggle and how they set up an embryonic form of people’s, power in a limited area.
83*
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
The process of politicalising the peasants of the area had. started quite a few years ago. under the leadership launched demands.
a
The local Peasants’ Association
of the revolutionaries had in the past-
number of struggles on partial and economic
A qualitative change came in March
1967, when,
the Peasants’ Association of the Siliguri sub-division called, upon the peasants to launch a struggle for the seizure of politi¬ cal power.
Specifically the peasants were urged to establish
Ihe control of the peasant committees on all the affairs of the village, to get organised and armed for smashing the resistance of jotedars and other reactionaries, to break the monopolistic hold of jotedars over land and redistribute them peasant committees. peasants
held
through
In response to this call, thousands of
numerous group discussions and meetings,
formed branches of peasant committees and armed themselves. As Sanyal noted, since every small struggle of the peasants had in the past encountered armed repression, the slogan, ‘political power grows out of the barrel of a gun’ had a magic effect in organising them.
Thus, after the peasants
had been
aroused and organised they went ahead to implement the decisions of the Peasants’ Association. The ten principal activities of the peasants listed by Kanu. Sanyal give an idea of the methods by which the decision was implemented.
The first
to strike at the
achievement of the peasants was
monopolistic land-holding of the jotedars
which is the basis of the latter’s political, economic and social dominance. The land of the whole of Terai was “nationalised” for redistribution among peasants.
The second, third and
fourth categories consisted in the destruction of all records and papers concerning debt, and seizure of foodgrains, livestock and other properties of the jotedars for redistribution among the people.
The fifth was public trial and execution of jote¬
dars known for their oppressive past or of those who resisted peasant struggle.
Their other achievements, according to Kanu
Sanyal, consisted in the building up of a village self-defence force armed with home-made and captured
weapons
andi
84
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
replacement of bourgeois-feudal power by people’s power. One thing that comes out clearly from Sanyal’s report is that although initiated by the revolutionaries of the Peasants’ Association, the Naxalbari movement was something of a mass upsurge in which spontaneity and mass initiative far outweighed the planning and discipline required of a revolutionary move¬ ment. Without proper politicalisation, military experience and discipline, the movement suffered setbacks in the face of police repression. The very open and public nature of their decla¬ ration and preparation for armed struggle must also have exposed them too much before they could get sufficiently organised. Perhaps that is why Kanu Sanyal suggested that in the next phase of struggle they would set up party units which will not only be armed but will also be “trained to maintain secrecy”. Such party units will propagate Mao’s thoughts, intensify class struggle and “as guerilla units strike and annihilate class enemies”. They were also expected to participate, with the people, in production whenever possible. A conference of the revolutionary peasants of the Naxalbari area held in September 1968, reaffirmed the line suggested by Sanyal—the building of party units to propagate Mao’s thoughts, intensify class struggle and launch guerilla attacks on class enemies, police informers and even the army, if such opportunity arises. So far the sole concern of the party unit, it had been thought, was associated with armed struggle for the seizure of political power. However, Charu Majumdar had by that time just come up with some additional sugges¬ tions about the tactical line. In an article entitled “To the Comrades” (Deshabrati, August 1, 1968) he said, “the com¬ rades who are working in peasant areas, while engaged in propagating politics should not minimize the necessity of placing a general slogan on economic demands. Because, with¬ out drawing the large section of peasants into the movement, backward peasants cannot be brought in a position to grasp politics or keep up their hatred against class enemies”. In another article published in Deshabrati (October 17, 1968)
85
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
Charu Majumdar further elaborated on the problem of mobi¬ lising the backward sections of the peasantry.
While insisting
on the necessity of secret political propaganda by the party so as not to prematurely expose it to repression, he, however, pointed out that backward peasants would be late in grasping politics under this method.
“And for this reason”, he wrote,
“it is and will be necessary to launch economic struggles against the feudal classes.
For this reason it is necessary to lead
movements for the seizure of crops, the form of the struggle depending on the political consciousness and organisation of the area.”
He further stated that “without widespread mass
struggle of the peasants and without the participation of large sections of the masses in the movement, the politics of seizure of power would take time in striking roots in the consciousness of the peasants”. This line of launching mass struggles for economic demands did not, however, quite fit into the tactics of secret politicalisa¬ tion by underground and armed party units.
Implicit
in
Majumdar’s writing was that both these methods of arousing the peasants would continue simultaneously.
But the open
nature of the mass struggle for economic gains would expose the party apparatus and defeat the purpose of secret political propaganda by the party units. mid-1969 when,
This dilemma was resolved in
drawing on the teachings of Lin Piao that
“guerilla warfare is the only way to mobilise and apply the whole strength of the people against the enemy”, Majumdar said, “the revolutionary initiative of wider sections of the peasant masses can be released through annihilation of class enemies by guerilla
methods and neither mass organization
nor mass movement is indispensable before starting guerilla war”
(Quoted in Deshabrati, April 23, 1970, p. 11).
Later,
he further clarified his stand to mean that mass struggle for economic gains would follow guerilla action, not precede or accompany it.
In his ‘A Few Words on Guerilla Action’
(Deshabrati, January
15, 1970) he explained in detail how
after some preliminary propaganda work for the seizure of
«6
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
power has been done by the party unit, small guerilla bands would be formed in a completely conspiratorial way for striking down the most hated class enemies.
After the first action has
taken place, political cadres would start whispering around innocently about the advantages to be obtained when the oppressors have left the area in fear or have been liquidated. Then the peasants could enjoy undisturbed the land and wealth of the village.
Many peasants would now be shaken out of
their inertia and encouraged to join the struggle.
“When
quite a number of offensive ‘actions’ have taken place and the revolutionary political line of annihilating the class enemies has been firmly established, only then the political cadres would give the general economic slogan ‘seize the crop of the class enemy’.
This slogan will achieve miracles.
Even the most
backward peasant would now join the struggle”. The long way that has been travelled by the revolutionaries since the Naxalbari struggle can best be guessed by comparing Kanu Sanyal’s report with that of the Bengal-Bihar-Orissa Border Regional Committee of the CPI(ML) on the DebraGopiballavpur struggle published in Deshabrati, April 23, 1970.
As the report self-critically admits, initially the revolu¬
tionaries of the area had a vague notion about a Naxalbari-type of armed peasant uprising and they hoped that guerilla bands would emerge out of armed clashes for the seizure of crops. But in practice they could not adopt any specific programme other than propagate the politics of seizure of power through armed struggle. Rather by resorting to pure economism and public demonstrations at places they exposed the organization and invited repression. was in the doldrums.
The movement for the time being
It was only after Charu Majumdar had
given the line of starting guerilla warfare through annihilation of class enemies that they could break out of their inertia, it was stated.
On August 21, 1969, the Regional Committee of
the CPI(ML) met at Soormuhi and decided upon launching an annihilation campaign against class enemies.
As the report
said, the very first armed action which was not even successful
(DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
87
^released the floodgates of peasant initiative, which could not nave been possible by their propaganda work.
“With every
action mass initiative and class hatred of the peasants started growing and so did rise the level of their political conscious¬ ness”.
Simultaneous
process.
After
two
political propaganda also helped the months
of guerilla
offensive against
jotedars, in November 1969,
thousands of peasants, it was
claimed, rose up
Under the leadership of the
party,
armed
in arms.
peasants seized all the crops of oppressive
jotedars and those of enemy
agents..
disarmed and fled the villages. courts to try the oppressors.
Many jotedars were
The peasants set up people’s
They secured the return of all
their mortgaged property from the moneylenders. The jotedars who stayed on agreed to abide by the dictates of the peasants who fixed the wage for khetmajurs (landless labourers).
Shop
prices were also fixed by them. In the wake of this came brutal police repression. .But, as the report says, “after the taste of liberation they had, any amount of repression would not be able to rob the peasants of their dream of bright days of liberation in future.”
Faced with the encirclement and sup¬
pression campaign by Eastern Frontier Rifles, the guerilla squads dispersed over a wider area and carried on their anni¬ hilation campaign simultaneously with political propaganda. The way the struggle in Gopiballavpur, Debra and Baharagora started and developed sets it apart from the Naxalbari struggle.
In Naxalbari, thousands of peasants responding to
the call of the Peasants’
Association
sprang into
action,
•concentrating mainly on the seizure of land, the basis of feudal domination. launched
In the Gopiballavpur area the
by small guerilla squads.
struggle
was
By delivering lightning
blows at the class enemies they created a sort of power vacuum in the area into which thousands of peasants moved in, seized •crops and properties and set up peasants’ rule.
Kanu Sanyal
stressed at the end of his report the necessity of thoroughly •carrying out revolutionary land redistribution.
But the report
«on the Gopiballavpur, Debra and Baharagora struggles sum-
88
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
marised above does not mention this aspect.
VOL II
Rather than
formal redistribution of land the emphasis seems to have been placed on the actual control of the peasant committees on village affairs including appropriation of crops.
Compared to
Naxalbari, this struggle appears to be much more disciplined and planned.
It is claimed that the “Red power” which came
into existence, even if temporarily, helped to politicalise and enthuse the peasants.
Political consciousness of the peasants
has, in fact, been raised to such a level that the police as well as the administration, as admitted even by the bourgeois press, find the local people totally non-cooperative and often hostile. All these perhaps explain why the struggle in Gopiballavpur has survived and continues to develop in the face of massive repression. July 4, 1970
NAXAL1TE TACTICS IN CITIES ABHIJNAN SEN
In the present article an attempt is made to trace in bare outline the evolution of the CPI(ML) tactical line in cities. Back in 1967, when no tactical line had yet taken shape, the Naxalites vaguely stated that their task would be “to develop militant, revolutionary struggles of the working class and other toiling people,
to combat economism and to orient
these struggles towards agrarian revolution”
(Declaration of
the revolutionaries of the CPI(M) in Liberation, December, 1967).
In conformity with this line, attempts were made to
organise students and to some extent workers for demonstra¬ tions in favour of the
Naxalbari peasant struggle. About the
same time, Charu Majumdar spoke in greater detail about their task in cities.
Tie was most enthusiastic about the students-
whose lack of self-interest, courage and dedication “make then*
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
an asset for the revolution”.
89 First of all he wanted them to
integrate themselves with the peasants and propagate revolu¬ tionary politics.
But “those
villages at present
who are unable to go to the
he said, “should engage in doing propa¬
ganda work among the workers in the cities. Their aim should be to organise democratic struggles in the cities in support of the peasant struggles in the villages” 1967, P. 87).
(Liberation, December
There was as yet no programme for the students
or for the workers.
At the Democratic Convention in Calcutta
on March 22, 1968, the nature of the democratic struggle in the cities was spelt out in greater detail.
Apart from waging
struggles in support of the peasants, the workers were called upon to build militant organisations for the defence of their own class interest.
It was decided to launch struggles against
the PD Act, automation, retrenchment, lay-off, lock-out and police repression and for food and trade union rights.
Charu
Majumdar, however, put the greatest emphasis on propaganda work by the students and youth whose political organisation “would inevitably be Red Guard organisation”.
Their task
would be the widest possible dissemination of quotations from Chairman Mao.
(Deshabrati, May 2, 1968.)
Nevertheless, throughout 1968 and up to the birth of the CPI(ML), the students supplemented their agit-prop work with movements for partial demands, of their own and the people in general.
Processions and demonstrations were organised
against the tram-fare rise and rise in food prices.
The draft
political programme of the revolutionary student-youth move¬ ment published in Deshabrati, February 20, 1969, elaborated on the reasons for waging partial struggles. Revolution, it said, cannot succeed with the help of a handful of advanced elements of students and youth.
But it is difficult to draw in numerous
backward elements by simple political propaganda.
To unite
and lead this section of students and youth into joining a revolutionary movement it is necessary to wage struggle for “food, employment, education and culture” and direct all the discontent and anger of the youth to the path of long-term
90
NAXALBARI AND AFTER VOL
revolutionary struggle.
II
At every stage of such struggle they
would follow such tactics and
carry on propaganda in such
a way that there is a mass participation by students and youth and they would become
more
active and politically
conscious. But as the Naxalites were moving in the direction of forming a party, there was a noticeable tendency to make a distinction between the work of the ideologically advanced activists and students and youth in general.
Replying to the
charge of neglecting mass organisations and trade unions made by breakaway Naxalites like Parimal Dasgupta, Charu Majumdar said, “if everyone concerns himself with building mass organi¬ sations, who is to build the underground party ?
Do we
expect the mass organisations to organise the agrarian revolu¬ tion ?”
(Ghatana Prabaha, May 1969.)
Elaborating further
on the tactical line among workers he said that if one has to imbue the workers with revolutionary politics it has to be done Through the propaganda activity of party units from
outside
unions, for “the working class will never realise the necessity of agrarian revolution through its movement for economic demands”.
Trade
unions, he said,
become a school for
political education when there is no revolutionary situation, when the capitalist class appears very powerful and the work¬ ing class considers itself to be very weak. trade union movement
At this time the
creates self-confidence
among
the
workers and they also learn about tactics of struggle.
But
when the situation is revolutionary, when every struggle is fast turning into a violent clash, trade unions are not enough to tackle such a situation.
In a revolutionary situation, the party
is the class organisation of the workers.
Particularly in a
country like India, Majumdar said, where the principal centre of revolution is in the countryside, the responsibility of the party is greater and the task of building party organisation among the workers extremely urgent, for without this party organisation
the working class cannot perform its duty of
heading the revolution.
91
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
A new line about the students was given by Majumdar in ■an article entitled ‘Party’s call to the youth and students’ (Deshabrati, August 21, 1969).
In this article he recalled the
glorious tradition of the militant youth of the country.
“At
every stage of India’s struggle for national freedom, the youth and students of India made enormous sacrifices, carried the *call of freedom to the villages, resisted police repression, and discontinued their study and voluntarily destroyed the pros¬ pects of building a career for themselves in order to become wholetime political workers”.
Now, it is the task of the
revolutionary students and youth to shoulder the important task of propagating revolutionary politics.
But one obstacle in the
path of their taking up wholeheartedly the revolutionary cause is the college union. “These college unions”, he said, “cannot solve any problem of education that confronts the students. On the other hand the college unions fail to provide leader¬ ship to the youth and the students in their revolt against the existing education system.”
By encouraging a sort of econo-
mism the student unions blunt their revolutionary edge.
As a
result, “the union leadership in most cases, is found to sink deep into the mire of opportunism, and careerism begins to develop among them while the temptation of staying on in leadership drags them into all kinds of opportunist alliances and thus destroys their revolutionary morality.”
The article
ended with an impassioned call to the students and youth to integrate themselves with workers and peasants. The tactical line in cities, as it had evolved in the past two years, was very briefly noted in the draft organisational report ■ circulated after the formation of the CPI(ML) in April 1969. Since the party was to be a secret organisation, launching of mass or democratic struggle was by implication ruled out. The draft said that “though the party should learn to utilise all possible legal opportunities for developing its revolutionary activities it should under no circumstances function in the open”. Whether front organisations should be created for this [purpose was not made clear- either.
It was briefly noted that
92
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
the party will give
VOL IE
first preference to work by which the
working class would be prepared
“to assume the role of
leadership of our revolution, rather than carry on economic and cultural activities in cities”. The most clear-cut and comprehensive statement of CPI(ML) tactical line regarding the workers was made only in March 1970.
The reason why the central leadership had been
silent so long on this, Charu Majumdar explained, was that unless politics was firmly grasped by the workers the new tactics of working class struggle could well degenerate into militant economic struggles.
After the comrades have gathered some
experience through political work, time was now considered opportune for laying down the new line.
This new line mark
a departure from the earlier position of total rejection of trade unions.
Charu Majumdar, of course, reiterated his stand that
the party would neither build nor capture trade unions.
“But
trade unions are there and will be, mainly under the revisionist leadership.
Struggles would also be waged through trade
unions and since struggle is the nature of the worker, he will also join in this.
We cannot oppose any struggle whatsoever
waged by the workers against the class enemy. be petty-bourgeois idealism.
That would
We will not make them depen¬
dent on us in any struggle waged by the workers for economic demands or against any attack by the employer ; we will encourage them with politics to take independent initiative” (Deshabrati, March 12,
1970).
The party
cadres
would
concentrate on building secret party units through propaganda work. If this work succeeds in developing self-confidence and initiative among workers, some of them would go forward to give able leadership to the trade union struggle and also fight the revisionists there, but it should be ensured that the workers themselves donot develop revisionist tendencies. Although the party would “encourage the workers in any struggle we will always have to tell them that today tools like general strike or strike in factories have become largely blunted for tackling the blows of the organised employers (like lock-out.
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
lay-off, closure etc.)
93
Today we will have to advance not in a
peaceful, bloodless way but in paths such as gheraos, clashes with the police and the employer, barricades, liquidation of enemies and agents—according to the situation.”
The workers
will also learn new tactics through such struggles.
The party
will pay special attention to the organisation of agitation or other kinds of struggle in support of the workers if they are attacked.
They will not clash with fellow-workers if they raise
revisionist slogans in such a movement.
It will help to cement
the solidarity among the workers. Another thing, Majumdar wished the party to do, is to develop self-respect among the workers. Whichever party he may belong to, the worker always has suffered from the humiliation of slavery.
If through political propaganda, a sense of prestige
can be rekindled in him, he will grow into a daring firebrand revolutionary. even his life.
He will transcend the fear of losing his job and If retrenched, he will become a good organiser
in the city or will join the peasant struggle in the village. However, after the CPI(ML) tactical line in the city began to take shape by March this year (1970), Calcutta and other towns of West Bengal saw scenes that did not seem to tally with the line.
The students started hit-and-run attacks on educa¬
tional institutions, burning pictures of Gandhi and hoisting the red flag atop schools and factories.
Although there was no
published theoretical justification of this movement Deshabrati continued to support the students’ action.
It was only in a
special edition of Deshabrati (August 15, 1970) that Charu Majumdar came out with an explanation of this line of move¬ ment.
The way he has justified the attacks on Gandhi and
other bourgeois leaders and the hoisting of red flags indicates that these were more a spontaneous movement than something chalked out and led by the party.
The students, he said, are
making “a festival of breaking statues” and in factories the workers are making a festival of hoisting the red flag, enjoying the sense of fear among employers and helplessness among the police and military.
The students and youth, according to
94
NAXALBARI AND AFTER VOL
him, are doing a correct thing.
IF
A revolutionary education
and culture cannot be created without destroying the colonial" education system and the statues erected by the comprador bourgeoisie.
But he has taken care to remind that this move¬
ment is neither unique nor self-sufficient.
It is not a move¬
ment like the Chinese Cultural Revolution for demolishing the superstructure.
It is born out of the revolutionary tide that
has been created in the countryside.
“The students and youth
have become restless for the sake of the agrarian revolution and they are striking blows at the statues of those who had always tried to pacify the armed struggle of the peasant masses.. So this struggle of the students and youth is a part of the agrarian revolution.” at the base and
The peasant armed struggle is striking
in the process encouraging attacks on the
superstructure which in turn is helping the destruction of the base.
In short, Majumdar says that the present movement is-
an offshoot of the peasant struggle and though not a permanent feature, “in this age of inevitable collapse of imperialism,” he said, “the revolutionary tide would swell and burst again and again into India’s countryside.”
While thus approving the
students’ actions in the cities, Charu Majumdar has warned them against neglecting the primary task of integrating with the workers and peasants.
In an oblique reference to their
city action, he said, it is easy to do one or two revolutionary things but very difficult to remain a revolutionary for ever. This can be done only by integrating oneself with the poor and landless labourer.
Thus, while taking an approving notice
of student innovations, he asks students and youth to go back to their primary task, that of agit-prop. However, a most serious aspect of Naxalite activities in cities—“annihilation” of police and military personnel—has not so far been adequately explained in CPI(ML) publications. But the course of events since April this year leading to the death of more than a dozen policemen indicates that this pro¬ gramme enjoys top priority on the Naxalite agenda in the city. It is not possible to determine at which stage this type of action
95
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
'
in cities was planned but it can be seen as a sequel to clashes between the Naxalites and CPI(M), and Naxalite attacks on educational and other institutions leading to encounters with and torture by the police. It was in March 1970 that Charu Majuradar while talking to a group of students and youth urged them to be “always alert to retaliate against” any party that dared to attack CPI(ML) comrades.
As to the methods of attack he said that in order
to break the morale of “fascist gangs” they should go in a group of 5 or 6 and launch “swift, guerilla-style attacks from a very close quarter”
(Deshabrati, March 5, 1970).
The
slogan that henceforth became very frequent was “Take re¬ venge for every murder of our comrades”.
Following the
death of some leading Naxalites in Srikakulam, peasants were exhorted to take revenge for this by murdering landlords. Finally, in July it was announced that the “Calcutta District Committee has decided to take revenge of the murder of the heroic comrades in Andhra and West Bengal by annihilating police, CRP and blackmarketeers and capitalists” brati, July 9-16, 1970).
{Desha¬
In his latest instructions to the CPI-
(ML), Charu Majumdar has approvingly noted that “students of cities and workers...are striking at the police force and killing police officers”. Thus the present action against the police in the cities is presented more as one of supporting action for struggle in the countryside and resistance to police repression in the cities than one designed to achieve a particular strategic objective. Although blackmarketeers and capitalists have been included in the list, the party has not explained how this would be fitted in with the tactical line evolved earlier.
However, the fact
that intelligence agents and Special Branch police are special targets of Naxalite attack indicates, perhaps, a desire to shut off the “eyes and ears” of the State power—a thing which is being attempted in the countryside. October 3, 1970
Letters TWO DEATHS Comrade Sushital Roy Chowdhury died last week and so did Comrade Ashu Majumdar. They died because of the dangerous and destructive line put forward by a section of the CPI(ML) leadership.
They
have used the blind, dedicated, passionate allegiance of our petit bourgeois youth to lead the party into a line where death is the only reward and blood the only sign of success. Roy Chowdhury died fighting against this line, dar died implementing it.
Sushital
Ashu Majum¬
Both died because of it.
The CPI(ML) carried the seeds of ‘Left’ and Right devia¬ tion from its birth.
This was inevitable.
Right opportunism
wag'the main danger. It still is, except that one must remember that in revolutionary times, during passages of revolutionary advance, after every success in the battle against revisionism— right opportunism manifests itself in the guise of ‘left’ adven¬ turism and tries to wreck the party. CPI(ML) the signs were there.
In the
beginning, in the
But they were few : isolated
bits of unreason, sudden short bursts of fanaticism,
over¬
reliance on conspiracy, a tendency to stick to the city, repeated instances of directing appeals mainly to youth and students rather than directly to the toiling masses, thereby shifting the emphasis.
These piled up and collected and a whole range of
“theories” appeared.
The “theory” began, qualitatively, by
describing the mechanics of individual achieved by a conspiracy.
assassination to be
In the beginning, this was to be a
take-off point, a link between political propaganda and orga¬ nisational work and the formation of guerilla forces and libera¬ ted zones.
This was in March
1970.
In April/May it was
raised to the level of being the only way, the only link.
Im¬
mediately thereafter it was announced to be the strategy for all the stages of the People’s Democratic Revolution.
Those
.DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
97
who accepted this theory in March failed to see that by making conspiracy the
only method of organisation, by placing the
conspiratorial organisation outside the control of the party unit and by narrowing the definition of‘annihilation’ to mean tonly the slitting of throats—this ‘theory’ was fundamentally against Mao Tsetung Thought.
The rapid success of this
.line—measured in terms of throats slit—made all questions evaporate or appear revisionist.
As long as the pre-conditions
laid down by the original article were maintained, “successes” were few and the sphere of activity remained confined to the village, the deviation was not alarming. correction.
It was capable of
But then came the city ‘actions’ followed by the
*eity annihilations.
New ‘theories’ began to gush forth from
rthe fountainhead : 1.
The theory that all Indian bourgeoisie were comprador.
2.
The theory that all intellectual
or
petit
bourgeois
Headers of the past respected by the present society were agents of imperialism. 3.
The theory that more you study the more stupid you
become. 4.
The theory that destruction of
statues
and
schools,
colleges, laboratories was correct, revolutionary and akin to the great proletarian cultural revolution of China. 5.
The theory that one activist represents his entire class.
Thus the participation of one landless poor peasant in one annihilation means that the entire landless poor peasant mass is ready to participate in the annihilations. 6.
The theory
that propaganda, organisation
unnecessary, that only by annihilation would achieved. 7.
are
all these be
Annihilation must come first.
The theory that oppression is necessary
tionise the people. enemy
etc.
must
to revolu¬
Also the theory that every murder of the
be paid back by a murder.
Instant revenge
became the credo. 8.
The theory that the urban petit bourgeois youth need
mo longer go to the villages. Vol II—7
By destroying statues, schools,
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
98
VOL IF
colleges etc. they were integrating with the rural masses. 9.
The theory that in India, in the present age, city and
village, town and countryside are the same, indivisible.
The
work in both is the same, tactics in both shall be the same. The only work in the cities is armed guerilla attack. 10.
The theory that Comrade Charu Majumdar is the
only authority, only he understands Mao Tsetung Thought, that he is the Party, that he must be obeyed unconditionally and not to obey him is not to be a communist. 11.
The theory that to attack only when one is sure of
winning is revisionist. 12.
The theory that the rich peasant is an enemy and can
be annihilated. Sushital Roy Chowdhury fought all this.
His hopes and
revolutionary discipline kept him silent for a long time.
Then
when he began to speak he was insulted, isolated and abused as a centrist, a revisionist, a coward. Ashu Majumdar made up for his inexperience by his fiery zeal, his fantastic courage and his capacity to organise.
He
obeyed the Party. In this obedience he put everything he had ; in the end, his life. But to what purpose ? It is time the people and the revolutionaries asked this question.
What happened ?
Why do so many fear us ? Why
whenever there is an unreasonable murder do all of us tremble and hope that it was not the work of ‘our boys’ ? the working class who will lead our revolution ? roused peasantry ?
Where is
Where is the
Where is the People’s Army so flauntingly
announced in 1970 ? Why did so many vote so overwhelming¬ ly in spite of all the threats, the bombs, the pipeguns ?
Shall
we be blind to all this ? Now, this leadership, decimated by arrests, death and expul¬ sion, is again changing its line.
Economic work among the
peasantry, concentration upon the urban classes ( working ), building of rural bases, downgrading of annihilation of the class enemy—all these are being put forward.
But there is no
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
accompanying
99
analyses, valuation, self-criticism.
Thus this
leadership goes on, sowing confusion and reaping
death.
Sushital Roy Chowdhury and Ashu Mazumdar were the latest harvest. S. ROY
March 20, 1971
Calcutta
As the elder brother of Ashu, I knew him a bit personally. It is a blatant lie that his obedience to the party was blind. His devotion to the party’s cause was the product of critical judgment—this I know for certain. He was an active worker of the CPM on the peasant front and his disillusionment with the CPM came through his field experiences.
He had ideological discussions
with
Ashim
Chatterjee for months together while he was an activist of the CPM, and still was not convinced of the line advocated by the Co-ordination Committee of the Naxals.
Before he left the
CPM, he wrote to me once, “we shall have to build up genuine communist party which India lacks as yet. tough job
We know this is a
demanding many of our lives, because we shall
confront the most dangerous enemy in the CPM and Con¬ gress—both shall co-operate with each other to crush us by any means...If I die, I know that mother shall be very much upset.
But I have decided to pursue a difficult path.”
he wrote from underground as early as 1968.
This
He left the
CPM much later and joined not the CPI(ML) but the new Co¬ ordination Committee constituted by the remaining members of the original Co-ordination Committee.
In the middle of
1969, he joined the CPI(ML) after much critical evaluation of its line.
This narration of his political life is necessary be¬
cause Mr Roy sought to paint Ashu as a Naxal of blind obedi¬ ence. ARUN MAJUMDER
April 3, 1971
Santiniketan
Appraisal
NAXALBARI : BETWEEN YESTERDAY AND TOMORROW SUMANTA BANERJEE
The Naxalbari movement that began as a heroic upsurge, although abortive, back in May 1967, now seems to be domi¬ nated by citybred adolescents.
Some think that the rot set in
when the centre of the struggle shifted from the countryside to •Calcutta, that the revolutionary organisation which it sought to ■•create has been rapidly swallowed by the routine of Bengali middle-class political life. Yet, if we return to the source of the Naxalbari movement, we may find that the spring is still ready to spout.
The prob¬
lems that gave birth to the movement are not only a living reality but are fast maturing into crisis and may throw up a series of similar uprisings in the near future. The United Front Government may congratulate the people ■of West Bengal on their rejection of the Naxalite call for the boycolt of elections, but it has yet to find an answer to the fun■damental question brought to the fore by the Naxalbari up¬ rising and also by its own experience during its nine-month regime in 1967.
The question is :
how far can parliamentary
reforms bring West Bengal nearer to the radical solution for which the country’s basic problems have been crying out ? To begin with, Naxalbari movement threw a fierce light on cobwebbed, discreetly shadowed corner of India’s socio-econo¬ mic life—the world of the landless labourers and sharecroppers fast being reduced to one of the landless.
The mass of these
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
101
people, looked down upon by leftist parties, dismissed till re¬ cently as serfs beyond redemption from the influence of the landed gentry, remained at a distance from the main current of political struggles. According to a Government of India survey, out of 16*3 million agricultural labour households in 1956-57, 9'4 million did not possess a strip of land for supplementary
occupation..
About 4‘35 million were attached labourers contractually tied up with prosperous peasants. In spite of the appalling exploitation, little has been done among agricultural
labourers by the communist parties com¬
pared with their trade union activities in the trade union fields. The Kisan Sabhas remain dominated by the middle peasantry. The organization of the agricultural labourers is almost non¬ existent. It goes to the credit of those among the communists, now known as “extremists”, that they had the foresight to realize that any revolution in India would have to be spearheaded by the rural proletariat who, more than the industrial urban wor¬ kers, fit into the role assigned by Marx for the revolu tionary proletariat of 19th century Europe—“the workers have nothing to lose but their chains.” In under-developed countries like India, the rural prole¬ tariat
consisting of the landless and sharecroppers are the
worst exploited. The industrial proletariat, particularly in thepublic sector today, suffers less as a result of the manipulative capacity of the trade unions to wring some palliatives for them from the management or the State.
In 1950-51, an
agricultural labourer family’s annual per capita income in West Bengal was Rs 160 against Rs 268 of an industrial labourer’sfamily ( Dr. B. Ramamurti—Agricultural Labour). Quite understandably, the industrial workers
are not so
much concerned with the acquisition of political power as with gaining a fair share of economic wealth.
On the other hand*,
a change in the lot of the agricultural worker is bound up with the basic question of changing the entire rural econom ic set up
102
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
which is at present sustaining the growth of economic wealth in the urban pockets. It may be argued that the U.F. Government, on assuming power in 1967, proposed to alleviate the sufferings of the landhungry cultivators, but that the impatience of the Naxalbari “extremists” compromised those plans. But let us here pause to ask what the U.F. Government could have done or can even now do, to solve the problem in the existing administrative frame-work ?
Its aims would not
go beyond what E. M. S. Namboodiripad said about land re¬ forms on the eve of the second general elections.
He hoped
that the installation of an alternative Government in Kerala would be followed by “legislative measures providing for pre¬ vention of evictions, rent reduction, fixation of ceilings, distri¬ bution of surplus and waste lands, etc.—measures which are so modest in their character that they do not go beyond what has been agreed to in the Land Reform Panel of the Planning Commission” (Agrarian Reform—a study of the Congress and Communist approaches, 1956). How are these to be implemented in West Bengal ?
The
condition under which agrarian legislation, including ceiling laws, are enforced, are not only determined by the omnipo¬ tence of the bureaucracy, but the opposition of vested interests, the jotedars and rich peasantry who at every stage take the help of some law or other to block or delay the implementa¬ tion of legislation unfavourable to them.
The classic case is
that of the fate of the Zamindari Abolition Bill enacted by the Bihar Assembly in
1948.
How successful the zamindars of
Bihar were in obstructing its enforcement is related by the American scholar, Mr Daniel Thorner, who, visiting Bihar in 1956, found : ‘Eight years after the Bihar Legislature voted its acceptance of the principle of zamindari abolition, the majority of the zamindars of Bihar were in legal possession of their land (D. Thorner—The Agrarian Prospect in India). While the decision to enforce agrarian legislations through popular committees as envisaged by the U. F. Government
'DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
103
might eliminate to some extent the distorting control of the bureaucracy, what can effectively cripple the recalcitrant group of rural vested interests, who can always fall back in case of any emergency on the sacrosanct legal system, riddled with lacunae and moth-eaten by time ? it needs reconsideration.
As for the law on ceiling,
The present
law
presupposes a
ceiling on existing holdings that would preserve the small and middle landholders and rich peasants.
Since more than 60
per cent of the land-holdings in India are under 5 acres, the fixation of the ceiling at 25 acres in West Bengal might lead to further concentration of the land in the hands of landlords and the rich peasantry
through
the bankruptcy of small
peasants forced to sell their lands. The U. F. Government, therefore, would be required to carry out a law inherited from its predecessor—a landlordbourgeois ruling clique.
The purpose of the law was to con¬
vert the landlords and rich peasants into land-owning farmers of the capitalist type . In spite of a ceiling granting adequate breathing space to the rich peasantry, the latter lost no
chance to cheat the
government of the surplus land it owed to the West Bengal State under the Estates Acquisition Act. undertaken
at
the
instance of the
According to a study
Research
Programmes
Committee of the Planning Commission, about 105,000 acres might be estimated to have been transferred mala fide during 1952-54 for evading ceiling restriction.
(Land Reforms in
West Bengal by S. K. Basu & S. K. Bhattacharya) As a result, till 1965, the State government was able to secure 7.76 lakh acres as surplus, out of which 4.35 lakh acres were leased out on a year to year basis to the peasantry.
This
would hardly be enough to satisfy the West Bengal peasants’ land hunger. Even holding,
after the
they
become
owners
condition of the
of tiny, un-economic
peasantry
will not improve
perceptibly, because the old feudal structure of the rural society will remain the same, marked
by the age-old exploitation by
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
104
VOL IIP
traders, moneylenders and monopoly capital in the form of unequal exchange between town and country. The measures of the U.F. Government, therefore, however benevolent they might be, will not change the basis of the social structure of the Bengali village, which alone can guaran¬ tee the success of any land reform. It is in this perspective that the Naxalbari uprising assumes importance. It was not a movement for the occupation of land as made out to be by some of its friendly critics, but went beyond the limited aim of land redistribution by giving the call for the seizure of power.
The plan, according to its
leader, Mr Kanu Sanyal, was to smash once for all the village feudal society and create peasant bases to run the administra¬ tion.
No wonder, one of the main aims of the movement’s
10-point
programme was to cancel the hypothecary debt,,
lying like an incubus upon the landless labourer and daily growing upon him.
(Kanu Sanyal’s Report on the Peasant
Movement in Terai, November 1968) This task the U. F. Government would have found difficult to accomplish, clogged as it was by constitutional and legal inhibitions.
Since it accepted the premises of the bourgeois.
State-order, constitutional limits, parliamentary procedure, etc. —to wrest power, it now finds itself difficult to bypass them. In this context, the next important question raised by the Naxalites deserves notice—the problem of working with an administration which is a legacy from the past, which assures a very perfect conservation of anti-people,
out-moded ideas.
With its enormous bureaucratic and police organization, with the host of officials, this appalling parasitic machine enmeshesthe body of Indian society like a net and chokes all its pores. During the nine months of its stay in office in 1967, theU.F. Government found itself being swamped into the morassof the present administrative system.
This time it may atone
for its past mistakes of not removing notorious officials byoverhauling the administration, particularly the disreputable police force.
But its powers are limited by the Constitution,.
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
10S
drawn up under the duress of the British imperialists.
We
have seen already how the position of the Governor was used by the Centre to subvert the United Front Government. Thus a pathetic paradox becomes inevitable in the actions of the U.F. Government. It has to swear allegiance to the holy Constitution at every breath to gain permission from the Centre to rule West Bengal.
At the same time, it has to demand
amendments to the provisions of the Constitution to bring about radical changes in favour of the people. As a result, we
are entertained at intervals with hair¬
splitting debates about the powers of the Governor
and
exchanges
of idle
Speaker and the
phrases interpreting the
contradictions of the Constitution—all quite far away from the problem of starvation. The other stumbling block is the legal system.
The stock¬
pile of archaic law is still exploited by the ruling class in defence of anti-people measures.
An anti-democratic judg¬
ment becomes sacrosanct once it is delivered. to public protests. provide
the
It is immune
How can the U.F. Government hope to
minimum
relief to
the
people, without first
smashing up this holy order ? The Naxalbari movement has also rescued from the abyss of oblivion and negligence another aspect of our socio-economic life—the fate of the tribal population—and has drawn atten¬ tion to their revolutionary potentialities. In the 1951 census, the Scheduled tribal landless labourers formed 6.3°/0 of the total landless population.
The figure rose
to 10.6°/o in 1961, indicating their growing impoverishment. The
primitive
custom
of bonded
labour is still a practice
among them. As pointed out earlier, the question of organizing the land¬ less has been neglected so long.
The tribals who form a
major part of them naturally shared the same neglect. Yet, from the political point of view, the tribals have a militant tradition.
It is significant that peasant rebellions in
the eastern zone of India have always been spearheaded by the
106
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
tribals, right from the early days of the British rule. The Kols rebelled in 1831-32 against the distribution of their lands among the rich Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs in Chotanagpur. 1855.
The famous Santhal
rebellion
took place in
The Sardari agitation began in Ranchi against compul¬
sory labour in Mundas
rose
1887. against
Under the leadership
of Birsa,
the
and Christian
Hindu
landlords
the
missionaries of Ranchi in 1895. Coming to recent times, during the Tebhaga movement in Bengal in the forties, the Hajangs of North Mymensingh con¬ tributed a great deal to the success of the struggle. The analysis made by Mr
Kanu Sanyal
and others of
Naxalbari’s revolutionary potential was therefore not so wide of mark.
But then what went wrong ?
According to Kanu
Sanyal, some of the reasons for the failure of the uprising were “the want of a powerful party organization, failure to have a firm mass base and absolute ignorance of military science.” (The Report on the Peasant Movement in Terai) It is clear that the rebels minimized the repressive power of the State. force.
There was no preparation to face a ruthless military
The Naxalbari
facing the army.
rebels did not even have a chance of
Police action, and that too a
half-hearted
one, thanks to the then U.F. Government, was enough to make them collapse. The same mixture of naivete and ingenuousness marked the operations in Wynaad in Kerala.
If they were not a calculated
effort by agents-provocateur
to sow disillusionment among
future
betrayed
revolutionaries,
romanticism
by
they
their
a certain amount of
dream of conquering State power by
bows, arrows and spears. The isolation from the rest of the people of the country was also another factor that hastened their
defeat.
As the
absence of response to the Naxalite slogan of boycotting the elections was to prove later, the people are willing to support the communists with their votes, but are not yet prepared to take to arms in their defence.
107
'DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
But still one has to start somewhere and the leaders of the Naxalbari
uprising
deserve
praise on
that
score.
Their
followers in Calcutta are perhaps only parodying their heroism. These splinter groups owe their popularity not to the fact that they are more consistently revolutionary, but to the fact that the situtation is not.
Besides, how do they explain away the
fact that the Naxalites showed very little activity during the hated PDF-Congress regime or Governor’s rule in West Bengal, but as soon as the U.F. assumed power they have come back to the arena ?
Why are they reluctant to launch militant
actions, with the exception of Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh, in States run by Congress governments ?
Their slogan of
boycott of election and choice of U.F.-run States for staging uprisings may be ideologically motivated, but do they not objectively help the bourgeois-landlord ruling clique at the Centre ? But despite all this, Naxalbari will remain an important landmark in the annals of Indian revolution which is still journeying through purgatory.
For one thing, it has served
as a catalytic agent by compelling the complacent communist parties, and the U.F. Government of West Bengal in particular, to recognize the basic conflict in the country and to shed the illusion of solving it through peaceful transition to socialism. It is yet to be seen, however, whether they have courage to follow up this realization by action. The two communist parties in West Bengal are in an over¬ whelming majority in the Government.
The “red spectre”
continually conjured up by the bourgeois-landlord clique has finally appeared in West Bengal.
But it has appeared not in
blood-tattered dress, across the barricades, but in the uniform of ‘order’, in spotlessly white dhoti and kurta, in the plush chamber of the Legislature.
Therein lies the rub.
Will the communists in the Government continue to be reluctant to upset the Indian apple cart and prefer the comfor¬ table parliamentary road, or will they try to accentuate the polarization ?
108
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
The polarization has already set in.
VOL IE
It was reflected in
West Bengal in the disintegration of the PSP, elimination of Swatantra Party and the Jana Sangh and in the pattern of voting in the rural areas.
It will take a sharper form in the
coming inevitable clash with the Centre. hitherto unaffected ever political
The Indian army,,
by any internal political upsurge (what¬
alignment it may have, will be Jana Sangh-
oriented, because of the concentration of people from theHindi belt in its ranks), will prove an obedient tool in the hands of the Centre to crush any movement in West Bengal. The forces of reaction within the State also should not be minimized.
A combination of the rural vested interests, indus¬
trialists and the bureaucracy, backed by the Centre, could be a formidable threat to any Leftist State government.
The Right
reactionary forces are not idle and judging by the growth of the RSS, it is evident that they are thinking in terms of a future armed confrontation. In these circumstances, the necessity of preparing
the
masses for direct confrontations with the vested powers needsno emphasis.
In the absence of any such organized prepara¬
tion, the hungry and the impatient may break into blind, in¬ coherent revolts, bereft of conscious purpose, or premature disorganized Naxalbaris, get crushed and explode again—thusinitiating a long drawn out process of destruction of the present social system. The future of any communist movement in West Bengal therefore will have to be marked by a subtle combination of parliamentary activities, of legal and underground machinery and of course, by building up mass bases in the countrysideparticularly. May 17-24, 1969
CPI(ML) : THE TWILIGHT HOUR A CORRESPONDENT
Back in 1967, breakaway communist revolutionaries from the CPM fanned out in the villages to mobilise the peasant masses for armed revolution. At the same time they began discussion on setting up a genuine communist party in India. As an aftermath of all these was formed the All India Co¬ ordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries (AICCCR) in 1967 and the CPl(ML) in 1969. Identifying the Indian society “semi-colonial and semifeudal”, the new leadership identified “imperialism, socialimperialism, big comprador bourgeoisie and big landlord class” as the main enemy of the people and called upon the masses to establish a dictatorship of workers, peasants, petty bourge¬ oisie and even a section of the small and middle bourgeoisie. To do this it was necessary to form a “democratic front of all these classes under working class leadership”, it said. But this united front cannot be established unless armed struggle spreads and red political power is established at least in some areas of the country. For the development of armed struggle and the creation of base areas it was said to be necessary to mobilise the people, particularly the rural masses, and to draw them into the armed struggle. But the level of popular consciousness being uneven, the peasantry cannot be roused unless mass movement based on economic demands in launched—(Deshabrati, August 1, 1967). While stressing that secret guerilla action should conti¬ nually go on, it was said that even among the revolutionary classes there would be an advanced section and a backward section. While the advanced section would take to revolu¬ tionary politics quickly, the backward section would be slow to respond. “And for this there is and there will remain the necessity of economic movement against the feudal class. For
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
110
VOL IF
this there is necessity of crop seizure movement.” (Deshabrati, October 17, 1968 ) Briefly then the CPT(ML)
political line was that guerilla
warfare was basically a higher again is the outcome of the
form of class struggle which
economic and political struggle.
To make the people conscious of armed struggle, mass struggle should be launched and efforts made to draw the vast mass of the peasantry into it.
Different economic and political stru¬
ggles should be carried on, but simultaneously Mao Tsetung Thought should be propagated, as only through this can gue¬ rilla war be started and the base area created. In accordance with this programme, armed struggles were launched under the CPI(ML) leadership, in the Srikakulam Agency area in Andhra Pradesh, Debra-Gopiballavpur area near the Bengal-Bihar-Orissa border region, in Lakhimpur Kheri in upper U. P., in Mushahari in the Muzaffarpur dis¬ trict of North Bihar and in other isolated parts of the country. Of these the most prolonged and most bitter were the struggles in Srikakulam and in the Gopiballavpur area.
And the ups
and downs in the party’s fortunes in these areas bring out clearly the initial strength and subsequent degeneration of its leadership. The struggle in Gopiballavpur began in 1969 with the killing of a jotedar and forcible seizure of crops.
Immediately
the struggle caught on and about 40,000 people came forward to join the crop seizure campaign.
But the then CPI(ML)
leadership, instead of hailing this outburst of popular enthusi¬ asm, denounced the crop seizure movement as blatant revision¬ ism on the ground that it exposed the secret party organisa¬ tion and its armed units to repression.
(Quoted in “The
Bright Path of Red Chingkang is the way of the Indian Peo¬ ples’ liberation”, Bengal-Bihar-Orissa Region Committee of the CPI(ML), P.
14).
Charu Majumdar laid down
how
guerilla squads should be formed and class enemies annihilated. “Secret guerilla squads should be formed”, he said “in a cons¬ piratorial manner by recruiting guerillas from landless and
111
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
poor peasant classes through individual propaganda among them; each of these
guerilla squads should, on the basis of
specific investigation, annihilate class enemies by launching sudden attacks ; the guerillas by conquering death by means of annihilation of class enemies will develop into new men ; each of these new men must be able to acquire a base for himself ; Army”
put together, they will form the People’s Liberation (Quoted in the Report, P. 9).
From the outset, the CPI(ML) leadership was concerned with the problem of linking the mass struggle based on econo¬ mic demands with the line of armed struggle and secret poli¬ tical organisation.
In his report on Terai, Kanu Sanyal had
said that they did
not have the organisational experience re¬
quired by a revolutionary struggle, though they had the peo¬ ple’s backing.
Later, the leaders of Debra-Gopiballavpur in a
report admitted that they had no practical experience raising guerilla squads through mass movement April 25,
1970).
of
(Deshabrati,
Ironically, these leaders who subsequently
criticised Charu Majumdar for his line of annihilation had stated that it was only when Charu Majumdar gave them the line of annihilation of class enemies that they could break the people’s
inertia
{Deshabrati, April 23,
1971).
Initially
Charu Majumdar said that both these forms of struggle should be waged simultaneously but it was found that the mass movement exposes the underground party undermines the armed struggle.
apparatus
and
So in 1969, Majumdar said
that the revolutionary initiative of wider sections of the pea¬ sant masses could be released through annihilation of class enemies by guerilla methods and neither mass organisation nor mass movement was indispensable for starting guerilla war {Deshabrati, April 25, 1970).
Elaborating on this further,
he said that mass movement should follow armed struggle and not precede or accompany it {Deshabrati, January 15, 1970). Later, swinging still leftward he declared that mass move¬ ments were impediments to armed struggle and should be dispensed with.
“Mass organisation and mass movement”.
312
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
Majumdar said, “increase the bias for open
VOL II
movements and
economic movements, expose the revolutionary organisations to the enemies and, as a result it becomes easy for the enemy to launch attacks.
Hence mass movements and mass organi¬
sations are an impediment to the development and expansion of guerilla warfare” (Quoted in
“The Bright Path of Red
Chingkang is the way of the Indian People’s liberation,” Report of the Bengal-Bihar-Orissa Region Committee of the CPI(ML) P. 14). This changing attitude towards mass organisation sets out clearly the CPI(ML) leadership’s course of deviation from the party programme and its practice.
Mass struggle has a cru¬
cial role, as otherwise the politics of seizure of power would take time to strike roots, and arms, instead of politics, would command the party and the struggle.
But as in the period
between late 1969 and 1970 the leadership was groping for an answer to this crucial question, the emphasis was being shifted from mass movement as a link between guerilla action and the people, to the guerilla action only. and Liberation during the
The issues of Deshabrati
period were full of slogans like
“organisation first, then struggle—this is a wrong notion,” “every class enemy must be annihilated” ; and instruction on “how to form guerilla units in complete secrecy and in a com¬ pletely conspiratorial manner and how to begin annihilation of class enemies through guerilla action” appeared frequently in the party journals (Quoted by the late Sushital Roy Chowdhury in “Resist the line of adventurism”).
City action reflected this
deviation also. Though no specific programme for urban areas was given in the party programme, it was said that the party should carry on mass work and wage mass struggle among the city workers so that trained worker cadres can be sent to the village and for this the party must build up secret organisation in the cities
(Quoted by Sushital Roy Chowdhury).
But the
party activities in the urban areas did not conform to this line. Mass movement was discarded and guerilla action against the -class enemies and State apparatus was launched to create red
iDEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
terror in the cities.
113
Agitation against the U.S. invasion of
Cambodia in 1971 was put off and the cadres were exhorted to kill police personnel. Simultaneously, educational institutes, libraries and laboratories were attacked in the name of a democratic
and cultural revolution.
But soon the party
suffered serious reverses in the Debra-Gopiballavpur
area.
Even after annihilation of 120 class enemies the peasantry did not come to its help and the party became isolated.
A large
number of its cadres and important leaders were either killed or arrested by the police.
A similar fate also overtook the
party in the Srikakulam Agency area ; at least 150 of its members, including some top leaders, were killed and nu¬ merous others arrested. Summing up the failures of the line of annihilation and ■conspiratorial politics, the members of thd Border Region Committee self-critically admitted five serious mistakes.
First,
in spite of repeated annihilations the poor and the landless peasants did not join the guerilla squads.
Those
who came
initially left the squad and those who remained became com¬ pletely isolated from the people.
Second, the poor and the
landless peasants with families did not support the line for long.
Third, contrary to the leadership’s expectation, the
panicking class enemies did not flee the area and in fact, those who ran away came back in strength.
Fourth, this line attrac¬
ted the student youths, the middle classes, robber bands and lumpen proletariat of the area.
Fifth, the line did not work
in areas of intense feudal exploitation, but struck roots where petty-bourgeois ideas predominated.
[The
Report of the
Bengal-Bihar-Orissa Border Region Committee oftheCPI(ML) P.
15, 16] Elsewhere in the report, it was pointed out
that the same
observations held good for the urban areas also where it was '“rejected by the working class as a whole and found acceptable by the student youths and petty bourgeoisie”,
{ibid. P. 16)
During the time, some important changes also occurred in the CPI(ML)’s theoretical formulations. Vol II—8
It can indeed be said
114
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL IE
that these deviations in Naxalite activities were a sequel to more basic and fundamental changes that had occurred in. the CPI(ML) leadership’s analysis of the revolutionary condi¬ tions in the country as well as the international situation. late 1970,
In.
Charu Majumdar, drawing on the Peking Radio
declaration that “every point in India is on the verge of ex¬ plosion,” said that the theory of uneven development of revo¬ lutionary conditions is not applicable in the present-day condi¬ tions in India.
In his “Call of the November Revolution,.
March Forward by Crushing Centrism” he formulated his new line thus : “Power will be captured in the villages first and when in that struggle the people’s army has encircled cities, power will be captured in cities.
But in this era of victory of
the world revolution and fast and complete collapse of im¬ perialism, to apply this war strategy.in the specific conditions of India, the land of 500 million, it should be borne in mind that the cities
do not remain idle when the people’s war
has begun in the villages ; in people’s war village and city are one and undivided.”
(Deshabrati, November 7, 1970).
Following this theory of even development of urban and rural areas, the
urban cadres were exhorted to intensify the
class struggle in the cities by annihilating class enemies and any talk about the
necessity of defence and conservation of
revolutionary force in the face of police repression was called a bourgeois vice, (ibid) However, the party’s setback in the struggle and the deci¬ mation of its ranks created dissension within it and a number of important leaders fell out with Charu Majumdar and his associates.
In September,
1970, the Bihar State Committee
submitted a resolution on party activities and bitterly criticised the central leadership.
Later, the leaders of U. P., Punjab,
and a section of West Bengal leaders joined hands with them. Accusing Charu Majumdar of Left adventurism, the Bihar State Committee said that Majumdar and his close associates in defiance of the
Central Committee resolution, had advanced
the thesis that rich peasants, all capitalists and traders were te>
115-
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
be annihilated, that the People’s Liberation Army would march, throughout West Bengal by
1970-71 ; that the Third World
War had begun ; that comrades should forget all ideas of selfdefence, and attack and destroy all enemies ; and had advanced the slogan of cultural revolution. The Bihar Committee said that the moment these slogans were advanced by the General Secre¬ tary of the party, Left opportunism became the main deviation of the party.
(“The Problems of the Indian Revolution and
the Neo-Trotskyite Diversions” P. 33 ). On the question of the rich peasant, Charu Majumdar
said
that “rich peasants in our country indulge in exploitation.. Therefore our relation with the rich peasant will be the relation of struggle” (quoted in “The Problems of Indian Revolution and
Neo-Trotskyite
Diversions”,
P. 39).
But the
Bihar
Committee pointed out that since the aim of the CPI(M L) was. a bourgeois democratic revolution and the purpose was to forma united
front, capitalism or capitalist property in general
should not be attacked at this stage. drawing
on
Mao’s
observation
on
The Bihar Committee, rich peasants in “The
Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party”, said that a big portion of rich peasants would support the revolu¬ tion and another would stay neutral ; only a small section which had benefited from the reactionary hands
with the
enemies.
The
Bihar
State would join-
leaders claimed that
following the party programme, they had adopted this attitude in the Mushahari struggle and were able to neutralise a sizeable section of the rural bourgeoisie. Struggle
Against
Left
[“The New Upsurge and the
Opportunism”,
the CPI(ML) Bihar
Committee’s resolution ] Differences also arose on Charu Majumdar’s analysis of the national and international situation.
Majumdar
had said
that in these days of decaying imperialism it would be wrong to insist on the uneven nature of the Indian revolution and on the need for protracted people’s war.
But the Bihar leaders
pointed out that this assessment was based on a wrong analysis of the objective conditions of the Indian revolution.
For,
116
NAXALBARI AND AFTER VOL II
though the Indian bourgeoisie were beset with a weak capitalist economy with traits of feudalism and under the influence of imperialism, it was firmly on the saddle politically.
Besides,
the Indian revolution was weak and the revolutionary party, the CPI(ML), was at a nascent stage and had no base area. In this situation it would be wrong to minimise the importance of protracted war and base areas in the villages and discard other forms of struggle in the cities.
“At this stage’’, the
Bihar resolution said, “the character of work in villages and cities will be different.
In the cities the party will have to
work underground for long, must acquire strength, draw the urban mass towards the revolution and carry on defensive armed action. sive action.
Only in villages the party will undertake offen¬
The city work will supplement the armed struggle
in the village”.
(“The New Upsurge and the Struggle Against
Left Adventurism”, the CPI(ML) Bihar Committee’s resolu¬ tion) The same leadership
also
pointed
out
that
the central
leadership, by equating self-destruction with the communist ideal of self-sacrifice, had asserted that any emphasis on selfpreservation would inevitably encourage revisionism within us (quoted in “The Problems of the Indian Revolution and the Neo-Trotskyite Diversions”, P. 73).
Implied in this attitude
was the tendency to underestimate the enemy’s power and •overestimate the power of revolution.
The Bihar resolution
said that every effort should therefore be made to check this dangerous tendency.
“Our line should be the line of active
self-defence, the line of self-defence to attack and destroy the enemy.” The Bihar Committee submitted its paper in September 1970, with a lequest ior a meeting.
The central leadership
under one plea or other deterred the meeting.
However, in
view of the losses the party had suffered during the past two years, more and more leaders came out in support of the Bihar Committee s ciiticism of the party and pressed for a fresh •Central Committee meeting.
Even the leaders of the Bengal-
117
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
Bihar Border region who had initially stood by Charu Majumdar published
an inner-party document in which they self-
critically reviewed the party activities and
admitted failure.
But the most moving self-criticism came from Sourin Bose, a Central Committee member, in the form of a letter from the prison cell.
Sourin Bose said, “Our entire tactical
line is-
wrong and the international leadership’s criticism regarding this is absolutely correct.
We are suffering from a petty-
bourgeois impatience, so we have assumed the objective condi¬ tions for revolutionary situation as spontaneous political cons¬ ciousness of the people.
So by avoiding the difficult path of
class struggle, we have found a short cut to revolution in the name of originality and to make it attractive to the cadres we have added, mechanically, some slogans of proletarian cultural revolution.
But what is the result ?
Today we stand isolated
from the broad sections of poor, landlord and middle peasants., from the working class we are permanently isolated”.
NAXALBARI AND AFTER : AN APPRAISAL PRABHAT JANA
The armed struggle of the Naxalbari peasants upheld thetruth that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun and‘ marked the beginning of the Indian revolution.
It showed the
revisionists in their ‘true light’—lackeys of imperalism, socialimperialism and domestic reaction, whose sole mission is to divert the people from the path of violent revolution.
It
correctly assessed the stage of the Indian revolution and the role of the peasant in it.
It successfully aroused the masses *.
led by Communist Revolutionaries, the peasant masses, armed with whatever they could lay their hands on, took part in the struggle and tea-plantation workers there and in neighbouring
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
118
areas actively supported them. confiscation of the jotedars’
VOL II
The economic struggle for
lands
and
cancellation of the
peasants’ debts was closely linked with the political struggle for the overthrow of the reactionary ruling classes.
Here,
legal struggle was combined with illegal struggle and the mass organization of peasants was linked with and led by the under¬ ground party organization—the organization of the Communist Revolutionaries who had rebelled against the revisionist leader¬ ship of the CPI(M). Though the political line of the
Naxalbari struggle was
correct, it suffered a setback chiefly because of the smallness of the area,
inexperience of the
peasants, their
revolutionary leaders and
inability to spread it to wider areas and to
develop an appropriate military line.
It was a temporary
■setback but no defeat ; rather, it marked an advance for the revolutionary forces of the country as a whole.
It aroused
people in various places, from theTerai region in the northeast of India to Kerala in the southwest and Kashmir in the north¬ west and helped to unite a majority of the Communist Revo¬ lutionaries of the country.
Thousands of them rebelled against
revisionism and chose the path of armed struggle.
Many went
to the rural areas to educate the peasantry in Mao Tsetung Thought,
the
science
of revolution
’Colonies, and to organize them.
in colonies and semi-
The support of the Commu¬
nist Party of China was of immense help in bringing the Communist
Revolutionaries
together,
first,
within the
All
India Co-ordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries and then within the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist). kulam,
Sparks of armed struggle flew from Naxalbari to SrikaMusahari,
Lakhimpur-Kheri, Debra-Gopiballavpur-
Bahar agora, Punjab, and later to different parts of West Bengal, especially Birbhum.
Naxalbari did promise a new dawn.
But the dawn did not break.
The darkness of reaction
blotted out the first streaks of light.
The ruling classes and
the minions of the law may congratulate themselves on their performance, but it is not their efficiency in perpetrating dia-
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
119
bolical crimes but the weakness of the Party’s line that is to blame for the present defeat and disarray of the revolutionary forces. It is the Party line that determines success or failure of revolutionary struggles. The richest source of strength for revolutionary wars lies in the people.
“Only by mobilizing the masses of workers and
peasants, who form 90% of the population, can we defeat im¬ perialism and feudalism.”
This Maoist teaching was applied
in Naxalbari and Naxalbari proved to be a turning point.
But
later, from about the end of 1968, this lesson was ignored and Ihe Communist Revolutionaries were gradually led away from the path of Naxalbari.
A “left” opportunist line that was
gradually introduced from about this time did immense harm. What were the concrete manifestations of this “left” oppor¬ tunism ? First, in the name of combating economism, the party abandoned the mass line.
Instead of trying to forge close
links with the masses through different mass organisations and different forms of struggle dictated both by their immediate and long-term interests, the Party led by Charu Majumdar withdrew from all mass organisations like peasant associations, trade unions and youth and student associations, and from all mass movements on the plea that they breed economism, dubbed them revisionist and described them as obstacles to the growth and spread of revolutionary struggle.
This marked
an abrupt change in the line of the Communist Revolutiona¬ ries.
That the usefulness of mass organisations and mass
movements had been acknowledged would be evident from the resolution on trade union work, adopted
by the All India
Co-ordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries in its session of May 1968, and from various writings published in its journals, including those of Charu Majumdar.
But, from
1969, the Party gradually withdrew into its own shell and relied not on the masses but on small, secret squads of van¬ guards for waging revolutionary struggle. It is true that mass organisations and mass movements have
120
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL IT
for a long time been utilized by reactionaries and revisionists in the interest of class collaboration and for blunting the revo¬ lutionary consciousness of the people.
To confine mass orga¬
nizations and mass movements within narrow, economic bo¬ unds was certainly economism.
It was not the mass organi¬
zations and mass movements but the Right opportunist and revisionist leadership of the CPI, the CPI(M) and other socalled socialist and communist parties that were to blame. Even now revisionists of all hues are busy trying to divert all mass struggles and the wrath of the people along peaceful, constitutional channels.
While people, even their own sup¬
porters, are driven away from their homes, robbed of their jobs or assassinated by the police, they take upon themselves the task of organizing petitions and prayers to the ruling classes. Nevertheless, to
withdraw from mass organizations and
mass movements is to be guilty of “left” opportunism.
It
actually means abandoning the patient and painstaking politi¬ cal struggle and arousing the masses and winning them over from the influence of the counter-revolutionaries and ends in a fatal divorce between the underground Party and the people, between the revolutionary vanguard and the masses. In a country like India, the main force of the revolution must be the peasantry and one of the main tasks of the Party is to arouse the peasants.
It is necessary to link closely the
peasants’ struggle for land and for annulment of debts with the struggle for seizure of power.
It was “left” opportunism
on the part of the CPI(ML) to issue a call for a struggle for seizure of power in, rural areas without linking it with the peasants’ loans.
struggle
The
for land
peasants
were
and
cancellation of
aroused
and
the
usurious movement
gained in intensity and acquired a mass character only in those areas where and when the two struggles became one and inseparable. From about the middle of 1969, the CPI(ML) began to withdraw its cadres from trade unions and all other mass or-
121
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
ganizations.
In practice it also withdrew from mass move¬
ment on international issues.
The mass line that had been
followed in Naxalbari was abandoned.
So, the
inevitable
happened : the divorce between the underground Party and the masses of workers and peasants gradually became complete and the revolutionary vanguard became easy targets of the re¬ actionaries for arrest, torture and assassination. Another manifestation of “left” opportunism was to equate class
struggles
with “the
battle of
annihilation of
class
enemies”. It was insisted that “the battle of annihilation of class enemies”
was the only form of struggle at this stage and
party cadres were instructed to form small squads of poor and landless peasants in a secret, “conspiratorial” manner—-secret from the
people and secret even from the Party units not
accustomed to underground conditions of work—and to carry out annihilation of hated class enemies one after another. Politics of seizure of power was to be propagated, not widely,, but with the sole purpose of carrying out successful annihilation of individual class enemies.
It was argued that “the class
struggle, that is, this battle of annihilation, could solve all the problems facing us” ; it would unleash
the initiative of poor
and landless peasants, carry, the struggle forward to a higher stage, raise the level of the people’s political consciousness,' create new men, build the People’s Army, ensure the creation of stable base areas and bring about a revolutionary upsurge ending in a countrywide victory. These arguments were not based on any concrete analysis of the conditions in this country but were wholly subjective. Because of the lack of a dialectical approach on the part of the CPI(ML) leadership, the ‘battle of annihilation of class enemies’ has, instead of solving any of our problems, made them much more difficult than before. landless
peasants was roused
and
The initiative of poor and the struggle reached a
higher stage only in those areas where the struggle for the confiscation of the jotedars’ land and other possessions and for cancellation of usurious loans was combined with the stru*
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
122
VOL II
ggle for seizure of power—for instance, in Naxalbari in 1967 and in Srikakulam and Musahari.
On the other hand, when
the class-enemy-annihilation line was imposed, it gradually dis¬ organised the revolutionary forces, snapped their links with the people, and led to the degeneration of the struggle in some areas and to the suppression of the militants by the police and the army.
Instead of raising the level of the people’s
political
consciousness, this line actually spread demoralization among them.
Whatever people’s army appeared in an embryonic
form is today faced with extinction.
Neither any ‘stable’ (or
unstable) base area nor any countryside revolutionary
upsurge
-could be created by the class-enemy-annihilation line. In his writing Some Questions concerning Methods of Leadership, Mao Tsetung said :
“However active the leading
group may be, its activity will amount to fruitless effort by a handful of people unless combined with the activity of the masses.”
He also said :
“Communists must never separate
themselves from the majority of the people or neglect them by leading only a few progressive contingents in an isolated and rash advance, but must forge close links between the progressive elements and the broad masses.”
(The Role of the Chinese
Communist Party in the National War) The Party leadership did not heed this warning, ignored the teachings of all great Marxist-Leninists and mistook terrorism for revolutionary violence.
Naturally, terrorism practised by
groups of its militants failed to accomplish what the revolution¬ ary violence of an aroused people can. The Party leadership believed that annihilation enemies could be carried on, one after another, in
of class an area
(some of them would be killed and some would flee), the rural .areas could thus be liberated from class enemies
and Revolu¬
tionary Committees, organs of people’s power, could be esta¬ blished there.
The very existence of the State machinery, the
purpose of which is to protect the class enemies and their regime of oppression and exploitation, was overlooked and the Tact that organs of the people’s power could not be established
123
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
an any area without contending with the State machinery was ignored. To equate secret annihilation of individuals with guer¬ rilla war is not correct.
Guerilla war can be waged only by
relying on the people and their active help and co-operation. But annihilation of class enemies is carried out secretly, “conspiratorially”—without involving the people.
Guerilla war is
war between the People’s Army and the enemy’s armed forces ; it is a form of people’s war.
So there is a basic difference
between guerilla war and secret assassination of individuals. Why do Marxist-Leninists reject individual terror, secret assassination of individuals, as one of the main forms of stru¬ ggle ?
This is not a question of abstract morality.
It is not
certainly immoral to annihilate certain mass-murderers—men responsible for the murder of many workers and peasants. But, in using individual terror—in special cases, the Party should be guided not by its own wishes but by the wishes of the masses and by a proper analysis of the actual conditions at the given time and place. individual
terror—secret
As a main form of struggle,
assassination
of
individuals—
does tremendous harm to the cause of revolution instead of
helping it.
First,
it diverts the Party from the path
of class struggle, from the path of people’s war. bourgeois subjectivism to
It is petty-
dream of creating mass upsurge
through individual terror by a handful of militants.
Secondly,
this belittles the enemies’ strength from the tactical point of view.
A handful of militants isolated from the people can
easily be suppressed by the enemy.
This terrorism endangers
the Party’s very existence, severs its links with the masses and renders all political work impossible.
Lenin said :
“In
principle we have never rejected, and cannot reject terror. Terror is one of the forms of military action that may be perfectly suitable and even essential at
a definite juncture
.in the battle, given a definite state of the troops and the existence of definite conditions.
We, therefore, declare
em¬
phatically that under the present conditions such a means of
124
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL IF
struggle is inopportune and unsuitable ; that it diverts the most active fighters from their real task, the task which is most im¬ portant from the standpoint of the interests of the movement as a whole ; and that it disorganizes the forces, not of the government, but of the revolution...Is there not the danger of rupturing the contact between the revolutionary organizations and the disunited masses of the discontented, the protesting, and the disposed to struggle, who are weak precisely because they are disunited ?
Yet it is this contact that is the sole gua¬
rantee of our success.”
(Where to Begin)
From about the middle of 1970, the annihilation of police¬ men, spies, bureaucrats, corrupt traders and petty millowners became the main form of struggle in urban areas.
In the
course of this struggle even traffic constables, educationists, judges, trade
union leaders and leaders of different political
parties
attacked
were
and
some
of
them
annihilated.
Instead of working underground in urban areas for a long time to co-ordinate the struggle of the workers and other working people with the struggle in the countryside, the Party’s mili¬ tants rushed into head-on collisions with the enemy’s organised forces of violence. and great heroism.
The Party cadres showed utter selflessness But the inevitable happened : while a
large section of the people were antagonised, thousands of cadres were tortured, maimed and imprisoned and several hun¬ dreds—both leaders and cadres—died. The Party militants were involved in another bloody stru¬ ggle.
The political struggle between the CPI(ML) and the
CPI(M) degenerated into a tragic feud—-a war of
annihilation
between the cadres and supporters of the two parties—a war that bewildered the people and served only the interest of the ruling classes.
The CPI(ML) failed to distinguish between the
CPI(M) leadership and the large section of its cadres and supporters, did not wage any persistent political struggle to win over the latter and did little to try to stop this mutual, senseless killing. It is right to rebel against the education system in our
125
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
country, which is semi-colonial and semi-feudal.
Today, chaos
reigns in the educational sphere because of the utter rottenness of the system.
But as
Mao Tsetung said,
it
is always
necessary first of all to create public opinion, to do work in the ideological sphere.
But when CPI(ML) cadres and lumpen
elements systematically attacked schools and colleges
with
bombs, destroyed their officees, laboratories and libraries and set some of them on fire, the Party leadership supported all these anarchic nonpolitical acts instead of guiding this revolt along a political channel and doing some work in the ideologi¬ cal sphere.
Thousands of teachers felt that they were the tar¬
gets of this attack. It was also right to rebel against the long dominance of the cultural and political influence of the leaders who represented comprador-cum-feudal
class interests.
The “heroes” of the
so-called Bengal Renaissance, able representatives in the realm of culture and
education of the new comprador-cum-feudal
class fathered by the British rulers, were British colonialists spiritually country in its imperialist
and
fetters
found at
a
children of the salvation
time
of the
when
India
was being rocked by anti-imperialist and anti-feudal peasant uprisings and imperialism
the
First
War of Independence.
of many great national
leaders,
The anti¬
who
flouri¬
shed in this century, was indeed sham while their role as se¬ rvitors of imperialism or fascism was quite real.
The new
democratic politics and culture of the working class, the pea¬ santry and the petty bourgeoisie, led by the working class, can not win in the struggle against the pro-imperialist and feudal politics and culture that still dominate the life of the country without unmasking its real character. But the manner in which the revolt took place, the burning of portraits and smashing of statues, bewildered and shocked the petty bourgeoisie which has been brought
up
to
and political leaders.
revere
the
pro-imperialist
Compared with the enormity of the
task, very little was done in the ideological sphere. case, too, the
cultural In this
Party failed to guide the revolt along
the
.126
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
correct path and this
failure was fully exploited
VOL IF
by
the
enemy. Thanks to the Party units, the activities of gangsters and hoodlums were curbed to a great extent in many areas and people enjoyed some sense of security.
But some oppression
was perpetrated on the people in the name of the Party in some areas.
In a few areas the local Party committees, on
their own initiative, took measures to stop it, but in most areas nothing was done to check it or to demarcate the Party from the elements that were utilising its name for their own sordid ends. Early in 1971, the slogan that those who would seek votes (for election to the West Bengal Legislative Assembly) and those who would cast their votes were to be annihilated, was raised in some areas.
Even the political struggle for boycott of
elections and against parliamentarism degenerated into a‘battle of annihilation.’
This was another extreme and dangerous
manifestation of “Left” opportunism. It was wrong on the part of the CPI(ML) leadership to characterize all other political parties as parties of the ruling classes.
Different small parties represent the interests of the
small and the middle bourgeoisie or the interests they may help the ruling classes and go against the interest of the people at certain times, but there are also contradictions between them and the ruling classes.
To see only one aspect, the aspect of
their unity with the ruling classes, and to overlook the other aspect, their contradictions, is contrary to dialectics and, so, un-Marxist. The All India
Co-ordination Committee of Communist
Revolutionaries had expressed the hope in a resolution adop¬ ted in May 1968 that its contradictions with the groups that believed in armed agrarian revolution and professed loyalty to Mao Tsetung thought would remain non-antagonistic.
But,
later,these groups were unjustly abused as agents of imperialism and international revisionism on the ground that they were opposing annihilation of class enemies.
This was a manifes-
127
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
tation of extreme “left” sectarianism. Indeed, an extreme “left” sectarian line that isolated and weakened the revolutionary forces, was pursued by the Party. classics was discouraged and
Even the study of Marxist
Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung
thought was made to degenerate into a cult of ‘bhakti\ into a blind, unquestioning faith in the revolutionary authority of a leader, and similar anti-Marxist trash.
All this was the work
of a petty bourgeoisie with a long feudal tail. The emergence of “left” opportunism during the last three years was perhaps historically inevitable.
Isn’t, as Lenin poin¬
ted out, anarchism infrequently a sort of punishment for the opportunist sins of the working class movement ?
In this,
country the Communist Party never became the party of the working class nor was its Marxist-Leninist ideological founda¬ tion ever firm.
Both in ideology and in composition it re¬
mained overwhelmingly petty bourgeois and trailed behind the pro-imperialist, compromising bourgeoisie.
The CPI, as well
as the CPI(M), led not even by a labour aristocracy but by a petty bourgeois-and-landlord or ex-landlord aristocracy, has throughout its
long life, pursued a policy not of class struggle
but of class collaboration—a policy of treachery against the people.
At particular places and particular periods there have
been revolt against right opportunism, for example, in Telengana in the forties.
But right opportunism has dominated the
communist movement in this country.
Revolt against right
opportunism started along the correct path in Naxalbari.
But,
afterwards, in the course of the bitter struggle against right opportunism, this revolt degenerated into “left” opportunism, a punishment for the many right opportunist sins, hypocrisy, servility and treachery of the communist movement in this country. When we are
criticizing deviations, it would be wrong to
suppose that the entire work of the last five years was utterly fruitless and all wrong, and had no positive aspect. can
be
more untrue.
Nothing
The work of the last five years has a
positive aspect of immense significance.
What is that aspect ?
128
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
First, the Naxalbari peasant struggle, as we have said before, marked a turning point in India’s history.
In view of
the long reign of right opportunism in this country, it was no easy task for the revolutionaries and peasants of Naxalbari to uphold the great truth that force is the midwife of the old society pregnant with a new one.
No force on earth can
wipe out the new revolutionary force that Naxalbari repre¬ sents. Second, the Naxalbari struggle could begin only by raising high the banner of Mao Tsetung Thought and by waging a bitter fight against revisionism and right opportunism.
For
the past few years Communist Revolutionaries have carried on an uncompromising
struggle against sham parliamentarianism
and other manifestations of revisionist ideology and politics as well as against revisionist practices. Third, it was the All India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries that unmasked for the first time in India the character of Soviet revisionism.
The CPI(ML) also
exposed the real character of the “Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation.’ Fourth, the CPI(ML) has waged struggle against bourgeois chauvinism and upheld proletarian internationalism.
When
all reactionary and revisionist parties tried their utmost to poison the minds of the people with hostility and hatred for socialist China, the CPI(ML) carried on almost single-handed a struggle against the anti-China campaign.
It also exposed
and denounced the Indian expansionists when they invaded and dismembered Pakistan. Fifth, the brief history of the CPI(ML) is the history of struggle, heroism and self-sacrifice.
The cadres and leaders of
the Party never hesitated and do not hesitate to lay down their lives in the interest of the people.
Here lies the basic differ¬
ence between the leaders and cadres of the CPI(ML) and the revisionists. the
latter
When the former are essentially self-sacrificing are essentially self-seekers and careerists.
CPI(ML) has set examples—examples of courage to
The fight,
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
129
•self-sacrifice and devotion to the cause of revolution—at a time when sham
militancy,
rank opportunism, careerism
and
servility masqueraded as socialism, communism and Marxism in this country. May 12—19, 1973
THE MAIN DANGER BABURAJ
Let us examine how much reasonable are the criticisms -raised against the CPI(ML).
Before going into these problems
we should know how to evaluate the correctness of a theory. Chairman Mao has taught us how human knowledge develops ■dialectically from the perceptual stage to the conceptual stage and how the correctness of the conceptual knowledge thus acquired is tested in the course of revolutionary practice (see ‘On Practice').
When we evaluate on these lines we can see
that almost all the theories have to be modified during the •course of revolutionary practice in order to suit the objective conditions.
But we have to be very careful before reaching a
judgment on the correctness of a theory, because sometimes the theory (conceptual •implemented.
knowledge)
may
not
be
correctly
So the failure may not be due to the incorrect¬
ness of the theory.
That means we have to pinpoint the actual
reasons for the failure.
If the failure is due to the improper
implementation we can correct it.
If the implementation is
.correct and even the theory fails to achieve the anticipated result, then the theory itself is wrong. abandon
that
theory.
Instead
of
Then we have to
taking
this dialectical
approach many of the critics of the Party line seem to be very eager to put the blame everywhere except where it belongs. First of all let us take the problem of mass organizations and mass movements for the fulfilment of the economic de-
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
130 mands of the peasants and
the masses.
VOL IF
The question of
whether the struggle is for political power or for economic de¬ mands
is
closely linked with this problem.
So we shall
consider both together. From the very beginning these two formulations were dividing the revolutionaries in India who revolted against the revisionist leadership of the CPI(M) and took up Mao Tsetung Thought as the guiding force.
The leaders and followers of
the Naxalbari struggle proposed that “militant struggles must be carried on not for land, crops, etc.
but for seizure of
political power” (Charu Majumdar, “One year after Naxalbari struggle”, Liberation).
Kanu Sanyal wrote in his “Report on
the Peasant Movement in the Terai
Region” (Liberation,
November 1968) that the struggle in Terai was “not for land but for State power”. the
revisionist
This is a fundamental question, and
thinking which has been prevailing in the
peasant movement for the last
few decades, can only be
combated “by solving this problem”. formulation was very clear.
The reason for such a
The experiences of the past have
taught the people a very valuable lesson that without political power in their hands they could achieve nothing and that they could not retain the gains even if they could win any. true
that
the
peasants may
not
It is
be having any scientific
knowledge of political power, but they know one thing, that isr there are the police and the armed forces and other machinery to safeguard the interests of the landlords and other exploiters^ It is because of this knowledge acquired from bitter experiences that the peasants in India take a kind of fatalist attitude and do not become enthusiastic in various struggles.
So it is
evident that the peasants can be aroused en masse only in the ultimate struggle for political power. On the other hand, another section in Andhra Pradesh held that the first thing to do was to mobilize the people for land and other economic demands.
“Fertile land and fruit
gardens that - had been grabbed from Girijan peasants are still in the hands of landlords.
People have been anxious to take
131
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
them back.
We must prepare them to occupy these lands.
This process must start with the first rains” Programme’,
Revolutionary
Andhra Pradesh).
Communist
(‘Immediate
Committee
Along with this they proposed
of
to start
armed guerilla struggle, that too as a defensive tactic.
But
after three years’ patient and painstaking work among the people, they made a self-evident analysis.
A relevant portion-
of that document (published in Frontier, July 29, 1972, as a summary of a part of a document released by the RCC Andhra Pradesh) is interesting :
of.
“The fact that the peo pie in
Karimnagar, Warangal and Khammam districts did not come forward to occupy the lands of landlords showed our over¬ estimations on this issue as stated in the Immediate Program me ...The people will occupy landlords’ lands in extensive areas when they become conscious and
have
confidence in the
strength of our armed squads in resisting the government's armed forces and when they are confident and determined that they can and will defend and retain those lands...We should not forget that mobilization of the people in extensive areas for the purpose depends on their readiness
and our
work for the armed struggle, on the confidence that can be created by the strength of the armed squads .” added) This conclusion is to be taken
(emphasis
into consideration not as
speculation, but as a proved fact tested in the course of re¬ volutionary practice.
This clearly shows that the formulation
drawn by the Naxalbari comrades was quite correct. no new information. Telengana struggle.
This
had
been
This is
proved during
the
This is what had happened in China.
While we stress that the peasants’ armed struggle is mainly aimed at the seizure of political power, it does not mean that it has no relation with the struggle for economic demands ; because the struggle for the seizure of political power itself is aimed
at the fulfilment of
the
the peasants, especially land reform. related.
economic
demands of
Both are inseparably
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
132
VOL II
Now, the problem is how to rally the people behind this struggle for the seizure of political power.
The Party Pro¬
gramme adopted at the first Congress in 1970 says : “The path of India’s liberation as in the case of all othei colonial, semi-colonial and semi-feudal countries is the path of People’s War.
As Chairman Mao has taught us, The revo¬
lutionary war is the war of the masses ; it can be waged only by mobilizing the masses and relying on them." The working class can wage a successful people’s war by creating small bases of armed struggle all over the country and consolidating the political possible
power
of the people.
only by developing guerilla
This is
warfare which is and
will remain the basic form of struggle throughout the entire period of our Democratic Revolution.
No one can find any¬
thing wrong with these formulations. During the course of protracted people’s war waged in China,
Vietnam and other countries, it was proved
guerilla
warfare
that
is the most suitable form of struggle
mobilize the entire strength of the people.
to
But it is to be
remembered that mobilizing the' people using the tactic of guerilla warfare is entirely different from mobilizing the people through mass organizations and mass movement for economic demands.
This had been misunderstood by many.
And the
revisionists and the neo-revisionists of all hues are capitalising this
misunderstanding
treacherous ends.
among
the rank and file for their
The problem of mobilizing the people by
integrating with the basic masses and raising their level of consciousness through politicalisation and waging armed struggle is not at all a matter to be solved through theoretical dis¬ cussions,
but
through
revolutionary
practice.
The
most
important peculiarity of guerilla struggle is that, as it does not follow the conventional laws of war, a very few guerillas can keep a larger contingent of enemy forces at bay arranging ambushes and launching surprise attacks with all kinds of help and cooperation from the people.
Thus, while regular con¬
ventional warfare does not call for direct involvement of the
133
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
people, guerilla warfare cannot be waged without the full co¬ operation of the people.
During this process—the dialectical
development of the initial embryonic forms of armed struggle into a kind of armed mass upsurge—there may appear different and hitherto unknown forms of mass struggle. This kind of mobilization of the people through armed struggle has nothing to do with the open mass organizations and mass movements. In short, the Party line is never against a mass line, on the contrary it stands for a revolutionary mass line, while it opposes the revisionist mass line of open trade unions and kisan sabhas which breed economism. The next problem is the tactical line of annihilation of class enemies.
Charu Majumdar never equated the annihilation of
class enemies with guerilla war.
On the contrary he had cor¬
rectly defined it as a starting point of guerilla war.
In his
speech at the Party Congress introducing the political-organiza¬ tional report, he explained : “It must be understood that the battle of annihilation is both a higher form of class struggle and the starting point of guerilla war. “1.
There are two deviations on this point.
Some comrades agree that annihilation is the starting
point of guerilla war, but they do not agree that it is a higher form of class struggle.
It should be borne in mind that only
through the development of class struggle can all the problems be solved. “2.
There are other comrades who carried on class strug¬
gle—the struggle for the seizure of landlord’s land and pro¬ perty—but did not wage the battle of annihilation. cadres became degenerate.
They were lost.
So the
The comrades
missed the point that annihilation is the starting-point of gue¬ rilla war.”
(Liberation, June-July, 1970)
This was a correct formulation. Here annihilation has been defined as a connecting link between class struggle and guerilla war.
But Majumdar never equated it with guerilla war.
He
had repeatedly reminded the revolutionaries to rely on poor landless peasants to carry out annihilation.
In the initial stage
134
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
when the revolutionaries were groping for a line that would coordinate armed struggle with the class struggle of peasants, this line was actually helpful in arousing the peasants. The later critics of this line themselves had stated that “it was only when Charu Majumdar gave them the line of annihilation of class enemies that they could break the people’s inertia” (Frontier January 13, 1973). It is to be admitted that this line did not work as had been envisaged by Charu Majumdar. The failure of this line was mainly for two reasons. First, the petty bourgeois adventurists who had flooded the rank and file of the Party took this line of annihilation as their own and did not heed the directives of the leadership to rely on the basic masses. Actually annihilation was i ntended to be carried out in the villages only after tho¬ rough investigation and correct class analysis of the area through which the politics of annihilation can be propagated among the masses. But in many areas such patient work was not performed. The petty bourgeois comrades were not patient enough to study the significance of the line. So in many areas the battle of annihilation degenerated into mere manifestations of petty-bourgeois revolutionary impetuosity. The second and most important reason for this failure was the lack of a clearly worked out plan to develop the battle of annihilation into a proper guerilla war. Of course, Charu Majumdar had pointed out that members of the annihila¬ tion-squads would ultimately form the PLA. But such state¬ ments were very vague. A clear-cut military line was necessary for this purpose. A detailed plan had to be chalked out in order to guide the dialectical development of annihilation into people’s war through a series of confrontations with the armed forces of the State power. Instead, stress was given only •on the battle of annihilation and mere repetition of this battle was encouraged. So, when the ruling classes adopted the usual policy of ‘‘encirclement and suppression”, the revolu¬ tionaries could not withstand the suppression and they were virtually wiped out. From this it is clear why the peasants at
135
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
•this stage became very lukewarm and indifferent to the revolu¬ tionary movement.
They knew that the annihilation of class
enemies alone cannot smash the political power of the ruling class.
They were very conscious of the strength of the State
machinery.
But in the beginning they expected that the armed
struggle against the class enemies would be continued directly against the armed forces also and so they supported the move¬ ment.
Still they were sceptical on this point and at last their
fear proved to be correct.
Here lay the most important weak¬
ness of the party line which resulted from the absence of a correct military line.
Revolutionaries
have to admit this
mistake and correct it in their future work. A serious discussion on the role of the PLA and its for¬ mation took place inside the party in 1971 ; but it was too late to link it with the battle of annihilation which had already been launched in 1969. Prabhat Jana alleges that the annihilation squads were ^‘secret from the people”.
This is a very attractive phrase used
by the revisionists of all hues to divert the people from the path of armed struggle. Under the present conditions in India, no activity connected with armed struggle can be conducted in the open,
This is the case especially after Naxalbari struggle.
That struggle opened the eyes of the ruling classes and they have taken the Naxalbari movement as a serious challenge to their existence.
So they have extended their vigilant arms
wherever there is any sign of a revolutionary movement. Hence anybody who has devoted himself to the path of armed •struggle to fulfil the cause of Indian revolution cannot but ■choose the underground conditions of work.
Those who are
interested in this matter can read William Hinton’s Fanshen for a very detailed account of revolutionary activities in an enemy-occupied village of China.
There the revolutionaries
had to work under conditions of the utmost secrecy.
The
fundamental, qualitative difference between the revolutionary activities in enemy-occupied areas and those in liberated areas can clearly be seen in this book.
At present, in India, almost
136
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL IB
all the villages should be considered as enemy-occupied areas. But in many areas revolutionaries have committed seriousmistakes, not caring to observe underground
activities
the strictest principles of
and they contributed much to the
setback. The circumstances compelled the Party and the revolution¬ aries to adopt secret and illegal methods of work.
For exam¬
ple, Party organs like Liberation, Deshabrati and Lok Yudh were published legally until
April,
1970, when the police
attacked the offices and printing presses and arrested the comrades. So the Party was compelled to publish these organs illegally.
Almost in every field this was the experience.
Jana has correctly pointed out that “though the political line of the Naxalbari struggle was correct, it suffered a setback chiefly because of the smallness of the area, inexperience of the revolutionary leaders and peasants, their inability to spread it to wider areas and to develop an appropriate military line.” But he concludes that the struggles is chiefly
reason for the failure of the later
“Left Opportunism” manifested in the
abandonment of the mass line and adoption of an annihilation line.
At the same time he points out, “The initiative of poor
and landless peasants was roused and the struggle reached a higher stage only in those
areas where the struggle for the
confiscation of jotedars’ land and other possessions and for cancellation of usurious loans was combined with the struggle for seizure of power—for instance in Naxalbari in 1967, and in. Srikakulam and Musahari.”
We know, as in Naxalbari, the
struggle in Srikakulam and Musahari also was suppressed and suffered a setback. been aroused.
Why ?
Not because the people had not
Then it is very clear that as in the Naxalbari.
struggle, all the later struggles suffered setbacks mainly because of lack of a correct correct political line.
military line which could reinforce the In short, we can conclude that the set¬
back is not due to the “Left Opportunism” of the Party line and that the political line of the Party was in the main correct, though it could not be implemented correctly.
137'
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
Then, what is the main danger ahead ?
Is it “Left Oppor¬
tunism” as has been charged by Kanu Sanyal and others in their alleged letter ? the main danger. the routine
Not at all.
Right opportunism remains
Once the revolutionaries are brought into
cycle of open mass movements they can never
return to the path of armed struggle.
But this time, in the
1970s, revolutionaries are not going to be betrayed ; because they have the valuable lessons of the 1950s behind them. History will never repeat itself in the same way. June 16, 1973
‘THE MAIN DANGER’ PRAVAT JANA
What is class
struggle ?
comprises both economic sections
As Lenin said,
class struggle-
struggle and political struggle by¬
of people in a society organized
as classes.
“These
two forms of agitation (economic and political)”, said Lenin, “are inseparably bound up with each other in the activities of the Social-Democrats like the two sides of a medal. economic and political agitation are
equally
Both
necessary for
the development of the class consciousness of the proletariat,, and economic and political agitation are equally necessary in order to guide the class struggle of the Russian workers, for every class struggle is a political struggle”. Vol. I,
Moscow, 1946, P. 135).
Lenin wrote :
In
(Selected Works,
What is to be Done ?^
“The workers’ organisations for carrying on
the economic struggle should be trade union organisations ; every Social-Democrat should, as far as possible, support and actively work inside these organisations”. Instead of running away from mass
organisations and mass movements,
Communist Party,
according to Marx,
the
Engels, Lenin, Stalin
and Mao, should send its cadres to participate in and lead
138
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
them, and should at the same peasants with seize power.
revolutionary
time
VOL II
imbue workers and
politics and prepare them to
One of the central questions in their teachings
was the question of the relationship between the economic and political struggle.
“The Communists”, to quote from
the Communist Manifesto, “fight for the attainment of the immediate
aims,
for the
enforcement of the
momentary
interests of the working class, but in the movement of the present they also represent and take care of the future”. They taught that while the economic struggle has tremendous importance and must in no circumstances be avoided, politics must have primacy over economics. Is the Marxist-Leninist doctrine of class struggle not valid in a semi-colony like India ?
Mao Tsetung did not think so.
In Problems of War and Strategy, where he distinguished between the path of revolution followed in a capitalist country and that followed in a semi-colonial, semi-feudal
country like
China, he categorically said that, though “in China war is the main form of struggle and the army is the main form of organisations”, “other forms such as mass organisation and mass struggle are extremely important and indeed indispensa¬ ble and in no circumstances to be overlooked”—both before and after the outbreak of war—and that their purpose should be to serve the war. Why do mass organisations, like trade unions and peasant associations, often fail as they have so far failed in India ?
To
quote Marx, “They fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organized forces as a lever for the final emancipatio n of the working class, that is to say, the ultimate abolition of the wages system”.
{Value, Price and Profit ; our italics)
What is our experience in India ?
The revisionist parties
like the CPI and the CPI(M) limit the role of mass organisa¬ tions to one of fighting for the immediate interests of the working people, i.e., to one of fighting against the effects
of
139
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
the system instead of simultaneously trying to organise the people for the revolutionary overthrow of the system itself. On the other hand, the leadership of the CPI(ML) drew, at one phase, an artificial dividing line between the economic and the political struggle, withdrew from mass organisations and mass movements and gave a call for armed struggle for seizure of power.
The two lines—the revisionist and the ‘left’ oppor¬
tunist—ran parallel and did not meet and both led to disasters. But it is the organic connection and close interweaving of the economic and the political struggle that can arouse, unite and organise the people for the highest form of class struggle—the revolutionary overthrow of the ruling classes and seizure of power by the people led by the proletariat.
History shows
that those who refuse to link up the struggle for the working people’s immediate versa,
interests with the final goal, and vice
sabotage the struggle for liberation of the working
people and play into the hands of the ruling classes—willingly or unwillingly. What is guerilla warfare ?
It is a form of people’s war,
which can be waged only by involving the people in the war. It presupposes the existence of people’s armed forces. Mao Tsetung said,
As
“It (guerilla warfare) is the indispensable
.and therefore the best form of struggle for the people’s armed forces to employ
over a long period in a backward country,
in order to inflict defeats on the armed enemy and build up their own
bases”
(Introducing ‘The Communist’).
It is
wrong to call secret annihilation of individual class enemies the starting
point of guerilla warfare.
According to
the
instructions of the Party leadership, an intellectual comrade ^‘should go to the village and whisper into the ear of a poor peasant with [revolutionary]
potentialities,
to assassinate such and such jotedars ?’ should be selected, one group”.
‘Is it not good
Thus the guerillas
by one, secretly and organised in a
This group was to be
formed
‘conspiratorially’,
secretly from the people and secretly even from the Party omits not accustomed to underground work (Charu Majumdar,
140
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL ID
“A Few Words on Guerilla Action”). This tactic has nothing to do with guerilla warfare or people’s war as it does not rely on an aroused people for carrying on the struggle. actually anarchistic,
terroristic and can be
for a short while.
It is
employed only
It is contrary to Marxism-Leninism-Mao
Tsetung Thought to describe it as a higher form of class struggle and the beginning of guerilla war, for it is neither. Who has said that democratic land reforms can be carried out in areas other than liberated ones ?
But it is necessary
to mobilize the masses of the peasantry on the basis of an agrarian programme and give a call for a struggle land and liberty.
for both
The theory that militant struggles must be
waged not for land but for State power is a symptom of an infantile disorder.
It is preposterous to draw an artificial
dividing line between the struggle for land and the struggle for State power and to theorize that the struggle for power must precede the struggle for land. of understanding evident that the
to assert,
as
It is an incredible lack
Baburaj does,
“So it is
peasants can be aroused en masse only in
the ultimate struggle for power”.
(Our italics). In 1905-06
and, again, in 1917, Lenin and the Bolshevik Party gave the call for a
struggle
for
both land
inextricably woven together) swept Russia.
and
liberty (the two
and huge peasant movements
In China also, the CPC issued the same call
and they were successful.
Has Baburaj not heard of the
Hunan peasant movement ?
Liberation wars cannot be led
to
victory
movements. out
except
in the
background of such vast peasant
Listen, then, to Chairman Mao as he details
the reasons for the emergence and survival of Red poli¬
tical power in China.
“Second, the regions where China’s
Red political power has first emerged and is able to last for a long time have not been those unaffected by the democratic revolution, such as Szechuan, Kweichow, Yunnnan and the northern provinces,
but regions such as the provinces
of
Hunan, ICwantung, Hupeh and Kiangsi, where the masses of workers, peasants and
soldiers rose in great numbers in the
141
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
course of the bourgeois-democratic revolution of 1926 and 1927.
In many parts of these provinces trade unions and
peasant associations were formed on a wide scale, and many economic and political struggles were waged by the working class and the peasantry against the landlord class and the bourgeoisie”.
(‘Why is it that Red Political Power can exist
in China ?’) Baburaj seems blissfully ignorant of the history of class •struggle in his own country.
Many big mass movements have
swept India from time to time, though this country is
yet to
be liberated. The only Marxist-Leninist way of arousing and mobilizing the people is class struggle, that is, both economic and politi¬ cal struggle of the oppressed workers and peasants organised as classes.
Anything contrary to this is opposed to Marxism,
Leninism and Mao Tsetung Thought.
“This kind of mobili¬
zation through armed struggle”, says Baburaj, “has nothing to do with the open mass organizations and mass movements”. It is granted that armed struggle can mobilize people, but can armed struggle be launched without some kind of political mobilization of the people ?
And can this mobilization take
place through political propaganda alone or through struggle ?
class
Armed struggle for seizure of power is one of the
highest forms of class struggle.
Can one conveniently skip
the lower forms of class struggle and issue a call for one of the highest forms without mobilization, without making orga¬ nised preparations?
To do so means
belittling the enemy
not only strategically but also tactically and this is what ‘left’ opportunism amounts to.
Marxism-Leninism as well as past
experience has proved that secret assassination of class ene¬ mies by secret squads cannot successfully mobilize the masses. This ‘theory of excitative terrorism’, as Lenin called it, is no new modification of Marxist-Leninist theories—a modification which Baburaj’s ‘conceptual The Russian Narodniks
knowledge’ seems to demand.
and their successors, the Socialist-
Revolutionaries, had tried the same path and Lenin founded
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
142
and strengthened the Bolshevik Party this alien and dangerous trend.
VOL II
by ruthlessly fighting
It was hostile to Marxism as
it belittled the role of the working class and the role of the masses, severed links between revolutionaries and the people, and disorganised the forces not of the government but of the revolution.
Only in those cases where it helps to raise their
morale and where it serves it has
the cause of people’s war (after
actually started), the use of individual terror is not
only justified but necessary. Some people
fail
word ‘annihilation,’
to
understand the meaning
as Chairman Mao used it.
misunderstandinng on
of the
To allow no
this point, Mao Tsetung wrote in a
parenthesis in his book On Protracted War : the enemy means to
“.to destroy
disarm him or ‘deprive him of the
power to resist’ and does not mean to destroy every member of his forces physically.” Baburaj
writes :
“From the very beginning these two
formulations [whether the struggle is for political power or for economic demands] were dividing the revolutionaries in India who revolted against the revisionist leadership of the CPI (M).” etc.
No, till
1969 all of them including Charu
Majumdar were unanimous in stressing the necessity of linking the economic struggle with the political struggle and in empha¬ sizing the importance of open mass movements.
Reference
to the writings in the Party journals, especially Charu Majumdar’s articles,
such as ‘The Peasant Struggle must be carried
forward by combating revisionism’, ‘To Comrades’ and ‘Build up the Peasants’ class struggle through class analysis, investi¬ gation and practice’ may conclusively prove that Baburaj is entirely wrong.
It was in 1969 that Charu Majumdar came
to the conclusion that mass organisations and mass movements bred economism and stood in the way of developing
armed
struggle. In “One year after Naxalbari struggle”, Charu Majumdar wrote : “It is the first time [sic !] that the peasant waged a movement not only for his petty demands but also for State
143
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
power”
(our italics).
Kanu SanyaFs Terai Report describes
how the peasants of Naxalbari were mobilized and the struggle was launched for the implementation of three main slogans : (1) Implement the decisions of the Peasant Committee in all affairs of the village, (2) Organise and arm yourselves to smash the
resistance of jotedars and village reactionaries, and (3)
Break
the
jotedars’
monopoly
of landownership and start
redistribution of land through the Peasant Committee.”
Both
Telengana and Naxalbari struggles were mass movements led by mass organisations (which, again, were led by communists) and developed as struggles for both land and liberty. Naxalbari was destined to suffer a setback. cause there was no Marxist-Leninist
Party
to
Why ?
Be¬
spread
the
struggle to wider areas, no PLA and no United Front. correct military line alone would not have helped.
A
Yet, if the
analogy is permitted, Naxalbari marked an advance for the people of India as
the
Paris
advance for the world proletariat.
Commune
had marked
an
What was needed was to
draw correct lessons from the Naxalbari experience.
Though
the All-India Coordination Committee of Communist Revo¬ lutionaries started on the right path, the class-enemy-annihila¬ tion line and the line of abandonment of mass organisations and mass struggles were afterwards imposed.
Srikakulam and
Mushahari, where the peasants had been mobilized through both economic and political struggles, were suppressed be¬ cause of this wrong line.
Instead of implementing the class-
enemy-annihilation line in small areas, which soon snapped the links between the revolutionaries and the masses of those areas, painstaking class struggle should have been carried on in wider areas to mobilize the people, to unite them in various organisa¬ tions and to build up self-defence and other forces of the people.
To fight and defeat the enemy, who is militarily much
stronger in the beginning, the people have one weapon—unity and organisation.
Without rousing the dormant strength of
the people and achieving their unity in an area large enough for the armed struggle to be sustained and for the new revolu-
144
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
tionary force, helped by the people in other parts of the country and the world, to grow from small to big, from weak to strong, any precipitate call for armed struggle is destructive not of the enemy but of the revolutionary force.
In Srika-
kulam, Mushahari, Gopiballavpur, Birbhum etc., the new¬ born revolutionary forces were faced with disasters for two reasons among others : (1)
the call for armed struggle was
premature in the sense that these areas of struggle were small isolated
pockets
which
the
enemy could suppress without
much difficulty ; and (2) the armed struggle took the form mostly of individual terror,
which assigned a role to the
militants but almost none to the masses.
It was a case of
‘active
theorizing about
and
passive
people’.
The
empty
“dialectical development of annihilation into people’s war” (!!) —a nice string of high-sounding words signifying nothing— would be amusing, if the subject we are dealing with was not so serious. To defend the indefensible, Baburaj felt it necessary to invest a myth—correct political line formulated by the leader¬ ship and incorrect practice of it by the cadres.
He has blamed
the cadres as impatient “petty bourgeois adventurists” who were responsible for annihilation” revolutionary
“into
the
degeneration
of “the
battle of
mere manifestations of petty-bourgeois
impetuosity.”
Two
questions
arise :
First,
does the role of the leadership consist only in formulating correct policies and not in guiding their implementation ?
If
the practice proved wrong, why was it not corrected in the course of three years ?
Second, if the policies were wrongly
implemented, how is it inferred that the policies were correct ? What revolutionary practice proved them right during the last few years ? One would have expected a noncombatant armed strugglewallah to have more respect for truth and more respect for the combatants who feared neither hardship nor death to carry out the directives of the Party leadership. its directives ?
What were
One may refresh one’s memory by reading
145
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
once again Charu Majumdar’s
i‘A few words on Guerilla
Action’, ‘Make the 70s the Decade of Liberation’, several rousing appeals to avenge the brutal murders of comrades by the police, etc. degenerated
If “in many areas the battle of annihilation
into
mere manifestations
of
petty-bourgeois
revolutionary impetuosity”, why did the Party journals syste¬ matically and ecstatically applaud them ?
Did not the Party
leadership even hail every urban action of the petty-bourgeois militants ? “What the students and youth are doing, is without any shadow of doubt just and proper.”
(Charu Majumdar,
‘Forge closer unity with Peasant Armed Struggle’, Liberation, August 1970).
If the line was correct, why, in the course of
the last few years, did not the workers and peasants rise in their millions, take up “the battle of annihilation” and push "“the petty-bourgeois adventurists” to the background ? What then is the main danger ?
“Is it,” Baburaj asks,
“‘Left-Opportunism’, as has been charged by Kanu Sanyal and others in their alleged letter ? Not at all. remains the main danger”. actually say ?
What
Right opportunism
did that ‘alleged’ letter
“We”, it said, “must be very careful against
revisionism, while
fighting
have become the
main danger inside the
present.”
(Our italics).
against Left
deviations,
which
Party for the
Why has Baburaj dropped out the
words “inside the Party for the present” ? July 21,
1973
‘THE MAIN DANGER’ ARUN GOSWAMI
Mr
Jana
has
made
helpful
observations
about
class
struggle. But his remarks about the ‘guerilla actions’ conducted by the
CPI(ML)
are
one-sided.
Although
the collective
activities of a class are of greater importance, the individual Vol II—10
146
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL IB
activities also constitute a part of the entire class struggle. Workers unnecessarily
move to
and fro to reduce working
time ; land labourers slow down work in the absence of landowners ; debtors play many tricks with usurers. many such examples. these
are
nothing
Undoubtedly, class
There are
All these are done individually. but
class struggle against
Yet
exploitation.
struggle gains proper momentum when
the individual activities
are organised into collective activities
of the class to the proper degree.
It may also be mentioned
that at a point when class struggle takes a qualitative leap instead of gradual quantitative transformation, only a handful of individuals actively
participate at the very initial
stages.
Charu Majumdar never asked for the entire affair of ‘action* to be kept a secret.
He instructed that propaganda should
be launched among the should be familiar
peasants in favour of ‘action’, one
with their opinions ; but he wanted to
keep the actual programme a secret because the enemy was tactically strong.
The aims of actions should be well explained
to the people and they should be organised up to a degree required for the initiation of struggle and for facing immediate consequences.
To
demand organisation up to the
degree before ‘action’ is mechanical,
highest
because only through
protracted guerilla warfare can the people be organised strong enough to win final victory.
It is also childish to demand
that the programme of action should be known to all before¬ hand.
That denies the very conception of ‘guerilla’ war.
Whether the ‘secret assassinations’ are justified or not is not a matter to be worked out without any knowledge of the concrete conditions.
If these are executed to carry forward
the main class struggle of the
peasantry and are matched
with the level of consciousness of the people involved, then they are justified ; otherwise not.
The line of killing of the
jotedars produced some bad effects only because it was taken as the central form, and not as a part of the entire class struggle. There is a lot being said about mass organisations and mass movements.
But how to translate these principles into work
147
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
-
How can a party which is carrying on armed activities against the Government and whose members and cadres are being killed or jailed if exposed, combine with its basic illegal activities ?
open and legal activities
This problem, I think, is yet
to be solved and Pravat Babu sheds no light on it. time of Naxalbari white terror was not so fierce.
At the In those
days it was possible even to maintain an almost legal organi¬ sation like the CCCR which, in essence, was the party. the picture is different.
Now
So while criticising the CPI(ML) ’s
policy regarding mass line, one must state how to combine open, legal and mass activities (in an area which is not liberated, i.e. under white repression) with illegal and vanguard activities. Otherwise, it will lead us straight to economism and legalism.. Armed struggle will be opposed in the name of maintaining open fronts.
Any armed revolt against the present regime
will be termed as the acts of “agents provocateur” to suppress “movements for democratic rights etc.”
There is yet another
possibility.
be
Underground
cadres
may
exposed to the
enemy in the name of performing open activities. request
Pravat
Babu
to say
something
about
May I
the actual
procedure by which the illegal party, CPI(ML), can take part in mass organisations, mass movements, and lead them ? Another thing. movement is
The CPI(ML) never said
possible
before the
formation
that no mass of red areas-
What they said was that through the vast mass movements of the past the Indian people have been educated to a degree from where the only logical conclusion of mass struggle is guerilla war.
So now the task of revolutionaries is to develop
guerilla war and there is no need to repeat the lower forms of struggles.
That new form of class struggle i.e. guerilla
war, will draw a few people at first.
But
through gradual
advance, broad sections of the people will gather around it and only then again.
there is need to conduct
mass
movements
One may or may not agree with this view.
But it is
not honest to distort a party’s views. Mr Jana does not agree with Mr Baburaj that the reason
148
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
for the setback is the mistakes not of the party line, but of the party cadres.
It is doubtful whether a total setback through¬
out the country can result only from the mistakes of the cadres. But it is equally doubtful
whether a party can be made so
rigid that the cadres can translate its central directives into work absolutely without any distortion. usually
maintains
its
contacts
with
The central authority low
levels
through
intermediate chain which, in the case of an underground party in a vast country like India, is very long. are bound to occur as a natural law.
So, distortions
There may be even
political swindlers in intermediate positions who distort the party’s directives willingly and submit false reports to centre.
the
A party requires some time to recover from these
difficulties.
Not to realise this is idealism.
Even in a strong
party like the CPC, Liu Shao Chi and other swindlers did great harm to the party and the people in the name of the party (before they were kicked out.
What, according to Mr Jana,
should be the view of a revolutionary about these ? he hate Liu & Co.
Should
for the misdeeds, or should he blame
Chairman Mao for his ‘overall responsibility’ ?
Whether there
are mistakes committed by the central leadership of the CPI (ML) is another question.
But how cap one rule out the
possibility that there may be evils and errors committed at intermediate and lower levels even if the central line is abso¬ lutely correct ? August 11, 1973
WHAT’S TO BE DONE ? K. G.
The statement by Mr Jana that in Naxalbarithe legal struggle was combined with illegal struggle is not accurate. In any zone once armed struggle started, there was no scope for legal stru¬ ggle against the enemy.
The enemy will never allow such
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
action.
149
)
Besides, to quote Chairman Mao, “it is necessary to
create terror for a while in every rural area, or otherwise it would be impossible to suppress the activities of the counter¬ revolutionaries in the countryside or overthrow the authority of the gentry.” Jana criticised “the weakness of the Party’s line
that is to
blame for the present defeat and disarray of the revolutionary forces”
without examining the non-communist process
of
the formation of the CPI(ML) which was the root cause of basic weakness of the Party’s line.
During the process of
formation of the CPI(ML), the ideological and political line was not thrashed out, the strategy and tactical line was not drawn up and communist organisational principles were not followed.
The
result
was
non-functioning
of the
party-
committee system, and the writing in instalments of policy and tactical line
of the Party by Comrade Charu Majumdar, and
this led to “the present defeat and disarray of the revolutio¬ nary forces”.
Comrade Charu Majumdar formed the Party
with groups and individuals who had no clear conception of Mao Tseiung Thought, as most of them did not integrate themselves with the peasants and workers.
In this connection
it should be mentioned that Comrade Ashim
Chatterjee’s
group which was vehemently opposed to the Deshabrati group and later
on to the CPI(ML), joined the CPI(ML) uncon¬
ditionally as soon as Peking supported the formation of the CPI (ML). I do not agree with the contention that “to withdraw from mass organisations and mass movements is to be guilty of left opportunism”.
Neither do I agree with the simplification
that “it actually means abandoning the patient and painsta¬ king political struggle and arousing the masses and winning them over.and ends in a fatal divorce between the under¬ ground Party and the people”.
First, even after withdrawal
from “mass organisations” and so-called “mass movements”, patient and
painstaking ideological and political struggle can
be continued and the
masses can be aroused.
The vital
150
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
question is whether the Communist Revolutionaries are among the massses and with the masses on the basis of “class-line” and mass line.
The present situation demands that Commu¬
nist Revolutionaries must
remain underground
among the
masses and imbue them with Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought.
They must take the leadership of the
so-called
mass organisations, that is, open and legal trade unions and peasant associations.
But they should organise the masses
and organise resistance struggle with the help of armed gue¬ rilla squads, when necessary, against all sorts of tyranny, repre¬ ssion and exploitation—things which the so-called mass move¬ ments have never done for the last 50 years. At Kanksha (near Durgapur) the Revolutionary Commu¬ nist workers never joined the so-called peasant association and mass movement.
Remaining underground, they propagated
Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought and then tried to organise resistance struggles against oppression, tyranny and exploitation.
Of course, a revolutionary peasant organisation
has evolved in the process of armed struggle, an organisation fundamentally different from the mass organisation envisaged by Comrade Jana. It is also incorrect to say that “it was wrong on the part of the CPI(ML)
leadership to characterise all other parties as
parties of the ruling class”.
Since these parties serve the
interests of the ruling classes and suppress and resist revolu¬ tionary armed struggle, they certainly represent the classes.
ruling
The argument that these parties are not the parties
of the ruling classes as “there are also contradictions between them and the ruling classes” is not at all tenable.
Will one
refuse to call the Congress (O) a party of the ruling classes just because it has some contradiction with the latter ?
Con¬
tradiction with the ruling classes does not make a party anti¬ ruling class, because this contradiction is not the basic con¬ tradiction, not to speak of the principal contradiction.
The
policy and tactical line pursued by the CPI(M) and the co¬ operation it gave the Government for the past few years also
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
151
‘confirm the contention that there is no basic contradiction between the CPI(M) and the ruling classes.
G. D. Birla’s
comment that “we have plenty of choices” on the election results of 1967 should remove any illusion about these parties. As
for
economic struggle, to imbue the workers and
peasants with revolutionary politics and prepare them seizure of power, Lenin said :
for
‘‘The conception of economic
struggle as the most widely applicable means of drawing the masses into the political movement, which our economists preach, is so extremely harmful and reactionary in its political •sense” (Collected Works, Vol. 5, P. 413). masses with
political consciousness,
For rousing the
Lenin prescribes that
“class political consciousness can be brought to the workers only from without, that is only from outside the economic struggle, from outside the sphere of relations between workers and employers” ( P. 422, Ibid). This does not mean that the Communist Revolutionaries will not participate in the economic struggle of workers and peasants. Comrade Jana’s emphasis on mass organisation and
mass
movement and all kinds of cultural media to arouse the people will only retard the progress of building of rural revolutionary base areas. neous.
His very conception of mass movement is erro¬
He calls the Hunan peasant movement as a specta¬
cular mass movement and on the same breath mentions big mass movements of India.
What Chairman Mao said about
the Hunan peasant movement was : “The second period, from last October to Jauary of this year, was one „action (emphasis mine).
of revolutionary
Within four months
(it) brought
about a great revolution in the countryside, a revolution out parallel in history”.
with¬
Can Comrade Jana tell us what
•“revolution without parallel in history” was achieved by the big mass movements in India ? Mao never calls the peasant movement of Hunan a mass movement, he always calls it a “revolution”, “revolutionary .action”.
The “revolutionary action” of Hunan must not be
152
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL IIP
confused with the mass movements for economic gains in India. The building of rural revolutionary base areas is the pri¬ mary, principal and central task of the hour. August 18, 1973
CLASS STRUGGLE MONI GUHA
Mr Arun Goswami has introduced some interesting points in his ‘The Main Danger’ (Frontier August 11).
In defence of
the “guerilla actions” of the CPI (ML) as an individual form of class struggle, he says, “workers unnecessarily move to and fro to reduce working time ; land labourers slow down work in absence of landowners ; usurers.
There are many such examples.
individually. Although
debtors play many tricks with
the
Yet
these
are
nothing
CPI(ML) and its
All these are done but
leader
class struggle”. Charu Majumdar
declared khatam as the highest form of class struggle, Mr Goswami, while remaining completely mum over this, says, “ Although the collective activities of a class are of greater importance, the individual activities also constitute a part of the entire class struggle.”
As theft, according to Marx, was
the first form of protest against property, it certainly ‘‘‘cons¬ tituted a part of the class struggle” ! cited
One could have also
the collective activities of the Luddites as a justification
of his “collective activities of a class are of greater importance” than individual activities. Indeed the theory and practice of class struggle can be extended to an absurd extent and debased. signs and symptoms
Such attempts are
of unconscious, primitive, elementary
and crude forms and modes of protest, which Marxist-Leninists do not glorify.
153
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
Every year many a landlord or jotedar are killed by many a peasant.
This has been happening since the advent of the
landlord-peasant system and will continue to happen.
The
blind hatred and rage of the peasant has an element, a potent factor of class hatred, but in itself it is not class struggle. Class struggle must represent the needs and requirements of the interests of the class as a whole and the needs of the particular given historical stage of the class struggle.
This also must
be conducted as an act of class for itself and not as an act of class in itself.
So long as the organised agrarian revolu¬
tionary movement on the basis of an over-all
agrarian revolu¬
tionary programme with a concrete line of implementation
led
by a truly working class party fails to capture the imagination of the overwhelming peasantry, the blind, elemental but impo¬ tent rage
of individual peasants will explode.
this is justified
and at times laudable.
Undoubtedly,,
But when half-baked
Marxist-Leninists come forward to organise and initiate such blind, elementary, individual outbursts of peasants and theorise them as the
highest form of class struggle, Marxist pundits
cannot but say that these have really nothing to do with Marxism-Leninism or
with
class
struggle.
The
Marxist-
Leninists being the most consciously organised body represent¬ ing the class interests of the revolutionary classes as a whole organise the class struggle to the needs and requirements of given historical stage
and combat these elementary, crude,
primitive, unconscious and impotent outbursts and “first forms of protest”.
Instead
of glorifying these forms as the highest
form of class struggle, they help the people to fight
back with
such forms and methods that may lead them to the fulfilment of the needs and class struggle.
requirements of the given historical stage of
It is not enough to recognise all forms of class
struggle, firstly because a lower form of class struggle, at a certain time of development, may become the weapon of the reformists
and revisionists ;
secondly, because all forms of
class struggle may not reach their logical conclusion in accor¬ dance with the interests
of
the
proletariat.
Recognition,,
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
154
VOL II
organisation and glorification of those forms of class struggle which do not culminate in the establishment of the joint dictatorship of the revolutionary
people under
proletarian
hegemony—in spite of being “class struggle”—do not promote the needs and requirements of the class struggle of a given historical stage. Of course, this does not mean that the Marxist-Leninists repudiate khatam altogether, or repudiate it on moral consi¬ derations.
Marxist-Leninists judge it from the point of politi¬
cal necessity of the class struggle.
They do not resort to
khatam as a movement, as an episode, but as an auxiliary to mass movements, as an incident.
Lenin said, “as revolutio¬
nary tactics, individual attempts (of assassination) are both impractical and harmful.
It is only a mass movement that
can be considered a real political struggle. Individual terroristic acts can be, and must be, helpful, only when they are directly linked with the mass movement”. Class struggle existed in society before Marxism came into being.
Class struggle is not the invention or discovery of
Marx and Engels.
Class struggle of the
working class
and
revolutionary people are organised and conducted not only by Marxist-Leninists but also by the right revisionists and ‘left’ adventurists and by the bourgeoisie and
landlords.
From
this, it is clear that the Marxist-Leninists can neither support nor glorify all forms of “class struggle”. Let struggle.
us
go
deeper
Mr Goswami’s theory of class
He cannot possibly deny the element of class struggle
in the 1932 Harijan Gandhi.
into
movement
for temple-entry,
led
by
The Harijan landless peasantry joined this movement
almost en masse and rightly demonstrated their class hatred. Why did the Communists criticise it ?
Because the landless
peasants were then organising themselves together with the poor peasantry in order to rise in revolt against the landlords. Already in U. P. a big revolt had broken out.
Gandhi deflec¬
ted the spontaneous and anti-landlord movement of the land¬ less and poor peasantry by resorting to hunger-strike and
155
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
launching the temple-entry
movement.
In spite of having
elements of class struggle, in spite of its collective character, one would not be in a position to support or glorify such a class struggle as it served the interests of
the
exploiting
classes. Another example. procession of 1966 ?
Can one justify and glorify the silent It had a strong element of class struggle
and protest, but stronger was the conspiracy of the “commu¬ nist” misleaders to throw cold water on the rising tide of the revolt of the people. Some people see ‘class struggle’ in the trickery of reducing the working time of a worker and slowing down of work by a day labourer, but fail to see the other side, that is, the sympto¬ ms of parasitism in it.
In fact, in the exploitative society of
‘give and take’, there are some bad habits, the vices of decay, of parasitism, among even a section of workers and toilers, not to speak of non-manual workers.
The habits of shirking
burdens, getting something out of nothing by trick, the habit of reducing working time by subterfuge and trickery are signs of growing parasitism as well.
These habits and practices
should and must be fought by class-conscious workers and by a working class party and not glorified as a form of class struggle.
The revisionist and reformist trade union leaders
indulge this parasitism of the workers and office employees and this base opportunism is now an accepted normal feature of the trade union movement.
This is one of the ideological
bases of revisionism. September 8, 1973
Letter Mr Moni Guha has misinterpreted some of my words •(September 8).
I did not say that khatam should be the
highest form of class struggle and that there was nothing wrong in the “annihilation campaign” of the CPI(ML).
What I said
was that khatam can be a part of the entire class struggle, if
156
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
wisely combined with other forms.
Another thing, Comrade
Charu Majumdar termed khatam as a higher, highest form of class struggle.
VOL II
not as the
Sadly, Mr Guha lashes out at
the distorted theory. In a class-society, different forms of class struggle, starting from the “primitive and unconscious” to the developed and wellorganised forms, exist.
Marxists should find out the mains¬
tream of class struggle and try to have a firm grip on it.
But
that does not mean that they should boycott the other forms totally.
Marxists should combine every possible ‘low’ and
‘primitive’
form
of class
struggle
with
the
main forms.
Revisionism occurs when the movement is confined to low levels
when
a
high
level could be achieved.
That is why
Marxists do not deny the necessity of organising terror, econo¬ mic work, legal work, but oppose terrorism, economism and legalism.
It is not fair to compare the killing of jotedars with
theft or Ludditism.
Communists should organise those forms
of class struggle which arise from the desires and needs of the people.
Nobody claims that theft or Ludditism can solve the
problems of the people as a whole. But liquidating some tyrant exploiters often becomes a necessity of the people. Mr Guha mentions the Harijan affair in such a manner as to hint that at the time of Naxalbari, some genuine Marxists were organising great mass movements but that the damned Charu Majumdar and his followers foiled their attempt by adopting the line of khatam.
While some people were
busy
lecturing or organising reformist movements, Charu Majumdar went ahead and tried to make revolution.
The movement led
by him shook the ruling classes and aroused new hopes in the oppressed people of our country. also committed.
Naturally, mistakes were
Communists do not glorify wrong theories.
But they have to glorify many a movement based on totally or partially incorrect theory for their basic content of revolutionaryclass struggle.
That is why Marx greeted the Paris Commune
and Radio Peking welcomes many spontaneous and revisionistled movements in India.
It is a pity that some Marxist pun-
157
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
dits
cannot
find
the
basic
content
of revolutionary class
struggle in the post-1969 activities of the CPI(ML). Mr Guha teaches us new lessons of Marxism by mentioning that the attempts of the workers to reduce working time reflect parasitism.
He conceals the fact that in the present exploita¬
tive system the toiling people (except for a few lackeys of the ruling cliques) have little chance to become parasites.
To
reduce working time by trickery may be fun to some intellectual parasites, but it is a question of life and death to the toilers who are compelled to exhaust themselves and die through overwork.
Communists have a compulsion to support them
in this struggle.
To be more sincere and industrious under
the existing production relations means to grow more surplus for the profiteers and a call for this is issued not by Marxists but by fascists.
Communists should judge labour, sincerity,
morality etc. not as abstract concepts, but on strict class basis. They should teach the people to be sincere and industrious not to the exploiters, but to people and the revolutionary authori¬ ties.
The crime of revisionists is that while accepting the
people’s right to be ‘dishonest’ and‘destructive’ with exploiters, they do not promote the sense of serving the people.
Thus
they lead people to be dishonest and destructive to each other and this sharpens the contradiction among the people. ARUN GOSWAMI
September 22, 1973
Calcutta
THE MAIN DANGERS AND THE MAIN ERRORS RAFIKUL HASSAN
Any revolutionary criticism of the CPI(ML) has to have to its credit a close study of the tactics of the ruling classes in India—its evolution and present phase—vis-a-vis the exploited workers, peasantry,
the lowest section of the middle class etc.
158
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
in order to have a positive idea of what can be and should be done for mobilising people for revolutionary armed struggle. On the basis of such a positive formulation of revolutionary tactics, one should examine whether mass movements of the trade union type can deliver the goods or whether the line of annihilation as an instrument of class struggle can achieve any revolutionary purpose or whether, broadly, one can explore the reasons for the setback the CPI(ML) suffered. During the colonial period, the Indian ruling classes—the landed interests and the bourgeoisie of a comprador nature— had a common front with British imperialism against the working class and peasantry.
But the Indian ruling classes
sought to cover up this main contradiction by demonstrating—through its political wing, the Indian National Congress—their concern for freedom.
Demand for freedom was hence the
result of two tactics adopted by the Indian ruling classes—one being to pose themselves as liberator of the exploited Indian people and thereby corner those who aspired, at least theoreti¬ cally, to rally the exploited working class and peasantry against the common front consisting of imperialists and their Indian henchmen ; and the other being to snatch some concessions from their imperialist master in the form of greater elbow room for exploiting the Indian people.
The Indian ruling
classes’ demand for freedom was destined to reduce itself to the demand for a greater freedom of exploitation of the Indian people, not to assert its independence from the clutches of British monopoly capital for independent economic develop¬ ment. Gandhi entered Indian villages earlier than the communists did and his entry was backed by the feudal interests and by a peculiar blending between religious obscurantism and peoples’ immediate aspirations for economic relief.
Again
among the industrial workers the communists engaged in trade union movement could hardly initiate any revolutionary pro¬ gramme and as a result, with the help of the British colonial power, the Indian ruling classes could contain the working
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
159
class movement within the periphery of economism and isolate the communists from the exploited people by opening their own trade union front. It is true that the amount of involvement with mass move¬ ment that the Indian ruling classes had allowed themselves, contained little economic programme and whatever programme they had was never operated. The Congress Agrarian Re¬ forms Committee made heroic recommendations, but in practice these were set aside while framing the programme of land reform in various States after getting power in 1947. The Bombay plan of 1944-45 or the recommendations of the National Planning Committee did contain many revolutionary policy implications for independent industrial development in India, but since 1947, the big bourgeoisie have started chang¬ ing their tune and during the Five Year Plans, the collabora¬ tion between Indian comprador capital and British/American monopoly capital became the mainstream of industrial develop¬ ment. Before transfer of power, ruling classes used to talk many progressive things just to win the confidence and loyalty of the people to their fake concern for the immiserised working class and peasantry ; but after the transfer, they took off their masks and every economic effort initiated and sponsored by the State power sought to stabilise the rural feudal interests or the interest of big business-cum-foreign monopoly capital. The land reform measures hit the middle peasantry, swelled the ranks of the poor peasantry and landless labour, enriched the big peasantry-cum-jotedars. The pattern of industrial development enhanced threefold the prosperity of big business and made the small manufacturers more and more dependent on the big business houses who were for all practical purpose the indigenous importers of foreign monopoly capital, its know-how and products. In a sense, this period—the period between the late forties and the late sixties—was a period when the dominant section of the ruling classes was not involved in any mass movement of any significance. As a result, this was again the period when
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
160
VOL II
various sections of the ruling classes who were not properly rewarded by the dominant section as represented in the Indian National Congress resorted to occasional mass movements with a view to securing a higher number
of seats in the
Assemblies or Parliament. This explains how the one National Congress broke into so many opposition parties like Swatantra, PSP, Jana Sangh, Kranti Dal etc.
During the
same period,
the communists also flourished as a parliamentary party—a party respectable to the establishment of the ruling classes. But the situation gradually worsened when the economic crisis started engulfing the entire sphere of economic life of the country.
The ruling classes—their dominant sections—as
represented by the leadership of the Congress—became more and more isolated and a series of storms in the form of mass movements swept the entire length and breadth of the country. It is certainly during this period that the Indian ruling class confronted disunity among
themselves in the severest form.
There was further rift among the ruling classes, the dominant section as presented by the Naba (Indira) Congress started paying attention to mass movement with slogans of nationalisation, ‘Garibi Hatao’
and socialism.
The Indian ruling classes re¬
framed their two tactics—the tactic of having socialist precepts along with adopting the severest repressive measures against revolutionaries in particular and militant sections of the people in general. What lessons do we derive from our experiences of open mass movements in India ? History clearly demonstrates that during the colonial period or its aftermath every mass organisation (including the party organisation of the communists) becomes in essence a pettybourgeois vote catching organisation or an organisation of appeals, petitions, memoranda or protests and every open mass movement has to move within the confines of partial reliefs—economic, political or social. colonial days,
It is true that during
communists held themselves to be a different
species simply because they held Marx in high esteem and
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
161
talked a lot about class violence for overthrowing the British Raj and its Indian clients, while Gandhi and Nehru had been promising miracle through ‘non-violence’.
The communists
were repeatedly outmanoeuvred by the faithful and cunning agents ol the colonial power.
The great Tebhaga movements
in Bengal or elsewhere in India under the stewardship of the communists usually started with a bang, contained many spora¬ dic revolutionary upsurges of the peasantry, but ended after repression with a whimper—whimper for the end of repression, tor the release of prisoners.
Within a few years the retired
veterans of the CPI may celebrate the 50th anniversary of the heroic Tebhaga movements with Tamrapatras in hand notwith¬ standing the fact that in 90 per cent of Indian villages, the real sharecroppers are not entitled today even to the one-third share (two-thirds being the objective of the movement) of their culti¬ vated produce. After the British colonial power handed over its machinery of exploitation to the Indian ruling classes, the mass move¬ ments did not change their form or content. worsening of the economic situation, the
With a steady
mass movements,
however, continued to gain momentum and the momentum reached its climax in the sixties. During this period, the ruling classes in India were off their feet and tremendous repressive measures were required to quell the spontaneous upsurge of the masses for immediate economic relief.
It is true that the
repressive measures adopted by the ruling class did not always pay the expected dividend, their isolation from the masses was indeed accelerated, their political power base developed many crack within itself, their tactic of cheating the exploited masses with the help of trumpeted welfare measures in the form of planning, nationalisation etc. got a big jolt, their tactic of ruthless exploitation had indeed to reckon with open opposi¬ tion from the
masses.
All the social
democratic
parties
including the CPI (M) and the CPI were rewarded during this period of crisis of the ruling classes. On the one hand, the mass movements conducted by the Vol II—11
162
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
opposition parties had a
VOL IF
tendency to assert themselves in
spontaneous violence and they
suggested in no
uncertain
terms that in India the objective situation for a revolutionary armed struggle existed ; on the other hand, such open mass movements were
proved to be a channel
through which
people’s wrath against the ruling classes could be driven into a blind alley.
Indeed, when the open mass movements led to
armed uprisings of the peasants and workers (as in Hajang, Telengana, Kakdwip,
Nadia or Narayangunge, Jamshedpur,
Howrah, Kulti, Calcutta etc.) both the repressive machinery of the State power as well as the social democratic leadership of the movement sought to attack them from without or within. The handy excuse of the social democratic leadership has always been that the time for total uprising is not yet mature ; or that the violence of the masses is the handiwork of anti-socials let loose by the ruling classes with a view to disrupting the peace¬ ful democratic character of the movement ; or the people’s outburst against the misrule of the ruling classes was used to justify electoral
candidature of social
democrats for State
power. We all know how hundreds and thousands of militant peasants or workers had to shed their blood in order to yield a magnificent electoral victory for the communists or other social democrats. The revolutionaries in India cannot escape the conclusion that open mass movement now has become, in fact, the tactics of the ruling classes to deceive people burdened with a growing economic crisis, because without this the ruling classes have no other path of political survival. This is obvious after the Naxalbari movement when for the first time in Indian history, the exploited masses thundered their determination for the seizure of State power.
The ruling
classes, though caught somewhat unawares by this develop¬ ment at the initial stage, replied effectively by changing the tactics they had followed between 1947 and 1967. They revived their two tactics
the tactic of annihilating with meticulous
ruthlessness the Indian revolutionaries, and the other tactic of
163
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
making their political forum—Congress or Naba Congress— the nucleus through which all mass movements should be can¬ alised.
The Congress had to be the platform for the exploited
masses in order to prevent them from the path of armed revolution. The tremendous accentuation of the economic crisis com¬ pelled the ruling classes to experiment with the revisionist model of counter-revolution in the country.
Such compulsion
united the Indian comprador bourgeoisie with Soviet socialimperialism without sacrificing an iota of unity between Indian monopoly capital and U.S. monopoly giants*. In such a situation,
the Indian
revolutionaries cannot
depend on the tactic of open mass movement while the same tactic is used by the ruling classes to maintain illusions about the system, to propagate masses.
lies and exercise deception on the
On the other hand such tactic is likely to expose the
revolutionary nucleus of armed struggle, to confuse the masses when revolutionary actions are to be speeded up from under¬ ground.
Above all, the tactic of the revolutionary forces can¬
not be similar to that used by the ruling classes, because the purports of the tactics are to be opposite in nature.
This is
more true particulary when armed gangsterism is the accepted policy of the ruling classes against mass movements—open or secret—and more slogans of socialism, anti-Americanism, anti¬ capitalism or anti-feudalism are raised from their political platform in order to cover up the machinery of exploitation promoted and encouraged by the ruling classes.
Revisionism
cannot be fought with revisionist weapons, for its death the revolutionaries require revolutionary weapons. Hence the question arises : how to organise revolutionary counter-offensive against
the revisionist
model of counter¬
revolution as practised by the ruling classes in India ? The CPI (ML) under the leadership of Charu Majumdar held that because the pivotal reasons for mass movement are the unlocking of mass initiatives for revolutionary activities and opening of enemy-free areas for consolidation of revolutionary
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
164
VOL II
forces, annihilation of class enemies with the help of the poor¬ est sections of exploited people can break the inertia of the people, accelerate their revolutionary enthusiasm, initiatives and struggle-oriented organisations. People’s armed struggle against the State power being the fundamental postulate of people’s war and the organisation of people’s armed forces being the dialectical necessity of the forces of revolution (confronting the armed forces of the ruling classes) the policy of class annihila¬ tion is supposed to be the crucial instrument of class-struggle, of huge mass mobilisation against the armed terror of the ruling classes and of setting up of enemy-free mobile areas where revolutionaries could consolidate their guerilla preparations for the higher stage of class struggle i.e. armed seizure of power. Asa tactical measure, the line of annihilation explodes the myths around the omnipotence of State power, terrorises those revisionists who as a matter of virtual performance resort to open mass movements in order to prevent people from the path of revolutionary armed struggle and earn something in return from the ruling classes. Because the line of annihilation of class enemies has two ends in view—arousing mass initiative towards a revolutionary end and exploding the almighty image of the State power—not all members belonging to the class enemies but only those picked up by the revolutionary peasant committees in villages and the revolutionary committees in towns should be dealt with by armed guerilla squads of three or four members through planned but secret ambushes.
Such acts are to have no veil of
secrecy, in fact they should be intensely propagated but what is sought to be kept secret is the identification of particular guerilla members who conduct those acts.
This requirement
of secrecy is presumably sought for two reasons : (a) to avoid the identification of the annihilators by black sheep even within the ranks of the poor and exploited people and (b) the realisa¬ tion that to the exploited masses only the facts of annihilation are necessaiy to louse their initiatives, to achieve their mobili¬ sation, to spontaneously decide their friends and foes, but not
165
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
the identification of members who perform the acts (particu¬ larly at a stage when the organised guerilla forces are consti¬ tuted by a small number of people and the stage of People’s Liberation Army has not yet been reached). In practice, what results have the CPI(ML) movements achieved ?
One must admit that a tremendous revolutionary
enthusiasm was created at the initial stage of class annihilation. The entire administrative structure proved a flop, the poor and exploited people particularly in the villages had a taste of their hegemony, may be for a brief period.
The movement chal¬
lenged many of the value-axioms of the intellectual establish¬ ment of the ruling classes.
The movement of the CPI(ML)
demonstrated that the communist revolutionaries, though hand¬ ful in number, constituted a force to reckon with and that without preparedness to dedicate their own lives, no amount of knowledge of Marxist classics can prepare a true communist. And above all, without revolutionary practice, no programme for armed struggle can be framed if revolutionaries remain confined within
the cobweb
of revisionist-type open mass,
movements. These are the positive lessons of the movement.
The
failure of the movement can be accounted for by its harmful deviations and lack of foresight. Annihilations became the be-all and end-all of revolutionary activities, later dubbed by Charu Majumdar himself as a ‘new kind of revisionism’, and the entire line of annihilation got a petty-bourgeois twist, particularly in the towns and cities, bybeing reduced to a narrow partisan violence of the revisionist type.
In the absence of a concrete programme for revolution¬
ary class struggle to be raised to a higher level step by step in the industrial and urban middle-class areas and the line of annihilation being implemented in a narrow
partisan manner
(which in fact helped lumpens, professional anti-socials to enter the ranks)—a manner usually practised by all the parties of the Establishment, the revolutionaries lost the sympathy of the lower middle-class, faced a gap between them and the industrial
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
166
VOL II
workers, the poor people of urban areas who otherwise could be their warmest friends.
Even those among the leaders of
the CPI(ML) who did not like such petty bourgeois adventur¬ ism in towns and cities were advocating the absurd line of sending revolutionary youths to the villages and could not suggest any programme for towns and cities. The line of send¬ ing urban youth
to the villages became absurd because it
prescribed no revolutionary activities in the towns.
Exchange
of cadres between towns and villages was required to be accomplished only at a maturer stage of people’s war, when the leadership of the working class over the peasantry was to be harnessed, at least, at the level of revolutionary cadres. The line however was not accepted.
Charu Majumdar opposed
this premature line but stopped short of giving any revolution¬ ary programme
for towns
and
cities.
In this way, the
movement was destined to be heading towards a collapse and the leadership, by supporting all actions of petty-bourgeois adventurism in the name of arousing the spontaneous classhatred of youths had in fact been tailing behind the events. The revolutionaries’ tively more successful.
movements in the villages were rela¬ One has to admit that in Debra-Gopi-
ballavpur huge mass mobilisation took place under the leader¬ ship of the party.
There was prima facie success in unlocking
revolutionary enthusiasm
and initiative among the poor and
landless peasantry and in rallying a sizeable section of even the middle peasantry as supporters.
The experiences of Srikaku-
lam were initially the same, although the experiences in Mushahari and Monghyr were slightly different. indeed the experience in Birbhum.
The same was
That the line of annihila¬
tion could be used as an instrument of class struggle at the very start for mass mobilisation, for accelerating the initiatives of the exploited people was evident in most of the rural areas where the programme was sought to be implemented.
But the
political and economic programmes prior or subsequent to annihilation were not implemented everywhere.
Only in some
areas vesting of land with revolutionary peasant committees
167
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
took place, that too in a half-hearted fashion.
The organiza¬
tion of production brigades and village resistance groups in the rural areas could not be built up because of excessive preoccu¬ pation with annihilation and its after-effects.
Whatever econo¬
mic programme the party had in the villages could not be implemented presumbly because there existed still a lingering fear of economism in Charu Majumdar and the leadership of the CPI(ML). In the rural areas the setback came mainly from the lack of a proper military line that should have
been developed to
protect the poor villagers against the programme of encircle¬ ment and annihilation launched by the State armed forces. Non-implementation of economic, political and organisational programmes of the party expedited the setback. reasons, the party, during that phase,
For obvious
faced a number of
controversies within its leadership and ranks on the appro¬ priate nature of base areas (whether they should be mobile or fixed in mountainous regions),
on the
nature
and
class
composition of the PLA, on the question of adopting military tactics against the organised forces of the State power.
Side
by side, the party had to face sustained attacks by the State armed forces on the cadres. There were many petty-bourgeois errors as a result of decentralised action decisions by party units as the State armed forces unleashed terrible repression on the poor villagers and urban supporters.
All this combined
to precipitate setbacks in both towns and villages. The setback should not be attributed to withdrawal from open mass movements and open mass organisations.
It is
fundamentally due not to the line of annihilation as such, but to its being petty-bourgeois in nature in the absence of a proper military-political line and appropriate economic pro¬ gramme. *The compradorial nature of the bourgeoisie is not at stake under the Soviet model of non-capitalist path of econo¬ mic development.
Though nationalisation and State trading
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
168
VOL II
are the main features of the Soviet model of socialist path, a Third World country is considered “liberated” from the strings of imperialism, if it is ready to fake a synthesis between the political and economic requirements of the Soviet revisionist clique and the activity of private or public monopoly capital. It is reduced to a three-way alliance : the alliance between State capitalism and private monopoly giants in an under-developed country—a result of feeble contradiction between comprador and his foreign masters ; the second alliance is between State capitalism of an under-developed country and the U.S. private* monopoly or the Soviet State monopoly—a result of strong unity between the comprador and his foreign masters ; and the third alliance is struck between all the ruling classes of in¬ digenous or foreign origin against the exploited masses of the* under-developed country in the form of division of spheres of activity among the respective ruling classes.
This three-way
alliance itself suffers from a contradiction—apart from others— between U.S. monopoly capital and the Soviet State capital. This contradiction helps the comprador bourgeoisie in
its
manoeuvres against both, in order to satisfy its narrow class aspirations, and any dent etc.
between the U.S. imperialism
and Soviet social- imperialism geoisie of the Third World.
alarms the comprador bour¬
In fact the contradiction between
the two world monopoly giants, the USA and the USSR gave rise
to the politics of ‘non-alignment’, a platform for
having ‘aid’ from both the giants, its initial architects being Nehru,
Nasser and Tito. But the recent
Nixon-Brezhnev
summit has given a big jolt to the comprador bourgeoisie of the Third World countries and that explains why the important
beneficiary
of the
U.S.-Soviet
most
conflict i.e. the
Indian ruling classes and their able spokesman Indira Gandhi could not conceal their concern at the success of the summit and had to warn so many times that no division of spheres among the giants should take for granted the Third World i.e. the comprador bourgeoisie of the Third World countries, if the scheme of share of the loot from exploitation of the masses &
169
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
those countries is framed without the concurrence of the com¬ prador bourgeoisie
of India or any other
country.
Such
utterances, though they sound patriotic, reveal, in fact, the helplessness of the prostitute monopoly capital of the Third World countries. September 29, 1973
CONTINUITY OF NAXALBARI BHABANI CHAUDHURI
The present situation in India is full of revolutionary possi¬ bilities.
Yet how different it is from the situation a decade
ago. There was the spring thunder over Naxalbari, an upsurge in revolutionary struggles. There was an urge for revolutionaryunity sweeping away all obstacles.
The CPI(ML) was formed.
Big struggles were conducted under its banner.
But that the
process of revolution is tortuous became evident early in the seventies.
Then began a period of severe setback from which
the revolutionaries are yet to recover.
Today the lack of unity
among them is as distressing as the situation is otherwise promising.
Workers and peasants are bursting forth in anger
against increasing oppression and exploitation.
But struggles
under revolutionary leadership are too fragmented to make any appreciable impact on the country as a whole. Eleven years after
Naxalbari
and
nine
years
after the
CPI(ML)’s birth, the question, therefore, persists : What was wrong ?
To this some revolutionary groups and founding
members of the CPI(ML) give the challenging reply : The formation of the
CPI(ML)
itself.
Since
the predominant
revolutionary practice of the post-Naxalbari period is associa¬ ted with the name of the CPI(ML), how one views the forma¬ tion of the CPI(ML) becomes so very important.
If it was
basically wrong, the CPI(ML) can at best be our teacher by negative example.
But if it was basically correct, the summing
170
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
up of the experiences of the past decade
VOL II
becomes a valuable
weapon for defending the positive gains and fearlessly correc¬ ting mistakes, for deepening our knowledge of Indian society, State and classes, for developing correct strategy and tactics. The splitting up of the CPI(ML) into several groups and the continuing setback seem to give some strength to the view that the party’s formation itself was basically wrong.
But is
the view acceptable ? The first argument of the supporters of this view is : The CPI(ML) was formed not on the basis of the line practised in Naxalbari and proved ‘correct’, but on the basis of the line initiated in the adjacent Islampur-Chaterhat area and proved ‘wrong’ in practice.
The ‘correct’ line depended on mass
organizations and mass struggles and created the peasant up¬ surge in Naxalbari.
The ‘wrong’ line relied on secret combat
groups for actions apart from the masses and led to the ‘isola¬ tion’ of Communist revolutionaries in Islampur-Chaterhat. Their argument no doubt draws
attention to deviations
from the mass line within the revolutionary the
past
decade.
They
also
correctly
movement during point
out that the
revisionists and neo-revisionists look at the peasant problem as a ‘merely economic problem’ and the left adventurists deny the agrarian programme itself ; the ‘correct’ line is the linking of the struggle for land and the struggle for seizure of power. But the basic weakness of their reasoning is revealed when one considers their contention that the Naxalbari
peasant struggle
developed by fighting against both ‘right’ and ‘left’ deviations. The Argument, in effect, evades the question : What was the main ideological fight on the peasant question at the stage of Naxalbari ? nism ?
Was it against economism preached by revisio¬
Or, was it against negation of the agrarian programme
preached by left adventurists ?
In the past few years new light
has no doubt been thrown on the history of Naxalbari showing how the Naxalbari peasant upsurge occurred in the process of implementing the programme of seizure of land at the stage of -agrarian revolution.
This is a valuable addition to our know-
171
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
ledge
and
constitutes
a warning against separation of the
struggle for land from the struggle for political power.
But
all this should not make us forget that at the time of Naxalbari the main ideological economism.
fight on the peasant question was against
Without this
ideological fight the struggle for
land in Naxalbari could not have been raised to the level of seizure of power.
Forgetting this aspect of history today may
even lead to a relapse into revisionism on the peasant question. Secondly, supporters of the view formation was wrong argue : piracy’
that the
CPI(ML)’s
It was the result of the ‘cons¬
of a group of political ‘self-seekers’ which from the
beginning acted in their sectarian interests.
Who constituted
the group and how did they succeed in the ‘conspiracy’ ? answer given is : and
practised
The
The group consisted of those who initiated the
‘left’
line in Islampur-Chaterhat, who
utilized the glorious role of the Naxalbari peasant struggle to establish within the All India Co-ordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries (AICCCR) ‘one and only one individual’ as the creator of Naxalbari, who ‘hurriedly’ formed the CPI(ML) to ‘perpetuate’ the breach in revolutionary unity caused by the
AICCCR’s
‘subjective’
assessment
of the
Naxalbari struggle. This argument confuses the ideological struggle against subjectivism and sectarianism by raising the bogey of a cons¬ piracy without proving it.
A conspiracy within the Commu¬
nist movement can only be enacted through repeated violation of all norms of democratic centralism and the group accused of conspiracy must have degenerated to such an extent that it was beyond correction.
Did the comrades working in Islampur-
Chaterhat hide their politics from other comrades ?
They did
not. Even from the account of those who differed with them it is clear that the
Islampur-Chaterhat comrades had gone
into practice after full discussion other comrades.
of their differences with
Are the bitter critics of Islampur-Chaterhat
comrades unaware of a
process of
correction of mistakes
committed during the CPI(ML) movement, even though some-
172
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
what belated and piecemeal ?
VOL I?
Are they unaware of the later
writings of Charu Majumdar, warning against confining the struggle any more to attacks on class enemies, urging initiation of land reform party’s
in areas of armed peasant struggle under the
leadership,
and emphasizing
the need
for broadest
possible unity against the ruling classes on the basis of stru¬ ggle ?
If the CPI (ML) was the result of a conspiracy, such a
process of correction could not possibly have been initiated. Critics of the lslampur-Chaterhat line should realize that only when they free their mind of the bogey of conspiracy would they be able to carry on effectively the ideological struggle against ‘left’ deviations manifested in a subjective view of the role of the individual apart from collective practice and in sectarianism in relations with groups of Communist revolution¬ aries.
They would then appreciate that if sectarianism was
partly responsible for the failure to unite all groups of Commu¬ nist revolutionaries at the time of the formation of the CPI (ML), some of these groups also took too long a time—even after
Naxalbari revolted against the CPI-M leadership—to-
realize that it is the right as well as the duty of proletarian revolutionaries to rise up ‘in revolt’ against a leadership which has proved itself out and out revisionist.
Were not some of
these groups, though critical of the CPI-M, still trying to dis¬ cover the basis of a revolutionary party in the CPI-M’s pro¬ gramme as late as 1968 ? The third and final argument of those who consider the CPI (ML)’s formation wrong is : The CPI(ML)’s creation and ‘subsequent events’ once again prove that one of the main causes of the ‘deplorable outcome’ of the Indian Communist movement is the class origin of almost the majority of leader¬ ship at all levels.
The leadership, it is stated, comes from the
‘impetuous’ petty bourgeoisie, the class of conservative petty peasant producers with their narrow outlook and the class of decadent landlords with their
‘anarchist’ viewpoint.
The
‘honest section’ within the Communist movement seeking the correct path during revolutionary upsurges, big or small, has-
173
(DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
been led into subjectivism because of their ‘impetuous’ class character and ‘anarchist’
outlook and have been victims of
adventurism in trying to mechanically apply the rich experience of other countries. Petty-bourgeois impetuosity is admittedly one of the main causes of deviation from the correct path, of adventurism based on subjective ideas, and of unnecessary losses.
But we should
not fail to note that petty-bourgeois impetuosity in India is partly at least a reaction against reformism within the Com¬ munist movement.
We should not also fail to note that much
of petty-bourgeois impetuosity here is generated by the dead weight of a stagnant philosophy of a caste-ridden society.
But
the revolutionary process is ruthless at crucial moments and at such moments petty-bourgeois impetuosity turns into its very opposite—frustration.
As one of those petty-bourgeois join¬
ing CPI(ML) movement without necessary tempering in class struggle, this writer has personal experience of how he and some others of petty-bourgeois origin—propagandists of an adventurist line based on queer subjective notions of liberated areas—became so much frustrated during a moment of trial that they lost all sense of distinction between right and wrong, good and evil, enemies and comrades.
But with all this said
and done, petty-bourgeois influence on the Communist move¬ ment can not be wished away. Undoubtedly India has a much larger proletariat than was the case in pre-revolutionary China and fresh blood from the working class should be continuously injected into the Communist movement.
But peasantry is the
main force of the people’s democratic revolution and therefore, petty-bourgeois influence on the movement will continue for a long time to come.
In an underdeveloped country, moreover,
the educated from among the petty-bourgeoisie groaning under different forms of oppression will feel the urge to carry Marx¬ ism to the uneducated masses.
Therefore, merely pointing out
the petty-bourgeois origin of many Communists as a weakness is not enough.
The problem is one of transforming the class
outlook of Communists of petty-bourgeois origin.
A
new
174
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL IS
process was started when the post-Naxalbari movement usher¬ ed in a fresh style of work with emphasis on class analysis, investigation and integration with peasants
and
workers.
There were certainly serious deviations from the style.
But
those from the petty-bourgeoisie who have not deviated from this style are still on relatively firm ground. The basic weakness of the theory of the conspiratorial origin of the CPI(ML) is its inability to explain the particular significance of the Naxalbari peasant upsurge.
The peasant
upsurge of Naxalbari certainly did not drop from heaven. Without the long history of class struggle in Naxalbari the up¬ surge would not have been possible.
But to say that mass
organizations and mass struggles created Naxalbari is saying half-truth. How do we explain the leap :
the transformation
of the struggle for seizure of land into the struggle for seizure of power ?
How do we, above all, explain the revolt against
the neo-revisionist leadership, the revolt which made all the difference with Telengana ?
Is it not a fact that the Siliguri
sub-divisional peasant convention had given the prior call for establishing the
authority of the peasant
committees, for
getting prepared to resist with arms the repression that would inevitably be let loose by the United Front Government of West Bengal and other ‘reactionary forces’ on the Naxalbari peasants struggling against feudalism ?
Since the CPI-M was
the largest constituent of the Front Government, did not this call mean a
revolt against
the neo-revisionist leadership ?
Wherefrom did the convention get this consciousness to break the grip of revisionism ?
The answer is given by Charu
Majumdar in his poetic language : “The Indian people were about to be steeped in the mire of revisionism, at that moment came Chairman’s clarion call—revisionism is the main danger today. We listened to his message with attentive ears, then we began searching our hearts.
When in 1962 Chairman Mao
began using his pen against modern revisionism led by Soviet revisionism, we found our path.
When during the Cultural
Revolution, Chairman declared in thunderous voice : it is right
17*
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
to rebel against
reaction,
we
found
courage, we found
tremendous strength to stand on our own legs, we ignored the revisionist Party leadership, we independently of building up the armed Without this
took the path
struggle of the peasant masses.”
consciousness on the part of the
Naxalbari
leadership, Naxalbari could not have been the first conscious application of Mao Tsetung
Thought on the soil of India.
During the great Telengana struggle, Andhra comrades had no doubt realized that the Indian revolution would in the main be
similar to
Chinese
revolution.
But in the
historical
conditions then obtaining, an open revolt against ‘organizatio¬ nal slavishness’ is why
imposed from above was not possible.
Naxalbari is a
Telengana.
continuation and
That
development of
That is why it has been a decisive break with
parliamentarism. Once we realize that the armed peasant struggle of Naxal¬ bari marked decisive break with parliamentarism, we also recognize the continuity between Naxalbari and the creation of CPl(ML).
The continuity is simply the continuity of rejec¬
tion of parliamentarism and adoption of the path of armed peasant struggle. Grasping this today is not essentially a problem of identi¬ fying this continuity with any particular CPI(ML) group. several groups—big and small—are poles apart.
The
At one pole
are groups which combine professed adherence to
armed
peasant struggle with practices like begging for election adjust¬ ments with reactionary parties—which smack of parliamen¬ tarism at its worst.
At the other pole are groups which are
steadfast to armed peasant struggle under the most trying . conditions but refusing to face reality and correct mistakes boldly, and are shrinking.
But this does not detract from the
essential political continuity of Telengana, Naxalbari and the birth
of
CPI(ML).
And without recognizing this
there cannot be any genuine revolutionary unity. April 29, 1978
basis,
DOCUMENTS
CARRY FORWARD THE PEASANT STRUGGLE BY FIGHTING REVISIONISM [This is the last of the “Eight Documents” written by Mr Charu Majumdar between 1965 and 1967.
The
article has been translated by us from the original in Bengali.]
In the post-election period our apprehensions are being proved correct by the actions of the Party (CPI-M) leadership itself.
The Polit Bureau has directed us to “carry on the
struggle to defend the non-Congress ministries against reac¬ tion”.
This suggests that the main task of Marxists is not to
intensify the class struggle, but to plead on behalf of the Cabinet. to
firmly
So a convention of Party members was convened establish
economism within the working class.
Immediately thereafter, an agreement for a truce in industry was signed at the Cabinet’s initiative. not to resort to gheraos.
Workers were asked
What could be a more naked
expression of class collaboration ?
After giving the employers
full right to exploit, the workers are being asked not to wage any struggle. Immediately after the Communist Party joined the Government that was installed as a result of a mighty mass movement, the path of class collaboration was chosen. The Chinese leaders predicted long ago that those who had remained neutral in the international debate would very soon take to the path of opportunism.
Now, the Chinese leaders
are saying that these advocates of a neutral stand are in reality revisionists and they would soon cross over to the reactionary .camp.
In our country we are experiencing how true is this
prediction. class.
We have witnessed the betrayal of the working
To this is to be
added the
announcement
of the
Communist Party leader, Harekrishna Konar. In the beginning he promised that all vested lands would be distributed among Vol 11—12
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
178 the landless peasants. buted was slashed.
VOL IB
Then the quantity of land to be distri¬ In the end he informed that the existing
arrangement would be left undisturbed this year.
Remission
of land revenue was left to the mercy of junior land reforms officers
(JLROs).
The
submitting petitions.
peasants
were shown the path of
They were further told that forcible
seizure of land would not be permitted.
Harekrishna Babu is
not only a member of the Communist Party’s Central Commit¬ tee, he is also the Secretary of the Krishak Sabha in West Bengal.
It was in response to the call of the Krishak Sabha
led by him that the peasants had waged a struggle for recovery of vested
and benami
land
in
1959.
In the interest of
landowners the Government had resorted to repression had given decisions in favour of
and
eviction, yet the peasants
had not given up possession of land in many cases and had stuck on to the land on the strength of village unity. the Krishak Sabha
leader support
becoming a Minister ? was that get it ?
vested land
their
Did
movement after
No. The meaning of what he said, would be
re-distributed.
Who will
On this point the JLROs would seek the Krishak
Sabha’s views.
But would such views be accepted ?
assurance has been given by Harekrishna Babu.
No such But if the
JLROs reject the Krishak Sabha’s views, the peasants would under no circumstances be permitted to occupy land forcibly. Harekrishna Babu lost no time in making himself clear on this point.
What is this ?
Is it not acting like a bill-collector of
the government and jotedars ?
Even Congressmen would
not have dared plead on behalf of the feudal classes so unash¬ amedly.
Therefore,
leaders would
obeying the
mean blindly
instructions of the Party
accepting the
feudal classes’'
exploitation and rule. So the responsibility of the Communists is to expose the anti-class and reactionary role of this leadership to Party members and the people, to hold on to the principle of intensifying class struggle and march ahead.
Suppose, the'
landless and poor peasants accept Harekrishna Babu’s proposal and submit petitions.
What will happen then ?
Some of the
179
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
vested lands are no doubt fallow, but most of it is cultivable land.
There
are peasants
in
possession
of such
lands.
Today, they are enjoying the land by virtue of licenses. they are giving
a share to jotedars.
Or,,
When that land is re¬
distributed, it will inevitably result in frictions among poor and landless peasants.
Taking advantage of this, rich peasants
will establish their leadership over the entire peasant move¬ ment, because as the rich peasant has opportunities for can¬ vassing, so also he is a partner of feudal influence.
Therefore,
Harekrishna Babu is not only trying to forsake the path of struggle today, but he is also taking steps so that the peasant struggle may not become militant in future also. Yet we have adopted the programme of a people’s
demo¬
cratic revolution and the task of that revolution is to carry out land reforms in the interest of the peasants.
Land reform in
the peasant’s interest is possible only when we are able to put an end to the sway of feudal classes over the rural areas.
To
do this, we shall have to seize land from the feudal classes and1 distribute it among the landless and poor peasants.
We
shall
never be able to do this if our movement is confined to the limits of economism.
In every area where there has been a
movement for vested land it is our experience that the peasant who has got possession of vested land and secured the license is no longer active in the peasant movement. reason ?
What is
the
It is because the poor peasant’s class has changed
within a year—he has turned into a middle peasant.
So,
the economic demands of poor and landless peasants are no more his^ demands.
Therefore, economism
causes a breach
in the unity of fighting peasants and makes the landless and poor peasants frustrated.
Advocates
of economism
every movement by the quantity of paddy in maunds land in bighas that the peasant gets.
judge or of
Whether the peasant’s
fighting consciousness has increased or not, is never their yardstick.
So they do not make any effort
sant’s class consciousness. be waged without
to raise the pea¬
Yet we know that no struggle
making
sacrifices.
Chairman
can
Mao has-
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
180
VOL II
taught us that where there is struggle, there is sacrifice.
At
the initial stage of the struggle the strength of reaction must be greater than the
strength of the masses.
struggle will be protracted.
Therefore, the
Since the masses are the progre¬
ssive force, their strength will increase day after day but as the reactionary steadily.
forces are moribund, their strength will decline
So, no revolutionary struggle can be successful unless
the masses are roused to make sacrifices.
From this basic
revolutionary outlook, economism leads on to the blind alley of bourgeois outlook.
This is what the Party leaders are
trying to achieve through their activities.
A review of all our
past peasant struggles will show that the Party leaders have imposed compromises on the peasants from above. Yet it was the
responsibility
of
Party leadership
to
establish
the
fighting leadership of the working class over the peasant move¬ ment.
They did not do this before, they are not doing it
even now. bureaucracy.
Now they are suggesting reliance on laws and the Lenin has said that even if some progressive
legislation is enacted but bureaucracy is given the charge of implementing it, the peasants will get nothing. So, our leaders have gone a long distance off the revolutionary path. Agrarian revolution is the task of this very moment ; this task cannot be left undone, and without doing this, nothing good can be done for the peasants.
But before carrying out
agrarian revolution, destruction of State power is necessary. Striving for agrarian revolution without destroying State power means outright revisionism.
So, destruction of State power is
today the first and principal task of peasant movement.
If
this cannot be done on a country-wide, State-wide basis, will the peasants wait
silently ?
No,
Marxism-Leninism-Mao
Tsetung Thought has taught us that if in any area the peasants can be roused politically, then we must go ahead with the task of destioying State power in that area. as peasants
liberated area.
This is what is known
The struggle for building up this
liberated area is the most urgent task of the peasant movement today, a task of this moment.
What shall we call a liberated
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
area ?
181
We shall call that peasant area liberated from which
we have been able to overthrow the class enemies.
For buil¬
ding up this liberated area we need the armed force of the pea¬ sants.
When we speak of this armed force we have in mind
the arms made by the peasants.
So also we want guns.
Whe¬
ther the peasants have come forward to collect guns or not is the basis on which we shall judge whether they have been politically roused.
Wherefrom shall the peasants get guns ?
The class enemies have guns and they live in the village. Guns have to be taken forcibly from them. their guns to us voluntarily. guns forcibly from them.
They will not hand over
Therefore, we shall have to seize
For this, peasant militants will have
to be taught all tactics, right from setting fire to the houses of class enemies.
Besides, we shall secure guns from the armed
forces of the Government by attacking them all on a sudden. The area in which we are able to organize this gun-collection campaign shall quickly be transformed into a liberated area. So, for carrying out this task it is necessary to propagate extensively among the peasants the politics of building up armed struggle.
It is, moreover, necessary to
and secret militant groups for conducting campaign.
organize small
the gun-collection
Simultaneously with propagating the politics of
armed struggle, members of these groups will try to success¬ fully implement specific programme of gun-collection.
Mere
collection of guns does not alter the character of struggle— the guns collected have to be used.
Only then will the creative
ability of the peasants develop and the struggle will undergo a qualitative change.
This can be done only by poor and land¬
less peasants, the firm ally of the working class.
The middle
peasant is also an ally, but his fighting consciousness is not as intense as that of poor and landless peasants.
So he cannot
be a participant in the struggle right at the beginning—’he needs sometime.
That is why clv>s analysis is an essential task for
the Communist Party.
The great leader of China, Chairman
Mao Tsetung had, therefore, taken up this task first and was able to point out infallibly the path of revolutionary struggle.
182
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
So the first point of our organizational work is establishing the leadership of poor and landless peasants in the peasant move¬ ments.
It is in the process of organizing peasant movement
on the basis of the politics of armed struggle that the leader¬ ship of the poor and
landless peasants will be established.
Because, of the peasant classes, they are the most revolutionary. A separate
organization of agricultural labourers will not
help this task.
Rather, a separate organization of agricul¬
tural labourers encourages
the trend towards trade union
movement based on economism and intensifies conflicts among peasants.
The unity of the allied classes is not strengthened,
because in our agricultural system the exploitation of feudal •classes is foremost.
Another question that comes up in this
very context is that of compromise with small owners. shall be the Communists’ outlook in this regard ?
What
In regard
to compromises we shall have to consider whom do we sup¬ port.
So, we cannot support any other class as against them.
In the peasant movement (in India) the
Communists have
always been compelled to give up the interests of poor and landless peasants in the interest of the petty-bourgeoisie. weakens the fighting
This
determination of the poor and landless
peasants. In regard to middle and rich peasants also we should have different stand.
If we look upon rich peasants as middle
peasants, the poor and landless peasants will be frustrated. Again, if we look upon middle peasants as rich peasants, the fighting enthusiasm of the middle peasants will diminish. So, the
Communists must learn to make class analysis of
peasants in every area in accordance with Chairman Mao’s instructions. Again
and again the unrest among the peasants of India
has burst forth.
They 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. class, the
This path is the path of the working
path of liberation, the path of establishing a society
free from exploitation.
In every State throughout India the
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
183
peasants are today in a state of unrest, the Communists must show them the path.
That path is the politics of armed
struggle and the gun-collection campaign.
We must firmly
uphold this one and only path of liberation.
The great cultural
revolution of China has declared a war on all kinds of selfish¬ ness, group mentality, revisionism, tailism of the bourgeoisie, eulogy of bourgeois ideology—the blazing impact of that re¬ volution has reached India also.
The call
of that revolution
is—“Be prepared to resolutely
make all kinds of sacrifices,
remove the obstacles along the path one by one, victory shall be ours.”
However terrible the appearance of imperialism,
however ugly the snare laid by revisionism, the days of the reactionary
forces
are
numbered,
the
bright sunrays of
Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung thought shall wipe off all darkness. So the question naturally arises :
Is there no need for
peasants’ mass struggle on partial demands in
this
era ?
Certainly the need is there and will be there in future also. Because India is a vast country and the peasants are also divided into many classes, so political
consciousness cannot
be at the same level in all areas and among all the classes.
So
there will always be the opportunity for and possibility of peasants’ mass movement on the basis of partial demands and the Communists will always have to make full use of that opportunity.
What tactics shall we
movements for objective ?
partial demands
The basic
adopt
in
conducting
and what shall be their
point of our tactics is whether the
broad peasant class has rallied or not, and our basic objective shall be the raising of the class consciousness of the peasants— whether they have advanced along the path of broadbased armed struggle.
Movements based on partial demands shall
intensify class struggle.
The political consciousness of the
broad masses shall be raised.
The broad
peasant masses
shall be roused in making sacrifices, the struggle shall spread to newer areas.
The movements for partial demands may
take any form but the Communists shall always propagate the
184
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL IF
necessity of higher forms of struggle among the peasant masses. Under no circumstances shall the Communists try to pass the type of struggle acceptable to the peasants as the best. In reality the Communists shall always carry on propaganda among peasants in favour of revolutionarry politics, i.e., the politics of armed struggle and gun-collection campaign. Des¬ pite this propaganda, the peasants will possibly decide to go on mass deputations and we shall have to conduct that movement. In times of white terror the effectiveness of such mass deputa¬ tion must in no way be underestimated, because these mass deputations will increasingly draw peasants into the struggle. Movements on partial demands are never to be condemned but it is a crime to conduct these movements in the manner of economism. It is a crime, moreover, to preach that move¬ ments on economic demands will automatically take the form of political struggle, because this is worshipping spontaneity. Such movements can show the path to the masses, help deve¬ lop clarity of outlook, inspire in making sacrifices. At every stage of struggle there is only one task. Unless that task is done, the struggle will not reach the higher stage. In this era that particular task is the politics of armed struggle and the gun-collection campaign. Whatever we may do without carrying out this task, the stfuggle will not be raised to the higher stage. The struggle will collapse, the organization will collapse, the organization will not grow. Similarly, there is only one path of India’s revolution, the path shown by Lenin— building up the people’s armed forces and the republic. Lenin had said in 1905 that these two tasks must be carried out wherever possible, even if these were not feasible in regard to the whole of Russia. Chairman Mao has enriched this path shown by Lenin. He has taught the tactics of people’s war and China has attained liberation along this path. Today that path is being followed in Vietnam, Thailand, Malaya, Philipines, Burma, Indonesia, Yemen, Leopoldville, Congo, in different countries of Africa and Latin America. That path has also been adopted in India, the path of building the
185
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
people’s armed forces and the rule of the liberation front which is being followed in Naga, Mizo and Kashmir areas.
So the
working class will have to be called upon and told that it must lead India’s democratic revolution and the working class will have to carry out this task by providing leadership to the struggle of its
most firm ally, the peasantry.
So, it is the
responsibility of the working class to organize the peasant movement and raise it to the stage of armed struggle.
The
vanguard of the working class will have to go to the villages to participate in armed struggle. working class.
This is the main task of the
“Collect arms and build up bases of armed
struggle in rural
areas”—this is called the politics of the
working class, the
politics of seizure of power.
We shall have
to rouse the working class on the basis of this politics.
Orga¬
nize all the workers in trade unions—this slogan does not raise the political consciousness of the working class.
This does
not certainly mean that we shall not organize any more trade unions.
This means that we shall not get the Party’s revolu¬
tionary workers
bogged in trade union activities—it would be
their task to carry on political propaganda among the working class i.e., to propagate the politics of armed struggle and guncollection campaign, and build up Party organization.
Among
the petty-bourgeoisie also our main task is political propa¬ ganda and propagation of the significance of peasant struggle. That is to say, on every front the
responsibility of the party
is to explain the importance of peasant struggle and call for participation in that struggle.
To the extent we carry out this
task, we shall reach the stage of conscious leadership in the democratic
revolution.
Opposition to this basic Marxist-
Leninist path of the Party is coming not only from revisionists. The revisionists are taking
the path of
class-collaboration
straightaway, so it is easy to expose them. But there is, within the Party, another kind of opposition ; they admit that revo¬ lution can be made envisage that the
only through armed struggle.
But they
path of armed struggle can be taken only by
spreading the democratic mass movement throughout India-
186
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
Before that, small or even big clashes can take place, but seizure of power is not possible.
They hope that as regards seizure
of power, India will go through some version of October revolution. In regard to India they mechanically apply their bookish knowledge of how the October revolution became successful.
They forget that there was the February revolution
before the October revolution ; the bourgeois parties had come to power and there was power in the hands of workers’, peasants’ and soldiers’ soviets also. Because of the existence of this dual power, leadership of the working class became effective and only when in these soviets the petty-bourgeois parties handed over power to the bourgeoisie did it become possible for the working class to accomplish the October revolution. They do not analyse the objective conditions They do not take lessons from the struggles waged in India.
of India.
that are being
The main cause of success of the Russian
revolution was the correct application of the tactics of the united front.
The question of united front tactics is equally
important in India too.
But the tactics of India’s democratic
revolution will be different in form.
In India also, in Naga,
Mizo, Kashmir and other areas, struggles are being waged under petty-bourgeois leadership. In the democratic revolution, therefore, the working class will have to march forward by forming a united front with them.
Struggles will break out
in many other new areas under the leadership or petty-bourgeois parties.
of bourgeois
The working class will also enter
into alliances with them and the main basis of this alliance will be anti-imperialist struggle and the right to self-determination. The working class necessarily admits this right, together with the right to secession. Although those who dream of revolution in India along the path of October revolution are revolutionaries,
they are not
capable of providing a bold leadership because of their doctri¬ naire outlook.
They do not realize the significance of peasant
struggles and
thus unconsciously become propagandists
cconomism within the working class.
of
They are unable to assi-
187
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
milate the experiences of the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America.
A section of them becomes disciples of Che
Guevara and fails to emphasise the task of organizing the peasantry, main force of India’s democratic revolution.
Con¬
sequently, they inevitably become victims of Left deviation. So we shall have to pay special attention to them and help them gradually educate themselves.
Under no circumstances
should we be intolerant in regard to them.
Besides, there is
amongst us a group of revolutionary comrades who accept the Chinese Party and the Thought of the great Mao Tsetung and also accept that as the only path.
But they view the book
‘How to be a good Communist’ as the only road to selfcultivation and are consequently led into a serious deviation. The only Marxist road to self-cultivation taught by Lenin and Chairman Mao is the path of class struggle.
Only through
tempering in the fire of class struggle can a Communist be¬ come pure gold.
Class struggle is the real school of Commu¬
nists and the experience of class struggle has to be verified in the light of
Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought and
lessons have to be taken.
So the main point of Party educa¬
tion is application of the teachings of Marxism-Leninism in class struggle, arriving at general principles on the basis of that experience and taking back to the people the principles summed up from experience. the people to the people’. education.
This is what is called ‘from
This is the basic point of Party
These revolutionary comrades are unable to realise
this fundamental truth of Party education. commit
idealist
As a result they
deviations in regard to Party
education.
Chairman Mao Tsetung has taught us that there cannot be any education apart from practice. learning’.
In his words, ‘doing is
Self-cultivation is possible only in the process of
changing the existing conditions through revolutionary practice. Revolutionaries of the world unite ! Long live the revolutionary unity of workers and peasants ! Long live Chairman Mao Tsetung !
SPRING THUNDER OVER INDIA
[Editorial in the Peking PEOPLE’S DAILY of July 5, 1967,
reproduced in the
LIBERATION,
No. 1. ]
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. This is a development of tremendous significance for the Indian people’s revolutionary struggle. In the past few months, the peasant masses in this area, led by the
revolutionary group of the Indian Communist
Party, have thrown off the shackles of modern revisionism and smashed the trammels that bound them.
They have seized
grain, land and weapons from the landlords and the planta¬ tion owners, punished the local tyrants and wicked gentry, and ambushed the reactionary troops and police that went to suppress them, thus demonstrating the enormous might of the peasants’
revolutionary
armed struggle.
All imperialists,
revisionists, corrupt officials, local tyrants and wicked gentry, and reactionary army and police are nothing in the eyes of the revolutionary peasants who are determined to strike them down to the dust. The absolutely correct thing has been done by the revolutionary group of the Indian Communist Party and they have done it well.
The Chinese people joyfully applaud this
revolutionary storm of the Indian peasants in the Darjeeling area as do all Marxist-Leninists and revolutionary people of the whole world. It is an inevitability that the Indian peasants will rebel and the Indian people will make revolution because the reactionary rule has left them with no alternative.
India under Congress
rule is only nominally independent; in fact, it is nothing more
189
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
than a semi-colonial, semi-feudal country.
The
Congress
administration represents the interest of the Indian feudal princes, big landlords and bureaucrat-comprador capitalists. Internally, it oppresses the Indian people without any mercy and sucks their blood, while internationally it serves the new boss, U. S. imperialism, and its number one accomplice, the Soviet revisionist ruling clique, in addition to its old suzerain British imperialism, thus selling out the of India in a big way.
national interests
So imperialism, Soviet revisionism,
feudalism and bureaucrat-comprador capitalism weigh like big mountains on the back of the Indian people, especially on the toiling masses of workers and peasants. The Congress administration has intensified its suppression and exploitation of the Indian people and pursued a policy of national betrayal during the past few years.
Famine has
stalked the land year after year. The fields are strewn with the bodies of those who have died of hunger and starvation.
The
Indian people, above all, the Indian peasants, have found life impossible for them.
The
revolutionary peasants
in
the
Darjeeling area have now risen in rebellion, in violent revolu¬ tion.
This is the prelude
to a violent revolution by the
hundreds of millions of people throughout India.
The Indian
people will certainly cast away these big mountains off their backs and win complete emancipation.
This is the general
trend of Indian history which no force on earth can check or hinder. What road is to be followed by the Indian revolution ? This is a fundamental question affecting the success of the Indian revolution and the destiny of the 500 million Indian people.
The Indian revolution must take the road of relying
on the peasants, establishing base areas in the countryside, persisting in protracted armed struggle and using the country¬ side to encircle and finally capture the cities.
This is
Mao
Tsetung’s road, the road that has led the Chinese revolution to victory and the only road to victory for the revolution of all oppressed nations and peoples.
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
190
VOL II
Our great leader, Chairman Mao Tsetung, pointed out as long as 40 years ago :
“In China’s central, southern and
northern provinces, several hundred million peasants will rise like a mighty storm, like a hurricane, a force so swift and violent that no power, however great, will be able to hold it back.
They will smash all the trammels that bind them and
rush forward along the road of liberation.
They will sweep
all the imperialists, warlords, corrupt officials, local tyrants and evil gentry into their graves.” Chairman Mao explicitly pointed out long ago that the peasant question occupies an extremely important place in the people’s revolution.
The peasants constitute the main force
in the national democratic revolution against imperialism and its lackeys ; they are the most reliable and numerous allies of the proletariat.
India is a vast
semi-colonial
and
semi-
feudal country with a population of 500 million, the absolute majority of which, the peasantry, once aroused, will become the invincible force of the Indian revolution.
By integrating
itself with the peasants, the Indian proletariat will be able to bring about earth-shaking changes in the vast countryside of India and defeat any powerful enemy in a soul-stirring people’s war. Our great leader, Chairman Mao, teaches us : “The seizure of power by armed force, the settlement of the issue by war, is the central task and the highest form of revolution. This Marxist-Leninist principle of revolution holds good universally for China and for all other countries.” The specific feature of Indian revolution, like that of the Chinese revolution is armed revolution fighting against armed counter-revolution.
Armed struggle is the only correct road
for the Indian revolution ; there is no other road whatsoever. Such trash as “Gandhi-ism”, “parliamentary road” and the like are opium used by the Indian ruling classes to paralyse the Indian people.
Only by relying on violent revolution and
taking the road of armed struggle can India be saved and the Indian people achieve complete liberation.
Specifically, this
191
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
is to arouse the peasant masses boldly, build up and expand the revolutionary armed forces, deal blows at the armed sup¬ pression of the imperialists and reactionaries, who are tempo¬ rarily stronger than the revolutionary forces, by using the whole set of flexible strategy and tactics of people’s war personally worked out by Chairman Mao and to persist in protracted armed struggle and seize victory of the revolution step by step. In the light of the characteristics of the Chinese revolution, our great leader, Chairman Mao, has pointed out the impor¬ tance of establishing revolutionary rural base areas. Chairman Mao
teaches us :
In
order to persist in protracted armed
struggle and defeat imperialism and its lackeys, “it is impera¬ tive for the revolutionary ranks to turn the backward villages into advanced, consolidated base areas, into great military, political, economic and cultural bastions of the revolution from which to fight their vicious enemies who are using the cities for attacks on rural districts, and in this way gradually to achieve the complete victory of the revolution through pro¬ tracted fighting.” India is a country with vast territory ; its countryside where the reactionary rule is weak, provides the broad areas in which the revolutionaries can manoeuvre Indian proletarian
freely.
So long as the
revolutionaries adhere to the revolutionary
line of Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tsetung’s Thought and rely on their great ally, the peasants, it is entirely possible for them to establish one advanced revolutionary rural base area after another in the broad backward rural areas and build a people’s army of a new type.
Whatever difficulties and twists and
turns the Indian revolutionaries may experience in the course of building such revolutionary base areas, they will eventually develop such areas from isolated points into a vast expanse, from small areas into extensive ones, an expansion in a series of waves.
Thus, a situation in which the cities are encircled from
the countryside will gradually be brought about in the Indian revolution to pave
the way for the final seizure of towns and
cities and winning nation-wide victory.
192
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
The Indian reactionaries are panic-stricken by the develop¬ ment of the rural armed struggle in Darjeeling.
They have
sensed imminent disaster and they wail in alarm that the pea¬ sants’ revolt in Darjeeling will “become a national disaster”. Imperialism and the Indian reactionaries are trying in a thou¬ sand and one ways to suppress this armed struggle of the Darjeeling peasants and nip it in the bud.
The Dange rene¬
gade clique and the revisionist chieftains of the Indian Commu¬ nist Party are vigorously slandering and attacking the revolu¬ tionaries in the Indian Communist Party and the revolutionary peasants in Darjeeling for their great exploits.
The so-called
“Non-Congress” government in West Bengal openly sides with the reactionary Indian Government in its bloody suppression of the revolutionary peasants in Darjeeling.
This gives added
proof that these renegades and revisionists are running dogs of U. S. imperialism and Soviet revisionism and lackeys of the Indian big landlords and bourgeoisie.
What they call the
“Non-Congress government” is only a tool of these landlords and bourgeoisie. But no matter how well the imperialists, Indian reaction¬ aries 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. single spark can start a prairie fire.”
“A
The spark in Darjee¬
ling will start a prairie fire and will certainly set the vast expanses of India ablaze.
That a great storm of revolutionary
armed struggle will eventually breadth
of India is certain.
sweep across the length and Although
the course
of the
Indian revolutionary struggle will be long and tortuous, the Indian revolution, guided by great Marxism-Leninism, Mao Tsetung’s Thought, will certainly triumph. [Reprinted from Liberation, Miscellany No. 1]
DECLARATION OF THE REVOLUTIONARIES OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF INDIA (MARXIST) November 13, 1967 An excellent revolutionary situation prevails country with all its classical symptoms Comrade Lenin.
as
now in our
enunciated
by
But the neo-revisionist leadership of the
CPI(M) has betrayed the people and the Party.
They have
betrayed the cause of the Indian Revolution. Despite all their revolutionary phrase-mongering it has now ^become crystal clear that these renegades have chosen the path ■of parliamentarism and class-collaboration and have shelved for good the revolutionary struggle for political power. great trust reposed in them by revolutionary the
latter
in
their glorious struggle
shamelessly betrayed.
comrades when
against
repudiated the leadership of the Dange
The
clique,
revisionism has
been
The process of betrayal had, of course,
started before the organisational split came.
The split itself
was brought about not on the basis of ideology, but artificially, through the instrumentality of Dange letters in order to pre¬ vent consummation of the inner-party struggle into a genuine split, which these neo-revisionists feared most.
They, however,
succeeded, though temporarily, in their game ; this bunch of conspirators was able to incorporate surreptitiously into the the Party’s Programme formulations alien to Marxism-Leninism and Mao Tsetung’s
Thought.
By disowning, in the name of
independent analysis, the neo-colonial nature of our country and its semi-feudal, semi-colonial character
as well as the
strategy and tactics of democratic revolution following there¬ from, they indirectly indicated that what was being built up in India was an independent capitalist
economy and that the
Indian big bourgeoisie had not exhausted its anti-imperialist role, and thus they managed to discard Comrade Mao Tse¬ tung’s great blue-print for world revolution,
specially for the
revolutions in the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, Vol 11—13
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
194
VOL II
as presented in a concentrated form by Comrade Lin Piao.With regard to the world Communist movement, their attitude of “non-committal” non-partisanship was a camouflage for their
support to Khruschov revisionism.
Thus, nationally
and internationally, the seeds of Titoism were cunningly sown,. which in course of time sprouted forth into the
notorious
Madurai resolutions. It is profitable to recall here that since the inception of our Party, its leadership has been usurped at different phases by revisionists, adventurists and opportunists.
As a result,
glorious class battles fought by revolutionary comrades and people under our Party flag have again betrayed.
and
again
been
The blood of invaluable cadres of the Party has
flown in profusion in many a sanguinary class battle,
and
many a significant victory has been won, of whose fruits,.. however, the fighters themselves were deprived, thanks to the treachery of the persons at the helm of the Party.
Time and
again revolutionary elements inside the Party have conducted intense and principled inner-party struggles ; time and again they have risen in open revolt ; time and again international Communist leadership
has come forward to help and guide
our Party ; and every time the opportunist usurpers of the party machinery—both of the ‘right’ and of the ‘left’—have treated these inner-party battles and ' fraternal offers of help and
advice
from
the
international leadership with utter
cynicism and insolence. Naxalbari came as a Party and country.
turning point in the history of our
The revolutionary comrades of Darjeeling
district of West Bengal rose in open revolt against the Party’s revisionist leadership and politics as well as against the orga¬ nisational slavery
imposed by this leadership.
earlier inner-party
struggles, this revolt was accompanied by
revolutionary practice.
But unlike
It is a typical peasant war modelled on
Comrade Mao Tsetung’s Thought and led by communists and working class, opening
up the real and only way to India’s
democratic revolution.
This great class battle of Darjeeling.
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
195
peasants at once received the warm fraternal care of the leader of world communism—the Chinese Communist Party led by Chairman Mao Tsetung and at once it galvanised long-simmer¬ ing inner-party
struggles
into
open
revolutionary revolt.
Simultaneously, Naxalbari unleashed militant and armed peasant battles in different parts of the country, sometimes spontaneous and sometimes led by revolutionaries.
But one of Naxalbari’s
great contributions to the Indian Revolution is that it has stripped naked the leadership of the Party and of other parties mouthing revolutionary slogans and has laid bare before the eyes of the world the utter hollowness of their revolutionism. They even openly joined hands with Indian reactionaries to crush this revolutionary peasant base with utmost military and police brutality. Comrades must have
noted that revolutionary
peasant
struggles are now breaking out or going to break
out in
various parts of the country.
It is an imperative revolutionary
duty on our part as the vanguard of the working class to develop and lead these struggles as far as possible.
With
that
end in view all revolutionary elements inside and outside the Party working rather in isolation today in different parts of the country and on different fronts of mass struggle must co¬ ordinate their activities and unite their forces to build up a revolutionary party guided by Marxism-Leninism, the Thought of Mao Tsetung.
After the final and decisive betrayal at
Madurai the situation brooks no delay.
Hence, this urgent
need for co-ordination. So we, the comrades of different states,
who have been
thinking and lighting on the above line, have decided after meeting in Calcutta to form an All-India Co-ordination Com¬ mittee.
On behalf of this Committee, we declare that its
main tasks will be : (1)
To develop and co-ordinate militant and revolution¬
ary struggles at all levels, specially, peasant struggles of the Naxalbari type under the leadership of the working class ; (2)
To develop militant, revolutionary struggles of the
196
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
working class and other toiling people to combat economism and to orient these struggles towards agrarian revolution ; (3)
To
wage
an
uncompromising ideological struggle
against revisionism and neo-revisionism and to popularise the Thought
of Comrade Mao Tsetung, which is Marxism-Leni¬
nism of the present era, and to unite on this basis all revolu¬ tionary elements within and outside the Party ; (4)
To undertake preparations of a revolutionary
pro¬
gramme and tactical line based on concrete analysis of the Indian
situation in the
light of Comrade Mao
Tsetung’s
Thought. Naxalbari has shown us the way to the Indian people’s democratic revolution as much as it has unmasked the true face of the neo-revisionists at present controlling the Party. Now it is time to act and act we must, here and now. time we start building a really revolutionary party. responsibility rests upon us
It is
A great
and we must shoulder it as true
revolutionaries and try to prove ourselves worthy disciples of 'Comrade Mao Tsetung. We call upon the revolutionary comrades still within the Communist Party of India (Marxist) to repudiate openly the nec-revisionist leading clique and its politics and openly to join hands with us who are striving
to build a genuine
Communist Party in our country. [Reprinted from Liberation, Vol. 1 No. 2, December 1967]
SECOND DECLARATION May 14, 1968 I Translated from the Bengali version of the Declaration ]
The All India Co-ordination Committee of Revolutionaries of the Communist Party of India ( Marxist), in its first session held on the eve of the first anniversary of the Naxalbari peasants’ struggle, reviewed the events subsequent to its first
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
197
session held six months back and decided to issue a new declaration in consideration of the changed situation.
It was
also decided that henceforward the Committee would
be
called the All India Co-ordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries.
The declaration is as follows :
Exactly a year ago the nor’wester with all its fury burst over India and proclaimed throughout the world that a new era had begun in India’s history.
Inspired by
Marxism-
Leninism and Chairman Mao’s Thought and led by the com¬ munist revolutionaries, the heroic peasants of Naxalbari rose in revolt with arms in their hands to smash the chains of slavery.
Once again they showed that the parliamentary path
which all sorts of revisionists, overt or covert, had been treading,, had become altogether outmoded.
Since that day the message
of Naxalbari—the message of armed peasant struggle under the leadership of the working class—has reached villages in remote areas of India and under its inspiration many a peasant struggle has begun in different parts of the country.
While,
on the one hand, this event has caused panic in the minds of U. S. imperialists, Soviet revisionists, the Indian big landlord class,
comprador-bureaucrat
bourgeois
class
and
their
stooges, the renegade Dange clique and neo-revisionists, on the other hand, the toiling people of India and all the revolu¬ tionary elements irrespective of their party affiliations have greeted this event with hope and exuberance.
To them Naxal¬
bari is a path—the path which is brightly illuminated with Chairman Mao’s Thought—the path which is the path of liberation of all colonial and semi-colonial people—the path along which the Chinese Revolution is victorious. A little over twenty years ago India was a colony of Britain today India has been turned into a neo-colony of some impe¬ rialist powers, the principal of them being the United States and the Soviet Union.
The U. S. imperialists, the most
aggressive enemies of mankind, are also the worst enemies of the Indian people. now complete.
Their neo-colonial grip over India is
The traitorous Soviet ruling clique who have
198
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
re-established bourgeois dictatorship in the first Socialist State of the world are to-day actively collaborating with the U. S. imperialists and they have turned India into a neo-colony of both the United States and the Soviet Union.
India is a
perfect example of the entente into which the U. S. imperia¬ lists and Soviet neo-colonialists have entered to jointly esta¬ blish hegemony over the world. The increasingly growing economic and political crisis is the
result
of
extreme
the
ruling
classes
and acute contradictions between
and the
people.
In the
present
era
capitalist-imperialist system is heading towards final collapse. In the semi-colonial and semi-feudal India, the contradiction between imperialist and neo-colonial powers and the people, the contradiction between feudal classes and the and
the
contradiction
capital and the acute form.
working
between class
peasantry
comprador-bureaucratic
have
assumed
the
most
Today, U. S. imperialism, Soviet revisionism,
the big landlord class and the comprador-bureaucrat bourgeo¬ isie of India are the principal enemies of the Indian people— these are like four
mountains weighing heavily on the backs
of the Indian people. The People’s Democratic Revolution can succeed only by overthrowing enemies.
the
direct and
Under the
indirect rule
of these four
leadership of the working class, the
peasantry—the principal force in the revolution—will have to develop revolutionary base areas in the countryside, carry on a protracted armed struggle, encircle the cities from the villages and in the end occupy them and win countrywide final victory.
On the basis of the alliance of the working
class with the peasantry will be built the united front of the working class, the peasantry, the petty-bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie.
The success of the Indian Revolution
will depend on how much the revolutionaries and the people have been enthused by Chairman Mao’a Thought which is the highest development
of Marxism-Leninism of our time.
The foremost task of all the communist revolutionaries is to
199
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
propagate and spread the Thought of Mao Tsetung. enemies of the Indian people
can be
The
overthrown not by
conspiratorial methods but only by pursuing a mass line. It has been our experience that revisionists of all varieties— the Dangeite traitors or the neo-revisionists—are lackeys of U.
S.
imperialism,
Soviet
neo-revisionism
and domestic
reactionaries and are undoubtedly the enemies of the Indian people. At Burdwan, the neo-revisionist leaders put a final seal of approval on the anti-Marxist revisionist ideological political line ; but faced with opposition
of revolutionaries and the
people they became more cunning before.
The
opportunists
and wicked than
alone—and
not
the
ever
Marxist-
Leninists—can remain inside the Party—a Party which rejects Marxism-Leninism, Chairman Mao Tsetung’s Thought and adopts the parliamentary path, discarding the path of revo¬ lutionary violence.
It has become all the more clear after
the Burdwan Plenum that like the Dangeite traitors, the neo¬ revisionists too have joined the counter-revolutionary camp, and with
Marxism-Leninism on their lips they are actively
striving to disrupt from within the agrarian revolution that is being
launched.
Those
who,
instead
of severing all
connections with them, still think that there is yet some scope left for
inner-party struggles, are
creating
illusions anew
amongst the anti-revisionist fighters and are creating obstacles to their unity. Today India has a position of vital importance in the counter-revolutionary world strategy of U. S. imperialists and Soviet neo-colonialists. They have reduced India to a powerful bastion of reaction in order to conduct war against the revo¬ lutionary forces of India, to defeat the great and glorious war of liberation of the Vietnamese people, to smash the wars of liberation of other nations and peoples of South and SouthEast
Asia
and
to
attack
the
socialist
China ;
and
the
reactionary ruling class of India has been eagerly, enthusias¬ tically and actively co-operating in these schemes of theirs.
200
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL I?
To achieve these designs, the Soviet betrayers, hand in gloveswith the U. S. imperialists, have increased their supply of military hardwares to the Indian reactionaries. jet bombers and
submarines are
among
Supersonic
those hardwares.
They have set up MIG-factory and missile bases on the soil of India and have been trying to secure marine bases for their warships in the Andamans and Nicobar islands. is divided into two camps.
World today
The U. S. imperialists and their
chief accomplice, the Soviet neo-colonialists, are the leaders of one camp ; socialist China and Chairman Mao are the leadersof the other camp. The present era is the era of Chairman Mao Tsetung.
This is the era when imperialism is on the verge
of final collapse and socialism is advancing victory
worldwide.
Assured
towards
final'
is the victory of the Indian
people who are a contingent of the great anti-imperialist army of the world people against imperialism, its accomplices and* agents. At this historic moment we once more appeal to
the-
revolutionaries in all parts of India, to all those who have accepted Chairman Mao’s Thought to consolidate their forcesand to co-ordinate their struggles so that the victory of the Indian Revolution is hastened.
Come, let us rally under the-
red banner of Chairman Mao’s Thought, apply his Thought in the concrete conditions of India and organise Naxalbari-type struggles and thus build up a genuine Indian
Communist
Party ; for, without a revolutionary party revolution cannot achieve victory. We, on this occasion, appeal to all those revolutionaries who firmly believe in Chairman Mao Tsetung’s Thought and have
revolted
against the
revisionist
and
neo-revisionist
leadership but are still maintaining separate group-identity, to disband their groups and join the All India> Co-ordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries. They should realise that today existence of separate groups is harmful to the cause of the Indian Revolution. The day of final destruction of imperialism and its chief
201
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
ally, the revisionists, is drawing
near.
The victory of the
Indian Revolution will take us closer to that
great
day.
Chairman Mao in his most recent statement has predicted : It can be said with certainty that the day of complete destruction of colonialism, exploitation, and
the
imperialism and all systems of
complete liberation of all exploited
nations and peoples of the world is not far off. [Source :
Three Documents of the AICCCR (in Bengali)
published by Deshabrati Prakashani, Calcutta.]
RESOLUTION ON ELECTIONS (A statement issued by the AICCCR.) May 14, 1968 [Translated from the Bengali version of the Resolution] ‘‘Following the completion of the Chinese Revolution there is a tide of national liberation movement in various countries, and Chairman Mao Tsetung’s Thought—which is MarxismLeninism in the era of rapid collapse of imperialism and rapid progress of socialism—has made its appearance. bourgeois parliamentary
As a result,
institutions having already become
historically obsolete, are now
obstacles to the progress of
revolution in general, and, in particular, to the progress of revolution in
semi-feudal
and
semi-colonial
countries
like
India ; for, a country like India is not bourgeois but feudal. From their experience of the past twenty years people have realised this bitter truth that as an alternative to the path of armed struggle as parliamentary hastens
the
path
developed keeps
by Chairman Mao in China,
intact
process of destruction.
the chain of slavery and Particularly from their
experience of the last ten months during which the revolu¬ tionary struggle of Naxalbari a more important lesson.
was
born, they have derived
They have seen with their own eyes
that the communist and socialist hypocrites are partners of this conspiracy of the ruling
class.
in
reality
They have
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
202
VOL II
seen with their own eyes how the betrayer Dange clique and the neo-revisionists have preached class collaboration while mouthing revolutionary jargons, how they have tried to give a fresh lease of life to the parliamentary path and have tried to create illusions anew in the minds of the people regarding that path.
At the behest of their masters they have sought to
destroy the revolutionary peasant struggle of Naxalbari—not only the Naxalbari struggle but also the struggles of all workers, peasants and other toiling masses.
In the background of the
past twenty years of the satanic Congress
rule, people have
learnt from their past ten months’ experience that the betrayer Dange clique, the neo-revisionists and other left parties are, in fact, part of the reactionary ruling classes of India—all of them are their faithful agents and have been safeguarding their interests.
Because they have donned the garb of ‘leftists’, they
have been performing all the more effectively this task of safeguarding their interests.
But our people have begun to
learn from their own experience.
Their illusion regarding
the parliamentary path—their illusion regarding
elections and
ministries is being quickly
revolutionary
shattered.
Their
consciousness is continuously on the rise. “After the great Chinese Revolution, we are living in a revolutionary era of rapid collapse of imperialism ; we are now in the midst of a great revolutionary upsurge.
The traitors
have betrayed the great struggle of Telengana.
But today
Naxalbari has made its appearance on the horizon.
Naxalbari
came as a turning point in the history of India’s revolution. Naxalbari has dug the grave of parliamentarism in India. People of India had so long been submerged in the mire of parliamentarism.
Now they have seen the
light.
Now they
have realised that the path of Naxalbari is the only path of their liberation. The reactionary ruling classes and their agents —the betrayer Dange clique and neo-revisionists, standably become panicky over Naxalbari. of Naxalbari
So, lest the spark
turn into a prairie fire they
peddling elections.
have under¬
are desperately
203
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
“So, comrades, our call is : ‘Down with Elections’.
We
call upon all the revolutionaries and revolutionary masses to raise this slogan, ‘Boycott this Election’.
By raising this slogan
foil the mischievous counter-revolutionary conspiracy of the reactionary ruling classes and their agents, the betrayer Dange clique and neo-revisionists.
But at the same time we must not
forget that this mere negative slogan of ‘boycott’ will not take us very far.
Simultaneously we must have concrete tasks.
Side by side with the ‘boycott’ campaign, people have to be organised and rallied under the banner of Chairman Mao’s Thought, along the path of revolutionary class struggles, and efforts must be made to build up Naxalbari type of movements —such movements as will help us march ahead along the path of the People’s Democratic Revolution.” [Source :
‘Three Documents of the AICCCR’ (in Bengali),
published by Deshabrati Prakashani, Calcutta.]
REPORT ON THE PEASANT MOVEMENT IN THE TERAI REGION September, 1968 KANU SANYAL
After about 18 months, we the communist revolutionaries -of the Siliguri subdivision met at a convention on 15 September 1968 under quite unfavourable conditions. Why am I speaking of unfavourable conditions ?
This is
because during these 18 months attempts have been made to crush the revolutionary peasant movement of the Siliguri sub¬ division and to annihilate the communist revolutionaries there through ‘encirclement and
suppression’
campaigns.
Who
started the campaigns of ‘encirclement and suppression’ ? 22 May 1967, the leaders of the
14-party
United
On
Front
Government led by Ajoy-Jyoti-Harekrishna-Biswanath threw hundreds of peasants and workers
into jail
and
inflicted
204
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL IJ
physical tortures on them, had their homes looted by the police and shot, bayoneted and killed 15 peasants, including men, women and children, with a view to crushing the revo¬ lutionary peasant movement. The leaders of the 14-party United Front were unable to prevent their fall, even though they had submitted slavishly to Indira Gandhi, the political boss of the comprador-bureau¬ crat bourgeoisie and the feudal landlords and jotedars.
This
is because the Congress party, the political organisation of the comprador-bureaucrat bourgeoisie and landlords, toppled the 14-party U. F. Government after having made that govern¬ ment do what it (the Congress party) needed.
It dismissed
the U. F. Government in order that it might use the U. F. again whenever necessary to serve its purpose.
The ‘encircle¬
ment and suppression’ campaign that the reactionary U. F. leaders had started on 25 May 1967 against the revolutionary struggle is being
followed up by the regime of Dharma Vira,
the governor, as clearly shown by the murder of Comrade Babulal Biswakarmakar, who was shot dead on September 7 this year (1968). We met at a convention under unfavourable conditions like these with a view to assessing the experience of the revolutio¬ nary peasant struggle of the last 18 months and carrying this struggle forward firmly along the path illumined by the Thought of our beloved leader and great teacher, Chairman Mao. Naturally, we shall place our views before the comrades on the basis of the lessons that we have drawn from the heroic struggle of the Terai peasants. We have not yet been able to learn well the Thought of Chairman Mao.
So there will be shortcomings in our views.
We shall learn anew from the discussions of the comrades. The importance of the peasant question The greatest Marxist-Leninist of our present era, Chairman Mao, has taught us :
“The present upsurge of the peasant
movement is a colossal event.
In a very short time, in China’s
205
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
•central, southern, and northern provinces, several hundred million peasants will rise like a mighty storm, like a hurricane, a force so swift and violent that no power, however great, will be able to hold it back.” Chairman Mao further teaches : “Every revolutionary party, •every revolutionary comrade, will be put to the test, to accepted or rejected as they decided. natives.
There are three alter¬
To march at their head and lead them ?
behind them, gesticulating and criticising ? their way and oppose them ?
be
To trail
Or to stand in
Every Chinese is free to choose,
but events will force you to make the choice quickly.” The truth of these words of Chairman Mao, of every single word of it, has been fully borne out once more in the struggle carried on in our area.
Why has the peasant movement of
terai region proved to be an event having more far-reaching •consequences than even an earthquake ? Ours is a semi-colonial and semi-feudal country, 80 percent of whose population live in the villages.
The contradiction
between the people of our country and feudalism is the princi¬ pal contradiction.
The
comprador-bureaucrat
bourgeoisie,
the landlords and the jotedars have been carrying on their rule and exploitation
through
their political
organisation, the
Congress party, by protecting fully and developing imperialist interests and by covering up the basis of feudalism with legal coatings.
So the peasants are the basis and the main force of
the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal struggle. Unless peasants are liberated it is impossible to achieve the liberation of all other oppressed classes. The terai peasants are a part of the peasantry of our country.
Seventy percent of the terai peasants are poor
and landless, 20 percent are middle peasants and 10 percent are rich peasants.
These heroic peasants dealt merciless blows
to the obsolete and rotten feudal elements—the jotedars, land¬ lords and usurers.
The
State
apparatus of the comprador-
bureaucrat bourgeoisie, landlords and jotedars is preserving the feudal system by force and carrying on an armed rule. Inspired by Chairman Mao’s teaching, “Political power grows
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
206 out
VOL II
of the barrel of a gun,” the heroic peasants opposed this
armed rule with armed revolt. The peasants of terai not only dealt a fierce blow at feuda¬ lism, they also expressed their intense hatred for the imperialist exploitation of India, specially the exploitation by U. S. imper¬ ialism, swept into the dust the political, economic and social authority, dignity and prestige built up in the villages by the landlords and jotedars, who represent feudalism, and establi¬ shed the rule of the peasant through their armed revolt. struggle has
shown the
committee That
is
why
in
the
the
villages
Naxalbari
path for the liberation of India’s
oppressed classes. We have seen how the criterion for judging political events changed as soon as the struggle of the heroic peasants started and thus proved how true are the teaching of Chairman Mao. The struggle made it clear as daylight who, in a semi-colonial and semi-feudal country like ours, is a revolutionary and who is a counter-revolutionary, who is progressive and who is reactionary, who is a Marxist and who is a revisionist, and which political party wants to advance the cause of democratic revolution, that is, the agrarian revolution, and which party wants to cover up the semi-colonial and semi-feudal system in order to preserve it. Starting from foreign radio broadcasts and newspapers which
upheld
the
imperialists to the villages—everyone struggle in the terai.
interests
of the
bourgeoisie
and
the
man-in-the-street in the cities and the chose sides on the issue of the peasant Not even one of the political
parties,
which never tire of talking about workers, peasants and Mar¬ xism, could maintain its previous position. The struggle of the terai peasants tore open their masks and forced them to take sides.
The struggle of the heroic peasants showed that all
the leaders of the 14 ‘left’ parties, including the so-called Marxist party, who had managed to secure ministerial guddies for themselves, were serving the
State of the comprador-
bureaucrat bourgeoisie and landlords, like the Congress party.
207
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
The struggle made it clear that, like the Congress party, the leaders of the 14 ‘left’ parties, including the Dangeite clique and Sundarayya & Co., revolution,
are enemies of India’s democratic
that is, agrarian revolution.
The struggle of the
terai peasants proved that the agrarian revolution can be led to success only by waging a relentless and uncompromising struggle against them. The struggle of the terai peasants acted as a midwife in the revolutionary situation prevailing in India.
That is why
a single spark of the Naxalbari struggle is kindling widespread forest-fire everywhere.
In a word, the struggle of the heroic
peasants has brought to the forefront quite forcefully the role of the peasants in India’s democratic revolution overcoming the fierce and active opposition put up by all the reactionaries and revisionists. Establish the Peasant Committees and get organised The Siliguri subdivision peasant convention gave out the call to—(1) establish the authority of the peasant committees in all matters of the village, (2) get organised and be armed in order to
crush the resistance of jotedar’s monopoly of
ownership of the land and redistribute the land anew through the peasant committees. The convention further declared that the peasants’ struggle against feudalism would have to face the repression of all reactionaries, be it Indira Gandhi’s government in New Delhi or the U. F. government in West Bengal.
So all their repre¬
ssion must be resisted by force of arms and and by carrying on a protracted struggle. The call of the sub-divisional peasant convention instantly created a stir among the revolutionary peasant masses. How did the revolutionary peasants of terai translate this call into action ?
To put this call of the conference into effect
the revolutionary peasants first of all laid stress upon the task of creating the armed groups of peasants in the villages.
In
every village we heard the words “political power grows out
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
.208 of the barrel of a gun.”
VOL II
This is because every single struggle,
however small, whether for stopping usury or another issue has been invariably met with lathis and guns.
That is why
this call worked like magic in organising the peasants. Almost all the villages got organised during the period from the end of March to the end of April
1967.
Whereas,
previously, the membership strength of the Kisan Sabha could not be increased beyond 5,000, the membership now jumped nearly to 40,000.
About fifteen to twenty thousand peasants
began to do whole-time work and built up peasant committees in villages. The young men of the villages who had never been seen in the front ranks of the Kisan Sabha now occupied the place of veteran peasant cadres.
With the speed of a storm
the revolutionary peasants, in the course of about one and a half months, formed peasant committees
through hundreds
of group meetings and turned these committees into armed village defence groups.
In a word, they organised about 90
percent of the village population. completely changed all our Chairman
Mao
creative power.
teaches
This action of the peasants
old ideas
us : “The
about
masses
organisation.
have boundless
They can organise themselves
and concen¬
trate on places and branches of work where they can give full play to their energy.” We came to realize more profoundly the significance
of
this teaching of our great teacher Chairman Mao from this action of the terai peasants. The great Lenin said : masses.” during the
What it
“Revolution is a festival of the
means in reality
was witnessed by
struggle of terai peasants.
us
While the so-called
Marxist pundits, Indira Gandhi and all and
sundry were
rending the skies with loud talks of national integration, we found how the revolutionary activities of the peasants united all the peasants irrespective language and caste.
of their
nationality,
religion,
The revolutionary peasants, through their actions, made their decrees the law in the villages :
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
209
1. A blow was dealt at the political, economic and social structure in the villages based on monopoly land ownership which dragged the peasants more and more into the depths of pauperisation. ‘No, not the deeds and documents—what is required is the order of the peasant commitee’, declared the peasants. They marked out all the land in the terai with their ploughshares and made it their own. They declared that all land which was not owned and tilled by the peasants them¬ selves was to be redistributed by the peasant committees. By carrying this out in practice, they struck a blow at the main political and economic basis of the jotedars. The old feudal structure that had existed for centuries was thus smashed through this action of the peasants. 2. All the legal deeds and documents relating to the land had been used to cheat them. They held meetings and burned all the receipts, acknowledgments, plans, deeds and docu¬ ments. 3. The jotedars and moneylenders, taking advantage of the poverty of the rural folk, got them committed to unequal agreements relating to the mortgage of land and bullocks. The peasants declared all such agreements as well as the huge burden of interest imposed on them null and void. 4. The hoarded rice which is used as capital for carrying on usurious and feudal exploitation was confiscated by the peasants and distributed among themselves. Apart from this hoarded rice, other things like oil, atta (coarse flour), bullocks, cows, a huge number of domesticated animals owned by jotedars, agricultural implements, even articles meant for their personal use were confiscated and*distributed. 5. All jotedars in the villages who were known for a long time as oppressors and those who tried to oppose the peasant struggle were all subjected to, open trial and sentenced to death. 6. The wicked ruffian elements andTlunkeys who were used to preserve the political, economic and social authority of the jotedars in the villages and those who co-operated with the Vo 1 11—14
210
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
police were all brought to open trial.
In some cases, death
sentence
fellows
was given ; in
others,
the
were paraded
through the village streets with shoes strung around their necks and with fools’ caps on their heads so that they would not dare commit crimes in future. 7.
Realizing that their struggle against the jotedars, the
landlords and the moneylenders would be subjected to armed repression by the State apparatus, they armed themselves with their traditional weapons like bows and arrows and spears as well as with guns forcibly taken away from the jotedars and organised their own armed groups. 8.
Lest the general administration of the villages should
suffer, they arranged
for night
watch and shouldered the
responsibility of running the schools in a smooth way.
The
peasant committees announced that severe punishments would be awarded in cases of theft and dacoity and took measures to inflict such punishments in some cases. 9. tionary
In every area they created regional and central revolu¬ committees
and established
the
peasants’ political
power. 10.
They declared the existing bourgeois law and law
courts null and void in the villages.
The decisions of the
regional and central revolutionary committees were declared to be the law. In addition to these ten great tasks the peasants also did many other things which wiped out of the villages the old feudal system that had existed for centuries.
How intense was
the class hatred of the peasants can be seen from the fact that during a raid on the houses of two jotedars, which lasted for two days, they not only ate up the cooked food of the jotedars but also helped themselves to the meals prepared with all other foodstuff left there.
In this struggle we witnessed the
festival of the revolutionary peasants overthrowing feudalism. Whenever the peasants became conscious of any short¬ comings during these revolutionary actions, they at once came to the peasant committee for their rectification.
This means,.
21 i
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
the peasant committees were not something imposed on them. On the contrary, these committees were wholly their own. That is why the struggle of the heroic peasants of terai was able to hit the jotedars and the vested interests. The leadership of this struggle was, naturally, in the hands of the landless peasants, who were the most militant section of the peasantry.
The reason why these revolutionary actions
could become so far-reaching and so vast in their sweep is that the leadership of the struggle was in the hands of the poor landless peasants, who constitute 70 percent of the peasantry. After the conference, it was the poor landless peasants who realised before all others that the resolutions of the conference were beneficial to their own interests more than to anyone else. It is only because of this that the work of organising the move¬ ment assumed such a broad and militant form.
From the
experience of their own life the poor peasants realised that any compromise with feudalism would more miserable than before.
make their future even
That is
why, in their fight
against the jotedars, the moneylenders, the ruffians and the police
it is
the poor peasants
who
have not shrunk from
making sacrifices ever since 24 and 25 May, 1967.
The truth
of this is being proved even today through struggles. Just after the conference, the middle peasants, who cons¬ titute 20 percent of the peasantry, looked with suspicion at the call given by the conference. the first phase of the struggle.
So, they were not active in
It was only when they came to
realise that their interests would be served by the struggle and that the main target and enemy of the struggle was the jotedars, landlords and moneylenders that they came forward.
With
the joining of the middle peasants the sweep of the struggle increased manifold and it grew even more intense. The rich peasants, who constitute only 10 percent of the village population, at no time thought the declaration of the conference interests. carry on
and this struggle
to be beneficial
t o their own
Rather, they, particularly those rich peasants who feudal exploitation in considerable portions of their
212
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
land, apprehended that it meant danger for them.
VOL II
So, after
the conference they took the role of critics and opposed the struggle in the first phase and sometimes even acted as spies for the jotedars.
But as soon as the middle peasants joined
the poor peasants,
their
After the jotedars and
movements
underwent
a change.
the wicked people had been punished
and they
had fled to the towns and business centres, the rich
peasants
gave up the path of
opposition and criticism and
began to demand justice from the peasant committees.
And
the peasant committees considered every case on its merit and did justice to them.
As a result, the rich peasants generally
became neutral and even took an active part in the struggle in .quite a few instances. The small jotedars split into two sections in the course of the struggle. One section, comprising those jotedars, who were able neither to develop themselves as they desired owing to the oppression
by the government of the comprador-bureaucrat
bourgeoisie and the landlords nor to maintain their existing standard of living, took part in the struggle.
Another section,
comprising those who realised that it was not possible for them to resist, turned inactive hoping to take revenge in future. The struggle of the heroic peasants of terai demonstrated through practice how to build peasant unity, though, it must be admitted, the task was often found to be not at all easy. Real peasant unity
can be built only by not making any
■compromise with feudalism, only by intensifying class struggle against it and by directing the spearhead of attack against it. The peasants proved this in practice.
A look at the past and
the present revisionist Kisan Sabha convinces one that intense class struggle against feudalism can never be developed by convening such conferences as the “jute cultivators conference” or by avoiding class struggle for the sake of unity.
A vigorous
class struggle against feudalism not only helps to build peasant unity but also guarantees the establishment of the peasants’ political power through such peasant unity. learnt from the peasants of terai.
This we have
215
debates and documents
AI1 the so-called left parties joined the Congress party in their mad crusade to vilify the struggle of the heroic peasants of terai.
But all their vilification can never hide the fact that
the peasants of terai have overthrown feudalism root and branch, a feat which could not be done through any legislation or any other thing during all these hundreds of years. Our great teacher, Chairman Mao, teaches us : ‘I hold that it is bad as far as we are concerned if a person, a political party, and army or a school is not attacked by the enemy, for in that case it would definitely mean that we have sunk to the level of the enemy.
It is good if we are attacked by the enemy,,
since it proves that we have drawn a clear line of demarcation between the enemy and ourselves. It is still better if the enemy attacks us wildly and paints us as utterly black and without a single virtue : it demonstrates that we have not only drawn a clear line of demarcation between the enemy and ourselves but achieved a great deal in our work”. The truth of those words of Chairman Mao has been vindicated through practice during the struggle of the heroic peasants of terai. Armed Struggle—not for land, but for the State power The struggle of the terai peasants is an armed struggle—not for land but for State power.
This is a fundamental question,,
and the revisionist thinking, which has been prevailing in the peasant
movement for the last few decades, can
only be
combated by solving this problem. From the bourgeois parties and newspapers to the leaders of the so-called Marxist party, all have been saying the same thing, that it is quite just for the peasants of terai to struggle for land but that the acts like arming the peasants and the forcible taking away of guns are dragging the struggle into a wrong path.
By making this one statement all the bourgeois
and petty-bourgeois parties, including the Congress and the so-called Marxist party, have ranged themselves on the same side and made themselves agents of India’s ruling classes. We all know that every class struggle is a political struggle
214
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL It
and that the aim of political struggle is to seize State power. Chairman Mao teaches us : “The seizure of power by armed force, settlement of the issue by war, is the central task and the highest form of revolution.
The Marxist-Leninist principle
of revolution holds good universally, for China and for all other countries”. In our country also, we can succeed in overthrowing the regime of the comprador-bureaucrat bourgeoisie and landlords only by arming the peasants and by building up guerilla groups and a regular armed force. The peasants of terai have taken up exactly this work, and this is the reason why all the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois parties, including the Congress and the so-called
Marxist
party, have become so furious. The so-called communists derssed up as Marxists have unmasked themselves by hitting away at this.
They want to
keep the anti-feudal struggle pegged to the question of mere distribution of land.
Like all other
bourgeois
and petty-
bourgeois parties, the so-called Marxist party also looks at the question of land distribution from the standpoint of social injustice towards the peasants.
This is what they have been
doing in reality, whatever may be their subjective motivation. That is why they become panicky whenever they see armed peasants or hear the slogan ‘Vietnam's path is our path*. And they stage like a true bourgeois the farce of setting up committees distribute land.
with
pro-jotedar
bureaucrats
in
order to
It would be relevant to mention here what our respected leader. Comrade Charu Majumdar, had told us. “Whatever
He said,
little concession the U.F. government may be
able to give to other classes, it is not possible for them to give any concession whatsoever to the peasants”.
We set
down this statement in our local election review but were not able to realise its
significance at that time.
But later the
peasant movement in terai has cleared up our thinking. As in the other States of India, the peasants of terai are
BEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
also being
oppressed by
215 the
regime of the
bureaucrat bourgeoisie and feudal jotedars.
comprador-
And this oppre¬
ssion is carried on in the villages by preserving the political, economic, social and cultural structure that serves jotedars and through feudal exploitation.
The heroic peasants are
every day realising this in their lives.
That is why they
accurately hit at the proper place. The first thing the peasants of terai did was to arm them¬ selves and then they carried out the ten great tasks and wiped out at a stroke the old feudal system that had continued for centuries.
Furthermore, relying on the armed revolutionary
strength, they established a new political power, that is, the rule of the revolutionary peasant committees in their area. By carrying out these ten great tasks the heroic peasants have taught us that the struggle of the peasants is not merely a struggle for land.
On the contrary, in order to end the
monopoly of land ownership and feudal exploitation of the landlords in the villages, which are being preserved by the Congress
party,
the
political
party of the
bureaucrat bourgeoisie and the landlords, the political,
economic,
comprador-
with the help of
social and cultural structure
that
serves the landlords, a new political, economic, social and cultural
structure
political power.
must
be created by establishing a new
This political power can be established by
arousing and arming the peasants, by organising
guerilla
groups, by creating liberated areas, by building a regular armed force, and by protecting and expanding this force. Such a political power, no matter in how small an area it is estab¬ lished, is the embryo of the future people’s democratic State power in India. It is never possible to overthrow the rule of the compradorbureaucrat bourgeoisie and the landlords, who have come to terms with imperialism, without arming the peasants in the anti-feudal struggle, without building their guerilla and regu¬ lar armed forces.
This is so because in our country, the
feudal landlord class is the main social base of the imperialist
216
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
and comprador-bureaucrat bourgeois peasants are
the
VOL II
exploitation, and
the
main force and the basis of this struggle.
Herein lies the distinctive feature of the Naxalbari path, that is, the Naxalbari struggle.
It is precisely because the Naxal¬
bari struggle is not merely a struggle for land that it could not be stamped out. Without this consciousness, matter how
any struggle for
land,
militant it may be, is militant economism.
no Such
militant struggle for land generates opportunism in the peasant movement and demoralises the majority of the fighting section as happened during the struggle for seizing the benami lands. Such militant economic movement leads one into the blind alley of revisionism.
This means, in other words, becoming,
consciously or unconsciously, a bourgeois
reformist.
The
bourgeoisie try to gain this object of theirs, sometimes through their laws and sometimes through a Vinoba Bhave. When they fail in this, they depend on the present-day social-democrats who disguise themselves as Marxists. in common with this.
Marxism has nothing
In short, the question of making the
agrarian revolution victcrious in our country is not
the same
as the question of ensuring social justice to the peasants. United Front and its leadership in the Anti-feudal struggle An important aspect of the struggle of the heroic peasants of terai is its success in gaining the support of the tea-garden workers and other toiling people and, thus, intensifying the struggle still further by building a united front in the anti-feu¬ dal struggle.
This is the most important task.
The struggle
of the heroic peasants of terai has solved the problem. The terai peasants began their struggle against the compra¬ dor-bureaucrat bourgeoisie and the landlords, who have come to terms with imperialism, have prettified feudalism and are carrying on their rule and exploitation through the Congress party, which is their political organisation.
The fact that the
reactionary leaders of the so-called United Front were able to
217
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
install themselves on the ministerial guddies did not change the class character of the State. While the
heroic peasants of terai were
smashing
the
foundations of feudalism in the villages by performing the ten great tasks, the tea-garden workers realised from their innate class consciousness that this class struggle was a struggle to overthrow the rule of the Congress party, which represents the comprador-bureaucrat bourgeoisie and the landlords.
That
is why the tea-garden workers could not be kept away from the struggle of the peasants in spite of the fact that the unions of tea garden workers were mainly controlled by the so-called communists. From their own experience of class struggle, the tea-garden workers of terai realised that the peasants were their most faithful friend and ally.
That is why they not
only participa¬
ted in the struggle of the peasants but were in the forefront of the struggle.
They went on strike and arming themselves
they have taken part in every struggle since 24 May 1967. The struggle of the terai peasants helped the tea-garden workers to come out of the mire of trade unionism and economism. This happened in spite of the fact that the so-called communist trade union leaders were opposing the struggle. this anti-feudal struggle there grew up a peasant
alliance under the
leadership
of
And from
genuine workerthe
tea-garden
workers. At the present time, every anti-feudal armed struggle is certain to be opposed by imperialism. tances today to
bear this out.
There are many ins¬
In the propaganda
carried on by the bourgeois papers,
representing
being
different
imperialist interests, by the Voice of America and by the BBC, we are witnessing this opposition in an embryonic form.
The
object of their propaganda is to crush the struggle without delay, and the reactionary U. F. leaders are diligently working to this end under the leadership
of the Congress.
As
soon
as the anti-feudal struggle of the workers and peasants of terai grows more intense, it will have to face direct opposition from.
J218
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
imperialism.
VOL II
All the anti-imperialist strata and classes will
then naturally join the alliance of workers and peasants. The struggle of the heroic peasants of terai has taught us the lesson that a united front, of all anti-imperialist anti-feudal elements that can be united, can be built only on the basis of worker-peasant
alliance carrying on armed
struggle.
united front of workers and peasants can never
be
This built
through any so-called ‘turn to the villages’ or by taking a few demonstrations towards the villages. Any other front that can be built is the United Front of Ajoy-Jyoti-Harekrishna-Jatin, which can function as ministers or bureaucrats within the existing bourgeois structure which is unable to give leadership to the
but
people’s democratic
revolution. The question
of leadership of this front has also been
solved.
No so-called Marxist can lead this struggle or this
front.
This front will be led by the political party of the
proletariat—a party which is armed with the theory of MarxismLeninism, Mao Tse-tung’s thought, the highest development of Marxism-Leninism in the present era—a party having its own army and able to build a united front of workers, peasants, and petty-bourgeoisie and of all those who can be united. Only such a party can successfully lead the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal struggle. Our Deviations and the Lessons we learnt Taken as a whole, internationally and nationally, the revo¬ lutionary situation in our country is excellent.
The armed
struggle of the peasants of the Siliguri subdivision has begun after the fourth general elections at a time when Anglo-U.S. imperialism, especially U.S. imperialism, finds itself in an acute crisis and the quarrel between
the imperialists
has
become bitter, when the U.S. imperialist capital is unable to rely fully on the influence of the Congress party in matters of investments, when all the hoax of economic planning of the Congress party, the organisation of the comprador-bureaucrat
219
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
bourgeoisie and landlords, is falling into pieces, when the people are suffering from the effects of an acute economic crisis and when people’s lack of confidence in the Congress has become even more pronounced, as reflected in the ending of monopoly rule of Congress ministers in eight states. We know that we must adopt an offensive tactic in our struggle when the enemy is beset with crisis and internal quarrels, and must adopt the tactic of advancing our struggle gradually when the enemy has gained some stability.
Judged
from this standpoint, the struggle of the peasants of terai is just, timely and beyond reproach. Why have we failed, though temporarily, to advance the struggle of the heroic peasants of terai ? lack of a strong
party
organisation,
The reasons are :
failure to
rely whole¬
heartedly on the masses and to build a powerful mass base, ignorance of military affairs,
thinking on old lines and a
formal attitude towards the establishment of political power and the work of revolutionary land reform.
We must always
bear in mind Chairman Mao’s teachings in discussing these matters. He teaches us, “New things always have to experience difficulties
and setbacks as they grow. It is sheer fantasy
to imagine that the cause of socialism
is all plain
sailing and
easy success, without difficulties and setbacks or the exertion of tremendous efforts.” By the lack of a strong party organisation we mean absence of a party which is armed with the theory of Marxism-Leninism and its highest development in the present era, Mao Tsetung’s thought, which is closely linked with masses, which does not fear self-criticism and which has mastered the Marxist-Leninist style of work.
It is true that the revolutionary comrades of
the Siliguri subdivision led by our respected leader. Comrade Charu Majumdar, were the first to rise in revolt against the revisionists.
But this does not mean that we fully assimilated
the teaching of our great teacher, Chairman Mao.
That is,
while we accepted the teachings of Chairman Mao in words, •we persisted in revisionist methods in practice. Though it is true
220
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL I®
that the worker and peasant party members of terai were in a majority inside the party and that there was party organisa¬ tion in almost every area, yet in reality the worker and peasant comrades were led by the petty-bourgeois comrades and the party organisation in every area actually remained inactive. The party members were all active at the beginning of the struggle but they were swept away by the vast movement of' the people.
We did not also realise that the party had a
tremendously significant role to play in advancing firmly the struggle of the heroic peasants.
As a result, whatever might
be the role the party members played spontaneously at the beginning of the struggle, it was afterwards reduced to nothing in the face of white terror.
To belittle the role of the party
in the struggle is nothing but an expression of the old revisio¬ nist way of thinking.
The party played no role in matters-
like deciding what are the needs of the struggle at a given moment, giving political propaganda priority above every¬ thing else, advising the people about what they should do when the enemy attacks, preparing the people politically to meet the moves of the enemy, and developing the struggle step by step to a higher stage. We did not even politically assess, nor did we propagate among the people, the significance of the ten great tasks per¬ formed by the heroic peasants.
As a result, there developed
among us opportunism and escapism ; and even the fighting comrades began to show signs of lack of firmness. So, we are of the opinion that we must carry on a sharpstruggle against the revisionist way of thinking and fulfil certain definite tasks.
These tasks are : to form a party unit in a
given locality and elect its leader ; to train these party units, which must be armed ones, to observe secrecy.
The tasks of
the party unit will be to propagate the thought of Chairman Mao in a given locality and to develop and intensify class struggle in that locality ; to act as a guerilla unit and attack and eliminate class enemies by relying wholly on the people ; and, whenever possible, to take part along with the people im
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
221
the work of production.
We have now started implementing
the above programme. We were unable to raise the struggle firmly to a higher stage because we failed to rely wholly on the people and to build a powerful mass base.
We now admit frankly that we
had no faith in
peasant
the
heroic
masses
who,
swift
as a storm, organised themselves, formed revolutionary peasant committees, completed the ten great tasks and advanced the class struggle at a swift pace during the period from April to September 1967.
We did not realise that it is the people who
make history, that they are the real heroes, that the people can organise themselves and can amaze all by their own completely new style of work. Tribeni
We failed to realise that comrades like
Kanu, Sobhan Ali, Barka Majhi,
Babulal
Biswa-
karmakar and the ten peasant women of Naxalbari are the real heroes and organisers and so we failed to move forward. Though we repeatedly recognised this in words during the period from April to September 1967, in reality, however, we, the petty-bourgeois leadership,
imposed
ourselves
people.
peasant
masses
Whenever the
initiative and
heroic
wanted to
took
the
The reason is we did not
nor did we ever try to understand, the action
of the masses. revisionist
the
do something, we of the petty-
bourgeois origin opposed them. understand,
on
On the contrary, under the influence
habits
they should go.
we arbitrarily
set limits
of old
as to how far
This resulted in thwarting the initiative of the
masses and blunting
the edge of the class struggle.
Having
worked in a revisionist party, we were used to bourgeois laws and conventions and so tried to convince the masses about what was right and what was wrong.
So, when the people wanted
to attack the police, we prevented them on the ground that our losses would be heavy.
We looked at the people’s attitude
towards the jotedars and the police from the angle of bour¬ geois humanism.
Asa result, we failed to organise the large
masses, who numbered more than 40,000, and were thus unable to build a powerful mass base during April and May 1967.
222
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
Therefore, during the second stage of our struggle, we have resolved, we must link ourselves with the needs and wishes of the people, go to the people with boundless love and respect in our heart and integrate ourselves with the people. We must learn from them and take the lesson back to them again through practice. anything from above.
In other words we must not impose Mistakes may be made owing to this,
but it is possible to correct such mistakes.
The most impor¬
tant thing is—never to allow the initiative of the masses to be suppressed.
Our duty is to develop their initiative.
Ignorance of Military affairs and old way of thinking The struggle of the heroic peasants of the Siliguri subdivi¬ sion was not a movement to realise certain demands in the old sense. This was a struggle to establish a new political power, the peasants’ power in the villages after abolishing feudalism there.
So, we shall discuss the reason for our failure in this
struggle both from the political and the military viewpoint. Chairman Mao teaches as : tigers.
“All
reactionaries are
paper
In appearance, the reactionaries are terrifying but in
reality they are not so powerful.
From a long-term point of
view, it is not the reactionaries but the people who are really powerful”.
If, in any struggle, we happen to over-estimate the
enemy’s strength politically, victory in that struggle.
it will never be possible to gain
In other words, if we do not have,
from the strategic viewpoint, the courage and firmness required to defeat the enemy, we shall inevitably face defeat.
If we
fail to realise that in the final analysis it is the people who are powerful,
we shall be able to achieve victory in any
struggle. It is this consciousness that lends firmness to the struggle, urges one to make supreme sacrifice without fear and teaches one to undergo all kinds of hardship in order to win victory. We believed that we had assimilated the teaching of Chair¬ man Mao.
But the course of the struggle made us realise
how superficial was our understanding.
Today, our continued
223;
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
participation in the struggle makes us feel with every passing day that this teaching of Chairman Mao has to be realised anew every day, every moment and this realisation has to be tested through our own practice.
The day when this realisa¬
tion is translated into reality, we shall be able to shatter the much boasted strength of the armed forces of India’s reacti¬ onary government and march forward undeterred. The encounter with the police on 24 and 25 May 1967 and the action of the people in coming forward undauntedly both during and after the shooting down of unarmed
peasant
women by the police, and the boundless heroism and selfsacrifice of Comrades Tribenu Kanu, Sobhan Ali, and Barka Majhi—how can we explain all these things if not by the fact that they are the expressions of that realisation ?
And we
of the petty-bourgeois origin failed to recognise this very thing and so, at times, either under-estimated or over-estimated the enemy’s strength. In the first phase of the struggle, we under-estimated the enemy’s strength and thought of everything in the old way, and being in a revisionist party we indulged in idle
day-dreaming.
Sometimes we imagined that ‘the U.F. cannot go so far’ or that "it will be difficult for it to go so far’.
On the one hand,
we view the revisionists from a purely petty-bourgeois standpoint while, on the other, we under-estimated the enemy’s strength and kept the people unprepared in the face of the enemy, that is, we did not prepare the people regarding the measures that the enemy was likely to take.
This is nothing
but
revisionist attitude. Again, when the people were ready to launch attacks on the
enemy,
subjectively
we
over-estimated the enemy’s
strength and
magnified the likely effects of such attacks.
The
people fought with determination and created model heroes whose heroism we belittled.
As a result, the people found
themselves in disarray in the face of widespread terror, the intensity of the struggle diminished and escapism increased. Comrade Babulal Biswakarmakar, by sacrificing his life on 7
:224
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
September this year has enjoined on us to advance along the path pointed out by Chairman Mao. This is a struggle to seize State power and as such, it demands of us to prepare the party and the people militarily to the fullest extent.
Chairman Mao teaches us : “Without
a people’s army the people have nothing”.
We have come
to realise the truth of this teaching of Chairman Mao deeply through the struggle in terai.
Though we had known as
soon as the struggle started it would be met with suppression by the Central Government and the reactionary leaders of the West Bengal U.F. Government, yet we failed to take the programme of action which should have been taken eventually. We had a wrong understanding of Chairman Mao’s teaching in that we turned strategic defence into passive defence. When all the population armed themselves, the jotedars, the vested interests and wicked persons fled from the villages, we concluded that we had already created the base area. We mistook the armed police for the armed force and adopted the tactic of resisting and attacking by means of broad mass mobilization as the main tactic of our struggle.
The one or
two small armed groups which were formed to take away forcibly guns from the jotedars were not recognised by us as the main instrument of struggle.
On the contrary, we assumed
that guerilla groups would eventually grow out on the basis of the spontaneons actions of the broad masses.
In many cases,
fooled by the display of revolutionary ardour in vagabonds, we made them leaders for organising armed groups.
Again,
when we found armed rich peasants and a section of small jotedars
by
the
side
of armed poor peasants and middle
peasants, we concluded that together they constituted the united armed force of the entire peasantry.
We totally forgot that
the rich peasants and that section of the small jotedars could desert to the enemy at the first opportunity.
We learnt in the
course of the struggle that a few rich peasants and small landowners might take an active part in a big struggle that was raging.
But as soon as counter-revolutionary terror started,
225
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
these people quickly desert to the enemy camp spreading fear among the poor
and middle peasants.
In short, our total
Ignorance of military affairs is the root cause of the temporary setback in our struggle. What we have learnt from the terai peasants is that we must deeply study the political and military theories of Chairman Mao, apply them in practice and then study them again.
Our
^greatest responsibility is to make arrangements for our worker and peasant comrades to study the thought of Chairman Mao. Furthermore, we have learnt from the experience of our struggle that the armed groups
formed, after arousing the
people in the villages and arming them, will become the village .defence groups. We must acquire knowledge of guerilla warfare by arming the peasants with conventional weapons (bows and arrows, spears etc) and by organising assaults on the class enemies. We are to build up liberated zones gradually by forming peasant guerilla groups and by carrying on their activities.
It
would not be possible either to form guerilla groups or to carry on their activities for long if we do not, at the same time, persevere in building liberated zones also.
We must keep in
mind the fact that only the liberated zones or those areas which can be transformed into liberated zones form the rear of the guerillas.
We must lay utmost stress on building a people’s
armed force. centrally
To build a people’s armed force we must form
organised groups
of armed guerillas.
These, we
think, will be the embryo of the people’s armed force. In some other areas, again, we may try to organise armed peasant revolts and build the people’s armed force comprising those armed peasants who have risen in revolt. In forming the guerilla groups
or
the
central guerilla
group we must lay utmost stress on the class standpoint.
We
have come to realise that only the poor and middle peasants must be the basis of forming the guerilla groups. Our failure in establishing the revolutionary political power .and in carrying out revolutionary land reforms blunted the Vol 11—15
226
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
edge of the class struggle both during and after the struggle. The revolutionary peasants accomplished two tasks through mass mobilisation.
They are : formation of central and zonal
revolutionary peasant
committees and distribution of land.
And we turned exactly these two things into a most formal affair. it.
Our petty-bourgeois day-dreaming was at the root of
We never seriously considered how deeply significant were
these two tasks. Had we treated these two tasks seriously and carried on political explanation campaign among the masses about their significance, had we been able to develop the initiative of the people to participate in carrying out these two tasks by educa¬ ting them, they would have remembered for a long time the gains which they themselves had won through struggle and would have fought unflinchingly in order to retain these gains. As regards distribution of land, our policy was to confis¬ cate the land fully and distribute the same entirely. We did not give any
importance to this work also.
As a
result, in many cases the rich peasants prevented this task from being carried out under various pleas.
In many other cases,,
the top section of the middle peasants, being in the leadership in some cases, managed to divert the emphasis from the confis¬ cation of land to making raids on jotedars’ houses, and thus deprived this work of its importance.
In some cases again,
there developed acute contradictions between the poor peasants and the middle peasants in matters of distribution of land. In spite of all these mistakes, the people have been defen¬ ding heroically the fruits they won through their struggle. Therefore, we have taken the decision that, of the ten great tasks of the peasants, we must attach the greatest importance to these two
tasks and turn them into a weapon for our
propaganda. [ Reprinted from Liberation, November 1968 ]
IT IS TIME TO FORM THE PARTY Following is the full text of the resolution adopted unanimously by the All India Co ordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries on February 8, 1969. A little over 18 months has passed since the revolutionary peasant struggle was launched in Naxalbari
under the all-
conquering banner of the thought of Mao Tsetung.
And it
is more than a year ago that the All India Co-ordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries was formed under the inspiring leadership of the Naxalbari comrades. During
this
period,
though
brief,
the Co-ordination
Committee has, no doubt, made significant achievements in dealing powerful blows at all reactionary ideology, including revisionism and neo-revisionism, and in spreading the flames of agrarian revolution.
This period has witnessed the victori¬
ous march of Chairman Mao’s thought, the acme of MarxismLeninism in the present era, which is winning new adherents every
day.
agrarian
It
is during
revolution
have
this period that spread out
the
flames
from Naxalbari
of to
Srikakulam in the south and to Mushahari and Lakhimpur Kheri in the north.
It has been the period when the peasant
revolutionaries of Kerala have staged a heroic revolt that has shaken the whole of India.
It has also been the period of the
bursting forth of the revolutionary liberation struggle of the Adibasi people in Chotanagpur and its uninterrupted advance. It is also in this period that the national liberation struggles of the Nagas, the Mizos and the phase.
Kukis have entered a new
The reactionary Indian Government has become a
stooge of U. S. and Soviet imperialism and a dead-weight on the Indian people.
And so the resistance of the Indian people
both in the countryside and in the cities—among the working class and the petty-bourgeois masses—is growing fast and is creating a new upsurge in the agrarian revolution which is the
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
228
VOL II
main content of the Democratic revolution in India today. The revolutionary struggle of the Indian people to achieve emancipation from the yoke of imperialism, Soviet revisio¬ nism, feudalism and
comprador-bureaucrat
capital has now
reached a new height. In this excellent revolutionary situation, when the people of India have finally embarked on the road of revolution, all the parties of the ruling classes,
including the various revisi¬
onist parties, are feverishly trying to strengthen the parlia¬ mentary illusions.
The call of “Boycott Election” issued by
the Co-ordination Committee has exposed the hollowness of parliamentarism and the
counter-revolutionary character of
the revisionist and neo-revisionist parties. It is a heartening fact that within the last one year, revolu¬ tionaries from Assam to Maharashtra have united under the banner of the All India Co-ordination Committee and all the centres of revolutionary peasant struggles are linked with one another through this Committee.
The reactionary ruling
classes and their counter-revolutionary agents, including the revisionists and the neo-revisionists, who pinned their hopes on the disunity within the revolutionary ranks, have been sorely disappointed. the
revolutionaries
The growing unity within the ranks of despite
the
obstacles
created
by the
reactionaries of all sorts proves that we have overcome the main impediment to the formation of a revolutionary party in India.
The Co-ordination Committee has thus served as
the first indispensable link in the chain—the process of forming a Marxist-Leninist Party in India. However, the experiences of the last one year have also made it amply clear that the political and organisational ne$ds of the fast developing revolutionary struggles can no longer be adequately met by the Co-ordination Committees. struggles have to be led and manner.
These
co-ordinated in an effective
The entire revolutionary forces have to be fully
roused and organised to consolidate and extend the existing .areas of struggle.
The rich experiences of these struggles
229
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
'’
have to be analysed and assessed, generalisations have to be made and lessons drawn in order to lead these struggles along the correct line.
These struggles cannot develop to a higher
stage and a revolutionary authority cannot grow if we depend merely on local initiatives.
Without a revolutionary party
there can be no revolutionary discipline and without revolu¬ tionary discipline struggles cannot be raised to a higher level.. Only a revolutionary party can infuse revolutionary discipline, the spirit of self-sacrifice and death-defying abandon.
So, for
taking these struggles forward, it is essential to form an allIndia Party and a centre recognised by all revolutionaries. The All India Co-ordination Committee was set up to help this process of forming a revolutionary party and this was set down in the very first Declaration.
In the absence of
such a Party, comrades in the areas of struggle have come to look upon the Co-ordination Committees as Party Committees and expect them to function in the same manner.
But the
Co-ordination Committees cannot fulfil the complex political and organisational tasks arising out of the present stage of revolutionary struggles.
At a time when Communist revolu¬
tionaries all over the country have given priority to the task of building revolutionary bases in the rural areas, at a time when the slogan of revolutionary class struggle is rending the sky, it is our immediate duty to form a revolutionary Party without which the advance of revolution is sure to be impeded. Chairman Mao teaches us :
“If there is to be revolution,
there must be a revolutionary Party.
Without a revolutionary
Party, without a Party built on the Marxist-Leninist revolu¬ tionary theory and in the Marxist-Leninist revolutionary style, it is impossible to lead the working class and the broad masses of the people in defeating imperialism and its running dogs”. Idealist deviations on the question of Party building arise as a result of the refusal to recognise the struggle that must be waged, within the Party. be formed only after all
The idea that the Party should
opportunist tendencies, alien trends
NAXALBARl AND AFTER
230 and undesirable
elements have been purged through class
struggles is nothing but subjective idealism. Party
VOL II
To conceive of a
without contradictions, without the struggle between
the opposites, i.e., to think of a pure and faultless party is indulging in mere idealist fantasy. us :
Chairman Mao has taught
“Opposition and struggle between
ideas of different
kinds constantly occur within the Party ; this is a reflection within the Party of contradictions between classes and between the new and the old in society. tions in the Party and no
If there were no contradic¬
ideological struggles to resolve
them, the Party’s life would come to an end.” Revisionism is
bourgeois, counter-revolutionary ideology.
The inner-party struggle between revolutionary ideology and counter-revolutionary ideology will continue so long as classes exist.
It is
through an
uncompromising struggle
against
revisionism and other alien trends that the Party shall grow and develop. Fortunately for us,
we are living in an era when the
thought of Mao Tsetung when the great
is winning victory after victory,
proletarian cultural
initiated and led by
revolution,
Chairman Mao, has
personally
gained
historic
victory in China and has immensely enriched the treasure-house of Marxism-Leninism, when Chairman Mao is still living and leading the world proletarian forces in the final struggle for complete victory of
Socialism all the world over.
We are
confident that with the active co-operation of all the revolu¬ tionaries of our country we shall succeed in building a Party in the revolutionary style capable of leading the Indian revolu¬ tion through to complete victory. It should be borne in mind that ours is a new great era of world revolution and that the responsibility of the Communist revolutionaries of India, a contingent of the world communist movement, is tremendous.
All the imperialist powers of the
world headed by the U. S. imperialists and the Soviet socialfascists are trying to win a fresh lease of life by exploiting the .500 million people of India.
They are also trying to use
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
231
Indian people as cannon-fodder in a war to destroy Socialist China, the base of the world revolution.
By carrying the
Indian revolution to victory we shall not only end the brutal exploitation of the vast masses of our country but also hasten the collapse of world imperialism and revisionism and thus help in building a radiant future for ourselves and mankind.
for all
We must unite with our class brethren who are
waging heroic struggles in Vietnam, Burma, Thailand, Malaya, Indonesia and various other countries of the world and forge that
great
bond
of internationalism—that internationalism
which has been given noble expression by Chairman Mao in the great proletarian cultural revolution. A stage has now been reached when the formation of the Communist Party brooks no further delay.
The Party should
immediately be formed with those revolutionaries as the core who are
building up
and
conducting
revolutionary
class
struggles. This Party composed of revolutionary cadres, steeled and tempered in the fire of class struggle, shall play its historic role in leading India’s People’s Democratic Revolution to victory,
in
carrying it forward to the completion of the
Socialist Revolution and in helping to bring about the total oollapse of world imperialism and revisionism. [Reproduced from Liberation, Vol 2, No. 5, March 1967]
IMMEDIATE PROGRAMME | Adopted by the Andhra Pradesh Revolutionary Communist Committee at its convention held on April 10-12, 1969.] We, the Communist Revolutionaries who have broken from revisionism, are striving for the victory of Indian revolution in accordance with Marxism-Leninism-Mao’s Thought. India is a neo-colonial country. feeing
subjected
to
the
The Indian people are
neo-colonial
exploitation
of the
American imperialism, the British imperialism and the Soviet revisionism. Together with imperialism, feudalism is the main
232
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
exploiting force in the country.
VOL 15
Seventy to eighty percent of
the population live in the countryside. They are being subjected to various forms of feudal exploitation. In view of these condi¬ tions the Indian revolution would be completed in two stages. Today we are in the stage of New Democratic Revolution.. Immediately after the completion of this, the stage of Socialist Revolution would begin.
Since there are two different stages,,
the tasks of these two different stages would also be different. The task of the New Democratic Revolution is to establish the New
Democratic State in the country by smashing impe¬
rialism, feudalism and comprador and bureaucrat bourgeoisie i. e., the big bourgeoisie.
The task of the Socialist Revolution
is to establish the Socialist
system by
abolishing
private
property. For the successful completion of the New Democratic Revolution, which is our immediate task, we should formulate a general programme.
In the stage of the New Democratic
Revolution the basic points of the general programme would remain unchanged. These basic points are : 1.
The comprador and the
the big bourgeois
bureaucrat bourgeois i. e.r
feudal State should be smashed.
In its
place the New Democratic State should be established. 2.
Feudalism
should
be
abolished.
The
land of the
landlords should be distributed among the poor peasants
and
the agricultural labour. 3.
The foreign capital as well as the capital
of the com¬
prador bourgeosie and bureaucrat bourgeoisie in collaboration with it in the industries and banks should be confiscated. 4.
For the working class, increment of wages, reduction of
working hours
and other facilities should be secured and the
problem of unemployment should be solved. 5. The middle class people should be given the guarantee of employment. 6.
For defence of the country the existing mercenary
army should be abolished and a revolutionary people’s army should be built up in its place.
233-
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
7.
The basis of the foreign policy should
be the forma¬
tion of a united front against the world imperialists, especially American imperialism and British imperialism and its colla¬ borator, the Soviet social-imperialist clique.
India should be
party to this united front. 8.
Various nationalities in the country should have the:
right of self-determination. 9.
All types
of unequal treaties should be abrogated.
India should quit the ‘Commonwealth’. 10.
Anti-imperialist and anti-feudal
and culture should be promoted.
education,
science
The problems of unem¬
ployment among the middle class people should be solved. 11.
Integration of the country should be based on com¬
plete independence and democracy. The revolutionary programme based on these eleven points would constitute the New Democratic gramme. enough.
pro¬ is not
We should also have a revolutionary path in order
to achieve this programme. the
revolutionary
Having a revolutionary programme alone
parliamentary path
This path is totally different from of revisionists.
One of the main
aspects of Mao’s thought is people’s war
The essence of the
path of people’s war is to
establish guerilla bases in the
countryside, to encircle and liberate the cities tely liberate the country.
and to ultima¬
It is the task of the revolutionaries
to apply the path of people’s war to the revolutionary practice in India and to carry it through to the end. The formation of a United Front is very important for the successful completion of the Indian revolution. Front should be
formed against imperialism, feudalism and
their collaborator, the big bourgeoisie. of the proletariat, working class,
This United
Under the leadership
this United Front should be formed of the peasantry,
middle
class and the
national
bourgeoisie. Unlike the electoral united fronts of revisionists, this would be
a Front for struggle which would emerge and
develop in the
course of revolutionary struggles and armed
struggle for liberation.
.234
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
To build and develop the United Front for the implemen¬ tation of the programme of people’s war and the New Demo¬ cratic Revolutionary programme, a Communist Party capable of applying Marxism-Leninism-Mao’s Thought to the revolu¬ tionary practice of India should be built. This should be a Communist Party formed of the revolutionaries. The revolu¬ tionaries of today should come forward to build such a revolu¬ tionary Party. We should realise that this Party should be totally different from the revisionist parties that have betrayed the Indian revolution. It is with this basic understanding we should formulate a clear cut programme suited to the present conditions. We have already stated that this general programme of ours would be such that it would be applicable for the entire stage of New Democratic Revolution. Following the path of people’s war, we are and will be implementing this programme in different regions. The vital aspect of this programme is to liberate the villages, encircle the town and then gradually liberate the urban areas. We should, in accordance with this, formulate our programme for rural and urban areas. The mass movement of the Agency areas of Srikakulam district has reached the stage of armed struggle. The mass movement in the forest areas of Warangal and Khammam districts has passed ordinary legal confines. The peasantry, especially the landless poor peasantry and the agricultural labour, is coming forward not only to occupy the forest banjars but also to reoccupy lands illegally grabbed by the landlords. Hundreds of militants from these classes are participating in the day to day activities. In the Agency area of East Godavari district, the Agency peasantry is coming forward to fight for the abolition of the muthadari system and to reoccupy the lands illegally grabbed by the landlords. The movement is spreading to the neighbouring areas of Vishakhapatnam Agency, Bastar area, Karimnagar and Adilabad districts. During the months of July and August last year, there was a tremendous mass upsurge in the plains areas of some
debates and documents
235
districts adjacent to the forest areas and reached the stage of confiscation of foodgrains from landlords. continues.
This position still
The mass movement in Khammam and Madhira
taluqs of Khammam
district and Janagaon and Manukota
taluqs of Warangal district is thus marching forward, reaching the stage of direct
resistance against
the landlords.
The
movement in Nalgonda district had been subjected to a severe government repression and once again the peasantry is getting prepared for struggles. Our Immediate Programme With the peasantry constituting more than 70 percent of the population in our country, the agrarian revolution would play the main role in the New Democratic Revolution.
The
abolition of feudalism and the distribution of land to the tiller is the main task of the agrarian revolution.
Together
with this, the emancipation of the rural masses from
all
forms of feudal exploitation would be the main task of the agrarian revolution.
In Andhra Pradesh, the land belonging
to the landlord class and the government is mainly in the following forms : 1.
The landholdings of the landlords cultivated through
farm servants. 2.
This is known as self-tilling.*
The lands cultivated by the tenant-farmers paying the
rent in the form of grain or money to the landlords as well as the lands cultivated for landlords by some of these tenantfarmers. 3.
The pastures and other similar categories of lands.
4.
Temple and endowment lands under the occupation
of landlords. 5.
The
cultivable
government
banjar
lands.
(This
includes the government banjar lands under the cultivation of landlords. ) * For the sake of clarity, the term ‘self-tilling’ is introduced in place of self-cultivation, the term originally used in the English version of the document.
236
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
6.
VOL IF
The forest lands needed for the cultivation by the
peasantry. The land issue could be solved only by re-distribution of these
lands to the poor and landless peasantry and
agricultural labour.
the
Therefore, the communist revolutiona¬
ries in different parts should study the land issue and carry on, among the people, especially the peasantry, the propaganda about the importance as well as the urgent need for the land re-distribution. While thus carrying on the propaganda, we should, from now on, make the preparations for the occupation of lands by the peasantry in the next year. occupied immediately,
All the land that should be
would come in for cultivation from
June, this year. Therefore we should take detailed decisions as to the areas, villages and the lands that should be occupied, and prepare the peasantry from now on. We should, for the present, concentrate only on the big landlords, the main enemies of the people. It is only these big landlords that we should keep in view when we occupy the lands under ‘self-tilling’.
Keeping the question—of whether
all the lands under the item ‘self-tilling’ should be distributed or not—open for discussion, it is essential to distribute the land to the extent available. Where there is no preparedness among the poor peasantry and the agricultural labour, the distribution of the lands under ‘self-tilling’ and the pasture of landlords, the land that the landlords had grabbed from the poor peasantry and agricultural labour illegally or with nominal compensation or towards debts, can be restored to the people belonging to the respective families in case they still remain poor peasants or agricultural labour*
But owing to this there should not arise a situation
where some would get such land while some would not.
We
should, in such a situation, see that others do also get a portion of such land.
Thus it should be possible for all the
poor peasants and agricultural labour to get the land equally (inclusive of the land they have already in their possession).
237
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
At present, we are only concentrating on the lands of the big landlords.
The question of ceiling would arise at the time
of distributing the landlords’ lands.
We should recognise the
land needed by a middle peasant who cultivates the land by himself as the maximum ceiling limit. may differ from area to area.
It is possible that this
As the agrarian revolution
advances, it would as well become necessary to distribute a portion of the land from the small landlords also.
In such a
situation, depending upon the needs of the agrarian revolution, it is to be decided as to where and how the distribution should be carried out. We should trace out the temple and endowment lands under the occupation of the big landlords (they are often concealed) and make preparations for their distribution among the poor peasants and agricultural labour.
We should, wher¬
ever possible, take it up as an immediate problem. The common people are not in a position to make use of common banjar lands as well as forest lands since a major part of these lands is under the occupation of the landlords. The cultivable lands from among them should be distributed among the poor peasants and agricultural labour.
The rest
of the lands should be taken over by the people. The poor peasants and the agricultural labour would need cattle and other implements for the cultivation of lands thus distributed.
At the time of land distribution itself, the cattle
and the implements of the landlords should also be distri¬ buted among such of those that are in need of them. Moneylending,
Nagulu, Khandanalu,
abolished in whatever form they may exist.
these
should be
But it is only on
the big landlords, moneylenders (shahukars)
and the rich
peasants, who carry on exploitation in this way, that we should concentrate.
The common people would lose the credit faci¬
lities if we are also to concentrate on petty individual money¬ lenders.
It would be necessary to promote the credit facilities
to a certain limited extent till the liberated areas are established and credit facilities are
arranged for
the people.
fore, credit facilities are permitted in such
There¬
a way that they
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
238
VOL IE
continue on reasonable rate of interest, either the bank rate or
the lowest reasonable rate in vogue
in the respective
regions. Besides, forced labour (vetti), tips, tilling of land (of the landlords without any payment) by the peasants with their own cattle and such other feudal exploitation should thus be abolished in whatever form they may exist. We should mobilse the people on all other problems because of which the rural people are facing difficulties owing to the domination of
landlords.
We
should
concentrate
on the
problems
specially in villages where the conditions of the people are the worst.
The conditions of the people in some villages
may be better than those in other villages owing to the work of the Party over a number of years.
But it would, howeverr
be wrong not to mobilise the people into struggle on the presumption that the
conditions of the people in all other
villages are also better.
The problem of toddy-tappers is
serious in the Telengana region.
The degree of exploitation
by the Govt, contractors (who include local landlords) is very high.
They are
put to untold sufferings due to corrupt
practices of the Govt, officials.
Against this exploitation we
should organise and lead them into struggles on the slogan of “Tree to the tappers”.
We should carry on
propaganda
among them that their problems would be solved only with the establishment of the New Democratic Government and that for this the path of armed struggle should be taken up. Similarly, the agricultural labour and the poor and middle peasants in all the regions are sites.
suffering for want of house
We should take up this problem.
This is a programme
which should be extended to all parts of Andhra Pradesh. Now let us work out a programme on problems pertaining to different regions. Forest Areas The importance of forest and mountainous regions would be crucial in the people’s war. the enemy is weak but
In these regions not only
also these are areas favourable for
239'
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
the
people’s
guerilla
squads to carry on resistance against
the armed forces of the enemy for a long period and are ideal for establishing guerilla base areas. The landlords, the money¬ lenders, and the forest
officials are exploiting the ordinary
people and the Girijans inhabiting the forest and mountainous region in ever
so many ways.
In these regions, the
masses have become conscious and are revolting against the government and the exploiting classes. struggle is a prelude to it.
Srikakulam Girijan
In all these areas, especially in
the forest areas of Warangal, Khammam and Karimnagar, the land with irrigation facilities as well as a major portion of the fertile cultivable land is in the hands of the landlords. For the purpose
of grazing, usually hundreds and thousands
of cattle belonging to these landlords are left off in the forest itself.
They earn lakhs of rupees in the cattle-trade. Besides
the distribution of banjar lands, under the occupation of government as well as landlords, among the poor peasants and agricultural labour, we should, in these areas, carry on a struggle for the fertile dry lands as well as the irrigated lands under ‘self-tilling’
of the landlords and distribute them. The
cattle, available in thousands, should also be distributed. For this, we should Ploughing
should
make preparation
commence with the
from
now on.
commencement
of
monsoon. In the coming months, the contractors would employ the people as coolies to move out the forest produce.
We should,
therefore, intensify the struggle on the question of coolie rates in the next month.
Thus,
by intensifyng
the
mass
activities, we should, by the end of April, advance the move¬ ment to a higher stage.
In this period, a good amount of
work has been done to organise and mobilise the Girijans in the Agency area of East Godavari district.
The muthadari
system, the worst kind of feudal exploitation, is in practice in this area.
The remnants of it are also found in the Agency
area of Visakhapatnam.
The people themselves should go in
for revolutionary actions to abolish this system.
240
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
The fertile lands and the fruit gardens that were grabbed from the Girijans are in the hands of the landlords. people are very eager to take them back.
The
We should prepare
the people for occupation of these lands.
The occupation of
land should commence with the commencement of monsoon. By allotting the land
needed by the Girijans for podu
cultivation, we should create opportunities for their cultivation. The government, grabbing away the lands from the Girijan peasantry, is raising coffee and other big plantations. should study the problem of these plantations. examine these
this
gardens
problem, taking into account that
We
We should
the extent of
needs to be distributed,
in order to
solve the land problem of the peasantry. All the corporations set up for the purpose of purchasing forest produce are nothing but a means for the exploitation of the people and for filling the pockets of the people’s wealth.
officials with the
They should, therefore, be abolished and the
Girijans should be given the opportunity of freely selling to whomever they wish to. We should not, while implementing this programme, per¬ mit Girijan and non-Girijan discrimination.
Rallying all the
non-Girijans, including poor and middle peasants, a United Front with the Girijans should be formed and the struggle carried on.
The division on the basis of Girijans and non-
Girijans would only prove helpful to the enemy.
This applies
equally to different tribes among the Girijans themselves. The tips, forced labour (vetti) and bribes to the forest officials and employees have ceased by now.
We should not
permit them in any form or to any extent. Plains Areas There are dry and wet lands in the plains areas.
To this
day, the exploitation and atrocities of the landlords continue to be a serious problem in the dry lands.
The food problem
is a serious problem here.
Vast areas of banjar lands are
available for distribution.
There are opportunities in these
241
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
areas to organise and mobilise the people on ever so many problems such as land, coolie rates, food problem, and against the domination of landlords and so on. Despite the fact that in terms of armed resistance this area is less favourable than the forest and mountainous regions, it would be wrong to conclude that this area would not be useful for resistance. Under the present conditions, a limited guerilla resistance would be possible even in these areas.
Though it
would take time for an incessant resistance to take off in these areas, these are highly important since they include areas adjacent to forest areas and the Telengana area where the armed struggle was carried on in the past.
It is very essential
to develop revolutionary movement in these areas in order to send the cadres and procure help needed in the forest areas. Wet Lands In view of social conditions and geographical features, there are no possibilities for immediate development of guerilla resistance here in these areas.
Yet from these areas cadres,
funds and other help should be sent to the areas of resistance. Ceaseless class struggle against the exploitation of the people should be carried on in these areas.
These areas should also
he liberated gradually. Here, among the struggles of the agricultural labour as well as the struggle against the general domination of the landlords, we should mainly concentrate on the struggles of the agricul¬ tural labour and the tenant-farmers.
We should launch strug¬
gles for the abolition of Government Farming Societies and for the distribution of lands under their control among the poor peasants and agricultural labour.
We should study where the
possibilities for developing such
struggles exist and make
efforts to develop the struggles there. Political Propaganda We should propagate, while implementing the above pro¬ gramme, that the people are waging struggles for their liberation, Vol 11—16
242
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
that the liberation could be achieved only through their armed struggle and that the people should seize the political power into their own hands.
We should make them realise the fact
that we could seize the political power only through the path of people’s war.
Despite the fact that the need for achieving
a People’s Raj safeguarding the gains achieved through the struggles and that for our liberation from the exploitation of the exploiting classes is being propagated, a comprehensive political propaganda is however not being carried on.
We
should especially propagate the politics of armed struggle much more extensively than what we are doing now.
We should
carry on comprehensive propaganda about the revolutionary struggles going on in different parts of the country as well as the Srikakulam struggle.
In addition to the propaganda by
our cadres through speeches, we should organise local cultural squads and carry on propaganda through them. Boycott Panchayat Elections—Establish Village Soviets Panchayat elections
are due in the month of May.
have resolved to boycott them.
We
We should immediately take
steps to implement this decision.
We should give no room
for entering the Panchayat Boards by back-door methods. Our experience has proved that in the anti-feudal struggles the Panchayat Boards could not be the instruments in the hands of the people.
It is because even in the villages where
we had been a majority in the Panchayat Boards during this period, the landlord class got only weakened.
strengthened and not
What is more, by way of collection of taxes and
other means, the Panchayat system has only proved helpful for the further strengthening of ruling classes. We should, from now on, make the people realise as to how the Panchayat system and the election system is proving useful for the ruling classes as a cover to safeguard their power.
We
must convince the people that they should not participate in the elections and thus make them boycott.
We should make
the people, especially those who follow us, boycott the elec-
245
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
tions.
For this we should strictly rely on the consciousness
and the organised strength of the people. resort to any shortcut methods.
But we should not
We should make it clear to
the people that it is not merely boycotting the elections, that there is the path of people’s war for them to follow, that it means establishing the Village Soviets and the People’s Com¬ mittees, that it is under their leadership that we should implement the agrarian revolutionary programme and that these are the foundations for the New Democratic revolutionary State. (There will be no change in our programme despite the postponement of the Panchayat elections for the present.
We
should carry on an extensive propaganda about the need for boycotting the elections.) We should, in all the villages of the forest areas where
wo
are working, mobilise the people to boycott the elections.
In
the villages where the elections are thus boycotted, the question of how to manage the affairs of the village would arise.
Then
all the people, the adults of the villages, should assemble and elect the People’s Committees. These Committees should assist the people in all problems connected with the life of the people.
In the plains areas, District Committees should take
steps to boycott the strong.
elections in the villages where we are
Boycott by the revolutionaries alone does not mean
the boycott of elections.
In the village, where the elections are
thus boycotted, the People’s Committees elected by all the people should come into being.
These Committees should
function as alternate committees to the government Panchayat Boards. These would be the Committees empowered by the people.
They should provide leadership in all the affairs of
the village and stand by the people.
They should implement
the agrarian revolutionary programme. They should take the responsibility of law, revenue, defence of people and so on.
These Committees should be prepared
to carry out the given responsibilities at the given stage.
As
the struggle reaches the higher stage in the countryside, the People’s Committees would transform into Village Soviets.
244
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
Against the feudal system and the elections, the Village Soviets and the People’s Committees would act as United Front Committees to launch and successfully conclude the agrarian revolution.
In these Committees, led by the revolu¬
tionaries and dominated by the poor peasants and agricultural labour, the others who rally round us should also be given proper representation.
As the agrarian revolution advances,
a few of the representatives, especially of the rich peasantry can also be given representation. These Committees should have a clear-cut class and politi¬ cal outlook.
We should educate them in the understanding
of the path of people’s war and develop their political cons¬ ciousness.
We should not permit the opportunists, careerists
as well as the representatives of the rich classes to join these Committees. Volunteer Squads With the mobilisation of people on the boycott of elections, on food problem and the problem of forest areas, the problem of people’s self-defence would arise. the volunteer
squads.
have
been
already
For this we should build
In the forest areas where the people
mobilised into struggles, the volunteer
squads should be organised on a large scale.
All the youth of
the villages should be the members of these squads.
One
squad if it is a small village, and as many squads as necessary depending upon the feasibility of work if it is a large village, can be organised.
Each of these squads should have a com¬
mander and an assistant commander. cally
conscious and disciplined.
these posts.
They should be politi¬
They should be elected for
For the purpose of self-defence the ordinary
volunteers can use any weapon that is locally available.
They
can have sticks only if they cannot procure any other weapon. These squads should assist the Village Soviets and People’s Committees in the implementation of their decisions.
In case
of attacks from the armed police and military, these squads must assist the people in all possible ways.
245
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
The volunteer squads should be organised not only in the villages where the Village Soviets exist, but also in the villages where the People’s Committees exist.
Only when there is a
volunteer squad, can the activities of the People’s Committees be carried on effectively,
the decisions can be implemented,
and confidence in the Committees can be created among the people. We should, in a simple language, educate the volunteer squads in our political line, path of people’s war and current politics.
The party should take steps for this. Local Squads
The government armed police attacks would begin with the implementation of agrarian revolutionary programme. this the resistance should also begin.
With
For this it would be
better to have local squads along with the regular squads. Depending upon defence needs, these squads could consist of seven members.
They can arm themselves with bows and
arrows, spears and axes. Usually the local enemies are terrified by the very sight of the people and the volunteer squads.
These bullies are still
more terrified if there are local squads.
It should be the task
of local squads to deal with the people’s enemies, who cannot be dealt with by the people and volunteer squads.
The local
squads should provide leadership in the mass actions against the landlords.
They should render necessary assistance to the
regular squads.
They should be given good military training
and political education. Mass Organisations We mobilise the people for the implementation of the agrarian revolutionary programme.
We should recruit these
masses into the peasant organisations. should not, for this purpose,
As in the past, we
print membership books and
collect membership fees. In the meeting of the village people, we should, by show
246
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
of hands decide as to who are willing and who are not willing to join.
We should take all those who are willing to join.
All those people who join thus should elect the People’s Committees and Village Soviets. We
should also hold meetings among the women and
organise them.
This task would be easy where there are
female comrades.
The women should also join the men and
fight in the agrarian revolutionary struggle.
For this they
should be recruited into the women organisations in the same manner as above.
They should also be gradually recruited
into the volunteer squads, local squads and the regular squads. In a situation when there is severe repression, and when it is not possible to openly recruit
the
people
into
the mass
organisations, the cadres should go door to door and recruit the members secretly. Intensify Mass Activities We
should, in the next month, intensify our activities both
in the forest areas as well as plains areas. these
By May, not only
activities should be intensified and the Village Soviets
and the People’s Committees formed—and these should start functioning—but we should also get prepared for counter¬ attacking the landlord class. mass activities
that we
revolutionary programme.
It is at this higher stage of these
should
implement
the
agrarian
For this we should politically and
organisationally get prepared from now on. Extend to New Areas At
present
the
movement is, to some
extended to areas adjacent to the pace is very slow. for it. We should
forest
extent,
areas.
being
But
the
The shortage of cadre is the main reason
quickly bring the Vishakhapatnam
Agency
area which is adjacent to East Godavari into the movement. We should cover the centres and areas left in Khammam and Warangal
districts.
We should
intensify
our activities in
247
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
Karimnagar and Adilabad districts.
The units of the revolu¬
tionaries have already begun to function in these areas. Steps are being taken to begin mass activities in Mahabubnagar district. In Rayalaseema district, it is decided to convene a meeting of the district leaders and intensify the anti-feudal struggles. Steps are being taken in this direction.
We should also begin
to intensify the activities in other districts. Work in Cities Notwithstanding the fact that our units are functioning in the cities, we are not putting well-concentrated work here. Even though the forest areas are of importance, it is not correct to leave out the cities.
The armed struggle that we
are conducting should have the support and solidarity of the urban working class.
The help of the transport workers as
well as the workers of various other branches of industry would be needed for the transportation of materials and other technical assistance.
We should give proper importance to
the students as well as to our work in the cities.
Influenced
by the revolutionary ideas, today’s students and youth are being fast attracted to Marxism-Leninism-Mao’s Thought. Ours is a path of people’s war, i.e., to liberate the villages and then to liberate the cities.
For this we should carry on
Dur work in cities from now on.
At the same time we should,
on the one hand, smash the enemy’s plans to suppress the peasant
armed
struggle,
and should, on the other hand,
prepare the Party and the people to seize political power by the time we liberate the cities.
We should, keeping this in
view, plan our work in cities. Support the Srikakulam Armed Struggle An armed struggle is going on in Srikakulam. releasing a separate
document
We are
explaining as to how this
movement has developed and what are the problems that arose in the course of the development of this movement.
248
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
We should take lessons from the experiences of Srikakulam movement.
We should carefully study the experiences that
the comrades are gaining at present. from these experiences.
We should take lessons
We should pass on our experiences
tothe comrades taking part in that struggle. We should not only support the Srikakulam armed struggle but should also attack the vile propaganda that the enemies are carrying on against it. Consolidate the Organisation of the Revolutionaries We should have well-organised and disciplined organisa¬ tion to implement the programme explained above, to build a revolutionary movement through it and to carry on the armed struggle.
Even though the State
Committee
and
all
the
District Committees work as Co-ordination Committees, they are often taking majority decisions and are functioning as Party Committees. Should we,
the
revolutionaries,
and
our Committee
function like this as Co-ordination Committee ?
Or should
we, based on the principle of democratic centralism, go in for the organisation of the Party ? This is the point of dis¬ cussion now. We are unable to centralise our activities due to the lack of discipline and concentration in the nature of Co-ordination Committees. character.
As a result, they are not acquiring revolutionary
In the areas where the Committees observed disci¬
pline and functioned as Party Committees, the revolutionary movement acquired a definite form and is marching forward.. Since our activities in other areas are being confined to mere discussions, they are not taking the form of mass movements. In view of these experiences, our Co-ordination Committee hasdecided to take necessary steps for building up the Party. In the light of this decision the Party building is going on in the struggle areas.
The Committees are deciding as ta
who should be the Party members. activities
To carry on the Party
effectively, the Area committees
and
the
Zonal
249
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
committees
have
been
constituted
and
are
functioning.
Necessary steps are being taken for the functioning of these units
in
accordance
with
the
principles
of democratic
centralism. The Area committees have been formed and are functioning in the Jangaon, Mulugu and Khammam area of Warangal and Khammam
districts.
We
should further
consolidate
and
develop them so that they would be capable of leading the armed struggle.
Further, we should take steps for all the
units in all the districts to function in accordance with the principles of democratic centralism.
Only then
could
the
necessary conditions for building the Party be secured. These steps are necessary for the future advance of the revolutionary movement. The question, as to who should be recognised as party members, still remains a problem.
As our cadres accept the
path of people’s war, we should mainly examine as to whether their practice is in accordance with it or not. From the time we began our work in the struggle areas to this day, we should examine the
activities of each of the cadres and decide as to
who should be and who should not be given the membership. Those
who
necessarily
be
should
be
whole-timers.
given
membership
need
not
But they should be prepared
to go underground when there is repression.
The membership
of those who are not whole-timers should be kept secret. We should see
that the
Party members through their
exemplary and revolutionary work, emerge as members of the Village Soviets and People’s Committees as well as the leaders of the regular squads, local squads and volunteer squads. Get Prepared for Armed Struggle It is our opinion that we should, after quickly completing the political propaganda, mass mobilisation as well as the above tasks on the organisational front, get prepared for the armed struggle by the coming monsoon. first drizzle,
We could, with the
begin the land distribution programme, the main
250
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
item of the agrarian revolutionary programme.
VOL II
By co-ordina¬
ting the guerilla warfare with this, a strong and broad mass base would be secured for the struggle. favourable period for resistance.
The rainy season is a
During this period—by the
land distribution and the functioning
of the Village Soviets
on one side, and organising the resistance
on the other, by
implementation of all of them simultaneously, the revolutionary movement would be strengthened and it would be in a position to withstand and march forward in the face of the enemy’s counter-offensive that would follow.
The comrades should
bear it in mind and march forward. As part of these preparations, a militant mass mobilisation against the landlords becomes necessary summer season.
in the end of the
Such a mobilisation would prove helpful
for the launching of the armed struggle. Comrades : Today there are favourable conditions for the implemen¬ tation
of the above programme.
The
ruling
classes are
frightened out of their wits at the activities of the revolutiona¬ ries. Because of this they are resorting to ruthless repression. At such a time
any complacence on our
part
would
be
unpardonable. In accordance with Mao’s thought, the liberation struggles are going on against imperialism, feudalism and reactionary forces in various parts of the world.
Following the path of
people’s war, the liberation struggle has
also started and is
advancing in Thailand. In China, the Communist Party under the leadership of Mao
has
victoriously
concluded
the
cultural
revolution,
liquidated revisionism and is marching forward. Taking advantage of all these favourable conditions, we should, along the path of people’s war, strive to take the agrarian revolution forward. forward.
Only then could we
Long Live Mao's Thought. Long Live Peasants' Armed Struggle.
march
POLITICAL RESOLUTION Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) April 22, 1969 The events of the last eighteen months since we repudiated the neo-revisionists, prove beyond doubt the correctness of ■our stand.
They prove that the line of rejecting the parlia¬
mentary path and adopting the path of revolutionary struggle is wholly correct.
During this period, the people of India
have seen the rank opportunism of all the bourgeois and revisionist parties and their total political bankruptcy.
They
have lost faith in all the bourgeois and revisionist parties and are convinced of the utter futility of the parliamentary path. Indian Society : Semi-Colonial and Semi-Feudal The events have also confirmed the correctness of our assessment as regards the stage, nature and
character of
our
rejecting
society,
state
and government.
While
the
revisionist understanding, we stated that India is a semi-colonial and semi-feudal country, that the Indian state is the state of the big landlords and comprador-bureaucrat capitalism and that its government is a lackey of U. S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism. on
“aid”
from
The abject dependence of Indian economy imperialist
countries,
chiefly
from U. S.
imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism, the thousands of collaboration
agreements,
the
imperialist plunder of *our
country through unequal trade and “aid”, the utter dependence for food on P. L. 480 etc, go to prove the semi-colonial ■character of our country. The increasing concentration of land in the hands of a few landlords, the expropriation of almost the total surplus produced by the toiling peasantry in the form of rent, the complete landlessness of about 40% of the rural population, the back
breaking usurious exploitation,
the
ever-growing
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
252
VOL IE
eviction of the poor peasantry coupled with the brutal social oppression—including the lynching of harijans, reminiscent of the mediaeval
ages, and the complete backwardness of
the technique of production clearly demonstrate the semifeudal character of our society. The fleecing of the Indian people by extracting the highest rate of profit, the concentration of much of India’s wealth in the hands of seventyfive
comprador-bureaucrat
capitalists,
the utilisation of the state sector in the interest of foreign monopolies and domestic big business and their unbriddled: freedom—all go to prove that it is the big landlords and comprador-bureaucrat capitalists who run the state. The political, economic, cultural and military grip of U. S.. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism on the Indian State, the dovetailing of its foreign policy with the U. S.-Soviet global strategy of encircling Socialist
China and suppressing the
national liberation struggle, the recent tours of Latin America and South East Asia by the Indian Prime Minister to further the interests
of this counter-revolutionary strategy, the total
support given by the Indian Govt, for the Soviet armed provo¬ cation against China, the fascist approval of Soviet aggression against Czechoslovakia and the active collaboration with the U. S. imperialists against the national liberation struggle of Vietnam clearly show that the Indian Govt, is a lackey of U. S. imperialism and Soviet revisionism. The rising tide of the peasant struggles in various parts of our country is further confirmation of our stand that the principal contradiction in our country at the present phase is between feudalism and the masses of our peasantry. The Indian revolution at this
stage is the
democratic
revolution of a new type'—the People’s Democratic Revolution —the main content of which is the agrarian revolution, the abolition of feudalism in the countryside. To destroy feudalism,, one of the two main props (comprador-bureaucrat capital being the other) of imperialism in our country, the Indian people will have to wage a bitter, protracted struggle against.
253
©EBATES AND DOCUMENTS
U. S. and Soviet social-imperialism too. By liberating them¬ selves from the yoke of feudalism, the Indian people will also liberate themselves from the yoke of imperialism and comprador-bureaucrat capital,
because the struggle against
feudalism is also a struggle against the other two enemies. Excellent Revolutionary Situation The international developments that have taken place in the recent period vindicate our stand that a very excellent revolutionary situation prevails in the world today.
The U.S.
imperialists and their chief accomplice, the Soviet revisionsts, are facing increasing difficulty in their dirty efforts to re-divide and enslave the whole world.
The growing intensity of the
armed struggle in Asia, Africa and Latin American countries for national liberation, is destroying the very foundation of imperialist rule. A new upsurge of struggle of the working class and the toiling peasants have overtaken the capitalist countries and the revolutionary ruling classes are facing an irreconciliable contradiction at home. An unprecedented wave of struggle of the Afro-American people against racial oppression that erupted with working class action is dealing powerful blows at the rule of the monopolis¬ tic classes in the United States. The revisionists, headed by the Soviet Union, are also confronted with an acute crisis and the people in the countries ruled by them are rising in, revolt against the restoration of capitalism and national subjugation and for the restoration of the dictatorship of the proletariat. On the other hand, Socialist China is performing a miracle of socialist construction.
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolu¬
tion has consolidated the dictatorship of the proletariat in every sphere of life, has created conditions for the emergence of the socialist man.
The victories of the cultural revolution have
culminated in the triumph of Mao’s Thought, the victories of Ninth National Congress of the great Communist Party of China.
The Thought of Chairman Mao is winning ever new
254
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
victories. The international class struggle has grown more intense than before and the doom of imperialism and all other reaction is near.
The world has created a new era in history—
the era of Chairman Mao’s Thought. The events of the last eighteen months have also proved the correctness of our view that the revolutionary situation in India is quite excellent.
Today, the ruling classes are enme¬
shed in a deeper economic and political crises than ever be¬ fore.
Contradictions between imperialism and the people,
between feudalism and the peasants, between capital and labour, and between different sections of the ruling classes are growing sharper
and sharper everyday.
The feudal fetters on the
masses of our peasantry have not yet been smashed and as a result of the intensified exploitation of our people by various imperialists, headed by the U. S. and Soviet imperialists and their Indian compradors, the working class, the peasantry and the petty-bourgeoisie and unemployment.
are victims of growing pauperisation At least ninetyfive percent of our people
are so hard hit due to poverty and wretchedness that they can no longer tolerate it and now they are impatient for a funda¬ mental change.
At the same time, a dog-fight is going on be¬
tween different sections and parties of the ruling classes that have linked their fate with that of the U. S., Soviet or British imperialists. Everywhere in India, the people are rising in bitter struggles to remove the four mountains that weigh upon them heavily. These mountains are U. S. Imperialism, Soviet Social-Imperia¬ lism, Feudalism, and Comprador-Bureaucrat Capitalism. Armed peasant struggle, which started in Naxalbari, have now spread to Srikakulam, Musahari and Lakhimpur Kheri and are spreading to the new areas.
Recently, the peasant
revolutionaries of Kerala staged a heroic revolt.
The revolu¬
tionary struggles of the Nagas, the Mizos and Kukis, who have risen with arms in hand, are also dealing hard blows at the reactionary regime.
The resistance of our people, both in
rural and in urban areas, fast develops and brings about a
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
255
new upsurge in the agrarian revolution—the main content of the democratic revolution. The reactionary ruling classes are resorting to brutal re¬ pression in order to beat back the rising tide of people’s struggles.
They are rushing their armed forces and police
personnel to the areas where armed struggles have broken out. Police firing, lathi-charge, tear-gassing, arrest and detention without trial have become the order of the day.
The ruling
classes are everyday arming themselves with all sorts of ‘demo¬ cratic’ legislative power to crush the class struggles.
At the
same time, every effort is being made to deceive the people and disrupt their struggles.
Communalism, casteism, provincialism
and all types of parochialism are being pressed into service to destroy the growing unity of our fighting people. chauvinism is
being fanned against
Socialist
National
China
and
neighbouring Pakistan to dupe the people and suppress their struggles.
In the name of national integration, the ruling
classes are trying to impose Hindi in the teeth of stiff opposi¬ tion from various nationalities. Equality of all nations and national languages is being denied. In such a situation when revolutionary struggles are advan¬ cing rapidly and when the ruling classes are making frantic efforts to suppress them, the revisionists and neo-revisionists have come forward to serve as the lackeys of imperialism and domestic reaction.
By presenting the so-called ‘United Front’
govts, as “organ of struggle”, by raising the slogan of “pro¬ viding relief” to the people they are trying to create illusions among the people in order to blunt their revolutionary consci¬ ousness and divert them from the path struggle.
of
revolutionary
These “United Front” govts, are in essence the
answer of the reactionary ruling class to the challenge thrown by the
people.
The neo-revisionists have been shouting that
“time is not yet ripe for revolution”, “the people are not yet prepared for it”, and that “the slogan of armed guerilla stru¬ ggle is an adventurist slogan.”
There is no doubt that these
lackeys of foreign and domestic reaction are only trying their
256
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
best to dampen the revolutionary spirit of our
VOL II
toiling people
in order to save their masters from the fiery wrath of the people. Struggle between Two Lines in the Party The history of the Communist Party of India is the history of struggle between the line of class struggle and the line of class collaboration and treachery, between revolutionary ranks and the bourgeois, ship.
the
proletarian
reactionary leader¬
An appraisal of the Party history will show that the
leadership has always acted as conscious traitors to the revolu¬ tionary cause of our people.
It will also show that the revo¬
lutionary ranks failed to overthrow the treacherous leadership earlier because of their inability to make concrete analysis of the classes in Indian society and of their role in the Indian revolution. With the great victory of anti-Fascist war, in which the Soviet people led by Stalin, played the most outstanding role, and the glorious victory of the Chinese people led by Com¬ rade Mao Tsetung, over Japanese imperialism, the fascist im¬ perialist powers met with their doom, thus severely weakening imperialism as a whole.
The world-shaking victory of the
great Chinese Revolution under the wise leadership of Com¬ rade Mao Tsetung breached the imperialist front in the East and the world balance of force underwent a change.
It is
during the anti-Japanese War of Resistance that Comrade Mao Tsetung’s theory of People’s War was fully developed: it charted a new path—the path that all the peoples of colonial and semi-colonial countries like India must pursue, to liberate themselves from the yoke of imperialist and domestic re¬ action.
A storm of revolutionary struggles raged over various
countries of Asia where the people followed the road indicated by Chairman Mao, the road of People’s War.
The pent-up
wrath of the Indian people found expression in a widespread, heroic revolt against the rule of the imperialists.
Led by the
working class, India’s peasantry took to the path of armed
257
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
struggle : the peasants of Punnapra-Vayalar put up resistance against the reactionary armed forces, the peasants of Telengana rose with arms in hand against the rule of the feudal lords, the peasants of Bengal waged the Tebhaga struggle against feudal exploitation.
There was an upsurge of working class struggle
all over the country.
The revolt spread even among the ranks
of the police, the Army and the Navy.
But the revisionist
leadership acted as the lackey of the imperialists and the domestic reactionaries and
betrayed
Alarmed at the revolutionary
these
great
struggles.
upsurge, imperialism struck a
deal with the Congress that represented comprador capital and feudalism in India. direct rule
The country was partitioned, the
of the imperialists changed
into
their indirect
rule. Together with all other political parties of India, the revisionist leadership
committed this treachery against the
people. The Second Congress of the Party witnessed the revolt of ranks
against
the
sordid betrayal.
The
Ranadive
clique
utilised these revolts to seize the leadership of the Party.
The
Secretariat of the Andhra Provincial Committee which was then leading the Telengana struggle, correctly pointed out that the Indian revolution could win victory only by following the road blazed by China, the road of People’s War.
The Ranadive
clique opposed this correct formulation of the Andhra Secre¬ tariat and adopted the Trotskyite theory of accomplishing both the democratic revolution and the socialist revolution at one •stroke.
Thus, this clique diverted the attention
of the Party
ranks from the agrarian revolution—the basic task of the •democratic revolution.
Sectarianism led the Party members
into adventurist actions.
Though the Ranadive clique followed
this wrong and suicidal policy,
the peasant revolutionaries
of Telengana did not deviate from the path of struggle. advanced
They
this struggle forward by adopting the tactics of
guerilla war.
The Ranadive clique formally abandoned the
sectarian line when they were forced with a revolt of the ranks. The just intervention of the international leadership helped Vol 11—17
258
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
this process.
VOL II
But the same treacherous policy was restored
with the adoption of the programme of 1951 The programme and the tactical line of 1951 were adopted on the understanding that the Indian big bourgeoisie has a dual character.
By this dual character was meant that the
Indian big bourgeoisie has an anti-imperialist role as well as a proneness to compromise with imperialism.
In other words,
the Indian big bourgeoisie is regarded as the national bour¬ geoisie.
Though Comrade Stalin said as early as 1925 that
the section of the Indian bourgeoisie which is big and powerful had already deserted to the camp of the imperialists and had formed a bloc with them, yet, while swearing by the name of Stalin and adopting a programme of national uprising, the treacherous leadership
of the Communist Party depicted the
big bourgeoisie as the national bourgeoisie.
This enabled the
revisionist leadership to describe the Indian State as an inde¬ pendent bourgeois state.
Though they held that the Indian
Govt, is the government of the landlords and the big bourgeoisie closely linked with imperialism, they put forward the theory that the big bourgeoisie is the most powerful element in this combination and that it is they who are building the Indian State as an independent bourgeois state.
Taking advantage
of this theory, the Dange clique adopted the political line that feudalism
no longer exists
developed in agriculture.
in India and that capitalism has Thus, Nehru was described as the
representative of the progressive bourgeoisie.
The
Dange
clique adopted a liquidationist policy as they held that India’s national democratic government would be set up by forming an alliance with the bourgeoisie.
At the same time,
they
preached that the more Soviet ‘aid’ India received, the more secure would be India’s freedom.
That is, Soviet ‘aid’ would
enable India to move out of the orbit of imperialist domina¬ tion.
We learn from the experience of the great Chinese
Party that in 1927, after Chiang Kaishek’s rise to power, the Chinese Trotskyites
declared that the Chiang Kaishek
clique had overthrown imperialism and feudalism and were.
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
259
preaching the path of independent capitalist development. The Right opportunist Chen Tu-Hsiu followed this Trotskyite line. They held that with the completion of the democratic revolution, China had entered the stage of socialist revolution. They raised the demand “Set up the National Assembly”, opted for legal movement and deserted the path of revolutionary struggle. They were opposed to all kinds of revolutionary struggle and were expelled from the Party. The treacherous revisionist leadership of the CPI followed the same path and opposed every kind of revolutio¬ nary struggle. They forced Telengana’s revolutionary peasants to surrender arms and stabbed the struggles of the peasants in the back wherever, in India, they rose in revolt. When, in 1962, the Indian Govt, launched an aggression against the Chinese frontier guards, the treacherous role of the Dange clique was clearly exposed before the Party ranks. The Party members rebelled against the renegade Dange clique. Taking advantage of their revolt, the Ranadive clique again seized the leadership of the Party, as in 1948. Even in the programme adopted at the Seventh Congress of the Party in 1964, they depicted the Indian State as an indepen¬ dent state. Assuming that the Indian big bourgeoisie had an anti-imperialist role, they declared that Soviet ‘aid’ would safeguard India’s freedom and lead to the sharpening of the contradiction with U. S. imperialism. The same Trotskyite theories had been adopted in the programme of the Seventh Congress too. By describing the Indian revolu¬ tion, instead of directly calling it socialist revolution, the Ranadive clique had resorted to trickery. No sooner had the Seventh Congress been over than it was declared on behalf of the Polit Bureau that the Party would pursue the legal, parliamentary path. So, no revolutionary party but another bourgeois party emerged out of the Seventh Congress. And this Party has today forged unity with world reaction by allying itself with the renegade Dange clique and has become a Party hostile to the Indian masses—an instrument for
260
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
suppressing the liberation struggle of the Indian people. this period has witnessed increasing collaboration Soviet and U. S. Imperialism.
Yet,
between
The Soviet renegade clique is
opposing every national liberation struggle in the world and has tightened its neo-colonial grip on
India.
Despite
all
this, the Ranadive clique not only sing praises of the Soviet Union as a ‘Socialist State’ but are also loud in praise of Soviet ‘aid’.
Though the character of the Indian big bour¬
geoisie is essentially comprador and bureaucratic, the Ranadive clique propagate that they are and thus try to
make
India’s
appendage to the bourgeoisie.
independent and sovereign revolutionary
struggle an
By under-estimating the feudal
-exploitation of the peasant masses they belittle the importance of the agrarian revolution and seek to lead
the
peasant
struggles alongthe path of compromise. So, the most important task today is to build up a revolutionary Communist Party armed with Marxism-Leninism,
and the Thought of
Mao-
Tsetung. Today, the sparks of Naxalbari have spread to many parts of India and will soon spread to newer and newer areas. Without overthrowing the enemies of the Indian people—U. S. imperialism,
Soviet social-imperialism,
India’s
comprador-
bureaucratic capitalism and feudalism, there can be no solution of any of the
problems of the Indian people, the reign of
darkness over India cannot be ended, nor can India advance one step along the road of progress.
Task before the Revolutionary Party While this revolutionary Party has been formed in India, it should be borne in mind that the Indian Party may commit both Right and ‘Left’ deviations because the Party of India’s working class has never before given serious consideration to the role of the peasants in the agrarian revolution. Mao has taught us, “Who are our friends ? of the first importance for the revolution.
Chairman
This is a question The basic reason
why all previous revolutionary struggles in China achieved so little was their failure to unite with real friends in order to
261
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
attack real enemies.
A revolutionary Party is the guide of
the masses and no revolution ever succeeds when the revolu¬ tionary Party leads astray. achieve
To assure that we shall definitely
success in our revolution
and shall not lead the
masses astray, we must pay attention to uniting with our real friends in order to attack our real enemies.
To distinguish
friends from real enemies, we must make a general analysis of the economic status of the various classes in Chinese society and of their respective
attitudes towards the revolution”.
If the poor landless peasants, who constitute the majority of the peasantry, the firm ally of the working class, unite with the middle peasants, then the vastest section of the Indian people will be united
and the
democratic
revolution
will
inevitably win victory.
It is the responsibility of the working
class as the leader of the revolution to unite with the peasantry —the main force of the revolution—and to advance towards seizure of power through armed struggle. of the worker-peasant
It is on the basis
alliance that a revolutionary united
front of all revolutionary
classes will be built up.
As the
Party of the working class, the Communist Party must take upon itself the chief responsibility of organising the peasantry and
advancing
struggle.
towards
seizure
of power
through
armed
To fulfil this task the revolutionary Communist
Party must study
Chairman Mao’s Thought, for it is only
Chairman Mao’s Thought that can bring the peasant masses into the revolutionary front and Chairman Mao’s theory of Peoples’ War is the only means by which an apparently weak revolutionary force can wage successful struggles against an apparently powerful enemy and can win victory.
The basic
tactic of struggle of the revolutionary peasantry led by the working class is guerilla warfare. the Chairman’s teaching :
We must bear in mind
“Guerilla warfare is
basic but
lose no chance for mobile warfare under favourable condit¬ ions''.
Our tactics as described by Comrade Lin Piao are :
“You fight in your own way, we can win and move away
we fight in ours. We fight when when we cannot”.
The task
262
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
of the Party of the working class is not merely to master tactics but also to rally all the other revolutionary behind
the basic programme
of
the
classes
agrarian revolution.
The revolutionary Party will be able to carry out this task only when it educates itself in the
Thought of Chairman
Mao, adopts the style of work taught by him, and practises self-criticism. It is the delay in India’s democratic revolution that enables U.
S. imperialism and Soviet sccial-imperialism to unite the
reactionary forces of the world and to oppose the liberation struggles
in different
countries of the world.
The U. S.
imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism are using India as a main base for carrying out their strategy for joint domination.
world
India is also the centre of conspiracies against
Socialist China, the base of world revolution, the hope of the exploited people of
the whole world.
That is why it is not
merely the patriotic duty of the Indian people to accomplish the I ndian revolution, it is also their internationalist duty. The international significance of the Indian revolution is very great.
Great Lenin dreamt of the day when revolutionary
India would unite with revolutionary China and bring about the collapse of the world imperialist system.
That is why at
the time of the formation of the Party, the Indian revolutiona¬ ries must resolve that they shall unite with the great people of China and thus forge unity with the liberation struggles of the various countries, that they shall build up a revolutionary united front and destroy world imperialism and accomplice,
modern revisionism.
its
chief
Chairman Mao has given
the call : “People of the world unite still more closely and launch a sustained and vigorous offensive against our common
enemy,
accomplices.
It can be said with certainty that the
complete
U. S. Imperialism and
its
collapse of colonialism, imperialism and
all systems of exploitation, and the complete emanci-
263
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
pation of all the oppressed peoples and nations of the world are not far off.” Our task is to prepare ourselves to respond to this call. [Reproduced from Liberation Vol.2, No. 7, May 20, 1969]
RESOLUTION ON PARTY ORGANISATION Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) April 22, 1969 Background Our Political Resolution has already made it amply clear how at each critical stage of our National Liberation struggle the leadership of the Party consciously betrayed the revolu¬ tionary cause by dragging the Party into the morass of Right Opportunism and Left Sectarianism.
We have seen how the
Party leadership betrayed the great armed struggle of the Telengana peasantry, the struggle of the people in the Native States, the great Tebhaga and Bakasht peasant struggles in North India, the great mutiny of the R. I. N. ratings and other sections of the armed forces.
We have seen how the
Party leadership recoiled in dread at the sight of the great anti¬ imperialist and anti-feudal upsurge that engulfed the whole of India in the post-war years, the upsurge that was part of the world-wide high tide of national liberation struggles delivering devastating blows against imperialism and their lackeys, thus shaking the entire edifice of the imperialist rule in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
We have seen how the Party leadership
consciously worked in post-war years to transform the Party from the weapon of class struggle into the weapon of class collaboration, from the general staff of revolution into a docile stooge of reaction, from a revolutionary Party into a legal and parliamentary Party and from a Party of proletarian inter¬ nationalism into a national chauvinist Party.
The bloody re¬
pression unleashed on the heroic peasant masses of Naxalbari
264
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL IJ
by the Revisionist leadership was the final act of treachery which completely unmasked their ugly and counter-revolutionary face.
A careful analysis of the Party history proves beyond a
shadow of doubt that there was nothing accidental in these betrayals of the Party leadership as they have refused to learn from the great armed struggle of the Chinese people who were conducting the most longdrawn and the bitterest war of liberation in the hitherto known history against imperialism and their lackeys.
These betrayals could take place because
the leadership took care to see that the Party was not rooted among the toiling people, especially among the working class, and the peasantry.
They could take place because political
consciousness of the ranks was deliberately kept at a low level. However, the history of the Party also proves that time and again the Party ranks have risen in open revolt against the policies of betrayals by the leadership and have been constantly fighting for a thorough revolutionary and proletarian inter¬ nationalist line in both theory and practice. have played a glorious
role in
The Party ranks
unleashing and conducting
the above-mentioned struggles and have kept the flames of class struggle burning throughout India’s struggle for emanci¬ pation from imperialism and feudal bondage.
The rank and
file of the Communist Party have stood at the head of bitter class struggles and have borne the brunt of bloody repression and thousands of
them
Indian revolution.
There is nothing accidental in this pheno¬
menon either.
fell martyrs to
the cause of the
It was natural that fired by the highest ideals
of Communism and closely linked with the suffering masses, the Party ranks represented the revolutionary urges of the people throughout this period. To sum up, it can be safely said that the history of the Communist Party of India has been the history of ceaseless struggles between
the bourgeois stand-point and the prole¬
tarian stand-point, between the bourgeois line and proletarian line and between the bourgeois reactionary leadership and the proletarian revolutionary ranks.
265
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
It must also be emphasised that the revolutionary struggle of the Naxalbari peasantry represented the final break of the revolutionary ranks from the counter-revolutionary leadership and the formation of the All India Co-ordination Committee of the Communist Revolutionaries was the first link in the chain process of building a truly revolutionary Communist Party in India.
Inspired by the invincible Thought of Chair¬
man Mao and drawing lessons from the Great Chinese Revo¬ lution, the All India Co-ordination Committee have
been
conducting heroic armed struggle in many parts of the country, particularly in Srikakulam, Lakhimpur Kheri and other places. The bankruptcy of the parliamentary path has been proved and the treachery of the Revisionists and Neo-revisionists has been exposed considerably.
The last eighteen months have wit¬
nessed the unification of the revolutionaries of India on all the essentials of Party Programme, thus placing the immediate formation of the Party on the agenda, as Chairman Mao tea¬ ches us : “If there is to be a revolution, there must be a revo¬ lutionary Party.” The Ideological Political Unification The building of a revolutionary Party is, first and foremost,, the ideological
and political building.
The
neo-revisionist
leadership of the Party could easily befool the revolutionary ranks simply by deferring the ideological and political ques¬ tions to a secondary place and putting the organisational tasks in the first place.
Most of the revolutionary cadres were
swayed away by wrong notions about Party unity and legality and thus played into the hands of the revisionist gang.
We
must now draw a proper lesson from this mistake and must give first place to ideology and politics above everything else. The ideological and political building of the Party today means : i) That we all accept Marxism-Leninism-Mao’s Thought as the guide to all revolutionary activity and apply their general truths to our concrete conditions.
We all pledge to become
266
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
true disciples of Chairman Mao, the greatest Marxist-Leninist of our era. ii)
We must attain unanimity regarding fundamental prob¬
lems raised during our struggle against revisionists of all vari¬ eties and also regarding the mistakes made by most of the revolutionaries. iii)
We must attain unanimity regarding the essential points
of our Party Programme, namely, the nature of Indian society, the primary task
and perspective of Indian revolution, the
motive force of our revolution and the path that we have to traverse, that is, on the general plan of Indian revolution. The unanimity that we have arrived at is being summarised in another resolution and the whole of the Party has to be educated and united on that basis. The Party of Armed Revolution The revolutionaries of India have now arrived at a common understanding regarding the futility of the parliamentary path, the parties which were organised on the basis of parliamen¬ tarism have sunk to the level of reaction and counter-revolu¬ tion all over the world.
Our experience, like the experiences
gained by many other parties, shows that the so-called inter¬ weaving of parliamentary
and non-parliamentary paths, in
practice, amounts only to the degeneration of the Party into a parliamentary party, into the position of appendage to the reactionary
ruling classes.
In present day India, the
big
landlords and the big bourgeoisie have found out a new device for hoodwinking the people, i. e. by setting up non-Congress Governments
with revisionists and
of all descriptions.
reactionary
politicians
Under such conditions, great pulls and
pressures of parliamentarism are bound to creep up again and again. All these pressures and pulls have to be combated most vehemently so that we are able to lead the Indian people on the path of revolution. Revolution.
So, our Party is the Party of Armed
No other path exists before the Indian people
267
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
but the path of Armed Revolution. It must be understood that the Party cannot be built in isolation from armed struggle. The Rural-Based Party The revolutionaries have also assimilated the truth that the path of armed revolution is the path of the People’s War.
In
the conditions in India, Asia and all other semi-colonial and semi-feudal countries in Africa and Latin America, it is first and foremost a peasants’ war against feudalism.
Therefore, the
first and foremost task of our Party is to rouse the peasant masses in the countryside to wage guerilla war, unfold agra¬ rian revolution, build rural base areas, use the countryside to encircle the cities and finally to capture the cities and to liberate the whole country.
Thus, in the present day phase
of Indian Revolution, the centre of gravity of our work has to be in the villages. So our Party, in the first instance, has to be a rural-based Party and not a town-based Party. The Secret and Underground Party A revolutionary Party, to be able to conduct a longdrawn armed
struggle,
cannot and must not remain a legal Party.
It must function with the utmost secrecy and keep its main • cadres
underground.
Though
the
Party
should
learn to
utilise all possible legal opportunities for developing its revolu¬ tionary activities, it should under no circumstances, functon in the open. We must assimilate the teaching of Comrade Lin Piao, which has also been confirmed in our recent Sonapet struggle, ■‘Guerilla warfare is the only way to mobilise and apply the whole strength of the people against the enemy.”
The coming
period will be a period of fast developing guerilla struggle throughout the vast expanse of our country and the Party is called upon to conduct and lead them confidently. the Party
should
Therefore,
concentrate, in the main, on developing
guerilla forms of armed struggle and not waste time and its
268
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
energies in holding open mass meetings and forming kisan sabhas in the old style. A Party of New Style According to Chairman Mao, the Marxist-Leninist style of work essentially entails integrating theory with practice, forging close links with the masses and practising criticism and self-criticism.
It means that our Party, while persisting in
the ideological and political line has to evolve a mass line on the basis of ‘taking from the masses and giving to the masses’ and must constantly raise the level of its understanding. It also means that it has to evolve a proper method of criticism
and self-criticism.
The cadre has to be educated
through self-criticism by the leadership.
In criticising
the
mistakes of the cadre, the policy of ‘curing the disease and saving the patient’ will have to be constantly worked out. It is in this way that our Party is going to be a Party of the new style. Developing Teams of Revolutionary Leadership All these tasks can be performed only by a leadership which
is
advanced in theory and boundlessly loyal to the
historical mission of the proletariat.
Absolute devotion to
the cause, contact with the masses, ability to find out one’s bearings and observance of discipline independently are the first and foremost criteria on the basis of which the teams of leadership should be reorganised at all levels.
We should not,
in the least, hesitate in ‘getting rid of the stale and taking in the fresh’.
It will be the incumbent duty of these leading
teams at different levels to work out the method of ‘combining general with the particular’ and of ‘combining with the masses’.
leadership
It means that those who refuse to take
active part in revolutionary activities and refuse to leave the cities and go to the rural areas to organise red bases of agrarian revolution should, in no case, be allowed to remain members of these leading teams.
Every member of these
269
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
leading teams, in whatever post he is, should be entrusted with the task of particular guidance to a selected area and to get personal experience therefrom.
Exceptions to this rule
may be granted only from the point of view of the Party’s requirements
and
the requirements
of the
armed struggle
and from no other angle. It means that the leading teams are to be organised only by professional revolutionaries, only by those who are ready to give up every other interest but the revolution. While organising such leading teams, care must be taken to bring in all the professional revolutionaries in the Co-ordi¬ nation who accept and implement the main line put forward by our Political and Organisational resolutions. It may take some time and great energy in organising the kind of leading teams that our Party requires. difficult job.
It will be a
Much explanatory work will have to be done,
traditional boundaries based upon
administrative units
of
our committee will have to be changed. But these committees or leading teams of leadership cannot perform their
jobs
unless the criteria set for the teams are strictly applied and the method
of
leadership
enunciated
by
Chairman
Mao
properly inplemented. Recruitment of Party Members It is under the guidance of such committees that proper -enrolment of Party membership has to be conducted. While enrolling the membership of the Party, all notions :about mass
membership of the Party should be combated.
A revolutionary Party does not become a mass Party by virtue of its large number of members.
Such is the criteria
-fixed by revisionists and parliamentary parties.
A revoluti¬
nary Party becomes a mass Party by virtue of its mass line, by virtue of its closest links with the masses, by virtue of its being merged
with
the
masses.
quality that is essential and Party.
It is not the number but the primary
for a revolutionary
270
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
We will enroll only such members in our Party who accept Marxism-Leninism-Mao’s Thought as a guide to action, who accept all the essential points of our Party Programme and the organisational line set forth in our Political and Organisa¬ tional
resolutions,
participate in daily
activity
under
the
discipline of some of the Party organisations and give financial aid to the Party according to their capacity.
Those comrades
who are unable to fulfil these primary conditions of Party membership
but have stood with us in revolt against the
revisionists, will certainly not like to degrade our Party to the level of social-democracy by lightening these conditions and we are fully entitled to expect that they will remain our best sympathisers and helpers.
We are confident that with the
rising tide of revolution, innumerable young elements from the working class,
peasants,
and fighting especially the
poor peasants and other toiling sections will join our Party readily fulfilling all the conditions of Party membership.
It
must be our constant endeavour to bring them into the Party organisation and turn them into the finest cadre. Elements from the petty-bourgeoisie, who take the standpoint of the working class and integrate themselves with the basic masses will also be welcomed.
But those who belong to the exploiting
classes, bad characters etc, should in no case be allowed to join the Party. No nation or class has ever attained its liberation without braving the storms and fulfilling the quota of sacrifices.
Our
Party and its members have to play an exemplary vanguard role by their perseverance, courage, initiative and sacrifices. They must place the interests of the Party and the people above their personal interests. Democratic Centralism Our Party will be organised on the principle of democratic centralism.
To conduct a revolutionary struggle, establishing
iron discipline in the Party is indispensable. condition
to
establish
But the first
iron discipline in the Party is by
271
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
creating an
atmosphere of democracy and establishing demo¬
cracy under central
guidance.
Only by constantly
giving
correct line of guidance, only by constantly getting familiar with the lower bodies and with the life of the masses, only by taking firm and
well-considered decisions and only by
promptly transmitting those decisions to the lower bodies, getting them thoroughly
discussed and helping the
lower
bodies in finding out methods of implementing them can the democracy under central guidance be developed
and
the
authority of the leadership established. This is the proper way of establishing the authority of the leading bodies.
This is the proper way of developing innumer¬
able successors of revolution by unleashing their initiative. Fight wrong conceptions and alien trends The bureaucratic
methods
employed by the bourgeois
reactionary leadership of the Party during the entire period of our Party’s existence, coupled with their meanest craftiness have terribly shaken the confidence of the Party ranks and, as a result, tendencies
all have
sorts of idealist, grown in them.
anarchic and
autonomist
The apprehension of a
possible re-emergence of a bureaucratic leadership has been utilised by various petty-bourgeois groups who are assiduously compaigning to prevent the building up of a revolutionary Party in India.
All sorts of anti-Marxist ideas and concepts
like ‘historical inevitability of groupism at this stage’, ‘the Party growing automatically out of struggle’ and leaving the task of building the Party to spontaneity in the name of building the Party from below and general varieties of ‘poly-centrism’, being preached by these groups.
are
On the one hand, they claim
to preach the Thought of Chairman Mao and support the Naxalbari path and on the other, they deliberately work to sabotage the building of a revolutionary Communist Party in India which alone can lead a revolution through to the end. Hence the building up of the Party means, on the one hand, to declare a relentless war against the bureaucratic methods
272
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
of leadership still prevalent among us at various levels and on the other, to expose and annihilate the alien, idealistic, anarchic and autonomistic concepts being preached by these groups. It is only by exposing and thoroughly smashing these alien concepts
that
those
honest
revolutionaries
who
are
still
following these groups can be won into the Party. There must be complete clarity in our minds in the methods of our leadership, in the style of our work and in our day to day practical life.
Revisionist methods, habits and practices
still dominate and they can be eradicated
and revolutionary
proletarian methods, habits and practices
can grow only by
constant
endeavour
participation in
to
remould
ourselves through active
revolutionary struggles and subjecting our¬
selves to criticism and self-criticism. Ours is the real Communist Party of India. the word
‘Marxist-Leninist’
after its name
(It will affix -to denote its
differentiation from the parties running under the leadership of the Dange clique and other neo-revisionists.) This is the Party of the proletariat and it represents the true aspirations and policies of the revolutionary class. This Party will give first preference to ideological and political building rather than to organisational structure. This Party will take as its first task the training of revolu¬ tionary cadres in revolutionary activity. This Party will be a Party of armed struggle and will be a rural-based Party in the first instance and will give first preference to the building of revolutionary base areas in the countryside rather than work in the cities in the present phase of the revolution. This Party will give first preference to prepare the working class to assume the role of leadership
of our
revolution
than to carrying on economic and cultural activities in the cities. This Party will give first preference to the task of organising leading teams of the
Party than to the enrolment of the
Party members on a mass scale.
273
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
This Party will give first preference to the quality
of
membership rather than to the quantity. This Party will be organised on the basis of democratic centralism but it will give first prefernce to the task of unlea¬ shing democracy under centralised guidance rather than to the formal discipline. This Party will develop a mass line and will be the first on criticism and self-criticism. It is in this way that we take our first organisational steps towards rebuilding the Party. The All India Co-ordination Committee sets up the Central Organising Committee from its midst with those of its members leading the armed struggles as its guiding force. The Committee appeals to all the State units and all other units to discuss this resolution along with our Political resolu¬ tion and to send us their points and suggestions within the next two months. It appeals to all its State Committees to set up State Organising Committees and Committees for
different areas
in the same manner, strictly adhering to the criteria set forth for the leading teams.
It is only under the
strict guidance of
the State Organising Committees that the members of the Party will be enrolled. It appeals to all revolutionary comrades to unite ideologi¬ cally and politically and to shoulder the rebuilding the Party.
responsibility
of
It is on the basis of this discussion and
some experience of functioning of the Party that the Central Organising Committee will place before a Party Congress the drafts of the Party Programme and the Party Constitution and take further steps towards Party building. We earnestly appeal to all State Units of the Co-ordination Committee to
prepare reports of the conditions of the masses
and self-critical reviews of their functioning so that a consoli¬ dated review of all-India developments may
be placed before
the Congress and necessary decision may be taken on that basis. Vol 11—18
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
274
VOL If
We are fully confident that our Party, led by invincible Thought of Chairman Mao and trying to become his worthy disciple, will be able to lead the revolution through to the end.
A CRITIQUE OF THE POLITICAL RESOLUTION [We mention below some of the major criticisms of the Political Resolution of the CPI(ML), contained in the 18-point document, reportedly placed before the Party leadership in June 1969 by a section of cadres of Howrah District, West Bengal, who subsequent to their expulsion from the Party, later formed the LIBERATION FRONT—a group which, even after that, accepted the CPI(ML) as a revolutionary party. Ed.] 1)
Although it is a fact that the revolutionary section of
the Indian people has
discarded the parliamentary path, it
would be incorrect to suggest that people as a whole have lost all faith in all the bourgeois and revisionist parties, or they no longer harbour any illusion about the parliamentary path, or they are eagerly waiting for a fundamental and radical transformation of the socio-political system. 2)
At present, clearly visible is the unity—and not disunity
—amongst the ruling classes that have identified their interests with imperialism. 3)
The principal contradiction in the present phase of the
Indian revolution is the contradiction between feudalism and the Indian people and not that between feudalism and the peasantry. 4)
It would be wrong to draw a strict parallelism between
the experiences of the CPC and the Communist movement in India while refering to some deviations from the correct path committed by the Party leadership. 5)
Maintaining silence over the need to form a political
‘base area’ may provide incentive to form “roving guerilla bands.” 6)
Notwithstanding
the correctness of the formulation
that under the leadership of the working class the principal
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
275
tactic of the revolutionary peasants is guerilla war, it is wrong to maintain that there is no need for mass movements, mass organisations and class struggles. 7)
The contention that the major part of India’s wealth is
in the hands of 75 comprador capitalists is not correct as feudalism still constitutes the main enemy of the Indian people and the largest part of India’s wealth is still under the control of the feudal lords.
Moreover, taking the banking and public
sectors into account, this contention is far from correct in the light of the data published by the Monopoly Enquiry Com¬ mission, 1965.
PROGRAMME of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)
Adopted at the PARTY CONGRESS held in May 1970 1.
Our beloved country is one of the biggest and most
ancient countries of the world inhabited by 500 million people. Ours is an agrarian country, a country of the peasant masses, hard-working and talented.
They
have rich revolutionary
traditions and a glorious cultural heritage. 2.
The British imperialists conquered India and estab¬
lished their direct rule some 200 years ago and since then the history of our country has been a history of ceaseless struggles waged
by
imperialism
the
heroic
and
Independence in
feudal
Indian
peasantry
oppression.
The
against First
British War
of
1857, a war fought by the peasantry and
rebel soldiers, turned into a conflagration engulfing the whole of the vast country, inflicting many humiliating defeats on the imperialists and shaking the very foundations of the alien imperialist rule.
This great uprising of the Indian people
failed owing to the betrayal by India’s feudal princes. 3. Since then India has witnessed innumerable armed peasant revolts.
However, these revolts failed as there was
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
276
VOL II
no scientific theory and no revolutionary leadership capable of leading them to victory. 4.
The Indian bourgeoisie, comprador in nature, inter¬
vened to divert the national liberation struggle from the path of revolution to the path of compromise Beginning
from
the
Champaran
and
peasant
surrender.
struggle,
the
Gandhian leadership representing the upper stratum of the bourgeoisie and feudal class, with its ideology of ‘ahimsa’ ‘satyagraha’,
passive
resistance and ‘charkha’,
sought to
tailor the national movement to serve the interests of the British imperialist rule and its feudal lackeys. 5.
The Great October Revolution brought the ideology
of Marxism-Leninism Party of
India was
opportunities, the
to our country and the born.
However,
despite
Communist tremendous
leadership of the working class could not
be established over the national liberation struggle as the leadership of the Party refused to fight Gandhism and the Gandhian leadership and to take to the path of revolution. The leadership refused to integrate the universal
truth of
Marxism-Leninism with the concrete practice of Indian revolu¬ tion.
It refused to integrate the Party with the heroic masses,
chiefly the revolutionary peasantry, and to forge a revolutio¬ nary united front.
It refused to learn from the great liberation
struggle of the Chinese people led by the CPC and Chairman Mao Tsetung and to take to the path of armed struggle. 6.
On the contrary, the leadership of the CPI consciously
trailed behind the leadership of the Congress and betrayed the revolution from the very beginning.
The leaders of the
CPI were agents of imperialism and feudalism.
Despite the
treachery of the leadership, the Party ranks stood with the suffering people, led many class battles and made
untold
sacrifices for the cause of the Indian proletariat. 7.
The smashing defeat of the fascist powers at the hands
of the world people led by the Soviet
Union
under
the
leadership of Great Stalin and the world-shaking victorious advance of the Great Chinese liberation struggle under the
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
277
leadership of Chairman Mao brought about a new alignment of forces
the
world
over.
Imperialism
was
very
much
weakened and the national liberation struggle of the colonial people surged forward like a torrent throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America, threatening to sweep imperialism and its lackeys away. 8.
An unprecedented revolutionary
the Indian sub-continent too.
situation overtook
The mighty movement for the
release of ‘Azad Hind’ prisoners, powerful anti-imperialist demonstrations by students all over India, the great Tebhaga and Bakasht struggles, the anti-feudal struggles in the princely states, the powerful struggle of the P&T workers, the armed revolt of the R.I.N.
ratings along with rebellions in the Air
Force and the Army and the police revolt in Bihar, the great solidarity actions of the working class and the beginning of the historic armed peasant struggle in Telengana brought the imperialist rule in India almost to the verge of collapse. 9.
Faced with such a situation, the British imperialism
pressed into services its tried agents—the leaders of the Indian National Congress, Muslim League and of the CPI with a view to crushing this revolutionary upsurge of the Indian people.
The
country was
partitioned
amidst
communal
carnage and the Congress leadership representing the compra¬ dor bourgeoisie and big landlords, was installed in power while the British imperialists stepped into the background. The sham independence declared in 1947 was nothing but a replacement of the colonial and semi-feudal set-up with a semi-colonial and semi-feudal one. 10.
During these years of sham independence the big
comprador-bureaucrat
bourgeoisie and big landlord
ruling
classes have been serving their imperialist masters quite faith¬ fully. British
These lackeys of imperialism, while preserving the old imperialist
exploitation,
have
also
brought U. S.
imperialist and Soviet social-imperialist exploiters to fleece our country. 11.
They have mortgaged our country to the imperialist
278
naxalbari AND AFTER
VOL II
powers, mainly to the U. S. imperialists and Soviet socialimperialists.
With
the weakening of the power of British
imperialism the world over, the Indian ruling classes have now hired themselves out to U. S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism.
Thus instead of two mountains, British
imperialism and feudalism, the Indian people are now weighed down under the four huge mountains, namely, imperialism headed by U. S. imperialism, Soviet social-imperialism, feuda¬ lism
and
comprador-bureaucrat
capital.
turned into a neo-colony of U. S. social-imperialism. by these
Thus, India has
imperialism and Soviet
The ruthless exploitation and oppression
four enemies
of the
Indian people have created
unprecedented miseries, sufferings and calamities. are struggling on the brink of death.
Millions
Several millions go
hungry, naked, houseless and unemployed. 12.
In the name of ‘national integration,’ these enemies
of the people have been suppressing the genuine rights of all the nationalities and national and religious minorities.
The
right of self-determination is being denied to the Kashmiris, Nagas and Mizos.
Equal status to all the national languages
is being denied and Hindi is being sought to be imposed on the people by them. 13.
Our country is the country of the peasant masses
who constitute over 75 percent of its population.
They are
the most exploited people of our country living in conditions of semi-starvation and
absolute
pauperisation.
In
India’s
semi-feudal economy, 80°/o of the land is concentrated in the hands of the 20% of the landowners, i.e., ‘rajahs', landlords and rich peasants, while the starving peasantry constituting 80% of the rural population has no land or very little land. 14.
The landless and poor peasants have to turn over
50% to 90% of their annual harvest in the form of rent to the landlords.
The extortionate usurious capital continues to fleece
the peasants. Eviction of peasants is the order of the day. Social oppression on scheduled castes including the lynching of Harijans, reminiscent of the middle ages, is continuing unabated.
279
©EBATES AND DOCUMENTS
15.
The semi-feudal land relations have transformed our
■country into a land of perpetual famine, as a result of which millions of people die of starvation every year. 16.
In brief, out of all the major contradictions in our
■country, that is, the contradiction between imperialism and social-imperialism on the one hand and our people on the other, the contradiction
between feudalism and
the
broad
masses of the people, the contradiction between capital and labour and the contradiction within the ruling classes, the one between the landlords and the peasantry, i. e., the contra¬ diction between feudalism and the broad masses of the Indian people is the principal contradiction in the present phase. 17.
The resolution of this contradiction will lead to the
resolution of all other contradictions too. 18.
While preserving and perpetuating the semi-feudal
set-up,
the
big comprador-bureaucrat bourgeoisie and big
landlord ruling classes have become pawns in the hands of U. S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism. 19.
The phenomenal increase in the total quantum of
foreign
capital,
the
heavy
remittances of profits
abroad,
thousands of collaborationist enterprises, total dependence on imperialist “aid, grants and loans” for capital goods, technical know-how,
military
supplies and armament industries for
building military bases and even for markets, unequal trade and P.L. 480 agreements have made U. S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism the overlords of our country. 20.
U. S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism have
brought the vital sectors of the economy of our country under their
control. U.
S. imperialism
collaborates
mainly
with
private capital and is now penetrating into the industries in the state sector, while Soviet social-imperialism has brought under its control mainly the industries in the state sector and is at the same time trying to enter into collaboration with private capital. 21. U. S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism do everything
possible
to foster the
growth of
comprador-
280
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
bureaucrat capitalism for continuing their unbridled exploita¬ tion of the Indian people. 22.
The much-trumpeted “public sector” is being built
up by many imperialist exploiters for employing their capital and for exploiting the cheap labour power and raw materials of our country. The public sector is nothing but a clever device to hoodwink the Indian people and continue
their plunder.
It is state monopoly capitalism i. e., bureaucrat capitalism. 23.
With their octopus-like grip on India’s economy, the
U. S. imperialists and the Soviet social-imperialists control the political, cultural and military spheres of the life of our country, 24.
At the dictates of U. S. imperialism and Soviet social-
imperialism, India’s reactionary ruling classes pursue a foreign policy that serves the interests of imperialism, social-imperialism and reaction.
It has been tailored to the needs of the global
strategy of the U. S. imperialists and Soviet social-imperialists to encircle Socialist China and suppress the national liberation struggle raging in various parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America, of which Vietnam has become the spearhead. India’s aggression against Socialist China in 1962 and her continual provocation against China since then at the instance of U. S, imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism, her support to the Soviet attack on China, her tacit approval of Soviet aggression against
Czechoslovakia,
her dirty role in supporting U. S,
imperialism against the Vietnamese people prove
beyond a
shadow of doubt that India’s ruling classes are faithful stooges of U. S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism. 25.
These hard facts irrefutably prove the semi-colonial
character of our sociely, besides its semi-feudal character. 26.
As the obsolete semi-feudal society acts as the social
base of U. S. imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism and as it facilitates also the plunder of our people by compradorbureaucrat capital, the problem of the peasantry becomes the basic problem of the Indian revolution. 27. to
Therefore, the basic task of the Indian revolution is
overthrow the rule of feudalism,
comprador-bureaucrat
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
28V
capitalism, imperialism and social-imperialism. mines the stage of our revolution.
This deter¬
It is the stage of demo¬
cratic revolution, the essence of which is agrarian revolution. 28.
It, however, is not the old type of democratic revo¬
lution but a new type of democratic revolution,
People’3
Democratic Revolution, as it forms a part of the 'world socia¬ list revolution, ifshered in by the Great October Revolution,, and as such, it can be successfully led by the working cla§s alone and by no other class.
The working class is the most
revolutionary class and the most organised advanced detach¬ ment of our people. 29.
This revolution will establish the dictatorship of the
working class, the peasantry, the petty-bourgeoisie and even a section of the. small and middle bourgeoisie under the leader¬ ship of the working class.
They, together, constitute the over-
w helming majority of the Indian people.
It will be a state
guaranteeing democracy for 90 percent of the people and enforcing dictatorship over a handful of enemies.
That is why
it is People’s Democracy. 30.
The main force of the democratic revolution led by
the working class is peasantry.
The working class fully relies
on the landless and poor peasants and firmly unites with the middle peasants and even wins over a section of the rich pea¬ sants while neutralizing the rest.
It will be only a tiny section
of the rich peasants that finally joins the enemies of the revo¬ lution.
The urban petty-bourgeoisie and the revolutionary
intellectuals of our country are revolutionary forces and will be a reliable ally in the revolution. 31.
The small and middle bourgeoisie, businessmen and
bourgeois intellectuals are vacillating and unstable allies of the democratic revolution.
They will now support, then oppose
and sometimes even betray the revolution.
Their dual role in
the revolution arises because of their contradiction as well as unity with the enemies of our revolution. 32.
Thus, in
order to carry the democratic revolution
through to the end it is necessary that a Democratic Front of
282
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
all these classes is built up under the leadership of the working class. 33.
This Front can, however, be built up
when worker-
peasant unity is achieved in the course of armed struggle and after Red political power is established at least in some parts of the country. 34.
It must be understood that the working class can and
will exercise its leadership over the People’s Democratic Revo¬ lution through its political party, the Communist Party of India (M-L).
It also performs its vanguard role by launching
struggles on political issues, both national and international, by solidarity actions in support of the revolutionary classes, mainly, the revolutionary struggles of the peasantry and by sending its class-conscious vanguard section to organise and lead the peasants’ armed struggle. 35.
The path of India’s liberation, as in the case of
all other colonial and semi-colonial and semi-feudal countries, is the path of People’s War. us, “The Revolutionary war
As Chairman Mao has taught is the war of the masses ; it
can be waged only by mobilising the masses and relying on them.” 36.
The working class can wage a successful People’s War
by creating small bases of armed struggle all over the country and consolidating the political power of the people.
This is
possible only by developing guerilla warfare which is and will remain the basic form of struggle throughout the entire period of our Democratic Revolution. 37.
As Comrade Lin Piao has pointed out,
“Guerilla
warfare is the only way to mobilise and apply the entire strength of the people against the enemy.” Guerilla warfare unleash the initiative Indian
people,
alone can
and rouse the creative genius of the
make them perform miracles,
function in
various ways and can enable them to effectively co-ordinate 'those ways.
Thus guerilla war alone can expand the small
;bases of armed struggle to large, extensive areas through mighty waves of People’s War and develop the People’s Army which
283
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
will overthrow the reactionary rule of the four mountains in the countryside, encircle and capture the cities, establish the People’s Democratic Dictatorship all over the country and resolutely carry it forward to the Dictatorship of the Proletariat and Socialism. 38.
The People’s
Democratic State will carry out the
following major tasks : (a)
Confiscation of all the banks and enterprises of foreign
capital and liquidation of all imperialist debt. (b) and
Confiscation of all land belonging to the landlords
their
redistribution
among
the
landless
and
poor
peasants on the principle of land to the tillers ; cancellation of all debts of the peasantry and other toiling people. facilities
necessary
for
development
All
of agriculture to be
guaranteed. (d)
Enforce eight hours a day, increase wages, institute
unemployment relief and social insurance, remove all inequa¬ lities on the basis of equal pay for equal work. (e)
Improve the living conditions of soldiers and give land
and job to the ex-servicemen. (f)
Enforce better living conditions of the people and
remove unemployment. (g)
Develop new democratic culture in place of colonial
and feudal culture. (h)
Abolish the present educational system and educa¬
tional institutions and build up a new educational system and new educational institutions
consistent
with the needs of
People’s Democratic India. (i)
Abolish the caste system, remove all social inequalities
and all discrimination on the religious ground and guarantee equality of status to women. (j)
Unify India and recognise the right of self-determi¬
nation. (k) (l)
Give equal status to all national languages. Abolish all exorbitant taxes and miscellaneous assess¬
ments and adopt a consolidated progressive tax system.
284
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
(m) People’s political power to be exercised through Revolutionary People’s Councils at all levels. (n) Alliance to be formed with the international proleta¬ riat and the oppressed nations of the world under the leader¬ ship of the CPC. 39. The Democratic Revolution in India is taking place in the era of Mao Tsetung when world imperialism is heading for a total collapse and socialism is advancing towards world-wide victory. Our revolution is a part of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution which has consolidated socialism and proletarian dictatorship in China into the reliable base area of' the World Revolution. Our revolution is taking place at a time when the great Ninth Congress of the great, glorious and correct CPC—the Congress of unity and victory—has tremen¬ dously inspired the international proletariat. It is taking place at a time when the CPC, headed by Chairman Mao and Vice-Chairman Lin Piao, is leading the international proletariat to fulfil its historic mission of emancipating the whole of mankind from the rule of imperialism and reaction and establishing Socialism and Communism on this earth. We are a contingent of this great army of the international proletariat. 40. The CPI(M-L) is placing the Programme of People’s Democratic Revolution before the Indian people and dedicates itself to this great revolutionary cause. The Party is confident that the granite unity of our people with all socialist and oppressed nations, particularly the Chinese people, will bring about the victory of the Indian revolution, which as Chairman Mao has predicted, “will end the imperialist reactionary era in the history of mankind” and will ensure the world-wide victory of Socialism. [Reproduced from ‘Mass Line', Vol. 2, No. 36 Sept 13, 1970],
POLITICAL-ORGANISATIONAL REPORT
Adopted at the PARTY CONGRESS held in May 1970 Our Congress is taking place at a time when U. S. imperia¬ lism is continuing open and naked aggression on Cambodia and expanding the war of aggression throughout Indo*China with the sheer logic of an aggressor, reminding us of the days of Munich.
This attack can easily be termed as the
beginning of the Third World War, as the march of the Hitlerite hordes on Sudetanland was the beginning of the Second World War. But the world situation today cannot be understood only in the light of the aggression and aggressive designs
of U.S.
imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism for, unlike Munich, a new thing has emerged under the leadership of the great CPC and China.
The
three
Indo-Chinese peoples have
united and presented a united front against the U.S. aggressors. This marks a great victory of the Indo-Chinese peoples and serves as the key to the understanding of the present world situation.
Our struggle against imperialist warmongers must
take note of this new danger of aggression and the great victory of the Indo-Chinese people. In our country also, the Indian Government under the cover of national defence are feverishly preparing for an aggressive war to serve the needs of the
global strategy
imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism.
of U.
S.
Soviet and U. S.
specialists are actually controlling the entire defence organisa¬ tion of our country and this pressure of war efforts is breaking down the entire economy and throwing the country into an abyss of permanent and severe economic crisis.
But in the
Indian situation a new thing also has emerged which marks the victory of the people : it is the peasants’ armed struggle under the leadeship of the CPI (M-L).
Within a year, this struggle
has spread far and wide—from Assam to Kashmir—and has engulfed more than
12
states
of India and has
already
286
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
become a motive force of history.
VOL II
The puppet character of
the present regime and the hollowness of the parliamentary system are becoming clear to the entire people and the bitter class struggles are shattering the myth of Gandhism and the “peaceful professions” of the present regime.
The bitter class
struggles have exposed the butcher nature of the present re¬ actionary Government, the necessity of the battle of annihi¬ lation against these butchers is felt by the vast masses of the people and the struggle is spreading to rural areas with tre¬ mendous vigour. The emergence of the Party—CPI(M-L), is the victory of the revolutionary people of India and also the victory of the all-powerful Thought of Chairman Mao on the soil of India. Equipped with the great Mao Tsetung Thought, this revolu¬ tionary peasants’ armed struggle has already become an in¬ vincible force which the imperialists, social-imperialists and native reaction cannot suppress. That this onward march of the armed revolutionary struggle of the peasantry will continue unabated and that the struggle will spread to all the states of India is not only the truth of history but has already become the reality of history. In order to achieve victory, we must pay attention to the building of our Party—CPI(M-L).
This task is the most im¬
portant, most immediate and most sacred task of the revolu¬ tionary people of India.
We must build up our Party among
the landless and poor peasants and on this alone the revolutio¬ nary striking power, of the Party and the revolutionary people, depends.
The working class and the petty-bourgeois cadres
must integrate themselves with the landless and poor peasants and this task of integration cannot be over-emphasised.
The
history of our inner-party struggles shows that centrism is the vilest weapon of the revisionists and we must fight all signs of centrism.
Centrism undermines the revolutionary politics and
makes the fighter defenceless. With the peal of the spring thunder of the Naxalbari struggle came a turning point in the history of the Indian
287
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
revolution.
When revisionism seemed triumphant and the
whole of India was steeped in darkness, Comrade
Charu
Majumdar, who organized and led the Naxalbari struggle, analysed correctly the character of the Indian society and state and the great role of the peasantry in India’s democratic revolution, upheld Chairman Mao’s great teaching : “Political power grows out
of the barrel of a gunf and applied Mao
Tsetung Thought to the concrete conditions of India for the first time in India’s history.
The Naxalbari struggle led by
Comrade Charu Majumdar marked the beginning of the rout of revisionism in
India—the
beginning
of the
victorious
onward march of Mao Tsetung Thought on the soil of India. The leadership
provided by him since then has kindled the
flames of armed
peasant guerilla struggles in Srikakulam and
Andhra and
spread those flames to eleven other states in
India. The battle between the two lines was fought bitterly in the Co-ordination
period
on
issues like boycott of elections,
characterization of Soviet revisionism as social-imperialism and the fight against economism.
The bitter fight over these issues
led by Comrade Charu Majumdar, strengthened and conso¬ lidated
the
expansion
revolutionary
to
new
Lakhimpur Kheri.
areas
ranks
and this resulted in the
of struggle like Mushahari and
Another major struggle inside Co-ordina¬
tion was fought and won on the question of the formation of the Party.
The intellectuals’ resistance to democratic centra¬
lism, the metaphysical understanding of a “pure” Party, the worship of spontaneity as reflected in ideas like “building the party through armed struggles and from below” were among the many expressions of the wrong line which was defeated and the Party was formed marking the victory of Chairman Mao’s line on Party building. After the formation of the Party, which consolidated the victory of the revolutionary line over the revisionist line, the struggle between the two lines entered a new stage.
The
revisionist line sought mainly to undermine the authority of
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
288 the Party,
encouraging
VOL II
polycentrism inside the Party, to
attack the correct political line of the Party in the name of mass organizations and mass movements for economic de¬ mands as pre-requisites for the development of guerilla stru¬ ggles, to encourage big and spectacular actions for the deve¬ lopment of peasants’ armed struggles and to rely upon the petty-bourgeois intellectuals for the development of peasants’ armed struggles. The successful battle against this wrong line has spread the struggle from one State to another and the peasants’ armed struggles are rousing the working class and petty-bourgeois intellectuals and thus a new stage is opening when the peasants’ armed struggles will create waves of mass uprising engulfing the vast land of ours in a conflagration and the Party will be required to lead this revolutionary upsurge into a nation-wide victory of revolution. Though we are a small Party now, we can fulfil this sacred task if we raise our study and application of Chairman Mao’s Thought as embodied in the “Quotations” and the “Three Articles” to a new height, entrench ourselves deeply among landless and poor peasants and integrate ourselves with them, promote the landless and poor peasant cadres to higher res¬ ponsibility, study and concretely apply the correct thesis of Vice-Chairman Lin Piao : “Guerilla warfare is the only way to mobilize and apply the whole strength of the people against the enemy”, realize and apply methodically the correct thesis that the annihilation of the class enemy is the higher form of class struggle and the beginning of guerilla war and People’s War, and realize that the class struggle, i. e., this battle of annihilation, can solve all the problems facing us and lead the struggle to a higher plane, raise the political consciousness of the people to a higher stage, create conditions for the emergence of a new type of man, the Man of Mao Tsetung era who fears neither hardship nor
death, develop the People’s Army and
can thus ensure the formation of a permanent base area.
This
battle of annihilation liberates the people not only from the
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
289
oppression of the landlord class and its State but also liberates them from the shackles of backward ideas and removes from the minds of the people poisonous weeds of self-interest, clan interest, localism, casteism, religious superstitions, etc.
Thus
this battle of annihilation can bring the East Wind of splen¬ dour and glory of Man. The politics of seizure of political power can alone rouse bitter class hatred among landless and poor peasants and only by putting this politics in command, the battle of annihilation can be raised to a new height. The revisionists all the world over are trying to unite the •groups who are parading the name of Chairman Mao and fighting Mao Tsetung Thought in the name of Mao Tsetung by seeking to arrest and denounce this battle of annihilation. ■So any idea of unity with these groups means the liquidation •of the main plank of our struggle and submerging the entire Party in the morass of revisionism. Our comrades must keep in mind that entirely through ■our own efforts we have been able to create a new situation in India when the ruling classes and their parties are openly quarrelling with one another in a downright dog-bite-dog manner, when stable governments have become a thing of the past and when vast masses of people are coming into the arena of struggle and creating a new and
better situation for
the revolutionaries to carry on their struggles.
Our Party’s
call : “China’s Chairman is our Chairman, China’s path is our path”, our call against any aggressive war against China and our call to turn the ’70’s into the decade of liberation have gripped the
imagination of the masses, particularly, of the
revolutionary youth and won a victory over national-chauvi¬ nism and revisionism and have opened up a new era of greater victories.
Our battle of annihilation has linked
together our
two sacred tasks—the task of liberating our country and the people and the international task of ending imperialism and imperialist war—and has created the material basis, that is, the ■emergence of the new man, for fulfilling these great tasks. Vol 11—19
290
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
* So, our Party should continue this battle of annihilation in a more determined and concerted way, create newer and newer areas of operation, depend upon unsophisticated arms, which alone can release the initiative of the landless and poor peasants and develop the struggles in mighty waves, continue the political campaign in a purposeful way to develop this battle of annihilation, try continuously to draw in fresh forces from among the landless and poor peasants and know how to rely upon them,
concentrate on ‘one area, one unit, one
squad’ basis, direct their entire work to fulfil the main task of the period, try constantly to improve the political level of the people, help the fighters study “Quotations” and the “Three Articles”, link the fighters with the work of production and draw them inside the Party. Comrades !
Imperialists,
social-imperialists
and
native
reaction are hatching plans to launch fiercest attacks upon us when preservation of our main force and our leadership will depend upon how deeply we dig in among the people.
So
the method of work evolved by Chairman Mao should be studied and applied methodically and conscientiously by our leaders and cadres, because that alone can ensure the preserva¬ tion and victory of our revolutionary struggles. The world is progressing at a breathtaking speed towardsthe final emancipation of Man under the leadership of Chair¬ man Mao ; our struggle in India, too, is developing at an inconceivably fast speed.
The victory of the Indian Revolu¬
tion will certainly banish forever imperialism and imperialist war from the face of the world.
Our comrades must always-
feel this great responsibility that is on us, must develop the internationalist spirit of becoming one with the fighters of the world under the leadership of Chairman Mao.
This feeling
will give them immeasurable strength to carry on this great responsibility history has placed on us. Let
this
Congress
revolutionary cadres people.
usher
in
greater
unity among the
and greater victory for the great Indian,
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
291
Let this Congress give new strength to the cadres to end the age-old sufferings of the Indian people, rouse our cadres and the people for greater sacrifice to change this India of darkness into an India of brightness and brilliance. Chairman Mao is there, victory is ours. Long live the Indian Revolution ! Long live the CPI (M-L) ! Long live Chairman Mao !
A long, long life to Chairman Mao !
[Reproduced from 'Mass Line', Vol. 2, No. 36, Sept. 13, 1970]
ON THE POLITICAL-ORGANISATIONAL REPORT Comrade Charu Majumdar's Speech introducing the Political-Organisational Report at the Party Congress
(based on notes taken at the congress) In the present world situation there are two important, phenomena. On the one hand, there
is U. S. imperialism’s naked
aggression against Cambodia.
The U. S. imperialists have
thrown away all pretences and invaded Cambodia. Their logic is Hitler’s logic—the logic of all aggressors. They cannot wait any more, they can no longer talk of peace. Now they will attack one country after another.
So this is the beginning of
the Third World War. On the other hand, the revolutionary united front of the peoples of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, under the leadership of China, has been built up to fight the U. S. aggressors. The unity of the three Indo-Chinese peoples has been achieved. This is a great thing in world history, which did not exist when Hitler’s Second betrayal.
World
hordes War
marched was
across
preceded
by
Sudetanland.
The
Munich—by great
But now the united front of revolutionary peoples
292
NAXALBARl AND AFTJER
under the leadership of China is taking shape.
VOL II
So this is the
great beginning of the defeat of imperialism and the great beginning of the victory of the world’s people. The same kind of phenomena exist in India also.
India’s
reactionary ruling classes are making frenzied preparations to suit the global strategy of U. S. imperialism and Soviet socialimperialism. China.
They are hatching criminal war plans against
But the emergence of the C.P.I.(M-L) has changed
the internal
situation in India.
The
armed
revolutionary
peasant struggle led by the C.P.I.(M-L) has motive force of history.
become the
We must take into account not only
the offensive of the ruling classes but also the counter-offensive of the revolutionary people. Our cardinal tasks,
therefore, are : to build up the Party
and to get it entrenched among the landless and poor peasants. The building up of the Party means the development of the armed class struggle.
And without armed class struggle the
Party can not be developed and can not entrench itself among the masses. The struggle
between the two lines is there within the
Party and will continue to be there.
We must oppose and
defeat the incorrect line. But we must be on our guard against centrism. Centrism is a brand of revisionism—its worst form. In the past,
revisionism was defeated again and again by
revolutionary elements but centrism always seized the victories of the struggle and led the Party along the revisionist path. We must hate centrism. On the question of boycotting elections, Nagi Reddy said :
“Yes, we accept it but it sliould be restric¬
ted to a certain area at a certain period.
We shall participate
in elections where there is no struggle.”
This is Nagi Reddy’s
line.
This
is
centrism.
We
have
fought
against it and
■thrown the Nagi Reddys out of our organization. Soviet social-imperialism, some say : are revisionists.
“The Soviet
But how can they be imperialists ?
that development of monopoly capital ?”
Regarding leaders Where is
These are centrists.
We have fought them and thrown them out of our Party.
So
295
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
the centrists raised the questions of trade unions and “working class based party” when armed clash is to be developed by relying on the peasantry.
We fought Asit Sen and company
on these lines and threw them out of the Party. We must not only distinguish between the correct and the incorrect line but also find out the centrist position
and
smash it. Now the centrist attack is coming from inside the Party. On the questions of using fire-arms, the dependence on the petty-bourgeois intellectuals and the battle of annihilation, the Party is facing centrist attacks. It must be understood that the battle of annihilation is both a higher form of class struggle and the starting-point of guerilla war. 1.
There are two deviations on this question :
Some comrades agree that annihilation is the starting-
point of guerilla war but they do not agree that it is a higher form of class struggle.
It should be borne in mind that only
through the development of class struggle can all the problems be solved. 2.
There are other comrades who carried on class struggle
—the struggle for the seizure of landlords’ land and property —but did not wage the battle of annihilation. became degenerate,
they were lost.
So the cadres
The comrades missed the
point that annihilation is the starting-point of guerilla war. Class struggle will solve all other problems—the problem of building liberated bases and the problem of building the revolutionary army. We have tried to develop the army in some areas without: class struggle and have failed. battle
of
annihilation—the
Without class struggle—the
initiative of the
poor
peasant
masses cannot be released, the political consciousness of the fighters cannot be raised, the new man cannot emerge, the people’s army cannot be created. struggle—the battle
Only by waging class
of annihilation—the new man will be
created, the new man who will defy death and will be free from all thought of self-interest.
And with this death-defying
294
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
spirit he will go close to the enemy, snatch his rifle, avenge the martyrs and the people’s army will emerge.
To go close
to the enemy it is necessary to conquer all thought of self. And this can be achieved only by the blood of martyrs. That inspires and creates new men out of the fighters, fills them with class hatred and makes them go close to the enemy and snatch his rifle with bare hands. We have poured much of our blood in Srikakulam and we have spilled much blood of the enemy. exists there.
Yet the class enemy
Unless we throw the class enemy out of the
land, a new consciousness, a new confidence cannot arise.
We
cannot then go close to the enemy and snatch his rifle.
It is
the class struggle that can solve this problem of building the people’s army. The
annihilation of the class enemy—this weapon in our
hands—is the greatest danger of the reactionaries and revisio¬ nists all the world over.
So the leaders of world revisionism
are trying to contact the various groups which pay lip-service to Chairman Mao and the CPC and are trying to unite them to oppose the battle of annihilation of the class enemy.
We
refuse to unite with these groups because they are opposed to annihilation of the class enemy, to class struggle and so, are enemies of the people. Why am I against taking up fire-arms now ?
Is it not our
dream that landless and poor peasants will take up rifles on on their shoulders and march forward ?
Yet the use of fire¬
arms at this stage, instead of releasing the initiative of the peasant masses to annihilate the class enemy, stifles it. guerilla fighters start the battle of
If
annihilation with their
conventional weapons, the common landless and poor peasants will come forward with bare hands and join the battle of annihilation.
A common landless peasant, ground down by
age-old oppression, will see the light and avenge himself on the class enemy.
His initiative will be released.
In this way
the peasant masses will join the guerilla fighters, their revolu¬ tionary enthusiasm will know no bounds and a mighty wave
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
295
of people’s upsurge will sweep the country.
After the initia¬
tive of the peasant masses, to annihilate the class enemy with bare hands or home-made weapons, has been released and the peasants’ revolutionary power has
been
should take up the gun and face the world.
established,
they
The peasant with
his rifle will be the guarantee of the continuation of the pea¬ sants’ revolutionary power. Comrades, the peasants’ suffering has reached a stage when they can no longer endure it.
If we can show them the way,
there is not a single point in India where the peasants will not be roused to action.
There is the possibility of a tremendous
upsurge in India if we consciously work for it.
Guerilla war
■can be waged through the battle of annihilation in every village in India. ble.
So, start as many points of armed struggle as possi¬
Don’t try to concentrate.
where.
Expand anywhere and every¬
This is one principle to be followed.
principle is :
The other
Carry on the battle of annihilation of the class
-enemy. All the revisionists, all the groups
taking the name of
Chairman Mao, are attacking us on this issue of the battle of annihilation.
So, comrades, anyone who opposes this battle
of annihilation cannot remain with us.
We will not allow
him to remain inside our Party. One can see how the revolutionary armed peasant struggle is rousing the other classes.
Look at Calcutta.
The revolu¬
tionary struggle of the youths of Calcutta surges forward under the impact of the armed peasant struggle. in Calcutta is also rising.
The working class
And I hope there will be revolu¬
tionary upsurge of the working class not only in Calcutta, but in all other cities of India.
This is bound to happen.
The
■situation in the cities will then change completely. Comrades, let a vigorous armed peasant
struggle rage all
-over India after the victorious conclusion of our Congress. Then a spontaneous mass upsurge in the wake of the armed guerilla struggle will come as an avalanche, as a thunderbolt. It is sure the Red Army can be created not only in Srikakulam
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
296
VOL II
but also in Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal, With these contingents of the Liberation Army, the Indian peasants will march forward and complete the revolution. Three factors guarantee the victory of the revolution.
First,
the revolution that has been delayed by more than twenty years brooks no further delay.
Second, the revolution is
taking place in the era of the total collapse of imperialism and the world-wide victory of Socialism, the era of Mao Tsetung Thought.
Third, we have been able to hold this Congress
despite severe repression. Comrades, let us march forward.
The ’seventies will surely
be the decade of liberation. [Reproduced from Mass Line, Yol. 2, No. 36, Sept. 13, 1970J
PROBLEMS AND CRISES OF INDIAN REVOLUTION SUSHITAL ROY CHOWDHURY
{November, 1970) [Translated by us from the original in Bengali ] A lesson of the history of the international communist movement is that the genuine communist movement has to advance by waging struggle against the two kinds of deviation,, the “Right” and the “Left”.
From the history of the interna¬
tional communist movement it is again found that after the “Right” errors are corrected, the “Left” errors are liable tocrop up.
Whenever an
individual or the Party
advances-
from one success to another there is the danger of “Left” deviation.
This is
because arrogance may develop in the
wake of enthusiasm caused by success.
On the other hand,
in times of failure, there may be a trend towards pessimism and depression. During the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China, it has been found that even when the struggle against “Right”1
297
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
devtation continues, some persons raise “ultra-Left” slogans with an ostentatious play of words, try to create disunity of the proletariat with classes which are its allies and thus try to lead the entire struggle astray. From the history of the international communist movement it is found that in general the centre from which these two deviations originate lies within the Party leadership.
From
the history of our Party also we know that our experience is no exception to this. So Marxism-Leninism-Mao
Tsetung thought
teaches
us
that the members of the Communist Party should remain ever vigilant and alert in this regard.
All the ordinary members
of the Party must use their brains and must always exercise careful supervision over the leadership.
In the question of
leadership, Chairman Mao’s teaching is that the leadership must always be modest ; the higher the post, the greater the modesty required of an incumbent.
In case of leadership it is
a question of principle whether one is modest or arrogant ; because to err is human. Right from the aggression of China by India in 1962 when the Party at the manoeuvring of the leadership deviated from proletarian internationalism, many an ordinary member in our Party started becoming conscious of the danger of revisionism. This generated a feeling amongst many of us that we must, start armed struggle.
After March 1967 when the historic
peasant struggle burst forth in Naxalbari, this awareness within the ordinary Party members as well as the struggle against revisionism were raised to a new
level.
Throughout
country the communist revolutionaries severed with revisionists themselves.
and
the
connections
neo-revisionists and began
asserting
On the one hand, they went to the villages and
devoted themselves to the task of rousing the peasants ; on the other hand, for the reorganisation of a genuine Communist Party they took initiative in establishing contacts and holding discussions with
one another.
Through this
process was
formed the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist).
298
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
However, in different States of the country a number of ’Communist
revolutionaries
continued
to
maintain
their
independent group existence and to make efforts to build up armed struggle.
The Party declared
that
the ideological
differences with them will be non-antagonistic in character. As soon as the Naxalbari peasant upsurge took place it was greeted and blessed by Mao Tsetung, the leader of the international communist movement, and the great Communist Party of China. Immediately after
its formation, the CPI(M-L)
recognition of the international leadership.
earned
For natural and
justifiable reasons, the communist revolutionaries of Darjeeling district
earned
respect
of the
communist
throughout the country for these successes.
revolutionaries Naturally in all
these successful developments the leading role of Comrade Charu Majumdar earned recognition within the Party.
Right
at the moment of the formation of the Party he was respect¬ fully chosen for the highest post without any dissent. The peasant struggle of Naxalbari did not only inspire the revolutionary members of the Party,
it also enthused and
inspired the sympathisers and a large section of people under the Party’s influence. After the formation under
its
banner.
of the
After
the
CPI(M-L) they formation
assembled
of the Party the
peasants’ armed struggle began to expand rapidly with the help and co-operation of these sympathisers and the people. Groups of communist revolutionaries outside the Party too developed
armed
peasant struggles in some areas of the
country. In May 1970, the Party Congress of the CPI(M-L) was held with success.
The successful holding of the Party Cong¬
ress even in the face of policies of severe repression pursued by the exploiting classes and their government aroused much enthusiasm amongst the Party members, people and sympa¬ thisers throughout the country. omits were formed.
A large number of guerilla
In the real sense, the phase marking
299
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
the beginning of
guerilla war was reached.
spread to the urban areas. initiative and activity successful
influence
In particular it generated new
amongst
development has
Its
students and youth.
been
brightened
with
This new
examples of self-sacrifice set by Party members from martyr Babulal to Comrades Panchadri peasant masses.
and Nirmala and by the
Today the ruling classes and other political parties are passing sleepless nights because of the CPI(M-L).
It has be-
•come the focus of the new hope for the common man through¬ out the country.
The task before us is to raise our struggle
to a new phase—to
advance along the path of the most
arduous struggle for developing base areas.
In other areas
our responsibility is to intensify the class struggle of the peasants and to raise the armed struggle to a higher phase. It is a matter of deep regret that at this moment of our success, in the name of developing MaoTsetung Thought, such principles and policies are being introduced in our State and such ideas are being circulated as are nothing but ultra-adven¬ turism.
Unless the ordinary members of the Party become
aware of these ideas and policies and make an effort to change them, the progress of revolution as a whole will suffer. What are the concrete manifestations of these adventurist ideas and policies ?
The line, policies, strategy and tactics of
people’s war formulated by Chairman Mao Tsetung are inter¬ connected and constitute an integral whole.
These are appli¬
cable to and have relevance for all countries. “Comrade Mao Tse-tung’s theory of people’s war is not only a product of the
Chinese revolution, but has also the
characteristics of our epoch.Mao Tse-tung’s thought is a • common asset of the revolutionary people of the whole world.” (Lin Piao : Long Live the Victory of People's War P. 116) Explaining the theory of People’s War, Comrade Lin Piao showed that these (lessons) are :
(a) Go on fighting with the
people’s war in perspective ; (b) Correctly apply the policy of the united front ;
(c) Establish base areas in the countryside,
300
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
relying on peasants ; new type ;
VOL II
(d) Develop the People’s Army of a
(e) Apply the strategy and tactics of people’s
war in all spheres of work ; (f) Grasp the principle of selfreliance. The class enemies of the people are organised ; the state machinery is in their hands.
In the beginning the strength of
the people is unorganized.
The protracted war is a process
of organizing the people, rallying them and arming them. Long-drawn efforts are necessary to weaken the enemy forces gradually and to expand gradually the people’s forces. Quite correctly our activities began in the perspective of this protracted war.
“In India this revolution can triumph
only if we wage protracted and arduous struggle.
Citing the
fact that imperialism and social-imperialism will come forward to arrest the revolution in India, it is contended that it is. nothing but a blind flight of imagination to think of easy victory in this situation.”
(Deshabrati)
But at one time suddenly an idea began to be circulated that our struggle would not be that much protracted.
In the
manner of an astrologer it was forecast that we need not wait beyond 1975 for the success of the revolution.
Undoubtedly,
the style of work that established itself under its impact was one of getting quick results. At the commencement of the Second Civil War in China,. Chairman Mao wrote : our friends ? the revolution.
“Who are the enemies ?
Who are
This is a question of the first importance for The basic reason why all previous revolu¬
tionary struggles in China achieved so little was their failure to unite with real friends against the real enemies.”
(Analysis•
of the Classes in Chinese Society, March 1926). In explaining the theory of people’s war, Comrade Lin Piao has first shown : “In order to win a people’s war it is imperative to build the broadest possible united front and formulate a series of policies which will ensure the fullest mobilization of the basic masses, as well as the unity of all the forces that can be united.”
(Lin
Piao : op. cit. P. 25) In explaining the theory of people’s war
301
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
Comrade Lin Piao has given the first place to the task of building the united front. It is on the basis of this teaching that we have determined the allies and enemies of our revolution. imperialism,
The enemies are
social-imperialism, big comprador
bourgeoisie
and the big landlord class. In our Programme we have defined the objective of our revolution :
“This revolution will establish the dictatorship of
the working class, the peasantry, the petty-bourgeoisie and even a section of the small and middle bourgeoisie under the leadership of the working class.” we have said :
“They, together, constitute the ovewhelming
majority of the Indian people.” success of revolution, “Thus,
As regards these classes As the condition for the
we have stated in the Programme :
in order to carry the democratic revolution through to
the end it is necessary that a democratic front of all these classes is built up under the leadership of the working class.” The united front does not develop overnight. tion of the front is but a process.
The forma¬
As conditions for the suc¬
cessful building of the democratic front we have correctly stated :
“This front, however, can only be built up when
worker peasant unity is
achieved in the course of armed
struggle and after Red political power is established at least in some parts of the country.” Chairman Mao teaches us that the aim and object of the revolution are at one with the general principle which will regulate all the activities of the revolutionary party. known as the political line.
This is
This general principle must have
to be reflected in all the policies of the party. Then it is clear that from the beginning to the end the policies cannot be allowed to go against the Party’s general principle. Otherwise a deviation from the political line occurs. But what sort of attitude is being taken towards the ally classes in our activities ?
“They will be forced to come to us”.
“We need not bother about them.”
Frequently without any
second thought such policies are being adopted as are hitting
302
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
them also.
VOL IE
The so-called principle of annihilation is being
applied to many traders, teachers and many individuals of such types. Chairman Mao has repeatedly said :
“The revolutionary
war is a war of the masses ; it can be waged only by mobili¬ sing the masses and relying on them.”
(‘Be concerned with
the Well Being of the Masses, Pay Attention to Methods of Work’, January 27, 1934). He has further said : We are against issuing orders by depending only on a handful of persons. In starting people’s war the first question that has to be faced is how the people, especially the peasant masses, can be aroused
within
the
shortest
possible
time.
This rousing
involves developing the initiative of the peasants in regard to different aspects of waging people’s war. Chairman Mao teaches us :
Every comrade should be
taught to arouse and develop the consciousness of the people in conformity with their levels of conscionsness, to help them get organised gradually on the principle of sincere volunta¬ riness, and to help them conduct step by step all the necessary struggles warranted by the internal and external conditions of definite time and place. Our correct policy was given as follows :
“Guerilla war
is basically the higher stage of class struggle and class struggle is the sum total of economic and political struggles.
While
propagating politics, comrades working in peasant areas should never minimise the necessity of raising a general slogan on economic demands.
Unless the
broad peasant masses are
involved in the movement it will not be possible to bring the backward peasants to the stage of grasping political propaganda, and their hatred against the class enemies cannot be kept alive.” (Deshabrati, August 1, 1967) The first lesson to remember, therefore, is : we must not impose
anything
upon
the
masses against
their wishes.
By forgetting this principle we shall land ourselves in many deviations.
Such
Castroism etc.
deviations
may
be
called
sectarianism.
303
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
“Unless the peasants are made to participate in broadbased mass movements, it will naturally take time for the politics of seizure of power to strike firm roots in the consci¬ ousness of the peasant masses.
As a result there may be a
trend towards putting arms instead of politics in command. Areas of peasants’ armed struggle can be developed only by successfully
applying, under political leadership,
weapons—the
(Deshabrati, October 17, 1968)
advanced and backward sections even within
the revolutionary classes. revolutionary
four
peasants’ class analysis, class struggle, inves¬
tigation and practice”. “There are
the
The advanced section grasps the
principles quickly and
the backward
section
naturally takes longer time to absorb political propaganda. That is why the necessity of waging economic struggles against the feudal class exists and it will be therein future also. Hence the need for the
movement for seizure of crops.
The form
this struggle will take in an area will depend on its political consciousness and organisation”, (ibid) From the
above quotations from
Deshabrati it is seen
that at this phase the ideological concepts that guided our policies were briefly as follows : Guerilla war is basically a higher form of class struggle and
class struggle is the sum total of economic and political
struggles.
As a condition to make the peasants conscious of
the politics of seizure of political power,
efforts must be
made to develop the peasants’ mass struggles and mobilise the broad peasant masses (in these struggles). and political struggles must be waged. that we must
Various economic Simultaneously with
propagate Mao Tsetung Thought ceaselessly.
Only then will it be possible to begin the guerilla war and build up base areas and peasants’ armed struggle. In the process of striving to build up peasant movement with the object of developing (raising it to the level of) armed struggle, ideological concepts entirely opposed to the ones mentioned above were :
were smuggled in.
Their
manifestations
.304
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
Guerilla units have to be formed “in a completely secret manner,” “by a wholly
conspiratorial
method” ; we must
begin with elimination of the local class enemies by such guerilla units adopting “the method of guerilla action”.
True,
mention was made of the need for propagating the politics of seizure of power prior to actions ; “but it would be wrong to put too much stress on the importance of carrying on an intensive propaganda before starting the guerilla attacks”. In this way will be created the initiative (of the masses) and mass actions, “and the flames of people’s war will engulf the whole of the countryside”. This meant that there could be only one
meaning of
‘annihilation’ or ‘elimination’ of class enemies—an interpreta¬ tion, undoubtedly, opposed to Chairman Mao’s Thought. Those who have gone through Chairman Mao’s works attentively will have observed that in his various writings, the words ‘annihilation’, ‘wiping out’ and ‘to destroy’ are used synonymously.
‘Annihilation’ may mean ‘to kill’ in particular
circumstances, but not always.
Chairman Mao says : “.
to destroy the enemy means to disarm him or ‘deprive him of the power to resist’ and does not mean to destroy every member of his
forces
physically.”
{On Protracted
War,
May 1938) However, on the basis of ideological concepts inspiring it, the movement since Naxalbari has been divided into two phases.
If the concepts of these two phases are compared,
the change becomes clear : (1)
Instead of mobilising the broad peasant masses in
broad-based mass movements, form guerilla units by a cons¬ piratorial method. (2)
Previously it was said that once class struggles were
developed by forming the Party units, these Party units would be transformed into guerilla units.
In the second phase it
was said on the contrary that the intellectual comrade would fotm a guerilla unit by recruiting some one (poor peasant) ■without any knowledge of the Party unit. Instead of carrying
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
305
■on political propaganda for a long time and striving to build up class struggles, it was argued that it would be wrong to put too much stress on the importance of intensive propaganda. If only the four weapons—class analysis, class struggle, investigation and practice—were applied successfully, it was said previously, peasants’ guerilla action would create mass initiative and mass action and kindle the flames of people’s war.
But only a little later, guerilla action itself came to be
regarded as guerilla war.
Whenever any action took place in
any district or any State, it was suggested that guerilla war had spread. Such statements naturally had adverse effects on the minds •of the comrades.
A leaflet distributed by a local committee
in an important rural area even went to the extent of suggesting that “We shall be organised first then we shall fight—this is wrong.”
This leaflet contained such impractical slogans as :
“Annihilate all the class enemies.”
Of the two—“political
propaganda” and “annihilation of class enemies”—the former was given up at one stage in the process. It came to be argued that “action itself is propaganda.” Thus there was infiltration of bourgeois thinking. Previously it was written in iDeshabratV (September 4,
1969) :
“Another manifestation of bourgeois
thinking (i.e. revisionism—S.R.C) is to exaggerate the impor¬ tance of actions and to deny the importance of political propa¬ ganda.
This is what Chairman Mao has called ‘militarism’.”
Exactly the same outlook was reflected in the activities in the urban areas.
True, activities in urban
detailed in the Programme.
areas are
not
But from the theory of people’s
war it is evident that for a long time the Party’s task will be to build up base areas in the countryside and make use of them for encircling, and finally, capturing the cities. This is the path of the Chinese Revolution.
Our policy in regard to the
cities was determined in conformity with this path.
“In the
enemy-occupied cities and villages, we combined legal with illegal struggles, united the basic masses and all patriots, and ^divided and disintegrated the political power of the enemy Vol 11—20
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
306
VOL II
and his puppets so as to prepare ourselves to attack the enemy from within in co-ordination with operations from without' when conditions were ripe.”
(Lin Piao : op. cit. P. 53)
Moreover, the line laid down by Chairman Mao in regard to the work in urban areas is as follows : To build up the proletarian base of the Party, to build up all mass struggles which are just and
advantageous for us, to conduct all these
struggles with restraint and thus to preserve our strength and wait. In our Programme
we have said : “It (the working class)
also performs its vanguard role by launching struggles on political issues, both national and international, by solidarity actions in support
of the revolutionary classes, mainly, the
revolutionary struggles of the peasantry and by sending its class conscious vanguard section to organise and lead the peasants’ armed struggle.” From what has been said above, anyone with commonsensewill realise that our first major tasks in towns should be : (a)
to conduct
extensive mass work among the prole¬
tarian masses in towns so that cadres from among workersmay be sent to the villages ; (b)
to
build up
solidarity movements in towns
with'
workers’ participation ; (c)
to build up secret
Party
organisations with select
cadres so that this work may be conducted lor a long time. These tasks can be
performed if the Party’s proletarian
base is built up and the Party branches are formed in factoriesin important districts. programme in towns.
These are the primary tasks of our
But what did happen ?
It was decided to organise a mass-
demonstration in support of Cambodia. The programme was abandoned.
Instead the impression was given out that in
our country it was not necessary to wait for a long time in. towns as had been the case in China.
We need to create Red
terror in towns also and for that it was immediately necessary' to start the campaign
of
annihilation directed against the:-
307'
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
class enemies and the state machinery.
All this was said in
the name of the new international and national situation, denying the character of uneven development of the revolu¬ tionary situation.
The
sensitive students were exhorted to
accomplish the democratic and cultural revolution simultane¬ ously ; the ‘Luddite”-type
action of destroying educational
institutions, libraries and laboratories, in the name paralysing the educational system was begun.
Needless to say, there was
no discussion in the Central Committee on the subject before introducing this method in urban areas. It has already been mentioned how the necessity of the perspective of protracted war was belittled and how the idea gained currency that quick result should be aimed at. This line of thinking was encouraged by the wrong assessment regarding the Third World War. The U.S. aggression against Cambodia was regarded as the mark of the beginning of the Third World War. It was Comrade
Majumdar who gave this thesis.
Of
course the Party and the Party Congress were influenced by this assessment.
But it is also a fact that after Chairman
Mao’s statement of May 20 * had been broadcast, Comrade Satyanarain Singh of Bihar drew our attention to the wrong assessment and wrote a few letters to the General Secretary for rectifying the mistake—the Report of the Congress was yet to be published.
He had requested not to publish the relevant
portion. The General Secretary did not act as requested. The Marxists’ assessment of the international or national situation is not unrelated to their practical tasks.
The style of
work was influenced by the assessment as regards the begin¬ ning or otherwise of the Third World War. The Party’s politics and organisation are closely inter¬ related. Wrong politics is inevitably reflected in organisational *
Hailing the Joint Declaration of the Summit Conference of the
Indo-Chinese peoples, Chairman Mao issued a solemn statement on May 20, 1970, supporting the struggle of world’s people against U. S. imperia¬ lism. The statement was issued under the title, ‘'People of the world,. Unite and Defeat the U. S. Aggressors and All their Running Dogs.”
308
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
matters.
This is the law.
VOL II
In our state, simultaneously with
the increasing leftist trend in politics, its predominance in organisational matters is also becoming pronounced day by day.
Some of the concrete manifestations of this trend are
given below : (a)
Mao Tsetung Thought teaches us that the rejection
of the principle of strengthening of the leadership of the Party Committee means the establishing of authoritarianism.
Marx¬
ism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought teaches us that “The Party Committee system is an important Party institution for ensur¬ ing collective leadership and preventing any individual from monopolising of the conduct of affairs.” the Party Committee System ).
(On Strengthening
Chairman Mao Tsetung has
repeatedly warned us against the trend of monopolising of the conduct of affairs and solving of important problems by any individual and ttee nominal.
making the membership of the Party Commi¬ But all the members who are regular readers of
‘Deshabrati' must have observed that many an
important
policy has been published as “Comrade Charu Majumdar’s” exhortation.
In most cases even the State Secretary was not
informed beforehand—he also could come to know of it only through the newspaper.
Even the request to issue these
instructions in the name of the State Committee was rejected. The latest example was Comrade Charu Majumdar’s decla¬ ration on the formation of the People’s Army.
Even the
“formation of the People’s Army on the soil of India” was not considered in the Party Committee, nor even in the Politbureau, nor even in the State Committee ! of such a situation ?
Can anyone think
Is it not the principle of placing an indi¬
vidual above the Party Committee ? (b)
At one time it was observed that Comrade Charu
Majumdar was sought to be established as representing the authority and as its only interpreter in India [Shashanka’s *
*'Sh^shanka'was the pen-name of Saroj Datta, the then Secretary of West Bengal State Committee of the CPI (ML).
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
observation
309-
published in Deshabrati.)
Many a member of
the Central Committee had objected to the publication of such articles. Comrade Charu Majumdar
also expressed his
view that “publication of such articles was not correct”.
It
was also proposed that the Party Congress Report should describe him as the sole authority of Mao Tsetung Thought in India.
Quite justifiably many
comrades
opposed
it.
The
Party (Congress) acknowledged his leading role—the role on which there was never any difference of opinions within the Party.
But even after that, some responsible comrades in
Bengal continued to project him as the authority.
Is not this,
proposal to appoint him the sole authority ridiculous ?
Mao
Tsetung Thought teaches us : “Knowledge is a matter of science., and no dishonesty or conceit whatsoever is permissible. What is required
is
definitely
(On Practice).
the
reverse—honesty
and modesty.”
Mao Tsetung further teaches us : “To learn is
no easy matter and to apply what one has learned is even harder,”' “This
process of knowing is extremely important ; without
such a long period of experience, it would be difficult to under¬ stand and grasp the laws of an entire war.
Neither a beginner
nor a person who fights only on paper can become a really able high-ranking commander ; only one who has
learned
through actual fighting in war can do so.” (Strategy of the Revolutionary War in China). Only from 1967 onwards we have begun to learn to study and apply correctly Mao Tsetung’s Thought and his theory of people’s war.
Within such a short time is it not opposed
to the Party principle of collective leadership to propagate things such as ‘the only interpreter’ etc. ? To
what level has “authoritarianism”
reached today ?
Some of the most responsible leaders placed ultimatum before the ordinary members of the Party, such as these : Charu Majumdar’s Party.
“This is
Only those who would obey him
unconditionally will remain inside the Party.”
Is it not the
policy of “commandism” that accompanies left deviation ? (c)
In this State, anyone expressing dissatisfaction (over
310
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
the policy) or anyone criticising in any manner (the policy of the Party) is being labelled as “revisionist” or “centrist”. And
such
acts
are
being
performed by Comrade Charu
Majumdar himself and by many in responsible positions. it encouraging ideological struggle ? threat ?
According to Mao
Or, is it shelving it under
Tsetung Thought,
struggle is the “soul of the Party”.
Is
ideological
Then is not this gagging
tantamount to severing the Party from its soul ? (d)
The Bihar State Committee, in a document submitted
sometime ago, drew the attention to the “Left” (deviationist) trend inside the Party.
The document together with Comrade
Charu Majumdar’s replies to the questions raised therein were circulated inside the Party.
Our State Committee has given
its verdict that it is a “revisionist document.”
But it is very
surprising that the document in question has not even reached many units.
Even a Politbureau member who stays very
near to the General Secretary—within a stone’s throw—was not given the document.
Should it be called the honest way
of conducting ideological struggle ?
In this article, without
making any comments on the said document or on Comrade Charu Majumdar’s comment on it, I want only to point out that Comrade Majumdar concluded his comment with, “This is vile”, as is known to all who have gone through it. question naturally arises—whether Comrade
The
Majumdar was
commenting on any enemy document or that of criticisms of a State Committee of the Party ? Is not such reaction resulting from criticisms levelled by Party members an indication of .impatience inherent in “Left” deviations ?
Is it the correct
method of conducting ideological struggle ? Chairman Mao teaches us : “If there were no contradictions in the Party and no ideological struggles to resolve them, the Party’s life would come to an end”. August 1937). (e)
(On Contradiction,
Militarism in the policy usually casts its shadow over
organisational matters too.
Those who take part in “action”
twill form the Party Committees—the Party is being reorga-
311
fDEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
nised thus.
The Party is the Party for “actions”.
The Party
built on the ideology of armed struggles has been reduced to a (terrorist Party. (f)
“We should carry on constant propaganda among the
people on the facts of world progress and the bright future ahead so that they will build their confidence in victory.”
By
this, Chairman Mao never intended that there should be any exaggerated propaganda.
Chairman Mao also says :
“At the
same time we must tell the people and tell our comrades that there will be twists and turns in our roads.” king Negotiations, Oct. 7, 1945).
(On the Chung¬
In the pages of Deshabrati
one comes across many instances
of exaggeration.
A few
among those are being mentioned here. (1)
The “actions” the students and youth are conducting
in educational institutions are said to be comparable to the May 4th Movement of 1919, of China. (2)
In the immediate past, hoisting of Red^flags over the
(factories and educational institutions were said to be comparable to the historic Kharkhov movement. (3)
It is
peasants have teaches us :
claimed
that
in
Bengal
joined the guerilla
thousands
units.
of poor
Chairman
Mao
“In all mass movements we must make a basic
investigation and analysis of the number of active supporters, opponents and neutrals and must not decide problems subjec¬ tively and
without
basis.”
(Methods
of work of Party
the masses. (3)
Turn in everything captured. The Eight Points for Attention are as follows :
(1)
Speak politely.
(2)
Pay fairly for what you buy.
(3)
Return everything you borrow.
(4)
Pay for anything you damage.
(5)
Do not hit or swear at people.
(6)
Do not damage crops.
(7)
Do not take liberties with women.
(8)
Do not ill-treat captives.”
[“On the Reissue of the Three Main Rules of Disci¬ pline and Eight Points for Attention—Instruction of
the
General
Headquarters
People’s Liberation Army”
of the
Chinese
(October 10,
1947),
Selected Military Writings, 2nd ed., P. 343. ■—Editors J
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
399
'
Those who are willing to join the regular army must be admitted.
We must find out the creative method of speedily
educating them
politically.
Then only we shall be able to
preserve them and the regular army will grow into a vast force. From our
experience we have seen that where struggles
have been confined to the stage of annihilation of class enemies only, and where we have not been
able to establish
the
revolutionary committees as the State power of the masses by strengthening the People’s Liberation Army, the reactionary government
has distributed lands of the annihilated
class
enemies amongst the peasant masses and thus made sinister efforts to complete our land reforms with a view to blunting the edge of fighting consciousness of the peasant masses for seizure of power.
Therefore, in addition to developing our
struggle, seizing crops under the leadership of revolutionary committees, reducing rent in general and redistributing the lands of the annihilated class enemies, we must undertake the responsibility of total land reforms area-wise. Under the impact of armed peasant
struggle, today the
working class is holding its head high in different areas and is coming forward to discharge its responsibility as leader of the revolution.
We have been able to build up Party organi¬
zations within the working class in various basic industrial undertakings. adequate.
But our
work
among workers
is not
yet
Within the working class we must further intensify
the struggle
against the petty bourgeois outlook.
Only in
this way can we get from the working class good organizers who will rally the broad working class, the poor people and the petty bourgeoisie of the urban areas in the resistance struggle and will perform the role of worthy political advisers of the People’s Liberation Army in the villages. Our base areas are symbols of the united front of workerpeasant-middle class masses opposed to the Congress regime. It is by consolidating and
extending these that the united
front will be consolidated and
developed.
Gradually
non-working sections of the people will also unite with us.
the
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
400
VOL II
These base areas are also the bases of our cultural revolu¬ tion.
So, the People’s Liberation Army
transformed into a cultural army
will have to be
as well, repudiating, on
the cultural question, all revisionist points of view opposed to class outlook—opposed to armed struggle.
In this way
alone the struggle initiated by the revolutionary youths and students against the feudal-imperialist culture will be united with the
revolutionary
struggles of the peasants
and our
people’s anti-imperialist and anti-feudal culture will develop vigorously. [Source :
Liberation
(Bengali),
a mouthpiece
of this
group, Vol. 1 No. 1, February 1976.]
RESOLUTION ‘ON ELECTIONS’ [ The following is the document {Draft) of the CPI{ML) led by Satyanarain Singh,
dated April 3, 1977.—Ed.]
The Central Committee, having reviewed the Party line ‘on elections’, has come to the conclusion that the line of total and general boycott of elections during the entire period of People’s Democtratic revolution is a line contrary to MarxismLeninism-Mao Tsetung Thought and is an outcome of the Party’s over-reaction to revisionism and subjective and meta¬ physical approach. The Party, particularly the Central Committee, confused the parliamentary path as peddled by the revisionists with participation in and utilisation of the parliamentary institutions by the revolutionary Marxists for exposing the real nature of bourgeois parliaments, for educating the backward sections of the people about the necessity of armed struggle for the over¬ throw of their enemies,
for organising and mobilising the
broad masses in revolutionary struggles and for wrecking the bourgeois parliament from within.
The parliamentary path
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
401
peddled by the revisionists is to go to establish the so-called parliamentary democracy in India as an “instrument of peo¬ ple s will” and
advocate the “peaceful path” to socialism or
the path of “peaceful transition”.
The revisionists’ conception
is to gain a majority in parliament, capture the government and effect basic social transformation without demolishing the existing
reactionary
State
machinery.
The revolutionary
Marxists, on the other hand, believe in utilising the elections for mobilizing the people for revolutionary overthrow of the enemies of the people from power by smashing the reactionary State machinery, for overthrowing bourgeois democracy and establishing people’s democracy and socialist democracy.
The
parliamentary path peddled by the revisionists and revolu¬ tionary utilisation of the bourgeois parliament are not same thing.
the
The Central Committee in its over-reaction to
revisionism, wrongly bracketed the two entirely mutually anta¬ gonistic concepts and adopted the line of total and general boycott.
The impetuosity of accomplishing the revolution
on the morrow to our resolve led the CC
and the whole
Party to a negative and harmful line of boycottism.
It led to
boycott of elections, boycott of partial and economic struggles and boycott of mass organisations and threw the entire Party and the revolutionary movement off its correct rails.
In our
enthusiasm to draw a sharp line of distinction between Marxists and the revisionists, the CC and the Party threw away the baby with bath water. Even after the CC and the Party rectified its line of boycott •of economic and partial struggles and of mass organisations, even after it upheld and practised the tactics of combining the legal with the illegal, open with secret and other forms of struggle with armed struggle, the line of total and general boycott of
elections
was
continued
on the
basis of the
erroneous understanding that to utilise parliament was the same as taking to the parliamentary path and giving up the path of People’s war. The CC, victim of subjectivism and voluntarism, negated Vol 11—26
402
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II'
the Leninist conception that utilisation of the parliament or participation or non-participation in elections or in bourgeois parliament was a matter of tactics, that it was part of the tactics of combining legal with illegal and there cannot be an absolute approach to this question as it was a question of tactics and when to participate in it or when to call for a boycott depen¬ ded upon the level of consciousness of the people, degree of their organisation and strength and the striking capacity of the Party. Comrade Lenin narrated the experience of the Bolsheviks and observed : “...it has been proved that participation in a bourgeois-democratic parliament even a few weeks before the victory of the Soviet republic, and even after such a victory,, not only does not harm the revolutionary proletariat, but actually helps it to prove to the backward masses why such parliaments deserve to be dispersed ;
it helps their
successful
dispersal and helps to make bourgeois-parliamentarism ‘poli¬ tically obsolete’.
To refuse to heed to this experience, and
at the same time to claim affiliation to the Communist Inter¬ national, which must work out its tactics internationally ( not as narrow or one-sided national tactics, but as international tactics), is to commit the gravest blunder and to retreat from internationalism while recognizing it in words.” [Lenin :
Left-wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1975 P. 54]
Thus, participation in bourgeois parliament before and even after the victory of the Soviet Republic, in order to prove to the backward masses the utter futility of such parliaments, to facilitate its successful dissolution and to make it politically obsolete for the masses was correct tactics for the Bolsheviksr according to Lenin.
The line of total and general boycott
of elections upheld by the Central Committee was thus a total rejection of Leninism on this question. Lenin repeatedly has spoken about the political conditions in which to participate in elections.
Writing
elections or not to participate in
about the
boycott of Duma in August
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
403
1905, Lenin observed thus :
“At that time the boycott proved
correct, not because non-participation in reactionary parlia¬ ments is correct in general, but because we correctly gauged the objective situation which was leading to the rapid trans¬ formation of the mass strikes into a political strike, then into revolutionary strike and then into uprising.
Moreover,
the struggle at that time centred around the question whether to leave the convocation of the first representative assembly to the tsar, or to attempt to wrest its convocation from the hands of the old regime.
When there was no certainty, nor could
there be, that the objective situation was analogous, and like¬ wise no certainty of similar trend and rate of development, the boycott ceased to be correct.” [Lenin :
Ibid, Pp. 20-21]
Bolsheviks linked the question of participation or boycott of Duma or elections to a particular combination in the situation. The boycott was
correct when revolutionary
strikes
were
turning into an uprising, when Soviets as people’s organ of power had begun appearing and when revolution was on the verge of breaking out.
The revolutionary tide was reaching
its zenith. Similarly, pointing out the reasons justifying participation in bourgeois parliament, Lenin observed : “Even if not ‘milli¬ ons’ and ‘legions’, but only a fairly large minority of industrial workers follow the Catholic priests—and a similar minority of rural workers follow the landlords and kulaks (Grossbauern)— it undoubtedly follows that parliamentarism in Germany is not yet politically obsolete, that participation in parliamentary elections and in the struggle on the parliamentary rostrum is obligatory for the party
of the
revolutionary
proletariat
precisely for the purpose of educating the backward strata, of its own class, precisely for the purpose of awakening and enlightening the undeveloped, downtrodden, masses.
ignorant rural
As long as you are unable to disperse the bourgeois
parliament and every other type of reactionary institution, you must work inside them precisely because there you will still
404
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
find workers who are doped by the priests and by the dreari¬ ness of rural life, otherwise you risk becoming mere babblers.” [Lenin :
Ibid, Pp. 52-53]
Thus, Lenin points out the conditions in which it is obliga¬ tory on the part of the revolutionary proletariat to utilise elections and the bourgeois parliaments to work within them. As long as revolutionaries lack the strength to do away with bourgeois parliaments and every other
type of reactionary
institutions, they must work within them. However, the CC ignored the scientific tactics laid down by Lenin and adopted a disastrous tactic of boycotting all elections irrespective of the level of the revolutionary move¬ ment, the level of consciousness of the people and the degree of their organised strength. The CC, in order to justify its departure from Leninist tactics, used all sorts of arguments to defend its “Left” slogan of general boycott.
The CC in its various documents {Revisi¬
onist Onslaught, The Indian Revolution and Its Path and other documents) laboured hard to prove that Leninist tac¬ tics with regard to participation in bourgeois parliament was no longer applicable to the present day India.
The CC took
shelter behind the argument that world capitalism was
no
longer in the stage of decennial crises but in the stage of per¬ manent crisis, that the Indian p'eople had already sufficient experience of the elections since 1952 or even earlier and were convinced that in India elections were based on bogus votes and not on real votes, that there existed no lull in the revolu¬ tionary struggles and that it was in the phase of incline.
The
CC, in one of its documents, categorically stated that parlia¬ mentary democracy was not only historically obsolete but also politically obsolete in India. to boycott elections.
Hence the decision of the Party
There has never arisen a situation in
which the boycott could be a correct slogan. majority of people have yet
Overwhelming
to get disillusioned from the
elections, their struggle has yet to reach the stage when they could have the strength to sweep away the bourgeois parlia-
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
405
merits and other reactionary institutions. movement is still in its infancy.
The revolutionary
The areas of revolutionary
mass struggles are microscopically small in size in such a vast country as ours.
Even when the country was passing through
post-Naxalbari upsurge, the level of
consciousness
of the
people, their organisation and strength had not reached to that stage when they could sweep away the parliament. organs of people’s power were yet to be born. mentary democracy—though politically outlived itself.
historically
The
The parlia¬
obsolete
had
not
People were making use of it and
participating in the elections and this was not only the case with the backward strata of the people but for the whole people, except the people of those areas where we had deve¬ loped good movement and where they followed us loyally. What was politically obsolete to the revolutionary Marxists had not yet become so for the masses, for not only for a substantial minority of our people but for the millions of our countrymen.
The CC confused the relationship of the
leadership with the masses.
Can the basis of outbursts of
mass peasant struggles from Naxalbari, the militant waves of siudents’ struggles and working class struggles in several parts of the country be taken as the emergence of the stage when combining the legal with the illegal, parliamentary with the extra-parliamentary, the open with the secret, and other forms of struggle were regarded as contemptible and counter-revo¬ lutionary ?
The subsequent elections also, even the one held
in 1971 after the severe setback suffered by the revolutionary people in 1970-71, did not move us to the realisation of the reality that revolution had suffered defeat, that revolutionary forces had to be revived, strength had to be created and accumulated in order to prepare the Party and the revolutio¬ nary forces for a rapid advance.
The boycott of elections to
the Loksabha in 1977 (March) was the most serious blunder as it prevented the Party from emerging as a much stronger force.
The
bankruptcy of the line of general boycott, the
total absurdity of it can be realised from the fact that it was
406
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
overthrown not only by masses, but by overwhelming majority of revolutionary cadres as well.
In this respect, the election
verdict of 1977 is also a convincing victory against the line of general and total boycott of elections advanced by the Party. a
Comrade Lenin teaches us :
boycott
of the
bourgeois
“We did not proclaim
parliament,
the
Constituent
Assembly, but said—and from April (1917) Conference of our Party onwards began to say officially in the name of the Party—that a bourgeois republic, with a Constituent Assembly is better than a bourgeois
republic without a Constituent
Assembly,- but that a “workers’ Soviet republic, parliamentary,
is
better
republic.
and peasants’ ” republic, a
than any Without
bourgeois-democratic,
such
careful,
thorough,
circumspect and prolonged preparations we could not have obtained victory in October 1917, nor have maintained that victory”. [Lenin : Ibid P. 15]. The CC could have taken the lesson from Lenin and stated that
a big bourgeois-big
democratic
rights
and
landlord
regime
with bourgeois
institutions was better than a big
bourgeois-big landlord regime without bourgeois democratic rights and institutions but the people’s democracy was the best. Even this mistake might have saved us from the ridiculous position in which the CC landed itself in March 1977.
In this
election we even failed to correctly estimate the urge of the people against the fascist dictatorship of Indira Gandhi and therefore failed to play a positive role in the 1977 elections. The CC in its effort to overcome Lenin’s objection to the line of general and total boycott of elections took shelter behind the argument that since India was a semi-colonial and semi-feudal country and not a capitalist country, there existed no democratic rights and that elections on the basis of adult suffrage and secret ballot had no relevance for the revolutionary people. and
The material reality of the existence of parliament
people’s participation in elections were just ignored or
wished away as it might create illusions in the minds of the people and divert them
from the path
of
people’s war.
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
407
It was argued that if the Party participated in elections it would deviate from the path of armed struggle.
While it
was correct to think that in a semi-colonial, semi-feudal coun¬ try the base of bourgeois democratic liberties as parliamentary institution is weak, but this was only one aspect of the reality, the other aspect being the existence of the bourgeois parlia¬ ment with adult suffrage
and secret ballot.
The elections
could have been used right since the outbreak of the Naxalbari struggle to take our programme and path to the vast millions of our countrymen, and revolutionary
movements
developed by combining the legal with the illegal were simplv not considered at all.
The existence of parliament in a semi¬
colonial semi-feudal country was summarily dismissed as use¬ less despite the express provisions in the June 14 letter of CPC regarding combining parliamentary with extra-parliamentary. Since, there existed no parliament in China for the CPC to make use of, we refused to take the concrete reality of a parliament in India and fell a victim to metaphysical approach. The CC based itself not on facts but on fancy. The CC, in order to overcome the discomfiture caused by Lenin, took shelter behind the argument that it was not a period of lull but of revolutionary upsurge and that the tactics of participation in election did not apply.
Our conception of
an upsurge was that even if there was a lull in this period, it would be of a very short duration.
In one of our documents,
we had stated that the revolutionary upsurge which had app¬ eared in post-war India was still continuing.
Although we
recognized the possibility of a “temporary lull”, for all practi¬ cal purposes, the CC has been a victim of the theory of perma¬ nent upsurge.
And, that is one of the main reasons why even
after the serious setback of 1970, even after the caution of the 10th Congress of the CPC that Leninism was the Marxism of the era and that Lenin’s theory and tactics were valid today, we refused to move out of our fancy world.
The conception
•of permanent upsurge has been damaging the Party’s links with the masses and leading to voluntarism in practice.
Even
408
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL IF*
after being smashed, the revolutionary situation became more and more excellent and the boycott continued ! The CC, in its attempts to overcome Lenin’s admonitions to those who believed in general and total boycott irrespective of the conditions, took shelter behind the fact that since armed struggle had emerged, the parliament, assemblies or local bodies would cause hindrance to its development and expan¬ sion.
It was not taken into account that though the peasants
rose in mass struggles taking arms against the feudals in several pockets of the country, areas of armed resistance were micros¬ copically small, the number of regular squads were still very small and they too acted mainly in self-defence and for more time they organized the people in struggle on the basis of their immediate demands, and we had a long way to go in emerging as a national political force of any significance in the country and that we had to work hard, and utilise all legal opportuni¬ ties to educate and mobilise the people for agrarian revolution and for the path of the people’s war.
And, for such an objec¬
tive, the parliamentary institutions had to be combined with the extra-parliamentary and other forms of struggle had to be waged to supplement the armed struggle that was emerging in some small pockets in the country.
But the CC counterpoised
the utilisation of elections of the parliament against armed struggle, thus ignoring the dialectical
unity between other
forms of struggle with armed struggle. The CPI(ML) has committed grave mistakes in the sphere of applying Marxist-Leninist tactics in Indian conditions, which have caused much harm to the cause of the people (by the line of general and total boycott of elections irrespective of condi¬ tions).
The CC is mainly responsible for the continuance of
this “Left” line for such a long period, although this line was continuously opposed by
several communist revolutionaries
both inside and outside the Party. The CC committed “Left” deviation on this question be¬ cause it failed to apply Marxism-Leninism to the concrete practice of Indian revolution.
It became a victim of meta-
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
409f
physical approach and abandoned Marxist dialectics. Besides, it should be noted that the wrong line on elections was the product of over-reaction to revisionism and its manifesta¬ tions—legalism, parliamentarism and reformism. Such has been the ideological source or root of this “Left” deviation. The social root was the very preponderance of the petty bourgeoisie in the party ranks as well as in the leadership of the Party. The urban petty bourgeoisie, the ruined artisans and impoverished peasantry and its mood of dejection and impetuosity cast their reflections and the Party became a victim of impetuosity of the petty bourgeoisie. Such has been the social basis of our “Left” deviation on this issue. The historical root of this deviation was the long domina¬ tion of revisionism in our party. The cadres and the leader¬ ship of the CPI(ML) had seen how before the split, the CPI(M) had degenerated into an election machine, into a completely legal, open and reformist party and how cadres had got infa¬ tuated with all the views of bourgeois parliamentarians. This past history created a feeling of aversion against parliamentary elections in the minds of revolutionary cadres and leaders who not only lacked maturity in Marxism but also lacked sufficient experience of revolutionary struggles. The absence of parlia¬ mentary institutions in several countries of Asia also had its impact on the minds of the cadres and leaders of the Party. In conclusion, the CC views that participation in a parti¬ cular election or its boycott should be treated as a question of tactics. And this should be decided on the basis of the concrete situation existing at the time of that particular election, depen¬ ding on the consciousness of the people, the level and organised strength of the people’s movement. Comrades should realise that the aim of participation in or the boycott of a particular election is the same, namely, the advancement of the revolu¬ tionary movement through different methods. Therefore, the Party should decide its attitude to any election, whether to ther parliament or assemblies or local bodies, on the eve of eachi election on the basis of the conditions laid down by Lenin.
410
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II
The CC is placing this resolution before all the Party units for discussion.
After gathering the opinions of the Party on
this question, the CC will take the final decision on this. [ Source :
“Red Flag” (edited
by Satyanarain
Singh),
Bulletin No. 2]
ON UNITED FRONT [This is a section of the Chapter ‘The National Situ¬ ation’, taken from the ‘Political and
Organisational
Report’ of the UCCRI(ML), adopted at their first Central Conference in July, 1977.—Ed.] United Front :
Democratic and National
...the basic contradictions in Indian society in the present stage of revolution are :
(1) between the masses of the people
and feudalism ; and (2) between the nation and To resolve the first
imperialism.
contradiction, we have to build up a
broad democratic front (people’s democratic front) based on the alliance of all those classes who have a contradiction with the feudal-comprador capitalist classes and launch the armed agrarian struggle to overthrow them. This is the four-class alliance of the workers, peasants, urban petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie against the internal enemy, with the worker-peasant alliance as the main axis. Civil war will arise and develop in both phases of the New Democratic Revolution, during armed agrarian
revolution as
well as during the struggle for national liberation.
When im¬
perialism launches an attack on our country, either directly or through its lackeys, the principal contradiction becomes that between imperialism and its domestic reactionary
lackeys on
the one hand and the broad masses on the other. The question of forging a United Front with a section of •the ruling comprador classes in the event of a rival section of
411
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
these classes capitulating wholly to one or the other super¬ power, in a bid to turn India into a neo-colony, has arisen recently during the emergency.
Our understanding on this
is that in the first phase, i.e., the agrarian phase of the New Democratic revolution, that is, before imperialism launches a war of aggression on the nation, the question of forging an alliance with a section of the comprador ruling classes does not arise.
These comprador classes are the principal and
immediate target of the revolution.
In certain specific condi¬
tions and on certain specific issues it may be possible to have a tactical arrangement for a while, with one or the other section of these classes, for we must seize any opportunity of utilising the contradictions between the ruling classes, dividing them and weakening them in every way we can.
But at no
time in this phase can we modify our basic agrarian revolu¬ tionary programme against these classes as a whole, or enter into any binding or long-term alliance with them. Our basic task in the first phase of the revolution is to build the four-class alliance, the broad democratic front of the masses of the people on the basis of agrarian revolutionary progra¬ mme.
But to do this successfully, we must realise that even
in this phase, the anti-imperialist struggle must be linked with the anti-feudal agrarian revolution. When imperialism launches a war of aggression on the country, there is a split in the ruling classes, and the section which does not want to lose its semi-colonial status and be¬ come a neo-colony of the aggressive super-power, comes over to the side of the patriotic and democratic forces who must now launch the war of national resistance against the foreign enemy.
This is the second phase, the phase of the National
United Front against imperialism, when the question of forging an alliance with the ‘patriotic’ section of the compradors be¬ comes necessary in order to isolate the native traitors and their masters.
However, this alliance with the ‘patriotic’ compra¬
dors is also temporary and lasts only until the enemy is defeated, after which the section again becomes the principal
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
412 interal
enemy of the democratic
VOL II
revolution (as in China
after the defeat of Japanese imperialism—when the civil war against
the
comprador classes as a whole had yet to be
fought to the finish).
EDITORIAL, DESHABRATI [This is a translation of the editorial of the March ’78 issue of Deshabrati, the Bengali organ of the pro-C. M, pro-Lin Piao group of the CPI(ML) led by Mahadeb Mukherjee—Ed.] Today we are living in the era of the victory of world revolution, of the people’s offensive.
Our respected Comrade
Mahadeb Mukherjee, the great Central Leadership, has taught us that the characteristic of this era is the victory of MarxismLeninism-Mao Tsetung
Thought.
That is why we witness
that as a result of the successive blows dealt by the liberation struggles of the
revolutionary
masses, well-armed with the
weapon of Mao Tsetung Thought, and—faced
with
maddened and
final
imperialism is battered,
collapse—it has
bewildered.
become
In its desperate
furious,
bid to save
imperialism from its imminent final collapse, world revisionism is carrying on disruptive acts of sabotage within the revolutio¬ nary war in different countries of the world, adopting various sinister tactics in a vain attempt to wean away the people from the path of armed struggle.
That is why Chairman [Mao]
has taught us that revisionism is the
main danger of the
present era. Summing up the experience of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution,
our respected leader Comrade
Majumdar drew the lesson struggle against
that
today
without
Charu
waging a
revisionism, revolution in no country can
move even a single step forward.
So we see that the people
of the world are boiling with hatred against revisionism in every country and are taking the mask off its face.
Our
413
DEBATES AND DOCUMENTS
respected leader Chairman’s
Comrade
Charu
leadership the
Majumdar said, “Under
revolutionary
struggles of the
world today have merged into a great confluence.”
That is
why our national and international tasks today have become inseparable.
So we find in the international sphere today
that the most modern revisionism has adopted the sly tactics of opposing Chairman in the name of Chairman.
Attacking
Comrade Lin Piao, the able successor and close Comrade-inarms of Chairman Mao, it has attacked Chairman Mao and Mao Tsetung Thought and is thus carrying on the last-ditch battle to resist the world-conquering march of the people’s war.
Similarly,
in
the national sphere also we
find the
revisionists of various hues—paying lip-service to Chairman Mao—are attacking Chairman’s Thoughts on the soil of India by attacking our respected leader Comrade Charu Majumdar, who has successfully applied Comrade Lin Piao’s politics, and are trying to drag the Indian
masses from the path of armed
peasants’ struggles into the mire of revisionist struggles.
In
this respect, all the revisionists are birds of the same featherright from the CPI(M) down to the most modern representa¬ tives [of revisionism], Kanu—Souren—Ashim. In the history of revolutionary struggles in India, Naxalbari is the spring thunder, Naxalbari is the beginning of armed peasant revolutionary war,
of establishing
Peasants’
Raj,
Naxalbari is the first successful application of Mao Tsetung Thought on the soil of India. whose
creator
Majumdar.
is
our
So,
respected
Naxalbari is a politics
leader
Waging a resolute struggle
Comrade
Charu
against nearly 45
years’ revisionist past, it was Comrade Charu Majumdar who for the first time determined the method of application of Mao Tsetung Thought on the soil of India—and the result was Naxalbari.
That spark of Naxalbari has today assumed the
proportions of a prairie fire which has engulfed the whole of India.
It is to lead this revolutionary war that our respected
leader Comrade
Charu Majumdar has personally created the
CPI(ML), the symbol of the hopes and aspirations of the
414
NAXALBARl AND AFTER
Indian masses.
VOL II
It is at the cost of the arduous struggle and
great sacrifice of thousands of martyrs that the path of Naxal¬ bari, the politics of our respected
leader
Comrade Charu
Majumdar, is today established as the only path of liberation of the Indian masses.
And that is why revisionists of various
hues do not have the guts to oppose Naxalbari straightaway, that is why they are opposing Naxalbari donning the garb of Naxalbari,
trying
to dismiss the politics of Naxalbari [by
denying] its great creator.
That is the reason why we find
that the ‘officially recognized party of Naxals’ (Satyanarain— Santosh) have come out in the open bazaar,
trading the
martyrs’ name in order to shield their ugly traitors’ faces. But today it is clear as daylight to the people of the whole country that Naxalbari means armed struggle, that the CPI (ML) is the weapon for establishing Peasants’ Raj, and that the martyrs are great fighters in that armed struggle for seizure of power.
So, in trying to peddle the rotten stuff of election
politics, with the martyrs’ names on their lips, and displaying the signboard of the CPI(ML), they are now being disgraced by the masses ; when it was becoming difficult to get things done through them, entered the scene.
great
men
like
Kanu-Souren-Ashim
These people have started dancing to that
tune quite shamelessly.
Treading upon martyrs’ blood, they
have thrown away the signboard of the CPI(ML), and today they lie prostrate before Jyoti Basu.
They talk of the necessity
of reviewing the situations, and immediately announce their decisions to start everything anew.
In this process they are
seeking to negate the history of the last ten years’ armed peasant revolutionary war.
It is indeed a treat to watch these
great men play political volte-face.
It was this Kanu Sanya!
who once on the Maidan declared that Charu Majumdar was the leader, that it was Comrade Charu Majumdar who had, combating revisionism, applied Mao Tsetung Thought in Naxal¬ bari. It was he [KS] who had then warned the Indian masses against those seeking to smash Comrade Charu Majumdar’s Authority.
And then in ‘More About Naxalbari’ he suddenly
415
DBBATES AND DOCUMENTS
discovered that in Naxalbari Charu Majumdar’s politics had not been applied—a point he probably forgot to mention earlier.
A shim, the
propaganda-in-charge
of
this
Kanu
Sanyal, is today posing as a great commentator of the Indian revolution.
This A shim Chatterjee once said that it was at the
feet of Comrade Charu Majumdar that they had learnt how to start guerilla warfare.
It was he who once declared that
even if there was no one to stand
by
Comrade
Charu
Majumdar he alone would do so till the last, he alone would apply Comrade Charu Majumdar’s teachings to the letter. O Great Men !
don’t think any of us has forgotten what you
said in those days.
So, your sayings today are beyond doubt
remarkable examples of political volte-face.
Wasn’t it you
who had issued a firman for sacrificing the armed struggle of the East Pakistan CP(ML) at the altar of Yahya ? you have the cheek to accuse of having
“led the
And today
Comrade Charu Majumdar
proletarian movement into disarray” !
You have shed so much tears for Comrade Sushital Roy Chowdhury. But the fact cannot be erased that it was you who had then demanded the expulsion of Comrade Roy Chowdhury from the Party. And it was in opposition to you that Comrade Roy Chowdhury had remained in the Party under the instruc¬ tion of
the
respected leader Comrade Charu
Majumdar,
and continued as a member of the Polit Bureau of the Party of our respected leader
Comrade Charu Majumdar.
you have set about organizing under the
leader Comrade
proletarian movement ing
our
proletarian movement
patronage of Jaya Prakash Narayan, that U.S.
Agent, and Jyoti Basu. ted
the
Today
And you people accuse our respec¬
Charu Majumdar of into disarray.”
having “led the
Excellent !
Malign¬
respected leader Comrade Charu Majumdar and
praising, in the same
breath,
Jaya Prakash Narayan—that
U. S. Agent—and Jyoti Basu, you have made it clear whose class interests you are safeguarding.
In
the
international
sphere the most modern revisionism has, under the pretext of attacking
Soviet
social-imperialism, taken the
path of
416
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
collusion with U. S.
VOL II
imperialism, the No.l enemy of
the
people of the world, and is trying in vain to save world imperialism from destruction. national version of this.
What you are doing is just a
It is therefore crystal clear that you
are out to peddle your stuff in the political bazaar with the blessings of Jaya Prakash Narayan and as an appendage CPM.
But that would cut no ice.
years’ experience of armed
of
Tempered in the last ten
peasant revolutionary war and
anti-revisionist struggle, the Indian masses have today learnt perfectly well to distinguish the fake from the genuine. liberation struggle of the of an upsurge today.
The
masses is bursting forth in the form
The politics of our respected leader
Comrade Charu Majumdar has struck deep roots in the soil of India.
Under the personal guidance of his worthy successor,
respected Comrade Mahadeb creating, defending
and
Mukherjee,
the struggle for
developing liberated areas in the
villages of India under the CPI(ML) leadership is intensifying. Grasping the setting up of Revolutionary Committees as the main task, the work of establishing Peasant Raj in rural areas is proceeding at great strides.
The spark of the liberated
area of Kamalpur-Kalinagar has turned into a prairie fire and spread throughout the country.
The whole country is
today on the threshold of liberation.
Under the impact of
the successive blows dealt by the struggles of the revolutionary masses, the
reactionary clique of rulers and
out of its wits. inner
exploiters is
Today they are torn asunder as a result of
contradictions
and
dog-fights
amongst
themselves.
Their dream of building a powerful centre has been smashed today.
Today the masses are bursting forth in anger every¬
where.
All the deceptions practised by revisionism are to¬
day being exposed rapidly ; no mask, however attractive, can today confuse the masses.
The path of betrayal in the name
of Naxalbari has today become bankrupt. pected leader Comrade Charu
Today our res¬
Majumdar is well-established
as the great guide of liberation among the masses of India. So whoever today opposes Comrade Charu Majumdar, opposes
417
©ABATES AND DOCUMENTS
his politics, will be hated and punished by the entire country. So we are today recalling again the great call of our respected leader, Comrade Charu Majumdar : “Our work of establishing people’s political power will be our active line of action against these traitors”.
So
let us grasp firmly the politics of our
respected leader Comrade Charu Majumdar, the great Autho¬ rity of Indian revolution, the politics of Chairman Mao and Comrade Lin Piao ; let us hold aloft the banner of CPI(ML), the Martyrs’ Party led personally by respected Comrade Mahadeb Mukherjee—the worthy disciple of our respected leader who is the helmsman of the present Indian revolution ; let us bury imperialism,
feudalism and revisionism—national and
international—by completing the task of creating, defending and developing
liberated
areas in
the process of
establishing
peasants’ liberated governments through setting up of Revo¬ lutionary Committees in villages ; let us, by liberating India, hold aloft the red banner of the politics of Chairman, Comrade Lin Piao and our respected leader Comrade Charu Majumdar, defend
Chairman’s
revolution.
Yol 11—27
China, and carry forward
the
world
APPENDIX
‘ONE DIVIDES INTO TWO’ (February 1, 1974)
subroto datta (Jahar) [ The author of this article was reportedly killed in a clash with the police in Bihar.
As the article
was received late, it is being published as an Ap¬ pendix.—Ed. ] Class struggle will continue in class-divided society. class struggle has its reflection within the Party.
This
As a result,
the dialectics of two thoughts operates both inside and outside the Party.
One is the correct line, another, the wrong line,
i. e., one is the revolutionary line, and the other, the counter¬ revolutionary and revisionist line.
Any two-lines
struggle
ultimately is the struggle of two world outlooks : one is the proletarian outlook, and the other, the bourgeois outlook. In other words, one is the outlook of dialectical materialism, and the other, the outlook of idealism and metaphysics.
The
outlook of each and every reactionary power and revisionists is idealism and metaphysics.
Dialectical materialism is the
outlook of the proletariat. Within the Communist movement of our country, a struggle between two outlooks was going on.
At that time, the revo¬
lutionary peasant upsurge of Naxalbari took place under leadership of Comrade Charu Majumdar.
the
It was because of
the revolutionary peasant upsurge at Naxalbari that dialec¬ tical materialism won in theory and practice, the developed role of the proletariat guiding it.
The victory of the dialecti¬
cal materialistic outlook was possible by struggling against and completely defeating the outlook of idealism. After Naxalbari, the struggle between the two lines and the two outlooks has reached a developed stage.
The correct
{revolutionary line of our respected and dear leader, Charu
420
NAXALBARI AND AFTER
VOL II1
Majumdar, has been established within the Party and among, the people through revolutionary practice in recent years. From 1962, he was the representative of a correct revolution¬ ary line.
He was the first person who boldly declared in 1962,.
“The Indian Government has attacked China and so we should oppose this war.”
From
1962, particularly from
1967, he wrote the historic eight documents.
1965 to
These are
documents of uncompromising struggle against the revisionists and set forth the revolutionary theory of New Democratic Revolution of India.
Comrade Charu Majumdar integrated
the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thou¬ ght with the concrete realities of Indian revolution, upheld a revolutionary theory and formulated a correct revolutionary line for Indian revolution. The representatives of the wrong line within the Party opposed the revolutionary line of Charu Majumdar from the beginning.
Ashim—in his document on the national ques¬
tion—completely failed to distinguish between ‘wrong’ and ‘right’, in criticising the Party line, i. e., the revolutionary line of Charu Majumdar.
After that, ‘Soumya’ opposed (the line)
from inside and then, going outside the Party, circulated a big document in the name
of ‘Ajoy’.
The main thing in that
document was the philosophical theory of China’s Khrushchev, Liu shao-chi.
‘Soumya’ propagated that bourgeois revisionist
philosophical theory in the name of dialectical materialism. That was his little difference with Ashim.
Then, what was the
philosophical theory which he propounded in the name of dialectical materialism ?
That was the theory of China’s
Khrushchev, Liu shao-chi—‘combine two into one’. words, ‘Soumya’
In other
saw two aspects, ‘wrong’ and ‘right’, in the
correct revolutionary line of Charu Majumdar.
In reality, the
two lines in the Party are : one, the correct revolutionary liner of Charu Majumdar,
and the other, the wrong line which is-
the reactionary, revisionist line.
This is the correct philoso¬
phical theory of dialectical materialism, i.e., ‘one divides into»
two’.
appendix
4211
‘Soumya’, with his revisionist philosophical theory searched* for and failed in finding ‘wrong’ on all the questions in our Party line, the line which was the correct revolutionary line of Charu Majumdar. then
The revisionists, modern revisionists and
Nagi-Pulla-Asit-Parimal-Satyanarain-Ashim-Souren etc.
—all the revisionists of various hues—attacked the Party line on this particular question. The pedlar of the revisionist line that came next, ‘Sharma’,, hiding his own
bourgeois outlook, searched for and failed in
finding ‘wrong’ in the revolutionary line of Comrade Charu Majumdar—all this in the name of‘self-criticism’and‘with¬ drawal’ (of slogans).
This was also nothing but the outlook of
‘combine two into one’. “One trend covers another trend.”
After the Tenth Cong¬
ress of the great Chinese Communist Party, the anti-Party clique, the supporters of Lin, Mahadeb (Chotda) and company,, took an anti-Chinese revisionist line from the moderate point of view.
They also—with an outlook of idealistic philosophi¬
cal theory ‘combine two into one’—are searching for ‘wrongy in the correct Chinese Party line after saying‘Red salute to the Tenth Congress’ and ‘The Great, Glorious and Correct Chinese Communist Party’. for
It is nothing but a vain search
‘wrong’ in the proletarian revolutionary line of Chair¬
man. ‘One divides into two’ and ‘combine two into one’ consti¬ tute the struggle of two lines and two outlooks.
Everyone is
speaking of ‘one’ and ‘two’, but from two outlooks. Then, what is ‘one divides into two’ ?
Feudal society
divides into two-—peasants and landlord class—whereas dia¬ lectics is permanent.
Feudal rule would be repudiated and
then peasant rule would be established.
The peasant class
divides into two—on the one hand, the poor and illiterate,, and on the other, the most daring, kind and bold in their spirit of sacrifice.
The landlord class divides into two—on
the one hand, the living tiger to murder and exploit the pea¬ sants, and on the other, the paper tiger.
The proof is that the-
•422
NAXALBARI AND AFTER VOL II
peasants are annihilating them and their destruction is certain. The world situation is also ‘one divides into two’—the danger of war, and revolution, the main trend. Then, what is ‘combine two into one’ ?
To search for
‘good’ with the ‘bad’ within the feudal society ; to search for ‘bad’ with the ‘good’ within the peasant class ; to search for ‘good’ with the ‘bad’ within the landlord class. Today, the ped¬ lars of this idealistic philosophical theory are searching for ‘wrong’ even within the correct revolutionary line of Charu Majumdar.
Then, tomorrow they would search for ‘wrong’
within the Thoughts of Chairman.
But today, in the violent
revolutionary conditions, the consciousness of the Party com¬ rades and the people has developed.
So tomorrow is far
away, they are being flushed out today. Today, we have to annihilate this idealistic philosophical theory : ‘combine two into one’ and establish the dialectical materialistic theory of ‘one divides into two’. Today we have to understand what it would be if we apply ‘one divides into two’ in the revolutionary line of Charu Majumdar.
Not ‘wrong’ and ‘right’.
dialectics between two ‘right’ (aspects),
Then what ? It is the the dialectics between
the ‘basic’ truth and the ‘developed’ truth, the dialectics between the truth of today and the truth of tomorrow.
In this way we
proceed, society proceeds, revolution and the revolutionary line develop. Comrade Saroj Datta said : The task to be done at twelve must be done by twelve, the task to be done at one o’clock must be done by one o’clock, task to be done at two o’clock by two.
The revisionists can cry out that the line is
changing ; the reason is that they see everything from the dogmatic outlook.
They do not understand the development.
In the field of class-struggle also we have to understand ‘one divides into two’.
Our basic line is the great line of
‘annihilation of the class-enemies’.
After Magurjan, annihila¬
tion is one kind of economism, so we have to snatch the rifle. After rifle-snatching, it is not only mere snatching, we have to fuse it : that is, annihilation, rifle snatching and shooting.
To-
423
APPENDIX
day we should attack not only the enemy’s standing force but the mobile enemy also : that is, annihilation, rifle snatching, shooting and attack on the mobile enemy.
This is develop¬
ment, this is the dialectics between one ‘right’ and another ‘right’. Revolutionary line is not a static thing. which proceeds towards dialectics,
It is a science
and develops.
We all
should understand this. The experience of our practice is also ‘one divides into two’ : the experience of victory or moving forward, and the experience of defeat.
If we isolate ourselves from the revolu¬
tionary line of Charu Majumdar we will be defeated.
And if
we follow the revolutionary line of Charu Majumdar whole¬ heartedly we can move forward and would gain victory. That is why Charu Majumdar has directed us to grasp the outlook of dialectical materialism and to refute the outlook of dogmatism and metaphysics.
We should grasp ‘one divides
into two’ and refute ‘combine two into one’. The future of the revolutionary line of Charu Majumdar is also ‘one divides into two’. line is certain.
The victory of the revolutionary
But it should proceed by destroying the revi¬
sionist line of various hues. Our future is also ‘one divides into two’.
“Future is.
bright but the way is tortuous.” [Received through Post—sent by The Red Guards]
INDEX
AICCCR : 3, 23, 26, 99, 109, . 118, 171,
119, 126,
128,
147,
197, 200, 201, 203,
78, 81, 88, 95, 99, 118, 120,
108,
124, 127, 130,
150, 151, 161,
172, 174,
227, 264, 326, 328, 333,
177, 193, 196, 333-35, 337,
388-90
339, 344, 413, 416
Albania : 61 annihilation
Cambodia: 285, ( khatam ) :
10,
11, 71, 72, 86, 94, 95, 98, 110,
111,
113,
121,
122,
123, 124, 126, 133-36, 145, 152, 154, 166,
155,
156,
164,
167, 288-90, 293-95,
291,
306,
307, 313, 394 Chatterjee, Ashim : 99,
149,
413, 414, 420 Communist Party of China : 2, 12, 18, 31, 74, 122, 148, 187,
115, 118, 195, 250,
304, 305, 315, 323, 328,
253, 258, 274, 284, 285,
388-90
295, 298, 313, 322, 324,
APRCC :
2-10,
28, 29, 32,
34, 131, 231
326, 327, 333, 372, 379, 383, 387, 394, 395, 407
APRCP : 371,372, 381
comprador-bureaucratic capi¬
Basavapunniah, M. : 66-71
talism : 5, 21, 51, 52, 67, 97,
Basu, Jyoti : 71, 203, 218,414, 415
108, 125,
158,
159,
163,
167, 168,
189, 197, 198,
Birbhum : 118, 166
204, 205, 206, 214-17, 228,
Biswakarmakar, Babulal : 204,
232, 251, 252, 254, 257,
221, 223, 299, 375, 392
260, 276, 277, 278, 280,
Bose, Souren : 117, 413, 414
301, 323, 375, 377, 381,
boycott of elections : 7, 8, 37-
382, 410, 411
50, 62-64, 70, 71, 81, 107,
Congress : 33, 63, 64, 65, 78,
126, 203, 228, 242, 243,
81, 99, 102, 107, 150, 158,
287, 292, 400-409
159,
C.P.I : 1,
12, 27,
163, 177,
178, 188,
50-52, 61,
189, 192, 204, 206, 207,
62, 65, 66, 67, 69, 81, 120,
213-18, 257, 277, 320,332,
126,
333, 344, 372, 395, 399
161, 259, 276, 277,
330 C.P.I ( M ) : 2, 3, 12, 51, 53, 61, 62, 64, 65, 66-71, 77,
Cultural Revolution : 80, 94, 97, 117, 174, 183,230,231, 253, 284, 296, 394, 412
Dange, S. A [Dangeites] : 51, 192,
193, 197,
198, 202,
203, 207, 258, 259, 272,
Konar,
Harekrishna :
177,.
178, 203, 218 Lakhimpur-Kheri :
'Datta, Saroj : 308, 375, 422
118,
Datta, Subroto : 419
375
9,
110
227, 254, 265, 287'
Debra-Gopiballavpur : 9, 71,
Lenin, V.I. : 1, 37-43, 45, 47,.
86, 87, 110, ill, 113, 118,
49, 50, 53, 63, 69, 76, 77,
375, 389
78, 80, 81, 122,
127,
151,
184, 187,
193,
Desai, Morarji : 50, 51
154, 180,
Deshabrati :
208, 262, 329, 341, 343,
19, 82, 84, 85,
86, 89, 91, 92, 93, 94, 109112,114,136,149,201,203,
364, 402-409 Liberation :
300, 302, 303, 305, 308,
112, 130,
309, 311, 315, 320, 411
192,
Dimitrov, G : 49
11, 21, 88,
89,
133, 136,
145,
196, 230, 319, 323,
324, 400
Engels, F : 1,47, 48, 79, 80, 154, 328, 342, 364
Lin Piao : 13, 15, 17, 82, 85, 194, 261, 267, 282, 284,
Gandhi, M.K [ Gandhi-ism ] :
288, 299, 300, 301, 306,
93,154, 158,161, 190, 276,
323, 368, 379, 386, 391,
286
393, 411, 413
Gandhi, Mrs. Indira : 30, 31, 32,46, 50, 51,
160, 168,
Lok Yudh : 136
204, 207, 208, 372, 395,
Majumdar, Ashu : 96-99
396
Maoist Communist Centre :
Ghatana Prabaha : 6, 90 Ghosh Suniti : 374 Guevara, Che : 6, 187 Immediate Programme : 5, 7, *'
Liu Shao-chi : 148
313,318 Marx, Karl : 1, 39, 44, 47, 48, 79, 101, 152, 154, 156, 160 Misra Vinod : 393
8, 9, 28, 29, 32, 131, 231-
Mukherjee, Mahadeb: 412,416
250
Musahari : 9, 110, 115,
118,
Indian Express (The) : 349
122, 136, 166, 227, 254,
Janashakti: 4, 349
287, 375
Karimnagar : 30, 33, 36,131, 234, 239, 247
Nagi Reddy, T :
9, 23,
26-
36, 292, 372, 374
Khammam : 30„ 33, 36, 131,
Namboodiripad, E.M.S. : 102
*
234, 235, 239, 246, 249,
Nehru, J. L :
373
New Left: 41/ 42
161, 168, 258
Patnaik; D. B. M : 347
122, 136, 166, 227, 234,.
Patnaik, N.B : 347
239, 247, 248, 265, 287,.
Peking Radio : 25, 156
294, 295, 356, 375, 376
Peking Review :
19, 114
Stalin, J.V. : 1, 22, 38-42, 47,.
Plekhanov, G. Y. : 76, 79
49, 50, 79, 80, 256, 258,.
principal contradiction : 5, 9,
276, 329, 364
15, 16, 274, 279, 373, 382, 410
Tebhaga
movement :
106,
161, 342
Pulla Reddy, C. : 28, 371,385
Telengana : 1, 23, 27-29, 32,
Ranadive, B. T. : 1, 257, 259
35, 131,
Rao, Chowdhary Tejeswara :
202, 238, 241, 257, 259,
326
162,
174,
175,
263, 277, 328, 359, 376,
Rao, D. V. : 30-36
386
Red Flag : 410
Tito, Marshall : 1, 168, 194
Roy Chowdhury, Sushital :
Trotsky, L [ Trotskyite ] : 45,.
96, 98, 99, 112, 325, 415 Sanyal, Kanu : 4,
10, 82-84,
86, 88, 104, 106, 110, 130,
257-59, 367, 369 UCCRI(ML) : 410 U.S. Imperialism : 5, 17, 21,
145, 203, 347-49, 351-53,
30,31,67, 168, 189,
192,
357-60, 363, 370,386, 387,
197-200,
227,
390, 413, 414
230, 231, 250,252-54, 259-
206, 218,
Singh, Satyanarain [SNS] :
260, 262, 277-81, 285, 286,
307, 385, 400, 410, 414
291, 292, 300, 301, 307,
social-imperialism : 5, 21, 30, 31, 67-70, 109, 117, 163, 168,
227,
230,
251-254,
313,
372-73, 375-77, 380-
382, 393, 416 Venkaiah, Kolia : 326
260, 262, 277-81, 285-87,
Vietnam : 53, 54, 61, 70, 80,
290, 292, 300, 301, 372-
132, 184, 199, 214, 231,
382, 393, 395, 415
252, 280, 291, 394
Srikakulam : 7, 8, 9, 20, 2328, 95, 107, 110, 113, 118,
Warangal : 30, 33, 36,
131,.
234, 239, 246, 249, 373
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