topics: |  india | history | modern | terrorism |

At independence, the Communist Party of India found itself lauding the
socialist stance of Nehru, goaded by praise of these policies by the Soviet
Union.  This stance was reversed in 1948, when radicals like Ranadive
promised that an "armed revolutionary struggle" would be launched within
six months.

The role of revolution in marxism has been the subject of long debates within
the leading centers for communist theology.  The position of pre-industrial
societies were considered at length by Lenin.  As  John H. Kautsky (1959)
has written:

	Lenin sought in Marxism a rationale for a “socialist” revolution to
	be undertaken largely by intellectuals before capitalism had matured
	[as] in Russia. Thus, he introduced drastic modifications into the
	original Marxist theories. He claimed, for example, that the workers
	on their own were incapable of understanding their stake in the
	socialist revolution, and that genuine proletarian
	class-consciousness was possessed only by an intellectual elite,
	i.e. the Communist party.  Logically, then, any revolution led by
	such an elite becomes a proletarian revolution, even though the
	actual working class does not support it—or does not even
	exist. 

In India however, an industrial working class did exist, but the Communist
party was repeatedly disappointed at its lack of revolutionary zeal.  After
the Tebhaga uprising in Bengal and the continuing land-reform rebellion in
Telangana, the communist forces in India turned to the Chinese experience
of peasant rebellion.  In 1949, the Andhra Communists argued:

	Our revolution in many respects differs from the classical Russian
	Revolution; and it is to a great extent similar to that of the
	Chinese Revolution. The perspective is not that of general strikes
	and general rising leading to the liberation of the rural sides; but
	dogged resistance and prolonged civil war in the form of an agrarian
	revolution culminating in the capture of political power by the
	democratic front.
		- "Struggle for People's Democracy and Socialism-some
		  Questions of Strategy and Tactics," Communist, Vol. II,
		  No. 4, (June-July, 1949), p. 83, quoted in Overstreet and
		  Windmiller, op. cit., p. 287.


But even this did not materialize fully, and the leadership of the
intellectuals came to the fore during the Naxalbari movement which
originated in the intelligentsia of Bengal.  In the end though, it was the
peasantry that gave it sustenance along the much-oppressed tribal belt
stretching from Midnapore through Orissa and Chhatisgarh to Andhra.

The Naxalbari uprising has its roots therefore in the intellectual thesis
of Lenin, as well as in the agrarian initiation ideas of Mao.  While it 
called itself "Marxist-Leninist", one of its slogans was "Chairman Mao -
also our chairman."

This book forms a useful prequel to the fascinating stories related based
on documentation preserved by the-then police officer Arun Mukherjee, told
in his  Maoist "spring thunder": the Naxalite movement 1967-1972 
(2007), which presents many detailed confessions by the main Naxal
leaders.
See also the comprehensive history of early Indian Communism, by Gene 
Overstreet and  Marshall Windmiller, Communism in India (1959). 

Excerpts

till the late 1880's since independence · the history of the Indian
Communist movement is a complicated story of the CPI's difficult trek
through a zig-zag course... 

During a period of five years between the end of World War II in 1945 and
the take-over of the CPI central leadership by the Andhra Communists, the
party had undertaken its major experiments on the tactics and strategy of
the Indian revolution.

And this is abundantly dear from the three striking shifts in the
general policy line of the CPI:

* First, constitutional Communism under the leadership of General Secretary
  P. C. Joshi until 1948;

* Second, a strategy of Zhdanovist left-adventurism inaugurated at the
  Party's Second Congress in Calcutta in 1948 and followed
  by B. T. Ranadive who had then succeeded P.C. Joshi. 

* Finally, the adoption of the Maoist strategy of peasant revolution
  under the leadership of C. Rajeswar Rao: who had replaced Ranadive
  after the latter's failure to bring about "a revolution in six
  months."

Thus it should be clearly understood that in the postindependence days when
the CPI leadership was on the lookout for a definite programme of a
socialist revolution in India, the Maoist ideology came to be accepted by a
section of the Indian Communists during a short interlude of 1949-1950,
even before it was recognised as a valid revolutionary strategy.

During the years from 1945 until the party's Second Congress held in
Calcutta in February 1948 the CPI under the guidance of P. C. Joshi
attempted to gain respectability by burying the antinational disrepute it
had incurred during World War II while opposing Gandhiji's "Quit India
Movement" and helping the British Government's war efforts.  He sought to
build an image for the CPI as a national and constitutional force and as a
democratic party functioning through parliamentary and peaceful means.

[The CPI also supported the formation of Pakistan.]

Although to many Indian Communist leaders the country appeared on the brink
of a major revolutionary upheaval, Joshi estimated that it would be
unrealistic to expect the CPI to establish its control over this
revolutionary ferment, which had been ·sweeping many parts of the country,
harness it into a full-fledged revolutionary war against the new Congress
Government.  And the immediate reflection of this view could be found in the
attitude taken by the Communist leadership towards the Congress Government
as the successor of the British Government, following the announcement of
the Mountbatten Award by the British Prime Minister Cement Attlee in the
House of Commons on June 3, 1947, which set the deadline of formal British
pull-out from the sub-continent on August 15, 1947.

Though the Award was initially characterised as "a diabolical
plan" to balkanise India and a "manoeuvre" to perpetuate
imperialist influence over the sub-continent, the CPI Central Committee
recognised in its resolution adopted on June 29, 1947 that
the Award did represent certain "important concessions" and
"new opportunities for national advance".

... the resolution suggested that the Congress under Jawaharlal Nehru's
leadership was a rather progressive force. Therefore, the resolution
pledged the Party's fullest cooperation to the Congress Government "in the
proud task of building the Indian Republic on democratic foundations, thus
paving the way to Indian unity."  Such cooperation, it observed, should be
carried through "a broadest joint front" of all "progressive forces-the
CPI, the left elements in the Congress and the League."
[Central Committee of the CPI "Statement of Policy", People's
Age, June 29, 1947, pp. 6-7, quoted in Overstreet, G. D., and. Windmiller,
Communism in India, Berkeley, University of ·California Press, 1959.

The "Intertwined Revolution" that Failed

Although the CPI official line of cooperation with the Congress government
continued to prevail, the leftist elements in the party began to voice sharp
criticism against Joshi and to press for a radical change in the party
line. The central question was whether Joshi's policy of "right opportunist"
support to the Congress government would not . emasculate the CPI and reduce
it into a "harmless appendix" of the Congress, and whether the CPI should not
promote and then channel the already existing revolutionary ferments into a
full-scale revolutionary war against the government. The reference was
obviously to the violent peasant struggle that had been raging since 1946 in
Telengana in the eastern half of the princely state of Hyderabad under the
Nizam.

[1946-1956 - Telangana rebellion - as many as 4,000 villages saw the dominant
landlords evicted by peasant forces.  The Reddy landlords organized a militia
that worked with the Razakar forces of the Nizam but the peasants fought a
pitched guerrilla war, with several thousand deaths.  

By July 1948 they had brought under their control as many as 2,500 villages,
forming "Communes' to manage local affairs.
Much land was re-distributed to the landless, and resulted in a resounding
victory for the CPI in the Lok Sabha elections of 1952. ]
 
The attack on Joshi's line was spearheaded by B. T. Ranadive, leader of the
left radicals within the CPI. The ideological-tactical foundation of
Ranadive's political thesis was provided by the theoretical and practical
experience which the Yugoslav Communist leaders had accumulated through their
struggle for state power in the course of World War II.

The essence of these ideas, formulated by Tito and Kardelj came to be
officially known as the "Theory of Intertwined Revolution". The theory held
that it was possible to ·combine a national democratic revolution and a
socialist revolution into one revolutionary process, which would eliminate
the otherwise sustained period of time separating these two revolutions and
drive the Communist Party straight to power. Thus the establishment of a
People's Democracy would be made possible through this short-cut of
"intertwined" revolutionary strategy.

[Also influenced by Zhdanov's 1947 call - coming a month after India's
independence - for resisting imperialism in the epoch of the general crisis
of the colonial system.]  In the new international situation, said Zdhanov,
"the chief danger to the working class ... lies in underrating its own
strength and overestimating the strength of the enemy." The Communist
parties, therefore, must lead national resistance to "the plans of
imperialist expansion and aggression along every line."

1948 Calcutta thesis : The day of armed struggle had arrived

The victory of Ranadive was clearly reflected in the decisions of the Second
Congress of the CPI, held in Calcutta from February 28 to March 6, 1948. The
Congress replaced Joshi by Ranadive as the General Secretary of the Party and
approved a programme of revolutionary war on the Yugoslav pattern presented
by Ranadive himself.

The hard core of Political Thesis adopted at the Second Congress was that a
"revolutionary upsurge" was in motion in India and that the final phase of
the revolution, the phase of armed struggles had arrived. This "people's
democratic revolution", it held, involved the intertwined revolutionary
process of "the completion of the tasks of democratic revolution and the
simultaneous building up of socialism". The socialist revolution would be
generated by promoting the class struggle, waged by the industrial
proletariat in many cities, into a general strike; this would then merge with
the armed struggle of the peasantry, spreading out from Telengana to other
rural areas of India. The armed struggle would be the chief form of the
operations to achieve a people's democratic state.

But in no time the whole movement received a big jolt as it proved wellnigh
impossible to touch off the initial stage of the socialist revolution, i.e. a
general strike in the cities which would spill over to the rural areas, would
merge with the peasant revolution and set the whole country ablaze. This
failure of the party greatly isolated it from the masses. As a result, the
party switched to terrorism and subversion in many parts of the country. 

[for details, see Communist violence in India, Ministry of Home, Government
of India. 1949.]

[These actions resulted in a Government crackdown on the CPI -] On March 26,
1948 under the Public Safety Act the West Bengal Government banned the state
unit of the CPl.  The following week, the party units were declared illegal
in Mysore, Indore, Bhopal and Chandernagore.

With scores of important Communist leaders rounded up and others taking
shelter in the underground cells in the face of intense police repression,
the party apparatus throughout the country had gone almost out of commission.

It should be noted that Ranadive had committed a tactical blunder by placing
at the heart of his strategy a total reliance upon the revolutionary
potential of the urban proletariat, and relegating the raging peasant
struggle in Telengana and other parts of Andhra Pradesh to a secondary
position. p.6

The failure of urban proletariat to bring about an "intertwined" socialist
revolution "within six months" through a series of lightning strikes, on the
one hand, and the successful operation of the Telengana peasant revolt under
the leadership of Rajeswar Rao and the Andhra Communists since 1946, on the
other, totally discredited the Ranadive leadership.

The Andhra Communists argued that the only way to the victory of Communism in
India was the outright application of the strategy of agrarian revolutionary
war, which had been innovated by Mao Tse-tung and successfully earned out in
China. 

The new tactical line of India's revolution set forth by the Andhra
Provincial Committee of the CPI was contemned in a document entitled the
"Andhra Letter", submitted to the Central Executive Committee of the party in
June 1948.
[mentioned in Fic, Victor M., Peaceful Transition to Communism 1n India,
Nachiketa Publications, Bombay, 1969, p.22] 

A version of this letter, published in 1949, urgest that communist forces
in India turn towards the Chinese experience 
of peasant rebellion:

	Our revolution in many respects differs from the classical Russian
	Revolution; and it is to a great extent similar to that of the
	Chinese Revolution. The perspective is not that of general strikes
	and general rising leading to the liberation of the rural sides; but
	dogged resistance and prolonged civil war in the form of an agrarian
	revolution culminating in the capture of political power by the
	democratic front.
		- "Struggle for People's Democracy and Socialism-some
		  Questions of Strategy and Tactics," Communist, Vol. II,
		  No. 4, (June-July, 1949), p. 83, quoted in Overstreet and
		  Windmiller, op. cit., p. 287.

It is revealing that even before the formal victory of the Maoist revolution
in mainland China itself, the An<;lhra Communists led by Rajeswar Rao were
second to none in visualising the prospects and relevance of a revolutionary
strategy exclusively based on the Chinese experience. In fact, after the
triumph of the Chinese Communist Party in October· 1949, there had been a
complete polarisation of Marxism-Leninism (which is intrinsically a European
current of thought) between the Europocentric and Asiocentric forms.  

The victory of the Chinese revolution ·exercised a decisive influence on the
national liberation struggles in South and South-East Asia in that it
presented a definite model of Communist revolution by de-Europeanising
Marxism. 8

Liu Shao-Chi's message of Asian Communism

At a meeting of the World Federation of Trade Unions held in Peking in
November 1949, shortly after the establishment of the Chinese People's
Republic Liu Shao-ch'i declared most emphatically in his opening speech that
the Chinese way was applicable throughout Asia. He proclaimed :

"The way taken by the Chinese people in defeating imperialism and its lackeys
and in founding the People's Republic of China is the way that should be
taken by the peoples of many colonial and semi-colonial countries (in Asia
and Australasia} in their fight for national independence and people's
democracy.  This way, which led the Chinese people to victory, is summarised
in the following formula:

1. The working class must unite with all other classes,.  political parties
   and groups, organizations and individuals, who are willing to oppose the
   oppression 9f imperialism and its running dogs, form a broad nation-wide
   united front and wage a resolute fight against imperialism and its running
   dogs.

2. This nation-wide united front must be led by and built round the working
   class which opposes imperialism most resolutely, most courageously and
   most unselfishly, and its Party, the Communist Party, with the latter as
   its centre. It must be not led by the wavering and compromising national
   burgeoisie or petty bourgeoisie and their parties.

3. In order to enable the working class and its Party, the Communist Party,
   to become the centre for uniting all the forces.  throughout the country
   against imperialism, and to lead competently the national united front to
   victory, it is necessary to build up through long struggles a Communist
   Party, which is armed with the theory of Marxism-Leninism, understands
   strategy and tactics, practises self-criticism and strict discipline and
   is closely linked with the masses.

4. It is necessary to set up wherever and whenever possible · a national
   liberation army which is led by the Communist Party and is powerful and
   skillful in fighting the enemies, as well as the bases on which it relies
   for its activities. and to coordinate the mass struggles in the
   enemy-controlled areas with the armed struggles. Armed struggle is the
   main form of struggle for national liberation in many colonies and
   semi-colonies.
 

Though Ranadive held on to power and went on defending·· his policies
tenaciously throughout 1949, events both at home and abroad started crowding
so thick and fast between July 1949 and January 1950 that at one stage the
Maoist model of revolution seemed to have gained virtual legitimisation
through international Communist sanction. In 1950 the Cominform which had
been exercising guidance over the CPI since its formation in September 1947,
came out with its approval of the Chinese revolutionary strategy as the model
for the colonial and dependent countries. p.14

To this smart shift in Moscow's revolutionary strategy vis-a-vis the colonial
and newly independent countries may be adduced [partly to the the prevailing
cold war tensions with the United States.]

Thus with the prescription for a Maoist line from Liu Shaoch'i and finally
with the green signal from the Cominform in early 1950, the outster of
Ranadive from the post of General Secretary of the CPI became only a matter
of time...

At a meeting of the CPI Central Committee in May 1950- the first in two
years-the Andhra leaders staged a "palace revolution" in the party.  The old
Committee removed Ranadive and elected C. Rajeswara Rao the new General
Secretary. In the new Politbureau of nine members four were taken from the
Andhra Secretariat. The public announcement of the shake-up in the CPI
Central Committee came only on 23 July 1950 in the shape of a Central
Committee statement published in the Soviet Papers Pravda and Izvestia.  The
statement declared the CPI's adherence to the Maoist strategy of revolution.

	The new policy will be based on the national liberation movement in
	China. The course China is taking and which the countries of
	Southeast Asia are following is the only correct course before our
	people. 

[But this victory of a Maoist, agrarian revolution, was rather ephemeral.]

In early 1951, a top-level CPI delegation consisting of S. A. Dange,
A. K. Ghosh, C. Rajeswara Rao and M. Basavpunniah visited Moscow and returned
with a new Draft Programme of the Party along with a highly secret document
eptitled the "Tactical Line", both drawn in consultation with the Soviet
leaders. The Draft· Programme which formalised Moscow's stand on the strategy
and tactics of the Indian revolution was to cast aside both the lines of
urban insurrection and of peasant partisan warfare. A four-class alliance and
a two-stage revolution was to be the strategy but armed revolution was not to
be part of the immediate programme.

	Our party calls upon the toiling millions, the working class, the
	peasantry, the toiling intelligentsia, the middle classes as well as
	the national bourgeoisie interested in the freedom of the country and
	the development of a prosperous life ... to unite into a single
	democratic front in order to attain complete independence of the
	country, the emancipation of the peasants from the oppression of the
	feudals - Programme of the Communist Parly of India, Bombay,
		People's Publishing House, 1951, pp. 23-24.

[The Third Party Congress held at Madurai in for a week starting December 27
1953,] gave the green signal to the shift in the direction of lawful
activities including the use of legislatures and other political institutions
for securing partial demands as well as for strengthening the influence of
the CPl: 

[However, for the considerable opposition this faced, 
see Indian Communist Party: Documents 1930-1956, ed. Karnik, V.B. 1957;

This oppostion would lead to the split in the CPI in 1964, when the more
radical, revolutionary elements joined the CPI(M).  Many of these elements
were fired by a strong sense of left idealism.  When the CPI(M) also
chosed to fight elections in 1967, it generated considerable
disillusionment among this group.

After the CPI(M) used government forces to put down the incipient Naxalbari
rebellion, this group formally split up to form the CPI(ML) under the
leadership of Charu Majumdar, forming the CPI(ML).
]



Also see: 

*  Maoist "spring thunder": the Naxalite movement 1967-1972 
by Arun Mukherjee (2007).