Deepayan Bose
Criticism of Charu Majumdar’s Line and the Continuance of the Differences
Before continuing the discussion on the increasing differences within the CPI (M-L), it is to be noted that apart from the Chinese party, several other fraternal parties had also criticized the “left” adventurist line of Charu Majumdar. We have already discussed about the criticism presented by the M-L parties of Great Britain and New Zealand. Around June 1971, Shanmugathasan, the leader of the Communist Party of Ceylon (at that time Sri Lanka was known by this name only) had sent his fraternal criticism through Appu from Tamil Nadu who was a central committee member of CPI (M-L). Shanmugathasan was a well-known name in the world M-L movement. He had close contact with Mao and the top leaders of the Chinese party. His criticism included three points. The first point was concerned with rejecting all forms of struggle. Shanmugathasan was of clear view that the role of mass organizations and mass movements is inevitable in any revolutionary struggle. His second criticism, which was related to the first one, was that the slogan of ‘struggle for capturing political power’ is wrong because it neglects the basic need of the struggle for economic demands. The third point was regarding the title of Charu Majumdar’s article, ‘Will Telangana become the Yenan of India?’. The comrades from Sri Lanka were of the opinion that such unnecessary slogans alert the enemy and help it in identifying the places where it has to focus its attacks. Among these three points, the last one is insignificant and it depends on the concrete conditions of the class struggle in the country in question as to whether or not a party writes in this manner about its areas of struggle and whether or not it presents such an assessment in its party organs. But the essence of the first two points was the same as that of the Chinese suggestions and that of the criticism of the Charu Majumdar’s “left” adventurist line as presented by the DV-Nagi group, Harbhajan Singh Sohi group, Asit Sen, Pramod Sengupta, Parimal Dasgupta, Sushital Roy Chowdhury etc.
An important criticism of the “left” adventurist line was put forward by the ‘West Bengal-Bihar Border Regional Committee’, which is usually known as Birbhum Committee. Apart from West Bengal’s Murshidabad and Birbhum districts, the Santhal Pargana of Bihar at that time (today it is in Jharkhand) also came under the purview of this committee. The Birbhum Committee sent this criticism to the West Bengal Committee and through it to the Central Committee, but it was suppressed first by the state committee (which was under the stranglehold of the Charu acolytes such as Deepak Biswas and Dileep Bose etc.) and then by Charu Majumdar and no member of the central committee apart from Suniti Kumar Ghosh could even get a clue of it. Later, we will briefly mention how it all happened while discussing about the development of the differences of Charu with Suniti Kumar Ghosh. Because of this reason, this document does not find any mention in most of the books written on Naxalbari and the M-L movement. Subsequently when the Central Organising Committee, CPI (M-L) was formed, the other members of its leadership were informed about this by Suniti Kumar Ghosh. Later, when the Communist League of India (M-L) was formed in 1978, this document and the fact of its suppression do find mention in the document pertaining to history presented in its first conference. All this will be discussed at appropriate place. This document and the fact of its suppression do find mention in ‘Naxalbari: Before and After’, the memoir written by Suniti Kumar Ghosh a few years before his death on Naxalbari and the M-L movement.
This report of the Birbhum Committee assumes special significance because after Telangana, Charu’s “left” adventurist line was implemented on the biggest scale in this region itself. The party activities began in Birbhum in the beginning of 1971. The Sriniketan Agricultural College of Bolpur had come under the hegemony of the students who were influenced by the M-L politics. A large number of students and youth from Calcutta also started working there. In this extremely poor region, the landlords and usurers had established their reign of terror over the poor peasants. Hence, even the terrorist activities of the communist revolutionaries received tremendous support of the common poor population initially. In the entire region, the guerilla squads consisting of ten to twenty people were formed in which two or three people used to be from the middle class and the rest were landless peasants. About 255 rifles and pistols were snatched away from the landlords and the police and were distributed among the landless. By the end of June, 175 people had been annihilated in which there were 5 policemen, 17 big, 32 medium and 26 small landlords, 12 usurers, 11 dacoits and 7 police agents. Finding the landlords and the goon gangs of the local leaders of Congress and CPM into helpless situation, the CRPF was called, but despite that, the situation could not be brought under control. The guerilla squads used to march openly not just in the villages but also in the towns of the area. The Santhal peasants under the leadership of guerilla squads used to attack the houses of landlords and their crimes were read out loud and sentences were given in the people’s courts. Some were released while others were given death sentence as well. The usury had come to halt in the entire region. It is to be noted that Magurjan, too, came under the purview of the Birbhum Committee, where a squad of poor peasants had attacked on the camp of Railway emergency force and snatched away six rifles and bullets after which Charu Majumdar hurriedly declared the formation of the People’s Liberation Army without consulting the committee. We have already discussed this declaration earlier. The mid-term election of 1971 was approaching and it was feared that due to the Naxal activities, the election might not take place in West Bengal. Then, on behalf of the central government, the Bengal in-charge Siddharth Shankar Ray decided to use army. The Eastern command regiment of Lieutenant General Jagjit Singh Arora, which had just returned from the Bangladesh war, was asked to stay in Bengal and all the armed forces of police were also attached. Then began the historical phase of repression which is mentioned in detail by Sumanto Bannerji, Suniti Kumar Ghosh, Amit Bhattacharya, etc. in their respective books. Before going into its details, we will first discuss the Birbhum Committee’s report and subsequent developments.
After the beginning of the intensive cycle of repression, the ongoing struggle in the Birbhum region got scattered. The Birbhum Committee had sent its first report to the leadership when the activities of the guerilla squads were in their full swing. In this first report, special mention of the contributions of Charu Majumdar was made while supporting the party policy and the line of annihilation. The committee sent its second report at the time when the struggle was in dispersal and a situation of stagnation had come to exist. In this, the Birbhum Committee had put forward a vocal and clear criticism of Charu Majumdar’s ‘line of annihilation’ based on the sum up of its experiences. As per the report, the thought of mobilizing the peasants by the annihilation of the class enemies had proven to be incorrect. Through this only ten percent of the youth population of poor peasants could be made active in the struggle. Due to this tactics, the guerilla squads got isolated from the peasant community at the time of the attack by enemy. The peasants could be mobilized to some extent only in those areas where the documents of mortgaging the land were burnt after the annihilation and the fixed property of the ‘jotdars’ were confiscated and distributed among the peasants. The committee stated in unequivocal terms that not only the line of annihilation is not the highest form of class struggle, it is not even a class struggle in itself and on its own. The second point of the criticism was that there was no policy of the party as to what should be done in case of the organized attack of the enemy’s armed forces and how to carry forward the struggle along with the encounter. This proved to be a fatal mistake. Along with these focal points, the report also criticized the party’s non-participation in the struggles of the working class.
According to the information gathered from Bharatjyoti Roy Chowdhury, a member of the Birbhum Committee, this report which had sixty printed pages had been handed over to the Bengal State Committee in March or April of 1972. It was printed and published from ‘Bengal Printers’, located in Sheoraphuli in Hooghly district by Bharatjyoti’s father Pradyut Roy Chowdhury who had been the accused of ‘Birbhum conspiracy cases’ during the British raj and had even served the ‘Kala-Pani’ sentence in Andaman’s cellular jail. By the time this report was handed over to the Bengal Committee, the committee had come to be captured by Charu acolytes’ faction including Deepak Biswas, Dileep Bannerji and Mahadev Mukherji who used to consider Charu to be the ‘revolutionary authority’ and ‘India’s Mao’ and who wanted to continue the line of annihilation at all costs.
The death of Sushital Roy Chowdhury and Sauren Basu’s arrest had taken place by March 1971 itself and by August, Saroj Dutt was also murdered. After the martyrdom of Saroj Dutt, Deepak Biswas and Dileep Bannerji were coopted within the Bengal State Committee and the responsibility of the editorship of party’s Bangla organ ‘Deshbrati’ which earlier was with Saroj Dutt was now given to Suniti Kumar Ghosh. Immediately after the martyrdom of Dutt, Deepak sent a brief note along with a letter to be published in the ‘Deshbrati’ and he claimed that it was the summary of Saroj Dutt’s speech given before the Bengal-Bihar Regional Committee. A note which has been given by Suniti Kumar Ghosh in his book after having edited parts of it is as follows:
Every party implements Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought after assessing the concrete conditions of its own country. Our relation with other (communist) parties will always be fraternal. If, while leading the revolution, our ideas would be different from the international leadership, we would have to implement our own assessment. Chairman Mao is our international leader; but the Chinese party can never be international authority. Its relation with other (communist) party would be fraternal. Hence the Chinese communist party and Chairman Mao are not one and the same. Those who are dependent on external hearsay and refuse to see the internal development, can never understand dialectical materialism. Lenin built the Bolshevik party; Mao built the Chinese party. The history of India has vested the responsibility of the historical task of the party building in this country on comrade Charu Majumdar. That’s the reason why in the current circumstances, Comrade Charu Majumdar is the central committee of CPI (M-L). To establish Charu Majumdar’s line is to demolish the counter-revolutionary revisionist line.
Suniti Kumar Ghosh was a bit sceptical about the authenticity of this comment, however, it could be very well possible that Saroj Dutt did make such a comment as he himself was a staunch “left” adventurist and a Charu acolyte. Owing to the petty-bourgeois sentimentalism, he was replete with the tendency of the personality cult. On the basis of some previous incidents, it is very well possible that he would have said such things. We have stated earlier as to how Charu was rattled and shattered after receiving the Chinese suggestions, but when Saroj Dutt and Souren Basu brought him from Puri to Calcutta, how he regained his lost confidence after talking to these staunch supporters of his ultra-leftist line. It may well be possible that Deepak Biswas had exaggerated while summarizing Saroj Dutt’s comments and the entire note could well be forged by him too. Be that as it may, the fact that this note was sent to ‘Deshbrati’ for publishing shows the extent to which the Bolshevik work-culture had got degenerated in the party by that time under the adverse impact of the ultra-leftist line and there was no meaning of the committee system. On the one hand, Charu Majumdar was eager to fulfill his eternal aspiration to declare himself as the authority and on the other hand he wanted to gradually change the line to bring it closer to the Chinese suggestions. This dual purpose was repeatedly creating dilemma in his decisions and behaviour. When Suniti Kumar Ghosh received the note sent by Deepak, he was at Devghar with Charu himself. When he read out the note to Charu Majumdar, he initially said not to publish it. In December 1971, in a meeting with Ghosh in the presence of Dileep Bannerji, Sadhan Sarkar and few others, when Deepak Biswas raised the issue of not publishing the brief note of the Saroj Dutt’s speech, Ghosh said that the reason behind this was that there were some objectionable comments in it about the Chinese party. Deepak was of the view that the note must be published by editing out those portions. Suniti Kumar Ghosh, while later meeting with Charu opined that the note cannot be published only under the condition that Charu himself writes such a letter as most members of the State Committee were in favour of publishing it. Initially Charu was ready to write such a letter; however, he changed his mind only after half an hour and asked to let the note be published. When asked by Ghosh, he even suggested its title as ‘There cannot be a revolution without a revolutionary leadership!’ The note was published with the same title in ‘Deshbrati’. After some time, when Ghosh relinquished all the party responsibilities, the note was republished with the title of ‘Without revolutionary authority there can be no revolution’.
In January 1972, Sadhan Sarkar was also arrested. After this, the meeting of state committee was called in a dubious manner, for instance, the intimation of the meeting was given to all the members quite late and the information about the venue was also not given in time. In that meeting, Deepak got himself elected to the post of the secretary of Bengal State Committee through manipulation with the help of Dileep and Mahadev Mukherji. When, on the request of Deepak and Dileep, Suniti Ghosh met them in February 1972 they raised the question as to why he does not use the words ‘revolutionary authority’? When Suniti Ghosh asked them as to what was the difference between ‘revolutionary leadership’ and ‘revolutionary authority’, Deepak and Dileep said that one has to accept the ‘revolutionary authority’ unquestioningly. On hearing this Ghosh said that the communists must always use their brains and instead of blindly believing anything, they must carefully think whether what has been said corresponds with the reality or not, and they must never promote the slave mentality. When Deepak and Dileep said that Saroj Da used to believe in the ‘revolutionary authority’, Suniti Kumar Ghosh said that even if he believed in it, they would have to prove it with logic and arguments. On this, Deepak and Dileep expressed the desire to meet the ‘respected leader’ (Charu). Suniti Ghosh gave them the address of Charu’s shelter in Cuttack at that time and they immediately proceeded to meet him. Meanwhile, Charu Majumdar was continuously getting the information that Suniti Kumar Ghosh does not consider him as ‘political authority’ and he has differences with the party line as well. In this regard, he got a comment written on March 9, 1972, which was published in the ‘Deshbrati’ of 22 April-1 May 1972. ‘Deshbrati’ was now under the control of Deepak and Dileep. The comment was as follows:
We can work with those with whom differences have arisen, but can never enter into any compromise…we can engage in debate with those who have read too much just on the basis of ‘Red Book’ (selected quotations from Mao Tse-tung).
A bourgeois individual makes a lot of hue and cry by citing ‘why and for what’. Their aim is to create suspicion about proletarian ‘authority’ and to establish their own authority. But when we communists raise the question of ‘why and for what’, we do exactly opposite. We consolidate the proletarian authority, implement the party line in lively manner and question the bourgeois authority….
Bourgeois influence prevails in the party and it has been there for some time. It gets reflected in the form of interpreting the quotations in bourgeois manner. Chairman Mao has said, “nothing should be done with eyes closed’. – – but it does not mean that everything must be suspected. Why should we question the party directives? We must do so as to understand the intensity and importance, so that we could implement them in the best manner…
It is obvious that the comment was targeted at Suniti Kumar Ghosh and he did not fail to understand it. When Suniti Kumar Ghosh met Charu Majumdar next time on April 11, he said that it’s been 5 years since the Naxalbari peasant struggle, hence a sum up of these five years must be done in order to rectify our mistakes and only Charu could do this. Charu bitterly responded by saying that even Suniti Ghosh could do this. Since Charu’s health was not well, Suniti Ghosh did not continue the discussion and said that he would present his thoughts in writing. After a couple of days, when he was about to leave from Charu’s shelter to Chauduar, Deepak reached there with the second report of Birbhum Committee. Suniti Ghosh wanted to stay there to listen to the report, but Charu asked him not to change his plan. Later, neither Suniti Kumar Ghosh saw that report nor did Charu mention about it with any comrade from the leadership who met him in his last days. However, Suniti Kumar Ghosh managed to find the report from his sources. Further, besides doing a sum up from the period between Naxalbari and then, Suniti Kumar Ghosh in a letter to Charu, written with the pen name ‘Saumya’, also put forward the demand that in line with the Chinese suggestions, there should be a rethinking on the party line and in order to study the suggestions deeply, it should be distributed among the responsible people of the party. But, nothing of this sort happened.
On April 23, Suniti Ghosh met Charu with his written sum up of the time period after Naxalbari and he read it out to him on Charu’s request. Even though that document is not available now, after some time he wrote down his conclusions in the form of an essay, which had been published in the 12-13 May, 1973 issue of ‘Frontier’ weekly with the title ‘Naxalbari and After: An Appraisal”, with the pseudonym ‘Prabhat Jana’. The important conclusions of this report were as follows: (i) The political line of the Naxalbari was correct, but as a consequence of the area of the struggle being limited, the inexperience of its leaders and owing to it the inability to expand the area of struggle and in the absence of a correct strategic line, it could not be extended; (ii) After 1968, the “left” opportunist line gradually infiltrated the movement, whose main expression was the fact that in the name of waging a struggle against economism, the party gave up massline itself and it isolated itself from all mass organizations including the peasant associations, trade unions, students-youth organizations and from all mass movements; (iii) Secretly annihilating class enemy through small secret squads formed in conspiratorial manner was made equivalent to class struggle and they were termed as Guerilla war, whereas as per Maoist principles, the Guerilla war is waged only by depending on the masses; (iv) Those groups which used to believe in the armed land revolution and believed Mao Thought, but used to oppose the line of annihilation, were in blatantly unjust manner termed as agents of imperialism and international revisionism which was an expression of ultra-leftist sectarianism; (v) Even the study of Marxist classics was discouraged and Marxism-Leninism-Mao Thought had been reduced into unquestionable allegiance towards the authority of one leader.
Broadly, it can be said that these points of criticism of Charu’s “left” opportunist, “left” sectarian, “left” adventurist line were correct and of the nature of a sum-up. But, the question again arises that when D.V. Rao-Nagi Reddy group was putting forward even more consistent criticism, or when people like Asit Sen, Parimal Das Gupta, Sushital Roy Chaowdhury were raising questions at different points of time from the same perspective, why is it that these questions were not raised in the mind of Suniti Ghosh who had read Marxist classics more than others and why is it that he continued to be among the people closest to Charu! Why is it that this understanding epiphanically dawned upon him in a very short duration when he became aware about the Chinese suggestions and the movement had rapidly started moving towards the slope of disintegration and destruction! Till his last days, Suniti Kumar Ghosh continued to believe that the mistake was not that of Charu Majumdar alone, but rather that of the entire leadership collectively which was quite weak from the perspective of political understanding, which did not lay emphasis on collective leadership and suffered from cult of personality. This is true to a large extent, but still as the proponent and leader of the “left” adventurist line, Charu’s mistakes must be considered the gravest of all, which historically turned out to be catastrophic. History will do positive assessment of those who were critical of Charu Majumdar’s line, partially or comprehensively, and among them those who raised questions by going against the grain and risking isolation will be put at the highest pedestal! At the lowest pedestal placed will be those who started raising questions after becoming aware of the Chinese suggestions, and Suniti Kumar Ghosh, too, is among them. When we proceed in this discussion of history, we will also clearly see Suniti Kumar Ghosh’s methodological errors and it will be clear that his method of sum-up and review was also to a large extent quite empiricist, dogmatic and fragmentary. It would be apt if we do that discussion at the appropriate place. Here let us go back towards the days of March-April 1972!
After reading out the review and sum-up note to Charu, Suniti Kumar Ghosh requested him that he be relieved from the responsibility of editorship of the ‘Liberation’ and that of arrangement and management of Charu’s secret shelter, and that he would be associated with the ‘Liberation’ as an ordinary worker only (although he did not put forward the proposal of resigning from the Central committee or Polit bureau). Charu wanted that he should continue to look after the work of his shelter because he was indisputably considered to be the ablest executioner of the tasks related to the underground structure. However, Suniti Ghosh was of the view that under the atmosphere of so much mistrust it would neither be possible nor appropriate for him to shoulder such a big responsibility! He also told that Deepak and Dileep were ready to take this responsibility! In fact, earlier Suniti Kumar Ghosh had already requested to relieve himself from the responsibility relating to shelter way back in the two meetings with Deepak, Dileep and Mahadev on December 1971 and March 1972. The three remained silent on hearing this, but only a few days later Dileep informed Ghosh that Police is planning to arrest him (that is, Ghosh) first to reach to Charu. In this assertion, this suspicion was implicit that if arrested Suniti Ghosh would reveal Charu’s location. Ghosh retorted that if he were to relinquish this responsibility, police would not be able to reach to Charu even after he gets arrested. Dileep said that they are prepared to take this responsibility. Anyways, they continued the arrangement made by Suniti Kumar Ghosh till the end of April.
Suniti Kumar Ghosh in his last meeting with Charu Majumdar on April 23, had requested the alleged comment of Saroj Dutt and Charu’s comment indirectly criticizing Suniti Kumar Ghosh which was published in ‘Deshbrati’, must be published in the party’s central organ ‘Liberation’, but Charu Majumdar rejected this proposal by terming it as unnecessary. Then when Suniti Kumar Ghosh was about to leave after handing over his sum-up document to Charu, the latter asked him to call a meeting to resolve the problems that have arisen in the party. Suniti Ghosh said that being the General Secretary, such a meeting can only be called by Charu himself. This was their last meeting.
On the morning of 25th April, when Suniti Ghosh had just arrived in Calcutta, he received this horrible news that some party members and well-wishers had killed Kamal Sanyal, the secretary of south Calcutta zone and Agni Roy, the secretary of Baliganj-Tiljala Regional Committee on the pretext of calling them for talks. In the pamphlet distributed after the murder, they were labelled as police agents. The pamphlet also mentioned that more such killings would be carried out in future. Both the slain were trustworthy organizers, who were popular among the cadres and they had shouldered important party responsibilities in the past. Their only crime was that of late they had begun to raise questions on the line of annihilation and the ‘revolutionary authority’. Evidently, the “leftist” adventurist line had by now reached to its dangerous and perverse logical conclusion as the comrades’ hands were stained with the blood of comrades. In response to the above pamphlet, Satish Bannerji, a member of South Calcutta Zonal Committee and a few others released a pamphlet in which the people responsible for the killings were declared as police agents. There was ample evidence to hold Deepak and Dileep responsible for these cold-blooded murders, who had begun to label all those who used to raise questions over Charu’s line as anti-party and state agents and used to utter things such as now an armed struggle would be raised against the lines that are opposed to Charu Babu’s line. As soon as Suniti Kumar Ghosh learnt about this incident, he wrote to Charu Majumdar that the question as to whether or not he is a ‘political authority’ is a political one and it cannot be solved in this manner. Those responsible for these killings are taking the party towards destruction, and under such a situation Charu must immediately intervene to save the party and publicly condemn those involved in this criminal act. Also, he again raised the demand that suggestions of the Chinese party which were received through Sauren Basu must be circulated as soon as possible among the responsible party comrades and the party line must be reviewed.
Yet another incident which happened during the same period must be mentioned here. Amidst the above incidents, two comrades from Bihar met Suniti Ghosh. One of them was Jauhar who later played the leading role in building a struggle on the “left” adventurist line in Bhojpur, was the first secretary of CPI (ML), Liberation and was martyred. More on this later. Jauhar was also part of the leading team which was given responsibility of reorganizing party under the leadership of Narayan Sanyal (who was soon arrested) in Bihar after the split with Satyanarayan Singh. In the Central Committee, Suniti Kumar Ghosh was given the responsibility of guiding and leading this team. Ghosh told these comrades that for now he has relinquished all organizational responsibilities given by the party. Bihar’s comrades were suspicious of the arbitrary and autocratic work style of Deepak and Dileep, and they wanted that this responsibility must be shouldered by Suniti Ghosh himself, but he did not accept to this request.
On May 27th, Suniti Ghosh received a letter from Dileep in which he wrote that Charu wanted to meet him, but it was also written in it that first he should meet Deepak and Dileep. It was also written that Charu has severely criticized both of them. Suniti Ghosh replied that his meeting depends on whether he gets answers to some of his questions or not! His first question was whether they accept the responsibility of the murders of Kamal and Agni and are they ready to undertake self-criticism? At the same time, he wrote a letter to Charu in which he reiterated his demands. In the later half of June, Suniti Ghosh received a self-criticism in the handwriting of Deepak and Dileep, which was very formal. Suniti Ghosh, expressing his disagreement, wrote a letter to them regarding their sidestepping the main issue and indulging in evasive self-criticism. As he was waiting for the response, Suniti Ghosh learnt that on July 16th, 1972, Charu Majumdar was arrested by the police from a shelter in Calcutta. The Deepak-Dileep faction had practically taken the responsibility of shelter in their hands from the first week of May and only after two and half months Charu was arrested. Police got hold of a courier sent by Deepak and after being subjected to intense torture he disclosed the location of the shelter to the police where Deepak and others were present. He had estimated that after so much time they would have left the shelter, but when police raided the location Deepak was found sleeping there. Then this Charu-acolyte quite adept at revolutionary phrase-mongering was terrorized and broken even without any police torture and disclosed the address of Charu’s shelter. Charu Majumdar who suffered from tuberculosis and had serious heart ailment, was continuously questioned by the police in the central lockup situated in Lal Bazaar for twelve days. Meanwhile, he was not even given the regular medicines and Pethidine injection, leave aside providing medical care. After Twelve days, on July 28th, 1972, Charu Majumdar breathed his last. Later, police released an abnormally long statement of Charu. Charu refused to sign on this statement. Most of the responsible old comrades within the revolutionary left movement believe that a large part of the above statement was concocted by the police officials.
Charu Majumdar’s Efforts in his Last Days to Slowly and Gradually Change His “Left” Adventurist Line and to Bring it in Conformity with the Chinese Suggestions
Just a few days before his arrest, Charu had met some leading comrades from Bihar on July 13th, 1972. The meeting was aimed at furthering the efforts of reorganization of the Bihar State Committee which at that time existed only in name. Suraj (Swadhin Roy) was one among those who met Charu. Suraj was among those comrades from middle class background who was sent to Bihar to lead the armed struggle even before Jauhar, later he surrendered before the police. During 1975-76, when he was shifted to Presidency Jail for some time, he had told a few political inmates about his meeting and conversation with Charu. When Suraj gave report about the mass movement of Dalits in Punpun area of Patna district, Charu suggested him to focus on that area and make it as a focal-point of the struggle in future. The notes of this conversation can be found in the collected works of Charu Majumdar. It is noteworthy that in this conversation, Charu did not make any mention of guerilla squads and the annihilation of class enemies. In this, he talked about making revolutionary committees of poor peasants, taking of initiative by the petty-bourgeois comrades in this and strengthening the unity between poor peasants and the middle peasants by terming them as revolutionary class. Also, he asked to think about the possibilities of expanding the work among the workers of huge colliery area which spanned from Asansol to Madhya Pradesh.
Earlier, he had already met Sharmaji (Jagjit Singh Sohal), the Central Committee member from Punjab. By that time, Saroj Dutt who knew about the Chinese suggestions had been murdered and Sauren Basu had been arrested. We have already discussed how Sauren Basu had dropped the hints about the Chinese suggestions at many places. We have also discussed about how the differences with Suniti Kumar Ghosh, who was the third individual in the know of the Chinese suggestions, had begun to surface. Now it was clear to Charu that it would not be possible to suppress the Chinese suggestions for long. Under these circumstances, Charu had also expressed his desire to call the meeting of rest of the members and hold a discussion on the Chinese suggestions, though no concrete decision had been taken in this regard. Third such meeting of Charu took place in June or July just before his arrest with K.G. Satyamurthy from Andhra Pradesh State Committee and another member Rauf. According to Rauf, in this meeting discussion took place regarding the reorganization of the Central Committee too, in future. Charu Majumdar was in the mood of ‘self-criticism’ that day. With both the comrades who came to meet him, he discussed about the criticism and suggestion of the Chinese party about the policies of CPI (M-L) and said that since the Chinese party does not approve of the slogan of ‘China’s chairman is our chairman’, he wants to take back this slogan. Except for the question of annihilation, he expressed his agreement with all the suggestions of the Chinese party. On the question of annihilation, he said that he never meant it to be individual annihilation and there was some confusion with the Chinese party on this point. However, if one goes through Charu’s writings, his clarification looks far from truth. Rauf told these things in 1977 to his fellow political inmates in Presidency jail. It was during this period that Bhawani Roy Chowdhury also met Charu. It was his first and last meeting with Charu. Bhawani Roy Chowdhury was among the founding members of CPI (M-L) Party Unity which was formed later. Roy Chowdhury told the political inmates in the Presidency jail that when he requested Charu to issue a statement regarding the reasons for withdrawing the slogan of ‘China’s chairman is our chairman’, he said that we cannot quote an international release. Even Gautam Bannerji, who too was incarcerated in the Presidency jail, and who used to act as a messenger between Saroj Dutt and Charu had told the fellow political inmates about Charu’s decision to withdraw the above slogan.
These meetings and conversations in his last days clearly indicate that Charu had gradually started to change his “left” adventurist line in the light of the Chinese suggestions and criticisms, which he had tried to suppress for about one and half year, so that when these suggestions were to be circulated among the leadership and some level of cadres, the points of criticism become very few and mild and he could have opportunity to say that there were some mistakes which were rectified in time. The biggest evidence of this is Charu’s writings in his last days in which he is seen gradually changing the line without any sum-up and review and is trying to rid himself of the spectre of the extremely crude version of “left” adventurism. After the Magurjan incident, while leaving from the Puri Shelter that was looked after by Suniti Kumar Ghosh to Calcutta, Charu had given him a note to be published in ‘Liberation’ in which the announcement of People’s Liberation Army in West Bengal was made and all the ‘action squads’ scattered in the state were termed as its ‘contingents’. In this note, no mention of annihilation was made. We have already discussed this incident. Moving further away from this, in ‘Build up the People’s Liberation Army and March Forward’ published in ‘Liberation’ (January-March, 1971) Charu Majumdar wrote:
Hence the attack on the armed forces of enemy must be carried out. Only attacking the class-enemies would now amount to a kind of economism itself. Along with attacking the class-enemies if we do not attack the armed forces of the enemy, we would fall in the morass of a special kind of economism.
Clearly, looking at the condition of class-struggle and the preparation of the party, whatever Charu Majumdar was saying, that too was nothing but pure militarist “left” adventurism itself. Even now he was not talking about mass struggles, mass movements, economic struggles or mass organizations, but his immediate purpose was to get rid of the line of annihilation. After this, in his writings and statements such as ‘One Year Since the Party Congress’, ‘To the Comrades of Punjab’, one hardly finds any mention of the annihilation of class-enemy as a form of struggle. Two days before his arrest, in a letter to his wife he wrote: “We have been waging very few struggles against the imperialists because too much importance has been given to annihilation. This is a deviation and we are recovering from it.”
Extending the process of slowly changing the line, in his comment ‘A note on Party’s Work in Rural Areas’ he wrote:
The movement for crop-seizure is also a mass movement. After launching the armed struggle we are giving leadership to a mass movement for the first time. Without carrying out the mass movement, we would not be able to achieve our goal of making every peasant a warrior.
It needs to be recalled that it was Charu himself who in his article published in December, 1971 issue of ‘Liberation’ had said:
The revolutionary peasants through their struggle have shown that the mass movements or mass organizations are not at all inevitable for waging guerilla struggle. The mass movement and mass organizations promote the open and economistic trend and expose the revolutionary activists before the enemy. Hence the open mass movements and mass organizations act as a hurdle in the development and expansion of guerilla war.
It is obvious that without summing up the past, Charu had silently changed the line and had started talking exactly the opposite. But the most dramatic somersault is seen in an article which Charu wrote five weeks before his arrest. In ‘It is the People’s Interest that is Party’s Interest’, Charu admits that mass movement has received a setback. He said that forget about 1975, the way the party leadership is moving ahead in the struggle, our country will not be free even by 2001. In this article, Charu stressed on the need for party building among the broad cross-section of peasants and workers and wrote that only then the struggle could be taken to an advanced stage. According to him, the US imperialism and Soviet social imperialism are badly crisis-ridden and hence they could wage a third world war. Under this circumstance, the broad public unrest could give rise to country-wide uprising. Hence, if in some areas revolutionary land reforms would be accomplished, they automatically will spread to other regions as well. Not just that, Charu also talked about a broad united front against the repressive rule of Congress, in which apart from the ‘Leftist’ parties, those could also be taken who till yesterday were the enemies of the communist revolutionary movement. Clearly, at this juncture, in the eagerness to get rid of the ghost of “left” adventurism, Charu Majumdar while whitewashing his old devastating mistakes, had got entangled into a web of contradictions. Instead of the secret squads, he is seen talking about party-building among the broad cross-section of the masses, instead of carrying forward the land revolution through annihilation and the so-called guerilla struggle, he is seen reposing his faith in a kind of spontaneity which would give rise to a country-wide mass uprising and saying that the advantage of such a scenario could be secured only when the party would be successful in implementing revolutionary land reforms in some areas. Hence, he is alluding to a mass line in the context of land revolution. Although he does not discuss as to in what form this mass line would be implemented. However, he does not stop at this. Charu talks about a broad united front whose form and policies are not clear and which could be easily interpreted in revisionist manner! No wonder that extending such an interpretation and taking its refuge as well as holding the banner of Charu’s legacy, CPI (M-L) Liberation sank into the quagmire of the most degenerated and most hideous form of parliamentary leftism under the leadership of Vinod Mishra and Dipankar Bhattacharya.
With the death of Charu Majumdar, an important chapter of the communist revolutionary movement came to an end. We have made some comments related to the assessment of Charu in the earlier parts of this essay, and have been discussing at appropriate places about the content, characteristics and the process of evolution of his “leftist” opportunist line and his undemocratic, bureaucratic organizational method of work. Now we shall present here a comprehensive sum-up of his role in the revolutionary movement!
Charu Majumdar: An Assessment in the Form of the Final Conclusion
Charu Majumdar began his political life as a communist organizer in 1930s. Apart from participating in the Adhiyar movement of peasants and Tebhaga peasant struggle, he also worked as an organizer among the railway workers and tea plantation workers of Duar. When the regional leadership of the Tebhaga peasant struggle was thinking about armed counter-defence of peasants to resist the brutal state repression, the state leadership had withdrawn the movement after trusting the empty assurances of the then Muslim League government. Charu was among those who had vehemently criticized this decision. When the Andhra Committee of the party was carrying out two-line struggle against Randive’s “leftist” opportunist line, Charu had chosen the side of the ‘Andhra thesis’ and in the prison, he was known as the supporter of Mao and Chinese party.
While the Communist Party of India had gone ahead on the path of revisionism in 1951 itself, in the Palghat Party Congress of 1956, the faction led by Dange gang had started openly advocating to collaborate with the “progressive government” of Nehru and to be part of the government. At that time, Charu was with those opposing this faction. In the Fifth (special) Congress of the Party in Amritsar in 1956, the party had accepted the line of Khruschevite revisionism, but a division had occurred within the party from top to bottom on the basis of the two opposing lines of ‘United Democratic Front’ (UDF) and ‘National Democratic Front’ (NDF). The first line was talking about carrying forward the anti-imperialist anti-feudal struggle on the basis of worker-peasant unity, while the second line was talking about peaceful transition to socialism by forming a united front with the “progressive” bourgeoisie. Even though despite its radical gesture, the second line was also essentially revisionist, the party cadre with the revolutionary spirit were with it as they considered it to be revolutionary. Charu was one among them. When Nehru dismissed the Nambodiripad government of Kerala in July 1959, a widespread movement had begun against it in the entire Bengal and in different parts of the country. The Siliguri Committee under the leadership of Charu was especially active in it. In the Terai zone of Siliguri, the peasant movement got intensified, but when the state leadership withdrew the movement after the hollow assurance by the state government, a tide of discontent spread among all the organizers of Terai including Charu and Kanu. After this, Charu was in a state of despair and disappointment due to the revisionist regression of the party. When Party’s Sixth Congress was held in Vijaywada in 1961, Charu did not take part in it as he considered it to be futile. We have already discussed that at the time of the Indo-China war in 1962, when the storm of anti-China jingoism was underway, the party cadres of Siliguri under the leadership of Charu were waging struggle against it by going against the current. The division of CPI had in fact taken place in 1962 during the Indo-China war when on the basis of identification by Dange, most of the leaders and activists of the opposing faction were sent to jail. Charu was also arrested at that time. When among the leaders in the prison, people like Jyoti Basu and Namboodripad were adopting soft attitude towards revisionism, Charu and Saroj Dutt used to be in its opposition.
CPM was founded in 1964 and in the same year the documents of “Great Debate” reached the communist cadres of India. These historical documents especially helped the Indian communist cadres in developing a theoretical understanding of not just the Khruschevite revisionism, but also the revisionism of CPI as well as the neo-revisionism of CPM. Among the two drafts of the new party, one was that of Sundarayya, Vasavpunayya, Pramod Dasgupta and Harekrishna Konar, in which the position of Chinese party was supported while criticizing the Soviet revisionism, whereas in the draft presented by Namboodripad, Harkishan Singh Surjit and Jyoti Basu, a middle ground was taken. Charu and Siliguri Committee took the side of the first draft, but right from the beginning Charu had reservations about this new party. Still, he hoped that the party could be revolutionized by carrying out ideological struggle from within. But it did not take long to dash these hopes. There is no doubt that Charu’s eight documents played an important role in making a radical rupture from the neo-revisionism of CPM, but this credit cannot be given to Charu alone. The leaders of Chinta/Dakshindesh group, Kanhai Chatterji, Amulya Sen and Chandrashekhar Das, had also blown the bugle of struggle against the revisionism of CPM exactly at the same time. What is important is that all of them had received inspiration for making a consistent understanding of revisionism from the Chinese party’s document of ‘Great Debate’. In 1965, the two-line struggle against the capitalist roaders within the Chinese party had got intensified and the Great Socialist Education movement had begun as a prelude to the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. In 1966, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution commenced. The documents of these historical revolutions helped all the leaders of the Communist revolutionary movement in India including Charu in a fundamental way in developing an understanding of revisionism to move ahead in the direction of forming and building a new revolutionary party by rebelling against the revisionist leadership. If we talk only about Charu, it is evident that his own ideological understanding was extremely weak and he adopted his decisive position as well as took decisive steps on the basis of the positions of the Chinese party itself.
Undoubtedly, no question can be raised on the revolutionary spirit of Charu and his disdain for revisionism, however, in his revolutionary sentiment, one could find the continuity of the tendency of the petty-bourgeois impatience owing to which he used to oscillate between subjective kind of ultra-enthusiasm and dismay. The ideological weakness which was responsible for this also prevented him from patiently carrying out sustained two line-struggle and instead he used to choose the path of deciding hurriedly. Charu’s eight documents played an important role in making a radical rupture from the neo-revisionist CPM, but as has been mentioned earlier, one can find the indications of Charu’s “left” adventurist line in these very documents. During the Naxalbari peasant uprising, when the massline was being effectively implemented, Charu had withdrawn for some time, but as soon as a period of stagnation and disintegration ensued in Naxalbari, Charu aggressively pushed forward his line. The Naxalbari peasant struggle had progressed by defeating Charu’s line and the first experiment of Charu’s line in Chattarhat Islampura was defeated in no time, but since he was the leader of the Siliguri Committee, he gained popularity throughout the country (and abroad as well) as the builder and the leader of the Naxalbari struggle and he took full advantage of this reputation in pushing forward his line. Undoubtedly, due to the ideological-political bankruptcy of the local organizers of the Naxalbari struggle, especially of Kanu Sanyal, and consequently their surrender before Charu’s line and its exaggerated recognition and appreciation by the Chinese party helped the Charu’s “left” adventurist line a lot in becoming hegemonic. The first important step towards the consolidation of the incorrect line was taken when by doing away with all the democratic norms the DV-Nagi led ‘Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries of Andhra Pradesh’ was unilaterally removed from the ‘All India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries’. Similarly, people like Parimal Dasgupta, Pramod Sengupta, Asit Sen etc. who raised question on Charu’s “left” opportunist line were removed without carrying out any debate by labelling them ‘revisionist’ and ‘renegade’. Thus, Charu’s line had become dominant virtually during the period of AICCR itself. Charu had started using the Coordination Committee as party and had consolidated his position as its supreme leader. After removing all the opponents, he changed his earlier stand and declared in no time the formation of an all-India party. Due to the incorrect and undemocratic ways of AICCR, several organizations and groups like MCC and WBCCR and many individuals did not join it and in February, 1970 some comrades from Punjab (Bathinda-Ferozpur Committee) under the leadership of Harbhajan Singh Sohi separated themselves from the process of formation of CPI (M-L) by criticizing the ultra-leftist line of Charu. The most devastating work done by Charu was to shelve the four tasks decided for the Coordination Committee. By renouncing the task of the development of the militant mass struggles of working class and all the toiling classes, building of mass movement and mass organization itself was labelled as revisionism and carrying out economic struggle itself was termed as economism. According to Charu, the poor and landless peasants had to now carry forward the guerilla struggle by making small action groups, and this “guerilla struggle” was the annihilation of the class enemy! The Coordination Committee was supposed to establish Mao Tse-tung Thought as Marxism-Leninism of current era by carrying out prolonged ideological struggle against revisionism and on this basis all the communist revolutionary cadres were to be united. However, in Charu’s agenda, there was no place for cadre’s ideological-political education, exposure of the incorrect line through carrying out debate on ideological-political issues and the political-ideological upgradation of the cadre. Just reading Mao’s three articles, Charu’s eight documents and Red Book was considered sufficient and even those reading Marxist classics were labelled as “bourgeois intellectuals”. Thus, Charu took the ideological weaknesses that were entrenched in the communist movement since its beginning to the newer heights. An important task of the Coordination Committee was to determine the program, strategy and general tactics of Indian revolution by studying the concrete conditions of India. This was a task of fundamental historical significance. Had the Coordination Committee implemented revolutionary mass line and had it made some beginning in the direction of study, debate and experiments towards determining the character of Indian society, the nature of production relations, stage of revolution and program, the history of the communist movement in India would have been different today. However, Charu did not let this process even begin. By giving the slogan of ‘China’s path is our path’ and by doing a carbon copy of the new democratic revolution of China, Charu “solved” the most basic questions in a trice. Charu not only used the platform of the Coordination Committee as party for implementing his line in unhindered and unopposed manner, he even established himself as an undisputed leader by forming a small clique of his acolytes. Undoubtedly, in achieving his goal, Charu received special help from those organizers like Kanu Sanyal who had once implemented mass line, but later due to their extremely weak ideological-political understanding, had knelt down before the “left” adventurist line. On the basis of these facts, it can be asserted that the party formed in 1970 under the leadership of Charu Majumdar was not an All-India Marxist-Leninist party, but was one amongst many Marxist-Leninist organizations and groups and it was an organization which was most firm and most consistent on the “left” adventurist line. From the time of the Coordination Committee itself, Charu’s line was defeated wherever it was implemented, but instead of review and sum up, what used to happen was that when the line was defeated at one place, it was being implemented at another place with renewed aggression. We have discussed this process in detail earlier. Even before the party was formed, the struggle in Srikakulam was beginning to get disintegrated which reached its culmination a few days after the party formation. The massline of the student-youth movement which was decided under the leadership of Asit Sen during the period of Coordination Committee was given up and Charu’s line was implemented on this front. Its peak point was Calcutta’s student-youth movement (‘Bhanjan-Dahan-Hanan’ program) whose adventurism was utilized by the Indian state to immerse it in the pool of blood. But, instead of summing it up, Charu’s faction sidelined Sushital Roy Chowdhary who had raised questions on it and who had criticized the “left” opportunism. The disintegration of the Debra Gopiballabhpur struggle, and the criticism and sum up presented by its leadership, was not even deliberated upon and we have earlier discussed about the suppression of the critical report of Birbhum Committee in an extremely conspiratorial manner.
Charu suppressed the suggestions and criticisms of the Chinese Communist Party for about one and half year and started talking about it to those meeting him only when it was clear that it could no longer be suppressed. In the same period, he also suppressed the second report of the Birbhum Committee. This was the period when the trio of Deepak, Dileep and Mahadev was creating much hullabaloo of Charu’s ‘revolutionary authority’ and was trying to project him as ‘India’s Mao’ (It needs to be recalled that the proposal to declare Charu as ‘revolutionary authority’ was rejected in the first and last meeting of the Central Committee held immediately after the Congress). This last phase of Charu’s life was that important phase in which his “leftist” opportunism had been transformed from political opportunism into individual opportunism. Initially, like any committed “left” adventurist, Charu suffered from self-righteousness, his organizational line was infected with bureaucracy and commandism, he used to consider himself as the committee; however, during the last one and half year he strived hard towards somehow saving his individual reputation and prestige and was slowly changing his line in a way that it becomes more and more in conformity with the Chinese suggestions and that he has to face least criticism and his leadership is not endangered. It cannot be termed anything else but political dishonesty.
In a nutshell, looking at the entire course of events in retrospect, it can be said that Charu suffered from “left” adventurism since 1965 itself, and this deviation went on acquiring dangerous form after being coupled with the political immaturity and extremely weak ideological understanding of the others in the leadership. The revolutionary impatience of Charu was in fact a petty-bourgeois impatience. This impatience was also a reaction to the long period of revisionism and existed in Charu’s thinking right from the time of the radical rupture with CPM itself. The task of strangulating the new revolutionary beginning had been virtually accomplished when Charu had given up the goals set by the Coordination Committee, the task of development of the experiments of revolutionary mass struggles of workers and peasants was not even taken up and by shelving the goal of research and study for determination of the program of Indian revolution afresh, the carbon copy of the program of Chinese revolution was made as the program of Indian revolution.
If one surveys the entire body of writings of Charu, it can be affirmed that his theoretical understanding of Marxism-Leninism was extremely weak. He perhaps hardly read Marxism classics. His intellectual calibre was not at all of the level of giving leadership to an all-India revolutionary communist party. At the most, he could have been a leader at the regional level of such a party. But like all the “left” adventurists, he was firm and decisive on his line and in implementing his line in undisputed manner he got great help from the capitulationist attitude, weak ideological understanding and liberal political-organizational conduct of those from the leadership who themselves were very weak from standpoint of political understanding. The “left” adventurist line was a rebellious reaction to the revisionist party practice and Charu Majumdar happened to be its agent because he had the quality of decisiveness of the leadership. The responsibility for this devastating phase of the “left” opportunism in the communist revolutionary movement in India also rests with those leaders of CPI (M-L) who continued to adopt docile and surrenderist stand, who did not raise questions at the right time and to a large extent remained victim to the tendency of hero worship. Most of these people were enlightened only when they came to know about the Chinese suggestions. However, the leader of this deviation was Charu himself and the history will principally put him in dock for its catastrophic outcomes. More than his positive contribution owing to his role in making a radical rupture from revisionism, his role proved to be negative since the “leftist” adventurist infantilism catastrophically liquidated a historical new beginning as soon as it was born.
