Interview with G.N.Saibaba in Varberg Sweden, 14-15th april 2012
(The transcript of the interview is checked by Saibaba)
Indiensolidaritet: Can you say something about the political
work you do in India?
Saibaba: I work for an
organization called Revolutionary Democratic Front (RDF). It is a federation of
revolutionary mass organizations working among different oppressed classes and
sections of the Indian society. Revolutionary students’ and youth organisations,
revolutionary peasants’ organisations, revolutionary workers’ organisations,
revolutionary cultural organisations as well revolutionary womans’ organisations
from different regions across India are constituents of RDF. Thus RDF is a
large network of revolutionary organisations reaching out to all sections and
strata of the society.
From the year 2009 onwards began the Operation Green Hunt, the Indian
state’s genocidal war on the poorest of the poor in India. All of us in our
organization RDF work with other parties, groups, democratic organisations and
individuals to raise our voice collectively and unitedly against the present military
onslaught on the people and the extermination campaign against the people of
India. We see this massive military operation as a continuation and the latest
addition in the war waged by India’s ruling classes against the people of the
subcontinent for last many decades – be it in Kashmir, North East, Punjab, and
now in central and eastern India. So we are at one level involved in the basic
struggles of the people and at another we are working along with a large
network of political forces and carrying out a countrywide campaign against Indian
state’s anti-people policies, particularly Operation Green Hunt.
Indiensolidaritet: The
way we see it, there are two lines regarding solidarity work in Europe. One
line is trying to unite people on an anti-imperialist and anti-feudal basis and
another one focuses more on Maoism. What do you think about this?
Saibaba: Yes, there is this
perception and understanding of how to develop the solidarity movement for the
peoples’ struggles and the particularly on the military attack on the people
that is going on in India. So what I can see is that there are large sections
who think that, the large sections of the people of India and the larger
confrontation is more important to focus on, to tell the world outside India.
There is another section of organizations which hold that the present campaign
by the Indian state is targeting the revolutionaries in India and therefore the
revolutionaries should be supported directly. What is important today is that
the people of India – the poorest of the poor 80 percent of the country who live
an extremely perilous existence – are looking forward to a basic change in
their lives. The poorest section of humanity in the world therefore is waging a
defiant struggle in India under the leadership of the revolutionary Maoists who
are from among their own. So if you take the larger picture of what is
happening in India, you can see that this is a great resistance against the loot
of the land and minerals by the corporate sector. Monopoly capital in its
desperation to dominate the world’s resources would like to overcome its crisis
by exploiting the cheap raw materials in India and other oppressed countries.
It’s an attempt by the imperialists, by the monopoly capital on the world scale,
to transport their burden of the economic crisis upon the shoulders of the
poorest of the poor in India.
Removing the people from their homes and hearths has become pertinent
for the corporations backed by the government to capture the valuable mineral
resources which are estimated to a value of several trillions of dollars. So
the resistance movement is built up by the indigenous people, the poorest of
the poor, the millions and millions of the wretched of the earth. To crush this
movement and to silence all the people the Indian government has sent more than
250,000 armed personnel to these regions backed by its air force and navy. You
therefore can see the importance of the struggle. Of course the revolutionary
forces are involved – they work in these areas and organise the people, but the
question is much larger. It is an anti-imperialist struggle of the people, led
by the revolutionary Maoists. This is a larger question because this resistance
exists not only in the central and eastern parts of India where the Maoist
movement has a strong presence, but extends to every part of India even where
the Maoists are absent. So in our view, we have to take into account this
anti-imperialist struggle as a whole. We have to recognize that this is a
larger struggle of the people of India who are not led by the revolutionaries everywhere
simply because they do not exist in other parts. So the international solidarity
should be to the entire movement. The other section of the people who feels
that the revolutionary movement is a target too is not wrong in their
perception. Yes, the revolutionary movement is a target of attack. In fact the
Indian prime minister has termed it “the largest internal security threat” way
back in 2005 reflecting the intent of the ruling classes to finish off the
revolutionary movement. But what is important to recognise is that the
anti-feudal and anti-imperialist struggle spanning over entire India and the revolutionary
movement in India which exists in a considerable part of the country are
interrelated. We cannot separate this two. The larger anti-imperialist and
anti-feudal struggle is very important and we must not lose sight of it. We
must stand in solidarity with the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal struggle of
the common people of India. The Indian ruling classes and the imperialists have
planned many genocides and massacres but the people have successfully resisted
them so far through coordination and collective struggle, not allowing any of
these corporate houses to intrude and take over their lands and resources.
So we in India feel that to give support to the anti-imperialist and
anti-feudal struggles of the people is also to give support to the
revolutionary movement in India. Therefore we need not and should not separate
these two and give support only to the revolutionaries as if the
revolutionaries exist outside and separately from this struggle. The
revolutionary struggle in India is a part of the larger anti-imperialist and
anti-feudal struggle going on in the subcontinent.
Indiensolidaritet: How can we support the people’s
struggles against exploitation in general and against Operation Green Hunt in
particular?
Saibaba: First of all I will
have to give you a larger picture of the present situation back home in India and
for this, a longer explanation is needed. Operation Green Hunt is a highly
orchestrated and well planned military campaign against the people of India.
This operation is modelled by the Indian state and the imperialist forces led
by the US along the line of what was called the Red Hunt in the 18th century
North America. Through the Red Hunt campaign, the land of indigenous tribal
people in that continent was usurped and violently taken over by the European
explorers and invaders. They also planned and executed the systematic elimination
of the tribes of Red Indians who chose to resist this genocide. The history of the
US tells us that this process of extermination of an entire population of indigenous
people in North America was termed as Red Hunt. The invading Europeans believed
that a good Red Indian is a dead Red Indian. The Red Indians had to be
annihilated to establish the country which came to be called the US. There was
no place for the tribal people in this New World created by the colonial
explorers from Europe. Thus the country called US was constructed on the dead
bodies of the Red Indians. Very much the same concept of annihilation and
extermination of an entire population operates in this military campaign called
Operation Green Hunt. The ruling classes of India call it Green Hunt for two
reasons. Firstly, the military experts, strategists and authors who are on the
payroll of the Indian state tell us that the hunt – or in more political terms
the Indian state’s war on people – is taking place in the greenest regions of
the Indian subcontinent. Central India and Eastern India have high hills and expansive
forests, and is one of the greenest areas of the subcontinent. From the
perspective of environmental concerns, we can call this the lungs of the earth.
The ecosystem of this region consisting of mountains, forests, rivers,
minerals, vulnerable ecology – they sustain life on earth and in this sense are
the protectors of all of us. This is one of the very few regions of the world which
have still remained untouched by imperialism/capitalism and therefore are very
important for our survival as well as for the earth to survive. So it is in
this green region that the Operation Green Hunt is being conducted. If
successful, you can well imagine that this operation will turn greenery into
barrenness. By forcibly evicting or exterminating the tribal people and
thereafter facilitating the entry of multinational, private and government
corporations, this war will destroy our very lungs and threaten our existence
itself. So you can very well imagine the self-destructive nature of this Green
Hunt.
Secondly, at another level the security analysts claim that Operation
Green Hunt is termed so because the revolutionary fighters wear olive green uniform
and are the targets of this hunt. But this mode of thinking too reflects the
same 18th century ideology behind the Red Hunt in the US. It is interesting to
note that in September-October 2009, one of the ministers in the Indian
government who is leading this Operation Green Hunt went to Afghanistan and the
US and soon after his return announced this Operation Green Hunt. He did not
explicitly term it Operation Green Hunt. He said it is a paramilitary
operation. Later the same minister denied that there is anything called
Operation Green Hunt. But lower level officers in each of the regions where
this operation is being conducted exposed his lie by frequently referring to Operation
Green Hunt. Government of India still denies it by saying that there is no
Operation Green Hunt. The reason for that denial is not difficult to see. In
2009 when the Indian interior minister announced this operation there was a massive
protest from the intellectuals and the democratic forces from all over India. They
immediately withdrew the nomenclature, though the operation has continued with
ever greater intensity in different parts of India from then till now. Nevertheless,
the resemblance of India’s Operation Green Hunt and US’s Red Hunt goes deeper
than just the name – in intent, purpose and intensity they are very much
similar. “Mr Chidambaram’s war” (the interior minister) an essay by Arundhati
Roy describes how Operation Green Hunt has three objectives: 1. Occupy 2.
Dominate 3. Hold. If you go to the website of the India’s interior ministry you
can see these words. It is interesting to note that it is the same terminology
that the U.S. is using to describe its strategy in Afghanistan. It doesn’t
matter whether Indian state acknowledges or denies the term or the war it is
waging on the people because the war is there on the ground. The entire people
of India call it Operation Green Hunt.
We can understand Operation Green Hunt as a “war on the people of India”
as well, and this is the main focus of the campaign. The ruling classes may
play as much with words, but the truth is that it is a “war on the people of
India”. What is this war about? The U.S. and other imperialists from European
Union have sent military forces to Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and other places
and are fighting imperialist wars of occupation against the people of these countries.
In India too the imperialists have the same designs as in Afghanistan and Iraq,
and elsewhere, i.e., to grab all the natural resources, be it natural gas,
petroleum, bauxite, coal or any other available resource. They have not yet sent
in their military forces to India, even though imperialists are aiding the
Indian government with military strategists, army generals, intelligence input,
weapons, surveillance equipment, and so on. These imperialist warmongers think
that these resources which belong to the people of India can be grabbed without
directly involving themselves in a war. This is because Indian rulers are completely
subservient to the imperialist forces and are fighting this war on behalf of
the imperialists. The Indian government is fighting a war for the US and
European imperialists and others by using the army of India and the
paramilitary of India. The servile Indian rulers are sending our own army
against our own people. The imperialists are planning and conducting this war
in India by simply sitting in their own countries and executing it through the
Indian government in waging their war. This is the true nature imperialism
since beginning of 20th Century. The Indian government, the rulers
of the country and India’s big corporations too are eagerly playing to the tune
of the imperialists with a hope of earning some crumbs as spoils of war thrown
at them. It is shameful for all of us citizens of India to see that the of army
and paramilitary forces of our own county, which are supposed to protect Indian
“sovereignty” and the Indian people’s freedom are being used to completely sell-out
our “sovereignty” and to kill our own people in millions through genocides and
massacres.
So it is a strange thing for the people in our part of the world, but this
is the reality today. I would like to say that the campaign for the poorest of
the poor in India who are fighting and resisting the imperialist onslaught is
important to the people all over the world because the fight of the Indian poor
people is not merely to defend themselves. It is against imperialism and
against the monopoly bourgeoisie. And your fight against monopoly capital and
our fight against its lackeys in India can build solidarity and come together
to save humanity itself. This is a fight not to save the people of any
particular country, but to save humanity and the entire earth, the only known
place for human existence which is threatened by monopoly capital. So we have a
larger reason for unity and a larger ground for solidarity. We must not see the
national borders as barriers to our common fight since the question of the destruction
of nature, natural resources and the people of global is concern today. Therefore
the solidarity across the borders and the building of a common fight is
something that the international community of democratic forces is the need of
the hour.
Indiensolidaritet: So what does it mean this solidarity work
for the peoples’ struggles and for the Indian government?
Saibaba: The solidarity
movement for the Indian peoples’ struggles which is to be internationally
established is very important and has the same significance today as the
solidarity movement for the people of Vietnam during the sixties and seventies
and for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan in the past decades. The Indian
government’s war on the people is planned in a large scale and involves carefully
planned genocides of the indigenous people of India who constitute a population
which is larger than the population of Germany and Sweden put together. It is
the indigenous people in the eastern and central India – the adivasis – who are targeted by the
Indian rulers with active aid from the imperialist forces and the corporate
sector. The biggest of the corporate houses from Europe and the U.S. have deep interests
in this area. But they know that their interest will not be served unless the
people, hundreds of millions of people, are removed from their ancestral land. Not
coincidentally, these areas are also the areas which figure among the strongest
resistance struggles in the world today. This massive war on the people by the
imperialists and the Indian rulers together threatens to massacre these people
and as democrats of the world we cannot afford to allow this to happen. In the
17th, 18th and 19th century the European bourgeoisie eliminated millions of
indigenous people of Africa, North and South America, Australia and New Zealand.
This could happen at that time because an international solidarity of democratic
forces was absent or extremely weak. But in the present, at least since the
days of the Second World War, there is a conscious international democratic
solidarity which effectively raised their voices against the American war in
Vietnam. They supported the democratic resistance against the U.S. military
campaign in Vietnam and launched several campaigns that helped the Vietnamese people
to gain strength and confidence. Similarly, an international campaign today will
strengthen the resistance struggle of the people of India and will give them
the confidence. They would be assured that the democratic voices of the world
are with them and that the people of India are not alone in their struggle
against imperialism and feudalism and to establish a new society. Indeed, a new
society is already taking shape in these areas of struggle in India and it is
our duty to inform the entire world about it. So is the significance of the
international solidarity campaign. This is the need of the Indian people and also
of the people of the democratic society at an international level. It is a
historical task of the democratic forces of the world to defend and stand in solidarity
with these fighting forces.
Indiensolidaritet: Can you tell us something about the
solidarity work in relation to the Indian government? Is it somehow disturbing
them that this solidarity exists?
Saibaba: Yes, the Indian
government is worried about this international campaign for the fighting people
of India. This is because the campaign also makes it clear that the tall claims
of the Indian state – that it is one of the largest democracies of the world, that
the economy of country is growing faster than other countries and that India is
going to be the next superpower in Asia after China, and so on. All these
falsehoods will come to light once the international campaign exposes the truth
that India is not really a democratic state but is an autocratic and
totalitarian state. It doesn´t allow democratic descent and there is no
internal democracy in India. And also the so-called high economic growth in
India is at the expense of millions of people. Today in India, 80 percent of
the people live on less than half a dollar a day on overage in a year. This is
worse than a subsistence economy, for in half a dollar a day you can´t even get
something to eat and survive. In other words, the quality of life for the vast
majority of Indian people is worse than that of the sub-Saharan populations,
with the difference that the population in India is several hundred times more
than that of all the sub-Saharan countries put together. We can say that instead
of having the largest democracy in the world India has the largest population
stricken by poverty, exploitation and oppression.
So the government of India is already worried about the international solidarity
campaign which has the potential to expose the reality that it wants to hide
from the world. When the international campaign takes shape and speaks up, it
will be very difficult for the Indian government to maintain the falsehood that
India is a democratic state. India’s growth story is like the history of
colonial economies which grew out of internal and foreign exploitation. This
growth rate is very vulnerable because it is sustained through exploitation, suppression
and massacre of the vast masses of people for the benefit of a small minority. This
economic growth is inhuman and temporary, since only a few families in India are
reaping its benefits while the majority of the people are getting severely
facing its brunt. And these realities are coming out now. The western media
never brought out these realties to the international community. The Indian
government suppresses such information and the imperialists too like to project
India as a developing economy or lucrative investment destination. It is a fact
that the imperialists don’t want the facts and realities of India to come out. The
international campaign alone can bring out these facts and present them before
the international community.
Indiensolidaritet: You mentioned earlier that it might be so
that the Indian government will be more careful in its genocidal campaigns if
there is a large public opinion that knows what’s really going on in India,
behind all these lies.
Saibaba: Yes, the
international campaign and your voices against the genocidal war in India have
forced the government of India to rethink about its genocidal campaign. It has
already started happening. For example, several protest demonstrations at
Indian embassies in several countries in Europe, the US and South America put
pressure on the Indian government. Initially in 2009, the government of India
planned to complete the war on the people within three years. They wanted to
evict the people from tens of thousands of villages within three years using
army, paramilitary and other coercive forces. But the campaign within India and
outside, particularly the international campaign, forced the Indian government
to go slow on its plans. Though the Indian government went through with its
deployment, it slowed down the military campaign and during these three years
the peoples’ resistance got precious time to consolidate, build its defence and
gain more strength. As a result, the carrying out of the military campaign
became much more difficult for the Indian government in the last three years. The resistance grew and expanded during this
period and thus the international campaign has direct impact on the people who
are resisting. The people also gained confidence and strength. One more example
that I remember is as follows. Last March the government of India declared in
the parliament that the campaign taken up by some organizations in India and
outside has portrayed the government of India in poor light and that there is
no war on the people of India. It was called a false propaganda to smear the image
of the Indian government. This shows that the government of India have not been
able to politically counter our collective international campaign and is forced
to claim it as a false propaganda campaign. Officials of the government in the
parliament say that the campaign actually has exposed the government of India. This
shows how the government of India is concerned about maintaining its image
which it feels is under threat due to the campaign. The real relevance of the
international campaign began to be felt by by the Indian government itself. Thus
the international campaign stands for the benefit of the people and for the
protection of the peoples’ movement. It is a kind of legacy for the world
people.
Indiensolidaritet: Of all the struggles we are supporting, the Naxalite
movement is very important. What is the Naxalite movement of today?
Saibaba: You may know of the
history of the Naxalite movement. The first ever armed rebellion of the tribal
people in post-1947 period took place in the North Bengal village of Naxalbari in
1967. It opened up a new arena of class struggle and came to be known as the Naxalite
movement. An important characteristic of this movement is that it is a
peasants’ armed rebellion led by the proletariat. It is primarily an agrarian
revolution, similar to what happened in China during the thirties an forties of
the last century. The struggle that started from Naxalbari inspired the youth,
intellectuals and the workers of India in every part of the country because
they understood that any kind of struggle in India has to be based on the
peasantry who constitute the vast majority of the population. Soon after 1967
the Indian government sent its army to suppress that movement and completely crushed
that movement in Naxalbari, the one village. But Naxalbaris sprang up
everywhere in India in the 1970s and 80s. In 600 regions in India they modelled
themselves along Naxalbari uprising and today the armed revolutionary movement
that is going on in vast parts of the countryside in India are a continuation
of the Naxalbari uprising. Naxalbari has given the Indian people a vision and a
future model of the struggle that runs along the axis of agrarian revolution. The
understanding that the agrarian revolution will liberate the vast majority of
the population following the proletarian ideology of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism
which is later called Maoism spread among the masses.
So, after the suppression of the Naxalbari uprising since the late 1960s
the predominant trend of the peoples’ struggles is the path of Naxalbari, if
are a keen researcher of history of all peoples’ struggles since 1947 in the
subcontinent. That is why it is said that Naxalbari is the only path of struggle
in India. This is the slogan you can see in every street, in every wall for the
last 40 years. It is the writing on the wall in the subcontinent, despite all
major attempts by Indian and Western European historians to hide this fact from
the history writing. There is no doubt to say that the ideological position and
trajectory of the Indian revolutionary movement has been shaped by the
Naxalbari movement. Today the vast swathes of rural India are gripped by the
ideology of Naxalbari – a revolutionary breakthrough which was aptly termed as “Spring
Thunder in India” by China under Mao’s leadership. So the Spring Thunder is
continuing and that is the basic line of struggle in India and constitutes the
largest revolutionary resistance movement in India today, though this has not
happened without colossal ups and downs.
Indiensolidaritet: As I understand it, there are several
parties or groups that you can say belong to the Naxalite movement. Which are
these parties?
Saibaba: In the 1970s there were
mass uprisings in about 600 places following a split in the communist movement
in India. The undivided communist movement represented by the Communist Party
of India (CPI) split into CPI and CPI(Marxist) in 1964. In 1968 CPI(M) further
split and CPI(Marxist-Leninist) was formed under the leadership of Charu
Mazumdar. But in the decade of 1970s the Marxist-Leninist movement got split
into several parties due to the differences on the questions of how to conduct
the revolutionary struggle, attitude towards the Indian parliament and the
attitude towards the imperialist forces and the Indian ruling classes. The
splitting of the Marxist-Leninist party and the movement into small factions
was the major trend in the seventies. But the decade of 1980s saw the
consolidation of the major Marxist-Leninist parties in important regions of the
country. The formation of major parties took place during this time. You can
see three strands in party building – the party in South India called itself
CPI (ML) (Peoples’ War) while in North India two parties emerged – Maoist
Communist Centre (MCC) and CPI(ML) Party Unity. These three parties worked in three
different areas in isolation from each other and without knowing much about
each other. But they considerably expanded the revolutionary areas and later
they came together.
But let me also tell you that there are other ML parties which do not
believe in taking up armed struggle but they want it to start much later in the
course of struggle. This can be understood as Phase Theory which many revolutionary
parties in India conform to. According to this theory, in the first phase one
has to prepare the masses through open and legal mass resistance struggles. In
the second phase, underground organisation of the movement is carried out, while
in the third phase the armed struggle is started. Though these parties had
large mass base initially, due to their faulty understanding, they became
smaller and smaller. This Phase Theory did not work. But the first of the three
revolutionary parties I have mentioned started armed struggle straight away, as
they did not believe in phases of revolution. They analysed that a
revolutionary situation already exists in Indian society and the people can be organized
for an armed movement. Even they believed and understood that armed forms of
struggles predate their own existence. Hence they need to lead them with the
MLM ideology at the centre. They succeeded while the rest of the groups became weaker
and alienated from the oppressed masses. The revolutionary classes and
individuals in the society came together in the larger revolutionary groups and
these groups expanded over time. On the other hand, those groups which believed
that they should spread the revolutionary ideas by going to the parliament or
believed that they should start the armed struggle much later, could not carry
forward the revolutionary movement. They remained for forty years in the same
preparatory stage and are now smaller forces – almost non-existent – even foregoing
their character as revolutionary forces. But those who believed from the very
beginning that the phase theory is wrong, that the Indian parliament has no
relevance in India and that the peoples struggles’ can and should start with
armed struggle became major revolutionary forces. They joined hands and merged
in 2004 to become Communist Party of India (Maoist) – the largest and the most formidable
revolutionary force in India. About ten smaller ML parties still exist, but
they have no relevance, leading no major struggle, thereby existing only on
paper mainly. One such organization is called CPI(ML) Liberation which contest parliamentary
elections in some pockets of the country. People consider it to be a
revisionist group like the CPI and CPI(M) which has no radical or revolutionary
content and relevance. On the other hand, CPI(Maoist) has emerged as the single
largest Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Party of the country after the coming together
of all revolutionary forces in India. The movement it leads is still called the
Naxalite movement because its origins lie in the Naxalbari village.
Indiensolidaritet: Ok, but I also heard that there are parities
called CPI(Naxabari) and CPI(ML) (Janashakti) that exists and some people also
call them progressive.
Saibaba: As I said, there are
about ten parties including CPI(Naxabari) which is a small group with a
revolutionary spirit. They have not gone down the path of other parliamentary
Marxist-Leninist groups. They are close to CPI(Maoist) than the revisionist ML
groups. Similarly, two or three other very small parties which have a
revolutionary content are much closer to CPI(Maoist). But the rest of the parties,
CPI(ML) New Democracy, CPI(ML) Kanu Sanyal and some lesser known parties called
CPI(ML) Provisional Committee, CPI(ML) Second Central Committee etc. have no
revolutionary content left in them and are more or less like the revisionist
parties. They hardly have any influence among the people.
Indiensolidaritet: We are using the flag of the Revolutionary
Peoples’ Councils and its logo for our organization. Can you say something on
how and where this peoples’ government is developed?
Saibaba: The Revolutionary Peoples’
Councils (RPC) have come up gradually, particularly in Bastar encompassing
south Chhattisgarh. There are about a few thousand of such RPCs in Bastar, and
some of them have also come up in Odisha, Andrah Pradesh, Jharkandh and Bihar.
But in Bastar RPCs and the peoples’ government have developed to a higher
level. In the rest of the areas too they are developing in the same direction.
The RPCs are called Janatana Sarkars
in the local language in Bastar. Janatana
means ‘of the people’ and sarkar means
‘government’ – ‘peoples’ government’. In the political language of the
revolution they are called Peoples’ Revolutionary Councils. They are formed and
elected by the people in a direct election where the entire village sits together
and elects. The ruling-class elements in the village have no voting rights while
all the people from the oppressed classes have voting rights. Once the peoples’
government is elected it acts like a government of the village which has
several committees, such as the development committee, the health committee,
the education committee, the security committee and the peoples’ militia. Peoples’
militia works under the village government or the RPC. The government has full
political power and it works for the people. If any elected member is not
functioning according to the expectations and interests of the village and
people, the constitution of the RPCs provides the right to the people to recall
the member and re-elect another person in his/her place.
The peoples’ government or the RPCs promote and develop indigenous
technology in industry and agriculture. They don’t depend on the technology or
the so-called development model that are imposed by imperialists and the ruling
elite. The very idea of development according to peoples’ own technology,
knowledge and skill is part of this experiment. The effort of the RPCs is to
raise the level of peoples’ consciousness and cultural level. The technology
they use is in consonance with the consciousness and the level of the peoples’
culture so that there is no feeling of alienation between work and knowledge.
In the process, they completely reject the technology developed and promoted by
imperialists and the comprador bourgeoisie which are oppressive and
exploitative. So the development that is experienced in the villages with RPCs
is based on a self-reliant economy. The hundreds and thousands of these
committees and councils have established a self-reliant economy based on their
own needs, own resources and their own technology. This is a complete negation of
the model of ‘development’ dependent on imperialism, imperialist technology and
imperialist funds which has been introduced by Indian rulers in 1947. It is through
this imperialist technology and imperialist investment that the exploitation of
our country and resources has taken place. ‘The revolutionary people and the
revolutionary peoples’ councils completely reject this. So in these areas of
central and eastern India where agriculture was developed only to a rudimentary
level, the people through RPCs have developed agriculture and fisheries, small-scale
industry and so on. As a result, for the first time in the history of these
regions, the vast masses of the people have successes in creating surplus, and
socialise it without allowing it transform into capital.
The RPCs have systematically carried out land distribution among the
indigenous people and other oppressed people, so that there are no landless
people in the areas under RPCs today. RPCs put the surplus back in collective
agricultural farming, while everybody gives their voluntary labour. The people
produce their crops and a portion of it goes to the common pool overseen by the
peoples’ government. The rest of the produce is distributed among the people as
per their requirements. It is not just only the agricultural produce that the
people collectively control, but the RPCs also regulate all trade and
commercial activities in their purview to establish and ensure non-exploitative
exchange. But they still require necessities like medicine and other products that
the RPCs do not produce. So the surplus produce that remains after being used
for the village is sent to the market. So the surplus that is generated in the
village is used for the welfare of the village, again socialising it. But this
is welfare from a revolutionary perspective, and has nothing to do with the government’s
welfare schemes which are launched to keep social discontent under check. The
surplus generated in this manner serves the people in that the RPC uses it for their
health, education and other requirements apart from putting it back for the
development of agriculture and industry, i.e., for further revolutionising
production. In this way a new society is being built in India by the most
oppressed of the people. As a part of this process, the feudal and reactionary cultural
practices are being discarded on the one hand while imperialist culture and
exploitation is being resisted on the other. RPCs are the foundations of this new
society. The revolutionary movement wants to expand the RPCs from the village
level to the block level and gradually a larger government will be formed at
the district level. With the development of RPCs in different parts of India,
the power of the Indian rulers will be overthrown and peoples’ power will be
established in their place. Peoples’ power is at the centre of these
Revolutionary Peoples Councils. Like the slogan of “All Power to Soviets” in
revolutionary Russia, “All Power to the People” is the slogan of the
revolutionary movement in India. The RPCs have all the power, which is the
implementation of the slogan “All Power to the People”. This is the guiding
principle with which the RPCs function in all spheres of social life in the
revolutionary regions.
Indiensolidaritet: Do you know how the Maoist party is related
to the new government?
Saibaba: The peoples’ government
has the party committee within its core. It is not the case that all the people
in this government are party members, but a section of them are. When representatives
to the RPCs are elected, both party members as well as non-party members will
be there. The party functions through these party committees within the RPCs.
So you can understand that the RPC is like a united front, because there are
communists, non-communists and general people. CPI(Maoist) does not believe
that Revolutionary Peoples Councils should be run by the party alone. In the
RPCs, members of the party work with the common people who have traditional
wisdom and knowledge of the struggle. Like in a united front, in RPCs, Maoist party
forces and non-party forces come together to form the peoples’ government. The
party members elected to the government function as per party ideology to develop
revolutionary consciousness among other members of the Revolutionary Peoples
Council.
Indiensolidaritet: How is the Peoples Liberation Guerrilla Army
(PLGA) related to the peoples’ militia? Is the peoples’ militia the backbone of
the PLGA?
Saibaba: As far as my study and
understanding of this vast movement goes, I can say that the militia is constituted
by the participation of a large number of people in the villages, and therefore
the militia is called the basic force. Behind the militia functions the Peoples
Liberation Guerrilla Army. So the PLGA is very much dependent on the militia.
The peoples’ militia is the basic force and the PLGA is the main revolutionary
army. But all basic requirements related to the defence of the revolutionary
areas and the revolutionary movement are taken care of by the militia because
they are the largest force in number and it should be the principal force.
However, the growth of the peoples militia can only begin after the PLGA is
established in an area. But once people’s militia develops, the PLGA goes to
the background. Then, the PLGA is called in only when the militia needs
reinforcement. Otherwise the PLGA does not take the main role in the armed
struggle. So the first on the frontlines of the revolutionary armed struggle is
the peoples’ militia followed by the PLGA. This is what I have understood in
the emergence and development the people’s militia in different areas of
Central and Eastern India over the last two decades of the history of this
trajectory.
Indiensolidaritet: Some people might say, “Oh the party is
controlling everything”. What do you think?
Saibaba: People who do not
know how a revolutionary party like the CPI (Maoist) functions or those who
would like to malign the Maoist party may say such things. But then there
places where wrong things are practised or mistakes happen. But then it is not
to be understood as the policy of the CPI (Maosit). But if you see the reality and closely follow
the movement, you can understand that the CPI (Maoist) gives primary importance
to the agency of the common people in their area. It is the people who
themselves take the initiative in struggles. There are many examples of this.
The roadmap of how to develop a village in a revolutionary way or how to
develop guerrilla warfare is not centrally given by the CPI (Maoist). In these
areas the people know of this through practice through their own history of
struggles. For example, the indigenous people have a long history of waging guerrilla
fight. They fought the armies of the Mughal emperors and the British colonialists
in hundreds of rebellions in all of the last three hundred or more years of their
known history, and this is equally true of their earlier history as well – a
peoples’ history which is yet to be written. They might not have termed it as guerrilla
warfare, but the history of the peoples’ uprisings in these areas is invariably
of guerrilla fight. There were about 150 armed rebellions against the British
by the tribal people mostly written but many more which were not yet properly
written– the indigenous people – and in each one of them they won while the
British were defeated. The mighty force of British imperialists was defeated by
the tribal people with superior knowledge of the terrain and but with simple bows
and arrows. They seized the weapons of the imperialist invaders and used them
against the British. Not always more developed social formation has won over
the less developed social formation. One such massive uprising is the Bhumkal Rebellion
of 1910 in the Bastar region. The rebellious tribal people used sophisticated
guerrilla methods against the British forces and defeated them. In popular
memory all these methods are still alive because they have taught each other and
passed on the experience of guerrilla warfare from one generation to the other.
Therefore, it is not the CPI (Maoist) who taught guerrilla warfare techniques
to the indigenous people. Rather, it is the indigenous people who taught them how
to wage guerrilla warfare. A public intellectual in India called B D Sharma who
worked with the adivasis for the last 50 years always reminds us about this in
his public lectures and writings. In this example we can see that the initiative,
assertion and creativity in every stage of the struggle come from amongst the
people, including the development model they have chalked out for themselves. In
the revolutionary movement the people are at the centre. The Maoists give utmost
importance to the peoples’ initiative, assertion and participation, particularly
the people’s agency in the revolution. Any party which places itself at the
centre can’t become an instrument of revolutionary change because it’s the
people’s agency that develops to transform the society in toto that that can
play this role. So the people and their party advance the movement together. This
is really where the party has played its role – by creating the conditions for the
people to take initiative and unleash their full potentials, creativity and
regeneration in the making of a new society free from exploitation and
oppression. And then the history is created by the masses of people themselves,
whose agency is central to this process.
