What People’s War in India looks like one month after the Indian
state declared an end to Maoism in the country on 31st
Marxism v.
Revisionism: A brief overview
Marxism is the
science of the laws governing the development of nature and society.
It is the science for the liberation of the proletariat, which will
pave way for the complete liberation of humankind. And as stated by
Marx in the Communist Manifesto, it is not possible without “the
forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions”. Only an
organized armed struggle of the people can overthrow the highly
organized state working for the bourgeoisie. Lenin reinforced this in
The State and Revolution, emphasizing that “The suppression of the
bourgeoisie by the proletariat is impossible without a violent
revolution.” Mao extended this, saying that “political power
grows out of the barrel of a gun,” insisting that revolution is
inseparable from armed struggle. Revolution
is an act of violence and therefore, there is no Marxism, let alone
Maoism, without armed struggle. Then why do some surrendered Maoists
talk of the change in their form of struggle from a primarily illegal
to a completely legal one, while still claiming to adhere to the
revolutionary line of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism?
For as long as
Marxism has existed, it has been in struggle against first utopian
socialism and then revisionism. Revisionists are petty-bourgeoisie
fellow travelers in the revolution who have moved into the camp of
the ruling class. They recognize the exploitation inherent in the
class society, but refuse to align with the proletarian revolution
which would demand sacrifice and require them to abandon their class
interests. Hence, while claiming to be Marxists (because Marxism has
proven itself to be the only true science for the liberation of
mankind) they turn a blind eye to the fact that antagonistic
contradictions can only be resolved through war, and turn to
reformism and class collaboration. A lot of petty bourgeoisie turn to
this camp especially in times of setback to the revolutionary
movement due to the vacillating nature of this class. As the fighting
people grow ideologically, politically and organizationally under the
red banner of Marxism, the ruling classes shake with fear as they see
close their historic defeat. In such times, revisionists distort
Marxism and derail it from its essence. This is how revisionists
help, and ultimately fall in the camp of the ruling class. The
struggle against revisionism is thus the struggle of the exploited
and oppressed masses against the ruling classes. This is why Marx
waged a sharp struggle against Lassalle, Bakunin and the Blanquists
and Lenin refuted Bernstein and identified the Mensheviks who
advocated for an open party as the greatest internal threat to the
movement. Lenin brought forward in this struggle that insistence of
transition to socialism by peaceful parliamentary means is nothing
but betrayal to the proletariat. Mao took this further in struggle
against the revisionism of Khrushchev and Lin Piao. The Naxalbari
uprising in India led by Comrade Charu Majumdar was a struggle
against not just the landlords and Indian state, but also against the
opportunism of CPI and CPI(M). Thus, the history of Marxism has
always been the history of struggle against revisionism.
Crisis in Indian
revolutionary movement and CPI (Maoist)’s struggle against the
revisionist surrender line
Even today,
opportunism-liquidationism-revisionism continues to plague the Indian
communist movement, and this precisely is the internal threat it
faces: bigger than the enemy’s military attack under Operation
Kagaar or any such operation. History teaches us that there are two
parallel political lines that contrast with each other for political
power. One line has been laid down by the communist revolutionaries
like Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Charu Majumdar, Kanhai Chatterjee,
Basvaraju, Raju Da, Kosa Da, Renuka, Kishan Da, Hidma etc while the
another line is being laid down by the traitors like Bernstein,
Kautsky, Lin Piao, Prachanda, Sonu, Satish, Devji, Venugpal, Kobad
Ghandy, Balraj, Prashant Rahi etc. The holders of the second line are
opportunist enemy agents who are attacking the proletarian political
line in order to weaken and thereafter obliterate the proletarian
line. The correct political line emerges only through struggle
against opportunist revisionist elements. CPI (Maoist) understood
that the Sonu-Satish-Devji clique, responsible for instigating the
line of surrender, laying down of weapons, and the disintegration of
revolutionary ranks amidst the encirclement and annihilation campaign
against the party and the army, are not friends of the people. They
are traitors and enemy agents disguised as revolutionaries.
After Sonu failed to
make the party open and legal with his press release and statements,
he surrendered his AK-47 to the fascist BJP-RSS representative, the
Maharashtra Chief Minister. In an interview with a leading English
newspaper, Devji said that he still upheld Marxism-Leninism-Maoism
and would work through legal means to accomplish the party`s
political goals. Ironically, he also called Sonu a traitor while
promising to work to make the revolutionary party open and legal and
request the government to lift the ban on it. Anyone acquainted with
basic Marxism-Leninism-Maoism will appreciate the fact that the
communist party cannot be legal and open. Comrade Lenin`s reply to
the politics of surrender conveniently held by Devji is, “To come
out in the legal press against the underground or in favour of an
open party is simply to disrupt our party, and we must regard the
people who do this as bitter enemies of the party” (Com. Lenin in
Report to the Brussels Conference).
Fear, said comrade
Marx, is the distinguishing characteristic of Opportunism. Comrades
Basavaraju, Raju Da, Kosa Da, and Hidma all had this situation before
them, but they chose to be martyrs for the revolution. It was their
politics that was dearer to them than their skin. But for People like
Sonu and Devji, this was not the option; they chose liquidationism.
While speaking about liquidationists comrade Lenin said,
“Liquidationism is opportunism that goes to the length of
renouncing the Party. It is self-evident that the Party cannot exist
if it includes those who do not recognise its existence. It is
equally understandable that the renunciation of the “underground”
under the existing conditions is the renunciation of the old Party.”
People of the world had exposed Sonu, and therefore, in order to
confuse the rank of the revolutionaries, the ruling class had to prop
up the face of Devji. Like Sonu, the Maoist party exposed Devji too
as a bitter enemy of the proletariat, and a traitor of higher order.
They made it clear that Devji is another Sonu, but with a
revolutionary cladding, and waged a sharp ideological struggle
against the line of surrender, against those who wanted to break the
working-class party. Indian revolutionaries once again reiterated
that throughout the period of New Democratic Revolution, armed
struggle will be the primary form of struggle and army the primary
form of organisation. All efforts at mass movements stand useless if
they don't ultimately serve the People’s War to tear apart the very
structures of exploitation of man by man.
While having
declared India “Maoist-free”, the crisis-ridden imperialism is
getting more restless and trying to use psychological warfare against
the revolutionary warfare, where it is still trying to make the
revolutionaries surrender. Amidst all the obstacles created by the
ruling class, their agents and opportunist-liquidationist-revisionist
elements, revolutionaries are marching forward on the path of New
Democratic Revolution – Socialism – Communism. Communist Party of
India (Maoist) has expelled the traitors and betrayers and continues
on the path of Protracted People’s War: the path laid down by the
brave martyrs. Hence, although the Maoist movement in India has faced
huge losses, the three magic weapons: party, army and united front
still exist by waging a sharp struggle against
opportunism-liquidationism-revisionism, and holding high the glorious
banner of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
People’s War in
India continues!
If you fall
one evening
twilight,
you should fall like
a sun,
and behind you
thousands of shooting stars.
On 13th April,
Rangaboina Bhagya, known as comrade Rupi refused to surrender before
the Brahminical Hindutva Fascist Indian state and laid down her life
in an encounter in Kanker, Chhatisgarh, upholding the revolutionary
line of armed struggle. She was a commander of the People’s
Liberation Guerilla Army (PLGA). Rupi was a 46 year old Area
Committee member of CPI (Maoist) who had left behind her village in
Siddipet district of Telangana to serve as a full time professional
revolutionary at the age of 24. Upon her martyrdom, the Indian state
withheld her body for 48 hours before releasing it. Thousands of
people participated in her funeral in her hometown Telangana,
marching and chanting slogans of glory to the People's War and their
fallen hero Rupi. The peasants chanted “Bhagya (Rupi) is Immortal”,
and banners were hung throughout the village, paying homage to Rupi.
She refused to betray the revolution and laid down her life,
remaining forever immortal in the hearts of the people. Her life and
ending serves as testament or metaphor that the spirit of revolution
or Maoism can never be undone. 
Two days later, on
15th April, the state’s security forces had encircled Maoist polit
bureau member Misir Besra and his squad in Saranda forest, West
Singbhum District, Jharkhand upon the inputs given by Tritiya
Prastuti Committee (TPC) goons. TPC is a reactionary, police-backed
splinter criminal militia operating in Jharkhand that serves the
interests of the Indian state, contractors, mining capital and local
elites by dividing the oppressed people along caste lines, engaging
in extortion, informer work and counterinsurgency against the
revolutionary forces. In the crossfire between the Maoists and the
state’s armed forces in Saranda, at least six CoBRA personnel were
injured according to the government’s data (which means actual
number could be higher) and Misir Besra’s squad moved from that
location. This incident was an echo of the slogan of the Protracted
People’s War through the thick forests of Jharkhand and across the
world, proving that Maoism is alive and refuses to surrender in front
of the enemy. As they gained nothing from the operation, the
desperate and panic-ridden Indian state reacted to its defeat by
dressing the four TPC goons (who had given them the information) as
Maoists and killing them in a fake encounter in Chatra, Jharkhand.
Recently, on 2nd
May, during the state’s area domination operation, four personnel
of District Reserve Guard (the anti-revolutionary army of surrendered
Maoists) were killed in an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) blast in
Kanker-Narayanpur border in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar region.
As the crisis of
imperialism sharpens, people all over the country are coming to the
streets and fighting militantly. In Sijimali, Odisha, the Adivasis
have been organizing continuous round-the-clock hill vigils,
protests, road blockades and resistance camps in their forests to
prevent the illegal takeover of their land by Vedanta for bauxite
mining. In April this year, women stood in the front lines with axes
in their hands to stop the road construction connected to the mining
project. 
In Panna and
Chhatarpur districts of Madhya Pradesh, Adivasi and peasant
communities are resisting the Ken-Betwa river linking project which
would submerge villages, displace thousands of families and destroy
the forest. The villagers here occupied roads and forest checkpoints,
halted construction, organized mass gatherings, held all-night
protest camps and refused evacuation. Hundreds of women staged the
Chita Andolan (funeral pyre protest), lying on symbolic pyres to show
that displacement is equivalent to death sentence for them. The women
in this protest declared that they will take up arms and join the
Naxalites if Vedanta does not step back. In Noida, thousands of
industrial workers protested for higher wages and better working
conditions. These workers blockaded the highways and industrial
roads, shut down factory zones, occupied intersections, confronted
police barricades, threw stones, torched vehicles and damaged the
company and police property. So terrified was the Indian state by
workers stepping beyond the narrow confines of legal unionism and
taking up militant struggle that, only weeks after declaring the
country “Naxal-free”, it began to see the spectre of Naxalbari in
this Noida workers’ protest. True to its comprador fascist nature,
the state has been responding to all these protests with brutal
repression. On 1st May, International Workers’ Day, revolutionary
graffiti upholding Marxism-Leninism-Maoism was documented at
different locations in the capital city of Delhi. These graffiti also
included the slogan “Ghar Ghar Se Hidma Niklega”, reiterating
that revolutionaries don’t die, they multiply!
All this proves not
only that CPI (Maoist) refuses to bow down in front of the enemy and
continues to wage an armed struggle, but also that people’s faith
in it remains alive. Flames of Naxalbari still burn across India and
the Indian state has failed miserably in its “final war” against
the revolutionary movement. Claims of triumph against CPI (Maoist)
that Union Home Minister Amit Shah had made on 30th and 31st March
hence remained debunked.
Defeated armies
learn well!
“Let the liberals
and terrified intellectuals lose heart after the first genuinely mass
battle for freedom, let them repeat like cowards: don’t go where
you have been beaten before, don’t tread that fatal path again. The
class conscious proletariat will answer them: the great wars in
history, the great revolutionary problems were solved only by the
advanced classes returning to the attack again and again; and they
achieved victory after having learned the lessons of defeat. Defeated
armies learn well. The revolutionary classes of Russia have been
defeated in their first campaign, but the revolutionary situation
remains. In new forms and by other ways, sometimes much more slowly
than we would wish, the revolutionary crisis is approaching once
more, is maturing again. We must carry out the prolonged task of
preparing larger masses for the revolutionary crisis; this
preparation must be more serious, taking into consideration the
higher and more concrete tasks; and the more successfully we fulfill
this task, the more certain will be our victory in the new struggle”
Comrade Lenin; The
year of reaction
The crisis that the
Indian revolutionary movement faces today is not new to communism.
The Russian revolutionary movement faced a similar crisis after 1905.
The Tsarist state had intensified repression and
counter-revolutionary terror, while inside the party movement there
emerged opportunism-liquidationism-revisionism with some elements
seeking to abandon underground revolutionary work in favor of
legalism and adaptation to bourgeois parliamentary structures. There
was a lack of centralized coordination between the committees. The
Bolsheviks overcame this by struggling against the line of
opportunism-liquidationism-revisionism and rebuilding a disciplined,
underground, ideologically united party based on
democratic-centralism and rooted in class struggle. Thus, within
little more than a decade, the very forces that had been declared
crushed and defeated returned with greater strength, swept aside
Tsarism and bourgeois rule through the February and October
Revolutions of 1917, and shook the foundations of the world.
Setbacks in a
revolutionary movement are not accidental interruptions but a normal
part of historical development driven by contradictions. Social
change does not advance in a straight, smooth line; instead,
development proceeds through conflict, reversals, ruptures, and
leaps. Every revolutionary movement contains internal contradictions
between advanced and backward forces, correct and incorrect political
lines, organization and spontaneity, as well as external
contradictions with the ruling classes and the state. A setback may
temporarily weaken the movement, but it also exposes weaknesses,
tests political lines, eliminates unstable elements, and further
develops the revolutionary movement ideologically, politically and
organizationally. Temporary defeats and setbacks become moments
through which the revolutionary movement transforms itself and
prepares the condition for future advances.
Indian communist
movement today faces a situation similar to what the Bolsheviks had
faced after 1905. Indian revolutionaries may be weak today but this
weakness is not strategic one, strategically they are on the correct
political line and therefore the law of science explains that they
will rise up to destroy the three big mountains (Imperialism,
Comprador Bureaucratic Capitalism and Feudalism) which are crushing
the people of this country and the world. The reason of this
temporary setback in not the state repression but the
opportunist-liquidationist-revisionist elements within the
revolutionary movement and continuous struggle is being waged against
that. The party of the proletariat is like a living organism which
preserves and strengthens its revolutionary vitality through constant
regeneration of cells. For the Indian revolutionary movement, the
wrong ideas defeated in two-line struggle and the
opportunists-liquidationists-revisionists who tried to make the party
open are like the dead blood cells that have been shed off as the
body of the party lives to develop and advance the struggle for
liberation. People’s War in the country continues, and continue it
shall, on the path laid down by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao and
numerous martyrs of the Indian revolutionary movement, until the
exploited and oppressed masses drown the fascist state in the blood
it has shed and rise to victory. Blood of the fallen people’s
warriors will nurture the people’s war!
2026
On
May Day 2026, revolutionary graffiti was documented at different
locations in Delhi (capital city of India). On
May Day 2026, revolutionary graffiti was documented at different
locations in Delhi (capital city of India). This happens one
month after the Indian state had declared 31st March as “Naxal Mukt
Bharat: The End of Maoism in India”. In his address to the Lok
Sabha (lower house of India’s bicameral parliament) on 30th March,
Union Home Minister Amit Shah hailed Operation Kagaar: the
intensification of Indian state’s longstanding genocidal war
against its own people to crush their struggles and clear the
resource-rich forests for loot by their imperialist masters. This
operation known as the “final solution to the maoist problem”
started on 1st January 2024 with the killing of Mangli, a six month
old baby in Bastar, Chhatisgarh. Since then, over one hundred
thousand paramilitary personnel with even more police officers,
Border Security Force and District Reserve Guards, CoBRA and other
special counter-insurgency units have been deployed to the region.
Over the past sixteen months of this operation, illegal detention of
Adivasis, mortar and aerial bombardment, sexual violence and cold
blooded encounters claimed nearly one thousand lives. Blood contracts
in the form of Memorandums of Understanding were signed with
companies such as Mittals, Jindals, Tata, Essar, Posco, Vedanta and
more to build mines and roads upon the corpses of Adivasis. This open
loot of resources and witch-hunt of not just the Maoist
revolutionaries but of all forms of dissent that comes in the way of
mining corporations and their parasitic ambitions is what the Indian
state and Amit Shah boasted in the name of “economic growth and
development”, claiming to have ended “Naxalism of pen and gun”
on 31st March. According to government data, around three thousand
Maoists including some big leaders have surrendered over the past
year, while a lot of those who refused to give up arms have been
killed in cold blood. Some intellectuals also say that Maoism has not
ended, but changed forms: from an underground party waging Protracted
People’s War to the legal one. But how much of it is true? Is it
even possible for Maoism to “change forms” and become open? What
does class war in India look like one month after the Indian state
has declared the country free of “the Maoist threat”? These are
some questions that we shall try to answer through this article.
Marxism v.
Revisionism: A brief overview
Marxism is the
science of the laws governing the development of nature and society.
It is the science for the liberation of the proletariat, which will
pave way for the complete liberation of humankind. And as stated by
Marx in the Communist Manifesto, it is not possible without “the
forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions”. Only an
organized armed struggle of the people can overthrow the highly
organized state working for the bourgeoisie. Lenin reinforced this in
The State and Revolution, emphasizing that “The suppression of the
bourgeoisie by the proletariat is impossible without a violent
revolution.” Mao extended this, saying that “political power
grows out of the barrel of a gun,” insisting that revolution is
inseparable from armed struggle. Revolution
is an act of violence and therefore, there is no Marxism, let alone
Maoism, without armed struggle. Then why do some surrendered Maoists
talk of the change in their form of struggle from a primarily illegal
to a completely legal one, while still claiming to adhere to the
revolutionary line of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism?
For as long as
Marxism has existed, it has been in struggle against first utopian
socialism and then revisionism. Revisionists are petty-bourgeoisie
fellow travelers in the revolution who have moved into the camp of
the ruling class. They recognize the exploitation inherent in the
class society, but refuse to align with the proletarian revolution
which would demand sacrifice and require them to abandon their class
interests. Hence, while claiming to be Marxists (because Marxism has
proven itself to be the only true science for the liberation of
mankind) they turn a blind eye to the fact that antagonistic
contradictions can only be resolved through war, and turn to
reformism and class collaboration. A lot of petty bourgeoisie turn to
this camp especially in times of setback to the revolutionary
movement due to the vacillating nature of this class. As the fighting
people grow ideologically, politically and organizationally under the
red banner of Marxism, the ruling classes shake with fear as they see
close their historic defeat. In such times, revisionists distort
Marxism and derail it from its essence. This is how revisionists
help, and ultimately fall in the camp of the ruling class. The
struggle against revisionism is thus the struggle of the exploited
and oppressed masses against the ruling classes. This is why Marx
waged a sharp struggle against Lassalle, Bakunin and the Blanquists
and Lenin refuted Bernstein and identified the Mensheviks who
advocated for an open party as the greatest internal threat to the
movement. Lenin brought forward in this struggle that insistence of
transition to socialism by peaceful parliamentary means is nothing
but betrayal to the proletariat. Mao took this further in struggle
against the revisionism of Khrushchev and Lin Piao. The Naxalbari
uprising in India led by Comrade Charu Majumdar was a struggle
against not just the landlords and Indian state, but also against the
opportunism of CPI and CPI(M). Thus, the history of Marxism has
always been the history of struggle against revisionism.
Crisis in Indian
revolutionary movement and CPI (Maoist)’s struggle against the
revisionist surrender line
Even today,
opportunism-liquidationism-revisionism continues to plague the Indian
communist movement, and this precisely is the internal threat it
faces: bigger than the enemy’s military attack under Operation
Kagaar or any such operation. History teaches us that there are two
parallel political lines that contrast with each other for political
power. One line has been laid down by the communist revolutionaries
like Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Charu Majumdar, Kanhai Chatterjee,
Basvaraju, Raju Da, Kosa Da, Renuka, Kishan Da, Hidma etc while the
another line is being laid down by the traitors like Bernstein,
Kautsky, Lin Piao, Prachanda, Sonu, Satish, Devji, Venugpal, Kobad
Ghandy, Balraj, Prashant Rahi etc. The holders of the second line are
opportunist enemy agents who are attacking the proletarian political
line in order to weaken and thereafter obliterate the proletarian
line. The correct political line emerges only through struggle
against opportunist revisionist elements. CPI (Maoist) understood
that the Sonu-Satish-Devji clique, responsible for instigating the
line of surrender, laying down of weapons, and the disintegration of
revolutionary ranks amidst the encirclement and annihilation campaign
against the party and the army, are not friends of the people. They
are traitors and enemy agents disguised as revolutionaries.
After Sonu failed to
make the party open and legal with his press release and statements,
he surrendered his AK-47 to the fascist BJP-RSS representative, the
Maharashtra Chief Minister. In an interview with a leading English
newspaper, Devji said that he still upheld Marxism-Leninism-Maoism
and would work through legal means to accomplish the party`s
political goals. Ironically, he also called Sonu a traitor while
promising to work to make the revolutionary party open and legal and
request the government to lift the ban on it. Anyone acquainted with
basic Marxism-Leninism-Maoism will appreciate the fact that the
communist party cannot be legal and open. Comrade Lenin`s reply to
the politics of surrender conveniently held by Devji is, “To come
out in the legal press against the underground or in favour of an
open party is simply to disrupt our party, and we must regard the
people who do this as bitter enemies of the party” (Com. Lenin in
Report to the Brussels Conference).
Fear, said comrade
Marx, is the distinguishing characteristic of Opportunism. Comrades
Basavaraju, Raju Da, Kosa Da, and Hidma all had this situation before
them, but they chose to be martyrs for the revolution. It was their
politics that was dearer to them than their skin. But for People like
Sonu and Devji, this was not the option; they chose liquidationism.
While speaking about liquidationists comrade Lenin said,
“Liquidationism is opportunism that goes to the length of
renouncing the Party. It is self-evident that the Party cannot exist
if it includes those who do not recognise its existence. It is
equally understandable that the renunciation of the “underground”
under the existing conditions is the renunciation of the old Party.”
People of the world had exposed Sonu, and therefore, in order to
confuse the rank of the revolutionaries, the ruling class had to prop
up the face of Devji. Like Sonu, the Maoist party exposed Devji too
as a bitter enemy of the proletariat, and a traitor of higher order.
They made it clear that Devji is another Sonu, but with a
revolutionary cladding, and waged a sharp ideological struggle
against the line of surrender, against those who wanted to break the
working-class party. Indian revolutionaries once again reiterated
that throughout the period of New Democratic Revolution, armed
struggle will be the primary form of struggle and army the primary
form of organisation. All efforts at mass movements stand useless if
they don't ultimately serve the People’s War to tear apart the very
structures of exploitation of man by man.
While having
declared India “Maoist-free”, the crisis-ridden imperialism is
getting more restless and trying to use psychological warfare against
the revolutionary warfare, where it is still trying to make the
revolutionaries surrender. Amidst all the obstacles created by the
ruling class, their agents and opportunist-liquidationist-revisionist
elements, revolutionaries are marching forward on the path of New
Democratic Revolution – Socialism – Communism. Communist Party of
India (Maoist) has expelled the traitors and betrayers and continues
on the path of Protracted People’s War: the path laid down by the
brave martyrs. Hence, although the Maoist movement in India has faced
huge losses, the three magic weapons: party, army and united front
still exist by waging a sharp struggle against
opportunism-liquidationism-revisionism, and holding high the glorious
banner of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.
People’s War in
India continues!
If you fall
one evening
twilight,
you should fall like
a sun,
and behind you
thousands of shooting stars.
On 13th April,
Rangaboina Bhagya, known as comrade Rupi refused to surrender before
the Brahminical Hindutva Fascist Indian state and laid down her life
in an encounter in Kanker, Chhatisgarh, upholding the revolutionary
line of armed struggle. She was a commander of the People’s
Liberation Guerilla Army (PLGA). Rupi was a 46 year old Area
Committee member of CPI (Maoist) who had left behind her village in
Siddipet district of Telangana to serve as a full time professional
revolutionary at the age of 24. Upon her martyrdom, the Indian state
withheld her body for 48 hours before releasing it. Thousands of
people participated in her funeral in her hometown Telangana,
marching and chanting slogans of glory to the People's War and their
fallen hero Rupi. The peasants chanted “Bhagya (Rupi) is Immortal”,
and banners were hung throughout the village, paying homage to Rupi.
She refused to betray the revolution and laid down her life,
remaining forever immortal in the hearts of the people. Her life and
ending serves as testament or metaphor that the spirit of revolution
or Maoism can never be undone.
Two days later, on
15th April, the state’s security forces had encircled Maoist polit
bureau member Misir Besra and his squad in Saranda forest, West
Singbhum District, Jharkhand upon the inputs given by Tritiya
Prastuti Committee (TPC) goons. TPC is a reactionary, police-backed
splinter criminal militia operating in Jharkhand that serves the
interests of the Indian state, contractors, mining capital and local
elites by dividing the oppressed people along caste lines, engaging
in extortion, informer work and counterinsurgency against the
revolutionary forces. In the crossfire between the Maoists and the
state’s armed forces in Saranda, at least six CoBRA personnel were
injured according to the government’s data (which means actual
number could be higher) and Misir Besra’s squad moved from that
location. This incident was an echo of the slogan of the Protracted
People’s War through the thick forests of Jharkhand and across the
world, proving that Maoism is alive and refuses to surrender in front
of the enemy. As they gained nothing from the operation, the
desperate and panic-ridden Indian state reacted to its defeat by
dressing the four TPC goons (who had given them the information) as
Maoists and killing them in a fake encounter in Chatra, Jharkhand.
Recently, on 2nd
May, during the state’s area domination operation, four personnel
of District Reserve Guard (the anti-revolutionary army of surrendered
Maoists) were killed in an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) blast in
Kanker-Narayanpur border in Chhattisgarh’s Bastar region.
As the crisis of
imperialism sharpens, people all over the country are coming to the
streets and fighting militantly. In Sijimali, Odisha, the Adivasis
have been organizing continuous round-the-clock hill vigils,
protests, road blockades and resistance camps in their forests to
prevent the illegal takeover of their land by Vedanta for bauxite
mining. In April this year, women stood in the front lines with axes
in their hands to stop the road construction connected to the mining
project.
In Panna and
Chhatarpur districts of Madhya Pradesh, Adivasi and peasant
communities are resisting the Ken-Betwa river linking project which
would submerge villages, displace thousands of families and destroy
the forest. The villagers here occupied roads and forest checkpoints,
halted construction, organized mass gatherings, held all-night
protest camps and refused evacuation. Hundreds of women staged the
Chita Andolan (funeral pyre protest), lying on symbolic pyres to show
that displacement is equivalent to death sentence for them. The women
in this protest declared that they will take up arms and join the
Naxalites if Vedanta does not step back. In Noida, thousands of
industrial workers protested for higher wages and better working
conditions. These workers blockaded the highways and industrial
roads, shut down factory zones, occupied intersections, confronted
police barricades, threw stones, torched vehicles and damaged the
company and police property. So terrified was the Indian state by
workers stepping beyond the narrow confines of legal unionism and
taking up militant struggle that, only weeks after declaring the
country “Naxal-free”, it began to see the spectre of Naxalbari in
this Noida workers’ protest. True to its comprador fascist nature,
the state has been responding to all these protests with brutal
repression. On 1st May, International Workers’ Day, revolutionary
graffiti upholding Marxism-Leninism-Maoism was documented at
different locations in the capital city of Delhi. These graffiti also
included the slogan “Ghar Ghar Se Hidma Niklega”, reiterating
that revolutionaries don’t die, they multiply!
All this proves not
only that CPI (Maoist) refuses to bow down in front of the enemy and
continues to wage an armed struggle, but also that people’s faith
in it remains alive. Flames of Naxalbari still burn across India and
the Indian state has failed miserably in its “final war” against
the revolutionary movement. Claims of triumph against CPI (Maoist)
that Union Home Minister Amit Shah had made on 30th and 31st March
hence remained debunked.
Defeated armies
learn well!
“Let the liberals
and terrified intellectuals lose heart after the first genuinely mass
battle for freedom, let them repeat like cowards: don’t go where
you have been beaten before, don’t tread that fatal path again. The
class conscious proletariat will answer them: the great wars in
history, the great revolutionary problems were solved only by the
advanced classes returning to the attack again and again; and they
achieved victory after having learned the lessons of defeat. Defeated
armies learn well. The revolutionary classes of Russia have been
defeated in their first campaign, but the revolutionary situation
remains. In new forms and by other ways, sometimes much more slowly
than we would wish, the revolutionary crisis is approaching once
more, is maturing again. We must carry out the prolonged task of
preparing larger masses for the revolutionary crisis; this
preparation must be more serious, taking into consideration the
higher and more concrete tasks; and the more successfully we fulfill
this task, the more certain will be our victory in the new struggle”
Comrade Lenin; The
year of reaction
The crisis that the
Indian revolutionary movement faces today is not new to communism.
The Russian revolutionary movement faced a similar crisis after 1905.
The Tsarist state had intensified repression and
counter-revolutionary terror, while inside the party movement there
emerged opportunism-liquidationism-revisionism with some elements
seeking to abandon underground revolutionary work in favor of
legalism and adaptation to bourgeois parliamentary structures. There
was a lack of centralized coordination between the committees. The
Bolsheviks overcame this by struggling against the line of
opportunism-liquidationism-revisionism and rebuilding a disciplined,
underground, ideologically united party based on
democratic-centralism and rooted in class struggle. Thus, within
little more than a decade, the very forces that had been declared
crushed and defeated returned with greater strength, swept aside
Tsarism and bourgeois rule through the February and October
Revolutions of 1917, and shook the foundations of the world.
Setbacks in a
revolutionary movement are not accidental interruptions but a normal
part of historical development driven by contradictions. Social
change does not advance in a straight, smooth line; instead,
development proceeds through conflict, reversals, ruptures, and
leaps. Every revolutionary movement contains internal contradictions
between advanced and backward forces, correct and incorrect political
lines, organization and spontaneity, as well as external
contradictions with the ruling classes and the state. A setback may
temporarily weaken the movement, but it also exposes weaknesses,
tests political lines, eliminates unstable elements, and further
develops the revolutionary movement ideologically, politically and
organizationally. Temporary defeats and setbacks become moments
through which the revolutionary movement transforms itself and
prepares the condition for future advances.
Indian communist
movement today faces a situation similar to what the Bolsheviks had
faced after 1905. Indian revolutionaries may be weak today but this
weakness is not strategic one, strategically they are on the correct
political line and therefore the law of science explains that they
will rise up to destroy the three big mountains (Imperialism,
Comprador Bureaucratic Capitalism and Feudalism) which are crushing
the people of this country and the world. The reason of this
temporary setback in not the state repression but the
opportunist-liquidationist-revisionist elements within the
revolutionary movement and continuous struggle is being waged against
that. The party of the proletariat is like a living organism which
preserves and strengthens its revolutionary vitality through constant
regeneration of cells. For the Indian revolutionary movement, the
wrong ideas defeated in two-line struggle and the
opportunists-liquidationists-revisionists who tried to make the party
open are like the dead blood cells that have been shed off as the
body of the party lives to develop and advance the struggle for
liberation. People’s War in the country continues, and continue it
shall, on the path laid down by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao and
numerous martyrs of the Indian revolutionary movement, until the
exploited and oppressed masses drown the fascist state in the blood
it has shed and rise to victory. Blood of the fallen people’s
warriors will nurture the people’s war!
