Naxalbari and Subsequent Four Decades: A Retrospection (Part-2)
-Deepayan Bose
Failure of the “Left” Adventurist Line in Srikakulam
It has already been discussed in this essay that the guerrilla struggle along the “Left” adventurist line (line of annihilation) had been suffering from severe crisis and impasse after the sustained campaign of blockade and repression by the police and paramilitary forces and murders of several leading organizers in real or fake encounters in Srikakulam before the party congress was held in 1970. Yet, the movement continued, especially in Uddanam and Agency areas. Immediately after the Congress, two members of Central Committee Vempatapu Satyanarayana and Adibhatla Kailasam were martyred in fake encounters on 10 July, 1970 and on 30 July, leading organizers like Mallikarjunudu, Appalaswamy and Malleshwar Rao also faced the same fate. At that time, two surviving members of Central Committee from Andhra, Appalasuri and Nagbhushan Patnaik had gone to Calcutta to meet Charu Majumdar and they received the information of these martyrdoms via radio. Soon after this, both of them were also arrested.
It is necessary to mention here that in 1969 Nagbhushan Patnaik and Bhuvan Mohan Patnaik had started working on the line of Charu Majumdar in the Koraput district of Orissa bordering Andhra as well. Both were arrested after some time, but after managing to escape by prison-break on 8 October, 1969, Nagbhushan Patnaik gave a new fillip to the annihilation campaign in Koraput and Srikakulam and after Party Congress, the Central Committee gave him the responsibility of carrying out the movement in the areas of Koraput of Orissa and Vishakhapatnam and Ganjam of Andhra Pradesh apart from Srikakulam. After the murders of Vempatapu and Adibhatla and arrests of Nagbhushan Patnaik and Appalasuri (all four were Central Committee members), the Party work became stagnant and began to disintegrate in Srikakulam and also in areas of Koraput, Ganjam and Vishakhapatnam owing to sustained face-off with police blockade and suppression. Paila Vasudev Rao was the only important leader left in Srikakulam who could not be arrested by police.
Even at this crucial juncture, Charu Majumdar did not find it necessary to reconsider the line of annihilation; rather taking forward the same line he called upon the surviving comrades of Srikakulam to take the leadership into their own hands and directed them that every unit has the right to chart out its own plan towards the objective of setting up a people’s liberation army in Srikakulam by annihilating class enemies and police and seizing their rifles. Although some of the surviving comrades did make such efforts but they could not succeed. After this a section of local organizers reached this conclusion that it was wrong to linearly emphasize on the annihilation of class enemies and neglecting other forms of struggle (though they considered this as a tactical mistake only). Such people tried to overcome the mistakes by adopting other forms of struggle on partial and economic demands of people, but they did not achieve any considerable success in the milieu of repression and terror by the state power and isolation from the public. There was another section which was emphasizing on organizing the masses by starting from the economic struggles by completely abandoning the armed struggles. There was a third section of those comrades who disagreed with these conclusions. They were in favor of implementing the policies and tactics of the Central Committee word by word and who believed that the residual influence of revisionism amongst the cadres has been the main reason behind the setbacks to the movement. This third section later re-organized itself as Andhra Pradesh State Committee. Anyway, the struggle of Srikakulam had disintegrated by the end of 1970, however, some isolated ‘actions’ here and there continued to be taken up even after that. The “Left” adventurist line of Charu Majumdar was implemented for the longest time in Srikakulam in the most organized and thorough manner, but ultimately it proved to be a complete failure after incurring heavy losses.
Students-Youth Rebellion in Calcutta
The second leading representative expression of “Left” adventurism got manifested in the form of widespread uprising of students-youth of Calcutta in March 1970 just before the Party Congress which after reaching the zenith in the so-called cultural revolution (‘Bhanjan’ (idol-smashing), ‘Dahan’ (burning), ‘Hanan’ (annihilation) -program) and the urban annihilation campaign by the mid-1971, got disintegrated owing to the unprecedented ruthless repression by the state. Estimation of the heavy toll that the “Left” adventurist deviation of the students-youth movement of Calcutta took on the Party-building process by strangulating the possibilities of recruitment of revolutionary students-youth in huge numbers amongst the revolutionary cadre requires a short discussion on how the political events unfolded before that uprising.
1960s was the decade of rapid radicalization of the consciousness of the students-youth of Bengal. Majority of the agitating students-youth during the food movement of 1966 (which has been mentioned earlier) had got mobilized against the revisionist leadership apart from the bourgeois system. Amongst the students-youth of Calcutta in 1967-68, there was a widespread wave in favor of Naxalbari peasants-uprising, but the communist revolutionary movement could not give it a definite course due to the impact of “Left” extremism. Charu Majumdar in his article ‘To the Youth and the Students’ in 1968 in ‘Deshvrati’ wrote, “The political organization of the youth and the students must necessarily be a Red Guard organization, and they should undertake the task of spreading the Quotations of Chairman Mao as widely as possible in different areas.” Thus, dismissing the need of extensive issue-based students-youth movements and mass fronts, Charu Majumdar confined their activities to the ideological propaganda only. But during the entire period of the Coordination Committee, students-youth of Calcutta launched several movements on issues like food price hike, tram fare increase and their several demands. ‘West Bengal State Students Coordination Committee of Revolutionaries’ prepared a draft political program of revolutionary students-youth movement and circulated it amongst the revolutionary students-youth activists of Bengal for deliberation and discussion. This draft was also published in the April, 1969 issue of ‘Liberation’. As against the general line of the aforementioned article of Charu Majumdar, the revolutionary mass line of students-youth movement was advocated in this document and it was said that the propaganda of the politics of agrarian revolution alone would only attract the advanced and conscious elements of students-youth to participate in the struggle; therefore, in order to mobilize and organize the wider population of the common students-youth with relatively backward consciousness on the basis of the general political program, it is required to raise the issues connected with food, education, unemployment, culture etc. which directly affect them and for that it would be necessary to build the mass political organization of the students-youth. However, by the time of Party formation, this idea of mass line had been pushed back under the all-encompassing influence of the Left adventurist line. In August 1969, Charu Majumdar in ‘Party’s Call to the Students and Youth’ (‘Deshvrati’) again emphasized that the unions of students-youth will have to unite with workers and poor and landless farmers by completely rejecting the economistic, opportunist and corrupt politics. Further advancing his line, he wrote in his article ‘A Conversation with the Revolutionary Youth and Students’ published in ‘Deshvrati’ in March, 1970 that students-youth would have to sacrifice their schools-colleges for the cause of revolution, would have to move towards villages forming squads in order to unite with poor-landless farmers and workers, would have to do revolutionary propaganda amongst them forming squads, would have to form red guard organizations in cities after returning from villages and these red guard organizations would have to retaliate in a guerrilla fashion to the attacking fascist armed gangs along with political and revolutionary propaganda amongst the workers. After this call from Charu, large number of students from Calcutta went towards villages and got engaged in the attempts to apply the “Left” adventurist line. Thus, by the time of Party Congress, Charu’s line had strangulated the possibilities of an uprising of a strong revolutionary students-youth movement in Calcutta.
The students-youth who had gone to the areas of Debra-Gopivallabhpur and other rural areas were soon disappointed because of the enormity of state repression and the failure of terrorist line and most of them went back to the city. The youth activists who returned from villages played a crucial role in the extreme Left students-youth uprising which went on from March 1970 to mid-1971 (approx.) in Calcutta. It started from the attacks on educational institutes run on American funding. Then schools and colleges were attacked and red flags were unfurled there. After this, statues of bourgeois reformists of the so called Bengali Renaissance such as Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Ishwar Chandra Vidya Sagar; and bourgeois leaders like Gandhi, Chitranjan Das, Subhas Chandra Bose etc. and of Ravindra Nath Tagore were demolished and the copies of ‘Gandhi Vangmaya’ were burnt on streets. This “cultural revolution” relying on the anger borne out of the hopeless present adopted an extremist, lopsided and ahistorical attitude towards history and heritage. Initially, the CPI (ML) leadership adopted an indifferent attitude towards this new course of events, but after this wave spread in the entire Calcutta, Charu Majumdar strongly supported it terming it as an inevitable consequence of the peasants uprising in the rural areas. Declaring the vandalizing of the statues of Gandhi and other bourgeois leaders as the “festival of idol-smashing”, he wrote that students have launched attack on the colonial education system because they have understood that creating revolutionary education system and culture is not possible without destroying the colonial education system and the statues erected by the comprador capitalist class (‘Forge Closer Unity with Peasants’ Armed Struggle, 14-07-70). Charu further wrote in this article that the aim of this struggle is not to demolish the entire cultural superstructure unlike the Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution of China, nor it is possible in this stage (i.e. before the victory of revolution), hence the students-youth will have to note that they can preserve their revolutionary character only by integrating with the workers and landless peasants. The differences of senior leader and Secretary of West Bengal State Committee Sushital Ray Chowdhary with Charu Majumdar started with the question of idol-smashing and eventually he presented the critique of the whole line of “Left Adventurism”. We will discuss this difference later. Saroj Dutta, Politburo member and old poet and journalist who strongly supported the idol-smashing offensive, emerged to be a new cultural theoretician of the Charu Majumdar line. He wrote articles indiscriminately lambasting Gandhi, Subhas, Tagore, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Tarasankar Banerjee etc. According to Saroj Dutta, social reformers of the Bengali “Bhadralok” (civilized folk) – the leaders of the Bengali renaissance – who were the outcome of the colonial education system were a medium of communication between the ruling and exploited classes and acted as the governing machinery of the ruling classes. They were against the anti-colonial mass resistance and were only focused on social reform confinedmerely to the middle class. He used to portrayGandhi as an agent of colonialism and considered Subhas Bose a fascist, acting as a puppet of the Japanese imperialism. In fact, cultural line of Saroj Dutta was just a mechanical and extreme elaboration of the evaluation of Indian society and the character of Indian capitalist class (in the form of comprador capitalist class) as formulated by the program of CPI (ML). This was the period during which the considerable section of intellectuals and cultural activists of Bengal that sympathized with the communist revolutionary stream, split away after realizing the consequences of the political line of Charu Majumdar and ultra-Leftist cultural thoughts of Saroj Dutta.
As has been mentioned above that the campaign of attacking educational institutes and idol-smashing had started spontaneously. There were meritorious students involved in it in large number, but many lumpen elements were also involved. Party supported the movement but in fact it had no control over it and it was dragging itself behind it. Charu in his above article also wrote that the students-youth and workers are annihilating the police instead of kneeling down. Such incidents were sporadically happening by that time, but after the publication of this article by Charu Majumdar, the campaign of annihilation of the police personnel, bureaucrats, merchants, agents and hired goons (’Mastans’) was intensified. Calcutta district committee had announced in July that the murders of comrades from Bengal and Andhra will be avenged by annihilating the police, CRP, black-marketers and the capitalists. During this indiscriminate campaign of annihilation, some prominent individuals like vice-chancellor of Jadavpur University, one judge of Calcutta High Court and a secretary of the government of Bengal were murdered, but mostly traffic constables, some petty-merchants and businessmen turned out to be its victims. Then started the clash on streets with CPI (M) activists and by August 1971, 368 CPI (M) activists along with 1345 ML activists were killed. Annihilation of electoral candidates during the midterm elections of 1971 also started. Forward Block’s veteran leader Hemanta Kumar Bose, in spite of being the leader of a revisionist Party, was quite popular due to his simple life and modest nature. His assassination created a lot of turmoil in Bengal and played an important role in increasing the isolation of CPI (ML). During this entire annihilation campaign, there were 700 squads in the whole Bengal and 150 squads active in Calcutta only. As per the instructions of Charu Majumdar, these squads used to be independent of the local Party Committees and carry out their actions without their knowledge.
Even if the revolutionary mass line were to be implemented in accordance with the New Democratic Revolution program, then the general line in that period should have been that of defense in spite of development of class struggle in villages along with some partial uprisings in the cities and the mass struggles should have been developed under the strict supervision of the Party. But extending his terrorist line even beyond Srikakulam, Charu Majumdar aggressively adopted the line of annihilation in cities as well, he completely dismissed the mass struggles and formation of mass organizations by terming them as revisionist activities, freed the squads from the leadership of the Party Committees and fostered their chaos and spontaneity and completely subordinated the politics under weapon.
State repression of the revolutionary communist movement, which was already underway, turned even more intensified and extensive since 1971. CRP and police were given ‘shoot at sight’ orders. Fake encounters became routine incidents. ML activists would be brutally tortured in jails.By the end of 1972 around 20,000 activists (mostly students and people belonging to their families) were killed in Calcutta alone. 3,000 activists in Naxalbari, 4,000 in other rural areas of Bengal, more than 6,000 activists in Bihar and Assam as well as thousands of activists in Andhra, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Kerala and Tamil Nadu too had been killed. The extent of the military operation in Bengal can be estimated from a statement by Lieutenant General Jagjit Singh Aurora. According to Aurora, three divisions of the army (about 50 thousand soldiers) had gone to West Bengal and after the elections the soldiers remained there to deal with the Naxalite violence. After the suppression of the Telangana struggle, the Indian state had launched the most comprehensive and planned suppression against the communist movement during 1970-72, however this action continued in some form or other until the Emergency-period. Barbarism of this period is a known fact of history today and this truth has also been exposed in many studies that in addition to the Central Home Ministry, Army officers and bourgeois think tanks, specialists of various imperialist agencies were also involved at that time in formulating strategic policies of suppressing “Naxalism” and socio-economic policies to deal with it.
Nevertheless, the root cause of stagnation-disintegration of the movement was not the state repression, but its own ideological line (Left adventurism) and wrong understanding of the Indian program (program of New Democratic Revolution following the path of the Chinese Revolution). The state repression can push back a country’s revolutionary struggle for some time, but it cannot be the fundamental reason for the stagnation-disintegration that continues for more than four decades. With hindsight, this point can be easily made with complete certainty. Any revolution does involve martyrdoms and sacrifices, but this is certain that the Left adventurist line of Charu Majumdar was responsible for the numerous unnecessary martyrdoms and sacrifices during the early years of 1970s. Wrong estimation or underestimation of enemy’s power, self-righteousness, impatience, belief in brave heroes instead of masses and weapons rather than politics – these are the basic attributes of Left adventurism and Charu Majumdar (and his supporters in the leadership) was also equipped with these qualities. Next, we will see how the organizational line of the leadership implementing the Left adventurist line, in accordance to its ideological line, applied the bureaucratic working style, individualism, factionalism and manipulation(such instances have been observed during the AICCCR period as well), because of which the process of debate and healthy summing-up was repeatedly throttled in the organization and it was decisively pushed towards the path of disintegration.
Nevertheless, at the moment we will go back towards Calcutta during the latter half of the historic year of 1971. President’s rule was proclaimed in West Bengal on June 29, 1971. Union minister Siddhartha Shankar Ray was given the responsibility of implementing the President’s rule in the state. The period from July to November was the most brutal period of fake encounters, arrests and tortures in jails throughout the state, and especially in Calcutta. In the meantime, during the midnight of 4-5 August, police arrested Saroj Dutta and shot him dead. Students-youth of Calcutta, full of romantic revolutionary zeal and spirit of sacrifice, showed remarkable courage. There were many incidents of struggles inside jails and jail breaks. But in the end, the advanced armed forces and the unbridled repressive machinery by the state was bound to win. By November 1971, Calcutta’s students-youth movement had been crushed.
The fundamental reason behind the waste of this unlimited revolutionary energy and failure of the uprising of students-youth was the “Left” adventurist line of Charu Majumdar. The mass line entailed in the draft political program presented by the ‘West Bengal State Students Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries’ had been abandoned in very beginning of 1970. Mao’s conception of New Democratic Revolution emphasized on protracted revolutionary struggle, main focus on land struggle in villages and encircling the cities from villages, but with the full support of Charu Majumdar, the extremist agenda of the action of squads in the name of urban guerrilla war and “cultural revolution” were implemented in Calcutta. During 1970-71, the hearts and minds of youth remained occupied with the utopian thought of Calcutta’s freedom by 1975. In addition to Sushital Ray Chowdhary, Suniti Kumar Ghosh also raised voice against it, but Charu Majumdar, Soren Basu and Calcutta district committee rejected these objections outright. Not only this, neither there was any clear policy to carry out the actions of squads, nor was there any well-organized Party structure. There was no arrangement of the ideological-political education for the young activists. On the contrary, if someone studied the Marxist classics, he had to face criticism and humiliation for being the “victim” of the tendency of book worship. Students-youth struggles had no link or coordination with revolutionary peasant struggles which were going on in various parts of the country and in West Bengal, whatever be their extent and form. After the students-youth movement of Calcutta had been crushed, Charu Majumdar wrote in ‘Liberation’ (July 1971 – January 1972): “We cannot occupy Calcutta and the different towns now and that is not also possible. Therefore, the Party members who are in the urban areas cannot directly participate in the struggle for seizure of power” (‘A Note on Party’s Work in Urban Areas’). Clearly, Charu Majumdar was turning away from his former position without any critical sum-up and was avoiding to own the responsibility for the failure of students-youth uprising. It would not be an exaggeration to term it as opportunism.
Although, by the end of 1971, wherever the “Left” adventurist line was applied in the form of organized or isolated action, it failed. But after Srikakulam, its failure during the students-youth uprising of Calcutta came in the most obvious and deadly form. It was the line of Charu Majumdar, because of which sacrifices of thousands of students-youth went in vain, youth energy with unlimited possibilities was wasted and the state repressive machinery plunged it into the pool of blood.
Impact of Communist Revolutionary Wave on the Urban Working Class
From 1967 to 1971, waves of revolutionary uprising amongst the industrial workers of entire India and especially Bengal-Bihar, kept on acquiring violent forms time and again. Not only CPI, but the open and unashamed betrayals on repeated basis by the revisionists of CPI (M) too made this truth clear before the big section of workers that despite its deceiving and furious rhetoric, in fact CPI (M) too was a new renegade gang of parliamentarian Leftists. In such a scenario, conditions were quite favorable to mobilize the workers on a revolutionary line and a large number of them were themselves getting attracted towards the communist revolutionary wave, but the all-encompassing effect of the “Left” adventurist line easily let this golden historic opportunity go waste. Workers’ struggles dispersed after spontaneous strikes and short-term rebellions in limited geographical regions. Disastrous consequences of the “Left” adventurism gave opportunity to the trade unions of bourgeois and revisionist parties, to regain their loosing hold on industrial workers. In the entire historiography of communist revolutionary movement, there is little discussion about its impact on workers’ movement. The series of uprising and disintegration of the militant movements of industrial workers during the period from Naxalbari peasant uprising to 1971 is a neglected and forgotten chapter of the history. Here, we will discuss some of the important incidents of that period one by one, so that it can be understood as to how much harm did the “Left” adventurist line of Charu Majumdar cause to the workers movement of India and how, by throttling its revolutionary possibilities, the road to undisputed domination by revisionists on the trade union movement was cleared.
Forty lakhs of central employees of postal-telegraph as well as railways went on strike on 19 September, 1968. Central and state governments adopted authoritarian repressive attitude to crush the strike. More than ten thousand employees and workers were either dismissed or suspended, the equal numbers were put in jails and ten workers found themselves at the receiving end of the police firing. The approach of vandalism, deception and surrender adopted by the revisionist leaders caused much harm but its second consequence was that the new revisionists of CPI (M) were largely exposed amongst the working class population. There was tremendous adverse impact on the strike due to betrayal by the revisionists in West Bengal. “Marxist” Chief Minister of the united front government of Kerala, Namboodiripad criticized the draconian ordinances imposed by the central government in words but applying the same draconian ordinances in deeds his government filed 207 cases on the strikers, arrested 233 people and also used force on them on large scale. Prior to this strike when 700 employees of Kerala secretariat took collective leave on their demands on 26 July, 1968, then not only the Namboodiripad government took help of armed police force to crush them, but it also issued directions of their salary cut and ‘service break’. Even before this, when the workers of Gwalior Rayon mill of Birla situated in Mavoor of Calicut went on strike towards the end of March and start of April, the government tried terrorizing and pressurizing them for a compromise in favor of the owners by sending police.
After the symbolic strike on 19th September, 1968, when the central employees, workers and employees of the post-telegram department continued their struggle adopting the strategy of ‘working as per the rules’, the trade union leaders of the revisionist parties came forward to help the central government. Making every possible effort by pressurizing and blackmailing the workers-employees, they forced them to retreat. The United Front government of the West Bengal,which had used its full might to crush the Naxalbari peasant uprising in 1967, openly adopted the suppressive attitude towards workers as well. This ensured that their character before the majority of working class population continued to be exposed. Defying the revisionists of CPI and CPI (M), the workers started organizing militant movements on their own and what is important is that they were victorious in most of their movements until the end of 1970. During the rule of the united front government, of which both CPI and CPI (M) were a part, 1,20,000 workers were fired between March to September 1967 (‘Yugantar’, 19 November, 1967). Deputy Chief Minister Jyoti Basu shamelessly said that he wants a just agreement, not strike and lockout (‘Statesman’, 6 October, 1967). A big section of workers was itself getting away from revisionists due to these misdeeds by them. Workers with advanced consciousness were rapidly getting attracted towards the communist revolutionary stream, but by the latter half of 1968 the “Left” adventurist line had become dominant in AICCCR which considered the trade union works in themselves as revisionist and was against any form of mass action. As a result, even the most favorable conditions could not be taken advantage of in time and a historical opportunity slipped from the hand. In order to understand the whole scenario and the spirit and attitude of working class at that time, mention of just a few more incidents will be sufficient.
There were many incidents of wildcat strikes and vandalism in the South Eastern Railway in February 1970. Organizationally, there was no role of CPI (ML) in these incidents, nonetheless ‘The Statesman’ in a report had suspected that the influence of some “extremist elements” has increased amongst the personnel of South Eastern Railway who want to disrupt rail operations particularly in the Ranchi-Jamshedpur belt.The effectiveness of the organized power of these workers in disrupting the country’s economy can be gauged from the fact that at that time, 60 percent of the country’s freight was transported via Eastern and South Eastern Railway and only these two railways connected the leading industrial centers like Calcutta, Durgapur, Asansol, Jamshedpur etc.
In July 1970, the workers and employees of North East Frontier Railway went on a wildcat strike. They were demanding the release of the arrested people for the murder of the in-charge of Siliguri police station. The strike that started from Siliguri railway junction soon spread to other areas and the entire rail-system of North-Eastern India came to halt. Strike continued despite Railway minister Nanda threatening to use army, efforts to run trains with the help from Eastern Frontier Rifles and the tremendous efforts by the trade union bureaucrats of CPI-CPI (M). Employees of postal-telegraph department and state electricity board and the students of Siliguri showed complete solidarity. ‘The Statesman’ newspaper in its editorial of 2 August suspected that possibly “underground extremists” are leading the strike. In the end, this 11 days strike was called off only when the government succumbed to all the demands of the striking workers.
In July, 1970, a big strike took placein South Eastern Railway as well. On 26th July, a wildcat strike was called in protest against the beating of some railway workers by the police at the Adra Railway Station. The strike that began with the Adra division was joined by the railway workers of Chakradharpur and Kharagpur divisions as well and the rail-operations of the entire South-Eastern part of India got disrupted. Only after the government succumbed, the railway workers returned to work. Against the arrest of some workers of the Bhilai Marshall Yard on August 1, 1970, the workers of the Bilaspur division of South Eastern Railway called a strike. On 6-7 August, railway workers of Chakradharpur, Adra, Kharda Road and Kharagpur division also joined the strike. This strike too ended only when the government accepted the demand for the release of the arrested workers.
All these strikes of workers were not based on economic demands, but were of political nature. All these strikes took place by revolting against the established union leadership (which were affiliated to bourgeois and revisionist parties). The desperate steps taken by the revisionist leaders of trade unions in response to this further exposed their character before the workers. Trade union leader of CPI Indrajit Gupta while shamelessly criticizing the workers’ wildcat strike gave a written undertaking to the government that in future, he would make all the possible efforts to prevent workers from going on a ‘wildcat strike’. Jyoti Basu said that he is in favor of polite compromise, not strike. The intensity of hatred and resentment against the revisionists in the industrial workers of Calcutta was even more fierce. Workers were showing solidarity with CPI (ML), communist revolutionary stream and peasant struggles.The requirement was simply that they were organized on the basis of a certain revolutionary mass line and that they were told about the concrete tasks, which could not happen. In 1970, there was an important strike in the Central Dairy, an undertaking of the state government situated in North Calcutta. CPI (M) goons fatally attacked a worker of the said dairy while he was visiting outside Calcutta and handed him to the police after badly injuring him. All the workers of the dairy went on strike immediately after hearing this news. Strike ended only when the dairy management got the arrested worker released and brought him amongst his comrades. From 1970 to the first half of 1971, in Calcutta and nearby industrial areas, red flags could be seen unfurling everywhere –in the whole port area from K.P. Docks to Strand Road, in the area of Taratala-Hide road and headquarters of Calcutta Tramways Company, Garden Reach Workshop (Defense Production Factory of India) and Cossipore Gun and Shell Factory (central government undertaking). If police removed them, workers would unfurl them again. Workers were carrying out this under the leadership of the local CPI (ML) activists without waiting for any instructions from the Party leadership. Trade union offices of the revisionist parties used to be deserted. Police used to watch them. CPI (M) goons, with the help of police,often attacked the rebel workers and CPI (ML) activists and ML cadres would strongly resist them and counter actions would also take place. Prior to line of annihilation in the name of urban guerrilla warfare and seizure of weapons becoming completely dominant in the Calcutta students-youth movement and the state suppression reaching the extreme levels, when the atmosphere of mass uprising prevailed, the examples of militant solidarity amongst the workers and petty-bourgeois youth were often witnessed. There had been a lockout for a long time in S. P. Engineering Company situated in Cossipore of North Calcutta. When the owners, conspiring with police, tried displacing the machines from the factory on August 9, 1970, then a large number of workers residing in the nearby slums as well as students-youth under the leadership of CPI (ML) activists came to the fray. Even after many rounds of firing by the police, workers and the students-youth did not budge and the owners’ purpose was not served. In the beginning of August, 1970 when a young communist revolutionary named Samir Bhattacharya was arrested by police and killed after torture in the lockup, then in bringing the entire life of Calcutta to a standstill and bravely facing the police and the paramilitary forces for three days, a large number of workers in camaraderie with students-youth stood their ground.
Several strikes took place in state electricity boards of W. Bengal and Bihar and Damodar Valley Corporation during 1970-71. Four out of these were largescale strikes, which involved vandalism on large scale and plant and transmission systems had been damaged. Police suspected that “Naxalites” were active behind these strikes, while the truth was that CPI (ML) had no role in them. When a contractor of Hindustan Steel plant situated in Durgapur fired five workers on 20 June, 1970 then all the workers under the contractor immediately encircled the plant manager and another officer. People affiliated with CPI (M) and SUCI made lot of efforts to end the encirclement, but workers turned them away. Then they brought police which too failed. Eventually the men of the Eastern Frontier Rifles came packed in three trucks and they pulled both the officers out of the encirclement. The workers’ movement still continued. Finally, management had to unconditionally take back all the dismissed workers to work.
On the basis of above description, from 1967 to 1971, the anti-system consciousness and the spirit of rebellion against trade unionism-economism prevailing amongst the workers in most of the industrial centers of India including Kerala, Bihar in general and Bengal in particular, can be easily guessed. Due to complete focus on annihilation campaign in the name of guerrilla warfare in villages under the leadership of “village based Party” till 1970, the “Left” extremist faction of Charu Majumdar, that dominated the AICCCR and then the leadership of CPI (ML), did not pay any heeds to the struggles of urban workers. People like Asit Sen and Parimal Dasgupta who were supporters of mass line and who had experience ofworking amongst the urban workers had been expelled from the Party even before the Party Congress and building any kind of mass organization, carrying out mass movements and open political-economic struggles had been declared as revisionism. Just before the Congress in March 1970, Charu Majumdar in his message to the working class told about its only task of coming forward as the vanguard of revolution and going to villages and leading the armed peasant struggles and mobilizing around the CPI (ML). Clearly all workers could not participate in the armed struggle in villages. Thus, according to Charu, majority of the industrial workers had no role in revolution. In another article published this month which was addressed to the Party activists working amongst the urban proletariat, Charu Majumdar wrote, emphasizing on building secret Party organization amongst the workers, that Party’s work is not to organize trade unions, but it should encourage every struggle initiated by the workers. Besides, he wrote that attacks by the organized capitalist class in the form of lockouts and retrenchments cannot be confronted now with a measure like strike, now struggle cannot be developed in a peaceful way without bloodshed and the workers now wouldhave to carry forward their struggles via encirclement, barricade struggles, clash with police and capitalists and annihilation of the class enemy and its agents. Charu repeatedly emphasized that instead of getting workers involved in the economic and everyday struggles, they must have a sense of self-esteem against humiliating slavery. If this happens, they will become courageous and militant revolutionaries. Much after the rail strikes of 1970, Charu Majumdar welcomed them and said that this is the impact of youth uprising on the working class and these strikes form a new era in the workers movement because the working class is not fighting for any economic reason but for their self-respect.
During 1970-71, following the call of Charu Majumdar, some industrial workers of Durgapur and Asansol did carry out some tasks of seizure of weapons, annihilation and unfurling red flags over the factories by forming guerrilla squads, but these actions failed to awaken or influence the wider working class and such squads quickly disintegrated. Towards the end of 1970, realizing the limitations of students-youth uprising, Charu Majumdar wrote in a letter addressed to a comrade that it would not be right to think that the petty-bourgeois class will never be horrified. The time would soon come when only the working class will be able to safeguardus. He also wrote that ‘actions’ themselves do not raise the level of political consciousness and we would have to take in our hands, the important tasks of building Party units amongst the urban and rural poor. It is noteworthy that here too Charu was only emphasizing on Party building, he did not even mention about organizing mass actions and trade union activities. Students-youth uprising of Calcutta had disintegrated by the end of 1971 and the tide of the labor movement had also ebbed and Charu Majumdar too had accepted that for the time being it was not possible to capture Calcutta or any other city. At that time, Charu Majumdar once again, emphasizing on building maximum Party units amongst the working classes, increasing their political consciousness and nourishing Party organizers from amongst them, wrote in his note titled ‘About Party Works in Urban Areas’: “The working class is ceaselessly conducting struggles, big and small. Our political work among them will help them in those struggles and draw the broad sections of the working class into the fold of our politics. The class-conscious worker will then voluntarily go to the villages and participate in the peasants’ armed struggle. It is in this way that the firm unity between the workers and the peasants will be established.” It is noteworthy that here too, workers organizing mass movement on their own class (economic and political) demands and leading role of the Party in the trade union activities have no place in Charu Majumdar’s thinking. Apart from helping in the struggles of workers, he believed that the only objective of political education of workers was to bring themunder the influence of revolutionary politics, so that workers couldgoto villages and participate in the armed struggles of peasants. Clearly this understanding about the role of Party in the labor movement was totally opposed to the Leninist understanding. This point of view was quite similar to the understanding of Narodnik terrorists.
If the communist revolutionary movement could not attract the subversive spirit of rebellion against the Indian bourgeois system and the despicable economistic-trade unionist politics of revisionists that was agitating the collective psyche of the Indian working class during 1967-71 and that was being manifested in spontaneous radical struggles, to its fold and missed out a historic opportunity, its fundamental reason was the “Left” adventurist deviation whose architect and leader was Charu Majumdar.
(Translated from Hindi by Shishir Gupta)
- Published in Anvil-2, Jan-Mar 2018
