Peasant rebellions in India did not begin in Naxalbari, and certainly they did not stop there either. However, the Naxalbari uprising in 1967 was a turning point in India’s peasant rebellions and heralded the new Maoist “People’s War”. These new warriors were christened by the name of the village, Naxalbari, where they first sprang up in their revolutionary struggle.
A History of Peasant Rebellions: Ideological Evolution
During the 19th century, colonial India saw more than a hundred big or small peasant rebellions. Practically none of these were aimed at seizing state power. There is a debate as to what was the extent of the political consciousness of the impoverished, oppressed Indian peasant. They rose against the land tenure system, the zamindars, and all the rest of evils which burdened them. These local peasant grievances gave way by early 20th century to the national struggle. However, the peasants had little say in the larger context of the struggle for Swaraj.
Meanwhile, the Communist movement also established its roots within India after the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. However, the Bolsheviks seized power through the city based proletariat. India’s population, on the contrary, was overwhelmingly rural. Without the backing of the rural peasants the communists could never hope for a revolution in India. Then, in 1927, Chiang Kai-shek launched the ‘White Terror’ on his erstwhile Communist allies, and the latter were driven out of the cities. Simultaneously, a Hunanese Communist named Mao Tse-tung was emphasizing the revolutionary potential of peasant associations. Especially after the 1930s, the Maoist version of revolutionary war inspired a section of radical Indian leaders.
Some of these leaders of the Communist Party of India (CPI) inspired a peasant uprising in 1946 in Telangana, Hyderabad, against the local landlords, which developed into a struggle against the Nizam of Hyderabad. After ‘Operation Polo’ in September 1948, until 1951, the struggle continued against the Indian Army. The uprising petered out after the Communists abandoned the peasants following the diktat of Stalin from Moscow.
CPI, CPI (M) and CPI (ML)
By early 1960s, there was an ideological rift within the CPI, closely associated with the Sino-Soviet split. In 1964, the CPI split, with the old party retaining its ties with Moscow while a new CPI (M) aligning with Peking. The CPI (M) was very strong in several states, including West Bengal. By 1967, it was in government in West Bengal, along with the old CPI in a left coalition: the United Front. Jyoti Basu, a politburo member of the party, became the Deputy Chief Minister.
However, a radical group emerged within the CPI (M), led by Charu Mazumdar, referred to as CM by his followers, who wrote the historic eight documents based on ‘Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought’ during 1965-66. These later became the basis of the Naxalite struggle. This group criticized the party for engaging in ‘bourgeoisie elections’ and preached a radical armed overthrow of the system.
Naxalbari, 1967
On March 2, 1967, just days after the UF regime took power in West Bengal, a tribal youth named Bimal Kissan, from the remote village of Naxalbari, went to plough his land, after having obtained a judicial order. He was attacked by the local landlords with the help of their henchmen. The local peasants, inspired and led by the radicals of CPI (M), retaliated by capturing the land from the landlords. Police was sent in to re-establish law and order by the UF regime which was led by the erstwhile pro-Mao CPI (M). A sub-inspector died in a hail of arrows, and the police retaliated, killing nine tribesmen.
The news of the uprising received great publicity and generated support from a substantial faction of revolutionaries in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa, Kerala, and several other states. The Chinese gave the uprising the fullest publicity. The ‘People’s Daily’ described it as a ‘peal of spring thunder….. over the land of India’. Similar uprisings sprang up in several parts of India, notably in Andhra Pradesh.
The revolutionaries met in November the same year and formed the All India Coordination Committee of Revolutionaries (AICCR), which evolved into the All India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries (AICCCR) in May 1968. The aim of both these groups was to found a revolutionary party. The founding of such a party was announced on Lenin’s birthday anniversary, April 22, 1969, and the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) was born.
Demise, Fractionalization and Re-emergence
The fractionalization of the Naxalites began at the time the AICCCR was being formed, as the ‘Dakshin Desh’ group of Andhra joined it but were expelled before the CPI (ML) was founded. The main CPI (ML) waged an incessant struggle against the Indian state, which saw two main characteristics. Firstly, after the suppression of the initial peasant uprisings, the main torch bearers were the urban intellectuals, including the undergraduates. Maoism had to return from the peasants to the cities in India, especially Calcutta (Kolkata). Secondly, and largely because of the ‘urbanization’ of the struggle, the movement increasingly assumed terroristic tendencies. The repression was swift. CM himself was arrested and later died at the hands of the police in July 1972. The Naxalites split apart, largely suffering a natural death.
The fragmentation of the movement however, did not bring about its total destruction. Different ‘strains’ of Naxalites grew with the passage of time. Some, including Kanu Sanyal, perhaps the second in command to CM, embraced the ballot box. However, more radical groups staunchly adhered to the armed struggle. They extracted support from the backward sections of the society, the rural poor, ‘Dalits’ and tribal people, and they have launched a Maoist style “People’s War”. In the past decade, especially after the Maoist Communist Center (MCC), which was previously the ‘Dakshin Desh’ group, and the People’s War Group (PWG) joined in 2004 to form the CPI (Maoist), they have spread far and wide throughout Eastern India. For the Indians, the East is once more, appearing Red.
Sources
Gupta, DK, The Naxalites and the Maoist Movement in India: Birth, Demise and Reincarnation, Democracy and Security 3, 157-188, 2007.
Kujur, R. Naxal Movement in India: A Profile Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, New Delhi, 2008.
Hindustan Times, A History of Naxalism, 2001.
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