Naxalbari, India
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Naxalbari, India 1987 marks the twentieth anniver• CPM. In West Bengal, especially, a parliamentary arena its actual main sary of the outbreak of armed strug• great number of genuine revolution• focus of work. gle of the peasant masses led by aries took part in the formation of That is to say the CPM (like most communist revolutionaries in the vil• the CPM as a result of the latter's "centrists") kept two goods in lage of Naxalbari, located in India's vocal criticism of the CPI revisionist stock: revolutionary posturing state of West Bengal, near the city of leaders. directed at the masses and real revi• Darjeeling, not far from the borders But it soon became apparent that sionism and class collaboration of Nepal and what is now Ban• the CPM itself had not really broken aimed at keeping these same masses gladesh. Before 1967 this remote vil• with revisionism. On an internation• forever enchained to the reactionary lage was unknown beyond the sur• al plane, the CPM tried to steer a system. rounding Terai region in the foot• ' 'middle road'' between Soviet revi• It was in this context that in 1965 hills of the Himalayas. Today Nax• sionism and the Marxist-Leninist Charu Mazumdar began developing albari is known to scores of millions line that was represented at the time a revolutionary opposition to the as the symbol of the people's war by the Communist Party of China. revisionist leadership of the CPM that will one day sweep imperialism Although the CPM came out against and began training the cadre of the and reaction off the face of India. Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin Darjeeling district committee of the Before Naxalbari, the communist and even made a show of ' 'defend• CPM in a radically different line movement in India was dominated ing" him, and although the CPM which would explode two years later by revisionism. The Communist had a so-called positive assessment in Naxalbari. These early writings of Party of India (CPI) had long be• of Mao Tsetung, it was unable to Charu Mazumdar became known as fore abandoned even the pretext of make the kind of radical rupture re• the "Eight Historic Essays." In revolution in favour of the quired with the long revisionist his• them Mazumdar stresses that the "parliamentary road" to power. tory in India and to assimilate Mao revolution in India would follow the Under the pressure of the criticism Tsetung Thought as the new stage of path of China — specifically the of revisionism begun by Mao Marxism-Leninism and apply it to path of protracted warfare and of Tsetung and the Communist Party the conditions of India. On the prac• surrounding the cities from the of China in the early 1960s, a section tical front the CPM was content to countryside. This analysis went of cadres and members of the CPI uphold the necessity of armed strug• straight up against not only the revi- had split off and formed the Com• gle in words while making the' 'tac• sionists' "parliamentary road" but munist Party of India (Marxist) or tic" of participating in the also the earlier, secret so-called Tac- 5 parts of India: in Bihar, Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, and Kerala as well as in many regions of West Bengal 20 YEARS where it all started. The Naxalbari struggle dramati• cally reconfigured the political land• scape on the Indian left. The revi• SINCE sionist CPI and CPM became thoroughly exposed as they openly sided with the central authorities who responded to the Naxalbari THE CLAP OF movement with widespread slaught• er and terror. On the other hand, throughout the country young peo• ple came forward from within and SPRING outside the traditional communist movement to take up the banner of Marxism- Leninism-Mao Tsetung THUNDER Thought and the armed struggle for power. Charu Mazumdar was at the centre of the efforts to group the genuine communist revolutionaries and his line became the basis for the formation of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) on 22 April 1969. While the centre of the revolution• tical Line which held that the revo• albari is located. Although this ary work of the CPI(ML) was in the lution in India would follow neither "Report on the Peasant Movement countryside, the movement had pro• the Chinese road nor the Russian in the Terai Region" was signed by found effects on all aspects of Indi• road but be a combination of urban Kami Sanyal, who later degener• an society, including the urban uprisings in the cities and what they ated into a right opportunist, it can areas. This was particularly true of called "partisan warfare" in the be said to represent, in the main, Calcutta, the capital of West Bengal. countryside. Although often Charu Mazumdar's line at the time Calcutta is infamous throughout cloaked in the garb of India's "par• and the report still provides valuable the world for its despicable inhuman ticular conditions," this argument insight into the Naxalbari movement conditions and its teeming millions was in fact aimed at defeating those as well as some of the thinking of of slum dwellers. It was also, and re• who wanted to uphold and apply those who led it. mains, the stronghold of the CPM Mao Tsetung's line. The Communist Party of China, as well as an important intellectual In his "Eight Essays" and in a under the leadership of Comrade centre in India. more developed way later on in Mao Tsetung, was quick to recog• Under the impact of the peasant other writings, Charu Mazumdar nise the importance of the Naxalbari upsurge in the countryside the in• develops his thesis of the "area-wide movement. The political support fluence of the "Naxalites" grew in seizure of power." This was of the given by the CPC, mainly through Calcutta by leaps and bounds. A utmost importance in distmgrushing its radio and press, helped further powerful movement developed the Naxalbari struggle from the fan the already spreading flames of amongst the youth and students many militant struggles of the the struggle. The articles in the against the comprador educational peasants in India which frequently Chinese press were also a means by system; statues of Gandhi and other went over into revolutionary vio• which the CPC was able to indirect• pro-imperialist, anti-national mis- lence. As Mazumdar points out, if ly offer comradely advice to the In• leaders of the people were destroyed. such struggles did not aim at seizing dian communists (see the article, The movement spread to the slums power but remained merely struggles "Let the Red Flag of Naxalbari Fly as well, where large numbers of the for land they would degenerate into Still Higher" reprinted in this issue, workers and the urban poor saw the "mihtant economism." with its stress on the importance of CPI(ML) and the armed struggle it In 1968 a report was prepared by guerrilla warfare.) Within a very was waging in the countryside as the the communist revolutionaries in the short period of time Naxalbari-type road to eliminate their oppression. Siliguri subdivision, in which Nax• struggles were taking off in many Charu Mazumdar, while hailing and 6 Supporting the movement in the ised to fight with their traditional problems of the relationship be• , cities, continually .called upon the weaporis while, at the _ same time, tween such''annihilations'' and ef• revolutionary youth to go to the striving to seize guiis from the reac• forts to launch and develop people's countryside, integrate with the tionaries themselves. He saw guer• war. But such questioning has noth• peasants and in this way help rilla warfare as the main fofm to ing in conirrion with the hysteria of propagate trie armed struggle. In mobilise the' entire strength of the the bourgeoisie and its apologists in factyntanyhuh^edsheeci^d"his call. people against the enemy — and ar- the face Of the "Naxalite violence,'' .. Asthe-arhieH sfrugglfe'was raging gtled that revisionist-led mass move• As Mao put it, "A revolution is not . inthehe^^ ments could never do so.,Arid, in a dinner party, or writing an essay, ^b^'afelt^elfeegaalkJ develop in fact, in some areas the'OP'l(ML) was or painting a picture, or doing em• the'cities theniselyte.-lt.se'ems that able to lead the poof peasants in broidering; it cannot be so refined, this- fa&f have" Been sp'orrtanequs in establishing guerrilla squads on a so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, origin, but b'edarne more systematic wide scale — it is estimated that kind, courteous, restrained and a's revolutionary youths arid slum several thousands were mobilised in magnanimous. A revolution is an in• dwelieft sought to participate in the such squads in' 1970 iii West Bengal surrection,, an act of violence by C;Pl(ML)'s ^guh-snatching'' cam* alone. ..• which One class overthrows r paign aimed at seizing weapons He argued that people's war must another." from the reactionaries and theif be waged on the plains as well as in Does this mean, then, that com• armed forces, to provide the afma- the more inaccessible mountain and munist revolutionaries Of India did rrfent for a people's army. While forest regions in order to rely on the not make any mistakes or that Com• l&fge number's of amis were s*eize"d broad masses of the peasants. He rade Mazumdar solved all of the ah4. a-considerable number of constantly stressed the need to mobi• problems of the Indian revolution? • - , pofic*ine,n arid' other, reactionaries . lise the peasants to establish their Obviously, such a situation would wete wiped out* the reactionary own rule through revolutionary be unlikely in any revolutionary • forces,' aided by the CPM, were able cornmittees, named after the organs movement and all the more in the to unleash a vicious onslaught of of political power established in Chi• case of a movement that erupted so white terror that eventually restored na in the midst of the Great suddenly that in the space of two or ' 'order'' at the cost of thousands of Proletarian Cultural Revolution.