[A Note
from the Editors: This article is an attempt to contribute in the
ongoing struggle against the line of
Opportunism-Liquidationism-Revisionism attacking the Maoist movement in
India. Our sources for the details specific to the current debate are
the CPI(Maoist) North Coordination Committee’s press releases available
in public domain. Wherever references have been made to affairs that
happened within the structures of said party and committee, our source
is invariably the aforementioned press releases.]
Introduction
In this age revisionism is
counter-revolutionary ideology. That is why the inner-party struggle—the
struggle between revolutionary ideology and counter-revolutionary
ideology—will continue. “Unity, struggle, unity” this means that
counter-revolutionary revisionism must be fought and defeated. Only then
unity is possible but that unity is not lasting. New contradictions
will arise, revisionism will try to appear in new forms. That is why
struggle has to be waged at a new level… The Party will develop through
constant struggles both against the enemy outside and against alien
trends within. Through these struggles the Party will grow in strength,
act as the vanguard of the revolution in order to serve the people,
transform itself and transform the whole society.
Readers familiar with the world
situation and the situation of the domestic politics today would know
very well that the International Communist Movement (ICM) and the
communist revolutionary movement in India is in a state of setbacks, and
severe crisis plagues it from within. Amid the ideological, political
and military attacks of the enemies from all sides, there has arisen a
section within the Indian revolutionary movement that seeks to betray
the interests of the exploited and oppressed Indian people, destroy the
communist party, dissolve the people’s army and surrender itself to the
Indian state. The charades are all nauseatingly the same. The Indian
state parades them around like trophies, and they give interviews to the
media talking about how they have finally seen the light of truth about
the futility of armed struggle and Protracted People’s War, and finally
embraced the constitution to “serve the people”. Such enlightened men!
The names are many — Balraj, Sonu, Devuji — all mere faces of the
Opportunist-Liquidationist-Revisionist (OLR) camp. The disease, however,
runs much deeper.
The OLR forces seek to subvert the
movement from within, render it toothless in the face of the enemy’s
attacks, and divert the people from the goal of revolution and
emancipation. Comrade Lenin fought ruthlessly against the opportunists,
liquidationists and revisionists of his time, both in Russia and
internationally. Comrade Mao carried on that struggle within the CPC and
then on an international scale through the Great Debate with the modern
revisionist social-imperialist clique that restored capitalism in the
USSR. This calls on us “foolish old men” who still dare to dream of
“moving mountains”, of a world free of exploitation and oppression, to
continue the struggle carried out by our great teachers. For the
communist movement to advance, it must get rid of the OLR muck holding
it back, and that struggle is continuous and never ending, for
revisionism is like the Hydra of Ancient Greek mythology — if you cut
off its head, a couple more grow to take its place.
The history of the desire and
struggle for emancipation from exploitation and oppression is as old as
exploitation and oppression itself. Ever since human society has been
divided into classes, these classes have struggled between themselves
and this class struggle has been the driving force of history. Spartacus
in times of slavery and Thomas Münzer in times of feudalism, went down
into the annals of history as great men who led armies of rebels to
overthrow the exploitative social orders of their times. But despite
their great struggles, this task remained incomplete as, throughout
history, one exploitative social order has only been replaced by
another, specific forms of class society were overthrown but classes
themselves remained. The Communist programme for liberation of humanity
from the clutches of class society, from all forms of exploitation and
oppression, is therefore a culmination of the oppressed peoples’ long
yearning for freedom from exploitation and oppression. It is only the
Communist programme that is also capable of overcoming the
contradictions of these previous liberation struggles. Indeed, “Communism is the riddle of history solved and it knows itself to be the answer.”2
Therefore, it is only obvious that
the bourgeoisie finding its heaven of liberty, equality and fraternity
being threatened by the earthly demand for real liberty and freedom,
would try its utmost to render this movement incapable of achieving its
goals. Thus it corrupts a section within the revolutionary movement
directly through bribery, promises for a better life, etc. or indirectly
through helping germinate the existing seeds of non-proletarian class
trends and ideologies within these people.3
The key link in the chain of Opportunism-Liquidationism-Revisionism is
the tendency of liquidationism. Liquidationism is the line promoting the
dissolution of the communist party, the only party capable of leading
the proletariat and all oppressed and exploited masses to realise
communism. The liquidationist does this by the “renunciation of the
underground”.4
Lenin had pointed out during the
inner-party struggles of the Bolshevik party that it is only a core of
professional revolutionaries — communists who have dedicated the entire
purpose and objective of their life to the revolution and liberation of
the oppressed — staying clandestine, leading the communist party and the
revolution by masterfully combining the illegal and legal work, that
can guarantee the success of the revolution.5
Why is this so, the reader might ask? Would not the communist party be
cut off from the masses if their structures are hidden off, if their
members do not openly participate in mass movements? To this Lenin
answers: “It is obvious to all that contact with the masses has been
maintained only by those who have not renounced the past and who know
how to make use of ‘open work’ and of all and sundry ‘possibilities’ …
for the purpose of strengthening, consolidating and developing” the
underground organization.”6
What Lenin is arguing for here is that the communist party maintains
its connection with the masses not by dissolving itself into open legal
activity, but by preserving its clandestine organisation and utilising
every legal opportunity to strengthen that organisation. Open work is
important, but its significance lies in it being a means to extend the
party’s influence among the masses, politicising the masses and drawing
its ranks from among the masses, consolidating the underground apparatus
that can survive repression, and provide leadership to the
revolutionary movement.
So why should a communist party be
clandestine? We must begin from the basic fact that no exploiting class
in history has ever given up exploitation through persuasion. The basic
essence, the central question, of every revolution is the seizure of
political power.7
Class struggle, in its final sense, is the struggle between classes for
political power, for political power is nothing but a means required
for a class to transform or shape society according to its class
interests. But no class will peacefully give up its monopoly over
controlling the society. Therefore, this recognition of seizure of
political power must also extend to the fact that this seizure is only
possible through war.8
But what is the objective of war?
Why do some armies lose while some win, while some wars end in
stalemates? Comrade Mao pointed out that the very objective of war is to
destroy the enemy’s forces while preserving one’s own forces.9
Therefore, in order for the proletariat to emerge victorious in the
class war, it must preserve its own forces. The subjective forces of the
communist party cannot be preserved if they are laid bare in front of
the enemy. During the 2004 peace talks between the Andhra Pradesh
government and the CPI (ML) People’s War and CPI (ML) Janashakti,
representatives of both parties temporarily emerged from underground to
participate in the negotiations. The People’s War leadership promptly
returned to underground functioning once the talks concluded, preserving
its clandestinity and underground functioning, while the Janashakti
leadership remained open. The subsequent repression directed against
cadres and leaders of both the parties led to the cold blooded murders
of Janashakti leaders including Comrade Riyaz, one of the
representatives at the peace talks. This is an example that demonstrates
that a revolutionary party cannot abandon the clandestine methods
necessary for its survival. We can also look back into the history of
the Communist Parties of Italy and Germany during the fascist onslaught.
The lack of clandestinity had to be paid for with the arrests and
martyrdoms of their respective General Secretaries (Comrades Ernst
Thälmann and Antonio Gramsci). This lesson taught by Comrade Lenin and
reaffirmed time and again by every revolutionary communist was gained
through the blood of the international proletariat. When the
revisionists of our time play the old tunes of liquidating the
underground, it is not just an ideological and political shortcoming.
They are dancing to the tunes of the international
capitalist-imperialist ruling class. We must have nothing but class
hatred for these running dogs of imperialism, and they must be seen as
nothing short of class enemies.
The struggle being waged by
communists against liquidationism is not a closed struggle. The struggle
for life and death of the communist movement and communist party is a
question of the life and death of the struggle for a society free of
exploitation. When the Maoists have weakened in Dandakaranya, it is the
Adivasi peasantry bearing the brunt of it. And if the forests of Saranda
have yet not been sold off wholesale to the imperialists by the
comprador bureaucratic bourgeois Indian ruling class, it is also because
of the maoists who are continuing the fight and not surrendering.
As long as the revolutionary
movement remains weak, the violence of the existing order continues
unchecked. Every day brings new victims of communal hatred and caste
oppression. Countless women are subjected to sexual violence. Workers
are attacked and murdered by police and the hired thugs of capitalists
for daring to even demand a survival wage. Peasants are killed for
demanding the land they till. Everybody who wishes to see a democratic
and truly free India in their lifetime, as well as forces worldwide
opposed to imperialism and all reaction, must cherish the struggle of
the CPI(Maoist) against liquidationism as their very own struggle and
rally to defend it. A blow to reaction anywhere is a blow to reaction
everywhere.
The North Coordination Committee
(NCC) of the CPI(Maoist) has recently released a number of statements,
available on the public domain, launching a sharp struggle against the
OLR forces.10
They have expelled a number of revisionists who were formerly part of
these structures but were involved in anti-party activities under the
direction of their leader, Baccha Prasad Singh alias Balraj. Of
particular interest to us is the statement released on 28th February,
2026, expelling Gopal Mishra alias Raghu and Prashant Rahi.11
These two people have been active in sowing confusion among the ranks
of the revolutionary and democratic movement in Delhi for a long time,
and engaging in sabotage. Thus, we wish to use our platform to make
public and propagate the counter-revolutionary lines and acts of these
two renegades.
Balraj — The Father of Revisionism in North India
Before talking about the lines and
actions of Gopal Mishra and Prashant Rahi, it is important to talk a
bit about their ideological father—the revisionist Baccha Prasad Singh
alias Balraj.12
Balraj was a Politburo Member of
the Communist Party of India (Maoist) and led the party’s North Regional
Bureau (NRB) before his arrest in 2010. The NRB subsequently got
dissolved in 2013. After coming out of jail, Balraj demanded that he be
reinstated in his position as NRB in-charge even though the NRB did not
exist anymore. When he was asked to report to the leadership of a
different region and work under their leadership, his feudal ego got
hurt and he started anti-party liquidationist and conspiratorial
activities. He refused to go underground, despite being a Politburo
member, because he was not ready to declass himself and face the
hardships and sacrifices demanded of a professional revolutionary. He
brought up bogus debates to hide his own revisionism and non-proletariat
class politics. He demanded that there should be two central
committees, one open CC to coordinate the urban work and one underground
CC to coordinate the rural work, which is in essence denying the
primacy that underground work should take in a revolution. He and his
lackeys claimed that semi-colonial semi-feudal mode of production is an
outdated analysis and capitalism has developed in parts of India such as
Punjab and Haryana. On the basis of this, they claimed that the line of
Protracted Peoples’ War is no longer valid since the resolution of the
land question is no longer central to the Indian revolution. They claim
that the CPI(Maoist) focuses too much on military line and does not pay
attention to building mass movements. And when their lines started
getting defeated in the party structures, these people claimed that
there is no place for debate within the Party and started gathering
forces trying to create a parallel CC. Despite continued attempts to
unite with him and carry on a principled two-line struggle, he refused
to respond to any of these attempts, and carried on with his
liquidationist activities. Finally, the CPI(Maoist) expelled him in
2023.
However, this was not the end of
Balraj’s shadow over the party. As reported in the NCC statement dated
24th January 2026, Balraj had set up and carefully prepared a network of
coverts secretly embedded within the party in order to carry on his
liquidationist activities in his absence. This follows Lin Piao’s
conspiratorial methods. Lin was the vice chairman of the CPC. He
presented himself as a revolutionary in public, but conspired and
created secret factions within the party behind closed doors to usurp
the revolution. Balraj and his network of coverts are similarly
following this path of secretly usurping the party from within. These
liquidationists held a secret meeting in 2023 where they passed a
resolution that political and organisational unity is not at all
possible with the party structures in North India and doing so is
unprincipled.
Balraj’s revisionism poses great
danger for the Party and the revolutionary camp, even after his
expulsion. We must maintain utmost vigilance to identify and expose such
ruling class elements within the revolutionary organisations. Thus, all
the Opportunists, Liquidationists and Revisionists that rear their head
up today, especially in North India, must be seen as continuators of
Balraj’s anti-party political line.
Gopal Mishra alias Raghu — lapdog of Balraj
Gopal Mishra alias Raghu was a
trade union activist working in Delhi. He was arrested along with his
wife in 2010 by a team led by the Special Cell of the Delhi Police,
under the charges of being the secretary of the Party’s Delhi State
Committee.
After Mishra came out of jail,
instead of submitting his self-criticism by meeting with comrades, he
continued to do parallel work on his own accord on the basis of his
incorrect political understandings and made unity with the Balraj group.
A representative of the Gopal Mishra group attended the liquidationist
meeting held in 2023, thus shedding their masks.
Gopal Mishra and his group,
echoing the line of Balraj, refuse to accept the path of revolution in
semi-colonial, semi-feudal India to be the New Democratic Revolution
through the Protracted Peoples’ War. In Delhi, which is the primary area
of work (perhaps, area of sabotage is a better phrase) for the Gopal
Mishra group, they have been helping the state by disrupting the work of
revolutionary organisations and slandering comrades. They had declared
Comrade G.N. Saibaba as dictatorial and authoritarian and did everything
in their ability to isolate him because he always took a sharp and
correct Marxist-Leninist-Maoist line against any form of deviation. They
had put much effort to isolate Comrade Saibaba and sabotage the great
work he was doing in exposing the war on people. They have taken the
same approach towards all comrades and sympathisers who upheld and
defended the correct MLM line before them.
Their people have shamelessly
participated in the red-tagging of revolutionary organisations and
propagated against agitation and propaganda actions taken by
revolutionary organisations of Delhi in the support of the ongoing New
Democratic Revolution. They have even threatened students with dire
consequences for joining Revolutionary Mass Organisations following the
correct MLM line. They have built parallel organisations in some
universities where revolutionary organisations do not exist, in order to
divert students sympathetic to the politics of MLM and NDR towards
themselves. They also built parallel organisations in areas where New
Democratic organisations already existed. But despite their absolutely
shameless and disruptionist tactics, always so common among
liquidationists, the revolutionary movement continued to work along the
correct Marxist-Leninist-Maoist line and will continue to do so by
fighting against all such OLR elements.
His group also gives a safe
shelter to state agents and people expelled from New Democratic
organisations, including those who have been expelled for sexual
harassment and other anti-women practices. At one point, it had become
somewhat of a common practice that these individuals would commit
anti-women acts, the revolutionary structures they were in would decide a
punishment for them after taking appropriate steps, and these
individuals would then run off to Gopal Mishra who would welcome them
with open arms.
Gopal Mishra, while in words still
claiming to seek unity with the revolutionary camp, would spread
slanders against the leadership of the revolutionary movement in Delhi.
Even after the liquidationist meeting, the NCC statement says that full
efforts were made to struggle with him politically, seek unity, and win
him over. However, it was he who left no scope for such efforts by
refusing to meet any comrades. His anti-party, disruptionist and
liquidationist activities make him no less of a threat to the
revolutionary movement than Balraj, as the NCC has correctly stated in
its statement.
Moreover, Gopal Mishra has also
been involved in collecting funds from revolutionary sympathisers and
masses in the name of the maoist party. This is nothing but corruption.
On the one hand he refuses to subject himself to party discipline,
spreads liquidationist slander about the party, its leadership, and the
revolutionary organisations, but then he goes to the masses asking funds
in the name of the party. The degenerate revisionist always stoops down
to such acts. We request sympathisers and comrades to not fall for
their lies. The money and aid that the revolutionary movement gets from
the masses are used to strengthen the revolution and serve the interests
of the masses. The money siphoned from the masses by the OLR forces
will be invariably used to strengthen their counter-revolutionary and
anti-people activities.
The Snitch And The Revisionist — A Match Made In Hell
Prashant Rahi, who had long been
under suspicion among revolutionary organisations in Delhi, including
our own magazine, has been exposed in the NCC statement to be a state
agent and traitor. Saibaba, before his martyrdom, had conveyed to
comrades that this traitor was involved in snitching and getting
multiple comrades arrested in Sai’s case. Even before his arrest, Rahi
was involved in anti-party and counter-revolutionary activities,
interfering in matters of other states, building organisations parallel
to existing revolutionary organisations, etc. because of which he was
subjected to disciplinary action.
Prashant Rahi goes around using
his image as a political prisoner to meddle in the affairs of
revolutionary organisations. Even in the case of our own magazine, he
has multiple times tried to red-tag us. When students were arrested
during the Delhi Air Pollution Protest, he would come to the court
during the hearings and take aside the parents of the activists (who
were already antagonised towards the idea of their child doing activism)
and talk to them separately, which also raised suspicions.
Despite numerous attempts made by
comrades to warn Gopal Mishra and his clique to not interact with
Prashant Rahi and tell them that he’s a state agent and a snitch, they
have continued to associate with him and give him space.
Prashant Rahi is actually the
“revolutionary” face of the Balraj group. He often goes around the
country trying to use his image in order to gain legitimacy which is
then in turn banked upon by the Gopal Mishra gang and the rest of the
Balraj group to gain legitimacy for themselves. It is thus dangerous for
revolutionary organisations to give him any platform as it would give
him legitimacy in front of the masses which he would use to continue his
counter-revolutionary activities. We appeal to revolutionary
organisations that may have unknowingly platformed him in the past to
not repeat that mistake.
Conclusion
The struggle to advance New
Democratic Revolution is inseparable from the struggle against OLR.
Every revolutionary must take the road of revolutionary transformation
against the road of capitulation. Victory in the revolution can only be
achieved through struggle against the forces trying to stop the advance
of the revolution, including both the external and internal enemies. In
1924, Com. Stalin had stated:
Our Party succeeded in achieving
internal unity and unexampled cohesion of its ranks primarily because it
was able in good time to purge itself of the opportunist pollution,
because it was able to rid its ranks of the Liquidators and Mensheviks.
Proletarian parties develop and become strong by purging themselves of
opportunists and reformists, social-imperialists and social-chauvinists,
social-patriots and social-pacifists. – J. V. Stalin13
We request comrades, revolutionary
masses and sympathisers to not give any space to Gopal Mishra and his
cohort, including state agent and snitch Prashant Rahi, and to expose,
isolate and take militant action against these anti-people traitors. To
those seeking to join the liquidationist circus of Balraj, Gopal Mishra
and co. we warn you to mend your ways before it is too late. To the
students, youth and people who aspire for a New Democratic Revolution
but have been misled by these traitors, and are part of the parallel
organisations set up by them to divert you, we appeal to you to rebel
against their established revisionist leadership and join the genuine
revolutionary organisations, or transform these organisations into
revolutionary organisations. There is only one revolutionary movement in
this country and any justification they give to explain why these
organisations are separate from the existing revolutionary organisations
are all lies made to mislead you. Let us raise high the red banner of
Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and carry forward the revolutionary movement.
Let us wage an uncompromising struggle against
Opportunism-Liquidationism-Revisionism in the spirit of Marx, Engels,
Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Charu Majumdar, Kanhai Chatterjee and countless
other communists who have laid down their lives for the cause of achieving a society free of exploitation.
References
3. Communists are also part of this society, they do not fight for a better world by standing above that world. “Nobody can stand above the warring classes, for nobody can stand above the human race.” (Bertolt Brecht, A Short Organum for the Theatre,
1949). In order to be able to continue to fight to change this world,
communists must constantly fight to change themselves as well.
Recognition of the stubbornness of, and the need to fight against the
system we are up against is incomplete without recognition that the
ideas of this system are much more stubborn and difficult to uproot and
must be combatted more ruthlessly. True, a complete transformation of
the individual is only possible through the radical transformation of
society but it is also equally true that the individual will not also be
able to participate at par with this radical transformation without
consciously struggling against the outlooks of the exploiting classes
prevalent within themselves. If this is not recognised, the journey from
comrade to renegade shall also seem like a mystery. See also, A basic understanding of the Communist Party, Communist Party of China. Norman Bethune Institute, 1976; and Qin Zhengxian’s Inner-Party Bourgeoisie in Socialism. 1976.
5. Lenin waged a sharp, prolonged struggle
against Mensheviks and other liquidationists to defend the underground
and clandestine nature of the communist party, establishing the
dialectical relation between the legal and illegal work that the
communist party must skillfully combine, by grasping the illegal work to
be principal. For understanding this better, see: Tony Cliff’s Lenin 1: Building the Party (1893–1914). (1975).
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