20th anniversary: Communist Party of India (Maoist)

“Avenge every attack of the enemy and spread the struggle like waves! This is the only path, the only tested path for self-defense, and there is no other path. This is how a revolutionary peasant army can be built. This is so, because you are today the only revolutionary force, the only force striving for progress in India, and no power can prevent the onward march of revolution. You must never forget this. Victory will certainly be ours!” — Charu Mazumdar, General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)

September 2024 marked the 20th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of India (Maoist). Party cadre celebrated this anniversary for a month, until the end of October. Its roots go back much more than 20 years.

In May 1967, a peasant uprising in the northeastern tip of India, called Naxalbari, took place. This uprising was led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), a party that came to be as a result of a split within the Communist Party of India (Marxist). The uprising was a response to years of neglect and backward conditions, which led to unrest among the peasantry in that section of India.

From 1967-1972, the Naxalbari uprising battled against the capitalists and landlords in India. Peasants fought police and soldiers, who served as agents and warriors for bourgeois and casteist forces in the “world’s largest democracy,” a “democracy” that maintained a lower status for people with darker skin (Dalit), for Adivasis — Indigenous peoples in Southeast Asia — and for the working and peasant classes.

Indian police arrested Charu Mazumdar, founder and General Secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) and a visionary of Indian Marxism-Leninism, in July 1972. Less than two weeks later he died of a massive heart attack that some of his revolutionary successors say was the result of neglect in custody. 

Even though the Naxalbari uprising in its most immediate form was defeated, the bourgeoisie and casteist forces did not defeat what Naxalbari meant to the people.

The establishment of the Communist Party of India (Maoist)

Decades after the initial defeat of the Naxalbari uprising, new factions emerged in the armed revolutionary movement in India. Three of these were the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) People’s War (CPI(ML)PW), the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Naxalbari, and the Maoist Communist Center of India (MCCI). Their common mission — to liberate the proletariat and peasantry and end casteist and classist oppression — made it almost inevitable that they would come together. 

In the early 21st century, these groupings found each other and discussed the lines they had in common and the lines in which they differed. All of these groupings believed that there would be a time in which the oppressed would cease to be the oppressed. In 2003, the process of these three parties — all Maoist in their outlook — coming together started. On Sept. 21, 2004, the Communist Party of India (Maoist) was formed.

The CPI (Maoist) extended a welcoming hand to other Maoism-aligned groupings, and thus created a party and an army based on and trained in the teachings and military tactics of Mao Zedong and other legendary communist fighters.

The goals of the CPI (Maoist)’s New Democratic State, as stated in a founding document, are as follows:

1. It will confiscate all the banks, business enterprises and companies of imperialist capital and annul all imperialist debt. It will nullify all unequal treaties and agreements with imperialist countries.

2. It will confiscate all the land belonging to the landlords and religious institutions and will redistribute it among the landless poor peasants and agricultural laborers on the basis of the slogan of “Land to the Tiller.”

3. It will regulate the industries of the national bourgeoisie. It will protect the small industries and help their growth. It will encourage the development of industry based on agriculture.

4. The New Democratic State will fulfill all the basic necessities of workers, peasants and the toiling masses. It will assure the right to employment to students and youth and end all discrimination based on gender and caste. It will guarantee equal opportunities to women including equal rights in the properties. Assuring the equal opportunities for Dalits and Adivasis, it will provide special facilities, including reservations.

5. It will assure the oppressed nations the right to self-determination including the right of secession and will endeavor to unite them on the basis of equality.

6. It will implement democracy to the people and dictatorship to the few who are reactionaries.

The goal, in the party’s words, is “the establishment of socialism by advancing the New Democratic Revolution.” This means a state free of exploitation, sexism, casteism and all other forms of oppression. The CPI (Maoist) recognizes its part in the global class war. 

The tactics and lines taken are based on the situation in India. The CPI (Maoist) recognizes that India is semi-colonial and semi-feudal, led indirectly by the world powers, principally the U.S. and England, despite being independent on paper. The goal of the Maoists is to overthrow imperialism, the big bourgeoisie and the comprador bureaucrat classes.

A founding document of the CPI (Maoist), “Strategy and Tactics of the Indian Revolution,” delineated the allies, potential enemies and definite enemies of the revolution. It also delineated the military tactics and path the Indian revolution would take.

According to the document, the allies are the proletariat, peasantry and petit-bourgeoisie. They also consider the national bourgeoisie a vacillating ally. They view, beyond all doubt, that the big landlords and big bourgeoisie are enemies of the Indian revolution and that the targets the Party wishes to defeat are imperialism, feudalism and comprador bureaucratic capitalism.

The CPI (Maoist) distinguishes itself from other Marxist-Leninist organizations in India by completely denying the parliamentary road to socialism; they believe that it will not lead the Indian revolutionary classes to victory. Their pathway to revolution is called “the Chinese road,” the path that Mao Zedong and the Communist Party of China took to lead the Chinese peasants and workers to victory. 

Founding the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army

How did CPC Chairman Mao Zedong manage to launch a successful revolution? He developed revolutionary military tactics and vision. He set up Base Areas and encircled the counterrevolutionaries. This has defined the military tactics of the various Mao-influenced revolutionary groups throughout the world, including in Southeast Asia. Mao’s view was that the revolution needed three important weapons: the Communist Party, the revolutionary Army and the United Front.

The CPI (Maoist), after being formed, took the various military organizations of the three founding parties and unified them into a single, unified force: the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army. The PLGA was influenced by the original Naxalbari movement and the Chinese revolution before that. The military instructions and tactics that the PLGA uses were initially used by Mao Zedong, Zhu De and other revolutionaries in China, but they have been studied, taken apart theoretically, and then applied to the Indian movement.

The PLGA fields approximately 9,000 to 10,000 people. It claims base areas in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar and West Bengal. It has seized control over Base Areas in the countryside and is currently countering the police and army’s anti-guerilla tactics, taking the “learn warfare from warfare” maxim as the most important lesson. In other words, the PLGA is getting new members all the time, and they’re learning about warfare by fighting the state’s force. The battles between the police and the PLGA have been successful for the PLGA, with dozens of enemy forces falling to them.

The Communist Party of India (Maoist), through its mass organizations – which for security reasons can’t be named – is among those fighting what is called “Saffronization.” Saffronization is, in a word, the fascistification of Indian society under the Hindutva (Hindu Fascism) ideology. Saffronization oppresses Communists, Muslims, Adivasis, Dalits, and many others. 

Currently the CPI (Maoist) is mourning the 200 guerilla fighters lost in combat against the Indian state, along with the loss of G.N. Saibaba, a leading intellectual who supported the CPI (Maoist). The CPI (Maoist) charges the state with murdering him. (workers.org/2024/11/81696/)

Marxists in imperialist countries need to understand the different paths the Indian movement, or parts of it, have taken. While some groupings have decided to take the parliamentary road, others have chosen the path of armed struggle. It is important to understand what the movement in the colonized world looks like. 

The CPI (Maoist) has not given up and continues to fight. The Hindutva regime of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has fought back with cowardly tactics, killing not just CPI (Maoist) members but murdering villagers, including children.

Build a workers’ world!

Sources:

Naxal Challenge: Causes, Linkages, and Policy Options by P.V. Ramana

The Naxalite Movement in India (Origin and Failure of the Maoist Revolutionary Strategy in West Bengal 1967-1971) by Sohail Jawaid

Maoist “Spring Thunder”: The Naxalite Movement (1967-1972) by Arun Prosad Mukherjee

India’s Simmering Revolution: The Naxalite Uprising by Sumanta Banerjee

Selected Works of Charu Mazumdar

Naxalism in Bihar by Dr. Ajay Kumar Singh

Red Sun: Travels in Naxalite Country by Sudeep Chakravarti

Hail the Formation of the Communist Party of India (Maoist)

Founding Documents of the Communist Party of India (Maoist)

The CPI (Maoist) Central Committee 20th Anniversary Message

The 2023 Annals of the CPI (Maoist)