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!
