Khalistan Calling newsletter dated October 15, 2003

to a friend, opinion maker, Congressman, Think Tank & / or newspapers in your area

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India's Naxalite movement - What is it?

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A tutorial

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Andhra Pradesh Chief minister Naidu has lucky escape

from a Naxalite landmine attack

BY

Dr. Amarjit Singh

Khalistan Affairs Centre

956-National Press Building, Washington DC 20045 USA

Tel: 202-637-9210 :: Fax: 202-637-9211

kacwashdc@yahoo.com

On the afternoon of October 1, 2003, People's War activists - a Naxalite organization - triggered a series of nine powerful Claymore mines, (which they are suspected to have planted over a period of time on the ghat road leading to the Tirumala hills from Tirupati) barely minutes after the Chief Minister's convoy had crossed the Alipiri toll gate downhill. The impact of the blast was so intense that Andhra Pradesh Chief minister Chandrababu Naidu's bulletproof car was hurled into the air and landed on its side. Security personnel extricated the dazed and injured Chief Minister from the mangled car in which he was seated beside the driver.

According to Indian media reports a look at the scene of the attempted assassination leaves no one in doubt that the Chief Minister had a miraculous escape, and got away with just a fractured collarbone, although he lost consciousness for a full two minutes after the blast and remained dazed for several hours later. Several leaders, including Indian President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, Deputy Prime Minister, L. K. Advani, and Karnataka Chief Minister S. M. Krishna, called on Chandrababu Naidu in Hyderabad soon after he returned from Tirupati.

Media speculations about the identity of the assassins were immediately cleared when a Naxalite organization, People's War (P. W.) issued a statement claiming responsibility for the attack. The Secretary of the State Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Committee of the People's War, Ramakrishna, justified the attack by saying that, "Chandrababu Naidu and the State police are enemies of the people. They deserve to be eliminated." The P.W.'s admission was not surprising since it had issued death warrants some time ago against Chandrababu Naidu, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, and former Jharkhand Chief Minister Babulal Marandi. The P. W. declaration disproves the claims of the State government that it had succeeded in driving the Naxalite People's War (P.W.) guerillas away from the plain areas and had confined them to the forest tracts.

It is being widely reported that despite the State police efforts to match the People's War area-specific strategies, the Naxalite group has further consolidated its stranglehold in Andhra Pradesh in the contiguous areas falling in the neighbouring states of Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Madhya Pradesh. The Peoples.War's presence is also being felt in Jharkhand, West Bengal, Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan, although it has not yet resorted to any violence in some of these States.

Correspondent K Srinavas Reddy claims, in the latest Frontline news magazine, that, "As consolidation continued within the country, the Peaple's War organization has made strident efforts to get international support by attempting to bring together all the revolutionary parties following the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist ideology in South Asia. By July 2001, an umbrella organisation, with nine left-wing extremist organisations active in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, was formed. It was called the Coordination Committees of Maoist Parties and Organisations of South Asia (CCOMPOSA). Records indicate that the parties in CCOMPOSA consisted of the Communist Party of India-Marxist-Leninist P.W., the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC), the Revolutionary Communist Centre of India(MLM), the Revolutionary Communist Centre of India(Maoist), the Purba Bangal Sarbahara Party(Maoist Punarghatan Kendra), the Purba Bangla Sarbahara Party, the Bangladesh Samaywadi Party(M-L) from Bangladesh, the Communist Party of Nepal(Maoist) and the Communist Party of Ceylon(Maoist).

What exactly is this Naxalite movement and what is its ideology? The Naxalite ideology is broadly based on the late Comrade Charu Majumdar's historic Eight Documents and creative application of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung thought to Indian conditions. The documents are historic as they initiated a sharp departure from parliamentary democracy and put forward revolutionary politics to win justice and end oppression. The Naxalbari uprising of March 1967 saw the implementation of Charu Majumdar's vision of revolution. The armed peasants' struggle began in Naxalbari in West Bengal on March 2, 1967 when a tribal youth named Wimal Kesan, who had a judicial order, went to plough his land. Local landlords attacked him through their goons. This sparked wide-scale violence by tribals who started capturing back their lands. In the 72 days of Charu Majumdar-backed tribal violence and retaliatory action by the state, the incident echoed throughout the country and Naxalism was born.

The ultra-leftist Naxalite ideology took concrete shape in a May 1968 meeting of All India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries (AICCCR) which represented revolutionaries from seven states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, UP, Bihar, Karnataka, Orissa and West Bengal. In 1969, a Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) was formed under the leadership of Charu Majumdar. It argued that democracy in India was a sham and decided to base Indian revolution on protracted guerrilla warfare on the lines of Chinese model. Who was this Comrade Charu Majumdar and what were his eight documents?

Comrade Charu Majumdar's was born in a progressive landlord family in Siliguri in 1918. He not only dedicated his entire life to peasants' cause but also authored the historic 1968 Naxalbari uprising, the ideology which guides the Naxalites even today. Dropping out of college in 1937-38 he joined Congress and tried to organise bidi workers. He later crossed over to CPI to work in its peasant front and won respect of the poor of Jalpaiguri. Soon an arrest-warrant forced him to go underground for the first time as a Left activist. Although CPI was banned at the outbreak of World War II, he continued CPI activities among peasants and was made a member of CPI Jalpaiguri district committee in 1942.The promotion emboldened him to organise a 'seizure of crops' campaign in Jalpaiguri during the Great Famine of 1943, more or less successfully. In 1946, he joined Tebhaga movement and embarked on a proletariat militant struggle in North Bengal. The stir shaped his vision of a revolutionary struggle. Later he worked among tea garden workers in Darjeeling.He was again jailed during the 1962 Indo-China war as part of curbs on all Left activities in India.

Charu Majumdar's was in bad health during the 1964-65 period and was advised rest. But he devoted his time, even in jail, to study and write about Mao's thoughts. The exercise shaped his vision and ideas of a mass struggle, which were recorded in his writing and speeches of 1965-67. These were later called 'Historic Eight Documents' and subsequently formed the basis of Naxalism. On May 25, 1967, the CM-led "rebels" launched the historic peasant uprising at Naxalbari in Darjeeling district of West Bengal. It was "brutally" suppressed by the state government but the ideology of "Naxalism" not only survived but also spread. With the upsurge of Naxalism, comrades from Tamil Nadu, Kerala, UP, Bihar, Karnataka, Orissa and West Bengal set up All India Coordination Committee of Revolutionaries (AICCR) in CPI (M) on Nov 12-13, 1967. It was renamed as All India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries, which launched CPI (ML) on April 2, 1969 with Comrade Charu Majumdar as its General Secretary.

A fierce crackdown by the authorities on ultra-Leftist movement in India's West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh states, (which climaxed during and after 1971 Bangladesh war) saw the killings of many key ultra-Leftist leaders and ailing Comrade Charu Majumdar had to go underground. By 1972 he was India's most wanted man. Charu Majumdar was arrested from a Calcutta hideout on July 16, 1972 and died twelve days later, on July 28, 1972, in police custody in the Lal Bazar lock-up infamous for its torture chambers where he was tortured while being held incommunicado.

His 'brain-child' Naxalism -- the ultra-leftist manifestation of age-old peasant struggle in India -- did not die after Comrade Charu Majumdar's judicial murder but the saga of terror and violence, by the land-less oppressed against the oppressor, that it entails has continued over the decades in different parts of India despite severe official crackdown on it by a police/landlord/Bania nexus.The movement continues to grow, in both its political and violent forms, in backward and tribal areas of Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Orissa and some parts of Tamil Nadu.

Of the many Maoist organisations in India, the People's War and MCC are at present engaged in armed struggle against "the ruling classes and oppressive state forces" in AP, Bihar and adjoining areas. Faced with a host of military and other measures against them, Naxalites have acquired lethal firepower and gathered guerilla war expertise over the years. They are well organised and armed with the latest weapons. They blow up landmines with precision, conduct killing raids, run parallel governments in remote areas, and romanticising a Robin Hood image, conduct people's court, extort money from "landlords" and distribute the booty among the poor.

As is typical of India's minority Brahmin Raj the Hindu-fundamentalist BJP government is continueing to neglect the core issues of landless farmers, injustice, casteism, usury and poverty, which have spawned the violent Naxalite movement In India and instead, like all Neo-Nazi fascists, continues to emphasize the police/military option. While the Andhra Pradesh governmnt searches for a police/military success the Naxalite Peoples War cadres are modifying their strategy and tactics. The Brahmin-caste dominated rulers are incapable of understanding what that great British poet, John Milton (1608-1674) meant when he wrote in Paradise Lost that, "Who overcomes / By force, hath overcome but half his foe."

The Naxalite movement has survived for over thirty five long years in rural India. It CANNOT be put down by force by anybody as long as injustice, hunger, lawlessness and high handedness rule the roost in the world largest Castocracy.

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