English

[A popular booklet published in 1991.]

Emergence of the CPI(ML): The Opening Up of a New Road

In the course of a protracted struggle between its opportunist and revolutionary wings, the Communist Party of India underwent its first split in 1964 and a new party was formed in the shape of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). It did not however take long for the revolutionary wing to realize that the leadership of the new party had been seized by the centrist trend of the movement, which was bent upon pursuing the same opportunist course. An inner-Party struggle ensued throughout the party. However, in a concentrated form, it was conducted by Comrade Charu Mazumdar through his famous Eight Documents, written between 1965 and 1967.

Marked by a nationwide outburst of mass movements, this was also the period that saw the first major turn in post-1947 Indian politics. In West Bengal, the CPI(M)-dominated United Front was swept to power and the party leadership completed its transition to the opportunist strategic course. As its antithesis, the revolutionary wing went beyond the parameters of inner-Party struggle and strove to orientate the mass struggles, the peasant movement in particular, towards the revolutionary strategic course. The peasant uprising in Naxalbari, organised by the Charu Mazumdar-led wing of the Party precipitated the first showdown between the two strategic perspectives and tactical lines within the CPI(M).

True to the tradition of social-democratic betrayal, the party in power responded with bullets, and the simmering revolt within the party spread like wildfire. With revolutionary communists throughout India detaching themselves from the party and rallying around the emerging centre, the All India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries (AICCCR), the CPI(M) suffered its first major split. The formation of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) on 22 April, 1969, gave an organised and centralised shape to this new centre. The CPI(ML) held its First Congress in Calcutta in May 1970 and Comrade Charu Mazumdar was elected the General Secretary of a 21-member Central Committee.

The history of the next two years is a saga of heroic sacrifices unparalleled in the annals of the Indian Communist movement. Following the pattern of the Chinese revolution serious attempts were made to develop guerrilla war, a red army and base areas in selected areas in the countryside. Backing it up was a powerful movement of students and youth, particularly in West Bengal and the city of Calcutta, which sought to challenge the entire foundations of the ideology of the Indian ruling classes that had begun to take shape with the advent of the so-called Bengal Renaissance.

However, despite its amazing revolutionary spirit and intensity, this first phase of the CPI(ML) movement could not provide detailed and comprehensive solutions to the complex problems of revolutionising Indian society. Amidst unprecedented state repression, the movement soon faced a disastrous setback.

The Mid-70s: Keeping the Party Alive amidst Splits and Confusions

By the middle of 1972, the Party had suffered almost total paralysis. The entire central leadership was virtually decimated. The remaining Party forces were all lying scattered and fragmented. And on the question of the Party’s line, there was confusion all around.

At this juncture, a new Central Committee was organised on 28 July, 1974, the second anniversary day of Comrade Charu Mazumdar’s martyrdom. The committee consisted of only three members — Comrade Jauhar, the General Secretary, and Comrades Vinod Mishra and Raghu (Swadesh Bhattacharya). This new CC enjoyed the allegiance of the reorganised State Committee of Bihar, which was at the helm of the growing peasant movement in several blocks of Bhojpur and Patna districts, the newly formed State Leading Team of West Bengal, which was struggling hard to keep alive the Party, and a section of comrades in Eastern U.P. and Delhi.

Soon, however, the Party again suffered a major setback as many of its leaders, cadres and fighters got killed in police encounters in Bihar. In November 1975, Comrade Jauhar, the Party General Secretary, too, died a martyr’s death fighting an enemy offensive in a Bhojpur village. Comrade VM then took over as the General Secretary, and in February 1976, the Second Party Congress was held in a village in Gaya district of Bihar. The Congress elected an 11-member Central Committee with Comrade VM as the General Secretary. It is this Party which has, in the course of time, come to be known, after the name of the Party Central Organ in English, as the Liberation group of CPI(ML).

Till 1977, we continued to follow essentially the old line with a particular emphasis on conducting armed guerrilla attacks on police and paramilitary forces and organising people’s political power through revolutionary committees. Successive efforts were made to step up the movement in Bhojpur and Patna districts of Bihar, in Naxalbari and in Bankura district of West Bengal and in Ghazipur and Ballia districts of U.P. But heroic actions and great sacrifices notwithstanding, the line was clearly left-adventurist in character, and it failed to unleash mass initiative on any significant scale. Neither could the Party consolidate the gains of our tremendous efforts.

For the people all over the country, those were the dark days of extreme repression institutionalised through the Emergency. And our heroic resistance, particularly in Bhojpur, objectively became a part of the anti-Emergency people’s movement. Theoretically too, the Party did adhere to the concept of building an anti-Congress united front, though this could not be translated into practice.

However, at a time when the CPI had aligned itself with the Congress, the CPI(M) was rendered totally ineffective and other factions of the CPI(ML) were lying in complete disarray, ours was the only group in the entire Left camp which had kept the red flag flying even in the trying conditions of extreme repression. Naturally, when the curtain was finally lifted in 1977, the red star over Bhojpur and our small group drew the attention of revolutionaries all over the country and also of the rejuvenated Indian media. Meanwhile, Party work had spread to Assam and Tripura and now comrades from Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala too joined the Party. By 1979, our Party had taken on an all-India character.

Drawing New Strength through Rectification of Old Mistakes

In 1978, the Party launched a rectification movement. It had all begun with the limited purpose of correcting just the style of work, but the spirit of rectification did not spare the political line. Great changes began to occur in the Party line and practice which were formalised in a Special Party Conference held in a village of Bhojpur in July 1979. The conference decided to initiate open mass activities through mass organisations.

At this juncture, the polemics within the movement was sharpened between the two trends represented by our organisation and the group known as the Provisional Central Committee (PCC). The PCC, an opportunist conglomeration of various factions, had won a lot of acclaim and support for the alacrity with which it had started rectifying all past mistakes. Its central figure, Mr.Satya Narain Singh, had deserted the movement in 1970 itself and begun to hobnob with bourgeois politicians. During the Emergency he advocated tailing behind Jayaprakash Narayan; in 1977 he worked out a deal with Charan Singh, the then Union Home Minister, asking the Naxalite prisoners to come out of jails by signing bonds abjuring violence; and finally ended up as a champion of unity with anti-Congress kulaks and big bourgeoisie.

We pointed out from the very beginning that the whole premise of PCC is liquidationist and what it actually intends to ‘rectify’ is the essential revolutionary spirit of the movement. We also predicted that this opportunist alliance of disparate factions would not last long. However, as the PCC put up a show of unity and initiated long overdue changes in forms of struggle and organisation, it did succeed initially in attracting a large number of revolutionary forces to its fold. But soon it got trapped in a maze of absurd propositions supplied by its own self-styled theoreticians and split into more factions than it had united.

Meanwhile, the unified and organised rectification campaign undertaken by our Party had begun to deliver results. With the initiation of various open forms of mass activities, the militant resistance movement of the peasantry started reaching new heights both in terms of expansion and intensity, and revolutionary elements started crossing over from the PCC to our Party. That was the end of the challenge from PCC.

The other liquidationist exercise was made by Kanu Sanyal, an important leader of Naxalbari. He openly denounced the CPI(ML) and its heritage and pleaded for a revival of the pre-CPI(ML) coordination phase. He could however mobilise only some leftover elements and could never pose any serious challenge to our organisation.

It is in the struggle against these liquidationist onslaughts that we eventually emerged as the biggest group of the CPI(ML).

Formation of IPF: A New Leap in Political Assertion

Meanwhile, the Party had started feeling a desperate need to assert its presence on the national political scene. In the wake of the failure of the first non-Congress experiment at the Centre and the restoration of the Indira regime, there had begun a national debate on a national political alternative, and we decided to launch a mass political organisation to intervene in this ongoing debate from a revolutionary democratic premise.

Serious attempts were made at both bilateral and multilateral levels to seek the cooperation and participation of other communist revolutionary (CR) organisations in building such a forum. A meeting of thirteen CR organisations including almost all the major factions of CPI(ML) was convened by our Party in 1981. That remains the first and last attempt for unity of the movement. At the same time, we embarked upon large-scale interactions with the emerging intermediate forces of non-party mass movements. All these efforts finally culminated in the formation of the Indian People’s Front through a three-day conference from April 24 to 26, 1982, in Delhi.

In December 1982, the Party organised its Third Congress in a village in the Giridih district of Bihar. This Congress was fairly representative in character and it elected a Central Committee of 17 full and 8 alternative members. The CC re-elected Comrade VM as the General Secretary. After a fierce debate, the Congress gave its green signal to the tactics of participation in elections. However, it reaffirmed the Party’s resolve to grasp the peasant resistance struggles as the key link, and to keep all our parliamentary activities subordinated to extra-parliamentary mass struggles. The 1985 assembly elections in Bihar were the first polls contested by the Party, of course, under the IPF banner.

The formation of IPF opened up new vistas of political initiative and advance before the Party. Organising mass rallies and demonstrations in various state capitals on almost all important political issues soon became an integral part of our Party practice. From the realm of abstraction the Party had taken its first major step into the realm of concrete political action, drawing for the first time the broad masses in political struggles based on the Party’s minimum programme. While the communist party’s leadership over the mass political organisation (MPO) was ensured through the party’s political guidance and by despatching staunch communists to various leadership positions, the MPO facilitated broader interactions with various streams of social and political forces, thereby helping the party in extending its influence and broadening its own social base.

As a particular form of united front in the shape of a popular people’s revolutionary party, the IPF symbolises one of our Party’s rare achievements in the annals of the Indian communist movement, both in the realm of theory and practice. It has earned its own place in Indian politics, and all practical political activities of the Party are routed through it.

Fourth Party Congress and the Call for Left confederation

The Fourth Party Congress was held in January 1988 in a village in Hazaribagh district of Bihar. In keeping with the changing situation and its own enhanced understanding, the Party radically revised various outdated ideas and stereo-typed positions, thus clearing the way for entering and reshaping the mainstream of Indian politics. Giving up the tiresome phrase of unity of communist revolutionaries, that is the Naxalite groups, it resolved to initiate interaction with the main left parties and advanced the call for a left and democratic confederation. The Congress elected a Central Committee of 21 members, and the CC, in its turn, elected a 5-member Polit Bureau with Comrade VM as the General Secretary.

The CPI(ML) movement of the ’70s had by now split into two distinct trends. One, represented by our Party, retrieved Marxism-Leninism through a thorough and consistent struggle against anarchist deviations, both in theory and practice, and brought the Party back to the course of the communist legacy, revolutionary mass struggles and full-fledged political initiatives. The other, represented by a host of groups like the Maoist Communist Centre, the Second Central Committee, Party Unity and some factions of PCC perfected anarchist deviations into a full-fledged theoretical framework. Within the CPI(ML) movement as a whole, this anarchist challenge has consolidated itself in the last few years and poses the main challenge before the Party’s advance.

However, within our Party, in the course of struggle against anarchist deviations we had to wage a serious struggle against liquidationism. The liquidationist trend raised its ugly head immediately after the Fourth Congress. Beginning from a right capitulationist standpoint, this trend tried to obliterate the Party’s essential difference with the opportunist Left. But it did not stop here and soon moved over to the point of obliteration of all differences between revolutionary and liberal democracy. Encouraged by the developments in Soviet Union and East Europe, it even demanded renunciation of Marxism and the Communist Party itself and advocated an out and out reformist programme. Its chief proponent is currently engaged in social investigations to produce a databank to help developmental programmes of the government and private agencies.

Our Party resolutely fought back this liquidationist tendency and frustrated all attempts to split the Party. Truly speaking, the Party witnessed a qualitative development in the years after the Fourth Congress. In the 1989 parliamentary elections it succeeded in sending the first Marxist-Leninist representative to the parliament and in the assembly elections of 1990 it was able to form a sizeable legislature group in the Bihar Assembly.

Most notable has been the success of the IPF-sponsored mass rally in the capital on 8 October, 1990. It has reinforced the undying relevance of revolutionary Marxism and illustrated the growing stature of the revolutionary Left in the national political scene. The massive demonstration of lakhs of people has also triggered off a realignment of forces in the Left camp. It has brought to the fore the struggle between the two tactical lines and the two premises of Left unity: whether the Left should count upon the bourgeoisie and bourgeois institutions for a democratic transformation of the Indian society and polity, or it should strive to take the lead itself and rely exclusively upon mass struggles.

A large number of forces from the CPI and CPI(M) in Bihar, UP and West Bengal are crossing over to the banner of revolutionary democracy, while formal relations are being developed with almost all the main parties of the Left, and avenues explored for developing joint actions and a left confederation.

Grasping the Basic Differences between the CPI(M) and CPI(ML)

It may be useful here to reiterate the basic differences between the CPI(M) and our Party. The opportunist course in the Indian communist movement is identified first by its characterisation of the Indian bourgeoisie. In the garb of various kinds of jugglery of words and phrases, it essentially emphasises ‘national’ character of the Indian bourgeoisie, thereby highlighting the latter’s potential for leading anti-imperialist and anti-feudal struggles and effecting a democratic transformation of the Indian society. This theory has led to exaggeration of contradictions between the private and public sectors, and advocacy of tailing behind different bourgeois-landlord parties, sometimes in the name of an anti-fascist front and at other times in the name of democratic or secular fronts.

In the international arena, the principal contradiction, according to the opportunist course is the contradiction between (U.S.) imperialism and (Soviet) socialism. Extended to the domestic scene, this principal global contradiction only rationalises the theory of the so-called anti-imperialist character of the Indian bourgeoisie, for the latter has always maintained close ties with the Soviet bloc.

Thirdly, and as a corollary to its understanding of the Indian bourgeoisie’s character, the opportunist course refuses to organise the broad masses of labouring peasantry as the main force of democratic transformation. On the contrary, it has developed an understanding with the kulak lobby, an understanding that lies behind its stable political relationship with various regional parties.

Finally, as the offshoot of the first three points, the opportunist course heavily relies upon the existing bourgeois institutions for bringing about urgent social reforms in the country. This has paralysed the opportunist Left with what Lenin calls parliamentary cretinism.

In contrast, the revolutionary course has always emphasised the comprador character of the Indian bourgeoisie, underlining thereby that it is the task of the proletariat to lead the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal struggles and that reliance upon the bourgeoisie would take us nowhere. Its understanding of the primacy of the contradiction between imperialism and the Third World has also prompted it to test the ‘anti-imperialism’ of the Indian bourgeoisie on the independent touchstone of regional solidarity and commitment to the Third World cause, rather than by the degree of its closeness with the Soviet bloc. It views agrarian revolution as the axis of democratic revolution and puts the main emphasis on organising militant mass struggles of agrarian labourers and labouring peasants. And in opposition to parliamentary cretinism, it relies primarily upon extra-parliamentary struggles.

These are the essential contours of the struggle between the opportunist and revolutionary wings. We can call it a continuation of the polemics between the Menshevik and Bolshevik tactics in Indian conditions.

The CPI(M)’s development from 1964 to this day has only confirmed its journey along the opportunist course. With the CPI making some tactical adjustments in its positions and international differences taking a back-seat, and the two parties moving in unison on almost all major questions, the very rationale of the 1964 split is today faced with a big question mark. On the other hand, the CPI(M) is facing a fresh round of dissension and almost all the dissident forces coming out of the party are accusing the party leadership of deviating from the 1964 programme, thereby depriving the ’64 split of all its political rationale.

The revolutionary position, on the other hand, was stretched to the opposite extreme. The comprador character of the Indian bourgeoisie was extended to mean a total rejection of any tactical alliance with any section of the bourgeoisie. The international outlook, too, suffered a distortion with blind adherence to the theory of three worlds, which was raised to the absurd height of prescribing a global front against Soviet social-imperialism in collaboration with all sorts of pro-US forces, including even the US itself under certain circumstances. Agrarian revolution was visualised strictly along the Chinese lines, and primacy of extra-parliamentary struggles was interpreted as permanent exclusion of the entire stream of parliamentary struggle. These perceptions did work to an extent in a situation of revolutionary upswing, but desperate attempts to stick to these slogans even under vastly different circumstances of a real retreat of the movement could produce nothing more than empty anarchist phrase-mongering.

Multifarious Activities and Growing Resumption of Open Party Practice

To take up the challenge of defending Marxism-Leninism in the face of the continuing deep crisis of socialism and renewed bourgeois offensive, the Party in its July 1990 Special Conference in Delhi has decided to resume open functioning after nearly twenty years. Accordingly, its central and state organs have started appearing openly; Party banners are displayed in open rallies and demonstrations, seminars are being organised in defence of Marxism and a widespread campaign has been launched to impart primary Marxist education to more and more people and recruit large number of elements emerging out of mass struggles into the Party.

The Party has also launched its all-India trade union wing named the All India Central Council of Trade Unions (AICCTU) and is planning to coordinate the activities of its state-level peasant associations through a national body. On the student front, a national-level organisation has already been initiated in the form of All India Students’ Association (AISA) while on women and cultural fronts too, building national-level organisations is on the agenda for the coming years.

The Party has also built up a propaganda network through its own organs, through IPF organs and through popular democratic periodicals like the Patna-based Hindi weekly Samkaleen Janmat. In 1986, it had brought out a Report from the Flaming Fields of Bihar — an analytical review of the developing revolutionary peasant movement of Bihar in the light of changing agrarian and social conditions in the state. The book was widely acclaimed in revolutionary and academic circles in India and abroad. Currently, the Party is engaged in making an in-depth study of the history of the Indian communist movement, which it proposes to publish in five volumes.

The Party has developed a mass political organisation called the Autonomous State Demand Committee (ASDC) in the national minority region of Karbi Anglong in Assam, and guides all its important activities including the running of the autonomous district administration. While we pay particular attention to the special problems of national minorities and appreciate the genuine grievances of various nationalities, dalits and backward castes, and religious minorities, we are strongly opposed to the marginalisation of the overall movement and strive for the unity of the overwhelming majority of the Indian people and of India as a country.

The Party continues to pay the highest attention to building revolutionary peasant struggles and organising armed resistance against the attacks by private armies of the landlords and kulaks as well as the state. Constantly raising the level of revolutionary consciousness, mobilisation and militancy of the masses at the grassroots is the motto of our Party and it is the only guarantee against all kinds of opportunist, social-democratic and bureaucratic deviations.

Fraternal Ties Based on Self-reliance and Mutual Non-Interference

The Party has maintained close fraternal relations with the Communist Party of Nepal (Marxist-Leninist) from the mid-1970s onward. These relations have been based upon the spirit of mutual respect and learning from each other while strictly maintaining the policy of mutual non-interference and our commitment to opposing all expressions of Indian hegemony.

At the invitation of the Chinese Communist Party two delegations of our Party visited China in 1979 and 1980. We have also been maintaining comradely relations with the Communist Party and democratic organisations of the Philippines and Peru. There are now greater prospects for expanding our relations with friends abroad and we do look forward to developing warm friendship and solidarity with communist parties and revolutionary democratic movements across the world.

However, we have always upheld and shall continue to uphold the cardinal principle of self-reliance. We have consistently and consciously refused and shall continue to refuse all kinds of financial support from any foreign source or from various foreign-funded domestic voluntary organisations. We refuse to be dictated to by any party and have always worked out our plans, policies and actions exclusively on the basis of our own study of the Indian conditions.

CPI(ML)-Liberation: True Inheritor of India’s Revolutionary Communist Legacy

In view of the facts that the CPI(ML)-Liberation is the only CPI(ML) group

(a) which has maintained its continuity and unity since its reorganisation in 1974;

(b) which has got an all-India organisational network covering Assam, Tripura, West Bengal, southern Orissa (Koraput-Ganjam area), coastal Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, southern Kerala, Bangalore, Bombay, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar;

(c) which has held regular Party Congresses and Conferences up to regional and district levels and is run by duly elected bodies at different levels;

(d) which conducts regular Party education and rectification and consolidation campaigns to raise the level of consciousness of Party ranks and ensure their increasing involvement in the running of various Party affairs;

(e) which has regular central organs in English and Hindi backed by a network of state organs in regional languages, Party pamphlets and various periodicals;

(f) which practises various forms of struggle ranging from armed resistance to parliamentary agitation and runs a whole set of organisations varying from the secret and the underground to the widest possible open mass organisations, conducts mass activities on all fronts and in all spheres of life and undertakes joint action with political forces of different kinds, combining them all into a growing current of mass struggles; and

(g) which maintains fraternal and friendly relations with communist and democratic movements of several countries,

we claim ourselves to be the true inheritors of the revolutionary wing of the Indian communist movement in general and the CPI(ML) in particular, as the Party, representing and acting on behalf of the CPI(ML).

[Excerpts from the popular outline of Party history was published in three parts in May, June and July 1993 issues of Liberation.]

Amidst the Great Debate in the international communist movement in the early ’60s, the first division occurred in the CPI in 1964 and the CPI(M) was born. Popularly the CPI was known to be pro-Russian and CPI(M) as pro-China. The CPI was characterised by its line of national democracy which meant that anti-imperialist anti-monopoly sections of the the Indian bourgeoisie — the national bourgeoisie represented by the Nehru-led Congress — shall take the lead in India’s democratic transformation and the Communist Party’s task is to back it against the monopoly sections of the Indian bourgeoisie and, at best, to play the role of a pressure group against the vacillation of the national bourgeoisie. The CPI(M), on the other hand, was characterised by its line of people’s democracy which rejected any alliance with the Nehru Congress, putting stress on building popular mass movements, and peasant struggles in particular.

Regarding the path of revolution, the CPI advocated gaining a majority in Parliament as the only viable option, the CPI(M) accepted only a limited role for parliamentary democracy where communists may assume governmental power at most in certain states. And such power, the CPI(M) argued, should be utilised to make people conscious of the limitations of the bourgeois state system and thus to sharpen the class struggle. Hence the slogan "Left government is the weapon of class struggle."

Revolutionary communists were naturally all part of the CPI(M) when the division came in 1964. Since its inception, however, the CPI(M) leadership started exhibiting vacillations on each of these questions and therefore an inner-Party struggle ensued right from the beginning. The well known Eight Writings of Comrade Charu Mazumdar best epitomise this struggle from 1965 to 1967. With the formation of the first United Front government in West Bengal, revolutionary aspirations of the rank and file rose everywhere and land struggles broke out in different parts of West Bengal. In Naxalbari area in particular, this struggle rose to higher levels and confronted the state machinery. Under threats from the central government, the CPI(M)-dominated government resorted to bloody suppression of the movement in order to save the government. This sparked off protests throughout the Party. While several state committees like those of U.P., Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir walked out of the Party, many others like AP, Bihar and West Bengal suffered major splits at all levels.

Communist revolutionary forces first organised themselves in the All-India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries (AICCCR) which later evolved into the CPI(ML). The CPI(M) suffered yet another split in the early ’80s when followers of the erstwhile general secretary, P. Sundaraiya, disassociated themselves from the Party to form the MCPI. The CPI(M) continues to face minor splits and every time the question revolves around the 1964 programme. In its first phase, the CPI(ML) began with the rejection of all bourgeois institutions and gave a call to wage armed struggle for building base areas on the classical pattern of Chinese revolution. The Indian communist movement had long been debating the relevance of the Russian path vs. the Chinese path, and this time it was decided to clinch the issue once and for all without stopping midway as in the wake of the Telangana struggle.

The CPI(ML)-led armed struggle in the late ’60s and early ’70s will be remembered in the history of the Indian communist movement as the most serious attempt so far to organise armed revolution in India. This saga of valour where thousands and thousands of Party leaders and cadres, including the topmost leadership sacrificed their lives at the altar of the Indian revolution forms an important heritage of Indian communist movement that must be cherished for the sake of future attempts. The armed struggle however suffered serious setbacks and the Party too got spilt into umpteen factions. All attempts to revive the movement along the old lines and also to unify the Party proved futile. Several factions got submerged into the mire of opportunism and degeneration while a few evolved into full-fledged anarchist groups, People’s War being the foremost among them. It was only our faction which kept aflame the torch of Naxalbari in Bhojpur of Bihar in the most difficult periods and when virtually all other groups got disintegrated, it reorganised itself step by step and after a painstaking struggle for over a decade revived the Party and the movement once again on a national scale.

Our Party, basing itself on Marxist dialectics, had learnt that a movement is never revived on the basis of old slogans. The Party also made a deep study of the new phase the movement had entered and took particular note of the fact of its reemergence in Bihar, a Hindi-speaking area. In the course of reorganisation, the Party developed and adopted a set of flexible policies and tactics, made gradual and cautious adjustments with bourgeois institutions and initiated several new and bold experiments. To get rid of serious anarchist tendencies, the Party emphasised its roots in the Indian communist movement and decided to carry forward the struggle between two tactical lines within the mainstream left and communist movement in a new form.

To develop effective resistance against the opportunist tactical line, it has also displayed the flexibility of appropriating within the revolutionary framework certain popular slogans of the mainstream Left. Our Party has done it successfully while upholding its principles, preserving its independence and maintaining its unity. This has facilitated a greater interaction with other parties of the Left and forging closer ties with them. In the process, left ranks, disgusted with their opportunist leadership, have been increasingly coming under our fold.

With the Calcutta Congress, our Party has reached a new stage and a much greater role is demanded from it in the field of Marxist theory as well as in terms of unification of the Indian left and communist movement and most importantly in consolidating the left core within nationwide democratic struggles.

Review of CPI(M) and CPI(ML) Positions on Major Questions

International Communist Movement: The CPI(M) which had started with a pro-China identity, soon developed the theory of equi-distance from both Soviet Union and China. Though no socialist camp existed after the Sino-Soviet split, it continued to uphold the socialist camp led by Soviet Union. The Party did oppose Khruschev revisionism but it refused to accept Mao’s theory regarding dangers of capitalist restoration in socialist countries through a process of peaceful evolution. The CPI(M) went on supporting the superpower status of Soviet Union and its social imperialist attacks like invasion of Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan. This "export of revolution" was justified by CPI(M) leaders as proletarian internationalism and they moved quite close to the Brezhnev regime, considered by far the most corrupt regime in the history of the Soviet Union.

It rejected all criticism of the Soviet Union as imperialist propaganda and harped constantly on the theory of CIA machinations and other external threats to Soviet socialism. Having rejected on the theoretical plane Mao’s brilliant analysis of peaceful evolution towards capitalism from within the socialist society, the Party perhaps had little other option. But all its theoretical jugglery stood exposed in the face of the collapse of socialism in Soviet Union. And it was not merely a collapse of socialism, the whole Soviet empire collapsed like a house of cards in face of the nationalist upsurge in the East European countries.

The collapse of Soviet Union has also brought about the collapse of the CPI(M)’s excellently balanced theory of equi-distance and the party has now moved closer to China. And in relation to China it is again repeating the same ‘proletarian solidarity’ where an incident like the Tiananmen tragedy is described and understood as resulting from external causes and CIA machinations.

Though the CPI(M) leaders now sometimes talk of certain internal causes behind the Soviet collapse, they have singularly failed to grasp the dynamics of capitalist restoration. At the level of practical politics, they have not been able to grasp the crucial link between hegemonic acts of the Soviet superpower and its eventual disintegration along nationalist-ethnic lines.

In the Great Debate, our Party firmly supported Mao’s positions against Khruschev’s revisionism and in true internationalist spirit it supported a socialist China. Our support to China may have suffered from over-enthusiasm but it had nothing to do with any sort of export or import of revolution, for Mao always sharply criticised the Soviet Union on this very question. Similarity, our criticism of the Soviet Union and its social-imperialist acts may have suffered from excesses in describing the whole system as social-imperialism and in holding the Soviet superpower as the more dangerous between the two superpowers. However, our criticism of Soviet Union on the question of capitalist restoration as well as our opposition to its hegemonic activities has been vindicated by subsequent history.

China, today, is not engaged in any debate over Marxist fundamentals, nor is it facing any imperialist encirclement. The Indian ruling classes too are no longer hostile to China. It is engaged in new experiments of building socialism which need to be studied carefully and critically. Moreover, after the demise of Soviet Union the question of socialist democracy has assumed much greater importance and a socialist system today must excel over bourgeois democracy. For all these reasons, we believe in judging China independently as one of the socialist countries making experiments with socialist economy suited to Chinese conditions. While broadly supporting Chinese socialism, we do reserve the right to criticise one or the other of its specific policies, particularly on the question of socialist democracy. We have definitely and correctly moved somewhat away from China. We believe however that this may set a new pattern of fraternal relations among Communist parties, more frank and more open.

In the new world situation, the general line of international communist movement (ICM) can only be that of extending support to socialist countries and the working class movements in developed capitalist countries, opposition to imperialism in general and US imperialism in particular, and upholding the decisive role of the liberation struggles of Third World countries. The course of events has compelled communists throughout the world to veer more or less around such a general line of ICM.

Two Tactics of People’s Democracy in India

In the early ’60s a great debate raged in the Indian communist movement regarding the programme of the Indian revolution popularly known as the struggle between NDR (National Democratic Revolution) and PDR (People’s Democratic Revolution). The line of national democratic revolution was influenced externally by the Khruschev thesis of non-capitalist path of development and internally by Nehru’s espousal of mixed economy. This line, which relied on the national bourgeoisie’s (i.e. Nehru-led Congress’) anti-imperialist, anti-monopoly, anti-feudal role and hoped for India’s eventual transition to socialism with the help of passive Soviet aid to the Indian public sector, was officially adopted by the CPI and it turned the Party into an appendage of the Congress. In contrast to this the line of PDR insisted on taking the Congress as the main enemy, considered Nehru’s mixed economy to be nothing but a euphemism for capitalism and emphasised that strong feudal remnants still remained the main obstacle to India’s development. The CPI(M) leadership opted for PDR but its positions were vague from the very beginning. For example, it said that with the attainment of India’s freedom one stage of democratic revolution was over. This can only mean that the anti-imperialist aspect of democratic revolution is basically completed whereas the anti-feudal aspect still remains. It was this formulation that led to the party’s branding of India’s foreign policy as progressive with internal policies remaining reactionary. The party, therefore, supported India’s foreign policies for a long time, more so as these policies coincided with the Soviet foreign policy perceptions. It was only when the myth cherished by the party about the Soviet Union taking on the might of America collapsed like a house of cards that its illusions about India’s anti-imperialist policy too received a cruel setback. Since the ’80s, India has been increasingly taking openly pro-imperialist positions in foreign policy. While the CPI(M) finds itself hard-pressed to explain this transformation, these overt changes in India’s foreign policy have firmly established the CPI(ML) position that anti-imperialism continues to remain the foremost task of India’s democratic revolution.

The revolutionary section in CPI refused to get carried away by the nationalist hysteria against China in 1962 and even in 1965 during the Indo-Pakistan war, left communists condemned the ruling classes. However, since the 1971 Bangladesh war the CPI(M) has turned an ardent supporter of the lndian ruling classes’ approach towards neighbouring countries, particularly towards Pakistan. It refuses to recognise that being the biggest country in the South Asian region, India does cherish regional hegemonic ambitions. Supporting the chauvinism of one’s ruling classes has always been the most characteristic feature of revisionism everywhere. A firm and consistent opposition to the regional hegemonism of the Indian ruling classes must therefore be an integral item on the agenda of India’s democratic revolution and it goes without saying that a party pursuing national chauvinistic policy can never lead the democratic revolution.

The CPI(ML) has all along opposed all manifestations of Indian domination over its smaller neighbouring countries and we consider this as the litmus test of proletarian internationalism, a test much more crucial than supporting Cuba, South Africa or Palestine.

The CPI(M)’s formulation about the Indian bourgeoisie was that it is increasingly compromising with imperialism. Implicit here was the assumption that the Indian bourgeoisie is essentially an independent bourgeoisie with only traits of vacillation and compromise. Like the CPI it also harboured the illusion of the public sector playing the role of a countervailing force to the private sector controlled by the big bourgeoisie and started supporting nationalisation measures, like bank nationalisation resorted to by Indira Gandhi, as something of a struggle against the big bourgeoisie.

These positions led to political cooperation with the Congress at several critical junctures, like siding with Indira Congress against the Syndicate, supporting the Congress candidate in the last presidential election, and the recent advocacy of an anti-BJP secular front with the Congress(I). With the new economic policy of the Indian government pursued at the behest of the World Bank and IMF, questions were raised once again within the CPI(M) about the essential character of the Indian bourgeoisie. In its last congress, a proposal even came to designate the Indian bourgeoisie as comprador, which was rejected by the leadership.

The party’s whole opportunism revolves around the formulation of "utilising the contradictions within and among the ruling classes to change the social balance of forces". The scope of this utilisation was highly exaggerated, so much so that it became the party’s main focus. This has led to the party’s submergence deep into the quagmire of bourgeois politics and political intrigues, and its important party leaders remain busy negotiating with and mediating between the upper layer of bourgeois politicians.

In the realm of tactics, the CPI(M) paid the greatest of attention to developing alliances with regional and centrist opposition parties like DMK, Telugu Desam, Janata Dal, Akali Dal etc. At the altar of such alliances, it sacrificed the struggles of poor peasants against the kulak classes who form the main social basis of such parties. Nowhere, therefore, is the party to be found in the forefront of either anti-feudal struggles or the newly developing class struggles in the countryside. The very basis of the people’s democratic revolution has thus been thoroughly undermined. The whole thrust of the party’s democratic programme has just been reduced to general democratic phrases like federalism, more power to the states, decentralisation of power to panchayats and so on and so forth.

The CPI(ML), on the other hand, redefined people’s democracy on the basis of Mao’s guideline of New Democracy. It characterised India as a semi-colony, meaning thereby that although imperialism does not directly control the state power in India, it still has enough clout to influence and direct the policies of the Indian state. And it does this through the Indian bourgeoisie which is basically dependent in nature. All its relative independence – its bargaining capacity between different imperialist powers — is subject to this overall framework of dependence. It has therefore been the firm belief of the CPI(ML) since its inception that the Indian bourgeoisie is no longer capable of bringing about any substantial democratic transformation and the proletariat should take the leadership in its own hand. Ours has been a constant endeavour to expose the hypocrisy of the Indian rulers, both in their external relations as well as internal policies. This has enabled our Party to maintain the strict line of demarcation with the Indian ruling classes and to emerge as the champion of consistent democracy.

The CPI(ML) has all along put utmost emphasis on anti-feudal struggles in the countryside, as well as on the class struggle of agrarian labour and poor peasants against kulaks in the post-green revolution phase.

The CPI(ML) has taken up all issues of democracy from civil rights to federalism and has sought to build the broadest possible democratic alliance. But while so doing, it has always laid stress on maintaining its class independence and political initiative.

In our current polemics with the CPI(M), our sharp criticism is against tailism and our consistent emphasis is on independent left assertion and on left unity based on class actions of workers and peasants — these are not questions of abstract principles or just some tactical measures. These are the essential ingredients of our preparation for People’s Democratic Revolution and unless one grasps this, one can never grasp the struggle between the two tactics of people’s democracy in India.

Parliamentary Cretinism Vs. Parliamentary Struggles

The debate among Marxists and revisionists over the peaceful transfer of power through obtaining a majority in bourgeois parliament is quite old. This debate was supposed to have been settled long back, after Lenin effectively demolished the arguments of Bernstien and Mensheviks. Moreover, in real life too, whereas revisionists in Western Europe degenerated into social-democrats and turned into appendages of the bourgeois political system, the communists in Russia and China led successful revolutions. The question was, however, revived once again in the early ’60s by Khruschev under the pretext of the ‘new situation’ characterised by a radical change in balance of forces with the emergence of a mighty socialist camp. It was argued that socialism, thus, was quite capable of defeating imperialism in a peaceful competition and therefore new opportunities had also opened up before communists to strive for a peaceful transition of power through parliamentary means. The threat of a nuclear war was also invoked to justify the ‘peaceful competition’ and the ‘peaceful transition’.

In India, the CPI was found to be a readymade taker of this line of thought and it officially adopted what is called the parliamentary path where sole emphasis is placed on winning more and more number of seats in parliament and eventually to gain a majority and thus power. Parliamentary majority remains as elusive to CPI as ever. Meanwhile the very citadel of ‘peaceful competition’ has crumbled and CPI has virtually been reduced to a social-democratic party.

Marxist-Leninists the world over rejected the parliamentary path propounded by Khruschev and in India this had been a major factor behind CPI(M)’s split from CPI. CPI(M) advocated combination of parliamentary and extra-parliamentary struggles. It rejected the possibility of gaining power through a parliamentary majority. Gaining power in certain states through elections was considered a plausible option. The condition was that the party must go into the government only where it was the leading force or at least capable of influencing the course of the government. The governmental power here was distinguished from the state-power and the specific task of the party was to explain to people about the limitations of the governmental power within the bourgeois state system. It was presumed that this will enable the party to raise the political consciousness of the masses and prepare them for an onslaught against the bourgeois state. It was precisely in this sense that a left government will serve as the weapon of class struggle.

Experiences of the communist government in Kerala in 1957 had shown that the central power would not allow such a government to function and this would further provide an opportunity to expose the hypocrisy of the parliamentary system and, thus to clear the ground for people’s democratic revolution.

This was how the party ranks conceived the division between CPI and CPI(M) as regards parliamentary struggles.

The CPI(M), riding on the crest of a powerful mass movement, and amidst revolutionary rhetoric did come to power in West Bengal in 1967. The coalition proved short-lived. The success in 1969 too could not last long and the state was put under a reign of white terror till 1977. The present Left Front government came into power in 1977 due to a peculiar turn of events in national politics, when ironically mass movements in the state were subdued and the CPI(M)’s party organisation was in an immobile state. Since then in the last 16 years or so the ruling Cong(I) at the Centre has stuck to the rules of the parliamentary game and there has hardly been an occasion when any serious attempt has been made by the central power to overthrow the Left Front government. Slogans such as ‘Left Front government is the weapon of class struggle’ and the rhetoric of confrontation with the Centre have been silently dropped from the party’s vocabulary. Instead of exposing the hypocrisy of the bourgeois parliament, the emphasis has now shifted to extolling the virtues of ‘people’s representative institutions’ and highlighting the unique model of retaining power for such a long spell within the bourgeois state system. The way the party is flirting with various bourgeois formations to increase the number of seats in assemblies and parliament, and even contemplating the share of power in central government through the NF-LF combination, clearly shows that the party is well entrenched in the parliamentary path.

Revolutionary communists at Naxalbari raised the banner of revolt with the first signs of CPI(M)’s parliamentary cretinism becoming apparent, and subsequently CPI(ML) was organised which rejected the parliamentary path. Within the CPI(ML), however, the debate over rejecting parliamentary struggles altogether had never stopped. Incidentally, this has also been a major contentious issue among Marxist-Leninists all through the communist movement in the international arena. The CPI(ML) has always rejected the parliamentary path, i.e. seizure of power through obtaining majority in the bourgeois parliament. But on the utilisation of parliamentary struggles it has evolved, in due course, a comprehensive and flexible approach. The CPI(ML) bases itself on the Marxist-Leninist premise of combining parliamentary struggle with extra-parliamentary struggle, where the latter plays the primary role. At the same time, as Marxist-Leninist tactics, the Party neither rules out boycott of elections in the situation of revolutionary upsurge nor negates the possibility of according elections a very special role in times of retreat. More so, when Indian objective conditions do provide the possibility of forming communist-led governments in this or that state, it is imperative for the Party to explore this opportunity and provide an alternative model of a left government that shall really function as a weapon of class struggle.

In the debate on Russian Vs. Chinese path, the Party opted for the Chinese path, which meant that the red political power should be estabilished in the countryside and through building a powerful red army to encircle and eventually liberate the cities. As the Party embarked upon this course, it was obvious that participation in elections was out of the question for the entire stage of revolution and thus election boycott was given a strategic connotation.

After more than a decade of experiments with the Chinese path, the Party summed up its experiences and came to the conclusion that it was wrong to blindly copy the classical Chinese model in Indian conditions. The point is to integrate Marxism-Leninism and Mao’s thought to concrete Indian conditions. As there was no parliament in China there was no question of parliamentary struggles there. Indian conditions are different and therefore while it was correct to boycott elections in the earlier phase of advance and in the particular context of charting out a new revolutionary course, Indian communists cannot and should not reject the parliamentary struggle forever. Thus the election boycott was made a tactical question. The Party continues to put primary emphasis on the countryside and on developing the militant resistance of peasantry. In a certain political situation such vast areas backed by the might of people’s armed forces may develop into parallel power centres, drastically altering the balance of forces at the national scale.

The Party firmly rejects the parliamentary path and in its recently held 5th Congress it has reiterated that in the final analysis only armed struggle shall decide the outcome of Indian revolution. Based on this fundamental premise, the Party will continue to experiment with various forms of combinations of parliamentary and extra-parliamentary struggles in different stages of revolution, in order to chart out the Indian path of revolution.

[From the Political-Organisational Report adopted at the Third Party Congress, December 1982.]

The question which has raised the fiercest of debates is the question of "annihilation" as formulated by Comrade Charu Mazumdar. It is argued that there is no Marxism in this, and that it is simply vulgar individual terrorism, which has only brought about losses. It is also said that armed struggle and mass struggle must be combined and that, therefore, the ‘annihilation line’ must be condemned.

Let us first deal with the question of combining armed struggle and mass struggle. The general repetition of this phrase as a panacea has no relevance for Marxists engaged in practical work. It remains a historical fact that all mass movements acquire newer forms in the course of their advance — constantly discarding the old and creating the new — and transformations as well as new alignments of new and old forms are thus observed. Our duty as communists is to take an active part in this process so as to develop suitable forms of struggle. As Lenin says, while not denying even a bit the necessity of force and terror on principle, we shall have to develop such forms of struggle in which direct participation of the masses has been assumed and this participation has been ensured.

Coming out of the bounds of neo-revisionism after the heroic Naxalbari struggle, and after engaging in some two years of revolutionary practice to build mass movements, communist revolutionaries of India faced such a situation and longed for a new form of struggle. It was in this context that, in the heat of the Srikakulam struggle, ‘annihilation’ based on mass support was formulated. This sought to combine the beginnings of armed struggle with the step-by-step mobilisation of the masses in struggles. And it was this basic orientation in Comrade Charu Mazumdar’s line, that of combining armed actions with mass struggles — with one aspect predominating at one time — which runs through his entire political line from the pre-Naxalbari days to the end of his life. Evaluating the successes and failures of his efforts is one thing, and very important too, for any real advance. But calling him a ‘terrorist’ is the height of absurdity and nonsense, and betrays a servile attitude. In the overall perspective of mass support this particular form of struggle, which was to be combined with mass movements, actually aimed at an areawise seizure of power. This struggle led to the formation of many peasant squads in different parts of India and also to a mass upsurge. This upsurge was sought to be organised through revolutionary committees by taking up certain programmes of agrarian reform while these squads were to be organised as units of the People’s Liberation Army by conducting guerrilla actions against police and paramilitary as well as military forces, thus heading towards red power. This, in brief, was the entire process and outcome of the ‘annihilation line’. Its achievements were many, and the existence of Bhojpur till this day bears testimony to this aspect. However, it had its negative side too, and with the passage of time this side became the principal one. In many areas annihilation was conducted as a campaign, with a lot of indiscriminate and unnecessary killings, and it got isolated from peasants’ class struggle so that no resistance could be built up against police repression, and our struggling areas were smashed. Overenthusiastic supporters of ‘annihilation’ — from Ashim to Dipak and finally Mahadev — raised these mistakes to the zenith and step-by-step formulated a left-opportunist line which did tremendous harm to the people and the revolution.

The period then was characterised as that of immediate and general revolutionary situation throughout the world and a general revolutionary offensive was planned. Such an overestimation of the revolutionary situation led to impetuosity and the state of subjective forces was not taken into account, thus exacerbating the mistakes. It is true that the revolutionary situation was favourable to us with the ruling classes engulfed in deep economic and political crises, and wherever possible the proletariat had to rouse the peasantry to armed struggle and make attempts to seize political power. However, the uneven development of Indian revolution was not seriously taken into account. Therefore, in spite of the general programme and basic tactical line being basically correct, due to the overestimation of the revolutionary situation and not taking note of the uneven development of the Indian revolution, the form of struggle and course of advancement suitable for some areas came to be generalised for every corner of the country, and as a campaign at that. These were certainly serious left deviations. And the objective law of development punished us too: mass upsurge got restricted to a few pockets and continued merely in a single area.

In this context, the declaration in our first Party Congress — "Class struggle, i. e., annihilation will solve all our problems" was definitely wrong. However, in certain pockets annihilation combined with mass upsurges, initial attempts at organising this upsurge through revolutionary committees with slogans of agrarian reform, and attempts to build red army out of guerrilla squads, remain glorious examples in the treasure-store of revolutionary experiences. And it was on this basis that the Bhojpur peasant struggle, initiated by the not-too-conscious communist revolutionaries and then organised by the Party leadership, emerged and was maintained during the hardest of times at the cost of the maximum of sacrifices — a struggle that is now developing in broader areas and in more diversified forms. And it is because of this glorious tradition that Charu Mazumdar remains alive in the hearts of millions of oppressed people of India, that his line is taken to symbolise the only revolutionary line in India. By contrast, many academic Marxists and opportunist leaders kept chanting on ‘combination of armed struggle and mass struggle’ but never succeeded in reaching the broad masses or in developing a single mass struggle of any importance — not to speak of armed struggle and the so-called ‘combination’. The pedantic attitude, displayed by some of the self-proclaimed Marxists, of doing everything and combining everything on earth, is not a solution but a travesty of solution — a purely academic exercise devoid of any concrete experience. The revolutionary line could acquire full shape only in a process and the Party while beginning with rejecting the old forms of struggle, could have brought about a new realignment of new and old forms only through a process.

As for the working class movement, Comrade Charu Mazumdar correctly pointed out the need of developing new forms of struggle without rejecting the old ones and developing political struggles while not rejecting the trade union struggles.

As regards the student and youth movement, he for the first time in the Indian communist movement put forth the question of integrating them with workers and peasants and for that it was necessary to bring them out of campus struggles. Students and youth most energetically responded to his call and he supported their movement against old values, old education and old culture. Moreover, while differentiating their movement from the Red Guard movement of the contemporary Chinese youth and from the ‘New Left’ of France, he showed its limitations, and asked them to integrate with its base — the peasant struggles. At the same time, he asked the intellectuals to make deeper studies of the 19th and early 20th century history of India — a task which has been taken up and carried forward by many progressive and revolutionary intellectuals.

Blaming the CPC analysis in those times for our mistakes or adopting a pedantic attitude of so-called ‘combination’ with the hope of avoiding all mistakes — both of these betray a sick mode of thinking. Any revolutionary upsurge is bound to give rise to right and left deviations: "right in not being able to break from the past" and "left in not being able to reckon with the present." Only we are responsible for our mistakes, and mistakes are unavoidable in any revolutionary upsurge. And, it is only on the basis of such mistakes that communists can learn and leaders as well as cadres are trained. There is no other way out.

The military form of annihilation battle, the military line, was meant to serve the political line and the entire revolutionary process was aimed at developing a revolutionary mass line. Propaganda of political power among the peasants: "peasants should be mobilised for liberating their own villages and be told that not landlords but you will become the sole authority in settling the matters of the village, the land will be yours, tanks will be yours, and, after the annihilation of landlords, the police will not be able to trace who tills whose land, and so on" — taking up their psychology and explaining in most popular forms to rouse them, was an important contribution of Comrade Charu Mazumdar. Such propaganda was just the opposite of revisionist propaganda. Comrade Charu Mazumdar formulated ‘annihilation’ not on the basis of negating the role of masses as cowards and regarding a few vanguards as "individual heroes", but rather on the basis of immense confidence on the tremendous creative energy latent in the masses. It is this spirit which permeates his articles all through, and hence the entire Party based itself on complete faith on the masses. Not a bit of this confidence is to be found in his opponents who out of distrust of the masses advocate fronts with this or that bourgeois party.

Bringing the landless and poor peasants to the front line of the country’s political life — a fact acknowledged by all bourgeois and revisionist politicians and economists when they say that Naxalism grew on the discontent of the rural poor — and putting agrarian revolution on the immediate agenda by piercing through the land reform measures of the Congress government, raising the level of thinking of communist revolutionaries and the Indian proletariat from tidbits of revisionist politics to the dream of liberation of the country, and joining hands with the international proletariat and oppressed masses, recruiting thousands and thousands of young people to the communist movement of India and creating the phenomenon of Naxalism which was born in Naxalbari but acquired a concrete and developed shape only afterwards (this is something which Kanu Sanyal does not understand and hence fails to find out the basic reason of his failure) as a nationwide political trend in India which continues to rise even from the ashes and even without Comrade Charu Mazumdar himself, and above all, building the CPI(ML), the revolutionary Party of the Indian proletariat — such are his major contributions and also the main content of his revolutionary line.

However, owing to over-estimation of the revolutionary situation, inadequate grasp of the objective Indian conditions, generalisation of the annihilation struggle, the splits and disorganisation of the Party, the ruling classes’ temporary stability following the Bangladesh incident and the Indo-Soviet military pact, we suffered very serious setbacks in the face of the enemy’s repression.

Comrade Charu Mazumdar realised that annihilation had been taken too far and that, in most cases, it could not be properly combined with mass struggles. So he assessed the situation of setbacks and disorganisation of the Party and called for building a politically united Party and a united front of labouring people, particularly those belonging to the left parties, against the Congress regime. He called for a united front based on united struggles in general — and not necessarily armed struggle as such — and emphasised taking up land reform measures in selected areas. This was clearly a policy of retreat under new conditions. But a planned and orderly retreat could not be organised. Firstly, because the retreat was still supposed to be a very temporary phenomenon so that the tactics were based on the hope of a resurgence of mass struggles very soon. And secondly, because the policy and methods of retreat were not clearly formulated in terms of various forms of struggle and organisation.

With setbacks in struggle, splits in the Party, and gaps in reorganising the Party Central Committee, the rank and file loyal to Comrade Charu Mazumdar handed over all authority to him for the temporary period of reorganising the Central Committee. This phenomenon was given a general character by some careerists around him, who harped on the concept of ‘individual authority’ to further their own interests, created hurdles in the work of reorganising the Central Committee, and ultimately betrayed the Party and Comrade Charu Mazumdar.

To sum up, the Party’s main mistakes were: it generalised the ‘annihilation’ form of struggle for the whole of India and took this up as a campaign, it failed to chalk out a consistent and thorough-going policy for combining this form of struggle with mass struggles in spite of an overall orientation and successes at certain points. And, even with the appearance of serious signs of setback, it did not succeed in arranging a planned and orderly retreat from military offensive to political offensive. These mistakes resulted from overestimating the revolutionary situation prevailing in India in the sense of understanding the situation as more or less of permanent upsurges, inadequate grasp of the concrete Indian situation, the wrong methodology of generalising particularities from subjective wishes, the infancy of the Party and the impetuosity on the part of the leadership as a reaction to revisionist betrayal.

With the martyrdom of Comrade Charu Mazumdar, things took a complex turn, and only after 5 years, i.e., in the year 1977, was it possible to really begin the process of seriously rectifying the mistakes.

After Comrade Charu Mazumdar’s martyrdom, Sharma and Mahadev floated a central committee of the Party on 5-6 December, 1972. With the Lin Piao episode, they parted ways in early 1973, and each in the name of his central committee indulged in unprincipled condemnation or eulogisation of Comrade Charu Mazumdar to further their own factional interests. Mahadev in particular resorted to all sorts of absurdities and, in the name of ‘safeguarding the purity of every word of Charu Mazumdar’ put the Party against the CPC and intensified actions divorced from peasant struggles. In this way he caused great damage to revolutionary forces, particularly in West Bengal, and finally destroyed himself.

At this moment of crisis, comrades of Bihar State Committee and the newly-organised State Leading Team of West Bengal shared their experiences of fight against the Mahadev-Sharma clique. They also exchanged the experiences of new upsurge in Bihar and of reorganisation in West Bengal after serious setbacks. Meanwhile, comrades of Delhi also joined in this process. Then under the leadership of Comrade Jauhar, the Central Committee was reorganised on July 28,1974. At that time peasant struggles were going on in Bihar, particularly in Bhojpur and Patna areas, and efforts for reorganising peasant struggles were on in West Bengal. To guide and lead these struggles and to overcome the setback, the urgent necessity of a centre was felt. With the distortions of Comrade Charu Mazumdar’s line by Mahadev, Sharma and Co., the need to defend the revolutionary essence of his line became the supreme task. The new Central Committee’s proclaimed aims were: a) defending the revolutionary essence of Comrade Charu Mazumdar’s line; b) uniting the Party politically on this basis; and c) unifying the communist revolutionaries of India.

At that time the area of work under this Central Committee was confined to Bihar, West Bengal, Delhi and a minor part of UP. After some time, many comrades of Assam joined it, too. In those days, comrades in Andhra, Tamil Nadu and Kerala were also working among the peasantry, conducting some militant struggles and fighting against trends resembling to those of the Sharma and Mahadev cliques. These comrades were organised in Party committees at various levels. Comrades from Tamil Nadu, in particular, were united under the State Party committee. But the reorganised Party centre could not establish contacts with them which prolonged the process of reorganisation with a revolutionary orientation. In all parts of the country revolutionary movements were being crushed and many of the comrades were either killed or arrested. After some time the central committees of both Sharma and Mahadev also disintegrated and collapsed. In these conditions, formation of the Central Committee was the only way open to us for uniting the Party forces with a revolutionary orientation and for carrying on efforts of building up peasant struggles.

With the formation of the Central Committee, peasant struggle in Bihar got a new fillip. Some armed actions and peasant struggles were also organised in Ghazipur and Ballia districts of UP and in Naxalbari of West Bengal. Comrade Jauhar always held supreme the interests of the Party and the collective leadership of the Central Committee. He personally guided the Bhojpur peasant struggle, put forward the task of building outstanding organisers and commanders who would organise and lead into military actions the forces that were coming to the forefront of the fiercest class struggle, and emphasised the need of launching attacks on mobile enemy forces by army squads so as to break encirclement operations of the enemy and raise the people’s morale. He termed these areas of struggle as the basis of an anti-Congress united front.

However, the Central Committee in general and Comrade Jauhar in particular had much of metaphysics. Guided by a formal and subjective approach, they indulged in the wrong practice of not taking the overall situation into account and of generalising the particular. So Comrade Jauhar in his philosophical article "One divides into two but two do not combine into one" mechanically interpreted a ‘correct line’ as having only the basic and the developing aspects. This further blocked the way for any rectification of our mistakes on a theoretical level. Again, he formulated attacks on mobile enemy forces as the beginning of mobile warfare and generalised it for all places — this was a mechanical upgradation of annihilation which gave rise to a wrong military line. It is true that at many places the people were organised under the leadership of revolutionary committees in heroic resistance struggles against the attacks of police and landlords were also developed. Yet no thoroughgoing and consistent policy for developing mass movements could be formulated. And the negative effects of these wrong ideas started manifesting themselves in the shape of serious losses in different areas and petering out of mass initiative on a broad scale. In November 1975, Comrade Jauhar was martyred in the battlefield of Bhojpur. There are certain unscrupulous fellows, who in their attempt to destroy our Party, eulogise Comrade Jauhar as the leader of Bhojpur to deny his most important role of reorganising the Party and restoring collective leadership and democratic centralism in the Party, but for which the Bhojpur struggle could not have existed. In this way they only insult the great revolutionary leader just for their factional interests.

The Second Congress of the Party, held in February 1976, played an important role in uniting the revolutionary forces to encounter severe enemy onslaughts. But it only confirmed the existing political line and so, during the whole of 1976 we just maintained the Party organisation and the struggle in the hardest of times. Over this entire period of 1974-76, our main drawbacks consisted, firstly, in our failure to link up with the anti-Congress upsurge of students, youth, and all sections of people of Bihar (the leadership of this upsurge was later captured by JP and it degenerated into impotency) and secondly, in our failure, when the movement collapsed with the arrest of leaders and repression on the masses, to provide a new guideline to organise the remnant forces. Although we maintained the political line of building an anti-Congress united front and upheld our areas as models of the same, we could not link this with the actual anti-Congress mass upsurge. This so happened because we had a mechanical conception of the development of united front on the basis of what Comrade Charu Mazumdar had said and we refused to analyse the concrete way in which things were actually developing beyond that mechanical framework. This lesson had an important bearing on our future course.

With the inception of the year 1977, many significant changes appeared in the international and national situations as well as in our movement. Contacts were re-established with comrades of Tamil Nadu, Andhra and Kerala, thereby providing an all-India shape to our Party. During the Emergency, all fronts had been more or less quiet barring the struggles led by us bravely facing the hardest of times. So Bhojpur hit the headlines as soon as censorship of the Press was removed. By 1976, the dialectics of practice had clashed violently with the metaphysics in theory and, given the required conditions, the Party was poised for a major change. It all began with ‘rectifying the wrong ideas in the Party’ concerning armd units only; but, linked with major national and international changes and a resurgence of peasant struggles, it gradually developed into a full-fledged rectification campaign throughout the Party.

This, in brief, is how we look at the past — how we evaluate our basic achievements and major faults. There are many other minor aspects which either had been dealt with in the ’79 Party Conference, or have no relevance for the present. Our analysis points out how different approaches in evaluating the past had led to the emergence of different liquidationist and anarchist trends in our movement and also how we are now combining our lessons of the past with the needs of the present in advancing the revolutionary cause.

[From Liberation, January 1998.]

The history of Bihar, for more than two decades, is replete with massacres. Massacres of rural poor of dalit castes by various landlord armies. In their desperate bid to suppress the ever growing rural poor uprising and to hold onto their caste-class privileges, the new classes of landlords and kulaks have frequently taken recourse to this terror tactics as a means to terrorise the whole mass of people. Yet the massacre at Laxmanpur-Bathe of Jehanabad on the night of 1 December is a case apart and it rightly shook the conscience of the nation in the 50th year of Indian independence.

In all 61 persons — two thirds of whom were children, women and old persons — were butchered to death in a cold-blooded operation at dead of night. All the victims belonged to the class of agrarian labourers and were dalits in the social hierarchy. In their struggle for socio-economic emancipation they had taken up the revolutionary banner of the CPI(ML).

The killers were men of the Ranvir Sena — an upper caste landlord army which enjoys the political backing of the BJP as well as support from a section of the RJD.

This time the target chosen was a village in Jehanabad that lies close to the districts of Bhojpur, Patna and Aurangabad. The essential purpose was to send the message across the whole of central Bihar. The time chosen was significant as the political crisis at the centre had matured and a caretaker government was in office. Thus, by effecting an upper caste mobilisation of both Bhumihars and Rajputs, it also symbolised the beginning of the political offensive by arch-reactionary forces. As reports suggest, this was the first of the trilogy of massacres before the elections. The other two are planned for the districts of Rohtas and Buxar.

The whole operation was meticulously planned. Professional killers were assembled from all neighbouring districts apart from Jehanabad. To create a record and grab the international news headlines, the number of persons to be killed was predetermined with the specific targeting of women and children. For a smooth operation, a soft target was selected where people were most unsuspecting, most unprepared and thus chances of resistance were zero.

A record was indeed created not only in terms of numbers but also in the measure of brutality and cowardice. Side by side, another record was created by the media, particularly in Bihar, which excelled in hypocrisy. From the very first day, Sangh Parivar propaganda machinery swung into action and the media began playing to its tune. A prominent journalist from Patna wrote in a national daily that it was the same old story of clash between Ranvir Sena and Naxalites, the only difference being that this time Naxalites were unarmed. How cleverly the cold-blooded massacre of women and children was rationalised as a routine kind of confrontation! The same journalist in subsequent write-ups tried to rationalise Ranvir Sena as an expression of peasant’s anguish against indiscriminate Naxalite violence. This attitude was common to the entire upper caste journalist fraternity barring a few exceptions. The long list of upper caste villages supposedly under the threat of Naxalite revenge were boldly displayed in newspapers and cock-and-bull stories of PWG squads entering into Jehanabad were dished out. The news analysis that began with Laxmanpur-Bathe invariably ended up with concern over general deterioration of law and order and demands for action against Naxalite extremists who dare to run parallel governments and even attack the police. The news of protests were underplayed whereas the fast by BJP leaders and Vajpayee’s visit were overplayed. All this was a well-orchestrated move to divert public attention from the Ranvir Sena, from its organic links with the BJP and to pressurise the state administration to divert its operations against the victims themselves.

It was the age-old story of pen against people with the only difference that this time the pen was directly attached to the bayonet! It goes without saying that the state machinery was too eager to oblige the ‘pen-killers’ and after a token operation against the Ranvir Sena — more on paper than on the field — the entire thrust has been diverted against people’s forces on the pretext of preventing any revenge.

Still the machinations of the whole range of mercenaries is not the last word in the rural poor’s march to liberty. The protest is growing fast and assuming larger dimensions.

On 5 December, the left and democratic alliance of 17 parties called for a Bihar Bandh. Incidentally the bandh was the first one after the Supreme Court’s infamous verdict imposing a blanket ban on all bandhs. The bandh was supported by a host of other democratic forces and it was an astounding success. The massacre was condemned by progressive public opinion all across the country and even abroad. Many prominent intellectuals joined the protest.

The massacre has generated immense class hatred among the rural poor, strengthened their determination to close their ranks, and led to the growing realisation that going over to offensive actions is the best way of defence. The Party’s rally in Arwal proved to be a grand success. Battle cries against Ranvir Sena rent the air. Thousands of young people were seething with anger and went back with the resolve to take the battle to the enemy’s own ground.

With the advent of the Ranvir Sena, the class war is no longer confined to this or that region of Central Bihar. It is engulfing the entire central Bihar. This has also created conditions for forging a broader class unity, a unity cemented by blood. The class war is also making irrelevant the false god of social justice, Laloo Yadav, who in his earlier incarnation had encouraged the growth of Ranvir Sena as a Machiavellian plot to wipe out our Party. In fact, it has turned into a Frankenstein for him and is threatening his own social base in the changed political environment of BJP’s growing political offensive. This has indeed created a favourable condition to effect a new social equation on our Party’s own initiative. The Party has intensified its offensive in various forms and in Bhojpur in particular certain actions, prior to and after the Party Congress, have helped unleash the initiative at the grassroots.

The challenge of Ranvir Sena, the perpetrators of ‘national shame’, has to be met. In the concrete context of Bihar, the interests of the revolutionary peasant movement as well as the national responsibility of halting the onslaught of the saffron army has merged into one and the same task — wiping out Ranvir Sena.

The rural proletariat has been shedding blood for its socio-economic emancipation and political liberty. It is our duty to organise people to avenge the death of their class brethren and for that we shall have to undertake the widest exposure campaign, particularly in view of media hostility; do away with all sectarian attitudes, unite all positive social sections and political forces and raise our preparations to a higher level to deal a crushing blow to this army of butchers, of cowards.

This battle can surely be won and must be won. This is the call of human progress, democracy and true nationalism. This is the call of the modern times.

[From Liberation, July 1997. Excerpts.]

After the Governor’s sanction to CBI for filing a chargesheet against him, Mr.Laloo Yadav has lost the moral and political legitimacy to rule Bihar. With this the demand for his resignation has become much more vocal and broad-based: all sections of the Left and also a section of JD are demanding this. By all accounts, this is the beginning of his end. In this new situation, it is imperative to make a review of the Left’s positions.

The other day a prominent left ideologue in Bihar while writing a piece in The Times of India, invoked the famous Hamletian dilemma ‘to be or not to be’, to describe the Left’s attitude towards Laloo. He wrote that if the Left had earlier erred in trusting Laloo Yadav, it will be repeating the same mistake by riding on the crest of the anti-Laloo crusade. The reason: Laloo still enjoys a substantial mass appeal and BJP is well set to fish in the troubled waters. Though he welcomed the renewed initiative of the Left, he couldn’t resolve the riddle and ended up wondering who gains if Laloo goes?

By Left he obviously meant the official Left, including his own tiny group, who have been, in the proverbial ‘more loyal to the king’ fashion, tailing after Laloo all these years.

For obvious reasons he has omitted any reference to CPI(ML). It would have been too uncomfortable for him to accept that in the course of seven years of Laloo’s rule, the CPI(ML), from the start sounded strong warnings against reposing trust in a bourgeois leader, initiated exposure campaigns of this so-called Mandal messiah, charted out its own independent course of action and spearheaded a popular movement against his misrule. For this the CPI(ML) invited the wrath of official communists who were all enamoured by Laloo’s charisma, was branded as anti-Mandal, as putting a spoke in the wheels of progress and was even accused of collaborating with communal forces to bring the downfall of social justice regime. Very few people are aware that CPI(ML) was criticised more or less along similar lines by the far-left streams of the left spectrum. Official communists as well as official anarchists -- both ended up developing organic linkages with Laloo Yadav and he used them to the hilt in defaming CPI(ML) and even physically liquidating its cadres.

History, of course, had a different design up its sleeve. As the wheel has turned a full circle, ‘the messiah of the poor’ who enthralled the national audience by his rustic ways and who proclaimed himself as the kingmaker has been proved to be the kingpin of unscrupulous scamsters whose one-point programme was to loot the government exchequer for his personal ends as well as to keep a whole brigade of his cronies in good humour. Left spokespersons as well as mediapersons, in their bid to wash their hands off Laloo for glamourising him and to conceal the fact that they were taken for a ride, are trying to show that Laloo’s degeneration came up subsequently after he developed a lot of clout and became arrogant. This is a white lie. As the facts reveal he was involved in the fodder scam even during his tenure as the leader of opposition and he indulged in full-scale operations right after assuming power. The entire public show was nothing but a smokescreen to cover his misdeeds.

His anti-feudal credentials too were bogus. The composition of his clique — the 56 accused in the scam — is quite revealing and includes the names of notorious champions of upper caste feudal interests. His overt agenda was apparently to weaken the forward caste feudal grip over Bihar polity and to contain BJP but his covert agenda was to strike a power balance between elites of backward and forward caste groups and to contain the growing revolutionary left movement in Bihar. The intelligent representatives of the Indian ruling classes did understand this covert agenda and that is the sole reason why they backed him as a counter-weight in an otherwise explosive revolutionary situation in Bihar.

However, Laloo Yadav failed to retain his hold over the backward castes and the split in the shape of Samata provided an opportunity for BJP to project an alternative plank of forward-backward balance of power. On the other hand, the CPI(ML) refused to submit to the carrot-and-stick policy of Laloo and went ahead with the popular mobilisation of rural poor and dalit social strata. Laloo’s sway over them considerably eroded. Though this has been the bloodiest period in CPI(ML)’s history in Bihar where our Party faced the wrath of upper caste feudal mobilisation in Bhojpur, the combined forward-backward power groups’ killing-spree in Siwan and MCC-PU onslaught in parts of central and south Bihar, all aided and abetted by Laloo administration, still the Party stuck to its guns and never lost a chance to bring about popular mobilisation of the rural poor against Laloo’s regime. The Party organised the biggest ever mobilisation against the scam-tainted regime, which no other political party of the opposition could match.

After seven years of rule, Laloo ended up with the weakening of his own social base as well as his political manoeuvrability and, in the process, also marginalised his own left allies and destroyed the JMM which at least had played a buffer role in checking the growth of BJP. The BJP, on the other hand, considerably increased its clout and CPI(ML) too emerged as the mainstream Left. Laloo’s abject failure in pursuing his covert agenda to its logical conclusion has been the sole reason behind his becoming irrelevant in the gameplan of the ruling classes and in no way is his so-called crusade against the ruling classes — as claimed by himself and also hinted by the Left ideologue mentioned above — responsible for his being dumped by them.

Laloo has been a demagogue par excellence. As far as his attitude towards the Left is concerned, in one of his famous statements, he described the Left as an aberration and missed no chance in publicly humiliating his very own Left allies and the red flag. If the ‘Left’ still harboured all sorts of illusions about him and reposed all trust in him, it was essentially dictated by their flawed tactical understanding of relying on such forces to bring about the democratic revolution.

The new situation marked by CBI formalising the chargesheet against Laloo Yadav in the fodder scam brought about a new political realignment for which we had been working for years. A loose confederation of 15 left and democratic parties came up on our initiative demanding Laloo’s resignation. Though CPI and some others have been forced to join this configuration, they have a very limited vision of just Laloo’s removal and they hope to return to the old family with the expectations of a better bargain from the new political dispensation. Therefore, they are participating in the alliance half-heartedly, trying to block its consolidation by all possible means including secret and unscrupulous parallel moves with some of the constituents. The alliance therefore is very fragile and temporary in nature.

Still, its emergence has led to heightened expectations from the masses who are looking for a left-democratic alternative to Laloo’s regime. This was witnessed in their spontaneous and massive support to the 48-hour bandh call. Despite the fact that CPI officially withdrew from the second day of the bandh and the CPI(ML) had virtually to undertake the entire responsibility on its own, the bandh was a resounding success. Had the CPI shown the courage to accept the ground reality and acknowledge the fact that for all practical purposes CPI(ML) has emerged as the biggest left party in Bihar, a perception which majority of the partners in the front share, the alliance would have emerged as a strong contender to BJP in Bihar politics. Though the conditions have forced them to join hands with us they have not been able to reconcile with the reality. When news analysts wrote that CPI(ML) after seven years of consistent ideological struggles has emerged as the forerunner, CPI reacted vehemently.

Be that as it may, the whole course of the movement has established beyond doubt the moral authority as well as the ideological superiority of the CPI(ML). At the same time, CPI(ML)’s capability of independent mass mobilisation on a large scale, uniting diverse kinds of forces and taking up multifarious initiatives has drawn appreciation from many quarters.

The super-revolutionaries of MCC stand totally exposed as they have openly come out in support of Laloo Yadav. Party Unity has been thrown out of the living political process. Critical junctures in the political situation provide the best proof of the essentially non-political, anarchist character of such groups.

The situation in Bihar has definitely turned in our favour. Laloo’s era is drawing to a close and CPI(ML)’s political profile has extended to the entire length and breadth of Bihar. Middle classes too have started looking up towards us with hopes. But the road is still extremely tortuous.

BJP and CPI(ML) are engaged in a ‘snake and ladder’ game in terms of outsmarting each other and in retaining the initiative in the anti-Laloo movement. The BJP has obvious advantages, being a major national party and the darling of the ruling classes. Even their minor initiatives are widely covered in print and visual media, nationwide. On the other hand, even our major initiatives go unreported. They have a firm ally in Samata whereas our ally CPI is more interested in stabbing us in the back. Still we have always tried to match them point to point and the 48-hour bandh relegated them to the background. With Advani’s rath yatra entering Bihar, BJP is planning to regain the initiative and we have called upon the people to boycott the yatra. A new round of confrontation with BJP is inevitable with Laloo’s fall and the Party has to step up its role in countering this communal menace.

Movements to force Laloo to resign are almost a daily affair in Bihar. The Party is also trying its best to consolidate the 15-party alliance and provide a programmatic orientation to whatever extent possible. We aim at retaining this alliance as an oppositional bloc vis-a-vis the new dispensation that is in the offing. But this necessitates strengthening our independent initiative along with a consistent struggle against the official Left’s ‘to be or not to be’ dilemma. If the Left is to retain its initiative in the new situation then it has to take on both the fronts of pseudo-social justice and pseudo-nationalism.

[Speech delivered at the inaugural session of the conference of the Bihar Economic Association, Department of Economics, Patna University held from 29 to 31 January 1997. From Liberation, April 1997.]

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Prior to me, the representative from the Right, Mr.Singh from the BJP, has spoken on the theme. I am perhaps the sole representative from the Left here. Well, Right is Right and Left is Left, still Left often proves right in matters of economy.

I have been asked to speak on the political economy of underdevelopment in Bihar. As the subject is economy, I would prefer to speak in English to convey my ideas better to the distinguished audience present here.

Bihar is underdeveloped, there can be no dispute over that. But so are several other states and regions of India. Then what is so special and specific about Bihar’s underdevelopment?

On the eve of independence, Bihar had the lowest per capita income among all the states, and that too lower by a wide margin, although it produced 8 per cent of India’s foodgrains, it was 4th among the states in terms of industrial output and the largest producer of coal and steel.

Now, after 50 years of India’s independence, Bihar is still the state with the lowest per capita income, barely Rs.10 or so on daily basis, which is less than one-third of Punjab’s, another predominantly agrarian economy. And if Dr.GS Bhalla, who spoke in this very conference day before yesterday, is to be believed, Bihar is the only Indian state where the per capita income has over the years actually declined.

This perpetual backwardness, this prolongation of Bihar’s underdevelopment, or better still non-development, deserves a comprehensive and in-depth study.

Bihar is caught in a trap, a poverty trap, in a vicious circle, and it is not going to be an easy job to break out from that.

Often, hopes have been generated, say in the ’50s, when the economy expanded at quite a satisfactory rate, as also in the latter part of the ’70s to mid-’80s, when total production of foodgrains had risen, and also the income from agriculture’s share had gone up by about 27 per cent.

In the ’90s too, statistics do show a high growth rate in foodgrains production as well as a real increase in area under HYV cultivation. Per hectare fertiliser consumption too has increased from 54.14 kg in 1989-90 to 64.51 kg in 1994-95. Household savings have risen considerably as witnessed in the astounding growth of non-banking financial institutions; take, for instance, JVG whose operational base is in Bihar. In the ’90s, hopes had particularly risen with the ascendancy of a social-justice regime, which in caste-class terms enjoyed the powerful backing of intermediate castes comprising mainly middle peasantry.

Now after nearly 7 years in power, the government is tottering under the biggest scam of the country, Bihar has entered into yet another phase of political instability, and Bihar is back to square one.

True, there are demographic and technological factors too that are responsible for Bihar’s underdevelopment. North Bihar has the second highest concentration of population in India after Kerala, but the whole area has no mineral resources. Moreover, it is a flood-prone area. Then coal has been largely replaced by oil and natural gas, and mica has given way to fibre optics. With this, Chhota Nagpur’s strategic advantage has also significantly declined.

Still, these are not the only factors responsible for Bihar’s underdevelopment.

One of the major dimensions of this perpetual backwardness is external, i.e. the status of Bihar’s economy vis-a-vis the national economy. Some people draw a striking parallel with the North-South divide on a global scale, where the South’s underdevelopment is closely related to the North’s development. One is the condition for the other. So is the case of Bihar in relation to the economy of few developed states. Several economists and social scientists have termed Bihar as an internal colony. Bihar has been the supplier of cheap labour and raw materials to agriculturally and industrially advanced states. Uniform pricing policy of coal and steel had taken away the locational advantages from the Chhota Nagpur industrial zone.

Then again, plan allocations until the advent of the Gadgil formula, were heavily tilted against populous states like Bihar and UP. Even after that, per capita plan allocation in the 7th Plan was Rs.622 for Bihar, less than the national average of Rs.920. Per capita investment from all sources — public and private — in Bihar has been lower than other states for over 30 years including the ’80s. Substantial part of the savings go out of the state. Investment of long-term institutional funds through IDBI and other such institutions, and UTI, LIC and GIC etc. is lowest in Bihar. Even in the phase of globalisation and liberalisation, the investment scenario is rather bleak here: Bihar got the lowest, just 0.14% of foreign capital investment from August 91 to May 96. In central plan outlays emphasis now has shifted to poverty alleviation and welfare schemes, where the element of capital formation is quite low.

A federal government at the Centre, though led by the same party that is ruling in Bihar, hardly inspires any confidence in terms of according any any preferential treatment to Bihar. The government is, on the contrary, more susceptible to the pulls and pressures of the powerful lobbies of advanced states.

To add insult to injury, in Bihar even half of the amount allotted to and in plans sanctioned is hardly spent due to callous administration.

Perpetual backwardness or the internal colonial status is, therefore, unlikely to be broken just by more allocation of central outlays or by waiting for the entry of foreign capital. Invoking the regional plank may be good politics for marginalised politicians, but it is bad economics indeed.

The impetus to break the vicious circle must come from within, generating vast internal resources. And here we enter into the other major dimension of the underdevelopment, the internal dynamics of Bihar economy.

Firstly, the arena of land reforms. Radical land redistribution is urgently needed to endow the land to enterprising small farmers. Small landholdings in the possession of small and marginal peasants should be given institutional backing to make them economically viable.

To enforce radical land reforms the political class must be prepared to go the whole hog, up to the nationalisation of all land and its redistribution to enterprising small farmers on lease basis. It is equally necessary to guarantee minimum wages to agrarian labourers both in relation to big as well as small farmers.

Secondly, the large amount of rural and semi-urban savings must be tapped by the state government agencies and redirected to farm-investments as well as building up infrastructure and improving social services.

Thirdly, pressure should be mounted on commercial banks in Bihar to improve their credit-deposit ratio and also for increased investment by term-lending institutions, the IDBI groups, LIC, GIC and UTI etc.

Fourth, the Centre should be pressurised for according preferential treatment to Bihar owing to its historical legacy of backwardness.

Only in the context of the internal vibrancy can the measures to attract capital, including foreign capital, for industrial development be meaningful.

India’s ruling establishment doesn’t bother much about the predicament of the common man in Bihar. With an expanding consumerism they can still sell the largest number of Maruti cars in Bihar. Patna witnesses the highest sale of premium brands of garments like Louis Philippe and Monte Carlo. Large savings from Bihar are channelised to build the fastest growing JVG empire. The best of Bihari brains can always be drained by JNU and Delhi University.

It is for the common people of Bihar and the intelligentsia, who are perturbed by the fact that nearly half of Bihar’s population goes to bed without food, to take the initiative to break the vicious circle. But you cannot expect it to be done by a political class which is deeply enmeshed in corruption, nor can it be achieved through a bureaucracy that is deep in league with the feudal forces.

An incorruptible political leadership with a grand vision for Bihar’s development that stands above the factional caste strifes of elites, coupled with the powerful mass initiatives at the grassroots, can alone break the shackles of poverty in Bihar.

Either you have a radical solution or continue with the perpetual backwardness, there is no middle-of-the-road option. There is no use crying oneself hoarse over the rise of extremism in Bihar. In history, extreme situations demand extreme solutions.

Sankat jab vikral ho jata hai, Mahabharat tab anivarya ho uthta hai! (When the crisis becomes colossal then a Mahabharat becomes inevitable!).

[This abridged version of a write-up written for the September 7, 1996 issue of Mainstream, was published in Liberation, October 1996.]

(...) The massacre hit the headlines of national newspapers the very next day and several editorials and analyses followed in the leading dailies. Doordarshan played down the incident and took special care to add that in the war of attrition between the Ranvir Sena and the CPI-ML so far over 250 people had been killed. Newspapers that draw their ideological inspiration from the Sangh Parivar, in their editorials, cried themselves hoarse over the general state of lawlessness in Bihar and then went on to narrate the fascinating story of so-called parallel governments being run by left extremists in 23 districts of Bihar and clamoured for special para-military operations to curb them. An ex-Director of the CBI wrote on the same lines in The Asian Age. Several other newspapers wrote sensational stories about the vicious circle of violence and counter-violence where the basic difference between the massacres of women and children, of the old and innocent, as a weapon of mass terror employed by heavily armed feudals and the mass resistance of the rural poor for their self-defence and for their just rights was blurred. In a strange travesty of logic the victims themselves stood condemned.

It is well known that the CPI-ML (Liberation), different from some of the anarchist groups, is a mass political party which has six members in Bihar Assembly including two from the very areas where the massacre took place. In 1989 it won the Ara parliamentary seat and in the 1996 parliamentary election it polled 1 lakh 46 thousand votes there. The Party has led powerful mass movements of the poor peasantry and has organised some of the biggest political demonstrations of the Left in the capital cities of Patna and Delhi. The Party does not believe in senseless violence and takes recourse to any retaliatory actions only when they become absolutely indispensable. None dare accuse the CPI-ML of killing women and children or innocent people. Despite strong provocations it has always worked for defusing any caste backlash, and Bathani Tola was no exception.

Kanshi Ram as well as Ram Vilas Paswan, the two self-appointed spokesmen of the dalits, didn’t feel it necessary to even condemn the incident. VP Singh, the foremost votary of dalit empowerment, who found enough time and energy to visit Ramesh Kini’s family in Mumbai, maintained mysterious silence over the entire episode. No Muslim leader worth the name cared to visit the spot despite the fact that the Ranvir Sena is a frontal organisation of the BJP, that a considerable section of the victims belong to the Muslim community, that the immediate issue was the liberation of the Kabristan and Karbala lands and that the massacre had a strong communal overtone.

Indrajit Gupta, the Communist Union Home Minister, did fly to the spot and parroted the hackneyed phrase of lack of land reforms as the root cause of the problem and hence as the Home Minister he can hardly do anything. This liberty of theorisation when one doesn’t intend to do anything concrete is, perhaps, the prerogative of a Communist Home Minister. Gupta flew back to Delhi promising Central funds for the modernisation of the police force in Bihar and for raising new units of para-military forces as demanded by the Chief Minister and the police top brass. One wonders whether it was really lack of arms which was the cause behind the police inaction! In Parliament, the Union Home Minister announced the formation of a task force comprising retired senior police officials to probe into the causes of the rise of extremism in Bihar. There was no word or action against the district administration for their criminal neglect of duty and even the earlier norm of setting up a judicial enquiry to probe such grave incidents was given a go-by under the cover of generalisations.

Gupta’s reference to lack of land reforms as the root cause was much acclaimed by the liberal media as touching the crux of the problem. However, a close scrutiny will reveal that it was the most ridiculous of statements in the concrete context and with regard to its particular timing. One often reads editorials and social analyses that point to the lack of land reforms as the root cause behind the growth of Naxalism. Gupta was obsessed with the same ‘concern’ and hence handed out the usual recipe. In his misplaced zeal of scholarly adventure he failed to grasp that Bathani Tola was the reverse case of growing feudal backlash.

In Bhojpur in general, and the main village of Barki Kharaon near Bathani Tola in particular, people relying on their organised strength and increasing political might had already snatched reforms over wages and land. The feudal backlash, emboldened by the ascendancy of the BJP in the last parliamentary elections in Bihar, was precisely meant to snatch these gains and re-establish the savarna hegemony. Incidentally, Ranvir was a Bhumihar hero of yesteryear who fought against Rajput domination and, therefore, Rajputs were generally wary of joining the Ranvir Sena. At Barki Kharaon, the unity between the two castes was effected by the BJP elements using the convenient communal pretext as the current struggle there was over Kabristan and Karbala lands which have been forcibly occupied by savarna landlords; the confrontation has its genesis in 1978 itself when Yunus Mian defeated Kesho Singh in the panchayat elections for the post of mukhiya, and then the subsequent razing to the ground of the Imambara.

Bathani Tola is a typical case of open class war which, though rising at grassroots, is defined by the parameters of political struggle at the top, a typical case where caste as well as communal antagonisms — the two major social parameters of contemporary Indian society — are blended within the framework of class struggle. It is no accident that the revolutionary Left and the communal fascist forces of the extreme Right stand face-to-face in a headlong battle in this class war which has engulfed the entire district of Bhojpur and is fast spreading to other parts of Bihar. Neither is it incidental that with the outbreak of open class war the centrist and social-democratic forces have turned impotent often adopting a neutral position that only goes to benefit the predators.

This class war, which subsumes within itself the issues of caste and communal discriminations, is at the same time the negation of the post-modernist agenda for which the priority is the other way round.

The media cover-up as well as the silence of all the proponents of dalit and minority empowerment has to be seen against this backdrop. Yet the protest movement is on. Centring around the fast-unto-death of Rameshwar Prasad, the first member of the CPI(ML)-stream to have penetrated the Indian Parliament and presently an MLA from Bhojpur, on the demands of punishing the district administration and disarming the feudals in Bhojpur, growing numbers of progressive and democratic intelligentsia are raising their voice against the medieval barbarism perpetrated in Bathani Tola and the state’s inaction.

If the 25 years of the history of Bhojpur is any guide, the struggle has never stopped half-way here. The rural poor, compared to their position 25 years ago, have snatched socio-economic gains and have advanced politically to a considerable extent. No Bathani Tola is going to make them surrender even a small bit of their gains. The battle, therefore, goes on and shall continue till the last vestige of feudalism is ultimately razed to the ground.

[This write-up was published in the form of a folder issued by the Central Committee, CPI(ML) on the Bathani Tola massacre.]

As you very well know, on 11 July the blood-thirsty killers of Ranvir Sena brutally massacred innocent people of Bathani Tola. 12 women and 8 children were murdered in cold blood on that fateful day. The abdomen of a pregnant woman was slit open. A little infant’s tongue was cut off before the tiny tot’s head was chopped off with a sword, another little baby’s fingers were severed from his hand. A new born baby cringing in its mother’s lap was butchered with a sword and their hut set ablaze. A girl in the prime of her youth was raped and her breasts chopped off before she was put to death. Among those injured, two little children lost their fight for life. No one can contradict the fact that such a degree of brutality is unprecedented in the history of independent India. Is it not necessary that we should know the historical background behind this heart-rending mass murder? After all, what is the reality underlying this brutal crime?

Govt. Propaganda — A Pack of White Lies!

It is imperative for you to know that the Ranvir Sena is banned since the last one and a half years and 3 police camps have been in existence in the vicinity of the Tola posing a facade of protection for the common people. The district administration had been time-and-again warned against the possibility of a big massacre. Yet no precautionary steps were taken while the policemen remained silent spectators to the gruesome orgy of blood. The Chief Minister visited the spot and suspended the local police for dereliction of duty but refused to initiate punitive action against the District Magistrate or the police chief. While the C.M. engaged in a lot of tall talks, in his private conversation with the press people he said ‘what else can be expected of them (Ranvir Sena) when the ML men conduct economic blockades’.

The Central Home Minister visited the Tola but seemed least interested in finding out the facts and details from the people of that area. Nor did he meet our Party representatives in Patna. Instead, on the basis of information gathered from the Chief Minister and the bureaucracy, he promised to modernise and streamline the Bihar Police and returned to Delhi, as though the ineffectivity of the police was due to lack of sophisticated arms. In his talks with press persons he is reported to have said such incidents are (and may continue as) an offshoot of the failure to implement land reforms in Bihar. While saying this it seems that the Home Minister had forgotten that the government in Bihar is being run by none other than the Janata Dal with the support of the CPI. Of course, the Home Minister blamed the Bihar administration, and according to a newspaper report he even spoke of its connivance in the incident. However, later, under pressure from Laloo Yadav, he went back on his words. Even after open indictment by the Home Minister and recommendation by the all-party committee to punish the D.M. and S.P., the Bihar government refused to take any action.

On the contrary, the same criminal administrators are trying to crush the peaceful movement of the people with lathis, water cannons and other terror tactics. People’s representatives sitting on indefinite hunger strike to press their demands are being put behind the bars. We are witness to a re-enactment of the Arwal massacre while the criminal of ‘Arwal’ fame, S.P. Kaswan shamelessly sticks to his position. No police action has been initiated against the Ranvir Sena while all the parties of the ruling classes are trying to save the Ranvir Sena even as they are laying the blame at our doors through all sorts of absurd logic and false propaganda.

Some of our so-called left friends have adopted a non-committal position. They fail to distinguish between the poor landless peasants and the feudal-Kulaks, they do not want to see the distinction between the dalits and minorities and the forces of Savarna caste-hegemony. Neither do they want to open their eyes to the communal hatred underlying the brutal and heinous character of the carnage, nor do they feel the urge to take to the streets even after seeing the cruel killing of new born babies and innocent women. Instead, they have been harping on the same note as the administration and are trying to misguide progressive opinion through false propaganda. In such a situation, it is necessary for us to acquaint you with the ground reality which has been little reported by the press.

Killer Ranvir Sena and the Unholy Political Nexus

The Ranvir Sena was formed two years back with the declared objective of protecting the crumbling edifice of feudalism from the fury of the revolutionary movement of poor peasants of Bhojpur. They challenged with all their might: "We will not allow Bhojpur to be turned into Russia or China; with our guns we will remove all signs of red flag not only from Bhojpur but from the entire country, we will re-establish the social system of our ancestors and revive the old customs and laws". From the day of its birth this Sena has put to death nearly one hundred innocent people in the Sahar and Sandesh blocks of Bhojpur alone, majority of whom are children, women, old and disabled people from the dalit, most backward and Muslim communities. Hand grenades were hurled at members of our Party sitting on dharna to demand administrative action against Ranvir Sena in Ara town. Similarly, grenade attack was made on a contingent of ML rallyists going for the March 11, Delhi Rally. Hundreds of people would have been killed if the grenade had exploded. In the beginning, the leadership of the Sena was with the Congress, later they switched over to BJP, and with this, the minority community became their specific target. The BJP leaders made hasty tours to their strongholds, and conducted several meetings after which the Ranvir Sena issued a written ‘Fatwa’ declaring support to the BJP. Copy of this Fatwa was placed in the Vidhan Sabha by the JD Govt. After the BJP-Samata tie-up showed its strong presence in Lok Sabha elections, all over Bihar the dominant upper castes and the feudal-kulak forces got a new lease of life and became extremely violent. Instead of countering these forces in a straight battle, the impotent leadership of Janata Dal went on appeasing them. Especially in Bhojpur district where the dalits and most backward sections are totally with CPI(ML) and where the Janata Dal openly sides with the feudal landlords in order to stop the CPI(ML) from growing, you will see Laloo Yadav openly sharing stage with criminal landlords. You will see the likes of JD MP and central minister Mr.Chandra Deo Verma demanding lifting of the ban order on Ranvir Sena while several leaders of the same party can be openly seen toasting with the criminal leaders of Ranvir Sena. This is the political backdrop behind the heightened morale of the Ranvir Sena and the connivance of the administration with it.

Backdrop of the Massacre

In the village panchayat elections of 1978, Mohammed Yunus, defeated the then mukhiya Kesho Singh and took his place. If we look at the incidents following this we will see that the victory of Yunus became a cause for permanent communal tension. The upper caste feudal psyche could not bear this defeat. They started taking revenge against the Muslims. First, they captured the road in front of the Imambara and then took over the Imambara itself. A case was lodged with the regional administrator on 13 August 91, who gave the charge for investigation to one of his subordinates. Though the report confirmed the encroachment, the administration did not take any decisive step against this. In 1992-93, the landlords destroyed the Imambara and burnt the flags after tearing them to pieces. An F.I.R. was lodged in the local police station and a case was filed. 13 days after the Bathani Tola massacre, on 23rd July 96, this case was decided in the court. The judgement says that there is no proof of any Imambara being there.

In the same way, the Kabristan land was also occupied. Mohammed Nayeemuddin filed a case against 14 people in 1993 and demanded that a boundary be constructed around the Kabristan. Due to shortage of money the case could not be fought till the end and was dismissed. But the encroachment continued as before.

The Ranvir Sena people had captured the Kabristan and Karbala land in Kanpahri (Sahar) and Navadih (Tarari). On 10 Jan 1996, Karbala Mukti Jan Jagran March was organised to protest occupation of this land. The Ranvir Sena men attacked the people who were coming from a meeting at Kanpahri. But their attack was resisted. The tension increased, yet the government did not make any effort to free the occupied land. Though Laloo Yadav declared that all burial land would be protected, nothing was done. In the month of Ramzan, on 25 April, Mohammed Sultan was killed and his body was not allowed to be buried in the Kabristan of Kharaon by the Ranvir Sena gang. Here also they were planning to murder several people but this was prevented after the body was taken to the adjoining village of Chatarpura and buried there. They still were not satisfied and attacked the Muslim tolas of village Kharaon and also other houses of ML supporters and looted their belongings. 50 families became homeless out of which 18 families were Muslim. Many of these families settled in Bathani Tola including that of Mohammed Nayeemuddin. But since the Masjid was located in the Ranvir Sena area they could not go for their Id prayers out of fear. Only with police bandobast could they offer their namaaz.

Still the tension did not subside. Now Bathani Tola had became a target and from the beginning of May to 11 July, the Sena goondas made 7 attacks on this Tola. The police remained inactive each time but the villagers chased the goondas through their own might. On 11 July, the Sena goons were successful and 5 members of Mohammed Nayeemuddin’s family were murdered and one infant died in hospital later. Mohammed Nayeemuddin and his wife were saved because they were not in the village at that time. Some say that the question of wages and land was behind the gruesome massacre but the reality is that this contradiction had been resolved one year back and there was no economic blockade in the village. The Shankar Sharan investigation team report also confirms this fact and the reality is that the struggle started only after this, so the propaganda that the massacre was a result of this contradiction is unfounded. Secondly, the manner in which the massacre took place points to an atmosphere of communal frenzy, hatred and vendetta; factually and logically, all indicators point to the communal character and backdrop of this massacre.

Our Efforts for Peace and the Attitude of the Ranvir Sena and the Administration

We have always been in favour of establishing peace. It is for this reason that, keeping in mind the aspirations of the peace-loving people, we began our peace initiative. On the occasion of the anniversary function of Swami Sahjanand Saraswati organised by Kisan Mahasabha in Bihta (Patna), we began our peace talks. Smt. Tarkeshwari Sinha and Shri Laliteshwar Shahi participated in the talks along with some respected personalities of the Bhumihar caste. From our side Central Committee Member and ex-State Secretary Com.Pawan Sharma was present. The talks were quite positive. Exactly two days after these talks the Party General Secretary issued an appeal for peace in a press conference at Ara. This appeal was well highlighted by the press. All peace-loving people welcomed it. We had also hoped for a positive answer from the Ranvir Sena. Next, we sent a message through a friend, who was mediating, that the Ranvir Sena should issue some statement so that we can proceed to the next step. The friend conveyed our message but the response was disappointing. Our peace effort had failed.

In order that we could take up developmental work in the area peace was urgently needed, so we did not give up our peace effort. This time we started again in a different way. We thought that we should create public pressure by mobilising public opinion. We also hoped that the administration would help us. In June ’96, we began a peace campaign by organising dozens of mass meetings in the main market as well as village chawls and told the people to came forward in this peace effort. In the meantime, contradictions between kisans of Ranvir Sena and our people in five villages were resolved. Through this campaign our issue of development gained seriousness and in Tarari block we started our Ghera dalo dera dalo movement. The movement was a big success.

In Ara, we organised a seminar centering the issue of peace, in which many respectable intellectuals and peace-loving persons as well as common people participated.

It is unfortunate that the Ranvir Sena showed little respect to the aspirations of the peace-loving people and retaliated with violence which continued all through our peace campaign. In this way our second effort also became unsuccessful. In a leaflet the Ranvir Sena appealed to the people to forsake this peace campaign and join the ongoing war. This may be the reason why the peace effort was rewarded through ‘Bathani Tola’.

Fight for Establishment of Democracy

The Bathani Tola massacre and the govt. response is a living example of how Bihar, the centre of democratic movement, is being converted into the graveyard of democracy. In this game, all the forces of darkness and retrogression have united — the forces that constitute the mafia and feudal vested interests.

We appeal to all progressive, revolutionary, democratic, socialist and left organisations and people to come together in this struggle for democracy and take it forward.

We have demanded that the administrative officers responsible for the Bathani Tola massacre be punished. If we fail to win this battle no one can stop criminals like Kaswan from multiplying and the police as well as the private armies from engineering more and more massacres like Bathani Tola.

We appeal to you to join this movement for justice through resolutions in meetings of intellectuals, through organising marches, sending telegrams to the Prime Minister, Home Minister, Governor and Chief Minister or issuing statements demanding punishment to the District Magistrate and Superintendent of Police.

[From Liberation, June 1996.]

This time total valid votes polled in the state were 3,49,44,438 and this was 53.3 lakhs more than 1991. Janata Dal, which had fielded 44 candidates this time as against 33 in 1991, got 1,67,69,081 votes. In terms of absolute number this was 17,32,671 more than in 1991 but its percentage went down from 34.1 to 30.7. BJP, on the other hand, fielded only 32 candidates as against 49 last time. Not only did its total votes increase, the percentage too went up from 16.91 in 1991 to 20.77 this time. Samata Party, which was part of JD last time, fought in alliance with BJP and its 22 candidates polled 14.28 per cent of votes.

The only other party which increased its votes as well as the percentage was CPI(ML). This time it polled 7,31,000-plus votes out of 22 seats it contested. This is nearly 1 lakh 50 thousand more than the votes polled in 1991 from 17 seats. In the 15 common seats that we contested on both the occasions, this time we polled nearly 80,000 more votes and the rest 70,000 came from the other 7 seats, out of which 6 were contested for the first time and one Patna seat was recontested after 1989. The vote percentage marginally went up from 2.02% to 2.14%.

Congress was the biggest loser. Its votes went drastically down and the percentage fell to 12.40 from 23.89 in 1991. JMM which had polled over 13 lakh votes in 1991, got only half of that this time and its percentage went down from 4.83 to 1.85. CPI lost four seats and its votes from 8 seats it contested went down by over two lakhs from earlier 22 lakhs. In terms of percentage the fall was from 8.09 to 5.78 this time. CPI(M) which had polled 4 lakh 18 thousand votes in 1991 from two seats got only 2 lakh 76 thousand votes this time from the same two seats. In terms of percentage the fall was from 1.54 to 0.79.

Regionwise analysis of our Party’s performance shows gains in North Bihar, mixed performance in Central Bihar and decline in South Bihar.

In the Northern part, in a last minute decision, we decided to contest Muzaffarpur fielding Comrade Meena Tiwari as our candidate. She is the Party secretary there and had taken charge only a few months back. Though we polled nearly 2,648 votes, the vigorous election campaign in the area has given a new lease of life to the Party there. The spectre of Mushari has again started haunting the landlords there. Immediately after election, they, in connivance with some degenerated SNS group’s men (now operating under the banner of TND group), killed one of our promising comrades who had recently joined the Party from the TND group and played an active role in resisting the booth capturing by upper caste Samata goons. The killing gave rise to wide protests and the Sankalpa Sabha was attended by thousands of people. Class contradictions are sharpening once again in Mushari and both sides have begun preparations for the impending class war.

Earlier we had planned to contest Darbangha seat where we command a wider social base and could have scored at least 10,000-plus votes but due to certain organisational complications the district committee was not in favour of contesting. Thus, we dropped the idea and chose Muzaffarpur instead, as some sort of Party assertion in North Bihar was considered imperative.

In the north-eastern part, in Katihar parliamentary seat we doubled our votes from 4,621 to 9,934 this time. The Party had to launch a serious ideological struggle against the tendency of avoiding the contest in parliamentary elections and concentrating exclusively in Barsoi assembly seat. It appears that a Muslim social base, particularly middle and rich sections of them in Barsoi opt for a dual role of supporting powerful Muslim mainstream candidate in the parliament elections — this time Tariq Anwar of Congress(I) — whereas they extend support to our candidate in the assembly elections. In the absence of a powerful Party organisation this pressure tells on our comrades there and is the root cause behind the reluctance to contest the parliamentary election. We decided to seriously combat this opportunism as the primary condition for building Party organisation there, the votes secured were mainly of dalits and this had laid the foundation for the Party’s independent base there. The State Committee had made plans to organise a regional committee of Purnea-Katihar district and deployed a senior comrade to reorganise the work in these areas.

In Balia (Begusarai), the other North-East Bihar constituency where we contested for the first time, we polled 7,642 votes. The problems of organisational disunity has still not been fully resolved there though in elections comrades unitedly worked for Com.Yogeshwar Gope whose candidature helped the party to reach the widest sections of people.

In the north-western zone, comrades in Siwan fought a heroic battle against the heavily armed goons of JD Mafia don Sahabuddin. Five of our sympathisers laid down their lives defending the booths and at least two goons died in fierce resistance. Sahabuddin, with the active connivance of the district administration, captured over 500 booths in the entire constituency. This was mainly in three assembly segments where we didn’t have organisational network. In Mairwan segment, he failed to capture a single booth. In Darauli too there was tough resistance but they succeeded in capturing some 50 booths in one part of the constituency. On the election day, the whole of Siwan was virtually turned into a battlefield and it was for the first time that Sahabuddin met with stiff resistance. From 20,000 in 1991, we polled 1,09,000-plus votes this time.

In Gopalganj and Bagha parliamentary constituencies, we contested for the first time and polled 22,000-plus and 15,672 votes. In Betia (West Champaran), however, we polled only 4,368 votes.

In central Bihar, our votes went up in Ara, Jehanabad and Buxar constituencies. The total increase from these three major constituencies from 1991 comes to around 78,000. In Bikramganj, another important constituency, our votes declined by over 4,000, in Barh by nearly 1,000 and in Sasaram by nearly 2,000 votes. Sharp decline was however witnessed in Aurangabad where we lost nearly 24,000 votes and also in Nalanda where the decline was to the extent of 34,000 votes.

In Ara constituency, quite unexpectedly, our votes declined in two assembly segments of Ara and Budahara. JD scored 46,000 votes more than us and Samata too backed by the combined weight of upper castes as well as sections of Kurmi-Koeri backwards scored 5,000 votes more than us.

In Jehanabad, in Masaurhi segment of Patna district our performance improved a lot compared to 1995 assembly elections. This was essentially due to the consolidation of votes of landless and poor peasants. Even the dalit support base of Party Unity in many villages, for the first time, voted for our Party.

The shortfall in Bikramganj was mainly due to drastic decline in Karakat assembly segment where the feudal forces were on the offensive. In Hilsa segment of Nalanda, we have still not been able to recoup. Still, this time we organised a good campaign among Muslims in Biharshariff and obtained support from sections of them in an otherwise highly surcharged and heavily polarised voting between Samata (George) and JD-backed CPI.

In Aurangabad, our organisation is still passing through serious disorders and except for one or two assembly segments, the organisation stands virtually dismantled in the face of MCC killings and internal disturbances.

In all these areas however, special measures have already been initiated to revitalise the Party organisation.

In Patna proper, in the 1991 by-elections we supported CPI against JD which had polled 25,000 votes. On our own we polled 15,000-plus votes this time. The Party work in rural segments of the constituency had suffered a setback and due to shifting of forces for Ara and Jehanabad, not much attention could be paid to these areas. In the city, quite an effective campaign was organised and our comrades valiantly resisted state-sponsored booth capturing. Comrade Saroj Choubey, CCM, was severely assaulted by police when comrades protested against illegal detention of other comrades.

In South Bihar, from Gaya onwards our performance remained quite poor. Our votes declined by 10,000 each in Hazaribagh and Koderma constituencies and in Dhanbad too, where we contested for the first time, we could poll only 5500 votes.

Our recent initiatives on Jharkhand movement didn’t translate in enlarging our support base and ironically all pro-Jharkhand parties were virtually wiped out. The contest was mainly confined between BJP and JD, both of which are anti-Jharkhand. BJP virtually swept the polls in South Bihar.

This raises an important debate about the continued relevance of Jharkhand movement or at least its continuation in its old forms.

We did take a calculated risk by rejecting electoral pragmatism in deciding about candidates and fielded candidates more with the view to strengthen Party organisation and Party’s social base.

Election results have shown serious cracks in JDs social base and voices of dissent have started raising themselves within JD. Internal crisis within CPI and CPI(M) too has intensified.

This provides great opportunity to us to make bold advances to influence and win over these sections. The BJP-Samata combine is in an upbeat mood and a fierce competition lies ahead.

The Party state committee shall have to take vigorous political initiative on all fronts and this is the time to pool the collective energy of the entire rank and file in general and leaders in particular. In Bihar, times ahead are stormy but full of opportunities.