Naxalbari and Subsequent Four Decades: A Retrospection
-Deepayan Bose
Some things are pushed
to the dark corners
which have to be extracted,
We have to reach the roots
and emerge,
outspreading the branches
towards the sky.
From the edge of this century
our voices have to rise anew
to protect ‘liberation’, the word,
against wearing out like an overused coin.
We have to reach the intellect of the masses,
lying dormant and concealed,
which will transform the static and sterile elements
into vigorous life yet again.
The things robbed from life
will be reclaimed someday.
The sky will get back its azure hue,
trees their verdancy,
glacier their dazzling white,
and sunrise its scarlet
drawn from your blood…
(Shashi Prakash)
There are many such battles in history that have been lost but have made an impact on the trajectory of the life and future of the world in no less a manner than the battles that have been won; in fact, at times their impact have been greater than the latter. Such ephemeral events appeared on the horizon like a blazing star and then disappeared, though not without leaving their indelible imprint in the collective memory of the masses and for a long time they continued to inspire the coming generation to march ahead to build history. The Naxalbari peasant uprising of 1967 was one such great historic event in the post-independence history of India.
The revolutionary mass uprising of the Naxalbari took place like an explosion which besides exposing the reactionary character and policies of Indian ruling class, also revealed the treacherous and anti-people character of revisionist and parliamentary left, including the Communist Party of India and Communist Party of India (Marxist) and in so doing it sent out a message to the toiling masses of India that they must take up the task of building and forming the vanguard of the proletarian revolution afresh. Immediately after Naxalbari, a new beginning towards the formation of an all-India Party of the proletarian class was made amid stormy upheavals, however, soon this new beginning got caught in the whirlwind of “left-wing” terrorism. Despite numerous proclamations, it is a bitter historical truth that at the national level a unified revolutionary Party of proletariat could not essentially come into existence as a consequence of the efforts subsequent to Naxalbari. The Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) (CPI (ML)),the formation of which was announced in 1969, has been split into numerous groups and organizations in the last 37 years and has been passing through a continuous phase of unity and split. The revolutionary communist organizations formed which drew inspiration from Naxalbari and which did not join CPI (ML) also has had the same fate. Amongst the group of these communist revolutionary organizations which have been termed as communist revolutionary camp, some are implementing a revised and refined version of petty-bourgeois line of “left” adventurism, some are in the process of going astray towards the right-wing direction while a few have joined ranks of parliamentary left, some exist only in name while others have been formally liquidated. There are some, which after embracing the path of neo-leftist “free thinking”are inventing new formulae of liberation in their chamber of thoughts. It is important to examine the causes behind such a tragic situation and we will try to do that, but it is certain that the incident which took place in 1967 at Naxalbari was a turning point in Indian history and a point of reference of the history of Indian Left. This incident and the Marxist-Leninist political current which emerged from it, deeply influenced the political scenario across India. The nature of Indian society and politics did not at all remain the same as it was earlier. The bourgeois media invented a new term for Revolutionary Left—Naxalism, and the remote rural block of the Darjeeling district of West Bengal secured its place in history. Today, even the bourgeois politicians and their theoreticians and consultants admit in their own way that the “Naxal problem” is not that of law and order but a problem of socio-economic nature and its solution can only be socio-economic.
The revolutionary mass-uprising of Naxalbari proved to be a symbolic incident of a new beginning of Revolutionary Left in India and of a radical rupture with the revisionist politics. It once again posed the question of state power as a central question before the worker-peasant population. After the days of Telangana-Tebhaga-Punapra Vayalar and the Naval Revolt, the revolutionary energy and initiative was unleashed yet again on a country-wide level, but owing to the ideological deviation of “left” adventurism and the inherited ideological weakness, which led to an incorrect understanding of the nature of Indian socio-economic formation and state and based on it, an incorrect strategy and general tactics of revolution, this stream suffered stagnation and disintegration instead of moving ahead. Now a lot of water has flown through the Ganges in the last four decades. Social transition which was already underway in 1967 has progressed much further in the same direction and has now reached a definite stage. The counter-revolutionary capitalist land reforms carried out by the ruling classes from above through gradual development has acutely sharpened the contradiction between capital and labour and marked the intensification with which the differentiation of peasantry, proletarization and displacement is occurring. The hegemony of capitalist mode of commodity-production has been decisively established and the existence of pre-capitalist remnants has become extremely limited. There has been a huge expansion of industries by domestic and international capitalists and that of industrial proletarian population. The Indian capitalist class, while accepting the neo-liberal policies of the era of globalization, has continuously been privatizing the public-sector industries on large scale and it has opened the national market for foreign capital almost completely. In the new circumstances, the Indian capitalist class has come to establish itself within the world capitalist system as a junior partner and co-sharer of the imperialist plunderers. Today, the contradiction between the indigenous and foreign capital and labor has become abundantly clear both in agriculture and industry.
Even in 1960s, the orientation of the social development was the same, but at that time there existed a transitional fluid state and the determination of the stage of revolution by identifying the essence of changing reality required a mature leadership with high ideological capacity, deep observation and study and a prolonged process of political polemic. The leadership which emerged from Naxalbari was not such and the “Left-wing” sectarianism strangled the possibility of exchange of ideas in a democratic manner. The slogan was given to follow the path of Chinese Revolution, but had the mass line been implemented, perhaps the correct conclusions could have been drawn. But first the “Left-wing” terrorism and subsequently the right-wing deviations precluded this possibility. Today, when we look at history in retrospect and conduct an analysis and a summing up, it becomes clear that we cannot rectify the mistakes by going back to the past. Indian society has moved much ahead since then. What was possible or should have been done in 1967 or in 1970 is not possible today as the circumstances have changed. Today, a Naxalbari peasant uprising cannot take place. To whatever extent the things got developed in the correct direction at that time is indeed our heritage, but it cannot be repeated. History progresses with the dialectics of continuity and change. In the context of the Naxalbari and the Revolutionary Left stream which originated from it, the aspect of change dominates over that of continuity currently. That is to say that both in terms of the objective conditions and the subjective forces of revolution, we are living in a new era. Yet it is certain that without the correct and objective sum-up of the history of that period, no new beginning can be made even today. The ideological deviations, the mistakes of approach and method which came in the way of the determination of correct path at that time, if not analyzed candidly, would repeatedly continue to digress any new journey. We will have to know as to what are the specters of the past which we need to get rid of and what is the heritage of past which need to be internalized and expanded.
One cannot create history just by imitating the past. The specters of history continue to haunt a movement or country as long as all its positive and negative experiences are not internalized after summing up and even after that when we confront a new situation, we establish a critical relationship with history once again on a new ground. History, as a matter of fact, is a continuous dialogue of present with the past. To prevent imitation of the past and the preparation of proletarian revolution in the new circumstances, both these aims (which incidentally are interconnected) call for a critical review of Naxalbari today. As we have stated, today the Naxalbari and the process which arose outof it cannot be repeated by rectifying it. But, today, it is important to understand some basic causes behind the failure and deviation of the process which began in the wake of Naxalbari and the prolonged stagnation resulting from it. It is with this purpose that we will discuss the Naxalbari peasant uprising and the history of the communist revolutionary movement which began from there. It is evident that the fundamental reasons behind the historical importance and failure of Naxalbari cannot be identified without the background of the entire communist movement. Naxalbari happened to be a new milestone, but it was not a sudden event disconnected with the continuity of history. In other words, there was a baggage of history even on Naxalbari and the communist revolutionary stream stemming from it, and it could not recover from it. Despite being a turning point of the Indian communist movement, Naxalbari and its stream could not free itself from some fundamental negative aspects of historical continuity. Further, we will see that the key link of all the negative aspects was the ideological weakness which infected the communist movement right from the beginning. We will also briefly put forward our provisional views on the objective historical reason for the continuity of this weakness. This discussion is needed so that we understand that the role of historical contingencies or that of few individuals were not fundamental to the accomplishments, both positive and negative, of Naxalbari and the communist revolutionary movement. Though the role of leadership was indeed important with regard to the fact that the task of correctly and accurately summing up the history and to determine the strategy and general tactics of Indian revolution by studying the concrete conditions was its burden. While we cannot go into the details of the history of communist movement here, we will definitely mention its salient points and stages as a background which in one way or the other will help us in reaching to the historical root of the significance and failure of the revolutionary communist movement.
Some Aspects of the Communist Movement in India:
A General Perspective
The history of the communist movement in India is nine decades old. Till the time of the Naxalbari peasant uprising it had completed the journey of half a century. During this entire journey, it built several pillars of glory of illustrious struggles, and courageous sacrifices; however, this noteworthy point still confronts us like a pertinent question as to why is it that the communist stream could not establish its political hegemony on the national liberation movement? Why is it that it could not capture the leadership of the national movement from the hands of the Indian capitalist class and its representative political Party? We cannot look for these causes in some kind of historical coincidence or in the role of some individuals. Doing this would be ahistorical.
The basic causes of the failure of Indian communist movement can be identified if the entire Indian history of twentieth century is examined in retrospect as well as a thorough examination of its turning points. The key link to all the lacunae of the Indian communist movement has been its ideological weakness. It was due to this weakness that the Communist Party of India never worked as Party forged as the steel-tempered structure according to Bolshevik principles following democratic centralism; not even in the era when it had not yet fallen into the swamp of revisionism and its basic character was still working class. Its structure remained loose and federal even after a long time after its formation. In December 1933, a ‘core of the provisional Central Committee of CPI’ was formed for the first time after criticism of the Indian Communist Party of being scattered into groups, for having a non-Bolshevik structure and of ignoring the tasks related to method and Party-building, by a combined letter of the Communist Parties of Britain, Germany and China(May 1932), an article published in the ‘Communist International’ (February-March 1933), and another letter of the Communist Party of China (July, 1933). Later, it was named as Central Committee after co-opting a few more people. Subsequently, for two and a half years the post of Party General Secretary was held by one or the other as a working arrangement. This situation ended only in April 1936 when P.C. Joshi was elected as the General Secretary. Despite this, the process of the Bolshevization of the Party was never carried out in a proper way. The terms of Party membership, committee-system and underground structure during the phase of right wing deviation in the tenure of P.C. Joshi’s leadership was quite lax and careless which increased substantially after the party was declared legal after 1942. It is to be noted that the first Congress of the Party could become possible only after it being declared legal (23 May-1 June, 1943, Mumbai). It is evident that Indian communists were not prepared to carry out proper functioning of the tasks of Party in the conditions of repression by state and being declared illegal like the Bolsheviks and other efficient Leninist parties. To a large extent, it was due to the absence of a democratic centralist Bolshevik structure that even during the period prior to the revisionist deviation, there was always a lack of consistency in conducting the two-line struggle. The “left-wing” and right wing opportunist tendencies always continued to co-exist, sometimes the former dominated the Party and at other times the latter and at yet other times a strange cocktail prevailed. Even after the formation of Central Committee, the tendency of narrow factionalism continuously prevailed at all the levels. In fact, the Party leadership never even considered Party building as an important task. Bolshevization and rectification through the ideological-political-practical education of the ranks was never emphasized.
It was the ideological weakness and the intellectual incapacity and bankruptcy of the leadership due to which the Communist Party of India always failed to apply the universal truths of Marxism to the concrete conditions of India. On the contrary, instead of doing this, it always looked towards the international leadership and the experienced fraternal parties. Most communists kept on determining the policies and strategies of the Communist Party of India under the influence of the proposals-circulars of International, the articles published in its organs, articles of the Soviet Party and the articles of people such as Rajni Palme Dutt of British Communist Party. What could be a greater tragic irony than the fact that till 1951 the Communist Party of India did not have a program of Indian revolution? It was only a few essays, proposals and tactics and policy-related documents written as per the general orientation and guidelines provided by the Communist International which used to state that the task of National Democratic Revolution needs to be completed in India. Despite the fact that the agrarian revolution was the main task;far from devising any agrarian program, detailed examination to comprehend the specificity of agrarian relations was never carried out. Given such a scenario, it is not surprising that the Party could not become the leading force of the national liberation movement, that it repeatedly failed in making good of the favorable circumstances and the courageous participation of the communist cadre in the people’s struggles and immeasurable sacrifices were wasted. For the first time, the Party leadership after a dialog between its delegation and Stalin and other leaders of Soviet Party prepared and issued the program and policy-statement in 1951 which was passed in Party’s All India Conference in October 1951 and subsequently in December 1953 during the third Party Congress. Despite being mainly and essentially correct about the stage of revolution and general orientation, this program of people’s democratic revolution was full of many contradictions and inconsistencies. The evaluation of this program about the character of Indian capitalist class and state and transformation of agrarian relations and general orientation of social development did not match with the reality as was explicitly evident with the passage of time. It is here that it should be mentioned that during 1955-56 a section of Party leadership had begun to think and state that the Indian bourgeois state was carrying out the task of transforming the feudal land relations from the top in a gradual manner (like that of Prussia during Bismarck era and Turkey during Ataturk era) and that of curbing feudalism. But instead of boldly taking their point to its logical culmination they kept quiet in a cowardly opportunist manner. The more interesting thing though is that by this time the Party had become completely open and parliamentary and it had marched on the path of revisionism and even if there were some thinking in the right direction with regard to the program, it would have been meaningless because for parliamentary leftists the programof revolution is only to consign it to the cold storage.
Owing to its ideological bankruptcy, the leadership of the Communist Party of India virtually made no independent attempt of determining the strategy and the general tactics of Indian revolution through concrete study of all the aspects of production relations and superstructure (which includes caste question, women question, and the question of nationalities) and always took decisions as per the assessments of international leadership and the big fraternal parties. As a consequence, it kept on swinging between two extremes on the questions of joint front, workers’ movement, and other questions. Clearly, in such a scenario, the deviations in the international communist movement which kept cropping up intermittently and the incorrect or unbalanced assessments with regard to India continued to influence the communist movement. This becomes even more evident when we compare the situation with China. In China, the Communist Party was formed in 1921 on a very weak base with minuscule strength and ideological immaturity. But right from the beginning,the Chinese Party laid special emphasis on the task of Party building—Bolshevization of the Party, political education of the cadre, consolidation of Party committees and functioning, discipline, and inner-Party democracy. The Chinese Party continuously developed through the two-line struggle. It was capable of learning from its mistakes and that was the reason why the shocks of defeat or failure could never break its back. Mao Tse-tung even while accepting the general orientation of the people’s democratic revolution in the colonies-semi colonies as proposed by the Comintern determined the concrete forms of the Chinese agrarian revolution and slogans based on the concrete study of the specific conditions of China. He innovatively identified the comprador and national sections of bourgeoisie and prepared the concrete outline of the strategy and general tactics of New Democratic Revolution. While doing so, his thoughts were not always in consonance with the suggestions of the Communist International and Stalin. He never hesitated in presenting and applying the conclusions derived from the concrete study of the concrete conditions and practice. This was the fundamental reason behind the success of Chinese revolution and it is this specificity which is found to be lacking in the leadership of Indian communist movement. Till the time of the decisive victory of the New Democratic Revolution in China in 1949, the Communist Party of India was not even able to present the programof Indian revolution. In fact, now it had got a new big fraternal Party to look up to and emulate. Since it was the Chinese Communist Party under the leadership of Mao Tse-tung which had waged ideological struggle against Khrushchevite revisionism the new leadership of the communist revolutionaries which came out from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in 1960s thought it incumbent that it consider the stage of revolution in India to be anti-imperialist and anti-feudal revolution as per the documents of the general line of the world communist revolution as propounded by the Chinese Party without bothering to study production-relations, class structure, and the character of the state power. Going much further, after adopting verbatim the assessment of Chinese Party regarding India, the Communist Party of India (M-L) had in fact followed the old tradition of Indian communist movement by imagining the class structure like that of pre-revolutionary China and by declaring the duplication of the Chinese path. The possibility of improving this situation was dampened further when, as per the old tradition, the pendulum while moving away from revisionism, swung to the other extreme of “left-wing” adventurism and subsequently a long phase of the co-existence of “left-wing” and right wing opportunism ensued. We will discuss this phase in detail ahead.
It is quite natural here to raise the question of the objective historical reasons behind the intellectual poverty of the communist movement of India. Although a consistent response of this question calls for a detailed historical-social examination it is not within the scope of this essay. We can certainly mention in brief the most basic reason behind the ideological weakness of the communist leadership of India and its tendency to look up to the international leadership or the big fraternal parties. As in other nations the communist movement in India did not come out of nowhere and its success and failure or the maturity and immaturity of its leadership was not just a coincidence.The dynamic process of protracted class struggle of the specific country and the continuity of the intellectual-cultural heritage distilled from it contributed significantly. If scientific socialism was born in Europe and if it strengthened its roots in the European labor movement there were some objective historical reasons behind this. The lightning journey which the Renaissance period embarked upon by breaking the inertia of the medieval age continued to unfold, except for a few decades of retreats and reversals, passing through the phases of Enlightenment and the bourgeois democratic revolutions. In mid-nineteenth century when the Red flag of liberation was thrown into the dust by the bourgeoisie it was lifted by the proletarian class and in the new historical era of class-struggle, scientific socialism became it guiding principle. The European working class was being equipped with rich intellectual-philosophical heritage as a result of the fierce dynamism of the preceding four centuries. When the advanced section of the European working class elite and privileged, largely made possible through the bribery from the colonial plunder, the centers of revolutions started shifting eastwards and the first proletarian revolution took place in Russia which was the bridge between the East and the West. Russia was a country chained to the shackles of Tsarist tyranny and feudal serfdom, though capitalist development was on its way in a gradual and slow manner. It was a prison of the weak and oppressed nations. Although equipped with huge military power it was also at the receiving end of the exploitation by the western European countries. Despite being the pasture for the capital of the developed Europe it was an independent country which itself was the oppressor of the neighboring East European countries. We can witness the backwardness and barbaric exploitation and oppression of the East in Russia and its intellectual centres maintained lively contact with the philosophical-cultural-scientific developments of the intellectual centers of Europe. Russia was never colonized, was never disconnected with it past, and it had the realization of its backwardness as well. It was on this land that Russia’s great revolutionary realist writers and great revolutionary democratic philosophers such as Belinsky, Herzen, Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov were produced. The generation of Lenin and his co-warriors had received this great ideological-cultural wealth as a heritage which had lent it the courage for independent reasoning. China, despite all its Asian lethargy and medieval inertia, was never completely removed from the continuity of its independent and internal dynamics. Despite the plunder by several imperialist countries and partial occupations and despite several defeats, China was never completely colonized and hence while there was a comprador capitalist class, there was a national capitalist class as well. While a section of intellectual community suffered from intellectual colonialism, there was also a nationalist section which had the courage to think independently. Although China was lagging a few centuries behind in terms of intellectual-ideological wealth, yet, as a result of not being enslaved, the nationalist intellectual community had not broken its ties with the intellectual-ideological wealth of the distant past and it was also free of the tendency of accept the contributions of West as a hypnotized slavishness. Also, the communist movement of China had inherited the heritage of Dr. Sun Yat-sen and the incomplete democratic revolution of 1911. This was the reason why despite making a beginning from very weak ideological ground the Communist Party of China instead of looking up to the international leadership and following its guidelines with devotion mustered courage to determine the character of the Chinese revolution by analyzing the concrete conditions of its country.
The ancient history of India was replete with stormy social struggles and rich and copious philosophical-cultural wealth. It was precisely at the time when the signs of breaking of the prolonged medieval era impasse (in the forms ranging from capitalist development and Nirgun Bhakti movement to the peasant struggles such as Satnami revolt) were beginning to express themselves that the colonization process began which was completed in a century (by the middle of nineteenth century). The colonization completely disrupted the independent internal dynamics of Indian society and imposed a colonial socio-economic structure on it. The new classes which were components of this imposed colonial socio-economic structure were the cursed progenies of history. The Indian capitalist class and Indian intelligentsia did not evolve through a process of Renaissance and Enlightenment. They were the products of colonial socio-economic structure detached from the historical roots. This was the reason why even the radical section of the Indian capitalist class never waged any revolutionary struggle and the entire capitalist class adopted the policy of ‘compromise-pressure-compromise’ from the beginning to the end and captured power by taking advantage of people’s struggle and the international situations. Even though this behavior taught it the charismatic cunningness of running the government by cheating the masses, it remained bankrupt in terms of philosophical-ideological wealth. The nationalism and democracy of even that section of Indian intellectual community which was radical national democratic did not possess the rich ground of rationality and materialism as its European and Russian counterparts. At the same time, owing to the colonial mindset, instead of independent thinking the common tendency of Indian intelligentsia was to blindly imitate Europe or blind opposition to the European knowledge wealth standing on the ground of the past, due to its sense of inferiority. The Indian working class did not inherit wealth of bourgeois Renaissance-Enlightenment-Revolution. Even the section of middle class radical nationalist intelligentsia which joined the workers’ movement after being convinced of scientific socialism was not free from the historical curse of being born in a colonial social structure. It possessed neither the sense of historical continuity nor the intellectual wisdom and courage to distill the ideological essence of revolution or class struggle and to apply it to the concrete conditions of one’s country through study. These intellectuals who brought the ideology of scientific socialism to the workers’ movement handed over the same heritage to the leadership to the communist movement which is yet to free itself from it. The colonial mindset has been prevailing in the leadership of the communist movement to such an extent that the blind imitation of the parties which led the successful revolutions and their leaders has been more or less a general tendency on a sustained basis.
The above reason behind the lack of originality, courage, and depth in the leadership of the communist movement is of course not the only reason. There might be several other reasons but the above reason is an objective historical reason which we can assert to be true confidently. It is an inconvenient truth, but it is important to recognize the ground from where we have to make a new beginning. By recognizing this ground of the past we can free ourselves from its curses in an easier way as we have left behind that past half a century ago. Today, the circumstances are more conducive to study the Indian history by freeing ourselves from colonial or mechanical materialist historical vision. Secondly, in today’s world, there is a more favourable objective condition to think by freeing oneself from the historical limits of national boundaries and internalize the world intellectual wealth. Thirdly, today there is no international center or leadership or a socialist country which could be blindly imitated hence the circumstances themselves are compelling us to explore our path ourselves. Fourthly, the changes in the conditions of the country and abroad are so blatant that only an imbecile would try to imitate any revolution which happened half a century ago. Thus, the circumstances are more conducive today for concrete analysis of the concrete conditions independently. While summarizing Naxalbari this historical discussion has been carried out by digressing from the main topic with the hope that in the new era of the new proletarian revolution in the new century the new generation of proletarian revolutionaries would take lessons from history and give a new direction to the Indian communist movement.
After this discussion as a background we now return to the main topic. Before carrying out analysis and summarization of the positive and negative aspects the communist revolutionary movement or the Marxist-Leninist stream which was born out of the womb of the Naxalbari peasant struggle it is important to know as to how the circumstances evolved to an extent that a big section of communist cadre reached to the point of rupture from revisionism and revolt from the revisionist leadership and became the torch bearer of the Naxalbari peasant uprising. Also, it is important to acquaint ourselves with the chronology of facts as to how the conditions were prepared for the explosion in Naxalbari, how the tide of peasant uprising surged and progressed.
Background of the Immediate Past: Indian Communist Movement During the Two Decades Prior to Naxalbari
In order to have an objective assessment of the historical importance of Naxalbari, it is important to know as to why and how the conditions were prepared to such an extent that an armed mass uprising began under the leadership of the local communist organizers in the remote Terai block of West Bengal (which lasted only two and a half month) and the communist movement throughout the country got divided in its favor or opposition and that event became a standard, a point of departure, a metaphor, and a symbol of the decisive rupture from revisionism. Naxalbari could pick the abandoned thread of Telangana and extend it further but it was not to be. In many ways the mainstream of the ML movement repeated the “left-wing” sectarianism of Ranadive era in an even more distorted and vulgar form. Workers’ movement gets punished for the revisionist sin in the form of ultra-leftist deviation. By proving this dictum of Lenin, the reaction of the 17 years of revisionist phase surfaced in the form of “left-wing” terrorism two years after the Naxalbari peasant uprising. But in order to understand it at a deeper level of realization, a brief discussion of the Party history from the Telangana peasant struggle to the subsequent seventeen years is essential. Such a discussion is important for understanding both its historical significance and its historical failure.
Naxalbari took place in a period when the reality behind the socialist mask of Nehru’s capitalist policies had been exposed. Common people suffering from price rise and unemployment were hitting the streets. The unabated sequence of students-youth movement, workers’ movement, and anti-price rise movements continued to unfold. Within the capitalist parliamentary politics, the expression of this widespread disillusionment and mass anger surfaced in the form of formation of non-Congress governments in nine states after the general elections of 1967. But what was important was the fact that it was for the first time after 1947 and after the Tebhaga-Telangana-Punapra-Vayalar and the Naval Revolt that the anti-system sentiments and aspirations of revolutionary change were agitating the masses at the national level and yet there was no revolutionary force present at the political stage which could give them orientation and leadership. It needs to be remembered that this was the time when the Vietnamese revolution was on the verge of securing a victory over American imperialism and the students-youth, intellectuals and workers throughout the world including the western countries were lending them support by hitting the streets. In the African countries, the national liberation struggles were securing victory one after another and in Latin America, the resistance struggles against the military Juntas were surging ahead. The relentless series of student movement in France and movements of blacks, women, and youth and anti-war movement in the US was still continuing. After the Great Debate, carried out by the Chinese Communist Party against Soviet revisionism, the storm of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution had begun since 1966 which was not only inspiring the working masses and communist cadre worldwide to carry out struggle against revisionism and choose the path of revolution throughout the world, but was also attracting the youth and intellectuals towards Mao’s thoughts as well as the epoch-making Chinese cultural revolution. This international backdrop was also deeply influencing and inspiring the communist cadre in India with advanced consciousness and the radical students-youth-intelligentsia. Within the country, the disillusionment of the communist cadre with the revisionist leadership was beyond despair and was fast turning into the spirit of agitation and revolt. When in 1964 after the split in the Communist Party of India, a faction of leadership formed the Communist Party of India (Marxist) after terming the other faction as revisionist, the majority of the radical cadre joined it in the hope that the new Party would plunge itself into the revolutionary struggles by taking forward the heritage of Telangana, but soon it became evident that despite its many illusory radical gestures, the CPM leadership too was not prepared to go beyond the ambit of economistic-parliamentary bounds. When the documents of the struggle by the Chinese Party against the Khrushchevite revisionism (Great Debate) reached to the communist intelligentsia (not just the Dange faction of CPI which was on the verge of split, even the Basavpunaiya-Sundaraiya-Namboodripad-Ranadive faction did not make any attempt to ensure that this polemics reach the cadre who were kept in dark till the time they managed to get these documents from some other sources). And when the advanced elements of the communist cadre of India got acquainted with this debate, a new direction for decisive struggle against revisionism was found here as well. In 1966, along with the commencement of the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution, Mao’s call for bombardment of the bourgeois headquarter inspired the Indian communist cadre as well to wage an open rebellion against the revisionists occupying the leadership.
Within the Communist Party of India, the two-line struggle was going on in one form or other since the days of Telangana peasant struggle. While one section of leadership suffered from revisionist deviation, the other section which represented the revolutionary aspirations of the cadre also suffered from inconsistency, indecision, and the tendency to depend on the international communist leadership and the big parties for guidance. Consequently, by the beginning of the 1950s this second section also fell into the revisionist quagmire and the only point of difference between the two sections was whether to adopt the path of cooperation with the Nehru government as part of the slogan of national democracy or to carry out some radical mass movement also as mainly a parliamentary opposition as part of the slogan of people’s democracy.
The Telangana peasant struggle was first such armed struggle as a result of which an area of 16000 square miles consisting of three thousand villages was liberated and for about one and a half year the entire governance of the area was under the control of the village committees. About 4,000 peasants and Party Guerillas were martyred and ten thousand communist activists were kept in prison for three to four years. In all, 3 million acres of land was distributed to the peasants, eviction and begar was ended and the system of minimum wages was imposed. In February-March 1948, in the second congress of the Communist Party of India when B.T. Randive was made the Party General Secretary by removing P.C. Joshi—a rightist, the Telangana peasant struggle had reached to the stage of Guerilla war. It is noteworthy that it was only after the insistence of the delegates from Telangana that the importance of the Telangana struggle was mentioned in the thesis of the second Congress and was given support and a call was made to organize such struggles and the appeal was made even to the working class to launch a movement in its support. However, the belief of the “leftist” opportunist Ranadive behind this call was that it would create a situation of armed revolt throughout the country. Based on the thoughts of Edward Kardelj,a theoretician of the Titoite revisionist Party of Yugoslavia, Ranadive presented a thesis that the democratic and socialist revolution must take place simultaneously and the communists must not only target the big bourgeoisie but all the bourgeoisie and adopt the path of nation-wide general strike and armed insurrection. The harm done by this “left” adventurism to the Indian communist movement is a fact of history. At the same time, this line also worked to halt the onward movement of the Telangana struggle. In May 1948, the Andhra Party unit, while opposing the Ranadive’s line, presented its line that the character of Indian revolution was different from that of Russian revolution and to a great extent it bears resemblance to the ongoing Chinese New Democratic Revolution. Here a united front of four classes would have to be forged and the path of protracted people’s war would have to be adopted. In the Andhra thesis, while terming the Mao Tse-tung’s principle of New Democracy as relevant, presented the plan of accomplishing the proletarian revolution in India in two stages. Ranadive, while opposing this thesis, also opposed Mao’s thoughts and he even went to the extent of terming him a revisionist in the category of Tito and Earl-Browder. The hegemony of Ranadive’s line over the Party for two years caused immense damage to the Telangana struggle. Instead of taking the peasant struggles in different parts of country forward along the path of Telangana and linking them with the struggles of working class, the “left” adventurism isolated the Party from the masses and almost paralyzed the initiative of the cadre. After the revolution in China in 1949, Cominform supported Mao’s theory of New Democracy in 1950. Zhukov, one of the theoreticians of the Soviet Party, stated the alliance between four classes to be essential in colonies and semi-colonies and another theoretician Balabushevich while supporting the Telangana armed struggle termed it as harbinger of agrarian revolution and the first attempt of establishing a people’s democratic regime of Indian people. As the international leadership gave the new orientation, Ranadive’s “left” opportunist line in India got isolated overnight. Rajeshwar Rao became Party’s General Secretary in May-June 1950 and Party officially accepted the Andhra-thesis. But there had been much delay by this time. The wrong line had to a large extent throttled the possibility of the countrywide expansion of struggle and the new bourgeois regime had got valuable time of three years to consolidate itself. Since the defeat of the “left” opportunist line was not an outcome of the two-line internal struggle but the outcome of the tendency of going along with the stand of Cominform and the Soviet Party, the Party cadre were confused. This phase of confusion continued from the past and since 1947 it was going on continuously. The cadre were getting disappointed due to the adoption of incorrect stand towards the national and international events and then suddenly reversing them and due to the prevalence of mutually opposite two extreme lines continuously in the Party leadership. This was the time when Indian Army entered Hyderabad. After the surrender of Nizam, the Indian Army waged a war against the communist guerillas. The people’s army which was divided in small guerilla squads was now faced with an army equipped with advance weaponry numbering 50-60 thousand. Still the Indian Army could push back the guerilla squads only after great difficulties and unprecedented repression. Taking cue from Malaya government’s Briggs plan, such villages were habilitated where the people had to live under the control of army. Two thousand tribal settlements were destroyed and people were kept in the torture camps. The guerillas left the villages and went towards the adjoining forests and when the army pressure increased even there they got scattered in the remote forest areas.
It is to be noted that the right-wing faction of S.A. Dange, Ghate and Ajay Ghosh which was dominant at the Bombay headquarter of the Party was opposing the Andhra line since the beginning. After the entry of army in Telangana, some people under the leadership of Ravi Narayan Reddy started putting pressure to withdraw the struggle, though the larger section of Andhra Committee still wanted to continue the struggle. It was of the view that despite the immediate loss, it was possible to carry on the struggle and to expand it to the other territories of the country where the situation was conducive. At this time,the British Communist Party and one of its leaders Rajni Palme Dutt played special role in strengthening the hand of the right wing faction. Dutt was of the belief that in the new world conditions of cold war, the Indian communists must abandon the path of armed struggle and work towards strengthening the world peace movement and must put pressure on the Nehru government to stay away from the imperialist camp and forge close ties with the socialist camp and for supporting the people’s war in Korea. An evolved form of the same idea later surfaced in the form of the national democratic front of the right-wing faction of the CPI and in the policy of co-operation and support to the “progressive” bourgeois Nehru government. The revisionists of the Party, adopting the metaphysical deductive methodology once again followed the approach of viewing the national contradictions from the perspective of international contradictions and when there was any conflict between the two, determining one’s tasks based upon the international contradiction. This mistake was committed even during the Second World War and earlier as well. Even the political committee of the Communist Party of Britain, in a letter to the Indian Party, apart from above suggestions, emphasized on getting involved in the legal works and taking part in the upcoming general election, which was scheduled to be held after one and a half years and it also advised on changing the leadership as the Central Committee under the leadership of Rajeshwar Rao was not elected in a democratic manner. These circumstances helped to strengthen the hands of the right-wing leadership of the Party. On 1 July 1950, Ajay Ghosh replaced Rajeshwar Rao as Party Secretary.
In order to deal with the situation of difference of opinion, crisis and confusion, once again the international leadership was relied upon and in the beginning of 1951, a delegation of four members visited Moscow to hold talks with the leadership of the Soviet Party. Two of them—Rajeshwar Rao and Basavpunaiyya—were the leaders of the Telangana struggle, while the other two—Ajay Ghosh and Dange—were opposing it. On behalf of Soviet Party Stalin, Malenkov, Malrov and Suslov held talks. As has been mentioned above, when the Indian delegation returned to India after these talks, a draft of the program of the democratic revolution was prepared for the first time and a policy statement was issued. The policy statement was part of the huge document of the tactical line which was published legally. In both these documents, even though there was no mention of armed struggle, in the document related to the tactical line, the Guerilla war of farmers and the class strike of workers and other forms of struggle were talked about even while “being careful to avoid immature insurrection and risky actions”. In that, this notion was termed as incorrect that the armed revolt can be declared only when throughout the country, the conditions are ripe for revolt. As per the document, if the general mass movement and Guerilla war are organized properly, then by agitating the peasants throughout the country, it is possible to elevate the struggle to a higher plane after the peasant struggle on a big territory reaches the stage of land-seizure.
The Soviet Party’s general suggestions about the peasant-struggle were correct, but it was the Indian Party which had to take the concrete decisions regarding the Telangana struggle, but by that time the right-wing opportunists had come to dominate over it. The Central Committee directed the Andhra committee to continue the struggle only till the time the Party completes the talks with the government regarding the conditions for suspending it. These conditions consisted of not returning the seized land to the zamindars, release of prisoners, taking back the cases, and to revoke the ban on Party. But going against this decision of the Party, the right-wing faction under the leadership of Ajay Ghosh and the Ravi Narayan Reddy faction from Andhra began to put pressure for withdrawing the struggle unconditionally. Taking advantage of this condition within the Party, the Nehru government refused to agree to any conditions for holding talks. By May, 1951 even the Andhra members in the Central Committee had come to believe that it was no longer possible to even carry on partial guerilla struggle. In October 1951, the Party capitulated and declared the withdrawal of the struggle. The guerilla leaders of the forest came to know about it much later. By now, the Party had completely embraced the parliamentary path. The opponent of the right-wing faction had surrendered before it and an immense sense of defeat prevailed amongst the cadre.
In hindsight, it can be said that the immediate defeat of Telangana was almost imminent at that time due to several reasons. The most important reason was that the Party was not unified in a Bolshevik manner and there existed “left” and right factions in it from top to the bottom, hence it was incapable of giving leadership to the Indian revolution. Between 1946 and 1951, first the right wing deviation during P.C. Joshi’s period and then the “leftist” deviation during Ranadive period, and then again Ajay Ghosh’s rightist deviation caused immense damage to Party’s tasks at the country level as well at Telangana level. This was a transition period when the consolidation process of the new regime had not yet completed, but the Party leadership failed to take forward the stream of people’s revolution by linking the naval mutiny, Tebhaga-Telangana-Punapra Vayalar peasant struggles and the nationwide labour movements in a chain. Had this process moved ahead, the aspect of the compromising nature of Congress would have been exposed more thoroughly and even if the democratic revolution had not been completed under the leadership of the Party, either the protracted people’s war would have entered in an advance phase on strong foundation or owing to the pressure of mass struggles, Nehru government would have been forced to carry out the tasks of agrarian revolution even if it was through above in the way of the Prussian path and with rapid capitalist development, India would soon have entered into the stage of socialist revolution. But it was not to be. By 1951, owing to the difference of opinion in the Party leadership, the damage to the Telangana struggle had been done to such an extent that at least for the time being its defeat was certain. Still, had the right wing faction not been dominant in the leadership and instead of complete surrender, after the temporary retreat and after scattering the military power in the difficult forest areas, the peasant struggle in that area and in other such territories could have been organized afresh, an opportunity could be secured to take control of the situation and move ahead. Even this fact need not be ignored that the faction in the leadership of Rajeshwar Rao, which had pursued the correct line on Telangana was weak ideologically. Because of this, despite being dominant in the Central Committee for some time, it could not consolidate its line at the countrywide level. Instead of decisive struggle against the opponent line, it adopted the attitude of compromise, and finally it yielded. This basic fact also need not be ignored that till 1951 the Indian Party neither had a consistent program of democratic revolution nor did it have any agrarian program. By the time the documents of the program and tactical lines were prepared with the advice of the Soviet Party in 1951, the rightists had come to dominate the leadership, the Party had moved on the path of revisionism, and the defeat of Telangana struggle was certain. Another important aspect is that the faction favoring the protracted people’s war like Chinese revolution, despite adopting the correct stand was very immature ideologically and since the Indian situation was not exactly similar to that of China it is doubtful as to what extent it could take forward the struggle had the conditions been conducive. Pre-revolution semi-colonial China was at the pre-colonial stage while India after 1947 was a post-colonial society despite the fact that the decolonization process was not yet complete and it had a centralized state which was under the control of an industrial capitalist class which was not comprador like the one in China. Owing to this very nature, it was inevitable for it to adopt the path of gradual capitalist transformation of the feudal land-relations via Prussian path for the formation of a national market and to expand its economic options by taking advantage of the inter-imperialist rivalry even while being a junior partner of the imperialists. This character of the Indian capitalist class was referred to first by historian D.D. Kosambi. In this regard, even though the 1951 program was determining the stage of revolution and the path at that time correctly it had nothing to say about the orientation of the development of Indian society due to lack of accuracy and clarity in assessing the character of Indian capitalist class and state. It did not make clear the fact that had the national democratic revolution under the leadership of proletariat not taken place, the Indian capitalist class would have gradually accomplished the task of changing the land relations through non-revolutionary path because it was in its class interest. It was not clarifying even the aspect that owing to a centralized state and relatively higher capitalist development it was not possible to duplicate the Chinese path of protracted people’s war, even though the stage of revolution was national democratic in 1947-51. Even the Chinese Party had warned at that time that the Chinese experience of guerilla peasant struggle cannot be blindly imitated in every colony-semicolony-neocolony. Under these complex, fluid transitional conditions, even if everything went on as per the faction implementing the correct line in Telangana, it is difficult to say, owing to its ideological weakness, as to the extent it could take the struggle forward and whether it could escape from the tendency of blindly imitating the path of the Chinese revolution or not. The history of the Indian communist movement in subsequent phase tells us that it would have been quite difficult.
By the way, what actually transpired in history was that the Party had adopted the path of peaceful constitutionalism in 1951 itself and had basically and essentially molded itself on the pattern of Mensheviks and the Kautskyite European parties. Between 1951 and 1962-63, the two-line struggle within it virtually existed between the soft stream of parliamentariaism-economism and a radical stream. A bigger section of cadre had revolutionary aspirations and character, though the recruitment of the reformist cadre was continuing. But owing to its ideological weakness, it considered the radical revisionist faction as revolutionary. The mild liberal faction was led by Dange, Mohit Sen, Bhawani Sen, Bhupesh Gupta, Damodaran, G. Adhikari etc. and even the middle roader Ajay Ghosh was basically with them. The second faction was led by Sundaraiyya, Gopalan, Basavpunaiya, Pramod Dasgupta etc. The thesis of the former was that the faction existing in Congress under the leadership of Nehru is the representative of progressive nationalist bourgeois class and the Nehru government is carrying out the national democratic task of decolonization and land reforms, and hence the Communist Party of India must mainly adopt the attitude of cooperation. Also, the government was maintaining friendly ties with the socialist camp. In order to strengthen this as also to respond to the cold war by strengthening the world peace movement, it was important to adopt the cooperative attitude towards the Nehru government. On the other hand, the radical revisionist faction believed that the bigger partner of state in India is the capitalist class which is making compromises with imperialism and does not wish to carry out the tasks of the national democratic revolution. According to this, what was needed was to struggle for the people’s democratic revolution by forging a four class alliance whose central element would be agrarian revolution. On the face of it, this program looked revolutionary, but the reality was that this faction never presented any concrete action-plan to take forward the Telangana peasant struggle by reorganizing the revolutionary peasant struggle. Apart from distributing the community land, Panchayati land and the land derived from ceiling, putting pressure on the government for expediting the land-reforms, waging struggle on the demands such as minimum wages, giving radical speeches against Nehru’s policies, and organizing movement on bonus, salary increment and other facilities for the industrial workers, the faction which presented the program of people’s democratic revolution did not do anything. It needs to be mentioned here that during 1955-56 Ajay Ghosh, Namboodripad, Dange, Jagannath Sarkar, Balkrishna Menon were talking on this line that much like the Prussia of Bismarck era, the Indian ruling bourgeoisie too is carrying out gradual capitalist transformation of the land-ownership structure from the top, but later, they kept quiet in a cowardly and opportunist manner. Although for a revisionist Party, there is no meaning of program being correct or incorrect but had there been a debate in the issues related to the transformation of land-relations, this issue would have come on the agenda of debate after Naxalabari even for the communist revolutionaries. But it did not happen. It can be said that while the first faction, through its social democratic conduct, wanted to take the Party into the lap of the bourgeoisie, the second faction wanted to play the role of a responsible parliamentary opposition, a ‘pressure block’ within the system and the second line of defense of the system by carrying out radical economistic-trade-unionistic-parliamentary opposition activities. But the revisionist character of this faction can be understood from the fact that between 1951 and 1964, apart from parliamentary and economic struggles, it did nothing for taking forward the revolutionary agrarian struggle of the peasants and for revolutionary political propaganda and political struggle amongst the working class. This faction never raised any question on turning the entire Party as legal and the Menshevik ways including the 4-ana membership. In 1958, when the Khrushchevite revisionist policies approved by the twentieth congress of the Soviet Party were adopted in the fifth (special) Congress (Amritsar) of the Party and the phrase ‘revolutionary violence’ was removed from preamble of the Party constitution not a single delegate opposed this. In order to understand the ideological weakness of the leadership of the communist revolutionary stream which was born out of the Naxalbari peasant uprising, it is important also to mention here that several people of the future ML leadership were present in this session as delegates. Among them, D.V. Rao (member of the Central Committee) and Nagi Reddy were national level leaders and several other state level leaders were present. In the sixth Congress (Vijaywada, 1961), there did surface serious difference of opinion on two mutually opposing drafts of the program, but the split was avoided due to the mediation of Khrushchevites of the Soviet delegation. It needs to be mentioned that during 1956-1961 the Chinese Party while indirectly opposing the revisionism was writing positively in its organs in favor of Stalin and the Marxist-Leninist principles of proletarian revolution, but instead of openly attacking, it was trying to resolve the differences through dialogue at Party level. It was hoping that perhaps the entire Party would not be with Khrushchev and it was possible to bring the Soviet Party on the right track through dialogue and a split in the world communist movement could be avoided. In the process, even though the Chinese Party did register its stand in the documents passed in the international communist movement in 1957 and 1960, it made some compromises as well. Owing to these ideological compromises, several revisionist propositions got included in these documents which were thoroughly utilized by the revisionist parties all over the world. The experience of history was not supporting the optimism of the Chinese Party and its conduct did not match with that of Marx, Engels, and Lenin who used to immediately wage struggle against reformism and revisionism. The undue delay by the Chinese Party in waging direct struggle against revisionism helped revisionists in the communist movement throughout the world. They fully utilized this time in confusing the cadre and consolidating themselves. The Indian communist leadership did not have a habit of thinking without any guideline from the international leadership. So the question of raising question against Khrushevite revisionism in the fifth and sixth congress does not arise. Even the revolutionary spirit of the cadre was continuously decaying after 1951. Now criticism of Stalin and the acceptance of parliamentary path contributed to enhance the despondency and disappointment.
In 1962, during the time of India’s China war, the Dange faction, as a logical culmination of its class collaborationist line, adopted jingoistic line and emphatically supported Nehru’s border policy while considering China as aggressor. At the time China was a victim of the encirclement of the western powers and the haze of slandering, still insofar as the India-China border dispute is concerned, the western media and the majority of the western intellectuals were holding India responsible for acts of provocation and attacks owing to the patronage of the US and other western countries and its expansionist ambitions. These facts are brought out in detail in many books, Neville Maxwell’s book being the most popular one. Even within India, several people including veteran revolutionary Pt. Sundarlal were staunchly critical of Nehru’s expansionist policies and several books and articles were written to bring out the facts, though owing to the jingoistic propaganda they could not reach to the people at large. The communist cadre of India were not familiar with all this material, but through their natural class instinct they were unwilling to accept socialist China as expansionist and aggressor and also they were familiar with the reactionary and expansionist character of the Indian bourgeoisie. While facing the huge jingoistic tide, large section of Indian communist cadre opposed the aggressive and expansionist border-policy of Nehru government. The faction within the communist Party which opposed the Dange faction and which was in minority declared the majority line of the Dange faction as anti-Marxist and based on the opportunist theory of bourgeois nationalism. But the events in the coming days proved that it was not done due to the commitment towards proletarian internationalism, but for keeping the revolutionary cadre on its side. Instead of boldly exposing the truths behind the myth of the Chinese “attack” and taking an anti-jingoism program, Ram Murthy, on behalf of this second faction, presented an alternative resolution in the National Council of party in which only this much was stated that China and India are two great neighboring countries, they must not engage in war as both the countries would have to face destruction and chaos. But despite this cowardly manipulation, they could not manage to escape. The Indian government, based on the information given by Dange, arrested them and sent to prison.
In the latter half 1963, a debate on the basic ideological question of ‘Revolution or Peaceful Transition?’ having an unprecedented dimension commenced in the communist movement of India probably for the first time, which took the entire Party cadre in its fold. Between 1957 and 1962, based on whatever literature of the Soviet Party and the Chinese Party was reaching to a section of communist cadre, it was clear that the Chinese Party opposed not only the revisionism of Togliatti and Tito, but it also did not accept the principles of three “Peacefuls” of Khrushchev and its criticism of Stalin. But the broad cadre throughout the country had the access to the Soviet writings only. The literature of the Chinese Party could reach only the Marxist intellectuals and the enlightened cadre of the metropolitan cities. The Party leadership was aware of the ongoing differences within the international communist movement, but even its second faction never tried to take the stand of the Chinese Party to the cadre. In June 1963, the Chinese Party presented the alternative general orientation document against the Khrushchev’s line by opening the debate for the first time. Subsequent to this, during the period of September 1963-July 1964, the Chinese Party, by totally exposing the phony communism of Khrushchev through nine essays, declared the Soviet Party as a capitalist roader. This was the debate which became famous by the name of ‘Great Debate’ in the international communist movement. At the time, the bigger section of faction opposing the official Party-line was in prison. Those who were outside did nothing to take the documents of the “Great Debate” to the Party cadre. These documents reached the Party cadre mainly through intellectuals and then the word was spread rapidly. Now the initiative was totally in the hands of the cadre. The large section of the militant cadre supported the Chinese position. It took no time for it to understand that the main target behind the false propaganda of Chinese “attack” and the tide of jingoism actually happen to be the revolutionary line of the Chinese Party, hence the cadre began to carry out bold propaganda against jingoism entirely on its own independent initiative. This campaign was most resolute in Bengal. A huge rally took place in the Shaheed Maidan of Calcutta followed by a procession on the streets. Its main slogan was: ‘Those raising the specter of China are the agents of imperialism”. The entire situation could be understood from the fact that the Bangla organ of Party ‘Swadheenta,’ despite being in control of the faction opposing the official Party-line of the leadership, maintained a studied silence on this issue. On the other hand, a new weekly ‘Deshhitaishi’ and a new monthly ‘Nandan’ which had begun on the initiative of the Party cadre, were writing on this entire issue with militant articulation and were attacking revisionism.
When the leaders belonging to the faction which was oppozed to the official Party-line came out of prisons, they found the situation going out of the bound of their understanding and control. Before their imprisonment they were seen in association with the Chinese line, though they themselves did not say so. Within the prison differences emerged even amongst them. Some liberals stated that both the position—that of Soviet Party and the Chinese Party—are wrong, while their opponents believed that the Chinese position is in the main correct. A small section of the leadership which opposed the official line which had managed to escape the arrest and which acting as the state committee of the Party by going underground issued a document with a pseudonym of ‘Prithviraj’ in which it was clearly stated that the differences in the international communist movement are on the fundamental principles of Marxism. But despite asserting this, one of its members Samar Mukherji clarified that they on their own would not take initiative for split. Even the leaders who came out from the prison believed the same, however they realized that this feeling is fiercely present amongst the cadre that the links with Dangeite majority which is dominant in the Party leadership must be severed. Under this circumstance, the official partly-line opponent faction in order to divert the attention of the cadre from the ideological issues started enthusiastically distributing the Dange’s letter after retrieving from National Archives, which he had sent to the British regime as a mercy petition. But this trick failed to work. The ideological struggle got intensified even more and there was no other alternative left to these leaders other than taking steps towards the formation of a new Party. Towards this purpose, a convention was called at Tenali (Andhra Pradesh). But the intention and character of the leaders of this faction can be understood from the fact that just before this convention Jyoti Basu flew to Delhi to meet Bhupesh Gupta and Rajeshwar Rao with a proposal for compromise. Their condition was that if the next Party Congress takes place on the basis of 1962 membership and if Dange is removed from the Party chairmanship, the idea of the formation of a new Party could be dropped. From these facts, it is clear that for such a leadership, the issue of split was not that of ideological-political, rather it was regarding the softer or harder policies and strategies within the arena of parliamentary politics. In the ‘Prithviraj document’, the differences between the Soviet Party and the Chinese Party were being termed as ideological and the Chinese position was supported while the Dange faction which was dominant in the national council had passed a resolution terming China as aggressor. In these two lines, those who were thinking about co-existence could only be rank opportunist.
The radical cadre were suspicious of such opportunist leadership from the beginning. Still they felt that after separating from the Dange faction, the new Party could be taken on the right track by putting pressure on the wavering nature of the new leadership. The cadre were further shocked when the leadership which was expected to apply the revolutionary line, got assembled for a congress openly at a time of immense alertness of the repressive state machinery and then what followed was obvious. All the main leaders who opposed the official line were peacefully picked and put in jail. At a time when the radical cadre were on the streets against jingoism, this faction probably found prison to be the most secure place. The suspicion of the cadre towards this new leadership got further impetus when it distributed the draft Party program for the proposed congress for the formation of a new Party (CPM). Even though the leadership of the working class, united front on the basis of worker-peasant alliance and the agrarian revolution being the axis were talked about while talking about the people’s democratic revolution, it contained several elements of revisionism and reformism and all possibilities relinquishing the revolutionary line completely in future were inherent in it, which a large section of radical cadre had sensed. Consequently, at all the levels of Party convention organized for preparation towards Party congress sharp debates arose. Even within the Party congress, the draft of an alternative program were presented, but in the old bureaucratic manner, every radical critique was suppressed by manufacturing majority through manipulation. Only few words here and there were changed in the draft of the Party program.
Despite all these developments, the radical cadre failed to understand that even the new Party which was being formed happens to be revisionist from the perspective of the leadership and policies. They were expecting that it was possible to orient it towards the revolutionary path by carrying out two-line struggle within the Party and by sidelining the middle roaders. The factors which were responsible for this confusion were: the long history of Party’s ideological weakness, long tradition of the lack of political education and the fourteen-year long phase of blatant revisionism.
The essence of the stand adopted by the newly formed Party on the fundamental ideological question of proletarian was evidently revisionist. Despite critiquing the Khrushchevite revisionism, the leadership of the CPI-CPM believed that the Chinese Party suffered from ultra-leftist sectarianism. Its assessment of Soviet Union was that the Party over there suffered from revisionist deviation, though the character of the society was still socialist. This stand on its own was ridiculously inconsistent. As per Lenin’s definition, a revisionist Party means a bourgeois Party with a socialist mask. If such a Party rules the state, then the state’s character is not that of proletarian dictatorship, rather that of bourgeois dictatorship and while such a state exists, it would be only a matter of time for the socialist fabric of society to disintegrate. Between 1955 and 1964 the socialist fabric of the society of Soviet Union was completely disintegrated and it was replaced by state monopoly capitalism. After the attack on Czechoslovakia in 1968, the imperialist character of the Soviet Union also got exposed. In the later decades, the Soviet policy of causing splits in the national liberation movements in the name of helping them, preaching them to compromise by relinquishing the path of armed struggle, exploiting the newly independent countries in the name of aiding them and the Soviet policy of exploiting the people of east European countries, exposed the social imperialist character of the Soviet Union like a broad day light. But the CPM leadership kept on believing Soviet Union as socialist until the state capitalism yielded to private capitalism of Western type and until the Soviet Union was disintegrated. As per CPM’s thesis, despite the 35 years long reign of a revisionist Party the character of the state and society remained socialist. Can there be a bigger joke with Marxism than this! As if it was not sufficient, slowly CPM even stopped calling the Soviet Party as revisionist.
CPM never wrote in detail on Mao Tse-tung’s analysis and theoretical derivations regarding the nature of the class struggle which goes on during the period of socialist transition and reasons of capitalist restoration, but it kept on rejecting the experiment of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution right from the beginning and continued to believe revisionist theory of Liu Shao Chi and Deng Xiao Ping of the development of productive forces to be Marxist. Hence it is not surprising that today it considers the naked capitalism of China in the garb of “market socialism” as socialism and singing the tune of Dengites it declares the Cultural Revolution as an “ultra-leftist aberration” and “catastrophe”. Much like all the revisionist parties, CPM often maintains silence on every crucial ideological issue of international communist movement and puts forward its revisionist stand only when compelled. Even though it verbally stated the Chinese stand in the Great Debate to be correct, instead of accepting the stand of the Chinese Party in 1963 regarding the general line of the world proletarian revolution including the revolution in the colonies-semi colonies-neocolonies, it essentially accepted the general line of the Khrushchevite revisionism. After the death of Mao, the capitalist roaders in China who had acquired power through reactionary coup, began calling the Soviet Party as the fraternal Party, CPM did not oppose and accepted this sly somersault. This revisionist character of CPM got more and more exposed with the passage of time, but looking from the perspective of ideological position and the character of Party, it was a revisionist Party right from its inception.
So, instead of narrow empiricist observation if we look from the perspective of the Leninist principles of the Party organization, the revisionist character of CPM was evident from 1964 itself. The CPM continued the entirely open, legal, parliamentary character and modus-operandi as it is. The nature of Party membership in it was worse even than the Mensheviks. The changes made in the Party constitution at the Amritsar Congress were maintained as well in the Seventh Congress of 1964. As per the program of people’s democratic revolution, the path of revolution could only have been protracted people’s war, but instead of mentioning it the Party program in a deceptive language mentioned “parliamentary and non-parliamentary” paths. Any revolutionary Party uses the bourgeois parliamentary election according to the circumstances as a tactics only. To put the parliamentary path at par with non-parliamentary path in itself is revisionism. While opposing the slogan of election-boycott of the “left-wing” adventurist streamof ML movement CPM used to claim that it was just following Lenin in saying that the elections could be used as a tactics and it was precisely doing that. However, it has been loyally implementing the bourgeois policies while it has been ruling in one state for three decades and instead of using the forum of elections and parliament as a preparation for mass struggles it has been using brutal authoritarian force of the state in order to crush the mass movements. It had exposed its character in the late sixties itself by brutally repressing the Naxalbari peasant uprising.
Insofar as the question of program is concerned, the CPM under his program of people’s democratic revolution believed that the character of the Indian big bourgeoisie was not comprador but rather possessed dual nature and all in all its position was supposed to be that of a junior partner of imperialism, which was closer to the reality. However, the inherent logic of the ruling capitalist class could only be such that as per its industrial-financial interest it would try to transform the semi-feudal land-relations from above, in a gradual process akin to the Junker-type transformation of Prussia, giving opportunity to the feudal landlords to convert themselves into capitalist landlords (and those who fail to do so are left free to be ruined), would convert the rich tenants into profiteer Kulak, would secure and expand its economic interest by taking advantage of inter-imperialist rivalry and by adopting the import-substitution policy and would try to bring even the remote villages in the fold of the national market. In fact, that is what actually transpired (and this process had picked up in 1964). The economists associated with CPM have been in part accepting the truth of the capitalist development, though they stop short of taking this logic to its culmination. The CPM, instead of taking the logic derived from the character of the Indian capitalist class to its conclusion, continues to believe till this day that for last half a decade that India has remained in the stage of people’s democratic revolution. In any case, the program of revolution hardly bears any meaning for a revisionist Party. There are many smaller revisionist parties that believe India to be in the stage of socialist revolution, they engage themselves in economism-trade-unionism with the proletarians in villages and cities and contest parliamentary-state assembly elections or only engage in theoretical babbling. But CPM is a Party having a relatively big social base which has to keep the big and medium owner farmers in villages and the petty bourgeois and upper middle class in the cities to its fold at any cost, otherwise there would be severe blow to its vote bank (it maintains its vote bank by waging legal and economistic struggles, howsoever meek, for the economic interest of the organized workers and by carrying the drama of protest against the government on salary revision, PF, Pension, terms of service etc. in the parliament, it can keep its vote bank intact, though its electoral fortune cannot be strengthened merely on this basis.) Hence the idea of a strategic alliance between of four classes inherent in program of the people’s democratic revolution act as a theoretical cover for adopting the class collaborationist attitude towards the big owner farmers in villages, small bourgeoisie and the upper middle class in the cities. It is because of this reason that the CPM continues to talk about the people’s democratic revolution till this day.
Anyhow, these developments belong to much later date. We will have to return to the period of 1964. The revsionist character of CPM today which has been exposed in form of the rampantly anti-people social-democratic character was like this right from its birth. But since the CPM’s leadership at that time was attacking Dangeite revisionism and since it appeared to be opposing Khruschevite revisionism, even if mildly, a big section of the cadre having low theoretical understanding and consciousness who were used to looking at things empirically, considered them as revolutionary. Yet, it is an undisputed fact that a large section of cadre was looking at them with suspicion and was considering it as wavering middle roaders. The cadre having advanced consciousness were in despair since the 1964 congress itself. However, they could not see any alternative. A large section consisted of those who, despite considering the leadership as revisionist, were with the Party only for the time being and were in the wait-and-watch mindset. A substantial portion of intellectuals and activists had become inactive after losing any hope from the new leadership. All in all, the ambience of enthusiasm, hope and zeal which was needed for the formation of an all India Party was nowhere in sight.
Ground being laid, that Historic Explosion and Afterwards
In November 1964, when the Party congress was being held in the Tyagraj Hall in Calcutta, a small group of a few people had distributed pamphlets and had also levelled the charge on the new Party leadership as being middle roader and suffering from revisionist deviation. Most of the delegates returned depressed and skeptic from the Congress. In January 1965, the General Secretary of the newly formed CPM, P. Sundaraiya, was arrested and with the government permission went to Soviet Union for medical treatment. After returning from there, while referring to several positive aspects of the Soviet leadership, he wrote that even the Soviet Party has a point. By the time the documents of the Great Debate had started reaching the lower echelons of organizers and activists as well and a substantial portion of the cadre having advanced consciousness had come to believe that there was no scope of adopting the middle path between revisionism and Marxism and doing so would be tantamount to standing on the side of revisionism. This was the time when the national bourgeois leadership in the national wars of independence and the anti-neocolonial armed struggles in the countries ranging from South Vietnam, Philippines and Malaya to the African countries and the Latin American countries was applying the military strategy of protracted people’s war and most of them were on the threshold of victory. The leaders of the African liberation struggles like Amilcar Cabral, Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere were openly admitting Mao’s contribution of military strategy. The Khrushchevite revisionists, who were trying help the national wars of liberation through bargaining and who were advising them to sit on the negotiating table with the rulers and to get power through compromise were increasingly getting exposed. During the Cuban Missile crisis, the surrender of Khrushchev before the US browbeating had already raised a question mark among the communist cadre throughout the world about the character of the Soviet regime. Its policy of continual compromise with the imperialists was also putting it under suspicion. Towards the end of 1965, unprecedented barbaric repression of the communists took place in Indonesia, and even this event made it clear before the communist cadre in India that if a Party despite its huge mass base and cadre-force shows laxity in terms of secrecy, cadre-recruitment, discipline related to work-culture and military preparation, the bourgeois state power would drown it into the quagmire of blood by crushing through brutal military force. This event also helped the communist cadre to understand the ideological differences between the Soviet path and the Chinese path and in this light they began to think about the new leadership of CPM as well. Immediately after the ‘Great Debate’, the ‘Great Socialist Education Movement’ had begun in China in 1964. This movement was actually a form of the struggle between revisionism and revolutionary line within the Chinese Party on the question of socialist construction and a prelude to the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was beginning to be prepared. The Chinese Party document related to this movement were reaching the intellectuals associated with CPM and the conscious cadre, and were helping them understand the things. Contrary to the pompous talk of mass movement during the Seventh Congress, no initiative was visible on behalf of the leadership to organize agrarian struggle or a militant movement on the political and economic demands of workers. Aside from the routine rituals, no activities of revolutionary political propaganda and education, which happens to be a necessary task for a newly formed Party, was being carried out. The main or almost full emphasis of the Party leadership was on getting prepared for presenting an alternative to Congress in the coming elections by forging a broad united front. Although in order to conceal its electoral character it was continuously talking about “setting up transitional governments strengthening the mass movements” (by the way, the “transition phase” continues till this day!). Even during the India-Pakistan war in 1965, the Party did not muster courage to take any program in its hand to wage anti-jingoistic and anti-war revolutionary propaganda. All these national-international events and tides of all round advancement of the liberation movements in that era of world-history were helping CPM cadre to revolutionize their consciousness, in teaching them to distinguish between revisionism and revolutionary Marxism, and in recognizing the real character of the CPM leadership. The attitude of the Party leadership itself was revealing its character.
Immediately after the Seventh Congress, amongst those who were raising question on the character of the leadership of the newly found party, some people with the initiative and leadership of Kanhai Chatterji, Amulya Sen and Chandrashekhar Das secretly formed a secret revolutionary center within the Party for carrying out theoretical struggle (in their assessment, the bureaucratic Party leadership would not let them carry out basic theoretical discussion within the Party and no sooner they would do this, they would be sidelined by terming them as extremist and adventurist. Later the attitude of the CPM leadership on several issues actually proved that their assessment was absolutely correct). On behalf of this center, the first edition of a bulletin named ‘Chinta’ came out in March 1965, and it was secretly distributed amongst the Party cadre (especially in Bihar and Bengal). It was precisely around this time that Charu Mazumdar also started writing his famous eight documents series. On 28 February 1965, he completed the first document of the series: ‘Our tasks in the present situation’. These two decisive initiatives calling for revolt against the neo-revisionism of CPM were taken separately but exactly at the same time. Besides these, several people from Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and Punjab had begun to believe the Party leadership as travelers on the path of revisionism ever since the Seventh Congress itself and were thinking as to what could be the way of waging the struggle against revisionism within the Party? There were some people (especially intellectuals) who, believing the Party to be revisionist had relinquished the membership of the Party or had become inactive even if they retained the membership.
In the period March 1965 to the middle of 1966, six editions of ‘Chinta’ bulletin were published. After that the pioneers of this revolutionary center were expelled terming them as extremist and adventurist. After the expulsion, in order to carry out the debate on the varied questions related to the strategy and general tactics on a wider platform, this group under the leadership of Kanhai Chatterji and Amulya Sen began the regular publication of an open magazine named ‘Dakshin Desh’ by mid-1966. Charu Mazumdar had completed writing six of his ‘eight document series’ till August 1966. He wrote the seventh and eighth document in February and April 1967 respectively when the peasants of Naxalbari had begun to take out huge processions and the ground for the peasant-revolt in May had been prepared. Before discussing about the content of these documents and editions of ‘Chinta’, it is important to know about Naxalbari as to how the objective conditions for this revolt were present and how there had been a tradition of peasant struggles and the communist movement in Naxalbari from an earlier time.
Situated in the Siliguri Sub-division of Darjeeling district the rural region of Naxalbari area falls under Terai zone. The hill area begins from there. Besides agriculture, there are tea plantations in the region which are adjacent to the villages. The Communist Party began systematic work amongst the peasant and the workers of the tea plantation of the region since 1951. Darjeeling district was a ‘Non-regulated area’ under the British rule. Its imprint was etched in its ambience even after 1947. An authoritarian rule of the Tea plantation owners, planter landowners and Jotdars (land owners) prevailed in the region. There was no union of the workers of tea plantations and the terror of the Tea plantation owners was such that they could not even think in this direction. An activist of any political Party could not even reach to the huts of the peasants without the wish and permission of Jotdars. Such were the circumstances under which the Party began its work. Charu Mazumdar was a leader of the Siliguri local committee under which Naxalbari region fell.
Charu Mazumdar had become communist after coming into contact with the communist students in the 1930s while studying at Edward College in Pabna (now in Bangladesh). After leaving the final examination of intermediate, he started working amongst the peasant in the Pachagarh of Deviganj police station (now in Bangladesh) of Jalpaiguri district. He received the basic education of communism from Madhavdutt and then he came into contact with Sachin Dasgupta and Virendra Dutt, the communist leaders of Jalpaiguri. After participating in the Adhiyar movement of peasants, he worked as an organizer amongst the rail workers from Lalamanihar Junction (Dinajpur district) through Jalpaigiri and the tea plantation workers of Duar. He was also active in the famous Tebhaga movement (1946-47) involving about 7 million peasants. It needs to be mentioned that when the direct leadership of the Tebhaga movement was thinking about organizing armed defense force for peasants for resisting against the brutal repression, the provincial leadership withdrew the movement after the blank assurances of the Muslim League government. At the time Charu Mazumdar was among those who staunchly criticized the provincial leadership. After the country’s partition in 1947, when Charu Mazumdar’s main area of work went to East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), he started working among the tea plantation workers, rail workers and Adivasi peasants in the section of Jalpaiguri district which fell into India. Charu was in jail during the Ranadive era’s ultra-leftist line and in the duration when Party was declared as illegal. It was in the prison itself that he got to know about the ongoing debate within the Party during Ranadive’s era and about the Andhra document. Within the prison he was known to be in favor of Mao’s and Chinese Party’s line. Charu was released from prison in March 1952, after the withdrawal of the Telangana movement. Now Siliguri sub-division of Darjeeling district became his new area of work and he took charge of the leadership of the local committee there. In 1951, the Party began its work among the peasants in villages in the Naxalbari region and the workers of tea plantation. This was the time when Kanu Sanyal also started working there as a full-time organizer and a team of local activists got ready which included Jangal Santhal, Kadam Lal Mallik, Khodan Lal Mallik etc.
The period between 1951 and 1954 was the initial phase in organizing the peasants and tea plantation workers of Naxalbari, but the atrocities of Jotdar were so prevalent that even the initial work was impossible without engaging in the bloody strife with them. The Party organizers while organizing the peasants against the illegal extortions and barbarities committed by the Jotdars, also organized the adjoining tea plantation workers in their favor. Thus, in practice a united front of workers and peasants was formed at the local level and between 1955 and 1957, the peasants and workers jointly waged continuous struggles. Owing to the tyrannical atrocities of the Jotdars and plantation owners, the tea plantation workers and the peasants of the region had to take resort to conventional weapons in self-defense right from the beginning. This was the important reason as to why the peasants of Naxalbari did not have any illusion about the legal and peaceful means from that time itself. The Bonus movement of the tea plantation workers in 1955, despite being an economic struggle, saw the demonstration of militant unity and combativeness of thousands of workers and peasants and not only did they succeed in forcing the hired goons of the tea plantation owners to go back but the police as well. On one occasion, ten thousand armed tea plantation workers and peasants compelled the police force to disarm. From the perspective of the class struggle in Naxalbari, this second phase of 1955-1956 assumes special importance.
The period of 1958-62 can be termed as the third phase of the evolution of the peasant-worker struggle in Naxalbari. In this duration, the Paschim Bengal Kisan Sabha gave the slogan of reoccupying the ‘Benami’ land by the peasants. However, the Siliguri subdivisional peasant committee’s conference, held in Naxalbari, believed that this appeal was incomplete insofar as the objective of the real land reform is concerned and it made an appeal to seize the entire produce of the Jotdar’s land. The conference made an appeal to the peasants that after harvesting they must put the entire crop on its place, that the peasant committees must give the crop to the Jotdar only after they present proof of the ownership and the peasants must be armed in order to safeguard the crop from police and the Jotdars. During this movement, in the year 1958-59 alone, two thousand peasants were arrested and seven hundred criminal cases were filed against them by police. Armed scuffles between peasants on the one side and jotdars and police on the other, ensued and many incidents of seizing of arms of jotdars happened. The peasants succeeded in capturing 80 percent of the crop and they managed to safeguard it from being captured by the police as well.
Throughout the movement, the police could not arrest even a single leading organizer. Charu Mazumdar was not associated with this movement directly. Organizers included Kanu Sanyal, Jangal Santhal, Kadam Mallik etc. In fact, Charu Mazumdar played a negative role when on the directives of the leaders of the provincial Kisan Sabhas he announced the withdrawal of the struggle without even consulting the leaders of the struggle and the participating peasant activists. Despite this, the peasants of Naxalbari succeeded in safeguarding the achievement of this struggle more or less by 1962.
The phase of 1962-64 can be considered as the fourth phase of the peasant struggle in Naxalbari. Even during the 1962 Indo-China border war and in the atmosphere filled with extreme jingoism and anti-communism, the communist activists of the Naxalbari area firmly stood on the stand that China was not the aggressor and that the war was initiated by the Indian ruling class for its expansionist ambition at the behest of the imperialists. The reputation of the communists amongst the peasants and workers was so strong that they continued to firmly stand with them. At the time in the campaign of arresting the communists who took correct stand, hundred peasants-workers were arrested in Naxalbari alone. Even during these difficult years, the peasant-workers in the region succeeded in keeping their organizational power intact even while facing the attacks of Jotdars and tea-planters and the repression by state. In 1964 the worker, peasant and middle class activists of the Darjeeling district resolutely struggled against revisionism and completely sidelined the Dangeites. The activists of the Siliguri division were firmly opposing the Khrushchevite revisionism and were supporting the stand of the Chinese Party.
The special conditions of the brutal oppression by the Jotdars and plantation owners which prevailed in Naxalbari and the one and a half decade long history of the work of the communist cadre amongst the peasant-workers and their militant struggle under the communist leadership had prepared the base for the Naxalbari peasant revolt and the establishment of the ideological-political hegemony of the revolutionary communism. However, this is not to say that this series of militant struggle automatically evolved and appeared in the form of the Naxalbari peasant revolt in 1967. Believing this would be a spontaneitist deviation. The Naxalbari peasant revolt was not just a revolt. It was a communist peasant-uprising whose leadership was in the hands of communists. Naxalbari had not rejected revisionism through sheer class-instinct only, rather there was a role of a conscious ideological leadership behind it whatever be the theoretical weaknesses and inconsistency of that leadership. The question of positive and negative role of Charu Mazumdar is related to the analysis of this issue only.
After the formation of CPM in 1964, there was large-scale arrests of the communist activists in West Bengal just before the Party congress. Between October 1964 and the first half of 1965, almost all the Party activists of the Siliguri division had been arrested. By that time, Charu Mazumdar had developed a heart disease due to which he was not arrested. Later towards the end of 1965, he too was arrested. During their stay in prison between 1964 and June 1966, the Party activists of the Darjeeling district spent time to understand the revisionism of the CPM leadership, took firm stand against it and they reached to the conclusion that the Chinese path would be the path of the Indian liberation struggle as well. These imprisoned activists, while they did carry out their political preparation against revisionism, did not try to write any document against the CPM leadership and did not make any attempt to take it to the other sections of the cadre. It is only a matter of speculation that whether or not they would have done so had they been outside prison and there is no significance of this speculation while carrying out objective examination of history. It is an undoubtable contribution of Charu Mazumdar that by writing the eight documents, he played the fundamental role in the radical rupture from the neo-revisionism of CPM, though this widely prevalent notion does need amends that he was the only person doing so. It was exactly at the same time that the ‘Chinta group’ (later ‘Dakshin Desh’ group) also did this in Calcutta through its bulletin and this bulletin was reaching to greater numbers of cadre as compared to Charu’s document-series. Later on owing to the light of the Naxalbari peasant-struggle and the popularity of Charu Mazumdar as its architect and that of his eight document, the efforts of the ‘Chinta group’ were largely deprived from the proper assessment of their significance. Insofar as the role of Charu as the architect of the Naxalbari peasant-struggle and his eight documents is concerned, their proper assessment can be done only after examining the concrete facts of that time. Hence we will briefly discuss them here.
Between February and September 1965, Charu while analyzing the national-international conditions of that time and while analyzing the role of the communists in those conditions, wrote five articles: ‘Our Tasks in the Present Situation’, ‘Make the People’s Democratic Revolution Successful by Fighting Against Revisionism’, ‘What is the Source of the Spontaneous Revolutionary Outburst in India?’, ‘Carry on the Struggle Against Modern Revisionism’, ‘What Possibility The Year 1965 is Indicating’. After this, he was arrested. Because his disease turned serious in prison, he was admitted to a hospital in Calcutta and it was from there itself that he was released on 7 May 1966. In August 1966, he wrote his sixth article. In these six articles of the famous ‘eight document series’, the propositions which Charu Mazumdar put forward need to be mentioned briefly here.
As per these documents, what is needed is to come out of the narrow confines of carrying out movements on the partial demands through Kisan Sabha and trade union and to wage struggle for political power. The capture of power does not mean the capture of government, but rather it means the area-wise power seizure through armed struggle. It is the Chinese path which is path of liberation for India and the armed struggle happens to be our immediate task. For this, the revolutionary activists need to be prepared and secret structure needs to be erected, then secret armed squads would have to be created, attacks on Jotdars would have to be carried out, their homes would have to be burnt, crops would have to be seized and the weapons would have to be collected. By completely ignoring the activities of political propaganda and agitation these articles put forward the proposition that it was with the effect of ‘action’ (armed personal attacks on the Jotdars by combat groups) that the mass mobilization would begin. Although in these documents, the mass organizations and the mass movements were not declared as reformist-revisionist in the same manner as was begun to be said by Charu Mazumdar since around 1969, but instead of mentioning about the role of mass movements in the development of armed people’s struggles what was stated was the formation of secret armed squads and activities through ‘action’ only, hence amongst the task of Party, the organization of mass movement and activities of political propaganda was openly ignored and it was stated to begin with the guerilla struggle directly. In these documents, the economic struggle was per se criticized as being economistic and it was stated that even while lending support to the workers’ movement the Party would not waste time in trade union and legal struggles. In the sixth document, the CPM was unambiguously termed as revisionist and the cadre were called upon to wage revolt against the leadership by breaking its structure and it was stated that the CPM leadership wishes to use the mass movements merely for forming the government and the only meaning to its anti-congress united front was to become a tail of bourgeoisie. It was in this very document that it was said clearly that the revolutionary struggle cannot move ahead without opposing the revisionism of the Soviet Party and in today’s world Mao has taken the place of Lenin and hence those opposing him are not the opponents of revisionism. Actually its backdrop was a recently held meeting of the Central Committee of the CPM in which a resolution was passed to disapprove the criticism by the Chinese Communist Party of Indian government and it was also stated that it was not proper to criticize the Soviet leadership at that time because doing so would lead to decline of trust among people’s mind for socialism. Besides this, these documents also entailed discussion on the crisis of Indian system, deepening repression and increasing public anger as also the strong condemnation of the Indian ruling class for fanning the jingoistic tide against China and Pakistan and the they also referred the public sector built with the aid of Soviet Union as being established in the interest of the Indian monopoly capitalist class.
Charu’s sixth document was released on 30 August 1966 on behalf of the ‘Maoist Centre for the Communist Party of India’. In fact, this name carried only symbolic significance because such a center had not come into existence at that time and this document was written by Charu alone. Right from the first article of Charu Mazumdar, the debate had started among the communist cadre of Darjeeling who were outside the jail. By the time Charu went to prison, his five documents had managed to reach only a limited number of people. After coming out of prison in May, he sent five-six selected youth activists to the rural areas for propagating the line derived from the five documents. The news of these documents got published in the bourgeois newspapers as well and the CPM activists of other regions and the jailed activists also got acquainted with this fact.
If we pay attention to the substance of the six documents that had been published by August 1966, they entailed frank discussion on international revisionism and the radical rupture from CPM’s neo-revisionism and Mao thought was established as a revolutionary ideology. This was their positive aspect. But at the same time, these documents, instead of carrying out the task of determining the program of Indian revolution by studying Indian conditions, assumed it to be pre-ordained and were putting forward the idea that the path of the Indian revolution would be completely similar to that of the Chinese revolution. However, the path of armed guerilla war in the Chinese revolution had evolved on the basis of revolutionary mass line, while Charu Mazumdar was stressing on the formation of secret armed squads and their ‘action’ from the beginning itself and on the mass mobilization on their basis by ignoring the mass work. As per them this could not be termed as terrorism since these actions would receive the support of the wider masses. This was the line which later surfaced as blatant “left” adventurist line, although the elements of this deviation were clearly present in the six documents themselves.
After the release of the Party activists of Darjeeling, the leading organizers of the Siliguri local committee had a discussion with Charu Mazumdar. A consensus reached among them that a struggle against the revisionism of CPM would have to be waged, that the path of liberation of India would be the Chinese path, the agrarian revolution could only be accomplished through armed struggle and the politics of agrarian revolution would have to be propagated amongst the peasants and workers, they would have to be organized and secret Party organization would have to be built. But the Party organizers of the local committee, including Kanu Sanyal, were of the opinion that the mass organizations and mass movements of people were essential, that the political work is the necessary precondition for the preparation of armed struggle, without ‘politics in command’ there was no meaning of ‘action’, that the higher form of struggle could be evolved only through the mass struggles and the mass organizations are needed even in the urban areas. Charu Mazumdar was not in agreement with this idea. Under this circumstance a compromise was reached that the organizers of the Siliguri local committee would implement their line in Naxalbari and Charu Mazumdar’s line would be implemented by the new activists who favoured him in Chatarhat-Islampur of Western Dinajpur district adjacent to Naxalbari.
In Chatarhat-Islampur the work began as per the six documents of Charu Mazumdar. The secret squads burnt the homes of some Jotdars and some crop were also cut in the night. No effort of building mass organization and mass movement was made. Soon the combat groups started turning into the jamboree of the lumpen elements. In 1967 when the Naxalbari uprising was at its peak the Jotdars of Chatarhat-Islampur carried out organized attacks on the homes of the known members of the combat groups. The entire peasant population supported them. The activists of the group found themselves at sea in front of these attackes and soon these secret squads got dissolved completely. Thus the first experiments of the Charu’s line proved to be a disastrous failure.
In Naxalbari, mass line was implemented. The revolutionary Party activists, in order to take the majority in the district committee along with them, decided to carry out ideological struggle within the CPM. Out of the 26 members of the district committee 20 accepted the political line of the Siliguri local committee and a secret committee was formed within the district committee. After widespread campaign, most of the tea plantation workers of the hill and plain areas of the Darjeeling district had begun to support the political line of the secret district committee. The tea plantation workers who were dissatisfied with the revisionist union leaders began pulling their socks for militant struggles on the economic demands. The entire period of the latter half of 1966 was such when the background for the Naxalbari peasant uprising was getting prepared in the Darjeeling district. The nine-day general strike which took place in the tea industry in 1966 was an important event during this period. When the strike was about to be broken in the Jalpaiguri district, the workers in the Darjeeling district were sticking to the ground. Along with the workers of Lal Jhanda Union the workers of other unions and the unorganized workers of plantations also joined the strike. The revisionist leaders who were horrified with all this wanted to enter into some kind of settlement as soon as possible. In Darjeeling, more than 25000 workers resolutely confronted the police which had come to repress them and a worker was martyred with the police bullet. During this entire period, the peasants of Naxalbari, despite being busy in farming, continued to firmly lend their support to the striking workers. There were some skirmishes with Police as well. The revisionists got completely sidelined from the workers due to the withdrawal of the strike without any of the basic demands being met. The activists of the secret district committee and the local committee took full advantage of this situation. The branch conferences of the plantation unions passed a resolution in support of the program of agrarian revolution. The annual conference of the tea plantation workers of the hill area strongly condemned the revisionist leaders and expelled them from trade unions. The annual conference of the plantation workers of Naxalbari passed a resolution calling upon the peasants to start agrarian-struggle. Thus, the line which was implemented by Kanu Sanyal and other Party organizers in Naxalbari and throughout the Darjeeling district in opposition to the Charu Mazumdar’s “left” sectarian line, resulted into the formation of a militant and strong alliance between the workers and peasants of the region, the hegemony of the revolutionary line got established on the trade unions and other mass organizations. The strength of the peasant-worker alliance can be understood from the fact that during the Naxalbari peasant uprising, the tea plantation workers carried out three general strikes in their support.
Charu Mazumdar wrote the seventh and eight document respectively of the ‘eight document series’— ‘Take this Opportunity’ and ‘Carry Forward the Peasant Struggle by Fighting Revisionism’—in the Darjeeling district and particularly after the above incidents of the mass movements of workers and peasants. The seventh document was written just before the general election of February 1967 and the eighth document was written in April 1967. The successful practice of the opposing line in Darjeeling compelled Charu Mazumdar to accept in these document the significance of open mass activities, economic struggles and political propaganda, though these documents were not free from the ultra-leftist deviation. In these documents, it was stated to form the secret armed squads and weapon collection from the initial phase itself, no clear plan of mass actions and forming mass organizations was presented, they were indirectly given the status of merely the supplementary to the armed activities, no program was presented for the struggle on the class demands of revolutionary middle class and the working class or a joint struggle, their only task was to support the agrarian struggle and participate in it, and instead of the necessity of deciding about the concrete program and slogans of agrarian revolution what was stated was merely seizure of crops and land of land owners through armed squads. The positive aspect of these documents was that there was a stress on the formation and building of a new revolutionary Party in concrete form and it was stated to carry forward the peasant struggle through uncompromising struggle against the class collaborationist politics of CPM leadership and all kinds of revisionism. The coming days proved that Charu had temporarily stepped back under the pressure of the successful implementation of the mass line and circumstances created out of it, otherwise he was always consistent and firm on his stand. Due to the ideological weakness of those who led the mass line, as soon as an impasse surfaced in the movement, Charu put forward his line as an alternative, by terming all forms of open, legal and economic struggles, mass movements and mass organizations as revisionism he declared the annihilation of the class-enemies by making secret armed squads itself as guerilla war and presented a terrorist line in a highly vulgar and distorted form. However, this was to happen in future.
In 1966, due to the struggle against revisionism which was going on in the Darjeeling district, particularly in the Naxalbari region and the militant struggles that were continually developing, the leading role in all these were considered to be that of Charu Mazumdar, since he was the leader of the Siliguri local committee and the Darjeeling district committee. The revisionists, the communist cadre outside and even the people in bourgeois circles were of this very understanding. The information regarding the differences between Charu Mazumdar and the local organizers was confined to the ‘secret committee’ working within the Darjeeling district committee. In October 1966, some leaders belonging to the CPM state committee and central committee came to Siliguri to make him understand, but he refuzed to pay heed to them. Earlier in July 1966, Pramod Dasgupta, secretary of the Bengal state committee, came to Siliguri for persuading him but to no avail.
In November 1966, a peasant conference was held in the Darjeeling district in which it was decided that the sharecroppers will not give any portion of their crop to Jotdars. In February 1967, legislative assembly elections were held in which Jangal Santhal and Sauren Basu got tickets for Faansideva and Siliguri respectively. There was a difference between the party activists of Darjeeling and some new activists even on the issue of this election. The activists of Darjeeling were of the view that the election must be used for the propaganda of the revolutionaryParty and this was exactly what was done. There was considerable advantage out of it. Immediately after the elections the sharecroppers launched a campaign for crop seizure against the Jotdars. Several regional conferences of peasants were held in which resolutions were passed to launch a movement for seizing the land in possession of Jotdars. On 7 May 1967 a Siliguri subdivision peasant conference took place in which it was decided that the peasants must begin the work of seizing the land of Jotdars and their redistribution through peasant committees, they must arm themselves in order to confront with the Jotdars’ resistance and the peasant committees must take the work of administration in their hands. By this time, the United Front government of non-Congress parties had come to power in West Bengal in which CPM was the biggest partner and its character was getting exposed more and more. From 8 May peasant revolt began in many villages of Naxalbari, Kheribari, Phansideva and Siliguri police station.
Before going into the details of the Naxalbari peasant-uprising, it is important that we pick the thread of the process of the struggle and revolt against the neo-revisionism of CPM in West Bengal and other parts of the country which was going on since 1964, from where we left it, and take it forward. We have discussed above about the communist group under the leadership of Kanhai Chatterji and Amulya Sen and the six editions of the ‘Chinta’ bulletin published by them. ‘Chinta’ systematically raised the inevitability of armed struggle, the question of the path of protracted people’s war, the question of neo-colonial character of Indian nation and the question of ideological struggle against revisionism in the articles published in its editions. This secret publication which was being distributed amongst the cadre was getting quite popular and was giving headache to the revisionists in Bengal. It can be guessed from the fact that several articles were published against the articles of ‘China’ in the CPM’s central organ ‘People’s Democracy’ and ‘Swadheenta’ and in ‘Desh Hitaishi’— the organ of the state committee. In the mid of 1966, several revolutionary activists who were either associated with ‘Chinta’ or were holding similar opinion, were expelled from the organization by terming them as “extremist”. Then, in order to take the debate to the ordinary cadre on wider level the Kanhai Chatterji-Amulya Sen group began the publication of an open magazine named ‘Dakshin Desh’. From 1966 to October 1969 till the formation of ‘Maoist Communist Centre’, ‘Dakshin Desh’ magazine published several important articles on the topics such as imperialism, neo-colonialism, Soviet Social imperialism, character of Indian nation, the problems concerning the strategy and general tactics of Indian revolution, mass line for revolutionary propaganda, Guerilla struggle, Revisionism, Economism, Parliamentarianism, Spontaneism etc. These articles helped in educating the cadre against the revisionism of CPM. Also the Dakshin Desh group later put forward its view through the same magazine on the questions of differences while indirectly critiquing the line of Charu Mazumdar faction which was dominant in AICCCR. This time period will be discussed later in this article. The magazine helped immensely in the initial political consolidation of this group and an initial organizational structure was formed as well consisting of activists agreeing on its position and with whom the work among workers, students, intellectuals was started. By the end of 1966, this group started working amongst peasants in the Sonarpur region of 24 Pargana district where in the October month of 1967, five months after the Naxalbari revolt, armed peasant revolt erupted which had to face brutal police repression from the Front government.
In 1966 itself the Food movement started in Bengal spontaneously, which was particularly intense in Calcutta and the adjoining regions. At that time, the entire old generation of central and state level leaders of CPM was in prison and a new state level leadership was organized with almost all youth and fresh faces for coordinating the Party activities. This new leadership had forged a united front of almost all left parties for taking forward the food movement. But the leaders of this movement, instead of giving leadership to the spontaneous movement, were trailing behind the masses. Due to immense police repression even though the movement got disintegrated, but the young generation of the new state level leadership, based on its sum-up, made a plan to reorganize the movement and take it forward on their own leaving aside the other Left parties. It was decided that the movement must be taken to the villages, a slogan of forcible seizure of the crops of land owners must be given and the necessary organizations must be built to prepare for an effective resistance. This was the time when the leaders of the old generation came out of the prison. While accepting the warm welcome by the people in the Shaheed Maidan Meenar, these leaders praised the militant participation of the masses in the Food movement and expressed resolve to take the movement forward. But immediately after getting down the podium, they started closed door meetings with CPI leaders for forging United Front for participating in the upcoming fourth general election which was scheduled in February 1967. This was totally opposite to the sentiments prevalent amongst the cadre which used to consider CPI as nothing less than an enemy. Their experience of the CPI’s attempt of blunting the militant attitude of the Food movement by adopting the soft path of hunger strike was still fresh. Consequently, the cadre started to ridicule the old leadership. The new leadership saw that after coming back from jail, the old generation leaders were at every step intervening and obstructing the activities of the editorial board of ‘Desh Hitaishi’ and ‘Nandan’ that wanted to carry on the propaganda work on the radical revolutionary line. A directive was issued to halt the distribution of a booklet ‘Philosophy of hunger strike’ which was published by Institute of Marxism-Leninism in order to expose the role of CPI in the Food movement. The same leadership which had supported the Institute of Marxism-Leninism before going to jail, started to obstruct its activities in various ways after coming out of jail. Even the basic Marxism classes which used to run at different levels were halted and it was said that only the rationale of the points of Party program needs to be explained in the classes. All plans to take forward the Food movement militantly were put on hold. Even the local partial struggles which unleash the revolutionary initiative of the masses began to be halted through various tricks and bureaucratic means. Owing to all these activities, the inner-Party struggle which was continuing from the time of the formation of CPM deepened further. Although the efforts of forging a United Front with CPI could not bear fruit, but after the election the CPM formed the United Front government by taking along CPI, Bangla Congress which was formed after splitting from Congress and all non-congress opposition parties in which Jyoti Basu became the home minister and minister of police department. The only logic of the CPM leadership was that with the Party being part of the Front government the class struggle including the struggle for radical land reform would be speeded up and the people would be saved from the police repression. However, the revisionist-parliamentary-economistic and bureaucratic character of the Party leadership was more and more getting exposed. The eruption of Naxalbari peasant uprising and its brutal police repression by the state government completely exposed the CPM leadership in front of the cadre. During 1967-68, the situation was such that had the ‘All India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries’ (AICCCR) formed after the Naxalbari revolt not been dominated by Charu’s leftist terrorist line, and had the mass organizations and mass work not been abandoned completely, the majority of the cadre active on workers, peasants, students, intellectuals front would have come with the revolutionary stream and an existential crisis would have been produced for CPM at least in West Bengal.
It is known that in Calcutta, Susheetal Roy Chaudhary, Saroj Dutt, Parimal Dasgupt, Asit Sen, Pramod Sengupt etc. had formed ‘Inner Party anti-revisionism committee’ within CPM from 1965 itself. Charu Mazumdar had managed to contact this committee by the mid of 1966. In those days, the slogan of forming ‘Party within Party’ had become very popular and besides various zones of Bengal such anti-revisionism groups within CPM had come into existence in Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. By the end of 1966 the ‘Dakshin Desh’ group had come into contact with the revolutionary faction of the Darjeeling district and they had a long discussion with Charu Mazumdar in the beginning of 1967. Dakshin Desh group was not in agreement with the decision to make Jangal Santhal and Sauren Basu as the candidate in the elections, but despite that both parties agreed to widen the anti-revisionism struggle, strengthen the work among the peasants according to their strength and to maintain close contact.
On the morning of 8 May 1967, the peasant revolt began simultaneously in few villages of Naxalbari and the three nearby districts. Equipped with bows and arrows, large numbers of peasants, waving the red flag, began occupying the land and crops in possession of Jotdars. Their guns also began to be seized. During the same period a small incident in a village falling in the Naxalbari police station gave a new turn to the struggle. A landless peasant, named Bigul, had got the right over some land from the civil court which the local Jotdar Ishwar Tirky tried to dispossess by beating him up. The local peasants united on this and ensured that the hirelings of Ishwar Tirky ran away. As the news arrived on 23 May 1967 as always, when the police arrived to teach the peasants a lesson and to help the Jotdars, three thousand peasants equipped with bow and arrow surrounded it. Several people were injured in this skirmish in which three people were from the police battalion as well. Amongst them Inspector Sunam Wangdi passed away in the hospital. On the same day, i.e. 25 May 1967, a huge armed battalion of police again reached the village. At that time a woman procession was underway in favor of the peasant revolt, on which the police opened fire indiscriminately. Due to this, ten people were martyred including seven women and two children. This incident acted as a spark. Suddenly the inferno of revolt spread throughout Naxalbari. The campaign of seizure of land and crop got intensified. Peasants, thousands in numbers, used to assemble at different places and raise the flags on the Jotdars’ land and they also used to attack the homes of the brutal Jotdars. Naxalbari became the topic of discussion throughout the country. The tea plantation workers declared strike in protest against the 25 May killing. In Siliguri, a big procession of rail and electricity workers was taken out. Teachers, students and common middle class people also came out on the street. A sense of desperation prevailed among the ruling CPM revisionists. The then land and land-revenue minister Hare Krishna Konar rushed to Siliguri along with another minister Vishvanath Mukherji of CPI. Konar had recently returned from Vietnam, “equipped” with the experiences of class struggle! Who else could have been more appropriate to tackle the grave situation of the Naxalbari peasant revolt! After reaching Siliguri, Konar neither met the members of the Darjeeling district committee, nor the peasant organisers of Siliguri. Rather he presided over a secret meeting with the top police officers and returned. Several state level leaders made many visits to Siliguri and tried to get the underground leaders surrendered. Their logic was old one that since now they were in power, if the movement is taken back all the grievances of the peasants would be addressed. But the activists did not have an iota of trust left for the revisionist leadership. It is to be mentioned that the CPM leaders did not even express grief on the killing of peasants. On the contrary Pramod Dasgupta gave a statement that police acted as a reaction to the murder of Inspector Sunam Wangdi.
Not even a fortnight had passed after the failure of the governmental efforts to withdraw the movement that the state police and the para military forces of the central government began a fierce phase of repression. More than two thousand people were arrested. Yet some main leaders including Kanu Sanyal and Jangal Santhal tried to continue the struggle while being underground. Jangal Santhal was arrested after a few months. Kanu Sanyal could be arrested after one and a half year. Despite maintaining the reign of terror in the entire region, it took slightly more than three months to crush this peasant uprising.
This mass revolt unleashed the revolutionary initiative and creativity of the peasants of Naxalbari. By implementing the determined short term program of ‘Naxalbari Krishak Samiti’ the peasants took the land in possession of Jotdars in their possession and started carrying out its redistribution through Kisan Samitis. The old government documents related to land-ownership and loan related documents were burnt in public meetings. The debt with Jotdars and rentiers were scrapped and the land and other articles being kept as mortgages were returned. The grain hoarded by the Jotdars and plough and oxen and other articles seized from the peasants were seized and distributed among the peasants. The tyrant Jotdars, their hirelings and the usurers were sentenced by the Kisan Samitis in open courts and these sentences were executed as well. In some cases, death sentence was also given. Rejecting the recognition of bourgeois courts-law-administration, the Kisan Samitis declared that the decisions of central and regional revolutionary committees would be deemed as laws. The responsibility of general administration in the villages—patrolling, settlement of mutual disputes, schooling arrangement etc. were declared to be taken over by the Kisan Samitis. Peasants confronted the resistance offered by the Jotdars by arming themselves and started these works. However, this process could not last long. When the state and center’s police force carried out organized campaigns and most of the people in leadership were arrested, the struggle started getting weakened and started disintegrating. Still the government could take control of the situation only in the month of September.
During this period Naxalbari remained the central topic for discussion throughout the country. The news of Naxalbari peasant revolt and the revolutionary communist leadership continued to be printed in the newspapers throughout the country. The Cabinet sub-committee visited Naxalbari. Bourgeois economist, political theoreticians, journalists, Marxist and bourgeois academicians and official communists, all had almost a consensus that if the explosions like Naxalbari and their possible “dreaded” outcomes are to be avoided, the pace of land reforms would need to be accelerated, the land ceiling act would have to be made effective at least to some extent, some effective steps would need to be taken towards the bourgeois solution of the question of the ownership of peasants and some bourgeois reformist action for distribution of land amongst landless would have to be taken up at governmental and nongovernmental level. This was the time when the Indian capitalist class was slowly moving on the “Prussian path” of gradual change for transforming the pre-capitalist relations from top in order to expand the scope and reach of the national market. The pressure lobbies of the kulaks-farmers which had emerged in some parts of the country, were even putting pressure on Congress for the same. The imperialists too wanted to increase the scope of capitalist investment in agriculture in the third world countries including India through direct “aid” and through the international agencies and for this reason they were eager to help the bourgeoisie of the countries such as India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Phillipines, Sri Lanka, etc in implementing the “Green Revolution” type agricultural policies. In the latter half of the decade of sixties the process of gradual capitalist transformation of land relations which was going on since earlier time, was entering into a new phase according to the class interests of the imperialists and the Indian capitalist class. The Naxalbari peasant-uprising had put pressure on the Indian ruling class to expedite this process and to implement the bourgeois land reforms in a systematic manner which resulted into the speeding up of the process of capitalist transformation of Indian society, the speed of capitalist transition got increased in all such parts of the country where the character of the land relations was still primarily pre-capitalist, or where the pre-capitalist remnants were abundant, or where a transitional backward peasant economy prevailed. It was in the decade of seventies that in most parts of the country the capitalist class structure and the situation of capitalist polarization had become abundantly clear. Immediately after the Naxalbari peasant-uprising, Jayprakash Narayan plunged into the Sarvoday, Bhudan, Gramdan of Vinoba and tried to give a new lease of life to them. It is not without reason that Jayprakash Narayan had camped and pooled all his strength in Mushahari (Bihar) and other “Naxal affected” regions and the regions having the potential for agrarian-struggle and thus tried to extinguish the fire of class struggle by sprinkling cold water. By partially resolving the land ownership question through bourgeois manner by registering the bargadars, the Left government under the leadership of CPM did the same thing as was done by Bismarck of Prussia and Czar’s minister Stolypin. It led to the release of tension related to land struggles and with the change in land-relations, CPM’s new social base was created amongst the newly born tyrant Kulaks. All in all, it can be stated that an important consequence and a by-product of the Naxalbari peasant-uprising was that a pressure was created on the Indian ruling class to expedite the process of bourgeois land reform and the timespan for the completion of the process of capitalist transformation of Indian society was squeezed and shortened. By the way, this was not the aim of Naxalbari movement, rather its objective effect. But even this effect also left a progressive imprint on the motion of the social development objectively. With the capitalist class-relations getting clearer and fierce it became lot easier to understand and decide that the nature of Indian revolution would be socialist rather than national democratic.
But as has been mentioned above, the above process was a consequence and a by-product of Naxalbari. It was the effect of a historic mass revolt on the policy of the ruling class. An uprising in a remote small zone of the country compelled the ruling class to think precisely because the revolutionary potential inherent in it were clear. Despite the repression and disintegration of the Naxalbari peasant-uprising, the impact which it had on the entire communist movement of the country clarified it even more. Naxalbari was not a spantaneous peasant revolt. Behind it were such emerging communist revolutionary elements which had resolved to form and build a new revolutionary Party through radical rupture from revisionism. These communist revolutionary elements had received ideological guidance from the ‘Great Debate’ which was carried out by the Chinese Party against Khrushchevite revisionism and the ‘Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution’ which was started by the Chinese Party in 1966 against the capitalist roaders within Party and state had shown them the way that the establishment of a new revolutionary center by revolting against the revisionists dominant in the Party leadership was the only proper and correct path. The revisionist character of the middle roaders who did not take part in the ideological debate which had been going on in international communist movement had been exposed to a large extent by the steps taken by the leadership after the formation of CPM. Their attitude towards the Naxalabri peasant revolt had completely exposed them. This was the reason why there was a wave of revolt amongst the CPM cadre throughout the country immediately after Naxalbari.From the perspective of historical assessment, Naxalbari, despite failure, had great achievements. A nondescript rural zone of the country influenced the history in such a way that it became a symbol of the stream of revolutionary communism and a point of departure. After being buried in the quagmire of parliamentarianism for about eighteen years, the spirit and tradition of Telangana emerged for one more time and spread throughout the country. While the politics born out of Naxalbari might not have succeeded in forming and building a leading Party of Indian revolution and while it might not have succeeded as an onward movement of revolution due to its ideological weaknesses and various negative factors born out of it, while it might have suffered splits and disintegration in future, but the historical importance of Naxalbari would always remain due to the manner in which it gave a decisively effective blow to the parliamentary dogmatism which was dominant in the communist movement in India. Before doing a thorough review of Naxalbari while taking a few more issues, it is important that we discuss the flow of events within the sphere of left politics immediately after the Naxalbari peasant-uprising.
As Charu Mazumdar himself admitted in his speech in the rally at Shaheed Minar on 11 November 1967, the leader of Naxalbari was not him but the local organizers including Kanu Sanyal, Jangal Santhal, Kadam Mallik and Khokan Mazumdar etc. We have discussed above that Naxalbari was built by rejecting the proposal which was put forward by Charu Mazumdar in his eight document series in which he began his agrarian revolution not through mass line, rather on “left” adventurist basis. Naxalbari peasant-uprising was in fact a proof of the success of revolutionary mass line and concrete rejection of “leftist” deviation. But it would be wrong to say that there was no role of Charu and his eight documents in it, because there were two aspects of the ‘eight documents’. Its important aspect was that it brought the clear proposal of the re-formation and re-building of an All-India Revolutionary Party in the agenda by making a decisive blow on revisionism and parliamentary dogmatism. Its negative aspect was that instead of determining the strategy and general tactics of Indian revolution through the study of Indian economic-social-political structure, it not only gave the slogan of blindly following the program and path of Chinese revolution, but it also made the Guerilla peasant struggle as synonym of ‘action’ of armed secret squads by denying the importance of political education and propaganda along with economic struggle and by rejecting the importance of all kinds of mass activities and mass organizations. The leadership of Naxalbari rejected the second aspect, but the first aspect became its ideological-political basis. The organizers like Kanu Sanyal etc. too had prepared themselves politically against the revisionism of the CPM leadership during their stay in prison but it was Charu who wrote the series of documents against it, made an attempt to take it to the cadre and after coming out of prison of Kanu, etc, to provide theoretical basis for the act of rebellion against the CPM leadership in the form of the ‘eight documents’. Hence, while on the one hand it is incorrect to say that Charu was the leader and architect of the Naxalbari peasant uprising, on the other hand it must be admitted that he played a fundamentally important role in preparing its ideological basis. It can be said that Charu Mazumdar played a decisive role in undertaking radical rupture from CPM politics. Had it not been for Charu, perhaps the Naxalbari struggle would remain as merely the next episode of various radical economic and democratic (or political to a limited extent) demands under the communist leadership in that area in the decade of sixties. Behind the decisiveness of anti-revisionist struggle, there could be a petty-bourgeois impatience of a “left” adventurist (as his “left” adventurist line was consistent from the beginning to the end), but at that time it was the aspect of decisiveness which was dominant. It can be said that it was Charu’s line which became responsible for the impasse, fall and disintegration of the Revolutionary Left politics, but on the other hand, it is also true that had it not been for Charu, perhaps the Naxalbari peasant-revolt could not become a point of departure and a symbol of Revolutionary Left politics. There is a famous dictum that workers’ movement pays for the sin of revisionism in form of “left” adventurism. Even in India, after eighteen years of the phase of revisionism, there was a possibility of the pendulum going to the other extreme and perhaps it was to be the satire of this dialectical irony of history that the person who had to secure the status of a hero in history did not possess the ideological-political capacity expected from the leadership and who suffered from impatient, idealist, emotional petty-bourgeois revolutionism. Based on the complete available political writings, it would not be a mistake to say so.
While there is a positive aspect to the incident of Naxalbari becoming a revolutionary symbol, there is a negative aspect as well. After the Naxalbari peasant revolt, a wave of revolt against revisionism spread throughout the country. The revolutionary cadre of CPM started revolting. The sentiment of suspicion, mistrust and restlessness which prevailed at empirical plane, was given the orientation of revolt by Naxalbari and the fluid situation got precipitated. While the leading organizers of the revolutionary side in different states were more or less aware about the ideological content of ‘Great Debate’, cultural revolution of China, and the middle path of CPM, but for common cadre, whether a person is in favor of Naxalbari or in opposition became the only straight forward benchmark of distinguishing between revisionism and revolutionary path. While this led to rapid polarization of cadre, but the political education which takes place in any prolonged process of ideological struggle and the necessary process of ideological-political consolidation before organizational struggle, did not take place. Owing to its ideological-political weaknesses, the revolutionary leadership did not lay stress on it. This too was one reason as to why the cadre easily got carried away by the wave of “left” deviation in future and in its turn the “left” adventurist line strangulated even the remaining possibility of the ideological-political consolidation of the cadre. Just imagine, what if the Naxalbari incident had not occurred in 1967. Would the Marxist-Leninist stream not be born in India? It is not so. The writing of eight documents, the anti-revisionist struggle of ‘Chinta’ group and dissent among the CPM cadre against the revisionist leadership and the presence of various forms of anti-revisionist factions before Naxalbari revolt give an indication that in that situation a long ideological struggle would have been carried out against revisionism which would have given birth to an alternative revolutionary leadership after reaching its logical conclusion. It is noteworthy that in many countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America (and even in Europe and America), the communist revolutionary cadre formed Marxist-Leninist parties and organizations by revolting against the Khrushchevite revisionist leadership by taking guidance from the ‘Great Debate’ the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in the decade of sixties. The possibility that something similar would have happened even in India was higher and in that event, the process of political education and consolidation of cadre during the long ideological struggle would have been carried out in a better manner. Hence, while Naxalbari speeded up and cut short the process of rupture from revisionism and polarization, this speed and shortness left serious adverse impact on the process of ideological-political consolidation of cadre which takes place during the process of an intense and prolonged struggle between the two lines. Today, Naxalbari acquires the place of a milestone in the history of communist movement of India which exists before us objectively, but related to it is a second aspect inherent in it which cannot be ignored. By ignoring it, the ritual of emotional tradition-worship may be accomplished, but the glorious revolutionary tradition of Naxalbari cannot at all be revived and expanded.
There is yet another aspect related with the historical evaluation of Naxalbari which needs to be discussed, because looking in hindsight after four decade things look clearer today. Naxalbari had occurred at such a time in the post-colonial period when entire India, while passing through a transition in uneven manner, was standing almost midway of the long transition period. The ruling Indian capitalist class had been expanding its industrial-financial base by consolidating the bourgeois power for the last two decades and by implementing the import-substitution policies while taking advantage of the inter-imperialist rivalry and at the same time it was striving to transform the land relations from top by implementing the policies of bourgeois gradual land reforms in order to include the villages within the ambit of the capitalist national market. This process was underway throughout the country in an uneven manner. For instance, relatively most radical and earliest land reforms took place in Jammu & Kashmir. By the mid of the 1960s, the situation was such that in Punjab, Western Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra and some pockets of Andhra Pradesh, the tendency of capitalist agriculture had gained momentum and the Kulak class had become powerful. In many regions of the country, along with the presence of feudal landlords some capitalist landlords had also been born out of them and some Kulaks had also been born out of the big tenants. In some regions the feudal remnants were more predominant and in other regions they were feeble, some were at the stage of the transition of the backward peasant economy and in some places still the aspect of semi-feudal land relations was dominant. In states like Bengal, Bihar and Orissa at that time, either the semi-feudal land relations were predominant or strong feudal remnants existed. In Bengal, so long as the question of the ownership of land was not partially resolved through the registration of Bargadars, the semi-feudal character of land-relations was primarily dominant. Naxalbari peasant uprising occurred at such a moment. The revolutionary cadre throughout the country were called upon to develop Naxalbari-type agrarian struggles. The first inconsistency of this slogan was that instead of anti-revisionist ideological heritage of Naxalbari, it was presenting the path of Naxalbari as the general path and thus it was muddling the question of ideology with that of program. On the top of it, even when this slogan was being given, essentially the “left” adventurist line was being peddled with the label of Naxalbari on the top of it. However, what we wish to assert is that even if the mass line of Naxalbari had been applied throughout the country, it would not have succeeded. In parts of country where the capitalist land relations had developed and where there was the transitional stage, neither was it possible to implement the land-revolution on the basis of the strategic alliance of four classes, nor was it possible to develop the guerilla struggle and base-area. The condition throughout the country was no longer such that the military strategy of protracted people’s war could be implemented by building the liberated zones in the rural areas and encircling the cities by the villages. Unlike semi-feudal-semi-colonial China, there was a centralized state power in post-colonial India, whose social props were wider, it had much developed state, military system and communication-transportation system. Here, the condition was neither like China nor like Vietnam, Cambodia, and the Latin American countries having military juntas. Yet another problem was that while the general formulation given for the People’s Democratic Revolution in the third world countries in the General line related document of the Chinese Party for the world proletarian revolution in 1963 and in Lin Piao’s 1965 article ‘Long Live People’s War’ was proper for most colonies and neocolonies of Asia, Africa and Latin America (and was in general correct at that time), but the newly independent countries such as India, Egypt, Indonesia, Malaya etc.where the process of capitalist transition was underway, were not fitting completely in its framework or scheme. The Chinese Party’s formulation of Indian big bourgeoisie as comprador and India to be a neo-colony too did not match with the reality. The problem was that instead of grasping the dynamics of the changing reality of post-colonial societies the dominant tendency in the communist movement was to consider it as a continuity of the colonial era and the Chinese Party’s formulation related to India were not free from it. The problem was also that unlike the Prussia of Bismarck-era, Russia of Czar-era or Turkey of Kamal Ataturk-era the ruling bourgeoisie in India (which though it was a junior partner of imperialism, was master of the state and was practicing limited bourgeois democracy), was for the first time implementing the similar policies of bourgeois land reforms, hence it could be understood only by breaking the old framework, which did not happen. By the way, coming back to the old context, what we wish to assert is that even if the model of Naxalbari-type struggle was supposed to be implemented throughout the country, even if mass line would have been implemented, the conditions, in 1967-1970, was not such that any success could be achieved. At the most it could have become possible to do so in the areas having strong feudal remnants and its logical conclusion could surface only in this manner that the bourgeoisie would have expedited the pace of bourgeois land reforms in those areas. It is not without reason that later the ML organisations which tried to implement the program of People’s Democratic Revolution on the basis of revolutionary mass line could not succeed and as a consequence of a long stagnation, they have now turned into Marxist Narodniks, who fight on the class demands of support price and low input cost of the owner farmers. Meaning thereby, even in 1967-70, Naxalbari could not be a universal phenomenon throughout the country. In other words, even if the revolutionary mass line were to be implemented, the success of the Naxalbari path was doubtful in 1967, and hence even Naxalbari could not last very long. Had the All India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries, which was formed after Naxalbari, not been found wanting in its task of determining the program of Indian revolution on the basis of study and experiment, the revolutionary mass struggles would have changed their programmatic orientation in the process of continuity itself. But, even in that case the historical-ideological importance of Naxalbari peasant-uprising would continue to be as a turning point for the decisive break from revisionism.
As has been mentioned above, the Naxalbari peasant armed revolt was based on the victory of the revolutionary line over the “left” adventurist line of Charu Mazumdar. But, after the state repression when the struggle was suffering from stagnation, the leaders implementing the mass line such as Kanu Sanyal, owing to the ideological immaturity, found themselves bewildered and having no alternative. Under this circumstance, Charu Mazumdar carried forward his terrorist line again and the leadership of Naxalbari completely surrendered before it. Charu Mazumdar who used to completely deny the importance of economic struggles had said that the peasants in Naxalbari did not fight for any economic demands but for state. In September 1968, Kanu Sanyal wrote a document named ‘A Report on the peasant movement of Terai Area’ in which while summing up Naxalbari he repeated the proposition of Charu. Again in 1974 he wrote an article titled ‘More about Naxalbari’ in which he changed his stand and while criticizing “left” adventurism he wrote that the question of land and state are intertwined in agrarian revolution, and the same was the case with Naxalbari. It is neither correct theoretically nor did it happen in this manner practically. In the phase of agrarian revolution, the peasants begin their struggle for the demand of ownership of land. The Party continuously carries out the propaganda that this issue can be resolved only by struggling against the state. When peasants carry out the campaign of seizing land and crop, they have to face the repression of Zaminadars and state, to confront which they have to arm themselves; volunteer squads, people’s militia and Guerilla squads are formed and gradually the struggle evolves gradually into the stage of area-based state intervention. It is in this process that the question of land becomes that of the state. The same process was unfolding in Naxalbari as well which Kanu Sanyal failed to grasp, neither in 1967 nor in 1974. In 1974 while criticizing the “left” terrorism, he went to the other extreme—right wing opportunist deviation, which will be discussed later in this article. In Terai report, in “ten great tasks” determined by peasant conference, he enumerated the failure of the leadership as suffering from petty-bourgeois deviation, the leadership having no faith in masses, lack of a powerful mass base, lack of a powerful Party structure, establishment of political power and the influence of formalist approach and old revisionist thinking towards the revolutionary land reforms, lack of awareness about the military affairs as the factors responsible for the failure of Naxalbari peasant-rebellion. In reality it was a superficial, formalist and eclectic sum up. The reality is that before the beginning of the Naxalbari peasant-rebellion, the leadership had not done systematic preparation by applying farsightedness. There was no plan as to how the armed defense of the peasants would be taken to the stage of formation of Guerilla squads and how in the event of repression it would scatter its armed power in other areas. There was no plan as such for building rear base in the adjoining forests and hilly areas. Notably, in order to get hold of the situation, an attempt was made much later in 1968 to develop a rear area in the hilly region of Mirik which could not succeed. More important was the fact that by that time the situation was no longer within control. And even more important was the fact that in the absence of a well formed Communist Party, even if the conditions of Protracted People’s War existed, it could not have been carried forward. In such a situation, had there been a capable leadership, it could have chosen the path of suspending the struggle for some time or even some compromise with the enemy on tactical plane, though if it was done without intense political propaganda among the masses and without preparation, the resulting hopelessness and disintegration would be obvious. The same was the situation in Naxalbari.
These were the circumstances in which the Naxalbari leadership surrendered before Charu’s line. In Terai report, Kanu Sanyal did not discuss the struggle between Charu’s line and the mass line before Naxalbari and the Chatarhat-Islampur affair and particularly underlined the role of the capable leadership of Charu in the Naxalbari struggle. These facts were mentioned for the first time in 1974. This opportunist surrenderist tendency which arose out of ideological weaknesses certainly aided the dominance of “left” terrorism.
By the way, the historical importance of Naxalbari did not lie in its local context. The main aspect was that it carried the message of decisive struggle and radical rupture with revisionism and the inevitable necessity of the formation of a new revolutionary Party to the communist cadre throughout the country. A new enthusiasm and energy had prevailed among the communist cadre. The revisionists were desperate. The bourgeoisie was viewing this wave as a serious challenge.
The Question of Unity Among the Communist Revolutionaries On Agenda: Towards the Formation of an All India Party
Immediately after the armed peasant rebellion in Naxalbari, a wave of revolt against revisionism spread amongst the Party cadre of CPM and the communist elements outside Party throughout the country. Outside Bengal, the situation of anarchy and division arose due to the revolt of Party cadre in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Jammu & Kashmir, Assam, Orissa and Tripura. Even the fresh young elements also got attracted towards this revolutionary wave. Revolutionary groups began to be formed both within and outside the Party in spontaneous manner. If we take the example of Bengal alone, several groups such as ‘Nishan’, ‘Padatik’, ‘Bhitti’, ‘Suryasen’, ‘Chhatra Fauz’ etc. got active there and played an important role in anti-revisionist theoretical struggle and revolutionary propaganda. We have already discussed the ‘Chinta’ group which was active from 1966 itself and the ‘Inner Party anti-Revisionist Committee’ formed within the Party.
In different states, among those providing leadership to anti-revisionist struggle, D.V. Rao and Nagi Reddy from Andhra Pradesh were the national level leaders and they had been members of the central committee. Besides them, there were several state level leaders such as Satyanarayan Singh in Bihar, Shivkumar Mishra in Uttar Pradesh, R.P Saraf in Jammu & Kashmir. In Bengal, Susheetal Roy Chaudhary and Saroj Dutt were state level leaders, Parimal Das Gupta and Asit Sen were famous Trade Union leaders and theoreticians. In the above states, large section of cadre was with the rebels.
On 14 June 1967, a public meeting was held at Calcutta’s Ram Mohan Library Hall against the killing and repression of peasants in Naxalbari and in support of the struggling peasants on the call of some labor unions whose leadership was unsatisfied with the revisionist, economist policies of CPM. During the meeting, a resolution was passed for setting up ‘Naxalabari aur Krishak Sangram Sahayak Committee’ and famous Trade Union leader and CPM’s Calcutta district committee member Parimal Dasgupta was made its secretary. The task of establishing contact with the communist revolutionary elements throughout the country was first started under the banner of this very committee.
The office of the West Bengal state committee’s organ ‘Deshhitaishi’ had come under the control of communist revolutionaries at that time. Its editorial board included Susheetal Roy Chaudhary and Saroj Dutt and its majority was with them only. On 28 June 1967, the CPM leadership occupied the office by forcibly removing them. One week after this event began the publication of Bangla Weekly ‘Deshvrati’ which happened to be the first organ of Marxist-Leninists. By this time, the CPM leadership had begun the nationwide campaign of purging. Throughout the country, more than one thousand leaders and activists who were vocal in favor of Naxalbari were expelled from the Party. In Bengal alone, number of those expelled exceeded 400. Among them, the main people were Charu Mazumdar, Kanu Sanyal, Sauren Basu, Saroj Dutt, Susheetal Roychaudhary, Parimal Dasgupta, Asit Sen, Suniti Kumar Ghosh etc. Satyanarayan Singh, Gurubaksh Singh from Bihar, Shivkumar Mishra, Mahendra Singh, Shrinarayan Chaturvedi, R.N. Upadhyay from Uttar Pradesh, Daya Singh, Jagjeet Singh Sohal, Balwant Singh etc. from Punjab were also included among those who were expelled. This process of expulsion went on till 1969 in several phases. The broadcasts of Peking Radio in favor of the activists also played an important role in taking the side. On 5 July 1967, an article titled ‘Spring Thunder over India’ was published in ‘People’s Daily’ (organ of the Chinese Party) in which, while supporting the Naxalbari, the neo-revisionists of CPM were declared as renegades and lackeys of Indian ruling class. Subsequently, several comments were published in ‘People’s Daily’ in support of the revolutionary movement. Their long-term negative aspect was that later on Charu Mazumdar used them to propagate as an international recognition for his line. Another negative aspect was that as per the notion of the Chinese Party the Indian Communist Revolutionaries removed the question of program from the agenda of thinking and started believing that like China, even in India the path of New Democratic Revolution and protracted people’s war would be applicable. However, on immediate basis the stand of Chinese Communist Party helped the revolutionary side by intensifying the process of polarization in the Indian communist movement.
On 11 October 1967, a public meeting was called at Calcutta’s Shaheed Minar Maidan by ‘Naxalbari aur Krishak Sangram Sahayak Committee’ for celebrating October Revolution Day and for Marxist-Leninist propaganda in which Charu Mazumdar gave his last speech from an open platform. In the resolution passed in this meeting, the Chinese Party was supported while condemning the Soviet revisionism and CPM was criticized by terming it as revisionist. Immediately after this, as per the plan a meeting of the representatives of communist revolutionaries from seven states took place in which after the discussion on the crucial political-organizational questions an All Indian Coordination Committee of the Revolutionaries of the CPI (M) was formed and a declaration was issued on its behalf. This coordination committee took four tasks upon itself: (1) To develop and coordinate the militant and revolutionary struggles at all levels in the leadership of the working class and particularly the Naxalbari type peasant-struggle, (2) To develop the militant struggles of the working class and other toiling masses, fighting against economism and to orient these struggles towards agrarian revolution, (3) Carrying out uncompromising principled struggles against revisionism and neo-revisionism and to popularize Mao Tse-tung thought which happens to be today’s Marxism-Leninism and to unite all the revolutionary elements within and outside Party on its basis, and (4) to take the responsibility of preparing the revolutionary program and tactics on the basis of the definite analysis of Indian condition in the light of Mao Tse-tung thought.
The task of establishing contact with the communist revolutionaries active in different parts of the country was being done from earlier, in the main, by Susheetal Roychaudhary. It was he who was elected as the secretary of the coordination committee and it was decided to issue an English monthly organ named ‘Liberation’. Its first edition was published in November 1967.
In Andhra Pradesh two of top most leaders of CPM — T.Nagi Reddy and D.V.Rao had been struggling against the revisionism of CPM leadership right from the beginning. They had taken the side of Naxalbari. But they were of the view that as long as it was possible, they must carry on struggle against revisionism, within the CPM so that a larger section of the cadre could be taken in favor of revolutionary side. On this issue they had the difference of opinion with Charu Mazumdar. In April 1968, CPM’s Burdwan plenum took place which was mainly focused on ideological issue. The draft of the document ‘for ideological debates and discussion’ was distributed earlier itself and D.V.-Nagi had registered their strong differences. The same document was passed in the plenum. According to the document while the Soviet Party suffered from right-wing deviation, the Chinese Party was suffering from “leftist” sectarian deviation. An accusation of intervening in the internal affairs of CPM was also labelled in this. The revisionist character of the middle path of CPM had now got completely exposed. The state committees of Jammu & Kashmir and Andhra Pradesh opposed the draft of the document. One issue of opposition was that the document did not accept the universal form of People’s war in all the backward countries like India and the land revolution as the main line had been rejected. Immediately after the Burdwan Plenum, the coordination committee in its second meeting held on 14 May 1968, removed the phrase ‘within the CPI(M)’ from its name and put a new name ‘All India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries (AICCCR) and its leadership was handed over to Charu Mazumdar. After the second meeting the coordination committee issued its ‘second declaration’ in which it was said that the neo-revisionist too have joined the counter-revolutionary camp like the Dangeites, they were actively backstabbing the agrarian revolution and those who still see the possibility of inner Party struggle within the CPM are putting the seed of illusion among those who wish to fight against revisionism and are precluding them from being organized and getting powerful. In this last phrase essentially a direct criticism of D.V.-Nagi was made. In this second meeting even the communist revolutionaries from Punjab too joined.
Immediately after the Burdwan Plenum, the majority of Andhra Committee of CPM under the leadership of D.V.-Nagi revolted and split from the Party. The communist revolutionaries from Jammu & Kashmir also left the Party. It was the outcome of the struggle waged by D.V.-Nagi within the Party that majority of the activists of Andhra left the Party. D.V. Rao-Nagi Reddy-Chandrapulla Reddy etc. formed Andhra Pradesh Revolutionary Communist Committee (APRCC) which joined with AICCCR and started acting as its Andhra state committee. Right from the beginning, there existed some crucial difference of opinion between Andhra group and Charu Mazumdar. The section under the leadership of Charu Mazumdar believed that the Nagi Reddy group does not accept the Chinese Party’s line in toto. A basis of this was that the Nagi Reddy group used to term Soviet Union as merely revisionist instead of social imperialists. This was not basic ideological question, rather that of objective assessment, which was turned into basic due to the dogmatic imitation of the Chinese Party. The second crucial difference of opinion was that the All India Coordination Committee used to consider the question of boycotting elections as a strategic one and it talked about implementing it from the beginning to end, while the Andhra Group used to consider it as a question of tactics and it talked about taking decision as per the circumstances. Their stand on this issue was as per the classical Leninist formulation. The Coordination Committee used to consider Naxalbari as the first experiment of Mao thought in India while the Andhra Group believed that the first experiment of Mao thought took place in Telangana and Naxalbari was in its continuity. The Coordination Committee was ignoring the open forms of mass struggles, struggle on economic issues and mass organizations with which the Andhra Group did not agree. The Coordination Committee stressed on organizing Guerrilla struggle from the beginning itself while the Andhra Group believed that the armed struggle would begin in the advanced stage of the process of mass movements, volunteer squads, local squads and regular Guerrilla squads would come into existence and the base areas would be built. Instead of the actions by a few armed squads, their emphasis was on revolutionary mass demonstrations, revolutionary mass movements, founding of revolutionary village Soviets and armed mass struggles. Even on this question the struggle was essentially on the question of “left” adventurism and mass line. Apart from these basic questions there were some differences between the two groups on the details, explanations and emphasis of the democratic program (the Coordination Committee wanted to use the term ‘People’s Democratic Revolution’ while the Andhra Group wanted to use the term ‘New Democratic Revolution’), which though were secondary but the difference in approach was crucial. The Coordination Committee used to blindly imitate the program of the Chinese Party while the Andhra Group, even though it agreed on its general orientation and framework, tried to adapt it to the Indian conditions to some extent. One charge of the Coordination Committee was that the Andhra Group, instead of giving enthusiastic support to the Srikakulam armed struggle, was only giving token support. We will return to this issue later.
Despite these differences, the Coordination Committee of Andhra Pradesh joined the All India Coordination Committee after the first meeting. It was decided that the process of debate on the differences would be carried on while doing practice as this was the objective of the Coordination Committee. But nothing of this sort happened. On 7 February 1969, in totally unilateral and arbitrary manner the Andhra Pradesh Committee was expelled from the All India Coordination Committee and their repeated request of dialogue was not paid heed to.
The Coordination Committee was formed precisely for the purpose that based on mutual debates and discussions among the communist revolutionaries who broadly agreed on Mao thought and by exchanging the experiences a consensus is reached on the question of the strategy of Indian revolution, its tactics and path and to prepare a program on the basis of studying the Indian conditions. But the Coordination committee went astray as soon as it started. After the surrender of the leadership of the Naxalbari before the “leftist” line, Charu Mazumdar pompously promoted it among the communist revolutionaries throughout the country. Ordinary revolutionary cadre believed that it was Charu who was the architect and leader of the Naxalbari and his line had the full backing of the Chinese Party. A faction from Bengal which included Saroj Dutt, Sauren Basu, Suniti Kumar Ghosh got together to declare Charu as the great leader of Indian revolution. Even Satyanarayan Singh and Kanu Sanyal started showering excessive praise. Although in the ‘Report of the Terai peasant struggle’, the principal aspect was that of surrender by the mass line of Kanu Sanyal and others before Charu’s line, it also contained a description of the development of the broad mass struggle. But the Coordination Committee never made the report as the topic of discussion amongst the revolutionaries throughout the country nor did it discuss it on its own. Taking advantage of this entire scenario Charu Mazumdar started running the Coordination Committee as a Party and started acting as self-proclaimed undisputed leader. The Coordination committee instead of doing coordination between various communist revolutionary groups started behaving as a Central Committee of a Party. Directives were issued to various groups to stop their organs. Instead of carrying out healthy debate on the differences of opinion and the question which were raised, those expressing different opinions were started to be expelled by taking resort to slandering and blame game. The Coordination Committee completely gave up its basic task of preparing the program and strategy of Indian revolution on the basis of study-analysis of Indian conditions. It was declared that the program, tactics and path of Indian revolution would be exactly like that of Chinese revolution. But in the name of the Naxalbari type peasant struggle and the Chinese Path, in practice Charu Mazumdar was actually talking about applying the terrorist line. Even while talking about the working class, the trade union activities and all kinds of mass activities were being rejected by terming them as economism-reformism. The Party was supposed to be “rural-based Party”. And even there only ‘action’ was supposed to be carried out directly against the landlords by forming the armed squads while avoiding any kinds of mass activities, economic struggles and open political struggles (soon Charu clarified it and gave the ‘line of annihilation’ i.e. assassination of the class enemy which was the naked form of individual terrorism).
The Girijans of the Srikakulam district of Andhra Pradesh were carrying out a movement against the exploitation and oppression of landlord and police repression for 8 years prior to the Naxalbari incident. This area did not fall under the influence of D.V. Rao-Nagi Reddy. The revisionists of the Communist Party never made any attempt to develop this struggle further. After the popularity of Naxalbari, the leaders of Srikakulam approached the Coordination Committee and invited Charu Mazumdar to be their leader. In January 1969 Charu Mazumdar went to Srikakulam and gave the guideline of carrying forward the armed struggle on the “left” terrorist line. In Srikakulam from January 1969, the line of Guerilla attack on the houses-godowns of landlords and their annihilation was commenced. Since the Girijan’s movement had been going on for a long time, the initial armed actions received widespread mass support. The incidents of assassination of landlords-usurers and Guerilla attack in Bathapuram, Padmapur, Budibanka, Akupalli and Garudbhadhra gained a lot of popularity. Charu Mazumdar faction termed it as a sign of people’s war. After the failure of Chatarhat-Islampur, the terrorist line was implemented at wide level for the first time in Srikakulam. Police initiated intense repressive action. In May 1966, one of the main leaders of the struggle Panchandri Krishnamurti was killed in a police encounter along with his wife Nirmala and five other Guerilla fighters. Despite severe repression, the Srikakulam struggle continued till 1970. Only a few months after the founding conference of the CPI (ML) in May 1970, that many popular leaders of Girijans including Venkatapu Satyanarayan and Adimatala Kailasham were murdered and Nagbhushan Patnaik and Appala Suri were arrested. The movement which had become almost leaderless soon got scattered. Thus a protracted broad based mass struggle was thrown into the pit of defeat by misdirecting it on the “terrorist” path.
After getting the leadership of Srikakulam struggle in January 1969 into his hand, Charu Mazumdar thought it proper that it was an opportune moment to get rid of D.V. Rao-Nagi Reddy who were staunchly advocating mass line and in February 1969 they were removed from the Coordination Committee in an absolutely bureaucratic manner. It was in the leadership of D.V. Rao-Nagi Reddy that the majority section of CPM in Andhra Pradesh had come out of the Party. In no other state was the mass base and activist base of the communist revolutionary politics was as broad as that in Andhra Pradesh. Charu’s success in getting the Andhra Revolutionary Communist Committee expelled was a major setback to the communist revolutionary movement which severely impacted the formation of Party in the beginning itself.
After the crushing of the required democratic nature of debate and discussion and the dominance of bureaucratic and sectarian factional style of work in the coordination committee several smaller groups of Bengal and other parts of the country did not even join it. Many groups which were associated with it in the beginning were separated later on. ‘Chinta/Dakshin Desh’ group has been mentioned above. Five months after the Naxalbari rebellion, this group organized peasant struggle in Sonarpur of 24 Pargana district which had to face severe police repression. In this repression a founder leader of the group Chandrshekhar Das was even murdered. Besides Sonarpur this group organized the work amongst farmers in some areas of Havda, Hughli, Medinipur, Birbhum, Malda and Bardmaan districts and worked on the trade union front amongst industrial workers in South Calcutta, Asansol and Durgapur during 1968-69. The Dakshin Desh people had come into contact with Charu Mazumdar and the communist revolutionaries of Darjeeling towards the end of 1966. Immediately after Naxalabari they again met Charu Mazumdar. After the formation of the Coordination Committee, despite several differences the Dakshin Desh group did get associated with it, but owing to the bureaucratic functioning and having no process of resolving the differences, it had to be separated soon. The political thinking of Dakshin Desh group was dogmatic and mechanical in many respects, but they did raise some issues of basic importance related to the organizational functioning. On several issues of interrelationship between mass organization and Party organization, development of Guerilla war, use of elections, practical forms of the strategic alliance between classes, they themselves suffered from ultra-leftist deviation, but they used to consider the terming the formation of secret squads and ‘action’ without any political work as Guerilla warfare and the line of annihilation as “left” adventurism and at the same time they believed that Charu’s line suffered from spontaneism and anarchism. Their attitude towards the Chinese Party was imitationist and on various organizational issues they suffered from purist romantic perspective, but they did underline this question with sincerity that the Coordination Committee must pay special attention to the determination of the program and tactics of Indian revolution on the basis of study and analysis of the Indian conditions, whereas it was neglecting it. They too believed that it was Telangana and not Naxalbari which was the first experiment of Mao thought in India and that Naxalbari was in its continuity. Instead of carrying out a debate on these issues in a democratic manner, Charu faction adopted the tactics of ignoring, slandering, and putting labels (even by writing in ‘Deshvrati’). As if this was not enough, using the coordination committee like a Party and itself as the Party leadership, the Charu faction even began to ask for stopping the publication and distribution of ‘Dakshin Desh’. Under this circumstance, ‘Dakshin Desh’ dissociated from the coordination committee. But at the same time it also decided that while struggling against the incorrect policies they would continue making efforts for unity. ‘Dakshin Desh’ group separated and the Andhra Pradesh revolutionary communist committee was expelled. Without carrying out a review of the performance of the Coordination Committee and without even accomplishing its basic objective, at this juncture, when on 22 April 1969 suddenly the founding of the CPI (ML) was announced and a decision was taken to hold the Party congress within a year, it came as a surprise to the ‘Dakshin Desh’ group. It sent a letter to the leadership of CPI (ML) which mentioned its thoughts and differences of opinion, but they did not reply. It was then that the ‘Dakshin Desh’ group took a separate path and on 20 October 1969 it founded the ‘Maoist Communist Centre.’
The West Bengal Coordination Committee of Revolutionaries (WBCCR) also raised some crucial questions related to politics, organization and functioning before the All India Coordination Committee and expressed its differences with the “left” adventurist line. Its questions and differences too were completely ignored and this organization also did not join the Coordination Committee.
Other two people who raised the basic and important issues of differences were Parimal Dasgupta and Asit Sen. Parimal Dasgupta did not agree with the decision of the Party-formation in haste after merely one to one and a half years of work of the Coordination Committee. He was in favor of the foundation of a Communist Party free from revisionism and opportunism after a long theoretical struggle and practical work. It is true that no revolutionary Party can guarantee the final riddance from deviations as the deviations keep on raising heads within the Party against which the perpetual two-line struggle needs to be waged. But despite this idealist deviation the stand of Parimal Dasgupta was correct in the sense that the Coordination Committee had not accomplished any of its aims including the study and analysis of Indian conditions for determination of program and the responsibility of debate and exchange of experiences for establishing the real unity between the communist revolutionaries was almost given up. After this difference, Parimal Dasgupta and his supporters dissociated themselves from the Coordination Committee and formed a parallel Coordination Committee (which became inactive in due course) which mentioned its differences of opinion with Charu Mazumdar by writing a document. In this document it was mentioned that Charu Mazumdar had deviated from Mao’s path and was following the petty-bourgeois revolutionist path of Che Guevara. While Mao thought talks about organizing the masses on the basis of politics, Che Guevara’s path was to organize them through combats. According to the document, terming the Guerilla war through secret squads as the only path of revolutionary movement, opposition of trade union movement in the name of avoiding economism, the feeling of hatred towards the movement of urban workers and middle class in the name of formation of base area in the rural areas, the attempt to carry forward the agrarian revolution only through the struggles by the small groups and the attempts of revolutionary struggle without the class organization and mass struggles—all these components of Charu’s line were borrowed from Che Guevara, this was a distortion of Mao thought and a Party formed without rectifying these trends would turn into a terrorist Party in due course.
On 1 May 1969, the public meeting at Calcutta’s Shaheed Maidan in which Kanu Sanyal announced the establishment of CPI (ML) was chaired by Asit Sen, but barely after a few weeks he separated owing to his serious differences with the leadership which had been going on since earlier days. The differences of opinion of Asit Sen with Charu Mazumdar’s line were there from initial phase itself. Charu Mazumdar believed that the fight for land leads the peasants into the quagmire of economism and revisionism, hence they must only fight for state power. He believed that the peasants in Naxalbari were fighting not for land but for the right on state. Asit Sen believed that any class gets organized first on its class demands, the struggle for land is the first necessary step for the preparation of the peasants for people’s democratic revolution. As against Charu Mazumdar’s line, Asit Sen considered trade unions to be the primary school of revolution and he believed trade union to be essential for the working class movements. He used to oppose the concept of “rural based” Party and stressed on the working class vanguard character of the Party. Charu Mazumdar faction believed that CPI (ML) was a pure proletarian Party as most of its leaders had come from the areas of armed struggle. Asit Sen believed that merely this fact that a few comrades have been associated with armed struggle does not alter the petty-bourgeois character of the Party. The main question being that of ideology and the recruitment among Party cadre from the working class. Also, the vanguard of a revolutionary army cannot be prepared by merely giving revolutionary politics while neglecting the wider class struggle. Asit Sen contended that calling the struggle for economic demands as revisionist and distancing oneself from working class movement is to entrust working class to revisionism and every kind of reactionary ideology. He stated that the assassination of individuals and line of annihilation is akin to mixture of Narodism and Che Guevara’s petty bourgeois romanticist theory. Asit Sen believed that the assassination of enemies and seizure of property can never be the principal form of class struggle. At the same time, as there is a fundamental difference between the spontaneous armed struggle of people and the armed struggle under the leadership of a revolutionary politics, there is a fundamental difference between an armed struggle initiated by petty-bourgeois revolutionary adventurists and the class struggle under the leadership of a revolutionary Party of the working class which is equipped with Marxism-Leninism-Mao thought. Refuting this notion of Charu Mazumdar that everything will be sorted out through Guerilla struggle, Asit Sen wrote in his document that had carrying out armed struggle itself formed the revolutionary Party, India would have witnessed revolution long ago. He also underlined this fact that Charu’s line completely alienates the main element of a revolutionary Party viz. the working class from the armed struggle!
While it is true that criticism of Charu Mazumdar’s “left” opportunist line by Parimal Dasgupta and Asit Sengupta was ideologically not that consistent and thorough as that presented by D.V. Rao-Nagi Reddy group or later on by Punjab Revolutionary Communist Committee (Harbhajan Singh Sohi Group). Still they fundamentally did correctly recognize the nature of “left” adventurism, class-character and the main expressions of it. The problem was that in the absence of a deep ideological understanding and thorough vision they raised the question quite late and at different times. When the differences with the Andhra Committee arose and when they were expelled in a bureaucratic manner, they did not take the correct stand. Not just this, after getting separated despite having the basic unity on mass line they made no attempt to coordinate with them (i.e. the Andhra Committee). So, owing to their own ideological weaknesses and deviations, the groups and individuals which opposed “left” terrorist line, continued to give extra importance to their secondary differences and this was also the reason why the process of polarization between the ultra-left wing and mass line got impacted. It is also a fact that the revisionist deviation and some ideological confusion existed even in the thinking of Parimal Dasgupta and Asit Sen as well (for instance, Parimal Dasgupta though used to consider Soviet Union as revisionist, but he had justified Soviet Union’s attack on Czechoslovakia on the ground of “opposition to the western imperialist intervention”), though rather than being consistent revisionists they were genuine Marxist-Leninists. The subsequent phase of their lives proved this. Both remained associated with the communist revolutionary stream throughout their lives and before his death in 1996 Asit Sen was associated with CPI (ML) (Janshakti) group. The main and essential point is that had AICCCR played the role of carrying out of democratic coordination and political debate, such capable and honest people would have freed themselves from the deviations through debates and discussions and they could have played immense role, but the bureaucratic hegemony of the terrorist line on the Coordination Committee did not let that happen. From the perspective of historical assessment today, the main aspect is that despite their weaknesses the people like Parimal Dasgupta and Asit Sen also recognized the basic character of the line which played the key role in pushing the communist revolutionary movement in the direction of disintegration and destruction and presented its critique.
During the period of AICCCR, among those who presented consistent, logical and thorough critique of Charu Mazumdar’s “leftist” line and firmly oppose it, after the Andhra Pradesh Revolutionary Communist Committee (D.V. Rao-Nagi Reddy Group), second was a revolutionary communist faction of Punjab which was led by Harbhajan Singh Sohi. After 1970, working as a separate group during the CPI (ML) period this section of the communist revolutionaries while successfully applying the mass line concretely in Punjab had even decisively defeated the “left” adventurist stream in practice. Differences and disputes began to surface in the Punjab unit of CPM right after Naxalbari and soon the activists having Maoist orientation were expelled from the Party. These revolutionary communists formed a coordination committee at the state level whose secretary was Daya Singh. Daya Singh was a mature communist and he had some reservations with the “leftist” line as well. But due to the dominance of the “leftist” wave in Punjab since the end of 1968 and owing to his liberal attitude, Daya Singh favoured to go along with the majority. The beginning of armed struggle in Punjab on the basis of terrorist line was from 1969. After merely a few ‘actions’ the process of police repression, arrests and fake encounters ensued. Towards the end of 1970, the secretary of the Punjab state committee of CPI (ML) (by the time the Party announcement had been made) Daya Singh, secretary of Ropad district committee Balwant Singh, veteran Gadri Baba and Patiala’s leader Harisingh Mrigendra were killed by police in the fake encounters. Among the veteran leaders of Ghadar Party who joined the ML movement was Baba Niranjan Kalsa and Baba Bhuja Singh. They too were later killed in cold blood and were later shown to be killed in police encounter. The “left” adventurist line continued in Punjab even after the first Party Congress. Around 90 class enemies mostly usurers were annihilated. In Punjab, unlike some backward areas of the country the question of land and feudal oppression was not there even during 1967-70, but there was a deep sense of hatred against the usurers not only among the poor peasant but even among the middle peasant sas well. There has been a long tradition of militant brave struggles and sacrifices in Punjab society. Due to lack of ideological understanding amongst the communist cadre this tradition helped “left” adventurism to flourish. In this state alone by 1974 more than 100 communist revolutionaries had been killed in fake encounters and dozens of revolutionaries were facing the long sentences in prisons.
Right since the formation of the state level Coordination Committee in Punjab, the people belonging to Bhatinda-Firozpur Committee were firmly opposing the line of annihilation, the line of negation of economic struggles, mass struggles and mass organizations and the terrorist understanding of the origin and evolution of the people’s war. Even on the question of uneven development of revolutionary struggles and the leadership of the working class their opinion differed with that of Charu’s line and they were unrelenting on the question of implementation of mass line. They had put forward their different opinion even at the time of the announcement of the formation of CPI (ML) and its Congress. Despite facing tough isolation and even after being hurled with the “titles” of “renegade”, “revisionist”, “enemy of the people” they stood firmly on their stand and continued to confront the powerful wave of the revolutionary terrorism. Despite this, formally they remained part of first the Coordination Committee and then of CPI (ML) after the announcement of Party-formation. In February 1970, just before the Party Congress, the Bhatinda-Ferozepur Committee got separated from CPI (ML) and it reorganized itself as Punjab Communist Revolutionary Committee (PCRC). Later on, it successfully and effectively implemented the mass line and completely isolated Charu’s stream and made them ineffective. It would be discused further in the article at an appropriate place.
During the entire period of AICCCR, abandoning all the tasks determined by the Coordination Committee, using the Coordination Committee as a centralized Party by rejecting its form and by acting in a bureaucratic manner as a whole sole leader, and by taking advantage of the approval by the Chinese Party through its articles and broadcasts and the reputation of being a proclaimed leader of Naxalbari, Charu Mazumdar cornered all the groups and individuals opposed to him one by one and as soon as the hegemony of his line was established on the Coordination Committee, he moved towards Party formation. In the process, the fact that several opponents of his line were themselves suffering from “leftist” or rightist deviation, their line was not consistent, the voice of protest were not being raised simultaneously but separately and the supporters of mass line had differences among themselves on several crucial and secondary issues. As the cleansing of opposition from the Coordination Committee proceeded, the “left” opportunist character of Charu’s line began to surface in more and more naked and vulgar form. Earlier he used to talk about mass struggles or the program of agrarian revolution or the struggle of working class in ambiguous terms, but now while outrightly rejecting all kinds of mass work, open work, economic struggle and political propaganda work he began to assert that “the fight of annihilation is both the highest form of class struggle and beginning of Guerilla struggle”, the Indian peasant masses would be awakened through this only, the problems of building liberated zones and making of revolutionary army would be resolved and it is through this only that the fierce spontaneous mass uprising would make fatal attack on the state. In an article about Guerilla actions, written three months prior to the Party Congress, he wrote that that Guerilla squads would be completely secret and independent, even the Party committee would have no control over them, the method of their formation would be disseminated through whispering into the ears of every individual, even the Party’s political units would have no idea about them and for this the petty-bourgeois intellectuals need to take initiative. As if this was not enough, inspired by the line of annihilation, he also envisaged fierce countrywide revolt by rejecting the tendency of protracted people’s war and even before the Congress after the announcement of the Party, in 1969 itself he gave the slogan of turning the decade of 1970s into a decade of liberation.
Essentially it was an extremely vulgar and crude edition of the “leftist” deviation of Ranadive era, which had nothing to do with Marxism-Leninism and Mao’s thoughts related to democratic revolution.
Besides the theorization, the practice of revolutionary terrorism too was continuing in different parts of the country in full swing. In different parts of the country, the stray communist groups inspired by Charu’s line used to implement the line of ‘action’ by forming squads in scattered form and of annihilation and everything would be ruined after a few activities. After Srikakulam the second big experiment of “left” adventurism took place in the two police stations Debra and Gopivallabhpur of Midnapur district of Bengal. By that time the Coordination Committee had announced the formation of Party. The activities began here since November 1969 by the West Bengal-Bihar-Orissa border zone Committee whose secretary was Aseem Chatterji and the main organizers were Santosh Rana, Mihir Rana, Gunadhar Murmu etc. It is to be mentioned that even here the beginning was made in form of extensive mass initiative and mass movement. 40,000 peasants took part in the campaign of reaping the farms of tyrant Zamindars. The peasant committees established its rule in the villages and punished the landlords and usurers by holding Lok Adalats (people’s court). The wages of workers working at the farms of landlords and rich farmers were increased five-fold. But after this beginning the terrorist activities of squad shattered the mass movement. By April 1970 sixty class enemies had been assassinated. This campaign was spread to areas beyond the Debra and Gopivallabhpur police station to Kharagpur local, Sankrail, Keshapur and Chakulia. But along with increasing repression and stagnation differences also began arising in the leadership and the questions began to be raized on the line. By the mid-1970s the movement had been disintegrated.
In about twelve districts of Musahri zone of Muzaffarpur district of Bihar a land movement began in 1969 in the form of mass movement in which about ten thousand peasants participated. After the initial phase the line of annihilation was applied even there and by February 1970 ten class enemies were assassinated. Even there the movement was stagnated and got disintegrated within one and a half year.
In Palia of Terai zone of Lakhimpur district of Uttar Pradesh, in January-February 1968, a peasant movement began with the mass-initiative and mass-participation. The poor peasants and workers occupied the land of Pilibhit Terai farm and the farms of Patiyan, Ghola, Ibrahimpur after confrontation with the goonda gangs of farm owners (it is another question whether the issue here should have been that of land or not as these farms belonged to capitalist landowners who used to hire workers and who used to do farming for profit). Then the phase of the dominance of “leftist” line came with it repression also rose. The movement was disintegrated within a year.
Despite these failures, Charu’s claims of the continued forward progress of the liberation struggle went on. There reason was when the failure of the “leftist” line was surfacing at one place, its implementation started in some other area in full swing. By the end of 1970s the “left”-terrorist campaign of the ML movement had been defeated and the all-round stagnation was causing despair amongst cadre on the one hand and laying down the ground for difference and split in the leadership on the other. It would be discussed in the next part of the article during the description of flow of events after the period of Party Congress and its sum-up. Here we will conclude by explaining the chronology of events till the Party Congress.
After the expulsion of the Andhra Pradesh Communist Revolutionary Committee (7 February 1969), Charu began to feel that the biggest stumbling block before the “leftist” line had been removed. Suddenly changing his earlier thinking he now began to put forward this idea that now the appropriate time for the formation of an All India Party had come. No review of the performance of the Coordination Committee was done. Some people objected but were convinced later. After the expulsion of Parimal Dasgupta, the only remaining opponent of this decision also was cleared from the way. On 22 April 1969 the Coordination Committee dissolved itself and founded CPI (ML) and in a public meeting held at Calcutta’s Shaheed Meenar Maidan on 1 May 1969, Kanu Sanyal made this announcement. In the Plenum held on 27 April Central Organising Committee was formed as a Provisional Leading Committee of the Party (till the Congress) whose members included: Charu Mazumdar, Susheetal Roychaudhary, Saroj Dutt, Kanu Sanyal, Sauren Basu, Shivkumar Mishra, Satyanarayan Singh, R.P. Saraf, Panchadri Krishnmurti, Chaudhary Tejeshwar Rao and L. Appu. Charu Mazumdar was elected as the secretary of the Party. A decision was taken to convene the first Congress of the Party within a year. The Communist Party of China welcomed the foundation of Party and granted its approval. Peking Radio broadcasted the resolution of 22 April 1969 and Kanu Sanyal’s speech and the resolutions passed in the public meeting on 1 May. It enhanced the newly formed Party’s respectability among the cadre and spread new energy. By the end of 1969 a Party delegation even made a secret visit to China.
In April 1970, the Central Organising Committee of the Party convened a three-day meeting towards the preparation of the Party Congress. In the meeting Satyanarayan Singh, Shivkumar Mishra and Sauren Basu were given the responsibility of preparing the draft of Party’s program and Susheetal Roychaudhary, R.P.Saraf and Saroj Dutt were to prepare draft for political resolution.
The Founding Congress of CPI (ML) (which was also termed as the eight Congress in terms of the continuity of the history of Communist Party) was held on 15-16 May in Calcutta in which delegates from West Bengal, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Andhra, Tripura, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Punjab and Jammu & Kashmir participated. Before this, intense debate took place in the Uttar Pradesh state conference on the draft of the political resolution in which following were opposed: to make the Guerilla struggle as the only form of struggle, the line of annihilation and the allegiance to the Chinese Communist Party as the only condition for unity amongst the revolutionaries. In the Congress R.N. Upadhyay put forward the report of this debate. It was evident that in Uttar Pradesh the faction of opponents of Charu’s line was dominant. But after the speech of Satyanarayan Singh in favour of the draft of political resolution it was passed. Party’s program was based on the People’s Democratic Revolution of China. In this conference, while referring the Indian society as semi-feudal, semi-colonial and the independence as sham independence, American imperialism, Soviet social imperialism, feudalism, comprador-bureaucratic capital was termed as the four enemies of Indian people. India was termed as a neo-colony of both American and Soviet imperialism (simultaneously) and feudalism was identified as the principal contradiction of that era. This program was prepared by deductively applying the general assessment of international situations on India and it was full of inconsistencies. The independent study and analysis of the concrete conditions had no role in it. Further in this article the numerous inconsistencies and contradictions of the program of New Democratic Revolution would be done when the context of the question being raised from within the Marxist-Leninist camp would come, hence we are not going into its details here. The political resolution too was as per this program only. At the same time the shadow of “left” opportunist line prevailed in the stand on myriad questions related to tactics and path. Whatever was remaining was completed by the Charu Mazumdar through his speech in which he had emphatically put forward the terrorist line.
Here it is also important to discuss that during the Congress Sauren Basu (Saroj Dutt too accompanied him) had presented a resolution to formally establish the individual authority of Charu Mazumdar. Aseem Chatterji while speaking in favor of the resolution went on to say that in case of differences between the Central Committee and Charu Mazumdar, he would go with the latter. Kanu Sanyal only said that it was crucial to give more description about the role of Charu Mazumdar in the Terai Report. Satyanarayan Singh vocally opposed it. Shivkumar Mishra and R.P. Saraf expressed their opposition in low voice. Susheetal Roychaudhary narrated all the quotations of Mao regarding strengthening the Party Committee from the book of Mao’s quotation and he termed the proposal as going against Mao’s teachings. The proposal could not be passed for lack of consensus, though in latter phases the Charu supporters’ caucus essentially implemented the Charu’s position of authority which rendered the Central Committee as meaningless. It was but natural as the “left” adventurist ideological-political line can only be effective through the medium of the organizational line of bureaucratic and commandist centralism.
The Congress elected a twenty-member Central Committee whose members included: Charu Mazumdar, Susheetal Roychaudhary, Saroj Dutt, Kanu Sanyal, Sauren Basu, Suniti Kumar Ghosh, Aseem Chatterji (West Bengal), Satyanarayan Singh, Gurubaksh Singh (Bihar), Shivkumar Mishra, Mahendra Singh (U.P.), Venkatapu Satyanarayan, Adimala Kailasham, Nagbhushan Patnaik, Appala Suri (Andhra Pradesh), L. Appu, Kodandraman (Tamil Nadu), Ambadi (Kerala), R.P. Saraf (Jammu-Kashmir), Jagjeet Singh Sohal (Punjab). Charu Mazumdar was elected as the secretary of the Committee.
If we put together the accepted program in the eighth Congress, political proposal, political-organizational report and Charu Mazumdar’s speech and look at them, at once, it becomes abundantly clear that the ideological essence of the line agreed at the Congress was against Marxism-Leninism-Mao thought. Here, as of now, we are not mentioning the analysis of Indian society and determination of its character as presented in the Program. The main aspect is that of ideology. If a revolutionary Party consistently applies mass line and the organizational line of democratic centralism, it can rectify the mistake related to the program of revolution through summing up the experiences and inner-Party debates and discussions. But if the ideological base of the Party is itself incorrect, even the correct program would be reduced to a mere piece of paper. The formation of CPI (ML) had taken place not on the basis of Marxism-Leninism but of “left” adventurism. The eighth Congress did not at all accomplish its task of the formation of an All India Party. The Marxist-Leninist organizations which used to apply revolutionary mass line mainly and essentially (and the organizations which suffered from “leftist” deviation or right-wing deviation to a lesser degree) were kept out of CPI (ML). Hence, at best it can be said about the CPI (ML) which was formed in 1970 that it was a communist revolutionary organization suffering from serious “left” opportunist deviation, and in no way an All India Revolutionary Communist Party.
….(to be continued)
Translated from Hindi by Anand Singh
