When we publish for debate it means that Maoistroad does not support some part of text, but it is correct to debate
Revolutionary Student Front striving to resurrect spirit of
Naxalbari and Maoism in
West Bengal
after the merciless suppression of the naxalite movement students groups were formed in the mid 1970’s .However they underwent a series of splits, leaving the student cadre scattered in fragmented parts, with student bodies tattered. Student’s bodies from the early 190’s influenced by the CPI (ML) 2nd CC, the CPI (ML) Party Unity, CPI(ML) Peoples War and the Maoist Communist Centre to an extent revived the torch of Naxalbari and penetrated village regions to integrate with the peasantry. The most notable contribution was by the Revolutionary Students Association led by the Party Unity group.,followed by the Revolutionary Students Front led by Peoples War group.However by mid 2000 their impact was greatly diffused with police repression. I would recommend readers to stroll through pages in late 1990’s of student organ ‘Kalam; of defunct All India Revolutionary Student Federation.
Another student wave or resurgence sprung in the time lf Lalgarh struggle but again watered down after 2011.
Today the scenario in West Bengal of a broad based student movement is grim, with progressive forces marginalized.
Contribution and Role of RSF
The Revolutionary Students Front inherits the rich legacy of the Naxalbari struggle .It is in the process of resurrecting new roses to bloom. In diverse spheres it is planting seeds to combat what it classifies as Brahmanical fascism and semi-feudal and semi-colonial oppression.
Armed with the weapon of ‘Marxism-Leninism-Maoism’, RSF carries out regular poster, march and programme campaigns on the burning issues of the day propelled by neo-fascism and participates in agitative programmes and campaigns against the brutal repression of the State forces, at a scale no other student body endeavours in West Bengal.
RSF is divided into district committees under the executive committee, local committees under districts, and other educational institute-based units.
Revolutionary Students Front has conducted noteworthy and qualitative struggles against neo-fascist detention of Maoist prisoners ,Israel oppression against Gaza, Violation of right of self determination for Kashmiri people, construction of Ram Mandir or demolition of Babri Masjid and wave of Hindutva fascism, brutal atrocities on dalits and Muslims Declaration of CAA and NRC,Attacks on farmers protest against bills, massacres of Maoists ,aerial bombing in Dantewada and illegal detention or fabrication of political activists.
It has also resurrected the legacy of the Russian and Chinese revolution and teachings of Marx, Lenin and Mao with regular study sessions and conducted solidarity with ongoing people’s wars. It is determined to re-unite the scattered student groups in Bengal.
Last year RSF took leading iniative in memorial programme for deceased comrade Channdi Sarkar ,who played an invaluable role in the agrarian movements and called for a "Gramme Chalo Abhiyan" on 12-15 April to go among farmers to realize and embrace their daily life struggles”
RSF has also commemorated martyrdom of Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru, linking their struggle with the resistance against the power hungry corporates and saffron fascists.
A magazine called ‘Chatra fauj has also been launched, in January.
A memorable campaign was conducted to procure the successful release of framed activists Abhinav of RSF and Sankhadeep of DYSA, who narrated their experiences at Jadhavpur university. Earlier in February, an intense protest was launched condemning detention of Sabyasachi Goswami ,leader and worker of Revolutionary Student Front.
In recent days RSF conducted impactful protests in College street against aerial bombings in Chattisgarh with APDR.
With high frequency it has integrated with civil rights protests of Association for Protection for Democratic Rights.
Almost every third day RSF posters are stuck or it’s slogans painted on the walls of Jadavpur university campus. to invigorate the spirit of resistance.
RSF is striving to unite and build mass resistance against privatization in education sector, against empowerment and establish mass scientific education. It condemned the blatant anti-student nature of the National Education Policy 2020 with its endorsing of mythology or unscientific philosophy.
RSF is one of the most commited organization of India, in resurrecting the torch of Maoism and Naxalbari.Most commendable that no student group in West Bengal has shimmered or sharpened the cutting edge of armed revolution and Maoism as RSF. It logically has summed up in a note to the Turskish seminar on Maoism recently, why it backs the line and practice of the CPI(Maoist) .RSF till the last drop of their blood defend role of late Charu Mazumdar and Kanhai Chaterjee. It has also strived to overcome sectarianism and unite with all progressive forces.
( CPI(Maoist) did not partecipe in any form at Turskish seminar on Maoism - note of maoistroad)
RSF correctly upholds concept of applying protracted peoples war in third world countries and discards it’s applicability in developed countries. of ‘Universality of peoples war.’ It also rejects concept of ‘Gonzalo thought.’
Perspective of RSF
Recently RSF wrote a most well formulated or constructive message to the Maoist symposium in Turkey.
“The Brahmanic Hindutva fascist administration that has ruled India for the past ten years, has taken the country on the road to fascism. The proletariat, semi-proletariat, and peasants are all experiencing an unparalleled surge in exploitation and oppression. Workers’, farmers’, and students’ struggles are being repressed in a fascist brutal method.”
“Muslims, Christians, Dalits, women, students, youth, and all other marginalized groups are facing increasing attacks, and they are being relegated to the status of second-class citizens within their own country. The BJP’s criminal elements are encouraged to commit various cruel and inhumane acts against the nation’s citizens.”
“Millions of rupees are not spent on fundamental necessities like healthcare and education for the nation’s citizens, but rather on constructing Hindu temples, most notably the Ram Mandir. In an effort to split the population along religious lines, these operations seek to incite religious fanaticism in a variety of forms. The BJP government implemented a number of harsh regulations, including the Data Protection Bill and three new criminal laws, in an attempt to silence the nation’s revolutionary and democratic voices.”
“The current regime aims to standardize and erase the rich heritage of India’s diverse cultural identity, from the erasure of the Mughals from history textbooks to Narendra Modi publicly upholding Hindu rituals at Ram Mandir in Ayodhya, which is more of a display of aggressive Hindu nationalism than faith and devotion. Propaganda is now being written into history. News of spontaneous attacks on Muslims on this ‘auspicious dawn’ is flooding in from all throughout the county.”
“The working masses of India are fiercely opposing the Brahminical fascists, despite their best efforts to alter the course of history in their favour. The Adivasis in central India who are opposing corporatisation and militarisation, the farmers in Punjab and Haryana, and the transport workers on strike for improved working conditions – these peoples’ movements lead the way. In all of these movements, we see the reflection of the truth in Comrade Mao’s words: “To rebel is justified.”
“All revolutionary organisations have the duty to use the dynamic scientific discipline of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism as the instrument of analysis, to minutely dissect each individual event and, based on that, to propagate the correct revolutionary praxis throughout the nation to sound the clarion call of revolution to every working class and oppressed person.”
“This struggle must be shaped by all the anti-fascist movements as the people’s concerted resistance against fascism on a common platform. But during the whole of the opposition to the all-consuming fascist forces, we must hold fast to the Maoist concept of class struggle. Fascism can only be fundamentally overthrown by class struggle. Therefore, in addition to exposing the true nature of fascism and constructing a united front resistance movement against it, it is our responsibility to spread the idea of class struggle based on Maoist practice. This is not only not limited to the domestic political landscape in India, but crucial for the unity of revolutionary and progressive forces internationally. The only way to unite the peoples’ movements, bring forth the downfall of the oppressive States of the world and establish a communist society is to march forward under the bright red banner of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism.”
I also recommend reading of an interview conducted by Vale de Pomares Study group of Brazil which is most logical and analytical.
Roots of Struggles in APRSU
Since the new democratic revolution in a semi-feudal, semi-colonial state like India is an agrarian revolutionary war in essence, the vast countryside engulfing this land of uneven development is naturally the main prop of the agrarian revolution;. Now, in the process of redistributing the scattered knowledge spread among the masses in the light of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, there was special importance of uniting with the working masses and practically integrating with their daily struggles. Keeping that importance in mind, the call of the Naxalbari was "Join the peasant revolutionary struggle" (Deshavrati, 15th August 1970). Countless students of schools, colleges and universities converged from village to village to voice ey the call of people's war to the farmer's fields. Later, in the second conference of APRSU (Andhra Pradesh Radical Students' Union), a call was given to the youth during the summer vacation to 'Go to the Villages'. With earlier experience and more scientific and mass-oriented application, that creative 'Go to Village' campaign with the lively participation of thousands of students was the precursor of the historical Karimgarh and Adilabad peasant struggles. Not only that, many student youth activists bloomed into professional revolutionaries with the seeds planted to breed roses, from that campaign. Thus, the 'Grame Chalo (Go to Village)' campaign was a historic turning point in the revolutionary communist movement in India.
Go to Villages campaign of RSF
In December 2022, two separate teams on behalf of RSF conducted a 'Grame Chalo' campaign in two different areas of Nadia district. They set out on a venture to explore the life-struggle of large part of the people including the farmers, farm laborers, small traders and rural laborers for seven days and paying heed to every expression of happiness-sorrow-frustration-struggle of the farmer taking into account his level of awareness ,the resistance level movement and the politics of the agrarian revolution are discussed. Emphasis was placed on grasping the various manual labor practices among the students associated with production in association with peasants and other rural laborers working on the land and overcoming the student-like urban pattern of behavior as much as possible. Since the eighties of the last century, the areas have a glorious history of re-capturing huge areas of lands especially non-ceiling lands and distributing them among the poor landless farmers led by Naxalbari-led revolutionary peasant organizations. As a result, the plight of landlessness has been nullified to some extent.
Most of the families in the villages are dependent on agriculture. Although there is a minor change in the degree of dependence of the rural population on agriculture in the two areas, the overall situation is similar. The amount of land privately owned by farmers ranges from seven-eight kathas to several bighas on an average. Poor farmers with less land are forced to cultivate their own little land as well as sharecropping other people's land and working in local brick kilns; Some also work in supplying soil to brick kilns. The brick kiln works roughly 6 months a year and is closed during the rainy season. At that time, the life of the poor farmer became more uncertain. The main food crops grown in the area are rice, maize, mustard, winter vegetables, onion, spinach, red vegetables, coriander, mallow, and kale. Jute is the only cash crop.
As the cultivation of food crops continues to be unprofitable, the trend towards sporadic floriculture has increased. Although the use of tractors, power tillers, paddy threshing machines, shallow pumps etc. in agriculture has increased significantly, the influence of the zamindars in their ownership and use is hidden and evident in some areas. There is only one farmer mandi for around 130 local villages. Due to insufficiency of agricultural land, most of the sharecroppers do not have 'Kisan Mandi Card' and are forced to sell to middlemen immediately after harvest at a price slightly lower than the MSP. Middlemen may exercise power as large landowners or as direct or indirect part of the rural ruling class. The few chemical fertilizer marketing centers in the area are owned by the landlord class. The figures we get for the cost and final profit of paddy cultivation on 1 bigha of land of average fertility according to a sharecropper's statement leave no doubt that agriculture is becoming increasingly futile or the poor farmer under the autocratic system and naturally a large section of the rural youth is forced to migrate to other states and forced to live a migrant life as a laborer or hotel worker.
A large part of the agricultural land in the area is owned by non-agricultural owners, who basically share the land (on fixed-term payment or crop contracts) and provide high-interest loans for incidental costs such as agricultural machinery, fertilisers, etc. Poor peasants mortgaged large sums of land annually and tilled the land on a contract to pay a fixed amount on time, which, if not paid on time, the owner either grabbed all the mortgaged money or invested it in non-agricultural businesses. Ancient examples of non-market exploitation are witnessed in sharecropping, 'manish khatano' and many others.
Besides, some women of the village are involved in making various designs of sarees. In this case, the sewing machine is available on loan from the moneylender and the thread required for weaving the sarees is distributed from house to house by moneylenders. It is mainly target-based work, earning wages per sari. The moneylenders' brokers collect the sarees and sell them in the market, with most of the profit going to the moneylenders. It goes without saying that women's participation outside the confines of the home is limited in the socio-cultural infrastructure that flourished under the semi-feudal system. There is no apparent social veil in villages, but there is an informal ban on girls entering even tea shops. Although there is some variation in women's social participation due to regional variations in the influence of petty-bourgeois and neo-liberal culture, there is a strong influence of patriarchy on the populace regardless of religion and caste.
Many villages have no primary health center within a radius of 10 km. No high school. Only a small fraction of area school-students pursue post-secondary education, while the rest enter minimum-wage livelihoods. Yet in these remote areas, where education and health services are not even accessible, neo-liberal culture like PUBG, Free Fire has been bred in the idle habits of school-leavers.
Different permutation s of caste and communalism function in the domination of semi-feudal power in different regions. For example, in one refugee-zone of the area, the Goala caste owning large tracts of land is the socially and economically dominant segment and the local face of the rural ruling class. The conflict between refugee Namasudras and local Muslims on various issues with this section is intense. Ruling parties like BJP-Trinamool-CPM have repeatedly tried to capitalize on t this conflict for electoral gains, but in the end, the struggle of the oppressed masses has the final say. The revolutionary farmers' organization have waged a valiant struggle against ruling class parties by mobilizing the people on many regional issues and building a militant mass movement.
The marches and road meetings of 'Sangramee Krishak Manch' are flowing at a wave in various populated areas to demand radical redistribution of all unused lands and non-ceiling lands among the landless farmers and government initiative irrigation. Police raids and terror are a regular feature in the areas, as well as negative propaganda against the revolutionaries. Yet among the peasant masses of the area there is relentless faith in the long legacy of struggle and ongoing struggle led by revolutionary peasant organizations. From one such farm laborer, they leant about the martyrdom of Comrade Chand and Comrade Jiten, the sons of this region in the revolutionary peasant struggle. Despite several limitations or drawbacks , the experience of this 'Grame Chalo' campaign was a stepping stone in solidarity with the working people, in grasping the phenomena of semi-feudalism in rural Bengal, and above all integrating concrete practice practice with theoretical understanding of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, demands special importance for the revolutionary student movement.
Weaknesses
In my view still the Revolutionary Student Front propagates Marxism-Leninism –Maoism in it’s agenda, which is erroneous for a mass organization. The RSF is still not able to build a cohesive structure.
It also hardly recognizes a change in the form semi-feudalism has undergone changes and penetration of imperialism.
The RSF is unable to rectify past errors in mass line and are not able to grasp that today the CPI(Maoist) has not established bases areas of proper people’s self governance with agrarian revolutionary practice which can penetrate beyond forest areas, where it is confined.
Still tendencies to glorify armed squad actions and past romanticism .and not recognize the positive contribution of the T.Nagi Reddy-DV Rao line in the Andhra Pradesh coordination Committee in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.
I feel RSF has not rectified the mistakes of Andhra Pradesh Radical Students Union, in demarcating party and mass organization politics. or converting a student group into a front organization of a Maoist group.
by Harsh Thakor is a freelance journalist .Thanks information from Revolutionary Student Front facebok wall and spokesman Tataghata Roy Chowdhury.
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