NAXALISM : A CHALLENGE TO THE PROPOSITION OF PEACEFUL TRANSITION TO

SOCIALISM
Author(s): Haridwar Rai and K.M. Prasad
Source: The Indian Journal of Political Science , OCT.-DEC. 1972, Vol. 33, No. 4 (OCT.-
DEC. 1972), pp. 455-480
Published by: Indian Political Science Association

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41854534

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Indian Journal of
Political Science

This content downloaded from

157.37.218.251 on Tue, 07 Mar 2023 11:25:46 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 NAXALISM : A CHALLENGE TO THE PROPOSITION
OF PEACEFUL TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM

By
Haridwar Rai* and K.M. Prasad**

As a revolutionary ideology and programme of action, Naxalism has

sought to present itself as a challenge to the tradition of peaceful and
constitutional method of socio-economic reconstruction. Originating as
an extremist wing of the Indian Communist movement, it claimed itself
to be the Indian counterpart of Maoism and an authentic, bearer of
Marxist-Leninist revolutionary tradition. Over a short span of less than
half a decade, the movement made such a psychological impact that every
violent manifestation against the "establishment" became identified with
Naxalite insurgency. Some people regarded the Naxalite uprising as the
resurrection of the Telengana peasant struggle of 1946-51 and some others
saw in it elements of Hunan (China) peasant revolt of 1926-27. The
Communist Party of China (CPC), gloating over the initial successes of the
Naxalite movement characterised it as "thunderclaps and flashes of
lightning breaking the dead silence of the overcast skies over India."1
In two articles published in People' s Daily,2 the CPC hailed the revolt as
"Spring Thunder Over India" and declared that armed peasant struggle
was the only correct road for Indian revolution.

Even votaries of peaceful Gandhian method came to recognize the

Naxalite movement as the product of the existing social, economic and
political injustices, and the Sarvodaya leader Jayaprakash Narayan admit-
ted that it was not 'the so-called NaXalites' who were responsible for this
violence but those who persistently dilly-dallied the long-awaited and
much trumpeted social and economic reforms in the country. In fact the
notion that Naxalism is not a fortuitous, exotic growth engineered by some
revolutionists, adventurists or extremists but incidental to the basic
character of social structure and process came to be widely shared. At a
meeting of the Congress leaders including Prime Minister Indira Gandhi
held in New Delhi to commemorate the death anniversary of Jawaharlal
Nehru in May 1970, there was a consensus that Naxalsm was essentially

* Professor and Head of tbe Department of Political Science, Bhagalpur University.

** Lecturer, Postgraduate Department of Political Science, Bhagalpur University.
1. Peking Review, March 1, 1968.
2. July 5, and 11, 1967.

455

This content downloaded from

157.37.218.251 on Tue, 07 Mar 2023 11:25:46 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
456 THE INDIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

a land and unemployment problem and not a law and order problem.3
At any rate it was commonly regarded as an expression of the phenomenon
of general discontent, ferment and rebellion against an unjust social
system. "Is there any wonder", therefore exclaimed Jayaprakash Narayan
"that discontent, frustration, anger and want should turn the minds of
some towards violence as the only possible saviour?"4
The Naxalites are one with Condorcet who declared that the aim of
every real revolution is freedom.6 Claiming themselves as belonging to
the revolutionary tradition of Marx, Lenin and Mao, the Naxalite
revolutionaries tend to oppose and fight not only economic and political
exploitation but all such traditions as inhibit human freedom. The
reason behind the burning of the national flag and desecration of portraits
and statues of national leaders and the throwing of bombs and crackers in
educational institutions by the Naxalite youths symbolised a violent,
aggressive protest against tradition. As true Maoists, they believe that
the central task and the highest form of revolution is to seize political
power by armed force. This non-conformism and violence was clearly
discrenible in Calcutta in the wake of the Naxalbari revolt when the coffee
house on the College Street teemed with students and other youths fiercely
discussing Naxalbari which they marked as the Yenan of India insofar
as it provided "a spark necessary to start a praerie fire."® To the Naxa-
lite activists, the revolt came to signify the harbinger of a new revolutionary
era which will witness the elimination of all vestiges of .the exploitative
society.

A point worth noting in connection with the Naxalite movement is

the spell it cast upon the youth and students. Those who accepted the
Naxalite creed did not necessarily come from poor families or were un-
employed. A good many of them came from well-to-do families and •
they had never to bother about earning their living. What actually turned
them into Naxalites was that they found their affluence "an oasis in the
desert of misery surrounding them, ¡engulfing them, overwhelming them...
Consciously, deliberately, they renounce the comforts and privileges avail-
able to them by accident to birth in particular families and take a life of
hardship".7 Thus theirs was a personal penance, an identification with
the people, much as the declasse , communists courted poverty. A young
3. Times of India , May 30, 1970.
4. Jayaprakash Narayan : Face to Face , (Varanasi, Navachetna Prakasban, 1970),
p. 2.
5. H. Arendt : On Violence , (London, Faber and Faber, 1963), p. 2.
6. Súmanla Sen: 'Portrait of a Naxalite', Thé Statesman (Calcutta), August 15,
1971.
7. Observer, 'Proving the Credentials', Young Indian , (New Delhi), August 26,
1971.

This content downloaded from

157.37.218.251 on Tue, 07 Mar 2023 11:25:46 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 Máxalism : Challenge to peaceful transition to socialism 457

Naxalite himself explained to a Journalist : "How do you expect

sensitive person to remain non-violent in a situation where people live
die on the streets, where laws are made only to be broken, where
government exists only as a police force, where not to conform is a sin

It is instructive to note that bombs and petrol were recovered fro

Rampurhat College and it was found that forty percent of its fourte
hundred students had turned Naxalites.9 According to a corresponden
of an important Hindi weekly, one-third of the students of Calcu
University were Naxalites and their position in Jadavpur University w
also quite strong.10 The consuming passion of the students and ot
youths which made them share the sufferings of the drop-outs of th
society tended to lend meaning to their quest for new society in which
men will be free and equal. If they questioned the values, assumpti
and institutions of the existing society on the one hand, they also we
further by proposing an alternative programme of action on the other.

The death of Charu Mazumdar, the chief Naxalite ideologue an

detention and liquidation of thousands of other Naxalite leaders a
cadres have dealt a serious blow to the movement which has, to al
intents and purposes, subsided. In view of this, a depth analysis of th
genesis and nature of the movement, its strategy and technique, the rol
its leadership, the causes of its set-back and the relevance of its tactics
the present context invites our attention.

GENESIS OF THE MOVEMENT

A. Socio-Economie Condition

In the opinion of Mahatma Gandhi, "the greatest obstacle in the pat

of non-violence is the presence in our midst of the interests of moneyed men
speculators, scriphoiders, landholders, factoryowners and the like".11 H
was sure of the outbreak of a "violent and bloody revolution"12 if the g
between these haves and the have-nots was not eliminated betimes. Wh
Naxalism was born in 1967, two long decades had passed since indepenenc
but these vested interests and the age-old class cleavage had not been elim
nated by peaceful, parliamentary, constitutional method. Docile, dumb,
patient and peaceloving peasants and workers had been mutely sufferin
as Sarvodaya leader Jayaprakash Narayan points out, "utter povert

8. Quoted in Sumanta Sen, op cit.

9. S.K. Datta Ray, Steeplechase m Birbhum , The Statesman, Aug. 26, 1971.
10. Dinman (Delhi), Oct. 5, 1969, p. 30.
11. Young India (Ahmedabad), Feb. 6, 1930.
12. M. K. Gandhi : Constructive Programme, (Ahmedabad, Navajivan, 1948),
p. 21.

This content downloaded from

157.37.218.251 on Tue, 07 Mar 2023 11:25:46 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
458 THE INDIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIÈNdE

misery, inequality exploitation... frustration, and loss of hope" inspite

"high-sounding words, grandiose plans, reforms galore."13 A recen
enquiry shows that the income of 20 percent of the Indian population fa
below the destitute line and another 33 percent below poverty line
Thus, in all, those whose income falls below poverty line constit
the majority of India's population. They continue to be ill-fed ill-cl
illiterate, landless, homeless and workless even after such a long period
independence. Their extreme poverty has reduced them to the state
subhuman existance. Describing the extent of Indian poverty, Gandhiji
once wrote in reply to poet Tagore : "I have found it impossible
soothe the suffering patients with a song from Kabir. The hungary milli
ask for one poem invigorating food".15
Indeed, the number of days in a year when the poor peasants, the
workers, the workless and their dependents eat to their fill can be count
on fingers- only on festivals. Existence of such a vast majority of hung
people in the midst of an extreme minority rolling in riches poses a seri
challenge to peace and to the proposition of peaceful transition. The rea
is that a "non-violent system of government is clearly an impossibility
so long as the wide gulf between the rich and the hungry millions per
sists".14 A hungry man wants food, not promises, and he needs fo
immediately. It is only food that satisfies hunger not the profoun
ideals of peace, non-violence or democracy, not the parliament, constit
tion or law. A hungry man prefers any means that will satisfy his hun
immediately. The choice before him is not between peaceful means and
violent means but between normal existence and painful existence or dea
Hunger totally blunts the sense of discrimination between various mea
Rightly observes Decastro, the former chairman of the FAÖ : "M
subjected to hunger react as violently as animals. Their whole thinking
actively concentrated on finding something to eat, no matter what th
means, no matter what the risk".17
Gandhiji visualised the forcible seizure of land by such hungry an
frustrated peasants, as is clear from Louis Fischer's interveiw with him
in the presence of Jawaharlal Nehru. In reply to Fischer's questi
"What is your programme for the improvement of the lot of the peasant
Gandhiji said :
"The peasants will take the land"
"With violence ?" Fischer asked.

13. Jayaprakash Narayan : Face to Face op. cit., p. 12.

14. Indian Institute of Public Opinion : The Anatomy of Indian Poverty (New Del
1968), p. 28.
15. M.K. Gandhi : Young India op. cit., Oct. 13, 1921,
16. M.K. Gandhi : Constructive Programme, op. cit ,p.2'
|7. Josue De Castro : Geography of Hunger , (London, Victor Gollancz, 1952), p. 6

This content downloaded from

157.37.218.251 on Tue, 07 Mar 2023 11:25:46 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 NaXaLism : čhalleNóe to peaceful transiťioím to socialism 459

"There may be violence", Gandhiji rejoined, "but then again

the landlords may cooperate .... They might cooperate by
fleeing."

"They (the landlords)

their land", Jawaharlal interjected, "by

village".18

Such a view of Gandhiji is corroborated by his most unequivocal

statement of the eve of the Salt Satyagraha. He declared : "When the
peasant is fully awakened to a sense of his plight and knows that it is not
the kismet that brought him to the helples state but existing rule, unaided,
he will in his impatience abolish all distinctions between the constitutional
and the unconstitutional, even the violent and non-violent means".19

There is no denying the fact that the promise of building a just

social order has remained largely on paper. This tended to produce an
explosive situation which threatened to undermine the democratic, parlia-
mentary framework of our polity. The Naxalites perceived the situation
and lit the fire at Naxalbari to explode it. And it did explode with a
loud thunder and soon spread like a flash of lightning. The land problm
has been the most dynamic factor in fomenting intrasocietal guerrilla war-
fare in most of the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. And
since 1967, India has been in its grip. The Naxalite movement has been
fundamentally land-based. The following statement of Jayaprakash
Narayan provides an insight into the various factors of the land problem :

The big farmers who cheated the ceiling law through benami and
fictitious settlement ; the gentlemen who grabbed government
lands and village commons ; the landowners who persistently
denied the legal rights of their sharecroppers and evicted them
from their holdings and who underpaid their labourers and
threw them out of their homesteads ; the men who by fraud
or force took the lands away from the weaker sections... the
money lenders who charged usurious interests and seized the
lands of the poor and the weak ; the politicians, the admi-
nistrators, and all others who aided and abetted these wrongs -
it is they who are responsible for the accumulated sense of
injustice, grievance and hurt among the poor and downtrodden
that is now seeking its outlet in violence...20

18. L. Fischèr : A Week with Gandhi (London,. George Allen, 1943), p. 43.
19. Quoted in D.G. Tendulkar, Mahatma (New Delhi, Publications Division, Govt,
of India, 1961), Vol. 3, p. 10.
20. Jayaprakash Narayan, op. cit., pp. 15-16.

This content downloaded from

157.37.218.251 on Tue, 07 Mar 2023 11:25:46 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
460 THE INDIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

Analysing the causes and extent of Naxalite movement in West Bengal,

Dirimati21 reported in 1970 that thousands of kenaml and government lands
were in the possession of Jotedars (landlords) and tea garden owners in
the Naxalbari area in west Bengal. According to the report, there are
over 70,000 Jotedars in' West Bengel. They constitute only five percent
of the rural population but possess forty percent of the arable land.
Sixtyfour percent of the vi' igers are landless peasants and workers.
They find no woik for moie than 100 days every year. Another corres-
pondent of the same journal found the same phenomenon in Bihar. And
similar is the situation in other parts of India. On the other pole of the
land problem are the crores of landless peasants who till the land but do not
own them. On many of these big farms, tractors are used for cultivation
throwing vast numbers of labourers out of employment. Thus this process
of Kulakisation, mechanisation and 'green revolution' has intensified the
process of class polarisation and class contradiction. It is these landlords
and rich farmers who have benefited most from the huge amounts of state
subsidies, state assistance and state loans at cheap rates for land improve-
ment, irrigation, farm implements, fertilizers and seeds. After an extensive
study of effects of 'green revolution', W. Ladejinsky of the World Bank
found the condition of the sharecroppers growing worse consequent upon
the 'green revolution', because as ownership of improved land is priced
very highly, there is mounting determination among owners not to permit
tenants to share in the rights of land they cultivate. Their preference is
toget rid of them".23 Y.B. Chavan, therefore, warned that "unless the
Green Revolution is accompanied by a revolution based on social justice,
I am afraid, the Green Revolution may not remain green".24 Large scale
evictions of the sharecroppers from the land they have been cultivating
for decades has become the order of the day, in spite of the law to the
contrary. As regards rural indebtedness, money landers lag behind none in
squeezing the poor peasants and Workers by their exhorbitant rate of farm
workers which is much lower even than the legal minimum. Theirs is indeed
a subhuman existence. As a result of all this, "there seemed (and still
seems) two mutually exclusive classes in which society was divided".25
And it was precisely this situation that gave rise to the Naxalite movement.
B. Ideological Foundations
The 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

21. Dinman, op. cit. June, 21. 1970.

22. Ibid., July 27, 1969.
23. W. Ladejinsky : 'Green Revolution in Bihar' : Economic and Political Weekly
(Bombay), September 1969.
24. Link (Delhi), Jan. 8, 1970.
25. C.N. Ranjan, 'Naxalism After Charu Mazumdar , òearchiight, (ťatna), July u,
1972.

This content downloaded from

157.37.218ff:ffff:ffff:ffff on Thu, 01 Jan 1976 12:34:56 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 NaXalisM : Challenge to peaceful transition to socialism 461

(CPSU) held in February 1956, played an important part in international

Communist movement. It developed Lenin's proposition on the variety of
forms that the transition to socialism could take in different countries. It
noted that in several capitalist countries the working class led by the
Communist Party had gained, by means of extraparliamentary struggles, a
real opportunity of rallying a large section of the people under its banner
and winning a majority in parliament. With the active support of the work-
ing people, the parliament could be changed from being a bourgeois instru-
ment into one that served the working people. In this way there was the
possibility of creating conditions for peaceful transition to socialism. If
however, the bourgeoisie resisted violently against the will of the majority
of the people, it must be dislodged from power by force.
In the light of these conclusions of the Ccngre^s of the CPSU, the
IV Congress of the CPI meeting at Palghat in April 1956, initiated action
for the peaceful transition by seeking to rally the leftist forces around the
CPI and use the left-wing in the Congress Party to effect a leftward shift
in its politics. But such a change in the policy of the CPSU was not to be
easily stomached by the Communist Party of China (CPC) and aSino-Soviet
doctrinal schism ensued which came into the open at a meeting of the
Communist and Workers Parties held in Moscow in November 1957, to
celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Russian Revolution.26 Meanwhile,
the CPI had captured power in Kerala through Parliamentary democratic
election, thus vindicating the CPSU proposition of transition to socialism
through peaceful parliamentary means. Largely drawing upon this
peaceful growth of the Communist movement in India as well as in
Indonesia, the CPSU presented a draft proposal of a joint declaration
which spoke only about the peaceful transition. It explained "peaceful
transition" as securing a majority in parliament and transforming it
from an instrument of the bourgeois dictatorship into an instrument of
genuine people's state power. The Chinese delegation led by Mao
Tse-tung insisted that the draft should speak only about the "desira-
bility of peaceful transition" and that entire emphasis should be placed
upon extra-parliamentary mass struggle. Ultimately, the Chinese approach
prevailed upon the Russian and the declaration in its final form known as
the "Moscow Declaration of the Twelve Communist and Workers Parties"
made some changes in the original draft of the CPSU. The declaration
admitted the feasibility of peaceful transition but emphasised extraparlia-
mentary mass struggle. The V Extraordinary Congress of the CPI held in
Amritsar in April, 1958, formally proclaimed the doctrine of peaceful transi-
tion, thenceforth known as Amritsar thesis. Ajay Ghosh later explained

26. This was the first meeting since the disbanding of the Communist International
in 1943. First there was a Meeting of the Communist and Workers Parties of 12
socialist countries, then of 64 countries.

This content downloaded from

157.37.218.251 on Tue, 07 Mar 2023 11:25:46 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
462 THÈ INDIAN JOURNAL OF POLlfiCAL SČIEtfCfi

it as "neither a creed nor a tactic. It is a policy - a seriously meant

policy".27

Meanwhile, the opposition parties in Kerala sought to make political

capital out of an administrative lapse on the part of the government in
their bid to cause its downfall. This incident gave rise to serious differences
in the CPI with regard to the course of action to salvage the party out of
the crisis. A group in the party interpreted the Moscow Declaration to
mean that the party should accelerate extraparliamentary struggle and use
both state machinery and party apparatus in order to retain power in
Kerala. This group later came to be known as the pro-Chinese faction of
the CPI, which ultimately blossomed into the Communist Party of India
(Marxist) or CPIM. On the other hand, the majority of the leadership,
later known as the pro-Soviet group of the CPI, felt that any militant
action would invite central intervention and downfall of the Communist
government in Kerala.
In this way, the Sino-Soviet ideological dispute and the Kerala crisis
had already produced an internal ideological strife in the CPI. But it was
highlighted by the Sino-Indian border dispute and the first serious clash
which took place in Ladakh valley in 1959. Whereas the. pro-Soviet wing
declared that areas south of the Mcmahon Line were a part of India and
urged negotiated settlement, the pro-Chinese group was not prepared to
put the blame on China. When full scale Chinese invasion on India took
place in 1962, it produced a serious crack in the CPI,

Rift had thus already overtaken the CPI which was heading fast
towards a split. To consummate the process of split, the breakaway group
held a Congress (VII Congress) in Calcutta in October-November 1964,
where it claimed itself to be the "true representative of the Communist
Party of India" and hence its legal and political continuity. However, it was
the major faction of the party which was commonly regarded as the contin-
uation of the parent body, the Communist Party of India or CPI, whereas
the new party came to be known as the Communist Party of India (Marxist)
or CPIM. This Congress of CPIM adopted a new programme whose
immediate objective would be the formation of a People's Democratic
Front to be followed by the establishment of a People's Democratic
Government to effect peaceful transition to socialism by using both parlia-
mentary and extraparliamentary forms of struggle. Thus, at the close of
1964, there existed two Communist parties in India, both committed to
the use of peaceful means - parliamentary and extraparliamentary - for
capturing power. But whereas the CPI would seek the cooperation of all
left democratic forces, including the left-wing of the Congress Party and

27. New Age, (New Delhi), May 18, 1958.

This content downloaded from

157.37.218.251 on Tue, 07 Mar 2023 11:25:46 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 NAXALISM : CHALLENGE TO PEACEFUL TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM 463

the Soviet Union in this transition through non-capitalist path, the CPIM
seemed to nourish the same obsession of anti-Congressism and anti-Sovietism
as the Samyukta Socialist Party (SSP).

Within the united CPI itself there existed an extremist wing which
was opposed to the peaceful, parliamentary line of transition, and proposed
armed revolution. After the split of the CPI, these extremists formed part
of the CPIM. The existence of these extremists in the CPIM in Kerala
from its very inception is borne out by a cyclostyled letter issued by a
"People's Court" to several government officials in Kerala in January 1965,
sentencing them to "liquidation for you and all members of your decadent
bourgeois family. You shall suffer the same fate as the landlords of Yenan
and Telangana."28 This incident heralded the uneasy calm on the extreme
left which was shortly to explode and showed that underground organiza-
tions of extremists were in the process of making. Two years later, when
the CPIM was busy forming united fronts, a printed wall newspaper Kerala
Red Guard appeared on the walls of Trivandrum attacking the party's
united front policy. It lebelled Namboodiripad "an agent of the
bourgeosie, rich peasants and decadent reactionaries" and concluded that
"the working class can never hope to capture absolute power except
through armed revolution."29

While remaining in the CPIM, these extremist Maoists constantly

pressed the party for non-peaceful, non-parliamentary extralegal forms of
struggle and opposed party's participation in united fronts, elections and
unprincipled coalitions. But to their utter dismay, they found it giving
primary importance to united fronts and elections to the neglect of mass
struggles. The party actually fought elections as a constituent of united
fronts in several states and was going to participate in coalitions in Kerala
and West Bengal. In the latter, it was forming coalition with the Bengla
Congress, a faction of the Congress party. As M. Ram remarks, the
united front governments in Kerala and West Bengal were "heterogenous,
non-ideological quantities. These motley combinations included bourgeois
and petit bourgeois parties and groups and individuals."30 The Maoists
regarded all this as a serious deviation from the policies adopted at the
Vil Congress of the party in Calcutta in 1964, particularly from the policy
of anti-Congressism. When they ultimately found that nothing was going
to change the party's policy of parliamentarianism facifism and unprinci-
pled coalitionism, they started organising peasants in the areas of their
influence for armed revolution.

28. The Hindu (Madras), January 30, 1965.

29. Ibid., February 16, 1967.
30. Mohan Ram : Maoism in India, (Delhi, Vikas Publications, 1971), p. 55.

This content downloaded from

157.37.218.251 on Tue, 07 Mar 2023 11:25:46 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
464 THE INDIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

ORGANISATION AND STRATEGY OF THE MOVEMENT

Such an armed struggle has taken place in Telengana in 1946-

which thousands of villages were '-liberated" and lacs of acres
"degrabbed" from landlords and distributed, and about 4,000 Com
guerrillas gave up their lives fighting the landlords, the police a
army. The same revolt resurrected itself at Naxalbari in the dist
Darjeeling in West Bengal in 1967. Largely masterminded by
Mazumdar, the chief theoretician and architect of Naxalism, the
was launched on March 2, 1967, the very day the united front gov
was installed in West Bengal with Bangla Congress leader Ajay M
as Chief Minister and Jyoti Easu, the leader of the CP1M legislatur
as Deputy Chief Minister and Police Minister.

As for the organization and mode of operation of the stiugg

present soviets of committees known as Krishak Sabhas, organize
CPI since 1959 provided the base necessary for revolutionary act
Peking Review reported later, the first organizational step that w
was to hold a convention of peasants of the villages around t
towns of Naxalbari, Kharibari and Phansidawa, an area of near
hundred square miles and a population of eighty thousand, to esta
authority of these committees in all matters of the village, redistr
governmental and "feudal" lands through them, and to be armed
to crush counter-revolutionary resistance.31

Some twenty thousand peasants and agricultural and tea

workers were working vigorously to organize these committees
ninety per cent of villagers were armed to function as village defence
against "reactionary subversion.". The weapons used by the in
were traditional, like bows and arrows and spears and guns snatch
landlords. Feudal and government lands were redistributed. Lega
ments including mortgage deeds were burnt. Work cattle, farm
ments and hoarded grains of landlords and usurers were confisca
distributed among poor peasants and workers. Oppressive and no
landlords, usurers and the "enemies of the revolution" were publi
and executed. The village committees took over village admini
Regional committees were constituted in every area in order to sy
peasants' political power. The "bourgeois" laws and law cour
declared null and void and the only valid laws were the decisions
revolutionary committees. All this was done under the village co
sation scheme. A Naxalite explained this scheme in operation as u

"..Armed with our weapons, we went to big Jotedars (lan

lords). Leaving foodstuffs and other materials according
31. Peking Review, op. cit., May 20, 1969.

This content downloaded from

157.37.218.251 on Tue, 07 Mar 2023 11:25:46 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 naxalism: challenge to peaceful transition to socialism 465

their need, we distributed the rest among the poor. Likewise

we snatched lands from the Jotedars and distributed them
among the poor peasants. We used force only when resisted
violently. We never made the womenfolk and children of the
Jotedars the targets of our attack. There was strict order
against this to the revolutionaries. The revolutionaries were
restricted from holding more property than that of a poor
farmer."32

As M. Ram states, landless peasants were the vanguard of the

struggle. After temporary neutrality, middle peasants realized their identity
of interest with the poor peasents and joined the struggle. The rich peasants
initially sided with the Jotedars, but when the latter fled the village or were
punished, the former ceased opposing. A few small landlords also actively
assisted the struggle, while others passively swore vengeance and awaited
the table to turn in their favour. One important feature of the struggle was
that tea garden workers came out of the mire of trade union economism
and took part in the struggle activity. It was a real alliance between
peasants, workers and petit bourgeosie.

However, within a few months, massive police repression succeeded

in suppressing the uprising and in undoing all achievements.

After Naxalbari, Debra-Gopivallabhpur area in the district of Midna-

pur was the biggest centre of Naxalite activities, where 19 landlords were
killed within a few months in 1969-70, vast areas of land "liberated" and
distributed, legal documents seized and destroyed and crops and granaries
looted. Inhabited mostly by tribais, means of communication in this area
are extremely difficult. Close to this area is a vast forest extending up to
Bihar and Orissa which provided an ideal hideout for Naxalites.33

Next in importance to Naxalbari, but far vaster in extent, was the

protracted peasant struggle in the Srikakulam district of Andhra Pradesh,
where the CPI had been organizing peasant and tribal militia called Girijan
Sanghams ever since 1959. Under the leadership of the CPI, these Sanghams
had occupied five thousand acres of government land and seized some two
thousand acres from the landlords and distributed them before the end of
1967. When landlords shot two Communists leading the struggle in

32. Dinman op. cit., Oct. 5, 1964.

33. In addition to Naxalbari- Kharibari-Dhansidawa and Debra-Gopivallabhpur
areas, other centres of Naxalite activities in West Bengal besides Calcutta,
include : Mirik, Mall, Siliguri, Kumargram, Barhampur, Karimpur, Yubrajpur,
Raghunathpur, Katya, Ansgram, Ranaghat, Magra, Habra, Barasat, Rajorhat,
Amta, Keshopur, Bhangar, Hingalganj, Mahestalla, Kharpur, Bahragoda, Naya-
gram, Namkhana, çtc,, in all 35,

This content downloaded from

157.37.218.251 on Tue, 07 Mar 2023 11:25:46 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
466 THE INDIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

October 1967, the struggle gathered further momentum and more land
property of landlords and usurers were seized, vast areas "liberated" an
these Girijan Sanghams started functioning as soviets and administerin
these "liberated" areas. The government however suppressed the struggle
March 1968, compelling the revolutionaries to prepare for guerrilla struggle
The Naxalites blamed CPIM leadership for the debacle of the strugg
"Renegade Sundarayya and his clique were the main causes of our failu
Due to confidence in him we could not see through the treachery of t
clique".34 After making meticulous preparations - choosing hideouts in
hills and forests, organizing elaborate courier system, collecting arms,
indoctrinating peasants and rigorously training party cadres in guerri
tactics including first aidfull scale revolt was launched on November 2
1968, looting crops and property of the landlords but avoiding murde
When Charu Mazumdar visited that area in January, 1 969, frequency
attacks rose and a series of murders took place under "class enem
annihilation programme. This invited massivepolice repression andsuppr
sion of tne movement, leading to capture or liquidation of the ent
Naxalite leadership including V. Satyanarayana, A. Kailasam and N
Krishnamurty who fell to police bullets while fighting. In Srikakul
district, Parvathipuram area was the nucleus of the struggle. This
hilly area on Andhra - Orissa border surrounded by forests. Madh
Pradesh forests are also not far. Inaccessible hill-top villages and
jungles provided good sanctuary to Naxalite guerrillas as in Naxalbari a
Debra-Gopivallabhpur areas.

With local variations, the organization and mode of operation of th

movement in Debra-Gopivallabhpur (West Bengal) Pulapulli-Telliche
(Kerala) Lakhimpur-Kheri (U.P.), Musahari-Surajgarha (Bihar), Bhatin
(Punjab), Koraput (Orissa), Kamrup-Lakhimpur (Assam) and else whe
were more less similar to those at Naxalbari and Srikakulam.

As for the urban organization and mode of operation of Naxalites

Radhakrishna's article in Dinman, written with reference to Calcutta,
enlightening35. Violence took place at many urban centres in India, bu
it was Calcutta where Naxalite activities acquired alarming proportions
According to Radhakrishna there are (or now no longer are, who know
many branches or cells of the Naxalite underground organization calle
"units" scattered all over greater Calcutta, with a headquarter call
"channel" to coordinate the activities of these units. Nobody, not ev
the řjaxalite cadres know about the directors of the "channel". Abo
twenty boys and girls constitute a "unit". Girls cannot be members

34. Quoted in C. Rajeshwora Rao : ' Naxalite Movement in Andhra Pradesh"

New Age, June 29, 1969.
35. Radhakrishna, Dinman, May 23, 1971.

This content downloaded from

157.37.218.251 on Tue, 07 Mar 2023 11:25:46 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 NAXALISM : CHALLENGE TO PEACEFUL TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM 467

the "units" before passing Matriculation. Till then, they remain only as
supporters. There is no formal membership of the organization. It suffices
to agree to the Maoist line.36 Rules of discipline are the same for boys
and girls, Every "unit" has a "group commander" who is the overall
incharge of the "unit" and under whose command members of the "unit"
and supporters act. Discipline is strict. The "commander" has three
bodyguards- right, left and in front. There are three committees in every
"unit" - action committee, carrier committee and publicity committee-
through which the "unit" functions. The action committee has five, seven
or proportionately more members who act as directed by the "com-
mander", including spying and reconnaissance. The carrier committee
carries messages to and from the "unit" and receives and transmits all
kinds of information. The publicity committee gives publicity to the
charges against the "class enemies" through various media, including wall
writings, posters and their periodicals - Liberation , English Monthly,
Deshabrati Bengali Weekly, Lokayuddha Hindi Weekly and Awami Jung
Urdu Weekly, etc. which were originally published openly, but now
clandestinely in cyclostyle. All the "units" are in constant touch with
each other. If contact with any ''unit" breaks, it is resumed through the
"channel" which receives and sends messages. Theirs being a strictly
secret organization, Naxalites never let anybody know their identity. Of
the many tactical guidelines given by Charu Mazumdar in an article on
guerrilla warfare in cities, written in Liberation , an important one is that
the Naxalite red guards should be divided into groups of six and each
group must include such skilled partisans as may launch surprise attack,
kill one or two persons and write on the spot not only the specific crime of
the killed, but also some slogans37. One slogan is : "Chairman Mao is our
leader". For the intellectuals, the slogan which is to be written is : "The
more books you read, the less will be your knowledge". Radio Peking
was consistently broadcasting Naxalite victories and successes and was
exhorting the revolutionaries to move faster and faster on the revolutionary
path. On the other hand, this struggle was causing tremendous strain to
the CPIM which was placing "the survival of the ministry above every-
thing"38.

Massive police repression was let loose to suppress the movement.

Although the home portfolio, including police, was held by Politbureau
member Jyoti Basu, the CPIM tried to put the blame for police excesses
on other united front parties, so much so that the Politbureau called for
an end to police and landlord violence and terrorisation of the peasants.39
34. Dirimati , Oct. 5, 1969.
37. Ibid., May 31, 1970.
38. M. Ram, op. cit., p. 59.
39. People's Democracy (Calcutta), JMÏy 30, 1967.

This content downloaded from

157.37.218.251 on Tue, 07 Mar 2023 11:25:46 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
468 THE INDIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

On the other hand, the party expelled the leaders of the movement, an
this decision was approved by the Politbureau latar. The CPIM declar
that the CPC's assessment of the struggle was at variance with th
CPIM's40. Undeterred, the CPC continued to support the struggle while
avoiding direct criticism of the CPIM for its participation in the coalitio
governments of Kerala and West Bengal. It still recognized the CPIM as
the real Communist party and attacked the West Bengal government in
general terms for its repressive and anti-people measures in Naxalbari. Th
equivocation on the part of the CPC and its mere indirect criticism of th
CPIM was perhaps aimed at pressurizing the CPIM to get out of t
heterogenous, unprincipled coalition and lead the struggle. This Chinese
game produced no favourable results. The CPIM neither tended to qu
the coalition nor to support the struggle, what to talk of leading i
Disappointed and incensed, the CPC now directly attacked "some
revisionist leaders" of the West Bengal CPIM for opposing the revol
tionary struggle, perpetuating the "fraud" of land reforms, agreeing t
police action and disowning the revolutionaries of Naxalbari as ''ultra-le
elements" and "adventurists".41 Even then there was no end to poli
violence in Naxalbari and no inclination on the part of the CPIM to alte
its stand. This irked and angered the CPC to the core and it now starte
a massive propaganda campaign not only against the West Bengal CPIM
leadership but against the entire leadership of the party in its bid to spl
it. It described the CPIM leadership in Kerala as "Namboodiripad an
other revisionists" and added "Namboodiripad has dispatched police unit
to suppress the peasants' struggle to seize land.... The state's minister h
forbidden the workers to take part in struggles to besiege capitalists an
has sent police to suppress them"42.

The CPC however still continued to designate the CPIM as the

authentic Communist Party of India gone "revisionist", and exhortingly
underlined the lessons of the Telengana peasant uprising for the Naxalite
within the CPIM. The main lesson was that struggle must not stop half
way but should be brought to the victorious end, lest a ruthless reveng
from the class enemy should follow.

The CPIM leadership noted with utter anguish this hostile stance o
the CPC toward it and the Central Committee of the Party 4 met
Madurai to deal with the situation. Expressing its dismay over CPC
support of the Naxalites vis-a-vis the CPIM, the Committee lamented :
"Chinese comrades are applauding the expelled extremists of Naxalbari a
real revolutionaries belonging to our party and thus lend their support t

40. Ibid., July 9, 1967.

41. M. Ram, op. cit., p. 60.
42. Peking Review , Sept. 8, 1967.

This content downloaded from

157.37.218.251 on Tue, 07 Mar 2023 11:25:46 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 NAXALISM : CHALLENGE TO PEACEFUL TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM 469

their activities against our party"43. It prepared a draft of an ideological

resolution and solicited the views of the State units of the party. On
receipt of their views, the party leadership was stunned to find the degree
of impact of the Maoist line on the rank and file of the party. The draft
was passed by paper-thin margins44 at some state plenums, but Andhra
and Kashmir plenums rejected it outright. Besides these two states, the
most serious defection was seen in West Bengal. In the light of the
discussions on the draft that took place in various state plenums, the
Central Committee prepared a new draft and presented it to the central
plenum held at Burd wan in April 1968. Here the Naxalite dissidents of
the CPIM demanded abandonment of the policy of parliamentary and
peaceful road to socialist transition and urged the party to change its
policy on Naxalbari. The demand was rejected, and 7000 members of the
CPIM left the party. The membership of the party thus dropped from
119,000 at the time of VII Congress in 1964 to 82,000 after this split, a
loss of 37,000 or one-third of the membership.

Meanwhile, the CPC stepped up its attacks on the CPIM. It accused

the CPIM "revisionists" for having "manufactured fallacies that India is
different from China, that time is not yet ripe for armed revolution in India
and that armed struggle is a form unsuitable for India. All this was done
to cover up their revisionist parliamentary road and lead the Indian revo-
lution astray".45 The CPC called upon the Naxalites to form a separate
genuine revolutionary proletarian political party in order to demarcate
themselves from the "revisionists". The Naxalites did not immediately
establish a separate party but, in response to this call, those Naxalites from
West Bengal who had left the CPIM or were expelled from it, established
a state-level coordination committee for West Bengal named 'All-India
Coordination Committee of Revolutionaries of the CPIM' on November
12, 1967, in Calcutta. In Andhra Pradesh, Nagi Reddy, together with
Pulla reddy, D. Venkateswara Rao and others who had been expelled from
the CPIM on June 16,1968, established a Secretariat and a State Coordina-
tion Committee on July 2, 1968, in order to rally the isolated groups of
Naxalites operating in various parts of Andhra Pradesh, Similar bodies of
Naxalites within the CPIM were formed in other states to promote the
naxalbari-type struggle that was growing there. Some time after the
Burdwan plenum, the, All-India Coordination Committee of Revolution-
aries of the CPIM' in West Bengal together with several other state coordi-
nation committees changed into 'All-India Coordination Committee of

43. Quoted in V.M. Fic : Kerala : Yenan of India , (Bombay, Nachiketa Publications,
1970), p. 43.
44. M. Ram, op. cit., p. 78.
45. New China New Agency (Peking), August 2, 1967,
46. People's Daily (Peking) Jan, 16, 1968.

This content downloaded from

157.37.218.251 on Tue, 07 Mar 2023 11:25:46 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
470 THE INDIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

Communist Revolutionaries' (AICCCR). The state coordination com

ttees of some states like Andhra Pradesh, Kashmir and some groups
Naxalites in several states had some reservations about joining t
AICCCR and kept out of it. Later on, the Andhra State committ
joined it only to be expelled soon after. Thenceforth, it started cond
ing the struggle independently and changed its name as ; Andhra Prad
Revolutionary Communist Committee' (APRCC). The Srikakulam dist
committee however broke away with the state committee on accoun
certain differences with it and forged direct link with the AICCCR.

The AICCCR on its formation directed its attention towards the

persistent call of the CPC for building a new party in order to bring the
revolution to its victorious end, that is, to arouse the masses, to carry out
guerrilla warfare and agrarian revolution, to build rural base areas to
encircle the cities and finally to capture them.46 The ATCCCR agreed that
revolution cannot be victorious without a revolutionary party for "without
a revolutionary party, there can be no revolutionary discipline and without
revolutionary discipline the struggle cannot be raised to a higher level.47 But
such a party cannot be built merely by bringing together persons professing
Maoism. It can be built only with the youth of the working class, the peasan-
try and the toiling middle class who applied Maoist principles in their own
lives, secretly propagated them among the masses and actively participated
in armed struggles in the countryside.48. Thus, the party is to grow out of
ceaseless struggle secret propaganda through secret meetings. This will
throw out political cadre which will grow into the party. Such a party
when formed will not only be the vangaurd of the revolution but will, at the
same time, be the people's armed force and people's state power49. In
pursuance of this, the AICCCR by a resolution converted itself into a new
party, a "truly" revolutionary Maoist party, the Communist Party of
India (Marxist-Leninist) or CPIML on April 22, 1969, the first birth
centenary of Lanin. The party was formally launched on May Day, 1969,
at a public meeting in Calcutta by Kanu Sanyal, with himself as Secretary
and Charu Mazumdar as Chairman.

At its first and secret plenary meeting, the CPIML adopted a long
political resolution in April 1969. Just contrary to the CPIM leader and
Politbureau member Harekrishna Konar's later contention that "the Indian
peasant struggle must necessarily take a different form from that of the
CCP led peasant struggle in China",80 the CPIML resolution set forth

47. Libration , op. cit„ March 1969.

48. M. Ram. op. cit.9 p. 84.
49. Ibid.

50. Quoted in Bhabani Sen Gupta, Indian Communism and the Peasantry', Problems
of Communism (Washington), January-February, 1972,

This content downloaded from

157.37.218.251 on Tue, 07 Mar 2023 11:25:46 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 ÜAXALlSJVÍ : CHALLENGE TO PEACEFUL TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM 471

essentially the same analysis and conclusions which Mao Tse-tung had
done in the Chinese context. According to it, the principal contradiction in
India is peasant-landlord contradiction, and hence the chief task of the party
is people's democratic revolution, whose main content is the agrarian
revolution, the destruction of feudalism. In order to accomplish this, a
worker-peasant alliance has to be forged under the leadership of the
former. Here the peasants include even middle peasants. The strategy to
be adopted by the alliance would be a protracted armed guerrilla struggle
in the countryside so as to liberate villages, build red rural bases, and
launch assault on the cities from there and finally capture them.51.

Since the suppression of the Naxalbari revolt and even while the
CPIML was in the embryonic stage, the movement was spreading fast to
farflung areas of the country. In addition to the Srikakulam district of
Andhra Pradesh where it was raging, it spread to Debra-Gopivallabhpur
and Jalpaiguri and latçr to Birbhum areas of Bengal ; Muzaffarpur,
Monghyr, Sihghbhum and some other districts of Bihar ; Lakhimpur-Kheri
and other areas of U.P. bordering Nepal; Bhatindaand some other districts
of Punjab; areas of Kashmir bordering Azad Kashmir ; Tellicherry-Pul-
apulli area of Kerala ; Warangal, Khammam, Karimnagar, Nalgonda and
East Godavari districts of Andhra Pradesh ; Kamrup, Goalpara, Lakhim-
pur and some other districts of Assam ; and parts of Tripura, Tamilnadu
and some other states. Except for some isolated incidents now and then,
the movement has now by and large been completely suppressed.

One feature was common to most of the areas that came under Nexa->
lite spell. Most of them are hilly and jungle areas, are situated along
interstate or international borders and are inhabited by poor hill tribes or
other peasants and landless labourers. Thes^ remote areas in hills and
forests are very suitable for effective guerrilla operation and Naxalites
did well to ^select them as their guerrilla bases. Such a terrain is ideal
for building guerrilla bases and hideouts and for the operation of the,
hide-and-seek and hit-and-run tactics of guerrillas. According to Singh
and Mei, "Guerrilla fighters are overwhelmingly the peasants and the
underprivileged who are the have-nots of the land"52 Indeed, peasants'
struggle with landlords for land has been the most common denominator
resposible for guerrilla struggles in most parts of the world - China, Indo-
Chinâ, Cuba, Kenya, Malaya, Phillipines, etc.53 In India too, as we have seen
above, land problem has been the greatest single factor responsible for
discontent among the poor peasants and landless labourers who constitute

51. Peking Review, July 11, 1969, pp. 18-22.

52. B. -Singh and Ko-wang Mei : Modern Guerrilla Warfare , (Bombay, Asia Publi-
shing House, 1971), p. 22.
53. Ibid., p, 24.

This content downloaded from

157.37.218.251 on Tue, 07 Mar 2023 11:25:46 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
472 THE INDIAN JOURNAL Oř POLITICAL SClENCË

the bulk of the Indian populace. This problem has been all the mor
acute in the tribal belts and other neglected areas inhabited by extreme
poor peasantry and farm workers due to their excessive exploitation b
landlords and usurers. Hence the Naxalites were perfectly discreet
choosing these weakest points in our society for initiating their guerril
attacks. The fact that they made use of only traditional weapons is als
quite in consonance with the principles of guerrilla warfare as is clear fr
what Giap writes with reference to the Vietnamese war of liberation".
the people would stay the advance with rudimentary weapons : stic
spears, scimitars, bows, flintlocks... These formations were, in the field
organization, the expression of the general mobilization of the people
arms"64.

CAUSES OF SETBACK

Poverty, inequality, discontent and frustration of the people a

favourable terrain are no doubt very importrnt factors contributing
success of a revolutionary guerrilla struggle. But the effective con
of a guerrilla operation leading to victory of the revolution deman
fulfilment of a few more conditions. Mao Tse-tung in his writi
guerrille warfare55 has outlined five conditions for it : (1) a sound
base, (2) a first rate party organization. (3) Red Army of adequate st
(4) a terrain favourable to military operations, and (5) economic str
sufficient for self-support. Of these, the Naxalite guerrilla organiz
failed to satisfy several conditions, or all conditions in some me
Thus in most cases it got favourable terrain, but in some cases w
the struggle took place in plains, the terrain was unsuited to gu
struggle. Then it did not satisfy the third condition - Red Army of adeq
strength. The Naxalites no doubt organized peasants' militia, but jud
it from the standpoint of organization , discipline, training and ar
could not be regarded as an Army of "adequate strength". However
had prepered a "groundwork for the establishment of a people's arm

As for the condition of building a first rate party organization,

Naxalites no noubt set up the AICCCR and later the CPIML, but
were far from being a "first rate" party organization due to several r
Several state coordinations did not join it on account of their c
differences with the AICCCR, the most important being the Andhra
committee. Later on it joined, but basic differences between th

54. Vo Nguyen Giap : People's War , Peoples Army , (New York, Praeger, 1962
55. Mao Tse-tnng on Guerrilla Warfare , (Tr. S.B. Griffith, New York, Praeger
and Selected Military Writings of Mao Tse-tung , (Peking, Foreign Lang
Press, 1963), quoted in B. Singh and Ko-wang Mei, op cit, p. 4.
56. Peoples Daily , op. c/V., Jan. 16, 1968.

This content downloaded from

157.37.218.251 on Tue, 07 Mar 2023 11:25:46 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 NAXALISM : CHALLENGE TO PEACEFÜL TRANSITION TÖ SOCIALISM 473

bodies came to the fore and the AICCCR disaffiliated it just a day before
the decision for the formation of CPIML was taken. The main bone of
contention between the AICCCR led by Charu Mazumdar and the Andhra
State co-ordination committee led by Nagi Reddy was the question of
leadership of the entire Naxalite movement and the credit for it. For
example, the Andhra State committee was leading the struggle in a much
bigger area (Srikakulam, etc.) than the AICCCR, the later claimed credit
for the Srikakulam struggle too, and violating all norms of democratic cent-
ralism, the AICCCR directly dealt with the Srikakulam District committee
by passing the state committee. The AICCCR's factional activity exten-
ded to other states also where by passing the state coordination committees,
it formed its own factions. The domineering attitude of the leading figures
of the AICCCR from West Bengal alienated more and more Naxalite
groups besides the Andhara Committee in Bihar, Orissa, Maharashtra,
Kerala, U.P. Punjab and Kashmir, so much so that the attendance at its
meetings dwindled practically to those who had been associated with the
Naxalbari movement. Consequently, when the CPIML was formed, the
majority of the Indian Maoists were not in it57. Later on differences
cropped up between the CPIML and the Srikakulam district committee
too after the setback of the movement there. Factionalism had already
started corroding the AICCR, the process of fragmentation of the CPIML
became more and more intensified on account of ideological differences
among its leaders. Fundamental ideological differences between Charu
line and Nagi line had already given birth to two shades of Maoism in
India. When Charu Mazumdar shifted Naxalite activities to Calcutta, Asim
Chatterjee regarded it as a violation of a basic Maoist principle and rebel-
led against his leadership. He formed a separate organization with large
following. The Bihar CPIML leader Satyanarain Singh also came to be
at loggerheads with Charu Mazumdar. Mutual distrust and acrimony
among CPIM leaders due to personal pride and prejudice as between A.
Kailasam N. Patnaik and V. Satyanarayana in Srikakulam also played
their role in the fragmentation of the party and disintegration of the
movement.58

The fifth condition listed by Mao Tse-tung for a successful guerrilla

struggle, that is, economic strength sufficient for self support is in fact a
corollary to the first, namely, a sound mass base. This condition occupies
the pride of place in the list. Mao Tse-tung's observation that "guerrilla
warfare basically derives from the masses and is supported by them59,
is regarded by all authorities on guerrilla tactics, including his ardent

57. M. Ram, op. cit., p. 103.

58. C. Subba Rau, 'Decline of Naxalism Times of India,. Aug. 1, 1972.
59. Selected Military Writings of Mao Tse-tung , op. cit., p. 44.

This content downloaded from

157.37.218.251 on Tue, 07 Mar 2023 11:25:46 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
474 the indián journal of political scieNcé

followers, Ho Chi Minh and Vo Nguyen Giap, as a truism.

wrote : "The Vietnamese people's war of liberation was victor
it. .succeeded in leading the whole people to participate enthus
the resistance, and to consent to make every sacrifice for its victory
the mass character of guerrilla warfare, Che Guevara said tha
warfare is a war of the masses, a war of the people. The guer
is an armed nucleus, the fighting vanguard of the people.
great force from the mass of the people themselves"61. And
that to try to carry out this kind of war "without the sup
population is the prelude to inevitable disaster".62

A successful guerrilla operation today necessarily assu

character because without solid mass support, military superio
adversary cannot be offset. Guerrilla warfare has now ceased to be a
spontaneous action or an irregular war carried on by ill-coordinated,
independent rebal bands. Unlike in the past, a modern guerrilla warfare
is a well-planned and well-organized multidimensional mass action
simultaneously on all fronts - political, economic and military - in order
to attack the enemy from all directions. Hence guerrillas arouse, organize
and mobilize the masses by means of persuasion, inspiration, exhortation,
propaganda, ideological stimulation, political indoctrination and mani-
pulation, in order to prepare them for active support and participation in
guerrilla action. Guerrilla warfare is no longer a completely clandestine
operation. It rather seeks publicity for its operations in order to attract
the people and tohighten the morale of the guerrilla fighters at the front, as
well as of those who are providing them with supplies, shelter, security
and all other kinds of support from behind. Mass organizations play
two kinds of roles in a guerrilla struggle - overt and covert. They
organize mass rallies, demonstrations, strikes and riots in order to show
off the strength of the guerrilla sympathisers, arouse mass uprisings,
paralize production, harass the factory management, even to destory the
factory, and finally to weaken the incumbents and immobilize the

60. V. N. Giap: Peoples 'War, Peoples' Army , (New York, Praeger, 1962),
p. 34.
61. Che Guevara : On Guerrilla Warfare (New York, Praeger, 1961), p. 17.
62. Che Guevara : Guerrilla Warfare : A Method , (New York, Praeger, 1963), quoted
in Daniel James : Che Guevara (London, Allen and Unwin, 1970), p. 235, Che,
however, himself did not act up to his dictum. The result was that though he
succeeded in his Cuban expedition with Fidel Castro and Raul Castro, he failed
in Congo and Bolivia. Referring to Bolivia, he himself confessed his great
disappointment at not having received any support from the peasantry (D.
James, op cit., p. 17). Not only that the peasants did not lend support to his
venture. On the contrary, the National Confederation of Peasants announced
lhe mobilization of its membership against the guerrillas. (D. James, op, cit,
p. 246).

This content downloaded from

157.37.218.251 on Tue, 07 Mar 2023 11:25:46 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 NAXALISM : challenge to peaceful transition to socialism 475

government. Secret organizations perform the functions of intelligenc

communications, propaganda, terrorism and sabotage. Only with th
kind of mass organizations solidly supporting and actively participating
in guerrilla actions can a modern guerrilla struggle hope to succeed. No
doubt it is actually waged by a small number of guerrilla squads, but it
victory depends on the active support of the many. Although in itself
"the most individual form of action, it can only operate effectively, an
attain its end, when collectively backed by the sympathy of masses."63
That the Naxalite movement spread with great speed and caugh
popular imagination quickly, so much so that resistance to any injustic
came to be identified with Naxalism, is a convincing proof of its profoun
psychological impact. Similarly in Naxalbari and Srikakulam areas an
also at some other places, the Naxalites organized a large number o
people into revolutionary committees and, in a way, also actively particip
ted in the struggles. In this sense also the movement may be said t
possess mass character. But this kind of mass participation was differe
from the Maoist sense of sound mass base. As we have seen above, in
order to launch a successful guerrilla struggle, it is necessary first to
arouse, organize and mobilize the masses. But Charu Mazumdar is
authoritatively64 quoted to have said that only after guerrilla squads had
cleared an area of ťtclass enemies" by annihilating some of them and
forcing others to flee the countryside, should revolutionary peasant
committees be formed. This shows that he gave priority to guerrilla
action over mass organization and mass mobilization, and actually at
many places these committees followed, and not preceded, the start of
the struggle. Referring to Srikakulam, for instance, M. Ram reveals
that the Royatanga Sungrama Samithi (peasants' struggle association) was
set up in the red base areas after the annihilation campaign.65 This
practice ran counter to the Maoist line which gives priority to arousing
class consciousness among the masses, indoctrinating, organizing, training
and disciplining them and thus preparing them for overt and covert
participation in the struggle. The Naxalites seem to have started the
movement without sufficiently preparing the mass base in all these ways.
There is no doubt about the fact that large number of people actively
participated in the struggle at Naxalbari, Musahari and, in the early
phase, at Srikakulam. But in later struggles, mass participation was
discouraged, because mass actions were likely to expose the guerrilla
fighters to the forces of law and order. Smaller guerrilla units were also
found to be more effective in hitting and retreating.66 Summing up the
63. B.H.L. Hart 'Lessons from Resistance, Movement- Guerrilla and Non-violenť
: The Strategy of Civilian Defence , (London, Faber & Faber, 1967), p. 201.
64. 'Our Path : Guerrilla Warfare', Liberation, November. 1969.
65. M. Ram : op. cit., p. 113.
66. Liberation , op. cit., October 1969.

This content downloaded from

157.37.218.251 on Tue, 07 Mar 2023 11:25:46 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 476 TííE INDIAN JOURNAL Of? POLITICAL SCIÉNČĚ

experience of the movement and lesonss it taught, Charu Mazumdar

wrote at the close of 1969 that open mass movement and mass organiza-
tion was not only not indispensable but was a positive hindrance to
guerrilla struggle.67 Thus the conception of mass support departed
from the conception of sound mass base which Mao rated as the first and
foremost condition for a successful guerrilla operation and which implied
active mass mobilization and action, and not only passive participation
and support. Violation of this Maoist principle in actual practice had a
disastrous effect on the movement. When Naxalite guerrillas started ope-
rating without adequately preparing mass ground, they could not get
popular patronage and support necessary to sustain the struggle. At
several places they started their guerrilla action without even taking the
people into confidence. To cite one representative instance from Kerala,
Kunnikel Narayanan and Philip T. Prasad organized a Naxalite guerrilla
struggle in the Pullapulli-Tellichery area without understanding the local
people, many of whom, particularly Christians, had been hostile to
communism and who helped the police in apprehending them. They
committed the same mistake as Che Guevara in Bolivia which had caused
his doom. Attributing lack of peasant support to the collapse of his
guerrilla war in Bolivia, Che's lieutenant Pombo stated : "They [the
peasants] never understood us. They were convinced, owing to the pro-
paganda, that Communism is bad68".

When this departure from Maoism was combined with another,

namely, that gurrilla struggle could be fought as successfully in plains as
in hilly tracts and jungles,69 it proved all the more devastating. At many
places, masses lacked class consciousness and the Naxalite Communists
had not prepared sufficient ideological background so that they could
receive mass patronage and support. Consequently, far from supporting
or concealing the Naxalites, even the middle and poor peasants assisted
the administration in their capture. Thanks to bourgeois propaganda at
many places, even poor people were made to believe that ''Communism
is bad" or that Naxalites are "enemies of the people" like dacoits and
murderers. As a result, the people themselves took the initiative at some
places in capturing the Naxalites, beating them and handing over to the
police.

With all Charu Mazumdar's emphasis on the poor peasants as the

sole components of Naxalite guerrilla bands, and with all his denunciation
of Che Guevaraist guerrillas as petit bourgeois intelligentsia, when he him-
self shifted emphasis from mass action, his guerrillas (particularly those

67. lbid.% December, 1969.

68. Quoted in D. James, op. cit., p. 271 .
69. Liberation , December, 1969.

This content downloaded from

157.37.218.251 on Tue, 07 Mar 2023 11:25:46 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 NAXALISM : CHALLENGE TÓ PEACEFUL TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM 477

operating in Calcutta) also went farther from Mao's and came closer to
Che's, who were neither peasants nor workers but an elite of self-chosen
people, ''essentially classless-in part, declasse- consisting of such motley
elements as students, intellectuals, professional revolutionaries, .and
adventurers"70.

Charu Mazumdar's variety of Naxalism parted company with Maoist

revolutionary principles in yet another very important respect. When Mao
had used the term 'annihilation', he did it with reference to the Japanese
occupation forces in war in 1939 and not to any class enemy, and even
with reference to these forces he did not mean killing them. He said that
"besides annihilating the enemy troops in war, it is important to work for
their disintegration".71 If annihilation meant killing, no question of
their "disintegration" would arise after their physical elimination. True
to the Marxist-Leninist line, Mao would also destroy an iniquitous and
exploitative class or system as a class or a system, not as individuals. Thus
he wrote of the feudais : "Our task is to abolish the feudal system, to wipe
out the landlords as a class, not as individuals".72 As for a few arch
criminals charged with committing the most heinous crimes, people's
court could try and sentence them even to death, but the sentence to be
executed had to be approved by an appropriate judicial organ of the
peoples's government. Emphasis is however to be laid on killing less and
on no indiscriminate killing at all, for killing more or indiscriminate
killing would only isolate the party from the masses by forfeiting their
sympathy.73

Charu Mazumdar's "class enemy" annihilation programme went just

contrary to what Mao forbade, and hence it had disastrous consequences.
After he launched this programme, the movement soon degenerated into
killing of individual landlords and the agents of these ''class enemies",
the policemen, with the result that as Mao had warned, the CPIML in-
creasingly lost popular sympathy and support and got alienated from the
masses, thus making it all the more easy for the government to suppress
it more ruthlessly. Barring exceptionally extraordinary circumstances,
violence is popularly looked upon "as a deviation from regular patterns,
as a phenomenon outside the boundaries of normal social interaction".74
And violence, which is used not in the form of mass revolutionary violence

70. D. James : Che Guevara , op. cit.% p. 77.

71. Mao Tse-tung : Selected Works , (Bombay, People's Publishing House, 1964,
Vol. Ill, p. 86), quoted in M. Ram, op. cit., p. 131.
72. Ibid., Vol. IV, pp. 185-86, quoted in ibid., p. 132.
73. Ibid.
74. See A.G.Janos, article, 'Authority and Violence : The Political T ramework of
Internal War, in H. Eckstein (Ed.) : Internal War (London, Collier-Macmillan,
1964), p. 130.

This content downloaded from

157.37.218.251 on Tue, 07 Mar 2023 11:25:46 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
478 THE INDIAN JOURNAL OP PÓLIŤIČAL SClENCÈ

but in the form of individual killing and terrorism, is commonly regarde

as the most heinous crime and in no way consistent with any Marxist-
Leninist principle. Consequently, the CPIML's policy of "class enemy
annihilation not only isolated it from the masses, it invited attack from
other Naxalite formations outside the party, mainly from Nagi Reddy's
Andhra Pradesh Revolutionary Communist Committee (APRCC) and eve
gave rise to serious intraparty ideological schism which came to the for
at the very first secret congress of the party somewhere in May, 1970.

As we have noted above, Asim Chatterjee had already formed a

separate group with large following. Satyanarain Singh, the topmost Bih
Naxalite leader and a right hand man of Charu Mazumdar at a fairly earl
stage disapproved indiscriminate "class enemy" annihilation. He confess
to an associate just before his arrest that "the policy of annihilatation ha
been overworked".75 Yamuna Singh, another Naxalite leader from Bihar
who had been expelled from the CPIML with his supporters due to estrang
ment with Satyanarain Singh, the chief commander of Naxalite forces
in Bihar held April, 1972, a secret conventi on of 300 Naxalite activists (inclu-
ding many from Satyanarain Singh's group) which found that the Charu line
of annihilation had tarnished the image of revolutionaries who have been
isolated from the masses. It repudiated the Charu line and formed
separate group with its own policy and programme. Similar groups and
factions appeared in every state denouncing the line of annihilation and
renouncing the leadership of Charu Mazumdar. For all practical purpose
the CPIML's area of activity contracted by the close of 1970 to Wes
Bengal, more particularly to Calcutta, and now nothing is heard of i
activities anywhere. The intensity and frequency of propaganda by the
Chinese media has also considerably lessened. One of Charu Mazumdar's
trusted emissaries who had gone to Peking, on his return in August 1972
revealed that the Chinese leaders disapproved of the CPIML's annihilatio
line.76

It is reported that in a secret letter written to Naxalite high command

and dated before the arrest of Charu Mazumdar, six Naxalite leaders
lodged in Vishakhapatnam jail, namely, Kanu Sanyal (just next in
command to Charu), Souren Bose, Tejeswara Rao, K. Venkiah, Nagabhu-
shan Patnaik and Bhubanmohan Patnaik, have admitted that the policy
of annihilation of landlords by secret guerrilla squads alienated the role
of peasants. They now consider this line as erroneous and contrary to
the Maoist principles of guerrilla warfare. They emphasised the necessity
of organizing and mobilizing peasants for guerrilla warfare.77 It is also

75. Quoted in C. Subba Rau, 'Decline of NaxaJism', Times of India , Aug. 1, 1972.
76. Times of India , Sept, 12, 1972.
77. Ibid., Aug. 8, 1972.

This content downloaded from

157.37.218.251 on Tue, 07 Mar 2023 11:25:46 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 NAXALISM : A CHALLENGE TO PEACEFUL TRANSITION TO SOCIALISM 479

reported that Naxalites are now trying to close their ranks, abandoning
the cult of individual liquidation of "class enemies". Talks, particularly
between Nagi Reddy, leader of the APRCC, which is one of the two
chief Naxalite organizations in India, and leaders of the CPIML who are
still at large, are considered a distinct possibility.78
ASSESSMENT

The Naxalite movement has thus suffered a setback mainly due

lack of sound mass base for its guerrilla struggle and due to its sui
policy of annihilation leading to mass alienation, intraparty ideolog
conflict and disintegration of the CPIML. But on one point all le
of the CPIML agree, namely, the necessity of armed guerrilla struggl
APRCC of Nagi Reddy also believes that -."...wherever we lagged beh
in forming armed squads to fight back landlord and police suppressio
movement has suffered a setback. And similarly, wherever we c
out armed attacks without taking into consideration the level o
people's consciousness, their political and organizational level, the m
ment has suffered a setback. Whenever the armed struggle was cor
coordinated with mass struggles on partial issues, the movemen
advanced"79
Here it is not clear whether by "armed struggle" the APRCC means
guerrilla struggle, but when guerrilla struggle advocated by the CPIML
takes place with active mass participation, little difference exists between
the approaches of the two. It seems, the leadership of both these Naxalite
organizations are oblivious of the lessons of the guerrilla warfare in recent
times. Of all the parts of the world, Latin America has been the main
seat of guerrilla warfare. The common experience of guerrilla warfare in
Latin American countries has been that a more or less fairly elected popu-
lar government backed by a proficient army skilled in counter insurgency
warfare and equipped with the most sophisticated weapons, can beat the
guerrillas, as have been the cases with Venezuela, Columbia and Peru.
In Bolivia too, it was the combination of a popularly elected regime and
efficient army that disposed of Che Guevara and his guerrillas. But if a
government, though freely elected and progressive in profession, fails to
execute measures of reform promised, it gives guerrillas a popular issue
against it. In such a case, it becomes difficult for the government to
defeat the guerrillas, as has been the case with Guatemala.
Coming to India, despite all alleged riggings, the elections are
regarded as more or less fair and the government professes to be left-of-
the-centre in orientation. But more or less the same have been the govern-
mental professions and the nature of elections ever since independence.

78. Ibid Sept. 12. 1972.

79. Andhra Pradesh Revolutionary Communist Committee, quoted iq M. Ram, op,
çit •» pp. 167-3,

This content downloaded from

157.37.218.251 on Tue, 07 Mar 2023 11:25:46 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
480 THE INDIAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENČE

Basic socio-economic conditions and relations remain the same as before

independence, giving rise to mass discontent, desparation and disbelief in
the proposition of peaceful and parliamentary method of transition to
socialism. This is not to say that there is any inherent demerit attached to
the peaceful, legal method of transition. As Lenin says, "Inexperienced
revolutionaries often think that legal methods of struggle are opportunist. .
while illegal methods of struggle are revolutionary. That, however, is
wrong

and employment are solved immediately or not. P

with methods of transition. They are concerned on
solution of their problems. If the peaceful and parl
it, so much so good. If it still dilly-dallies, people
bear with this method endlessly.

It is admitted on all hands, including the govern

is basically a socio-economic problem and only s
order problem. But in its actions the government r
the problem, has resorted to coercive method to sup
all means. The government has been able to suppre
iron hands and there is quiet on the surface. But th
of quiet one finds on the mouth of a dormant vol
of the guerrilla tactic of retreat before superior force
squads may be simply lying low, to surface agai
and greater fire at the opportune moment. If procra
the government still continues, India also may have
mala. Success of a violent revolt in India may be d
with which the Naxalite movement spread, ma
"objective conditions really exist in India for an arm
tactical mistakes on the part of the Naxalites, couple
sion -on the part of the government, might have
movement, but since objective conditions are presen
notwithstanding the outcome, that an armed uprisi
opportune moment, may be only to be suppressed a

80. V.l. Lenin : Collected Works , Vol. 31, quoted in

Revolutionary ?' Mainstream (Delhi), April 19, 1969.
81. V.M. Fie op. cit. y p. 451.

This content downloaded from

157.37.218.251 on Tue, 07 Mar 2023 11:25:46 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms