THE NAXALBARI UPRISING
A new dawn was breaking..............
Throughout 1966 itself the groundwork had been laid.
In 1965/66 the ‘Siliguri Group’ [(of the newly formed CPI (M)] brought
out as many as six cyclostyled leaflets calling for the immediate
commencement of armed revolution. One of these leaflets gave a call to
initiate partisan warfare in the Terai region within six months.
Throughout 1966 revolutionaries organised peasant cells in every part of
Siliguri sub-division; bow and arrows, and even a few rifles were
gathered and liaison established with the Nepalese Maoists active just a
few miles away. In late 1966 a Revolutionary Kisan meeting was organised
in Siliguri. On March 3, 1967 the seeds of struggle began to
sprout.......... A group of peasants surrounded a plot of land in
Naxalbari region; marking the boundaries with red flags, they began
harvesting the crop.
Then..... the March 18 Convention was the signal for
the peasant upsurge, which engulfed the entire area for four months. The
U.F. government in West Bengal sought to diffuse the movement by
announcing token land reforms. The revolutionary peasants replied to the
revisionist rulers by setting up peasant committees to take over the
land of the jotedars. Huge processions and demonstrations were organised
by Kisan committee members, many of whom were armed with lathis, spears,
bows and arrows. A sea of red flags struck terror into the hearts of the
landlords and the countryside reverberated with the slogan "March
forward along the path of armed peasant revolution."
The first clash was ignited when a share-cropper,
Bigul Kisan, was beaten by armed agents of a local jotedar. This was
followed by violent clashes and the forcible seizure of land and
confiscation of food grains, by armed units of the Kisan committee. Any
resistance by the landlords and their gangs was smashed and a few
killed. By end May the situation reached the level of an armed peasant
uprising. The CPI (M) leaders, who were now in power, first tried to
pacify the leaders of the movement......having failed, Jyoti Basu, the
then home minister of West Bengal, ordered in the police. On 23rd May
the peasantry retaliated killing an inspector at Jharugaon village. On
May 25, in Naxalbari, the police went berserk killing nine women and
children. In June the struggle intensified further, particularly in the
areas of Naxalbari, Kharibari and Phansidewa. Firearms and ammunition
were snatched from the jotedars by raiding their houses. People’s courts
were established and judgments passed. The upheaval in the villages
continued till July. The tea garden workers struck work a number of
times in support of the peasants. Then on July 19, a large number of
para-military forces were deployed in the region. In ruthless cordon and
search operations, hundreds were beaten and over one thousand arrested.
Some leaders like Jangal Santal were arrested, others like Charu
Mazumdar went underground, yet others like Tribheni Kanu, Sobhan, Ali
Gorkha Majhi and Tilka Majhi became martyrs. A few weeks later, Charu
Mazumdar wrote "Hundreds of Naxalbaris are smoldering in India.......
Naxalbari has not died and will never die."
Naxalbari gets recognition
The Communist Party of China, then the centre for
world revolution, hailed the uprising. On June 28, 1967 Radio Peking
broadcast : "A phase of peasants’ armed struggle led by the
revolutionaries of the Indian Communist Party has been set up in the
countryside in Darjeeling district of West Bengal state of India. This
is the front paw of the revolutionary armed struggle launched by the
Indian people......". Within a week, the July 5th edition of
People’s Daily carried an article entitled ‘Spring Thunder over India’
which said : "A peal of spring thunder has crashed over the land of
India. Revolutionary peasants in Darjeeling area have risen in
rebellion. Under the leadership of a revolutionary group of the Indian
Communist Party, a red area of rural revolutionary armed struggle has
been established in India..... The Chinese people joyfully applaud this
revolutionary storm of the Indian peasants in the Darjeeling area as do
all the Marxist-Leninists and revolutionary people of the world."
Meanwhile, revolutionaries in Calcutta, who had also
been running a campaign against revisionism, took up a massive campaign
in support of the Naxalbari uprising. The walls of college streets were
plastered with posters saying : "Murderer Ajoy Mukherjee (the Chief
minister) must resign." The revolutionaries [still within the CPI (M)]
held a meeting in Ram Mohan Library Hall in Calcutta and formed the
‘Naxalbari Peasants Struggle Aid Committee’, which was to become the
nucleus of the Party of the future.
Simultaneous to the police action, the CPI (M)
expelled a large number of their members. Sushital Roy Chowdhary, a
member of the West Bengal state committee and editor of their Bengali
party organ was expelled. So were other leading members like Ashim
Chatterjee, Parimal Das Gupta, Asit Sen, Suniti Kumar Ghosh, Saroj Datta
and Mahadev Mukherjee. The Darjeeling district committee and Siliguri
sub-divisional committee were dissolved.
The spark of Naxalbari set aflame the fires of
revolution in Srikakulam, Birbhum, Debra-Gopiballavpur, Mushahari and
Lakhimpur-Kheri. The states of West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar,
Punjab, U.P and Tamil Nadu saw a big spurt in Naxalbari-inspired
struggles and Maoist formations sprouted in nearly every state of India.
continues
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