Naxalbari Commemoration: Report from Punjab

20 Naxalbari Commemoration: Report from Punjab By the Leading Committee, Revolutionary Communist Party, India Punjab has a glorious tradition of notorious method of eliminating revolutionary struggles. The revolu• revolutionaries. Arrested revolu• tionary heritage of the people of tionaries would be barbarically tor• Punjab to fight against all oppres• tured and murdered in police sion and exploitation has custody. Then their blood-stained have succeeded in striking deep manifested itself in an uninter• bodies would be taken to some lone• roots among a large section of the rupted sequence of struggles and ly place and it would be falsely people on the basis of their narrow movements for self respect, digni• claimed that they had been killed religious appeal poses a serious pro• ty and independence. there in an armed encounter with blem for the Marxist- Leninists in When the bright red banner of the police. Braving this blatant their efforts to rally the people armed rebellion was raised by poor fascistic onslaught by India's around the banner of the pro• and landless peasants in the Nax• comprador-bureaucrat regime, letariat. albari area of West Bengal in the thousands of revolutionary youth It was in light of this political at-. spring of 1967, the Naxalite move• gave their lives for the emancipation mosphere that the Leading Com• ment spread across vast areas of In• of the exploited and downtrodden mittee, RCPI decided to hold a dia, including Punjab. The recent masses. campaign to commemorate Nax• commemoration in Punjab of the Though the reactionary rulers albari in this "inflamed" part of the twentieth anniversary of that succeeded in temporarily suppress• Indian Union, not as a formal ex• rebellion made it clear that the Nax• ing the revolutionary armed strug• ercise or ritual, but as part of albari spirit is still smoldering and gle, the memory of that valiant preparing conditions for the prac• threatening to leap once again into rebellion and the spirit of selfless tical unfolding of the revolutionary flames in this particularly turbulent sacrifice and courage displayed by process, by grappling with the pro• 8 region. the revolutionary youth of Punjab blems the revolutionary movement When the armed struggle broke is still kept alive among the people, is facing in theory and practice. out in Naxalbari in the spring of especially the poor and oppressed The April issue of Paigam, the 1967, Punjabi students and youth masses. Now when Punjab is ex• monthly organ of the LC.RCPI i especially joined this revolutionary periencing another upsurge of revolt published in the Punjabi language, stream in significant numbers in and armed struggle, this time under carried a proclamation by the Nax• what was known as India's most the leadership of religiously- albari Campaign Commission for a "prosperous" state. Some pockets motivated Sikh militants, the situa• fortnight-long propaganda cam• of armed struggle at the elementary tion provides the revolutionary paign beginning May 9 and level developed. The reactionary movement under the banner of the culminating in a public meeting ruling classes unleashed a reign of proletariat with both some good op• May 23, the anniversary of the day terror in Punjab in an attempt to portunities and some obstacles to be twenty years ago the peasants of halt this tide. overcome. Naxalbari signaled the outbreak of CPI(M-L) activists and sym• The ability of the Sikh militants the armed struggle by attacking a pathisers by the thousands were to unleash and sustain their armed police party that had come to arrest subjected to brutal repression. The resistance in the face of high- militant peasant activists. The cam• houses of prominent party members magnitude brutal repression is paign was to be concentrated in a were ransacked and burned down testimony to the fact that particular area where the revolu• and their families and relatives were favourable conditions do exist for tionary movement is relatively bet• harassed and worse by the police. initiating and advancing the armed ter placed, and at the same time Almost a hundred revolutionary struggle in Punjab, despite what is spread by every available means to communists were tortured to death called the state's "economic pro• every area possible. by police. The reactionary sperity" and the seeming might of , In practically every nook and cor• authorities in Punjab initiated what the Indian central government. But ner of the villages and towns of that was to become a widespread and the fact that these Sikh militants area, there appeared large 27 wallposters upholding the great need to strengthen the unity of the distinct banner of the proletariat Naxalbari uprising and calling on genuine Marxist-Leninist forces not amidst the strong and complex the people to advance along the only on an all-India level but on a winds now blowing in the "land of crimson path of Naxalbari. Village world scale; the significance of the five rivers." He also elaborated and town walls were painted red formation of the RIM and its upon the correct approach to be with slogans: "Naxalbari Zindabad Declaration in this context; the cor• taken towards the Sikh militants [Long Live]", "March forward on rect approach in the concrete con• who have taken up arms against the the path of Naxalbari," "Political ditions of Punjab towards the reactionary Indian state out of pent- power grows out of the barrel of a spontaneous outbursts of militant up resentment against the gun," "Take up arms against the mass revolts arising from the communally-based and repressive reactionary Indian state to eman• sharpening of various kinds of ob• policies of the Indian ruling classes. cipate the people from the ex• jective conditions; the need to form He criticised the mistaken notion ploitative clutches of Indian rulers an alliance of all struggling strata that these religiously-motivated and their imperialist masters," "To and sections of the people against fighters should be considered the strengthen Hindu-Sikh unity put up the common enemy and the in• immediate enemies and targets of a brave front against the terests of the proletariat to be pur• the revolutionary movement by communally-based rulers of India," sued through these alliances; etc. characterising them as "equally "Kindle the flames of Naxalbari On May 23 over 600 people sing• reactionary" or "fascist lunatics." throughout the length and breadth ing revolutionary songs, shouting Such an utterly erroneous ap• of the country," "Forward along slogans and carrying red banners proach, he said, would ultimately the path charted by Mao Tsetung" and placards converged on the end up sparing the reactionary In• and so on. Thousands of copies of sprawling grounds of an educa• dian state from the assault of the a four-page flier were distributed. tional institution at Sunam, a sub- revolutionary movement, and in• Paigam's May issue published a divisional headquarters deep in the evitably lead to siding with the reac• comprehensive article upholding the Malwa region of Punjab. More tionary state in its vicious campaign role and contributions of the Nax• than 80% of the participants were against those whom it labels "ter• albari struggle while making a youth, mbst of them teenagers with rorist" and "secessionist" forces. critical evaluation of it so that its a burning desire and zeal to This is already happening in Pun• lessons could help the revolutionary transform the world in a revolu• jab. It is a matter of shame for the movement advance. tionary fashion. In front of the au• revolutionary movement that the Mass" meetings, and'rallies were dience were full- sized photos of same reactionary authorities who ^ organised on a wide scale as RCPI Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and drenched their hands in the blood «^ activists fanned out throughout the Mao and of dozens of the martyrs of "Naxalite" youth are now Q area. The main points of discussion who sacrificed their lives to kindle showering praises on some former jj and propaganda were: the global the. flames of Naxalbari in Punjab ' 'Naxalites,'' and that these former O and local conditions that led to the during 1970 and 1971. Before the "Naxalites" who once snatched -H eruption of the Naxalbari uprising; formal opening of the meeting, the arms from the state are now gladly ^ the movement's aims and objec• audience-stood in silent homage to being presented with them by the ^ tives; the reign of terror let loose by all the martyrs who died for the state to use in their misdirected $ the ruling classes and their political cause of revolution, not only in crusade against "Khalistani ter- .« representatives of various hues, in• Punjab or India but the world over. rorists."[Khalistan is the indepen- cluding the revisionists; some short• Amid the raising of fists and the derit Sikh state some religious ^ comings and mistakes of the roaring of slogans, the 600^-strong fighting forces seek to establish. y> movement and its leaders and how revolutionary gathering, including a —AWTW] this contributed to the serious set• good number of women, expressed The RCPI spokesman made it backs it suffered; the need to its resolve to rekindle the spirit of clear in no uncertain terms that the uphold the positive lessons and con• Naxalbari in this turbulent part of interests of the proletariat demand tributions and their relevance in the India. that even while temporarily uniting present situation; the enhanced need The RCPI spokesman emphasis• with such social forces in the strug• to raise higher the banner of armed ed the historic role of Naxalbari in gle against the common enemy, no struggle under the leadership of the putting the question " of- armed concession or flexibility should be proletariat and the path of people's revolution back on the agenda when shown in the ideological struggle war as the only way to achieve the the revisionist renegades then at the against reactionary ideology and er• emancipation of the people of In• helm of the Indian communist roneous pohtics sometimes fraught dia; the.sharpening of contradic• movement had tried their level best with serious deviations.

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