Maoists, the boycott of elections, and violence: A debate
September 21, 2009
Participation in electoral politics has always been a hotly debated topic among the Indian radical left organisations - this was reignited during the recently held Lok Sabha elections. Sumanta Banerjee, in an article published in EPW (May 2009), discussed issues related to the boycott of elections and in that context analysed the politics of CPI(Maoist). In response to that, an article written by by Azad, a spokesperson of the CPI(Maoist), was received by various media sources and journals in August 2009, addressing several questions/criticisms raised by Sumanta Banerjee. Both commentaries are published below. - Ed.
Click here to read Sumanta Banerjee’s article [PDF, English] »
In his Commentary in the Economic & Political Weekly, Issue No 18, Vol 44, dated May 2, 2009, Mr. Sumanta Banerjee, who came into renown for his book In the Wake of Naxalbari: A History of the Naxalite Movement in India (1980), makes an attempt to analyse the boycott call issued by the CPI(Maoist) in the recently-held Lok Sabha elections based on the Interview by Azad, the spokesperson of the Central Committee of CPI(Maoist), which had appeared in its Maoist Information Bulletin No 7.
Entitled, “The Maoists, Elections, Boycotts and Violence”, he begins his article analyzing the boycott call of Maoists in the recently-held Lok Sabha elections with the following comment: “Lok Sabha elections were inaugurated with a fanfare of bomb blasts, killing of security personnel and poll officials, burning of polling stations, and a sensational hijacking of a train, where the hostages were served sattu and biscuits before being let off after about four hours!”
That even a shrewd political commentator and progressive intellectual like Sumantaji was carried away by the propaganda let loose by sensation-craving media shows the power of the media in moulding and influencing even saner minds who harbour the illusion that they can think and analyse independently. There are two media distortions to which Sumantaji has become a victim which I shall briefly explain.
The first distortion is the so-called hijacking of the train. Either to sensationalise news in order to add some colour to the drab news stories, or with the evil intention of projecting the Naxalites as the biggest threat to internal security and thereby to provoke the rulers to raise and deploy more central forces in Maoist areas, the media intentionally magnified and exaggerated the incident. A mass protest in which a few hundred people stopped the passenger train proceeding from Barkakhana to Moghalsarai at Hehegada railway station in Latehar district of Jharkhand for four hours is made into a sensational hijack! If one news channel starts the lie no channel wants to be left behind and the story goes on and on non-stop for 24, 48 or even more hours depending on the interest it generates among the viewers. Who first started this sensational news is not known but in no time it spread like wild-fire with every news channel and news paper jumping into the fray and turning even independent thinkers like Sumanta into their prey. Even if one gave a little thought to the meaning of the word ‘hijacking’ one would not become such an easy prey to the media sharks.
Second lie or distortion is regarding the reason for the so-called hijacking by protestors who stopped the train by squatting on the tracks for four hours. It is in no way related to the call for boycott of elections issued by the Central Committee of CPI(Maoist). As made clear by the spokesperson of our Party in Jharkhand soon after the incident, the protest was organized as part of the bandh demanding a judicial enquiry into the brutal cold-blooded murders of five village youth by the CRPF personnel in Badhania village in Latehar district. The five youth were picked up within an hour after a mine blast, triggered by Maoist guerrillas, killed two CRPF men on the morning of April 16. The villagers were shot dead within an hour after the mine-blast. The fake encounter generated wide protests throughout the state for almost a week. The top police brass had to publicly concede that it was a fake encounter and by the end of the month three top police officials were removed from their posts as a direct fall-out of this brutal incident. Thus at least now it should be clear that the train was held up in Hehegada by unarmed protestors only to protest against the fake encounter and not, I repeat, for boycott of polls, which, anyway, had been completed in the entire region by then.
Sumantaji also appears to be quite relieved that the Maoists had “physically targeted only the candidates and the state’s representatives – the security forces, the poll officials – and thankfully refrained from attacking the voters who came in large numbers (often representing 50 to 60% of the electorate in these areas).”
For Sumantaji it looks as if this was the first time that the Maoists had spared the voters. The unfortunate attacks on poll officials were an aberration and not a policy of our Party. It was due to mistaken identity that a polling party, instead of the police party, became the victim of a mine blast near Kamkasur village in Rajnandgaon district in Chhattisgarh (Dandakaranya). In fact, our Dandakaranya special zonal committee had tendered an apology immediately after the unfortunate incident and reassured that it will take all precautions that such unfortunate incidents would not occur in future. Our statement was covered in the local media widely. While expressing our condolences to the families of the five polling officials who died in the land-mine explosion, we made it very clear that it is not our policy to harm the polling personnel. In Orissa’s Malkangiri, after some lower-level cadre seized mobile phones and some cash from the polling personnel on April 16, they were returned to the district collector with a letter of apology signed by the secretary of the divisional committee of our Party. We reassured that such incidents of attacks on polling personnel will not be repeated. Even after this it is surprising that Sumantaji includes polling officials in the list of our targets.
Question of people’s preparedness for boycott
Now let me take up the main questions raised by Sumantaji. He tries to paint a picture of the Maoist Party attempting to enforce poll boycott over an unwilling population.
He writes: “The Maoist call for boycotting the elections, the party’s attempts to bring this about by large-scale attacks on the electoral machinery, and yet, the willingness of the villagers in their strongholds to queue up to cast their votes, present a peculiar web of complexities.” He also concludes that the “vast majority of the voters are not ready for boycotting elections”, and that there has been “moderate to high percentage of polling in Naxalite areas in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Bihar and Jharkhand.” He asks the CPI(Maoist) leaders: “will they recognise that the vast majority of the Indian electorate, despite their disillusionment with the present political leadership, are not yet ready for boycotting elections?”
On what basis has Sumantaji arrived at the conclusion that the vast majority of people are not ready for boycott? Does Sumantaji know the facts regarding the actual percentage of votes polled in the Maoist strong-hold areas about which he asserts so authoritatively? Has he toured any of these areas at the time of the elections? Or, has he drawn his conclusions from the concocted stories floated by the police and the media? In the psychological war waged against the Maoist revolutionaries by the reactionary ruling classes, intelligence and police officials, and faithfully represented by their pet media, the most common theme has been the supposed gap between the aspirations of the people and the goal of the Party besides the beaten “caught-in-the-crossfire” theory. The actual situation is deliberately distorted to show that the Party is isolated from the people and resorts to force against the people when the latter go against the decisions and goals set by the Party.
Sumantaji’s conclusion is subjective and biased, and hence looks ridiculous, particularly after seeing the unprecedented apathy and disillusionment among the voters, and the emergence of boycott as a major trend during the 15th Lok Sabha elections. In fact, never before had boycott become such a potent weapon in the hands of the people as during Election-2009. Hence the reactionary rulers had to spend hundreds of crores of rupees to refurbish the image of the rotten parliamentary system: bollywood and tollywood, cricket stars, industrialists, MNCs, media foundations, NGOs and so on carried out non-stop propaganda about the virtues of democracy, the sanctity of the vote, and so on. There is no end to websites and blogs calling on people to exercise their franchise. To lend an air of credibility to their propaganda they asked the voters to use their wisdom to choose between the good and the bad, to reject the criminals and the corrupt elements, and to elect the virtuous, as if there were any virtuous people left in the Parliamentary pig-sty.
The reactionary rulers have grasped the dangerous trend of boycott emerging throughout the country in the 2009 elections—a trend that Sumantaji has failed to recognize. Hence they were desperate to prove that democracy was the victor. The day the first phase of elections to the Lok Sabha was completed on April 16, the media tried to show how democracy had won against anarchy, how ballot proved to be superior to bullet, how people defied the Maoists and came forth to exercise their franchise braving the bullet, and such endless rhetoric. “Bullet vs ballot: Voters give mandate on Maoist-hit LS seats” wrote a paper. “Maoist warnings fail to deter voters in Red zone” claimed another pointing to the 45 per cent votes polled in Gaya district. “Despite red terror 50 % polling in Jharkhand” crowed another paper. “Ballot wins against Bullet” ran another headline. There is no limit to such hollow claims and empty phrases to prove that so-called democracy got the upper-hand in this sham drama. Chief Election Commissioner-designate Navin Chawla howled that “democracy triumphed over naxalism on April 16.”
Despite appeals to the voters by all and sundry hardly 50 per cent turned up at the polling booths in most parts of the country. In Mumbai, where the shrill cries of these apologists of parliamentary democracy were the loudest, the percentage of voting was a paltry 43.2 %; in Thane it was even less. The ruling classes were so alarmed by the low turn-out that politicians like LK Advani even came out with the proposal of compulsory voting as a solution. Thus Sumantaji’s conclusion is not only at odds with the objective reality but also does not respect the sentiments of the majority who had refused to be drawn to the polling booths even after the hectic campaign by popular actors, NGOs and government officials.
While agreeing that people had indeed used boycott as a form of protest relating it to their local issues, he, however, concludes: “Proud of their democratic right and hopeful of some change through the electoral process, they will cast their votes – though they are doomed to be betrayed by the victorious candidates.”
Our Party had never denied the fact that people will be coaxed, cajoled and coerced by the rulers and their armed forces to cast their votes. But to assert that it is because the people are “proud of their democratic right and hopeful of some change through the electoral process” as imagined by Sumantaji, is contradictory to ground reality. How much percentage is actually exercising its vote voluntarily with a sense of awareness of the policies of the contestants or with a hope that some change will occur through the electoral process? And how much of it is rigged? How much percentage of the voting population is doing it out of social compulsion, material and other incentives, caste, communal, ethnic, regional and other factors, threats and intimidation by gun-toting khaki goons or local rowdies? If all these are taken into account it is obvious that the actual percentage of voting based on hope for some change through the electoral process would be miserably low.
As regards the conclusion that there has been “moderate to high percentage of polling in Naxalite areas in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Bihar and Jharkhand”, one wonders from where Sumantaji has obtained his figures? If he goes through the local media in each of these states, instead of relying on the Delhi-centric or Metro-centric media, then he cannot afford to miss the reports of zero to nominal polling in hundreds of booths, and repolling in several centres amidst unheard of security. He cannot afford to miss visuals of empty booths and security forces all around with hardly any civilians in sight.
For instance, during the Assembly elections in Chhattisgarh in last November, polling was held thrice in a centre called Gougonda in Konta constituency. In the third repoll, over a thousand policemen and CRPF personnel were deployed but only 10 out of a total of 711 votes were polled. The attempts of the police to terrorise the people and force them to cast their votes simply did not work as elsewhere since people had fled upon seeing the police. We had cited several such instances in our Bulletin-7. In Anthagadh constituency, polling personnel did not go to the polling centre in Partap Pur, Chota Pakhanjur, Chote Bethiya, Aakmetta. About a lakh-and-a-half voters in 176 villages spread across 13 Lok Sabha constituencies in the state of Jharkhand boycotted the polls this time. In Lalgarh, in West Bengal’s West Medinipur district, no votes were cast in several booths. Of the 30,000 voters in Lalgarh, not more than one hundred voted. In Malkangiri in Orissa, almost no polling was reported from booths in remote areas like Manyamkonda, Kurmanur, Poplur, Tangurkonda, Bodigeta, Karkatpalli etc. The list of centres which registered zero polling or nominal polling runs long.
The trend of boycott will grow stronger as the revolutionary movement grows stronger, the organs of people’s revolutionary power come into being in vast tracts of the country, the armed strength of the people grows and the PLGA makes impressive gains and decisive victories in some areas. Without the consolidation of the Party, people’s army and revolutionary mass organisations, organs of people’s power, and without gaining an upper-hand over the enemy in a significant area, one cannot imagine people coming out on a big scale to boycott the polls. The emergence of an alternative to the parliamentary institutions will bring about a qualitative change in the perception, preparedness and approach of the people towards the parliament and contesting political parties.
We welcome any frank and meaningful criticism of our line, policies and practice such as Sumantaji’s criticism on the choice of priorities by the Indian Maoists. He says: “They have not yet been able to offer a wide-ranging viable alternative model that appears convincing and acceptable to the various sections of the poor all over India.”
This criticism is partially true. Given the vastness of the country and the weakness of the Maoist movement, the model that is being developed in Dandakaranya and parts of Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa and some other states, is not yet seen as a viable alternative model by the various sections of the poor all over India. Moreover, the problems in the advanced areas, plains, and urban areas are of a different nature and we admit our Party has not been able to address the problems of the poor in these areas. Thus whatever has been achieved in a few pockets of the backward areas does not provide a wide-ranging viable alternative model by itself. Lot more has to be done to make the people convince about a viable alternative model. Our CC and the Party Congress held in early 2007 have also reviewed this weakness and drew up some measures to overcome it.
While such a constructive criticism is to be welcomed one cannot understand the rationale behind some of his unwarranted comments like citing some mistakes on the part of our Party which are of no relevance here.
For instance, ridiculing the apology tendered by the Maoists to the unfortunate deaths of five polling personnel in Chhattisgarh on April 16, Sumanta recounts some serious mistakes committed by the Maoists in the past, like the three decades-old Kakatiya train incident, and a few incidents of punishments to police agents, and questions: How long will they go on repeating such “mistakes”, and dismissing them as “collateral damages” on their path of revolution? There are also comments such as “the frequent killings of poor villagers by paranoiac Maoist guerrillas who suspect them of being police agents” based on concocted police reports or the biased reports in the media.
The above allegation needs some explanation from the Party. Maoists have never dismissed our mistakes and justified the deaths of innocent civilians as “collateral damages.” Every such incident is thoroughly reviewed by the concerned Party committee, and where needed, by the higher Party committee, those responsible are censured, lessons are drawn, and measures are initiated to rectify such mistakes and weaknesses. The punishments to police agents should be seen in the correct perspective despite the hue and cry raised by the police, political parties and the media. The police lure poor people into their informer network, create covert agents to work from within the Party and the revolutionary movement, and attempt to cause the maximum damage to the Party and the movement. Our failure to break the back of the intelligence network of the police is one of the main causes for the setback we had suffered in AP. Learning from the lesson we have been more cautious and have succeeded in breaking enemy intelligence network to a considerable extent in Dandakaranya (Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra), Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa and West Bengal which is one of the reasons that we are able to survive in the midst of the severest repression in these pockets. It is not paranoia but sheer necessity that is driving us to smash the enemy network that is dangerously spreading into the areas of struggle.
The Kakatiya train incident has been a blot in our Party history and was due to the sheer inexperience of the comrades who were involved in the early years of our Party’s life.
Or take another comment of Sumantaji that says: “The CPI (Maoist) in particular, which claims to fight for the rights of the poor, has shown a cruel disregard for these basic amenities demanded by the people by disrupting power supply and obstructing road building in the backward districts – purely out of their partisan interest to cut off communication so that the police cannot raid their hideouts.”
The reality is the CPI(Maoist) owes its entire existence to its work among the poor and deprived sections of the society.
It has been able to build the longest sustained revolutionary movement in the history of India and South Asia, confronted the mighty Indian state for over four decades and had grown from strength to strength despite losing thousands of its cadres precisely because it has its roots firmly entrenched among the masses: it is by solving the burning problems of the people, particularly the problem of land alienation, lack of basic amenities and means of livelihood that our Party has gained the active support of the masses, succeeded in involving a considerable section of the people in militant struggles and in the ongoing people’s war.
And this is precisely the reason why people continue to extend all kinds of support to the Party even in the midst of the severest state repression. To say that our Party has shown a “cruel disregard for these basic amenities demanded by the people” means to play into the hands of the establishment and some so-called civil society groups funded by the big business and imperialist agencies. Alleging that we have been “disrupting power supply and obstructing road building in the backward districts” and to attribute it to our “partisan interest” is another baseless charge that has been taken out of the police files.
The question is: why are the rulers interested in building roads, pucca school buildings and even helipads in a place like Maad (called by outside world as Abhujmad or the unknown land) at the present juncture? The fact is the rulers have a long-term strategy to exploit the natural resources of the region and had arrived at an agreement with the comprador big business houses and the MNCs to loot the natural wealth that are lying unexplored and unexploited in the bosom of these regions. They are planning to exploit the entire natural wealth from Raoghat to Maad and it is for this purpose that road-building is taken up at a hectic pace. As the Maoists are well-perched in these regions it is essential for the reactionary rulers to suppress them first in order to loot the wealth.
None other than the Prime Minister himself spoke of how the natural wealth is locked up in these regions under the control of Left-wing Extremists. Thus the so-called Red Corridor is sough to be “liberated” from the Maoists so as to hand it over to the vultures waiting with greedy mouths to prey on these regions. Hence school buildings are required even if there are not enough people to go to schools as they provide fortified shelters to the CRPF and other state’s forces in their bloody onslaught against the Maoist revolutionaries. More important, the plan of the rulers is to evict the adivasis from the region and settle them elsewhere permanently. The region is home to one of the oldest surviving tribes in India—the madia gonds—and now their very existence is at stake due to the so-called development that Sumantaji is talking about.
We oppose only such development projects that harm the interests of the adivasis, that facilitate the unhindered exploitation of the region’s wealth, displace the indigenous tribes and the inhabitants of the forests from their homes and lands, and destroy their way of living and their culture. It is a misgiving that we are opposed to every kind of road construction or that we disrupt power supply and communication. It is in fact our party that has been in the forefront of people’s struggles for basic amenities and we ourselves had taken up some development activity that directly benefits the people in areas where we have our embryonic organs of people’s democratic power. Yes, power supply has been disrupted as part of our resistance to the state offensive, fake encounters etc. However, our Party committees had reviewed this and decided to take up such sabotage activities in a selective manner with least inconvenience to the people at large.
Sumantaji says: “Their jungle hideouts in Dandakaranya, Orissa and other areas, are a far cry from the Yenan that their mentor carved out in China, who had a wider vision – which is sadly lacking among the present CPI (Maoist) leadership.”
There is not an iota of doubt that we are still far from our goal of establishing base areas like that in Yenan but one should not miss the point that our guerrilla bases and the guerrilla zones are heading in that direction and it is with the support of people all over the country and pro-people intellectuals like Sumantaji that this task can be hastened.
There are some provocative comments such as Maoists are “scared of confronting the better-organised goons of the Sangh parivar – who pose a more dangerous threat to the democratic rights of our people.” We understand the spirit and concern behind this observation. The saffron terrorists have become a dangerous threat to the lives and rights of the people at large and minority religious communities in particular. Our Party has taken note of this danger and some steps are being taken to defeat the nefarious designs of the Hindu communal fascists masquerading under various labels and the annihilation of Vishwa Hindu Parishat leader Swamy Laxmananda Saraswati is an instance of this. We shall certainly take into account the concerns of democratic-minded people and deal with the saffron gangs while doing all that is possible to protect the lives and rights of the minority religious communities.
And finally, coming to the key question posed by Sumantaji: “if the voters are given what it considers “the minimum democratic right to reject the parties and candidates”, will the party allow them to participate in the elections, or still insist on boycotting them?”
Boycott of elections and the minimum democratic right to reject the parties and candidates are complementary to each other. There is no contradiction between these. Just as right to vote is being described as a democratic right, right to boycott is also a democratic right of the voter. But in many instances, the police and reactionary gangs force the voters to cast their votes. In such circumstances provision of the right to rejection of candidates will provide a chance to the voter to reject everyone in the fray. It is a curious logic to substitute this for the general call of boycott which is meant to enhance the awareness of the people regarding the futility and irrelevance of elections to their lives and in solving their basic problems.
Our boycott is taken up in different forms depending upon our strength, people’s consciousness and preparedness. In some places it is at the level of propaganda, in some it is done passively in the sense we do not attempt to stop the process of election but mobilize the people to question the parties and candidates and obstruct their campaigns. And where we are strong enough and have our own organs of people’s power and have emerged as an alternative before the people we organize active boycott and do all that is possible to prevent the election from taking place. In a country where the revolutionary movement and the people’s consciousness are at various levels of development our form of struggle too takes different forms of expression. Hence stopping or not stopping the people is not the point here. It is the people themselves who have actively stopped the election process in many places either due to their anger against parties for not solving their problems and non-fulfillment of promises, or because they see the futility of the very system of parliamentary democracy and the drama of elections.
To conclude, what exactly Sumantaji has been trying to drive at is not very clear. But from the tone and tenor of his arguments it seems he wants the Maoist Party to participate in the parliamentary elections as the “vast majority of the voters are not ready for boycotting elections.” Or, at least, he does not want the Party to issue a call for boycott since that, he feels, is not the aspiration of the people.
After the setback suffered by the Naxalbari uprising in the early 1970s, a certain amount of cynicism and skepticism had overtaken the left-oriented intellectual. The serious mistakes the Party had committed at that time had disillusioned some sections of the middle classes and intelligentsia. This is but natural. Most of the Party leaders of that time such as Kanu Sanyal, Jangal Santhal, Ashim Chaterjee, Nagbhushan Patnaik, later Vinod Mishra and others, turned into apologists of so-called parliamentary democracy.
Some defended the parliamentary line by putting forth the argument that people were not yet ready for revolution, that they had illusions on the Parliamentary system, and hence, revolutionaries should take part in the elections. Others argued that a long phase of political propaganda, political, organizational, military preparation is required if we have to confront the mighty Indian state; and hence, participating in Parliament was necessary until the time of completion of these preparations, or, in other words, until the time the people were ready to take up boycott on their own. Some of the Parties that had argued as above have become indistinguishable from the revisionist CPI(M); some have been consigned to the dust-bin of history, while a few are surviving only as namesake ML Parties basking in their past glory.
On the other hand, the erstwhile CPI(ML)[People’s War], Maoist Communist Centre of India and CPI(ML)[Party Unity], remained steadfast to the slogan of boycott of elections in a principled way, showed no vacillation whatsoever on advancing armed struggle, and gained wide mass base and support in the course of time. The very fact that these Parties did not go to the people begging for votes once in five years, that they had no selfishness but only an attitude to serve the people, that they lived and ate like them unlike the leaders of the parliamentary parties, had drawn the people at large cutting across Party lines to the side of the revolutionary parties. The boycott call too contributed greatly to enhance the image and prestige of the Naxalites in the eyes of the people. In fact, even those who said they had to vote due to some compulsions insisted that the Party should never think of participating in elections.
We hope Sumantaji will rethink based on this ground reality and appreciate the stand of boycott of election pursued by the CPI(Maoist).
November 27th, 2010 at 1:17 am
Today,the C.P.I(Maoist) is carrying out a major movement In the areas of Jharkhand, Bihar and Dandkaraya. Without doubt they have committed serious errors and have serious theoretical flaws, but any Maoist critique must applaud their effort.To have created such bastions of revolutionary struggle in Andhra Pradesh,Jharkhand,Bihar and Dandkaranya is an achievement of historical proportions. In Lalgarh they made great efforts to enhance the movement.Base areas have yet to be created but with great tenacity they have defended their guerilla zones. The fact that they have heroically resisted the enemy forces f or a period of 30 years and form a Central Peoples Guerilla army to become the strongest Maoist party in the World when no Socialist Country in the World exists and when the forces of globalization are acting as tentacles is one of the greatest achievements in the annals of the world Communist Movement.
However I wish to refute one theoretical point that today the situation is conducive for both the tactis of ‘Active Boycott’ or participation ‘ in parliamentary elections .Below i am quoting a December 1989 edition of a revolutionary Journal which voiced the views of Com.T.Nagi Reddy .
There can be 3 tactics deployed in The elections. Either you adopt the tactic of ‘ active boycott’ or that of participation.,or that of ‘active political campaign.’In all cases the political campaign should consist of a.exposing the uselessness of he presnt parliamentary institutions.
b. explaining the impossibility of achieving political liberty and social emancipation by parliamentary methods and
c .Explaining the necessity of armed Struggle in the form of protracted Peoples War centered around the agrarian question and of establishing he organs of peoples power,i.e of peoples democracy. The crucial aspects should be made are to the people by integrating hem with examples of the pat and present experiences and by concrete exposure of the deception of he ruling classes, their institutions and political parties. The only difference I his regard of implementing the basic tactics are the slogans of action they give an he pace which with theory work. Slogans of action have to be allotted in accordance to level of revolutionary movement at a given time.
Boycott is a higher form of struggle which is associated with imminent direct revolutionary action of the masses against the state and with setting up of organs of political power . For this,the party of the proletariat should have established it’s leadership over the revolutionary movement and prepared itself, politically and organizationally ,to lead the people’s armed struggle along with setting up suitable organs of political; power. Without this the boycott slogan will become meaningless, and futile as far as the realization of it’s full revolutionary potential is concerned. It will lead to cynical attitudes amongst the people.
On the other hand for adopting the revolutionary utilisation of participation in election as legal form of Struggle, the emergence of revolutionary democratic elements is a necessity. It need a proletarian party organization to train and control a cadre team for his specialized activity, to organise a legal front without liquidating the illegal party structure, and to link and co-ordinate the activities of its members in these institutions with the direct revolutionary struggles of the people.Othrwise it will blunt the class –consciousness of the people, blur he political demarcation between the party of the proletariat and the ruling class political parties and will be a weapon in the hands of the ruling class forces to defeat he proletarian vanguard.
At present a unified, effective and influential party is lacking Comunist revolutionaries are only in the formative stage-in the sage of re-organisatin. In most areas ,any Communist Revolutionary Organisation is yet to establish it’s identity,I the field of organization and mass -political influence.The level of political consciousness and organization of the people is lagging behind their actual practice of struggle or the objective potential for evolutionary struggle.F or asimilar reason,the emergence and development of revolutionary democratic elements is delayed .It is because of this situation that he present acute political crisis is not being converted into a revolutionary crisis. A general mood of distrust of leaderships and cynical indifference to political affairs and developments that a further hurdles are being created..
But or this circumstances the C.R’s could have in condition of great turmoil adopted the tactics of ‘Active Boycott’ and and called upon the revolutionary forces to carry out he agrarian revolutionary programme, conducted armed struggle and set up alternative organs of peoples power. In other times ,under adverse political conditions they could have participated in the electins as a tactical ploy.
Toady there are 2 serious deviations. The first one is that of carrying out ‘Boycott’tactics without the scope of direct revolutionary mass action and setting up of parallel organs of political power. The second is of using participation tactics without the proletarian party,sufficient mass opolitical influence and other necessary organizational means.It will organizationally lead to liquidationsim and politically to tailism
The only possible campaign is that of ‘Active Political Campaign’.They must build mass revolutionary struggles They must urge the people to rely and concentrate on their own struggle movement and organization-building to prepare for direct revolutionary mass action against the ruling classes and their institutions of political power.
In the campaign the Comunist Revolutionaries should analyse the specific features which get manifest in ruling class politics and their manouvres in elections. Eg Warring factions of ruling classes and their political representatives.T he uselessness of parliamentary institutions must be explained as well as parliamentary methods. The political objective of the working class movement and the democratic revolutionary movement led by it should be projected.
The campaign should consist of
A.Contracting the professed programmes of the ruling class parties with their actual practice and with the bitter experience of the peole in regard to their worsening economic conditions.
b. Explaining that the root cause of the economic misery is that of the semi –feudal, semi-political economy and The autocratic state structure , and that without eliminating the root cause there is no hope for meaningful change.
C .Explaining the people to depend o their own organized strength and struggle, and have no illusions of false talk of civil librties .The people must be explained the need o establish their own political power .
d. Pushing the proletariat and other sections to to pursue heir just revolutionary struggles, to build up their respective mass organizations and united Front organizations to be able to raise heir struggles to a higher plane and establish their own rule. Peoples Democracy to be executed through genuine representative institutions of the people-the revolutionary organs of political power.
e. Explaining the road masses the features of he new people’s republic that they are fighting for, in the interests of the various revolutionary classes.
In the present day context 2 points are of exceptional importance. The first one is.
a.Exposing the nefarious role of ruling class parties in utilizing communal sectarian divisons among the people, explain the connection between the electoral needs of the party and the lives of the masses and tell the masses about the need to rebuff such dirty manouvresof the ruling class parties.
b.Explaining the people the need to build their own reliable political instruments. i.e the proletarian party organization,the united Front organization
On Armed struggle I am quoting the views of Coms D.V.Rao and Tarimala Nagi Reddy who refuted the Charu Mazumdar Line.
“The armed struggle is the highest form of class struggle of which agrarianrevolutionary movement is the axis. While the class struggle develops througha process, from lower to higher to the highest levels and corresponding forms,it is the task of the communist revolutionaries, throughout all phases ofthe revolutionary movement, to constantly educate the people in the politicsof seizure of political power and to prepare them for armed struggle in anappropriate manner (to enable them to imbibe the necessary revolutionaryconsciousness and preparedness on the basis of their own experience). Itis the level of consciousness and preparedness of the people that determinesthe realisation of the necessity and launching of any form of struggle includingthe armed struggle. While the armed struggle proper will start at a certainlevel of development of the agrarian revolutionary movement (which is objectivelyverifiable in terms of actual manifestations of the consciousness andpreparedness of the people to seize and control the means of production andhence political power through their own instruments of struggle and power),the people should be guided and prepared to arm themselves to put up self-defenceand resistance to armed attacks of the ruling classes and their agents; theparty forces among the masses playing the leading role in carrying out suchself-defence–all of which is a part and parcel of the process of developmentof class struggle to its highest form–the armed struggle. Integrating therevolutionary struggles of different sections of people with the agrarianrevolutionary movement and integrating and developing different forms ofstruggle to the armed struggle, should be addressed to by the communistrevolutionaries with an integral concept and plan of tasks of the revolutionarymovement in all the stages of the process of its development. In a nutshell,the process of development of armed struggle should be conceived in its organicrelationship with the process of development of the class struggle, of theParty and of the revolutionary united front.
5. 1 Though the objective in starting armed struggle is to set up liberatedbase areas, the present correlation of forces in India is such that it isnot possible to achieve this aim immediately. To achieve this aim, it isnecessary to create areas of armed struggle in a number of areas in the country.For a long time they will be guerrilla zones in the military sense of theterm. With the numerical extension of such areas of armed struggle it becomesextremely difficult for the ruling classes to concentrate their armed mightin one area. During this process there arises a favourable situation, whereinrevolutionaries will be able to wrest the initiative from the ruling classes,and to advance towards the setting up of liberated base areas. Some majorchanges in the national and international situation may also lead towardquicker development of liberated base areas.
5.2 Revolutionary forces have to fight armed battles in the guerrilla zonesfor quite some time. Guerrilla forces, skilled and tempered over a long timein these battles, grow in number as well as in experience. In the courseof these battles there arises a situation wherein the guerrilla forces areable to defeat the armed forces of the ruling classes. This is the time whena part of the guerrilla forces is turned into a regular people’s army. Thepeople in the area are mobilised to help the people’s armed forces in inflictingdefeat after defeat on the enemies’ armed forces and wiping them out. Thisis how liberated base areas come into being. They are constantly extendedinto adjoining regions, eventually covering a vast area and a sufficientpopulation with the necessary resources for the people’s sustenance.
It is possible to set up liberated base areas in the plains and deltaic areas(where there are well-knit communication lines) at an advanced stage of thearmed struggle. In the same way, towns adjoining the base areas are liberatedfirst, then the rest and finally the whole country.”
Armed struggle is a debatable issue but the Current line of the C.P.I(Maoist)is plagued with defective trends towards the building of military political power.There is also an erroneous concept towards the building of mass organisations and their relationship with the party and mass organisations are virtually formed as Front organisations nad hardly given an independent identity.the military line has shades of Che Guevera’s focoist tendency.. Historically there is a difference between revolutionary base areas and guerilla zones.Quoting Mao’s writings on military line, “When guerilla Warfare began,the guerillas could not completely occupy the places ,but could only make frequent raids,,they are areas which are held by the guerilla forces when they are present and the by the puppet regime when they are gone.Thus they are not guerilla bases but zones.Thse zones can be converted into bases by consolidating guerilla warfare and after large portions of enemy troops have been annihilated,and the puppet regime destroyed..The mass organsiations also formed as well as peoples local armed forces.The extent to which the enemy is destroyed is the vital factor.“ The C.P.I. (Maoist). in implementation of line often confused the difference between forming a guerilla zone and a base area. Today the trend is similar. In their zones they retaliate and defend their areas through their guerilla squad actions and are not able to replenish their losses. They do not have sufficient support of the broad masses. There is insufficient development of mass agrarian revolutionary struggle and revolutionary democratic movement.A maoist mass military line has not been built.For many a action there is lack of adequate preparation of agrarian revolutionary Movement. What was defective was the nature of squad actions not properly evaluating the co-relation of the enemy with the masses..Over-emphasis has been placed on armed struggle without combining effective mass struggles. To a considerable extent the military actions reflect anarchist tendencies and have not adhered to a the maoist mass military line Today it’s all India Front the Revolutionary Democratic Front can hardly function openly like the A.I.P.R.F could earlier.I t has been dealt a severe blow In states like Orissa and West Bengal,and is for all moral purposes banned in states of armed MovementS.Unable to withstand the counter-onslaught of the state the mass organizations of such groups were virtually crushed and forced to function underground.Now mass struggle is completely substituted by armed Struggle.They have not created the level of preparation for armed struggle which was done In the Telengana Armed Struggle of 1946-1951 where work was initiated in the AndhraMahasabha ,or in the 1924-1927 period in China where Peasant associations were formed and a base was built for mass agrarian revolutionary Movement.,or even the preparation period for he launching of armed struggles i Phillipines or Peru I the periods of 1959-1968 a 1968-1980 respectively.