Nazariya: Two New Traitors to the World Proletarian Revolution

Two New Traitors to the World Proletarian Revolution – Vishwavijay and Seema

Two more names have today been added among the traitors to the world’s revolutionary communist movement – Vishwavijay and Seema. These are not merely two more individuals who have damaged the revolutionary party and the people; they are representatives of the opportunist–liquidationist–revisionist line within the revolutionary movement. Today our movement is in a deep crisis, and one of the principal causes of this is the growing influence of ruling-class ideology within the revolutionary communist ranks. Comrade Mao had said that the ruling class wages war on the people in two ways – one by using weapons, and the other by using the pen. The war of the pen is the more lethal, because it is not visible, and because it betrays the revolution and the proletariat while in the guise of a revolutionary. In our own time this war of the pen is being represented – passing from Balraj, Venugopal, Rupesh and Devji – by Vishwavijay and Seema. It has therefore become imperative that we too wage war against them.

The names of Vishwavijay and Seema belong among those very people who “revised” Marx and Engels’s theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat and of socialist revolution and thereby worked in the interests of the bourgeoisie; those very people who conspired against the dictatorship of the proletariat in socialist Soviet Russia and socialist China – which had shown the road to emancipation to the proletariat of the whole world – and who, by overturning it, betrayed the proletariat of the entire world. These people are carrying on that same old idea of betrayal in a new guise. Here it is also necessary to understand: who, after all, is called a traitor?

A traitor is one who works against the objective interests of the proletariat. If we look within India’s revolutionary party (the Maoist Party), then whoever works against the line laid down at the Party’s Ninth Congress, and goes against the Party to propagate a separate political line of their own, and does not abide by Party discipline, and damages the Party organisation – such a person is certainly a traitor to the Party, to the revolution and to the people. In Lenin’s book The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky it is explained that Kautsky is a traitor because he carried out a liberal distortion of Marxism, because he is against the use of armed struggle by the proletariat, and because he is against establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat. This corresponds entirely to Vishwavijay and Seema. They have negated the dictatorship of the proletariat both theoretically and practically. They are terrified of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and so they altered it and declared it wrong. In practical terms too, trying to build an open legal party and working against underground (UG) party building is precisely to obstruct the dictatorship of the proletariat. They are also against armed struggle – which is why they levelled the baseless charge that the military line dominates the Party; why they never paid attention to military work; and why, in the mass organisation too, instead of raising the level of militancy they only discouraged it.

I. The History of Betrayal in the World and in India

Let us see how Vishwavijay and Seema are carrying forward the legacy of two hundred years of the history of anti-Marxists – a legacy against which our great teachers (Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao) and the party of the proletariat have fought.

When Com. Marx and Engels first put forward the theory of proletarian revolution, they fought resolutely against the reformists and the anarchists of their time. In the First International they fought all these currents and established the current of socialist revolution. After this, Marxism became the theory of the emancipation of the proletariat throughout Europe and the whole world. Ruling-class ideology therefore cloaked itself in the very garb of Marxism and began to work against the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialist revolution. The first and a major example of this is Bernstein. Citing quotations from the writings of Marx and Engels, Bernstein said that socialism could arrive through peaceful development within the existing system, and that revolution was not necessary for it. At the time of the Russian Revolution, Karl Kautsky proved himself Bernstein’s true heir by saying that there was no need to overthrow the state by violent means – that is, that proletarian revolution was possible without armed struggle. After this, Khrushchev implemented the revisionist line in socialist Russia and laid the foundations of modern revisionism, which Deng carried forward in China.

Later, in Nepal, when the revolutionary movement was at its high tide, the General Secretary of the party, Prachanda, committed betrayal. Prachanda said that economic, social and political changes had come about in Nepal, and that therefore neither the Russian road nor the Chinese road would be adopted in Nepal; rather, by combining the two, a new road – the Nepali road – would be built. According to this theory, it was necessary to fuse together the line of insurrection and the line of protracted people’s war. This theory was fabricated precisely so that the line of protracted people’s war and armed struggle could be attacked and the party pushed into the mire of parliamentary politics. This was Bernstein in a new form – the same Bernstein who had abandoned armed struggle and advocated peaceful change.

In India’s communist movement too, Charu Mazumdar and Kanhai Chatterjee demolished the modern revisionist line of the CPI(M), the followers of Khrushchev. Struggling against the revisionism of the CPI and the CPM, and together with the great Naxalbari movement, they established in India the line of protracted people’s war and of new democratic revolution. This same line was carried forward by CPI(ML) People’s War and the MCCI. Of these, People’s War fought against the revisionist line of SNS, CP Reddy, Nagi Reddy and DV Rao; the MCC, while fighting the modern revisionism of the Bharat–Badal group and of the 2nd CC, built unity with the revolutionary camp; and in 2004 all the revolutionary groups merged and the CPI (Maoist) was founded.

We shall discuss in detail the various expressions of opportunism–liquidationism–revisionism within the Maoist Party from its founding down to the present day, and the Party’s correct approach to them. Since the historical roots of the political line being taken by Vishwavijay–Seema derive from the political line put forward by these people, it becomes necessary to discuss and to refute it.

After the Maoist Party was formed, in 2012 Sabyasachi Panda was the first to bring forward a revisionist line. Some of the points he raised are as follows (note them, because these points will also correspond with those of the later revisionists) –

1. The Chinese road – that is, the road of protracted people’s war – cannot be applied in India. There is a need to build India’s own road.

This is Prachanda’s line, which we have already spoken about.

2. The people are not ready for protracted people’s war and armed struggle, and so they must first be prepared for it.

This is like the stage theory put forward by CPI(ML) Janashakti, in which armed struggle is to be begun once the people are ready for it – which is in fact a theory for postponing armed struggle indefinitely.

3. There is a dictatorship of the leadership in the Party; democracy is being finished off in the name of democratic centralism.

This traitor, donning the skin of Marxism, wants to implement ultra-democracy and anarchy in place of democratic centralism. That is why he called for the implementation of a multi-party system against the dictatorship of the proletariat. Following the road of Khrushchev and Deng, he said that it was because of this “dictatorship” that socialism could not survive in Russia and China. In fact, those who fear the dictatorship of the proletariat are the very same people who fear the dictatorship of proletarian ideology and proletarian politics within the revolutionary party.

Like every true communist party, India’s Maoist Party affords full opportunity for debate and for placing differences. And it is precisely by this that the Party has been enriched. But as Com. Charu Mazumdar said, the Party is not a debating society. For opportunists, in the name of freedom of debate, to carry out wrecking within the Party and – instead of placing those debates in the correct Party structures and before the higher committee – to go about propagating their revisionist line, is anti-Party and anti-revolution. When the Party restrains such opportunists, it appears to them to be “dictatorship”. In fact it is the dictatorship of the Party’s MLM ideology over their ruling-class ideas, and we hold such “dictatorship” to be correct.

4. In the Party the gun dominates politics – meaning that the military line dominates in the Party.

This is discussed further in the section on Balraj below.

5. The state is very strong, and so waging armed struggle and building guerrilla zones and base areas is sectarianism and subjectivism.

The Party has said in its “Strategy and Tactics” document that the state is very strong; this aspect underlines the need to begin our revolutionary war in the vast tracts of India’s backward rural areas, which are the weakest link in the enemy’s rule. It also indicates the need to employ the tactics of guerrilla warfare and underground methods, and to make the best use of the terrain suited to the strategic areas of the countryside in order to build guerrilla zones there. It further states: “The enemy is superior only from the tactical standpoint. In the strategic sense the enemy’s armed forces are mere paper tigers. Their interests are entirely opposed to the interests of the broad masses, and hence they can obtain no cooperation whatsoever from the people.” This means that since the state stands against the objective interests of the broad masses, and the Party stands in their favour, in the end the victory will be the Party’s alone. It is precisely because of uneven economic and social development in India, and because of the state’s strong, centralised machinery, that there is a need to advance along the road of area-wise seizure of power and to work on guerrilla zones and base areas.

6. We should not expose ourselves before the enemy, and it is therefore wrong for the mass organisation to speak on MLM and on election boycott.

Panda began carrying out his liquidationist activities when he was sharply criticised at the 2012 plenum and when the state’s repression through Operation Green Hunt began to intensify. Like all opportunists, he too removed his mask at a time of state repression and laid his politics bare before everyone. Whenever the proletariat and its party demand greater sacrifice from the petty bourgeoisie, it panics; and out of its lack of commitment, and its inability to accept this demand, it fabricates new political theories. The same thing happened later with Balraj, Venugopal and Vishwavijay–Seema.

Next we come to the next major revisionist, and the guru of Vishwavijay–Seema – Balraj.

1. There should be a separate open Central Committee of the Party to look after open work.

This argument is against the secret method of functioning laid down for the Party in Maoist theory, and against protracted people’s war. If the Party leadership remains open, it will not be able to wage war against the enemy while protecting its subjective forces from him, and will ultimately be trapped in reformism. Balraj in fact wanted to give up neither his petty-bourgeois life of comfort nor his post in the Central Committee. It was out of this same petty-bourgeois weakness and this urge to establish feudal overlordship that he put forward a separate political line and engaged in factionalism against the Party leadership in its favour.

2. Military methods dominate in the Party, and the mass movement is not given enough importance in the Party.

The answer to this is given in the Party’s Strategy and Tactics document:

“As Com. Mao concretely pointed out, ‘… the principal form of struggle is war and the principal form of organisation is the army. Other forms, such as mass organisations and mass struggles, are also of very great importance and are indeed indispensable and must on no account be ignored; but they are all for the sake of serving the war. Before the war breaks out, all forms of organisation and struggle are for the preparation of the war … As soon as the war breaks out, all forms of organisation and struggle are coordinated with the war either directly or indirectly;…

“Whatever the differences between the objective conditions in India and in pre-revolutionary China, the above basic principle concerning the relation between mass struggle and armed struggle remains the same.

“This means that from the very beginning the aim and direction, the perspective and the method of building mass organisations and mass struggles must be to serve the war, directly or indirectly… If this direction is not maintained, our mass organisations and mass struggles will sink into the quagmire of legalism and economism, and we will become incapable of preparing the people to seize political power. This is the very source of right opportunism and revisionism.”

Com. Charu Mazumdar too said in his Eight Documents that to stress mass organisation without building a secret party and armed struggle is the ideology of rich peasants and is modern revisionism.

Balraj in fact wanted to finish off armed struggle and secret party building within the Party, and that is why he was fabricating this argument.

3. Inside the Party a dictatorship is being run in the name of democratic centralism.

This is Sabyasachi Panda’s line as well, which we have already spoken about.

Recently, as the ruling class’s greatest attack on the Indian revolution, the traitor group of Venugopal–Rupesh has come forward, whose political line is as follows –

1. The economic and political conditions of the country have changed.
2. To apply the Chinese or the Russian line in India is dogmatism. An Indian road should be built.
3. Because armed struggle alone was adopted as the sole method of struggle, the Party has fallen victim to left deviation.
4. Parliamentary participation should be a part of revolutionary struggle.

This is Prachanda’s line itself – speaking of changed conditions and of building one’s own Nepali or Indian road, so that the line of protracted people’s war and armed struggle can be attacked. All these arguments are the same old ones that have been advanced from Bernstein down to Balraj. We can see that historically all traitors have put forward their line thus –

• The Party should abandon armed struggle. Sometimes by saying that socialism can be brought about by peaceful or parliamentary means; or by saying that the military line dominates in the Party. These people are terrified of armed struggle by the proletariat.
• These people negate the theory of the dictatorship of the proletariat. On the dictatorship of the proletariat Com. Lenin said: “The dictatorship of the proletariat is the most determined and most ruthless war waged by the new class against its most powerful enemy – the bourgeoisie – whose resistance, after it has been overthrown, increases tenfold.”
• These people do not accept the principle of democratic centralism, because in the light of MLM they do not wish to accept the centrality of proletarian ideology, and want instead to run the Party in accordance with their own petty-bourgeois class interest.

Having understood the characteristics of the traitors who adopt the opportunist–liquidationist–revisionist line, let us now understand their new heirs –

II. The Journey of Vishwavijay and Seema to Becoming Liquidators

The definition of liquidationism passed at the 1908 conference of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) is –

Liquidationism is – “an attempt by a section of the party intelligentsia to liquidate (that is, to dissolve, destroy, abolish, wind up) the existing organisation of the party and to replace it, at all costs – even at the cost of an outright abandonment of the party’s programme, tactics and traditions (that is, of past experience) – with a loose organisation functioning legally (that is, in conformity with the law, existing ‘openly’).“

Com. Lenin said about this decision, in his article: “Its essence is the abandonment of the underground (UG) organisation, its liquidation, and its transformation at all costs into a disorganised body functioning legally…. Of course, liquidationism is ideologically connected with renegacy, with the abandonment of the programme and the tactics, with opportunism…. Liquidationism is that variety of opportunism which goes as far as the abandonment of the party.“

Like all opportunists, the mask of Vishwavijay–Seema too slipped and their face became clearly visible only when state repression – that is, an NIA raid – fell upon them. When the crisis was deepening in the revolutionary movement across the country, and especially in its vanguard, the Maoist Party; when revolutionary leaders were attaining martyrdom one after another; when they were being thrown into jails and subjected to cruel torture; when NIA raids were being conducted against countless open revolutionaries and intellectuals – the concerns of these traitors were not roused by any of it, nor did their commitment grow upon seeing all this. But when in 2023 a raid took place on them, then the cares of the whole world began to torment them. The spectre of the NIA, of going to jail, began to haunt them – so much so that they abandoned the very task of running the Party structures, and even stopped meeting comrades. Why did this happen? This is opportunism born of their extreme individualism. Com. Lenin’s words on the petty bourgeoisie in the revolution fit them exactly: “they joined the workers’ movement in the hope of a speedy victory in the bourgeois-democratic revolution, and were incapable of holding out in the period of reaction. In them, vacillation was displayed in the Party’s theory (‘retreat from revolutionary Marxism’), and in its tactics (‘toning down the slogans’), and also in the Party’s organisational policy.“

After the NIA raid, Vishwavijay told all Party structures to stop holding their meetings, and told them to shut down all their activities as well. For how long? Nobody knows. Why? Because, with ruling-class ideology dominating them, these people were afraid of going to jail. They began to dream of NIA raids and began to live their lives in the very terror that the NIA might come knocking again one day. To do this is to finish off the secret Party structure and to make the Party open and legal. They even told all the professional revolutionaries (PRs) working in their lower committee to go and pursue their own careers. To a PR comrade who had refused to do a Ph.D., they had an order sent that they must prepare and take admission for a Ph.D. Com. Lenin called PRs the backbone of the Party. To order comrades to build careers is to finish off the PRs and to damage the Party and the revolution.

Shortly before the NIA raid, a comrade who had worked in the mass organisation, along with several comrades connected to the Party and the revolutionary movement, had been arrested. When some comrades of the lower committee were putting forward a proposal to launch a movement against these arrests, Vishwavijay and Seema told them to wait for movements to begin in other places. This too is their ideological poverty and the stand born of the fear it produced. The politics behind this fear is that of the ruling class – that is, by conducting the NIA raid the ruling class wanted to weaken the Party. Instead of confronting this repression resolutely, instead of proving that the ideology of MLM is immortal and that the politics of the proletariat is immortal, these traitors further strengthened the designs of the ruling class. Because of pressure from the other comrades a movement was in the end launched for that comrade’s release, but it was only a token movement.

After this, for nine or ten months they (especially Vishwavijay, whose responsibility it was to run the Party structure) held no meeting of the Party structure. Comrades held meetings at their own level and took decisions to run the mass organisation and expand the work. During this period one or two comrades of the committee would go to Vishwavijay–Seema’s house to inform them of the decisions. In this period Vishwavijay’s role, rather than that of the in-charge of the structure, had been reduced to that of a bourgeois bureaucrat from whom mere rubber-stamp approval of decisions was obtained so that the work could be carried out. Such was the state of their political opportunism that the comrades of the lower committee were dragging them along, urging them to be somewhat active, to take responsibility, to do some work for the Party. After ten months had passed, at the comrades’ insistence Vishwavijay–Seema had to sit in a meeting, after which it was decided that from then on they would sit in meetings regularly. This episode too is laughable. In fact Vishwavijay–Seema had invited the committee comrades to their house to eat mangoes, and the comrades turned this ‘trip’ into a meeting. Indeed, when one comrade offered the view that instead of spending a long time cooking delicious food something quick should be cooked, so that enough time would remain for the meeting, not only was this not accepted, but that comrade was labelled ‘mechanical’ by Vishwavijay–Seema for saying it. And in the end precisely what happened was that the meeting was not completed.

This shows their seriousness towards Party work and their indifference towards meetings of Party structures. For these people, building personal relationships, going about, and eating and drinking have been more important than Party work. This exposes their political personality – steeped from head to foot in petty-bourgeois, neoliberal, market culture – which has no connection whatsoever with the Party line and Party discipline.

While Vishwavijay attempted to dissolve all the Party organisations, Seema too began to work evasively and began changing her political line. For instance, refusing when invited to a programme of a revolutionary organisation, lest her name become associated with it and the chances of repression by the NIA increase. She even refused to take the main responsibility for holding a programme against the NIA, on account of which the programme ultimately could not take place.

From this background of their becoming liquidators we can understand how these people have today joined the ranks of the traitors.

Comrades had been trying to make contact with Vishwavijay since January 2024. But despite being called to meet many times over a year and a half, Vishwavijay kept putting off coordination with the Party. For this he would come up with all sorts of foolish and childish excuses – such as that the manner in which the message reached him did not seem ‘safe’ to him, or that he could not understand the message. For instance, if it was written that he should come to the Kerala Café in Banaras, he would read only the word ‘Kerala’ and not read further, and would say that he could not go so far. He made a similarly foolish remark about another place. On the comrades’ repeated encouragement he finally went once to meet at the Party’s summons. On meeting, he said that he wanted to look after ‘his own area’ himself and did not want UG comrades coming there to work. For this too he cited ‘security’. In reality it was not the Party’s security but his own ‘security’ alone that he thought about. He did not want to let any UG comrade work there, so that his personal fiefdom would remain intact, and also because he thought that to do so might bring state repression down upon him and endanger his security. Their notion of security is a personal one, even if the Party’s principles must be liquidated for it. As Lenin said of the liquidators, their aim is to destroy the Party in the name of saving the Party.

When a comrade was going UG, Vishwavijay said that she would go UG only when the Party found a UG partner (a marriage match) for her. He said this without speaking to that comrade, and did not report it afterwards either. This reflects his feudal Brahminical patriarchal thinking, which views the question of a woman’s political life in the Party only in relation to her marriage. At the same time, this manoeuvre was also played by Vishwavijay in order to stop that comrade from going UG.

III. Their Approach on the UG Question

On the question of going UG, Vishwavijay proved himself an excellent opportunist. As Lenin said – opportunists sit at two tables. In just this way Vishwavijay would say that he accepted the Party’s UG line, while under cover of other matters he planted wrong conceptions about UG party building among the other comrades. Lenin said of such opportunists: “We must never forget a characteristic feature of present-day opportunism, found in every sphere – namely, its vagueness, its amorphousness, its elusiveness. It is in the very nature of opportunism that it always shrinks from presenting any question clearly and decisively; it is always in search of some middle course; it always wriggles like a snake between two mutually exclusive points of view and tries to agree with both; and it always tries to reduce its differences to petty amendments, doubts and innocent suggestions.”

Some of their arguments on the UG question are as follows –

Note here that before the ‘but’ they are at the first table, and after the ‘but’ they are found sitting at the second table.

1. Going UG is correct, but until a leading team of the mass organisation is ready, no comrade should go UG.

2. One should go UG, but there is a process for going UG, and going UG without completing it will increase repression on the comrades of the mass organisation.

3. It is up to you whether you do UG work or open work – but along with this they would say that both kinds of work are of equal importance. As the Party began to take a stand against them, they began to speak openly against UG party building and were exposed as liquidators.

Let us take up the points of their position on the UG question one by one –

Com. Mao said that there are three magic weapons for the revolution – the party, the people’s army and the united front. Of these the party is principal, and it is the party that wields the other two magic weapons.

The Party’s “Strategy and Tactics” document explains that from the very first days an impregnable and strong underground party must be built. Of the underground party that document says: “The second basic principle of party building expounded by Com. Lenin and Mao is the underground structure of the party and its secret character. Mao described the imperative necessity of keeping the party strictly underground in areas dominated by the reactionaries in these terms – ‘In the beginning our policy is to maintain the secrecy of Party organisations and to make them compact, select and effective, so that they may remain underground for a long period, accumulate strength, await the right opportunity, and not fall prey to impetuosity or expose themselves.’“

If the Party remains open, then all its members, all its structures and all its decisions will lie open before the enemy, and the enemy will not let it advance even a single step.

In no Party committee should there be comrades who are not professional revolutionaries and underground. If there are such comrades, they are to be given a few months’ time so that they may go underground; otherwise they cannot remain in the committee.

1. As to which is principal – the Party or the mass organisation – the answer has been obtained above from Mao and from the Party document. But it is precisely the economism and legalism of Vishwavijay and Seema that made them stress only and exclusively the work of the mass organisation, and always keep the Party’s central task of party building subordinate to the building of the mass organisation. These people kept harping on saving the mass organisation, and the result was that, in the absence of the guidance of the underground Party, the mass organisation too had fallen victim to reformist and economist deviation. Under cover of the security of the mass organisation, these people kept carrying out their liquidationist line of blocking underground party building. That is why, in the name of the ‘process’ of going underground, they would keep postponing it indefinitely.

2. To describe the question of underground and open work as being of equal importance is Trotsky’s theory. Trotsky used to speak of building unity between the Bolsheviks and the liquidators, which would as a consequence lead to the liquidation of the party. In the same way, describing open and UG as being of equal importance will ultimately lead towards an open legal party as against UG party building.

Today, when there is an extreme shortage of subjective forces in the Party, the question of saving the Party – that is, the question of underground party building – is the primary one. At such a time these people are propagating that underground work cannot be done. If liquidationism of this magnitude is not betrayal, then what is?!

IV. Their Approach on Elections

Before the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, the Party had issued a statement characterising the BJP government’s Brahminical Hindutva fascism, in which it was written that the BJP must be driven out and the elections must be boycotted. This statement was distorted and misrepresented by Vishwavijay and Seema. Just as Bernstein distorted Engels’s writings and presented him as a peace-loving supporter of socialism, in just the same way Vishwavijay–Seema said of this Party statement that the Party had appealed for the BJP’s defeat in the elections, which plainly means getting the opposition to win, or defeating the BJP by participating in the elections. In this way they attempted to portray the Party as class-collaborationist and openly legalist. Seema ‘Azad’ even went and voted for the INDIA alliance in this election, and afterwards she also attempted to build a majority among the Party comrades in favour of her vote, justifying it in the name of her cover identity as a human rights activist.

This is completely against the approach to elections laid down in the Party’s Strategy and Tactics document, and against the Party’s 2024 election boycott statement. The Party has stated in its Strategy and Tactics document that participation in elections is not a question of tactics but a question of strategic importance.

As far as the cover of a human rights activist is concerned, the cover became a weapon for implementing their opportunist politics. Their cover means: how to propagate opportunist politics while swearing by revolutionary politics. Indeed, this is exactly the way she used to use her cover. She held the status of a State Committee member of the Maoist Party, but at the time of working against the Party line she would become the state secretary of the PUCL.

V. Carrying Out Malicious Propaganda Against the Party Leadership

Vishwavijay and Seema continuously carried out malicious propaganda and factionalism against the Party leadership, and especially against the NCC. Proving themselves true followers of Lin Piao, they conspired against the NCC – spreading misleading propaganda against the NCC in their lower committee, and forming a separate group apart from the Party through which they even carried out their designs for a time. However, after the NCC made contact with the comrades, their intentions were defeated. They used to say –

1. Because of the Party’s General Secretary Basavaraju, the Party has been put into a position of retreat, because the military line dominates in the Party.

2. The NCC was formed in an undemocratic manner.

3. There is only one man in the NCC, and his dictatorship is being run.

4. The NCC is left adventurist.

5. The NCC wants to make all comrades go UG, and underestimates the importance of open work.

6. The NCC is bureaucratic and dictatorial. Whoever raises questions about it and wants to work differently from it – such people the NCC is expelling from the Party and wrongly declaring traitors.

We have already spoken about the first point. Vishwavijay has sunk to such a level that he goes about levelling so grave and baseless a charge against the Party’s General Secretary so lightly.

Let us take up the second and third points – any structure of the Party is formed only by the Party’s higher committee. Vishwavijay was even shown the Party’s resolution concerning the formation of the NCC; a letter also came to him from the Central Committee; and despite this, what reason and what motive could there be for raising questions about the formation of the NCC and about the number of members in the committee? The answer to this is perfectly clear. The reason behind it is that in a situation of Party crisis, Menshevik, opportunist, petty-bourgeois people like Vishwavijay and Seema want to mould the Party’s line to their own personal wishes, apart from the Party line. But at such a time the NCC is waging an uncompromising struggle to save the Party line established at the Unity Congress–Ninth Congress; that is why these opportunists cannot stomach the NCC’s work in the slightest. Because of their weakness in ideological struggle, these opportunists are attempting to defame the NCC on such issues as the process of its formation, one member or many in the committee, and violation of democratic centralism. In these attempts these people stand with the ruling class. But their designs never succeeded in history, nor can they succeed today.

Turning to the fourth point, let us first state that according to the 2024 PB resolution, right opportunism has influence in some areas of the Party, including North India and Telangana. Nowhere in it is there any mention of left opportunism.

Exposing Seema’s Feminism

For the Indian revolution, the question of women’s emancipation can be resolved only through the anti-feudal and anti-imperialist struggle. Seema, misusing the legacy of the Party’s struggles and misleading the people, is staging a pretence of progressive feminism in order to conceal her feudal and imperialist feminism.

1. Seema regards live-in relationships as a democratic right and propagates them as such. Vishwavijay concurs in this. Among the comrades of their lower committee they used to justify pre-marital sexual relations, and even encouraged them, knowing full well what the Party’s stand on this is. According to Party rules, pre-marital sexual relations and live-in relationships are imperialist trends, and the Party considers them wrong. This is a product of the neoliberal system itself, which has turned sex into a consumerist commodity – in which relationships are formed without any responsibility or accountability, that is, without a committed relationship, merely in order to satisfy one’s sexual desire and to overcome one’s alienation.

2. These people also encourage multiple relationships – more than one relationship at a time. According to Party rules there should be an interval of at least one year between moving from one relationship to another; otherwise that relationship will be considered a multiple relationship. If one enters a second relationship before fully coming out of the first, it has a wrong effect on both the old and the new relationship. Moreover, constantly changing relationships is likewise a result of consumerist imperialist culture.

Because of feudal and patriarchal society, women are certainly exploited in live-in and multiple relationships; this is therefore not democratic but anti-woman. In the Indian context, Brahminical patriarchal values also make use of postmodern ideas; these imperialist values therefore strengthen feudalism still further. Since these people are themselves victims of sexual opportunism, they cannot stomach in the slightest the article on sexual opportunism that appeared in Nazariya magazine, and Seema is going around the country carrying out malicious propaganda against it. In the matter of sexual relations, Seema accuses the Party of being feudal. The height of their individualism is that in this matter she declares even Com. Lenin’s stand to be wrong. Let us see what his stand on this is.

In Lenin’s interview with Clara Zetkin, he says that some people regard the quenching of sexual desire and of the hunger for love as a thing as trivial as drinking a glass of water. “Would a person ordinarily lie down in a gutter and drink its water? Or drink from a glass whose rim has been soiled by many lips?”

To postmodern feminists like Seema, these questions of Lenin’s appear to be a symbol of feudal and backward thinking. Feminists of her kind say that Lenin’s approach is feudal-puritanical. Their view is that a glass soiled by lips means that a person has had relations with several people, and that such a person would therefore be considered characterless by feudal morality. But Lenin is not saying this in that sense. The problem does not lie in someone having had a relationship which ended and a new one having formed, or even in this having happened several times; the question is rather from what standpoint we are forming relationships. When Lenin says that some people regard it as trivial as drinking a glass of water, what he means is that they form relationships without any responsibility or accountability, merely to satisfy their hunger for love and their sexual hunger (as one quenches thirst with water). He explains that relationships have a social aspect as well; it cannot be merely a matter of one individual’s ‘personal freedom’ (as the postmodernists say) – two people are involved in it, and a third is on the way. Neoliberalism has marketised relationships, so that relationships have become a means of overcoming one’s alienation. This neoliberal market presents sex as a means of erasing the sorrow of the people’s problems. But even by entering into this, people are unable to find a solution to their problems, unable to emerge from their inner crisis. Because this crisis of theirs has in fact been deepened by this very feudal-imperialist system. Its solution too will therefore come with the destruction of this very exploitative system. Lenin speaks of breaking the old (feudal) relations, and at the same time sharply criticises the ‘new relations’ influenced by bourgeois ideology, and calls for advancing towards communist relations.

3. Seema also supports postmodern gender and queer theory. According to the Party, the words gender and queer are influenced by postmodern, market-sponsored, bourgeois ideology. In place of gender the word sex should be used, which is employed to denote both the biological and the social aspects of sex. The Party recognises only LGBT, and considers the many identities included under queer to be imperialist-sponsored. The Party struggles for the democratic rights of LGBT people.

4. On the one hand these people support imperialist values, and on the other they are also afflicted with feudal values. That is why these people go about finding matches (arranged marriages) for comrades from among Party members and sympathisers. If a comrade has not been in a relationship for a long time, or is not attracted to anyone, these people consider them abnormal. Their conception corresponds to the Manusmriti, which holds that without marriage a person – and especially a woman – is incomplete. Not only this: Seema used to tell the comrades of the lower committee that she regarded them as her children. This too is an expression of feudal feminism, which, instead of seeing comrades as political units, sees them as personal relations subordinate to itself. When a comrade of the lower committee criticised her discriminatory behaviour towards them, Seema said that she regards all the comrades of the committee as her children, and that just as a mother’s children have different natures but are all equal to the mother, so too does she love all comrades equally. These people apply the feudal family structure to the organisation, whereas in revolutionary organisations and in the Party we break the existing feudal patriarchal and imperialist relations and build revolutionary relations, in which all comrades are one another’s comrades in the revolution, all are equal, and these relations are formed because of politics – not personal friendships or mother–child relations. The attempt should be to build the kind of relationship that Comrades Marx and Engels had, in which, with each other’s cooperation, we can further strengthen the communist movement.

5. Seema used to consider best and least patriarchal those male comrades of the organisation who opposed her less, who accepted what she said, with whom she had better personal relations, who helped her in her work, and who possessed the ‘feminine’ qualities that society associates with petty-bourgeois women – such as getting angry less, being more caring, doing household work, not taking sharp political stands, and so on – and she propagated this view among the other comrades as well.

When the comrades of the lower committee asked Seema to hold a discussion on male–female sexual relations and arrive at a common view, instead of discussing it she said that she has her own separate view and the other comrades have theirs, and that there is therefore no need to arrive at a common view. This is because of Seema’s postmodern philosophy, in which she presents herself as a ‘woman of independent views’. Here the question is: is such a thing as independent thought really possible at all? Let us discuss this in the next section.

VI. The Postmodernist Philosophy of Vishwavijay–Seema

What is the objective basis of freedom? Either a person’s ideas will be in the interest of the ruling class or in the interest of the proletariat. What is necessary for revolution is unity of ideas under the leadership of the vanguard party of the proletariat. But Seema and Vishwavijay form views separate from the Party’s stand. This is precisely postmodern thought, which speaks of the radical freedom of the individual – which refuses to accept any structure and any discipline, whether it be that of the ruling class or of the communist party. But nothing can remain neutral, and so in the end they go and join the structures of the ruling class. Seema and Vishwavijay regard the Party’s structure and discipline as the dictatorship of some individual or committee. Comrades who abide by Party discipline they label mechanical and cogs in a machine. In the name of ideological diversity, these people wanted to implement ultra-democracy and bring their opportunist–liquidationist–revisionist line into the Party.

They used to say that they would read only those documents that had been written by the Central Committee or that it had had implemented, and would not read the documents issued by the NCC – because they see the Party and the NCC as separate from each other. And yet these people also know that any committee is formed by the higher committee of the Party. Had their outlook been Marxist, they would not have said such foolish things.

Vishwavijay goes so far as to say that he is answerable to the revolution and not to any party. Our teachers (Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao) have taught that revolution is not possible without a revolutionary party; but these opportunists, afflicted with postmodern philosophy, separate revolution from party as well, so that they need take no responsibility whatsoever towards the Party, need not abide by the Party line, and can still keep up the pretence that they are working for the revolution. What is in fact within them is ruling-class ideology, which is liquidationism, and which has no relation whatsoever with revolution.

VII. Vishwavijay’s Feudal Bureaucratism

The principal contradiction of Indian society is between feudalism and the Indian people, whose principal feature is Brahminism. Feudal bureaucratism therefore exists within the Party too as a dangerous non-proletarian trend. Feudal bureaucratism has been used by Vishwavijay to implement his opportunist–liquidationist–revisionist line.

In the North Indian region two kinds of feudal tendency are observed –

1. The overlordship of a single individual, and the regarding of the other comrades beneath him as his subordinates – this tendency is found especially in Purvanchal and Bihar, where a single big landlord in a village controls the political, economic and social life of the village.

2. Brotherhoodism – in which, on the basis of caste-based mutual relations, a group of landlords establishes overlordship over other people – this tendency corresponds to the feudalism of Haryana, which can be seen today in the khap panchayats there. In an organisation it can be seen thus: accepting one another’s statements whether right or wrong, and covering up one another’s mistakes.

In Vishwavijay, who comes from the feudal background of Purvanchal, the first type of feudalism can be seen.

3. In order to establish his overlordship in his lower Party organisation, he continuously carried out malicious propaganda against the Party leadership.

In this he did not spare even Basavaraju. Not only this: during the process of coordination he would have the letters that came to him from the NCC and the CC read out in the lower committee, and would interpret them according to his own convenience, so as to turn the comrades against the NCC and in his own favour. In doing this, Vishwavijay–Seema also grossly violated Party security by having their letters read out below. The security of the Party – for the sake of which countless comrades have laid down their lives, a thing weightier than a mountain – they treated as light as a feather in order to serve their personal selfish ends. Besides this, they also had the NCC’s letters read out selectively. They concealed one important letter, and in doing so attempted to create among the other comrades the false impression that Vishwavijay had been bypassed in the process of coordination – and on that basis they called the NCC bureaucratic, mechanical and dictatorial. With the same object they also gave incomplete and false reporting of the conversation held with the NCC during the coordination. Besides this, they made every possible attempt to ensure that UG party building could not take place in ‘their area’, so that UG Party leadership could not come in and ‘their area’ would remain theirs – that is, so that their personal fiefdom would remain intact. They wanted to keep the Party organisation and the mass organisation under their control like a feudal lord, and therefore they did not want the NCC to advance the class struggle being conducted by the Party in ‘their area’; rather they wanted to run the Party organisation and the mass organisation according to their own wishes. That is precisely why, when they began to feel that the comrades were no longer accepting their leadership and had begun to accept the leadership of the NCC, a restlessness arose within them lest ‘their property’ slip out of their hands, and they began interfering excessively in the work of the comrades of the lower committee and complaining that the comrades were bypassing them. This was the restlessness of a wounded feudal arrogance, which was clearly reflected in their anger and agitation. When the comrades finally established coordination with the NCC, their restlessness grew so great that their anger reached its peak and they lost their sleep at night; their feudal thinking was now coming out of their mouths without any filter at all. After the coordination was established, when two comrades went to meet him, he said to the woman comrade among them: bring him here – the one whose advocacy you are doing. This was a feudal patriarchal remark, to which the so-called progressive feminist Seema Azad also gave her silent assent.

4. Vishwavijay–Seema at one time worked underground and were State Committee members of the CPI (Maoist). In order to display his feudal swagger, Vishwavijay therefore keeps boasting of his Party post and of the work he did in the past. Besides this, when his dissatisfaction with the coordination with the NCC was growing, and he had begun to feel insecure at the thought of losing control over his area, he would boast that he had worked in the Party for thirty years, had given his whole life to the Party, and so on. By saying all this he would cover up his present condition, in which he was almost inactive and was unable to give leadership. It is also important here that no matter how much work anyone may have done in the past, if in the present they are doing anti-Party work and adopting an opportunist–liquidationist–revisionist line, then their million virtues and sacrifices do not matter. In history they will be remembered only as traitors. Just as, whatever work Venugopal may have done in advancing the Party, all of it was reduced to dust by his surrender and his taking a separate line.

5. In Vishwavijay there has always been this feudal tendency: to scold, shout at and accuse the comrades of the lower committee over their shortcomings and mistakes, and not to work on the political and ideological aspects behind those mistakes and shortcomings. He would even criticise the comrades of his lower committee in front of the comrades of the mass organisation – that is, by not criticising in the correct structure, he violated democratic centralism with the object of belittling those comrades.

6. Many political questions he would settle by using his feudal authority rather than by resolving them through MLM. He would also keep things so entangled in organisational problems that almost the entire time in meetings of the Party structure would be spent discussing organisational matters of the mass organisation, on account of which new Party recruitment was not taking place. Vishwavijay had blocked new Party recruitment for years. Only after Vishwavijay became inactive did the comrades of the lower committee begin to stress political work as well, and only then did the way open for new professional revolutionaries and for Party recruitment.

7. Instead of building comradely relations with comrades, Vishwavijay–Seema built relations on the basis of feudal and imperialist individualism. With one comrade they had built a family-like relationship. That comrade came regularly to meet them at their house, but they never paid attention to his ideological and political development. With this comrade they maintained a relationship consisting only of eating and drinking, joking and laughing, and getting their personal work done – personal work such as being taken to hospital for treatment, being looked after during illness, and so on.

For them, the evaluation of a comrade was determined not by the political stand that comrade was taking but by who built a better personal relationship with them in their conduct. To regard those who accept them as leader or friend as better, and to regard their political opponents as bad people – this is precisely a feudal bureaucratic tendency. Like a feudal lord, Vishwavijay took political disagreements and opposition as insults to himself. He took the NCC’s letters too as an insult to himself. This was his feudal arrogance.

8. Vishwavijay and Seema did not read Party documents. The Bastar Talkies YouTube channel will be pleased to learn that Vishwavijay regarded this very channel as his source for Party news and for the Party’s stand on various issues. He had also told the comrades the Party’s stand on the elections after seeing it on this very channel. Vishwavijay had the self-satisfaction that at one time he had read the classic MLM documents and that his basic understanding was therefore intact. He did not read the new debates. When asked, he could not explain them properly, but even then he never felt the need to read and understand them, nor did he feel the need to know the Party’s stand on them. At the beginning of the process of establishing coordination with the NCC, when Party documents would arrive, he would hand the responsibility over to the secretary of the lower committee to read them and give him the gist. Later he began reading only those documents on which he had some dispute. Seema too did not read Party documents, circulars, or statements issued on new issues, and knew the Party’s stand only through social media and the news, and was self-satisfied with this. This too is the tendency of the feudal bureaucrat, who does not go among the people, does not carry out investigation and study, does not study Party rules, documents and circulars, and considers himself sufficiently informed and understanding.

9. These people would take the credit for achievements themselves and would impose shortcomings and mistakes on others. For example, they would take upon themselves the credit for funds collected by the lower committee, and would place upon it the blame for all the shortcomings that arose in the mass organisation, and never considered whether, as the in-charge, they too had any role in them. This too is a feudal bureaucratic tendency.

VIII. Conclusion

Comrades, we can see that as the communist party grows weaker, opportunism–liquidationism–revisionism grows stronger. Today, who is a revolutionary and who is not will be determined by who is waging uncompromising struggle against Vishwavijay–Seema, and who is supporting them, or – like a Trotskyite – adopting a middle path (a middle path which is ultimately against the Party itself).

In the process of reviving the revolutionary communist movement in North India we shall have to confront more traitors of this kind. And it is only in the course of struggling against them that a correct line can be established, and only on that basis can the Party and the movement be reorganised. This lesson we can draw from the history of the Russian and Chinese revolutions. We shall therefore have to wage an active ideological struggle against opportunism–liquidationism–revisionism – until such time as world communism is established. And this historic responsibility rests not only on the shoulders of the communist party but also on every revolutionary mass organisation.

Comrade Mao described three stages of the Communist Party in China, which occur in the development of every revolutionary party: the first is the stage of infancy, in which the party is weak in fighting against opportunism–liquidationism–revisionism, and at this stage many such people get into the party. The second stage is when the party advances by struggling against this, and large numbers of them are expelled from the party. At this stage the Bolshevisation of the party takes place. The third stage is when opportunism–liquidationism–revisionism is eliminated from within the party. This stage will arrive with world communism. At present India’s party is in the first stage. For the Party’s revival it needs to make a leap from the first stage to the second – in order to strengthen the Party and to build a true Bolshevik party, it is absolutely necessary to struggle against opportunism–liquidationism–revisionism.

[From the editor: This article reached us by email. In view of the serious and far-reaching effect of this article, we decided to publish it as quickly as possible. We ourselves take full responsibility for the ideology expressed in this article and for its publication and dissemination. In the coming days we will also try to translate it into English.]

Previous Post