Naxalbari and Subsequent Decades (Part–4)
Deepayan Bose
Sushital Roy Chowdhary died in March 1971 and it was in the same month that Sauren Basu, a staunch supporter of Charu Majumdar’s line, was also arrested. A few months later, Saroj Dutta, the second closest person to him, was murdered by the police on August 5, 1971. As discussed earlier, before being arrested on November 3, 1971, Ashim Chatterjee had already taken stand against Charu’s line.
By the latter half of 1971, differences arose even between Charu and Suniti Kumar Ghosh, who was considered one of the four closest persons to Charu. These differences got deepened with the passage of time. This will be discussed later at a relevant place. Prior to that, it is important to discuss the much talked about visit of Sauren Basu to China and the fraternal suggestions of the Chinese Party, because these suggestions essentially contained a critique of the Left adventurist line, which played a crucial role in motivating one-by-one the remaining leadership, too, to take stand against Charu Majumdar. But prior to that, it is important to briefly discuss the attitude of the Chinese Party towards Naxalbari and CPI(ML), because in one way or the other, the emphatic support of the Chinese Party helped, to a large extent, in strengthening the leadership of Charu Majumdar and his line between 1967-1970.
Naxalbari, CPI(ML) and the Communist Party of China
The Communist Party of China had enthusiastically supported the Naxalbari revolt. The Chinese press and radio also whole-heartedly welcomed the unity of the communist revolutionaries which ensued in the wake of the Naxalbari as a radical rupture from revisionism and neo-revisionism and as a new beginning. Radio Peking welcomed the Naxalbari struggle for the first time on June 28, 1967, and then the famous article Spring Thunder Over India was published in the Party organ People’s Daily on July 5. Subsequently, the Chinese media kept broadcasting and publishing about the developments in the communist revolutionary camp and about different actions being carried out in different parts of the country until the initial months of 1970. In a month after July 1967, Kanu Sanyal, Khokan Majumdar and few others also travelled to China by crossing the border. Apart from discussion with some leaders there, they also had a brief meeting with Mao who simply said that you should forget whatever you saw or heard here and after returning to your country, you should study the concrete conditions there in a concrete manner and proceed with the struggle accordingly. When the publication of Liberation began, translations of many of its articles were published in Chinese press as well.
This support by the Chinese Party certainly helped in a significant manner in taking the message of Naxalbari to the whole country and in the process of uniting the communist revolutionaries. But this support, in the next stage, adversely affected the ongoing two-line struggle between revolutionary mass line and Left adventurism inside the ‘All India Coordination Committee’. Chinese publications and broadcasts clearly indicate that they regularly received the literature of the Indian communist revolutionary movement (especially Liberation). Even if the Chinese Party did not receive the accurate and detailed information about the questions raised on Charu’s line by several important figures like Parimal Dasgupta, Asit Sen, Pramod Sengupta and various small groups and their splits during the period of Coordination Committee, it is almost impossible that they would not have received the information about the split of Andhra Pradesh Coordination Committee under the leadership of D.V. Rao-Nagi Reddy and Dakkhin Desh Group. Even after this, instead of thoroughly analyzing the whole matter, the Chinese Party kept on portraying Charu Majumdar as the undisputed leader of the Naxalbari struggle and the Indian revolution, while the Left adventurist line of Charu Majumdar had started coming out very clearly from his articles and comments published in Liberation (and from other articles too), especially since the beginning of 1969. This validation received from the Chinese Party helped Charu Majumdar a lot in advancing his line.
In this duration, the conduct of the Chinese Party’s media, many a times, appears to be contradicting the lessons of Mao Tse-tung himself. From Marx to Mao, all the great teachers of the world proletariat have repeatedly highlighted the fact that the Communist Party of each country should decide its own line and policies independently after the study and analysis of the concrete conditions of its country. The Chinese Party had always emphasized on this after some negative experience during the Comintern era. During a conversation with the representatives of some Communist Parties of Latin American countries in 1957, Mao had clearly said: “The Chinese experience, viz. establishing rural bases of support and to encircle the cities from the countryside and finally to seize the cities, is not necessarily valid for a number of countries, but it can serve as a reference for you. Be careful, I dare advise you, not to transplant it readymade. An experience from abroad can only be taken as a reference, not as a dogma. You must therefore integrate the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism with the concrete conditions of each country.” (‘Some Experiences in Our Party’s History’, Selected Works, Volume 5, Page 326). It is noteworthy that the approach in the articles on Naxalbari and the communist revolutionary movement of India that were published in the Chinese media used to be different from the above approach of Mao. In the article Spring Thunder Over India itself it was emphasized that the path of Indian revolution will be same as that of the China. ‘Xinhua News Agency’ published an article on December 27, 1967: ‘Indian revolution is marching on the radiant path illuminated by Chairman Mao’. With minor changes, the same article titled ‘Historical Juncture in the Indian Revolution’ was published in some other magazines. Both forms of the article contained the reference to the first declaration of the ‘All India Coordination Committee’ and the tasks set by it. But, out of the four tasks set by the Coordination Committee, the one that was omitted was: ‘Developing the militant revolutionary struggles of the working class and other oppressed masses….’ Here this possibility cannot be denied that this omission was intentional and that this action was suggestive, because from the viewpoint of the Chinese commentator, this task would not be in accordance to their thinking of the ‘Chinese path’. Be that as it may, even if it was a mistake, it was a serious one and was going to entirely benefit the Left adventurist line only. The Chinese Party’s assertions repeatedly implied that the path of Indian revolution would be that of the Chinese revolution and it was portraying Charu Majumdar as the leader of the Indian revolution. This was the reason why there was not any opposition from inside the Coordination Committee when Charu gave the slogan of ‘China’s path is our path’ and extended it so far to say that ‘China’s chairman is our chairman’. Those who could have opposed were already sidelined. The remaining people were ideologically so weak that after the validation from the Chinese Party, they did not feel the need, at least at that time, of thinking on the appropriateness or inappropriateness of these slogans.
As has been mentioned earlier in this essay, the elements of ultra-Left deviation were present in the initial six of the eight documents of Charu Majumdar, but since the implementation of revolutionary mass line in Naxalbari until the start of 1969, he never discussed the ‘combat units’ or the secret annihilation of the class enemies. Coordination Committee clearly said in its declaration issued after its second meeting of May 1968: “If the enemies of the Indian masses are to be uprooted, then instead of adopting conspiratorial methods, only the mass line will have to be implemented.” It has also been discussed that Charu Majumdar, after getting in touch with the leadership of the Girijan struggle of Srikakulam, following his visit to Andhra in February 1969 and after forming the Andhra State Coordination Committee by taking along the comrades of Srikakulam, Charu Majumdar once again took his line forward more openly and promptly. The line of annihilation was initially implemented successfully on a large scale in Srikakulam and Charu’s belief in his line got strengthened. Now the ‘combat units’ of ‘eight documents’ were replaced by the ‘guerrilla units. Charu Majumdar in his comment titled A Few Words About Guerrilla Actions’ had clearly stated that these guerrilla units will be formed by conspiratorial methods and they will remain secret from masses as well as party units “which have not yet fully mastered the methods and discipline required for illegal work.” It goes without saying that Charu Majumdar’s conception of guerrilla warfare was completely different from that of Mao and the Chinese Party. In China, guerrilla warfare was a stage of the people’s war which was carried out with the active assistance from the broad masses and which inflicted heavy losses on its more powerful enemy and thus resulted in the formation of base areas in the remote rural regions where the hold and reach of the enemy was weaker. Once a more favourable change took place in the class power balance, the people’s war entered the more advanced stage of the mobile warfare and then in the war of positions.
Charu believed that guerrilla warfare was the only way to mobilize masses as against starting the guerrilla warfare after the mobilization of masses up to a certain extent and for him guerrilla warfare meant annihilation of class enemies by the secret squads. While writing about the protracted people’s war, Mao clearly stipulated that annihilation of bourgeois class does not mean that it will be annihilated physically; rather it means that it will be annihilated as a class. He also said that destroying the enemy means disarming it and depriving it from the power of resistance (Selected Works, Volume 5, p. 504, and Selected Works, Volume 2, p. 156). Mao did say that there are some landlords and reactionaries in each county who barbarically torture the peasants and the poor. Most barbaric of them can be awarded with the death penalty in order to suppress the enemies, but murder in indiscriminate manner is strictly forbidden, the lesser the number of murders the better (see, ‘Report on An Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan’, Selected Works, Volume I, and ‘Essential Points in the Land Reform in the New Liberated Area’, Selected Works, Volume 4, p. 202). An important member of the Polit Bureau of the Chinese Party and the specialist of land reforms Jen Pi-shih has also elaborated the thoughts of Mao regarding suppression and annihilation of class enemies in one of his speeches and interestingly this speech by him was also published in the March 1968 issue (1, Issue 5) of Liberation (Jen Pi-shih, ‘Important Questions Arising During the Agrarian Reform in China’, ‘Speech to An Enlarged Session of the North-West People’s liberation army’s Front Committee’, January 12, 1948, Liberation, March 1968, p. 34, 37, 38, 42, 43).
The above discussion was not aimed at highlighting the Left adventurist character of Charu Majumdar’s line as the same has already been done in the essay. Here, the objective of this discussion is to understand the deviation that affected the political practice of the Chinese Party. Understanding of guerrilla warfare is completely based on the revolutionary mass line in the writings of Mao and the Chinese Party and the Chinese Party was not at all in favour of making the annihilation of class enemy as the general form of struggle. However, it is to be mentioned that ever since (i.e. since the start of 1969) Charu Majumdar started implementing his Left adventurist line openly and taking it forward, the Chinese media was quoting Charu Majumdar day and night and was presenting him as the leader of the Indian revolution. Only one example will suffice here. ‘Xinhua News Agency’ wrote in its dispatch of March 28, 1970: “Charu Majumdar, leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) pointed out that the practice of the struggle in 1969 proved: “rely on the poor and landless peasants; educate them in Mao Tsetung thought; adhere firmly to the path of armed struggle; build guerrilla forces and march forward along the path of liquidating the class-enemies; only then can the high tide of struggle advance irresistibly.” (‘CPI(ML) Leads Indian People Onward Along Victorious Path of Seizing Power by Armed Force’, reprinted in Liberation, III, Issue 6, April 1970). Needless to say, that such a glorification and the “certificate” especially helped in the consolidation of Charu Majumdar’s line of annihilation of class enemy. It needs to be recalled that it was the same time when Charu Majumdar had begun to openly oppose the mass organizations and mass movements contrary to the previous positions of the Coordination Committee and had started terming them as the obstacles in the path of revolutionary struggles and that they promoted the revisionist trends.
Coordination Committee and then CPI(ML) used to blindly imitate the Chinese Party even while assessing the world situations. In such a scenario, it was natural that the over-optimistic and over-enthusiastic assessment about the decisive victory of the world proletariat within a few decades on the basis of deepening rivalry between the two superpowers, possibility of the third world war and the possibility of the “final collapse” of imperialism, being presented by the Chinese Party while assessing the world situations during 1969-70, would adversely affect the communist revolutionary movement of India. An article titled ‘Confession in an Impasse: A Comment on Nixon’s “Inaugural Address” and the Contemptible Applause by the Soviet Revisionist Renegade Clique’, was published in ‘Peking Review’, Issue 5, 1969 (it was earlier published in the Chinese language Party organs). Towards the end of this article, in a surprisingly absurd prediction, it was mentioned that the start of the third millennium i.e. the year 2001 would be the time of the glorious celebration of the proletarian revolution and the worldwide victory of Marxism-Leninism-Mao thought. This article was also reprinted in the May 1969 issue of Liberation and the same spirit and language was reflected in the discussions within the CPI(ML) about the future of revolution. Bangla organ Ghatna Pravah (Second Year, First Issue) also wrote in its editorial that the revolutionary China has predicted that by 2001, oppressed masses of the entire world would become free. Kanu Sanyal repeated the same point while addressing the May Day procession in Calcutta in 1969. Translation of the above article of ‘Peking Review’ was published in the Bangla organ Deshbrati on June 5, 1969. On its basis, Charu Majumdar while completely ignoring the Marxist methodology of concrete analysis of concrete conditions and taking resort to arithmetic calculation, even gave the call of making the decade of 1970 as the decade of the liberation of the Indian masses (Liberation, III, Issue 4, article published in February 1970). Even while speaking on the ‘political-organizational report’ that was presented in the Party Congress of May 1970, he laid emphasis on this point. Then after some time he took his absurdity to a new height when based on the Chinese prediction he declared 1975 to be the year of the Indian revolution. In his article ‘March Onward, Day of Victory is Near’ published in Liberation in September-December 1970 he wrote: “Even if this fear (fear of attack on China by the US and Soviet Union) comes true, India will surely be liberated by 1975 … When Chairman (Mao Tse-tung) saw the possibility of the fierce explosion of the 50 crores of Indian people, he declared that the history of human civilization will enter a new era in 2001.” Obviously, it is nothing more than a speculation and the Chinese prediction which is the basis of this speculation is nowhere to be found in any comment or conversation of Mao Tse-tung. Rather, there are several evidence proving that Mao’s approach was to the contrary. In the Great Debate document ‘On Khrushchev’s Phoney Communism and Its Historical Lessons for the World’, one can find reference to Mao’s assertion that the complete victory of socialism would require five to ten generations or even longer and not just one or two generations. During the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and until right before his death, Mao emphasized on several occasions that ensuring the final victory of socialism in China and on the world scale would still take a lot of time and in this duration the possibility of capitalist restoration will remain there for a long time. Therefore, it is certain that the above absurd prediction by the Chinese Party cannot be considered as Mao’s prediction.
The outcome of the impatience of predicting the year of 1975 as the year of revolution was that the already half-baked and ideologically immature Party leadership and cadre forgot that the path of democratic revolution is people’s war, which is protracted. Only by completely disregarding all the lessons of Mao about the stages, ups and downs and military strategies of people’s war, could the year 1975 have been declared as the year of revolution. One of its logical conclusions was that the annihilation campaign was to be carried out more swiftly across the country, because according to Charu, masses would be aroused under its influence. Its other logical conclusion surfaced in the form of ultra-Leftist rise of students-youth in Calcutta, which has been discussed earlier.
It is true that if the sizeable section of the leadership stood behind the Left adventurist line of Charu Majumdar, its fundamental causes can only be internal and that is why we have discussed the ideological weakness of the Indian communist movement, its causes and its historical background at the start of this essay. But this is also true that during 1969-70, the evaluations about the Indian communist revolutionary movement by the Chinese Party which were subjective and based on insufficient facts, its incorrect understanding of the Indian conditions and the certain serious mistakes in the evaluation of the then world situation had a definite role in advancing and consolidating Charu Majumdar’s leadership and his line in the two-line struggle (to whatever extent his line was opposed inside and outside the Party). During that time, Chinese Party in practice violated its own conception that any big and experienced Party, while playing the role of international leadership, should not tell the general line of revolution to the Party of any other country. Although in the case of the Chinese Party, this was just a minor deviation, main mistake was by the Indian leadership which considered every assessment by the Chinese Party as a set of guidelines for itself.
Anyway, how did the Chinese Party commit such mistakes pertaining to the assessment and evaluations regarding the communist revolutionary movement of India, which were contrary to the approach and methodology specified by Mao himself—talking about this in a deterministic language will be pure speculation. At the most, we can make some guesses, and some possibilities can be discussed. From 1966 to 1969, i.e. until the Ninth Congress of the Chinese Party, first phase of Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was carried out in China which was a stormy period. During this time, as it happens with any trend-setter revolution, there were some excesses, imbalances and mistakes as well. Although the revolutionary communist faction under the leadership of Mao defeated the capitalist-roaders, in the process of polarization inside the Party and State, many imbecile Left extremists also came to the side of Mao. And some careerists also tended to take benefit from such a situation. As it came to be known later, Lin Biao himself was a Left extremist and a careerist. Internal struggle against him had started before the Ninth Congress and his influence within the Party had diminished to a great extent by the first half of 1970. It was under such a complex condition that the deviations of the Chinese Party emerged. It is noteworthy that there is a consistency of militarist deviation in Lin Biao’s articles too. No wonder that Charu Majumdar used to be very impressed by his articles.
It seems that the leadership of the Chinese Party systematically evaluated the condition of the communist revolutionary movement of India, its documents and the articles published in the organs by the initial months of 1970 when the internal storm was pacified to some extent and the order was somewhat restored. Before this time, the Left adventurist line was in full bloom in its childish, naked and farcical form and it was not very difficult to reach at any conclusion about it.
Sauren Basu’s China Visit and the Fraternal Suggestions by the Chinese Party
Reports in the Chinese media about the communist revolutionary movement of India had significantly declined in numbers before the Party Congress of CPI(ML) in May 1970. Broadcast and publication of such reports and news was completely stopped by the middle of 1970. Documents of Party Congress were also sent via contacts to the Chinese Party, but the silence continued. And when enquired, it was suggested that the Party should send a delegation to China for discussion. Then the Central Committee decided to send its delegation to China. Sauren Basu, Suniti Kumar Ghosh and Saroj Dutta were to go in the delegation, but due to some unavoidable technical reasons Suniti Kumar Ghosh and Saroj Dutta could not go and Sauren Basu alone left for Peking on August 25, 1970 via Paris, London and Albania’s capital Tirana.
While staying in London between 27 August and 12 September, he met the Chairman of the Communist Party of Great Britain (ML) Reisburg, its Vice-chairman Bill Ash, Polit Bureau member Ranjana Ash and the Chairman of the Communist Party of New Zealand (ML) Taylor. These leaders, while questioning the allegiance of CPI(ML) to the Communist Party of China, said that as a policy it is not proper for a Party to be allegiant to another fraternal Party. They also criticized the actions being carried out in the cities and the line of annihilation and said that a lot of revolutionary energy is being wasted in the ‘actions’ in the urban areas. They also strongly criticized the slogan ‘China’s Chairman is our Chairman’ and expressed their disagreement from this statement of Charu that ‘He who has not immersed his hands in the blood of the class enemy, is not a true Communist.’ They said that such a loose comment has not been heard from any leader of a communist party any where in the world. These party leaders from Britain and New Zealand were of the opinion that CPI(ML) does not have any agrarian policy suitable for the struggles of peasants in the rural areas and without properly organizing the armed forces of the revolutionary masses, the achievements of the rural areas cannot be maintained. They especially criticized some writings of Charu Majumdar in which he had said that all the forms of struggles hitherto developed by the communist movement of India had become entirely useless in the present era (Liberation, September 1969, p. 8-9). They said that the work style is developed via the struggles of the masses in each country and work style developed by the Indian people so far cannot be completely rejected only on the ground that the leadership of the struggles was in the wrong hands. They also expressed their disagreement with this thesis of Charu Majumdar that every deviation in the Party should be considered as ‘revisionism’. They said that deviations should be seen as mistakes that can be committed by any comrade including the Party leadership. Mistakes can be rectified through discussions and investigation. These leaders also criticized the complete absence of mass movements and trade union activities in the policies and practice of CPI(ML).
During the conversation, the party leaders of Britain and New Zealand also clarified that leaders of the Chinese Party also have almost the same opinions, but Sauren Basu did not completely believe it. All his suspicions evaporated when he spoke to Zhou Enlai and Kang Sheng in Peking. From London, Sauren Basu reached Peking via Rome and Tirana. There was not any conversation on political matters from Albanian leaders in Tirana and they arranged his visit to Peking. He reached Peking on 24 September, ’70 and met Zhou Enlai and Kang Sheng after a month on October 29, 1970 and talked to them. After the conversation, Sauren Basu returned to the guest house and noted the main points in some pages (because he was asked not to return to India with complete notes) and later prepared his report on that basis. After a few years, minutes of the whole conversation were released by the leadership of the Chinese Party, which not only confirmed Sauren Basu’s report, but it included a more detailed description of the whole conversation.
At the start of this two and half hours long conversation, Zhou Enlai first congratulated for the founding of CPI(ML), its achievements and its first Congress and termed it as a victory for the Indian masses along with the international communist movement. He said that the Chinese masses had to carry the burden of three mountains on its back before the revolution, while the Indian masses have to bear a fourth mountain too – the modern revisionism along with imperialism, feudalism and comprador capitalism. The social imperialism that has arisen in the Soviet Union is different from the old revisionists in the sense that it has political power and armed forces. After that, while congratulating for the initial successes of CPI(ML), he termed it as a new victory in India after the Second World War.
Then Zhou Enlai severely criticized the slogan of ‘China’s Chairman is Our Chairman’ and said that it is an important question of principle. To consider the Chairman of one Party as the leader of another Party is contrary to the Mao Tse-tung thought. He clarified that the relations between two parties are fraternal and any one Party cannot be considered as the leader of the international communist movement. He said that currently the Chinese Party is opposed to the idea of building any international organization like the Third International. Citing the examples from history, he explained how ‘big brotherism’ takes place, which is despised by the Chinese Party. He also said that calling another country’s Party Chairman as the Chairman of your Party hurts the national feelings of the masses.
Talking about the need of building a true proletarian party, Zhou Enlai indirectly criticized the Left adventurism by saying that such a Party compulsorily follows the mass line and remains in close contact with the masses. Citing his own experiences in the villages, Zhou Enlai opposed the idea of making the annihilation of class enemies as the general line of the struggle and said that some feudal lords and cruel people who are worthy of the deep hatred by the masses, can be killed if needed, but this should be done on the basis of demand by the masses and before this they should be publicly tried. When the masses are completely mobilized, and we start making use of our armed forces for safeguarding the achievements of revolution and also start distributing land and grains, then having arrived at such a situation the peasant population gains the courage to divide the land and grains themselves. It is important to have an agrarian policy to openly mobilize the masses. Then this policy is developed by the party as an agrarian program through practice.
Discussing his own experience of ultra-Leftist deviation, Zhou Enlai said that after the defeat of the first revolution there was the problem of the line of “Leftist” deviation in China also for some time. Some people would go armed in the villages and kill the landlords. There used to be no propaganda and mobilization work amongst the masses before such actions. People were expected to arise after the actions and the confiscated grains would be distributed amongst them. But soon the military force from the nearby villages-cities would reach the spot and then the advanced elements either had to flee or they were arrested or murdered. Party had to bear huge losses in such areas of “Leftist” deviation. Therefore, while leading the armed struggle in the villages the most fundamental issue is the political line, principles and policies of the party and it also depends on whether we have mobilized the vast masses or not, we have trusted them or not. Without this we cannot establish ourselves firmly at all.
It goes without saying that while discussing his experience Zhou Enlai clearly and in no uncertain terms criticized the line of annihilation of class enemy and the negation of all forms of mass movements by CPI(ML). Zhou Enlai also referred to his experience of urban ‘actions’ in 1927, when he himself was the incharge of such activities in Shanghai. Some actions like murders of some police authorities and illegal distribution of pamphlets were carried out, but the ultimate result was that all of this was nothing but pure adventurism. He unequivocally said that it is wrong to consider the open trade union works and open mass movements as “obsolete” and consider the murders carried out secretly by forming squads (regarding it as “guerrilla war”) as the only way to take the revolution forward and there is a need to ponder over it. Indirectly commenting on Charu Majumdar’s call for self-sacrifice, he said that it is not self-sacrifice to give life for adventurism and secondly, if there is not equal attention on self-examination along with self-sacrifice, then it only harms the revolution. Zhou Enlai emphasized that party should continuously run the process of its purification via criticism and self-criticism. If this process is not carried out amongst the leadership and the cadre, then deviation of the party from the correct path is inevitable.
Zhou Enlai said that party’s second most important weapon to defeat the enemy is the army, an organized force of masses which works under the party leadership and implements the right policies. Third most important weapon of revolution is the united front of all revolutionary classes led by the proletariat and whose leadership is in the hands of the Party. Zhou Enlai also termed this thesis of Charu Majumdar incorrect that different ally classes can form a united front only after power in some areas has been seized. He opined that the formation of united front is a process. Some changes keep happening in this according to different stages of the struggle. All of those should be included in the united front who can be won over to our side, and those who cannot be won over to our side, should be made inactive or neutralized. In this context, he also emphasized that the bourgeois class should be studied in a proper manner and the national bourgeoisie which has contradictions with imperialism should be correctly identified.
After Zhou Enlai left, Kang Sheng carried forward the conversation. While appreciating the Naxalbari struggle, its extension to other areas, bravery of the cadre, struggle of CPI(ML) against imperialism and revisionism, and the support to the Proletarian Cultural Revolution and the respect for the Mao thought, he said that CPI(ML) and the Chinese Party are two fraternal parties and their relationship is of two equals, therefore the Chairman of the Chinese Party cannot be called as the Chairman of the Indian Party. He said that since the CPI (ML) is a new Party, some weaknesses and mistakes are natural. He also underlined the incorrect thinking of Charu Majumdar about the united front.
While clarifying why Charu Majumdar’s article ‘China’s Chairman is Our Chairman, China’s Path is Our Path’, published in Liberation, was not published in the organs of the Chinese Party, he said what is objectionable in this article is evident from its title itself. Giving the reason behind not publishing Charu Majumdar’s other article ‘March Onward by Summing Up the Experience of The Peasant Revolutionary Struggle of India’, he said that the theses given in this article about mass organization, mass movement, trade union etc. are objectionable to the Chinese Party. ‘Guerrilla War is the only way to mobilize the masses’ – Charu had presented this quote by Lin Biao in support of his line and as an argument to negate the mass actions. Kang Sheng clarified that this was said in the context of warfare and in the context of that stage of war when the powers of two armies are unequal. He said that if ‘annihilation of class enemy’ means the action of murder by the secret squads, then it is dangerous.
Kang Sheng said that the general line of CPI(ML) is correct but some policies are wrong. Chinese Party had a program of agrarian revolution, on whose basis it mobilized the peasants for occupying the power. It seems that the Indian Party has not been able to solve the question of relation between the land struggle and the guerrilla struggle. He indicated that this formulation that ‘Peasants are not fighting for the land, but for the political power’ is incorrect, because the questions of land revolution and the political power are connected to each other and they cannot be separated. Mass movements and mass organizations are not obstacles to the guerrilla war, rather their absence is an obstacle to the guerrilla war.
In the end, Kang Sheng suggested that all these mistakes pertaining to the policy matters should be rectified step by step in such a way that there is no setback to the enthusiasm of the Party cadre and the masses. We should not act impatiently in correcting our mistakes and the changes should not be sudden.
After this conversation, Sauren Basu left from Peking on October 31, ’70 and reached Tirana via Shanghai, Canton, Dhaka, Karachi and Rome. After spending a few days in Tirana and London, he reached Calcutta on November 27. Suniti Kumar Ghosh (it was he who was responsible for managing the secret shelter of Charu Majumdar) took Sauren Basu to Charu Majumdar’s shelter. Sauren Basu briefly explained the critique of Party line by the Chinese leaders. According to Suniti Kumar Ghosh, Charu fainted during the conversation. Then he was administered some medicines and the conversation was postponed until the next evening. When Sauren Basu gave his written report to Charu Majumdar, Suniti Kumar Ghosh was not present. He had left to meet Ashim Chatterjee as per a pre-scheduled program.
According to Suniti Kumar Ghosh, he arranged a shelter and took Charu to Puri. At that time, Charu was so shaken from inside that one day he even began to cry. Suniti Kumar Ghosh believed that Charu Majumdar will put the suggestions of the Chinese Party for discussion at least before some leading comrades of the Party. But Charu did not put forward any such proposal. When Suniti Ghosh was returning to Calcutta on December 7, Charu handed over a note to him which carried the declaration of organization of the People’s Liberation Army in West Bengal. It was written in the comment that the incidence of rifle-snatching in Magurjan had made it clear that the people’s liberation army of the peasants of West Bengal had arisen, from now onwards all the guerrilla squads of the poor and landless peasants would be the ‘contingents’ of the people’s liberation army under the leadership of the party and the poor and landless peasants would be preferred while selecting the commanders. Perhaps for the first time in the world a people’s liberation army was being built in such a manner. It is to be mentioned that Charu Majumdar did not even consult any comrade from the leadership before this declaration. After this note was published in ‘Liberation’, Sushital Ray Chowdhary also questioned it as has been discussed before. The subsequent decisions and activities of Charu Majumdar made it clear that he wanted to bring his line as close as possible to the Chinese suggestions by slowly changing it under the disguise of concrete conditions so that cadre do not feel very shocked from the criticisms by the Chinese Party, nor his self-respect is hurt much. It will be discussed later.
After Suniti Kumar Ghosh returned to Calcutta, Saroj Dutta told him on the morning of December 8, ’70 that Chinese leaders have a critical attitude towards our party line and that it is not to be told to anyone. After this Saroj Dutta went to Puri and when he returned, Sauren Basu left and brought Charu back to Calcutta in the end of December. According to Suniti Ghosh’s impression, he again found Charu in his old confident mood in Calcutta. After talking to the ardent supporters of him and his ultra-Leftist line like Saroj Dutta and Sauren Basu and after deciding the work plan, Charu had now become free of contradictions and his lost self-confidence was back.
Thus, much to the surprise of even Suniti Kumar Ghosh, Charu Majumdar did not put the critical suggestions of the Chinese Party leadership before the leading comrades of the party and he suppressed it completely. This indicated Charu Majumdar’s political opportunism, which after reaching a certain stage, had resulted into individual opportunism. At this stage, the questions of ‘self’ and the self-respect had come to dominate the interests of the revolution and the party.
Undoubtedly, if the Chinese suggestions were put before the party leadership immediately and if they were made open for debate within the entire party, then the losses that the communist revolutionary movement had to bear due to the Left adventurist deviations, could have been avoided to a large extent in the later phases as well. Then if the stream of mass line would have been stronger, the revisionist politics could have been given severe fatal blow. But Charu Majumdar’s one unforgivable historical mistake did not let this happen.
In this whole affair, the most interesting and questionable role was that of Sauren Basu. Sauren Basu and Saroj Dutta were the two people who had been striving since the time of congress itself that Charu should be given the status of ‘revolutionary authority’ in the Indian Party, as was the case with Mao in the Chinese Party. To some extent it has been discussed earlier and will be discussed later as well. During the conversation in China, as Sauren Basu had accepted, his entire belief was deeply shaken. After returning to India, on one hand he was showing that he was firmly standing with Charu Majumdar and was advising him that it is not necessary to open the Chinese suggestions in the party yet and on the other hand, he himself was dropping some hints here and there in the party.
Ashim Chatterjee himself wrote later that whatsoever little information about the Chinese suggestions was received from Sauren Basu, it had played a decisive role in his rebellion against Charu Majumdar. After getting arrested in 1971, Sauren Basu told about the Chinese suggestions in detail to the leading comrades present in the jail and was also one of the eight people who wrote a letter to Charu Majumdar appealing him to make amendments in the party line as per those suggestions after tabling them before the party. This will be discussed later in the essay.
Now, if we evaluate the criticism and suggestions of the Chinese Party in the hindsight, there are some notable points. Firstly, this critique of the Left adventurist line was almost entirely correct, accurate and contained all the aspects. But after looking at all the documents and history of that period, this evaluation of the Chinese Party does not seem correct that the general line of the CPI(ML) was correct and only a few policies were wrong. Facts prove that every prominent voice in the party which talked of mass line was sidelined before the party congress itself and even the functioning of the congress shows that the Left adventurist line was completely dominating after ‘managing’ the remaining wavering and moderate people. Coordination Committee and the party were implementing the ultra-Leftist line from 1969 itself. This was a consistent deviation from Marxism and was the question of ideological-political line, and not only of the policies. Leadership of the Chinese Party advised to rectify these mistakes in a gradual and step by step manner, so that the masses and the cadre do not feel disheartened. History proves that the ideological mistakes are not rectified inch by inch in an incremental process, rather they can be defeated or destroyed only in a stroke by waging struggle against the ideologically incorrect line, by frontally attacking them. This is the approach we see in Lenin in struggle against the alien tendencies. Once the struggle against the Khrushchevite revisionism was made open, the Chinese Party had played an amazing role during the ‘Great Debate’, but this is also true that it delayed this task by seven long years. During this period, there were attempts to make the Soviet Party understand at the bipartite level and compromises with the incorrect line were also made. The same approach is seen even in the struggle against the capitalist -roaders inside the Chinese Party. Because of the lack of space, we cannot discuss this in detail, but our evaluation is that many a time, the Chinese Party used to adopt the attitude of waging even the ideological struggles and struggles on questions of principle in a gradual manner or delaying the open struggle due to keeping the organizational interests or unity in command, which is incorrect. This is reflected in the above suggestion as well.
Thirdly, although the Chinese Party was fraternal in its suggestions and it did not at all intend to give instructions pertaining to the party line, but objectively speaking some of its evaluations were inevitably going to have adverse impact. Zhou Enlai and Kang Sheng had pre-supposed that in India there will be a new democratic revolution like China. The right advice in this context would have been that they would advise the communist revolutionaries of India to work on mass line along with making a concrete independent study of the production relations, class structure and superstructure of the Indian society and draw conclusions regarding the stage, nature and strategic class alliance of revolution, as the Coordination Committee had decided. Although Mao used to especially emphasize that communists of each country will have to study the peculiarities of their own countries and decide the form and path of revolution themselves, but especially in the 1960s, the Chinese Party often seems to take resort to this type of over-generalization that path of revolution in most of the countries of Asia-Africa-Latin America would be that of the Chinese revolution. Half-baked and immature ML parties formed across the world in the decades of 1960 and 1970 extended this point so much so that they ended up making even the stage of revolution and question of program a part of ideology and started giving such ridiculous formulations that those who do not consider the new democratic revolution in the so-called Third World countries, are not the followers of Mao thought/Maoism. Anyway, in order to return to the original topic, we will have to wrap up and leave this topic here itself.
(to be continued in the next issue)
Translated from Hindi by Shishir Gupta
