by MA Krishna
14/07/2026
July is the month people of Telugu states recall, on their death anniversaries, Com Doddi Komarayya (the first martyr of Telangana) who died on July 4 1946, veteran communist revolutionaries (CRs) Com DV Rao on July 12, 1984 and Com T. Nagi Reddy on July 28, 1976. TN’s is being observed also as the 50th death anniversary.
A well-attended meeting was held on July12 at Hyderabad Press Club, to mark the occasion, in which several speakers explained the revolutionary roles played by DV and TN, including their struggle against Right and Left deviations.
This article focused on their principled ideological struggle against Left Adventurism is being published to mark the occasion. The subject in this installment is of particular interest in the context of the collapse of Left Adventurism, and well-publicized formal “surrenders” of hundreds of Maoist party cadres, including dozens of their top leaders, in recent past.
It is not well known, and least told even to leaders of ML parties and groups, that Andhra communist revolutionary leaders, DV Rao and TN, CC Members of the undivided CPI, went all the way to Calcutta (now Kolkata), and met Charu Majumdar (1918-1972 July 28). Andhra comrades met him twice within four months, beginning in Oct 1968, and held discussions, including on Telangana’s (1946 july-1951 October armed struggle) experiences and its lessons for Indian revolution. They also pointed out ‘Left’ mistakes in the line and practice, soon after the mass upsurge in Naxalbari, of Charu-led group, who also indulged in such activities elsewhere, Srikakulam in particular.
There was a decade-old (from late 1950s) ongoing militant mass movement of the adivasis of Srikakulam, led by Andhra CRs, which was disrupted by the Charu group’s ‘Left’ line and factionalism from late 1968, as explained elsewhere by DV Rao. In view of the differences on related questions of line and practice, they originally wanted to discuss this before the AP-CCCR (Co-ordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries) joined the (All India body, the AICCCR, and sought wider discussion in the latter. Charu Majumdar, Darjeeling district leader of the erstwhile CPI, however, did not agree with them. (The APCCR formally merged in AICCCR in Oct 1968; “it was a conditional merger, in practice, with our plain-speaking on the various subjects,” DV explained elsewhere, as in a Review.)
Majumdar, who knew little about Telangana, had the audacity to assert, subjectively, that the understanding, about Telangana people’s armed struggle, of DV Rao, veteran leader of Telangana, was “wrong”. That he did – so as to support his own ‘Left’ adventurist line on armed struggle. (Charu Majumdar was for “armed struggle as the only form, for the whole country, as well as the entire stage of the revolution,” DV explained elsewhere, based on among other things, the writings in the magazine Liberation.)
Andhra comrades, even while rejecting the parliamentary path, differed on elections which they said is a ‘tactical question’ as opposed to the ‘Left’ line of ‘boycott elections’ as a question of strategy, applicable to entire India, and for the entire stage of PDR. (To defend their wrong approach, they branded, with no basis, Andhra comrades as upholding parliamentary path. Now decades later, some of the top leaders claimed they changed their position, and see it as part of tactics.
DV and TN opposed the ML’s slogan China’s chairman Mao is our Chairman. DV Rao wrote, ‘mere chanting of Mao’s name is not internationalism’. The Charu group listed this (“not loyal to CPC”) as one of the reasons they dissociated the APCCCR. (Liberation, March 1969).
Organizationally, DV explained, there was disruption of the Srikakulam dt Committee, and the Charu group set up a Rival Centre with them: Charu had visited Andhra in Feb 1969. The decade-long adivasi mass movement was deviated into Left adventurism, and it was suppressed by 1971-72.
Charu Majumdar (CM) did not want any discussion on such questions of line in the AICCCR, and hence ‘dissociated’, unilaterally and arbitrarily, (DV Rao wrote it was “so-called expulsion on flimsy grounds”) the APCCCR from the former on Feb 7, 1969, prevented any discussion in the AICCCR, and went ahead to announce the formation of a party, the CPI-ML, on 22nd of April 1969. Thus the merger in Oct 1968 meeting of AICCCR ended by Feb 1969, in the second meeting: The representative from AP to that meeting was given a “copy of the decision of expelling” the APCCCR. (Liberation, in March 1969 issue, reported the decision to “part with” APCCCR.) There were comrades and units who differed with CM, and they too faced “expulsions”: The Maharashtra unit opposed his arbitrariness regarding APCCCR, and dissociated itself from AICCCR. Thus began the saga of splits, which later on degenerated into factionalism in the ML movement. Scores of ML groups emerged and survived till date.
The APCCCR thus never joined CPI-ML. It held its own separate AP state Convention in the same month, 1969 April, and formed its own organization based on a revolutionary mass line, and adopted an Immediate Program, which explained among other things, the APCCR view of armed struggle linked to agrarian revolution, and based on mass line.Taking that Immediate Program as the basis, DV Rao, TN and some others were arrested on 19th of December 1969, by the Andhra police, and framed up in the Hyderabad Conspiracy Case, the first such major case, in India post-1947. There were in all 48 leaders framed up and arrested. They were in jail for years, 18 of them (DV TN included) were convicted. until they got conditional bails in 1972. It was in the jail DV Rao and TN wrote their classic works, later published in the form of books: India Mortgaged by TN, PDR by DV Rao, were in fact written in the form of their Defence Statements in the Court. DV Rao’s statement was signed by nine others including TN, and was read out in full in the Special Addl Sessions Court from Dec 14 to 18, 1971.
The criticism on Left adventurism, dated Oct 1970, was published in book form (about 150 pages) in Telugu in 1973, later reprinted; and also in English a little later. The English version was also published in the Proletarian Line (issue No.4 in Nov 1979,) a magazine of communist revolutionaries founded by DV Rao (1917-1984 July 12), as a supplement.
Several leaders from Odisha, Kerala, Karnataka, Bengal, UP etc, of the ML parties, who were erstwhile associates of the Charu Majumdar line, had read it for the first time in recent years only. They were surprised and exclaimed, ‘Oh DV Rao raised all this in 1970 itself!’ They said they were too “prejudiced” to read it earlier: they ‘shunned anything by DV Rao for decades’. Some of them said, ‘it is a tragedy that we read it so late’. Communist veteran from Kerala com Gouridasan Nair (1920-2005 July 15), was one such, and said he would compensate by translating it into Malayalam; he did it, but could not publish it.
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Left Trend Among Indian Revolutionaries: Book by DV Rao
(A few extracts from the book of 150 pages, with the above title, are given here, slightly edited, with emphases added. They are significant, worth study, in the context of the collapse of Left adventurism, recent surrenders of dozens of top leaders of the Maoist Party.)
Section 14: Mao’s Thought and the Telangana armed struggle
During the period of 1946-51, armed struggle was carried on under the leadership of the Communist Party in Telangana. In the beginning it was carried on against the Nizam’s military, and against the Congress military after September, 1948. The people of Telangana as well as the revolutionaries were very much influenced by the Chinese revolution. Also it was the first attempt to apply the experiences of the Chinese revolution to the Indian conditions. Basing on the experiences of the Telangana armed struggle (1946-51), the then Andhra Communist Committee, which led the Telangana armed struggle, had made it clear that like the Chinese revolution the Indian revolution has to be a protracted war, that the political power could not be seized as in the case of Russia through insurrection in the semi-colonial and semi-feudal India and that as in China the New Democracy has to be established in India. This is anybody’s knowledge (an important document connected with this was even published in Liberation, magazine of the Charu group those days}. It was in Telangana itself that Mao’s Thought was for the first time applied to the Indian conditions. Therefore it should be said that the Telengana armed struggle is the form of people’s war in India.
The leadership of the CP (M.L.) who refuse to recognise this historical truth say :
Naxalbari represents the first-ever application of Mao’s Thought on the soil of India. It was in Naxalbari that the peasants, for the first time, launched their struggle for the seizure of state power. For this reason, Naxalbari symbolises the path of liberation for exploited masses of the Indian people, thus ushering in a new era in the political history of India, (Charu Majumdar, Liberation, Sep 1969.)
It is indisputable that the Naxalbari struggle has got historical significance. It has clearly proved that the parliamentary system in India has become outdated in India, that there is a revolutionary situation in the country and that the conditions for the armed struggle are mature in several parts of the country. it has also reiterated the fact that the Chinese path is the only path for the liberation of India and that it is the path of people’s war. This served as a warning for all the Indian revolutionaries and on this warning they started to prepare the masses for armed struggle in their respective areas.
In the course of this armed struggle, the people under the leadership of the revolutionaries established village Soviets (Grama Rajyas) in 3000 villages of Telangana. They organised the people’s armed forces. They distributed 10 lakh acres of land of the landlords among the poor and landless peasants, and introduced many revolutionary reforms in -the interest of the masses. They laid foundations for the People’s Democracy. In Telangana it was proved in practice that the Indian revolution would be in the form of protracted war to achieve the People’s Democracy (then known as New Democracy).
Just because the then leadership of the Communist Party of India betrayed the revolution in 1951 and took to the parliamentary path, the significance of the Telangana armed struggle does not become unimportant in any way. The valuable experiences gained by applying Mao’s Thought in the armed struggle are also very essential for the revolutionary struggles and the armed struggles going on today. To refuse to accept them is to refuse to learn the lessons of the Indian revolutionary struggles. This is a thing that no revolutionary should do.
The Naxalbari armed struggle which has so much of significance has not however continued as a protracted war. They have even accepted the mistakes that have led to the failure of this struggle as follows:
1. Lack of strong party organisation.
2. Failure to rely whole-heartedly on the masses to build a powerful mass base.
3. Ignorance of military affairs.
4. Thinking on old lines and a formal attitude toward the establishment of political power and the work of revolutionary land reform.
(While we accepted the teachings of Mao in words, we persisted in revisionist methods in practice. Party organisation in every area actually remained inactive.)
5. Party members were all active at the beginning of the struggle but they were swept away by the vast movement of the people.
6. We did not politically assess, nor did we propagate among the people, the significance of the great tasks performed by the heroic peasants. We now admit frankly that we had no faith in the heroic peasant masses who were swift as a storm, organised themselves, formed revolutionary peasant committees, completed the 10 great tasks and advanced the class struggle at a swift pace during the period from April to September 1967.
(Kanu Sanyal Report on Terai, 1968 Oct 24.)
(In this Terai Report, com Kanu Sanyal was constrained by the Left adventurist line he too shared. Later in April 1973, he came out with a fresh document, More about Naxalbari, which was published in Proletarian Path, (1974 May issue), a magazine of CRs founded and edited jointly by DV Rao and Moni Guha (of Bengal), with a small Intro. It was also published in Telugu journal of CRs, Jana Shakti (1974 Oct 5), with a small intro by the editors (TN and DV Rao), who stressed its importance. They said it was self-critical, carrying forward the understanding contained in the “six-man Letter” that revealed the discussions ML comrades, Kanu sanyal and Souren Bose, had with CPC leaders led by Zhou enlai; Mao himself was present for some time. The CPC was critical of the “Left” mistakes of Naxalbari. The six comrades had the benefit of discussions with Andhra comrades while all of them were in Visakhapatnam jail, in connection with Parvatipuram conspiracy case related to Srikakulam adivasi struggle (1968-72). Com TN himself was the chairman of the (Legal etc) Defence Committee, and could interact with some of them.
(See the section ‘Spring Thunder’ and the ‘Six-man letter’: Fraternal criticism made by the CPC in the article mentioned below:
Remembering Comrade D. Bhuvan Mohan Patnaik, veteran communist revolutionary leader of Odisha, on his Birth Centenary
(28/10/2025)
In this 1973 Review, Sanyal presented Naxalbari’s original mass revolutionary line as opposed to the “Left sectarian line,” that later crept in, and how the two lines “clashed” on the ground. He corrected, based on ground realities, the “Left” conclusions drawn in the Terai Report. .
The leadership of CP (M.L.) accepted Mao’s Thought in words and followed revisionism in practice. (In section 15, of the same work, DV explained revisionism has a Left variant too. Rejection of agrarian revolution by the Right revisionists and by the Left revisionists too, together with its link with people’s armed struggle are common.)
We now go back to DV’s writing:
Even today this leadership is merely chanting Mao’s quotations but they are not in actual fact applying Mao’s Thought to the Indian conditions. (We have already explained as to how they are not taking the Indian conditions into consideration and working contrary to Mao’s Thought).
They themselves admit (in Terai Report etc) that they did not rely upon the masses. The position with them is same even today. The experiences of Naxalbari show that no leadership can successfully lead the people’s struggles without fully relying upon the masses. In spite of their loud talk about relying upon the masses, they are not in actual fact still prepared to undertake the revolutionary mass mobilisation. Therefore this self-criticism of theirs has come to be nothing but formal.
On the one hand, they admit that they did not realise the significance of revolutionary land reforms. But on the other hand, they are formulating that the Naxalbari struggle is not a struggle for land but for political power. They have gone back on this question which is one of the items of their own self-critical report and thus refuse to admit it.
The Naxalbari leadership could have in fact avoided these mistakes, had they studied and correctly grasped the experiences of the Telangana armed struggle…
It is clear that it is only for the purpose of refusing to take the experiences of Telangana armed struggle that they are refusing to admit the fact that the Telangana armed struggle was guided by Mao’s Thought.
It is indisputable that the revolution today would also be guided by Mao’s Thought. But for a revolutionary to reject the experiences of the armed struggle, especially the Telangana and Tripura armed struggles, that went on during the period of 1946-51, under whatever pretext, is unpardonable.
Similarly, drawing correct lessons from the experiences of the Naxalbari, Srikakulam and other armed struggles going on today, the revolutionaries should enrich their revolutionary experiences. Only then would they be able to provide correct leadership to the armed struggle going on in their respective areas..
The leadership of CP (M.L.) have failed to take correct lessons not only from the experiences of Telangana armed struggle but also from the experiences of struggles under their leadership. They have given up the task of building the revolutionary mass movements. They are portraying their “annihilation of the class enemy” as guerilla warfare, and thus depriving the armed struggle of its necessary mass base or at least weakening it.
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Section 15. Deviation from Marxism-Leninisim and Mao’s Thought
DV Rao continues:
If we have to correctly understand this deviation in the Indian revolutionary movement, we should study what Mao has said about the “Roving Rebel Bands” during the armed struggle in China as well as what Lenin has said about “terrorism”.
In saying that “Some People want to increase our political influence only by means of roving guerilla actions but are unwilling to increase it by undertaking the arduous task of building up base areas and establishing the people’s political power”, Mao explained one of the characteristics of the Roving Rebel Bands. In order to rectify this tendency, he says that we should, besides conducting propaganda about this deviation in the party and the revolutionary people’s army, “Draw active workers and peasants experienced in struggle into the ranks of the Red Army so as to change its composition”.(Mao: Correcting Mistaken Ideas in the Party).
We have explained that though the leadership of the C.P. (M.L.) wish to build the base areas and to establish people’s political power, the slogans that they advance are in no way useful for this purpose. On the basis of the momentary enthusiasm that their “actions of annihilation of the class enemy” create among the masses, they have claimed in unmistakable terms that such actions would rouse the masses and enhance the influence of the revolutionary forces.
Thus the “actions of annihilation of the class enemy” that they carry on disregarding the building of revolutionary mass movements are similar to the actions of the Roving Rebel Bands that Mao pointed out. Mao says that the active workers and peasants with struggle experience should be drawn into the revolutionary people’s army in order to rectify this tendency. For this reason Mao attaches great significance to the struggle of the peasantry and the working class.
Besides what Mao has said above about the Roving Rebel Bands, it is essential to study what Lenin had said about “terrorism”..On “terrorism”, in one of the resolutions of the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, Lenin writes thus:
“The Congress decisively rejects terrorism, i.e., the system of individual political assassinations, as being a method of political struggle which is most inexpedient at the present time, diverting the best forces from the urgent and imperatively necessary work of organisation and agitation destroying contact between the revolutionaries and the masses of the revolutionary classes of the population and spreading, both among the revolutionaries themselves and the population in general, utterly distorted ideas of the aims and methods of struggle against the autocracy”. (Collected Works. Vol.6, page 474).
While writing about the struggle of the Bolshevism against the petty bourgeois semi-anarchical revolutionism, he explains the struggle within the Socialist Revolutionary Party on this question, as follows.
“..This party considered itself particularly “revolutionary” or ‘Left1 because of its recognition of individual terrorism, assassination — something that we Marxists emphatically rejected. It was, of course, only on grounds of expediency that we rejected individual – terrorism(Collected Works. Vol.31, Page 33)
“Without in the least denying violence and terrorism in principle, we demanded work for the preparation of such forms of violence as were calculated to bring about the direct participation of the masses and which guaranteed that participation”. (Collected Works V0l 6, Page 195).
This is what Lenin has said about the struggle against individual terrorism that stood in the way of preparations for the 1905 insurrection. Notwithstanding the fact that we are now following the path of people’s war and not insurrection, the basic principle that there should be mass participation in the revolution and that we should prepare the masses to this end remains the same in both the cases. The insurrection is a form of struggle in which the working class seize the political power through an armed insurrection, while the people’s war is the form of struggle in which the political power is seized through protracted (peasant) war. Viewing from this angle, and analysing our experience, we should find it inescapable to prepare the masses, the party and the armed forces in order to launch and carry on the armed struggle. It is on this that our victory solely depends.
Lenin did not merely reject violence and terrorism as a matter of principle. He directed that all Marxists should reject violence in the form of individual terrorism. He pointed out that while not being useful, it is extremely harmful to the revolution. Thus he denounced terrorism as unacceptable.
Like all the other revolutions, our people’s war is also undoubtedly a violent revolution. All the people’s armed struggles going on in different parts of our country today are also likewise violent struggles…It is only the actions which are going on in the form of “actions of annihilation of the class enemy” that we are opposing. We oppose this form because, in our opinion, the indiscriminate actions without preparing the masses for armed struggle would be harmful to the armed struggle.
Not only the “actions of annihilation of the class enemy”, carried out by the followers of the C.P. (M.L.) in the Circar, Rayala-seema and Telangana districts of Andhra Pradesh, possess the characteristics of “roving rebel bands” and terrorism as pointed out by Mao and Lenin, but also they have yielded exactly the same results..They have caused irreparable losses to the revolutionary movement..It is clear that the revolutionary movement in different parts of the country has suffered to the extent this programme was implemented by their cadres.
We have explained that the “programme of annihilation of the class enemy” does not reflect a correct understanding of the armed struggle and that it is opposed to Marxism-Leninism and Mao’s Thought. We have also shown that it does not conform to what-ever experiences of armed struggle we have. The experiences that have already been acquired clearly show as to how harmful is this deviation… If they fail to analyse their own experiences in the light of Maxism-Leninism and Mao’s Thought and rectify this deviation, they would travel in the same wrong path and ultimately become divorced from Marxism-Leninism and Mao’s Thought.
(More on the subject in the next installments.)
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Related articles:
1. Comrade DV Rao: Unique Role In Indian Communist Movement
(12/07/2020)
(2. For more on the exploitation of adivasis of Srikakulam, the adivasi movement against it, and the Conspiracy cases, see the article published in counter currents, 2019 July 28:
T.Nagi Reddy On Adivasis And Their Struggles- Recalling Srikakulam Girijana Peasant Revolt 50 Years Later (2019)
3. See the section ‘Spring Thunder’ and the ‘Six-man letter’: Fraternal criticism made by the CPC in the article mentioned below:
Remembering Comrade D. Bhuvan Mohan Patnaik, veteran communist revolutionary leader of Odisha, on his Birth Centenary
(28/10/2025)
(Author MA Krishna is a media person, who occasionally contributed to the counter currents.org.)
The Andhra Pradesh Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries (APCCCR) and its Progeny
The Andhra Pradesh Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries (APCCCR) was a leftist split-off from the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. Within Indian Maoism it and its successor organizations represented one of the most important if not the most important alternative to Charu Mazumdar’s Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) line.
Like Mazumdar and the other leaders of Indian Maoism, the founders of the APCCCR started out in the Communist Party of India (CPI). Several APCCCR leaders had in fact been prominent in the CPI. These included T. Nagi Reddy and D.V. Rao, both of whom had been active in the legendary Telangana armed struggle of 1946-1951. Rao had been one of the authors of the CPI’s 1948 “Andhra Thesis” arguing for the Indian revolution to follow the Chinese path of protracted people’s war. Reddy was a prominent CPI leader and member of the Andhra Pradesh legislative assembly in 1968.
In 1964, when the CPI split, Reddy, Rao and Mazumdar all left to go with the CPI(M). Beginning in 1965, however, Mazumdar grew increasingly dissatisfied by what he considered theoretical revisionism and political opportunism in the CPI(M). In 1967 he and his supporters launched a peasants’ uprising at Naxalbari in the Darjeeling district of West Bengal. This was the much celebrated “Spring Thunder Over India.”
For Reddy, Rao and their allies in Andhra Pradesh, the break with the CPI(M) would take longer. The flash point was a draft resolution prepared by the CPI(M) Central Committee detailing its differences with the Communist Party of China on certain ideological questions (the so-called “Madurai document”). In January 1968, at the instigation of Reddy, Rao and others, including Chandra Pulla Reddy, a plenary meeting of the Andhra Pradesh CPI(M) rejected the Central Committee’s draft resolution by a majority vote: 158/52.
The CPI(M) attempted (see its “Letter to Andhra Comrades”) to win back the Andhra Pradesh dissidents to no avail. As a result, T. Nagi Reddy, Rao, Chandra Pulla Reddy and another dissident leader, Kolla Venkaiah, were expelled from the CPI(M). In the meantime, the radicals had been organizing secretly and formally split from the CPI(M) after the latter’s Burdwan plenum in April 1968. They took with them 11 of the 14 Andhra Pradesh district committees and around 60% of the CPI(M) membership in the state (approximately 8,000 people in all). They were also able to capture the local CPI(M) publication, Janashakti. In July, the dissidents formally constituted themselves as the APCCCR.
While this process was unfolding in Andra Pradesh, in November 1967, under the leadership of Charu Mazumdar and with strong support from China, the All India Co-ordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries (AICCCR) of India was being formed. Its professed goals were to: a. develop and co-ordinate militant struggles at all levels, especially peasant struggles of Naxalbari Type; b. develop militant struggles of the working class; c. wage ideological struggle against revisionism and popularize Mao Tse Tung Thought; d. develop a revolutionary programme on a correct tactical line; e. found a new revolutionary communist party (which it did in 1969, forming the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) (CPI(M-L)).
APCCCR decided to affiliate with the AICCCR, but strategic and tactical differences with the Mazumdar line soon led to their expulsion. APCCCR characterized these differences as follows:
a. The AICCCR negated the mass line and exhibited romantic and petit bourgeois tendencies when they advocated armed struggle with no relation to the people’s consciousness. Typical of this error was the advocacy of the ’annihilation of the class enemies’ line. The APCCCR stressed that a mass agrarian revolutionary movement should be built up systematically and carefully, with particular attention to the land question. It also stressed implementation of the mass revolutionary line of the Telengana Armed Struggle.
b. APCCCR insisted on the need of building multiple forms of struggle and organization and the need to combine mass forms of struggle with armed struggle. The AICCCR totally neglected this aspect.
c. APCCCR opposed the line of “Boycott of parliamentary Elections” as a strategic path. Elections were a question of tactics and one of the several illegal forms of struggle. For the AICCCR, election boycotts were a matter of principal.
In April 1969, an APCCCR plenary session strengthened the organizing, adopted the “Immediate programme” and renamed the group the Revolutionary Communist Committee of Andhra Pradesh. It launched limited armed struggles in Warangal, Khammam, Karimnagar, Nalgonda, and East Godavari.
In December 1969 six out of the nine APCCCR State Committee members were arrested, including T. Nagi Reddy and D.V. Rao. The arrests were a serious blow to the organization. In response, a new state committee led by Chandra Pulla Reddy was created in July 1970.
In 1971 APCCCR suffered a major split, with the Chandra Pulla Reddy-led group leaving the party. For a while this group also called itself APCCCR, but in September 1973 it took the name Andhra Pradesh Revolutionary Communist Party (APRCP). The APRCP led by Chandra Pulla Reddy was the strongest Maoist group in the state in the 1970s. It conducted armed struggle operations in various locations, defended the armed defence of the cadres in the face of repression, but also insisted upon combining these action with the active mobilization of masses in struggle.
1975 saw significant changes for both the Nagi Reddy and Pulla Reddy groups. In that year, the APRCP merged with the Provisional Central Committee, Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) of Satayanarayan Singh. Singh had been a leader in Mazumdar’s CPI(M-L) but then led the revolt inside the party against him, setting up a parallel Central Committee. In November 1971 the new Central Committee officially declared Majumdar expelled from the CPI(M-L) and elected Singh as the new general secretary. In 1980, Chandra Pulla Reddy broke with Singh and went on to form yet another CPI (ML).
The APCCCR also actively pursued efforts to unify like-minded Marxist-Leninists in 1975. It prepared a draft Programme Path and Constitution for unity talks and invited other groups to a unity conference. Three groups responded: West Bengal Coordination Committee, North Zone Committee and West Bengal Communist Unity Centre. The resulting organization was called the Unity Centre of Communist Revolutionaries of India (Marxist-Leninist) (UCCRI(ML)).
The April 1975 unity conference adopted a programme, path, method of work, constitution and a statement on unification. The unity conference elected a Central Committee with D. V. Rao as its secretary. Other CC members included T. Nagi Reddy, Moni Guha (one of the first anti-revisionist dissidents in the international communist movement), and Parimal Das Gupta (a long-time anti-revisionist and one of Charu Mazumdar’s earliest critics). The UCCRI(ML) started publishing the Spark as its central organ.
Shortly after the UCCRI(ML)’s formation, Indira Gandhi launched her State of Emergency. The UCCRI(ML) was proscribed and forced underground. At the same time, efforts were undertaken to unite the UCCRI(ML) with other forces that were critical of Charu Mazumdar’s strategy and tactics and were supporters of the T. Nagi Reddy line. As a result of these efforts, a merger was effected with the Punjab Communist Revolutionary Committee (PCRC) led by Harbhajan Singh Sohi in June 1976.
Harbhajan Singh Sohi was originally part of the Charu Mazumdar led C.P.I.(M-L) but left it to form the Fereozepur Bhatinda Committee in 1969. This group came to be known as the Punjab Communist Revolutionary Committee. The PCRC played a leading role in the Punjab Students Union and the Naujavan Bharat Sabha, a popular youth organization. As a result of the 1976 merger between UCCRI(ML) and the PCRC, PCRC secretary Harbhajan Singh Sohi (and two leaders from Andhra Pradesh, Madhu and Anand, were added to the UCCRI(ML) Central Committee.
In July 1976 T. Nagi Reddy, who had been the most important leader of the UCCRI(ML), died. His death was a severe set-back for the group. In the following month the UCCRI(ML) suffered a major split. A conflict had developed in the CC between D.V. Rao and other Central Committee members. One of the resulting UCCRI(ML)s rallied around D. V. Rao. The other elected Moni Guha as its General Secretary.
The Rao UCCRI(ML) itself underwent a split in September 1979, this time over events in China, advocacy of the “theory of three worlds,” the death of Mao and the defeat of the Gang of Four. The majority, led by Rao and his supporters, upheld the “theory of three worlds” while the minority, led by Sohi, rejected it. As a result of these differences the former PCRC broke away and went on to establish a separate UCCRI(ML), known as the Unity Centre of Communist Revolutionaries of India (Marxist-Leninist) [Harbhajan Sohi]. In 1982 this group, too, split and a parallel Unity Centre of Communist Revolutionaries of India (Marxist-Leninist) [Ajmer group] was created.
The Rao UCCRI(ML) experienced further turmoil in 1980 over whether or not to participate in national elections. In Andhra Pradesh the UCCRI(ML) promoted non-participation, in reality a boycott, while supporting certain candidates in West Bengal and Orissa. In the aftermath of the elections, yet another split developed with Rao leaving the party with a group of followers in Andhra and setting up his own UCCRI(ML). After Rao’s departure, Anand became the new Central Committee Secretary of the other UCCRI(ML).
In 1988 Anand himself broke away from UCCRI(ML) taking with him the Maharashtra unit. In the aftermath, he initiated a dialogue with Sohi’s UCCRI(ML). Later that year, the two UCCRI (ML) factions led by Sohi and Anand joined with three other groups, namely the CPI(ML) led by Chandrasekhar, the RCPI led by Takra and the OCCPI(ML) led by Jitender to form the Centre of Communist Revolutionaries of India (CCRI).
The remaining UCCRI(ML) faction, led by Viswam and Madhu, merged with five other groups to form the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Janashakti in 1992. Madhu signed the merger agreement on behalf of his UCCRI(ML). The CPI (ML) Janashakti was built on and continued the revolutionary traditions of Andhra Pradesh and the Telangana Rebellion, as developed and articulated by and T. Nagi Reddy, D.V. Rao, and Chandra Pulla Reddy.
In 1995 the CCRI merged with the Central Team of the CPI(ML) (CTCPI(ML)), the Communist Unity Centre of India and the Marxist-Leninist Organising Centre to create a new organization named the Communist Party Re-Organisation Centre of India (Marxist-Leninist) (CPRCI(ML)). The merger was significant as it brought together groups that had evolved from different streams with divergent ideological positions. The Central Team descended from the Charu Mazumdar led CPI(ML) tradition while the CCRI belonged to the T. Nagi Reddy tradition.
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Let Us Learn from Com T. Nagi Reddy, By Meghanath [from India Mortgaged, 2nd. Edition]
The Development of the Tarimela Nagi Reddy Line, By Srinath Reddy Tarimela
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Rebellion is Right!, (on the Andhra State Party Plenum, CPI (M)) [Liberation, Vol. I, No 5 (March 1968)]
Class War in Andhra Pradesh, [Frontier, May 4, 1968]
The Rebels Press Statement (June 1968)
The Andhra “Extremists,” by H. Rao
Resolution on Andhra State Co-ordination Committee, by the All India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries [Liberation, Vol. II, No 5 (March 1969)]
“To Move the People Into Revolutionary Action Is Our Task” by T. Nagi Reddy [from India Mortgaged, 2nd. Edition]
Immediate Programme, Adopted by the Andhra Pradesh Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries
The Srikakulam Story Part I; Part II, by Narayanmurthi
The Politics of Nagi Reddy, by a journalist [Liberation, Vol. II, No 12 (October 1969)]
Left Trend Among Indian Revolutionaries [Extracts], by D.V. Rao
Indian Maoism – Two Shades? by Mallikaranjan Rao [Frontier, 4 July 1970]
Some Problems Concerning the Path of People’s War in India by Chandra Pulla Reddy for the Andhra Pradesh Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries (n.d. (1970?))
People’s War Path – Lessons of China by Chandra Pulla Reddy (1970)
New Tactics in Andhra, by Mallikaranjan Rao [Frontier, 23 January 1971]
Will You Vote?, by C.K. Kkatumba Reddy [Frontier, February 27, 1971]
Fundamental Line and Question of Unity [Extract], by D.V. Rao
A Forged Letter [Frontier, May 29, 1971]
What To Do?, by C. Chandraasekhara Rao [Frontier, June 12, 1971]
Andhra Pradesh: Conspiracy Case Diaries
Fight Against Revisionism: Party Letter from the Andhra State Committee of the CPI (Marxist-Leninist) to all Andhra Comrades [Liberation, Vol. V, No 1 (July 1971-January 1972]
Serious Mistakes (summary of part of a document released by the Revolutionary Communist Committee of Andhra Pradesh) [Frontier, 29 July 1972]
Andhra Pradesh: Analysis of a Split by a correspondent [Frontier, 27 January 1973]
Note to the English Translation of Right Opportunist Trend Inside the Party, [Extract], by D.V. Rao
The First Conference of the Andhra Pradesh Revolutionary Communist Party
More on Andhra Politics by Sudhendu Roy [Frontier, 19 January 1974]
Preface to the First English Edition, Telengana Armed Struggle and the Path of Indian Revolution, by D.V. Rao
The Parvatipuram Case, by D. Krishnamurty [Frontier, December 28, 1974]
“Unite to Build a Single Party” by Satyanarain Singh, General Secretary, CPI (ML); Paila Vasudeva Rao, CPI (ML); P. Ramanarsiah, Secretary, Andhra Pradesh Revolutionary Communist Party; and Chandra Pulla Reddy, leader, member, APRCP [Frontier, 8 March 1975]
On United Front, [Extract from Political and Organisational Report of the UCCRI(ML) adopted at its first Central Conference in July 1977]
In Defense of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought and General Line of the International Communist Movement by Harbhajan Singh Sohi (1978)
Hold Alot the Invincible Banner of Mao Tsetung Thought by Harbhajan Singh Sohi (1980)
Hold High The Banner of Mao Tse-tung Thought! by the Central Committee, UCCRI (ML) (1980)
The Politics of Comrade D.V. Rao and his UCCRI by Chandra Pulla Reddy (1980)
India Mortgaged. A Marxist-Leninist Appraisal by T. Nagi Reddy (1993)
See also:
Chandra Pulla Reddy Internet Archive
Janashakti, organ of the Central Committee of the CPI (M-L) – Janashakti
https://www.marxists.org/subject/india/apcccr/index.htm
Naxalbari and Subsequent Four Decades: A Retrospection (Part-5)
AnvilCommunist-movement • National
Deepayan Bose
Criticism of Charu Majumdar’s Line and the Continuance of the Differences
Before continuing the discussion on the increasing differences within the CPI (M-L), it is to be noted that apart from the Chinese party, several other fraternal parties had also criticized the “left” adventurist line of Charu Majumdar. We have already discussed about the criticism presented by the M-L parties of Great Britain and New Zealand. Around June 1971, Shanmugathasan, the leader of the Communist Party of Ceylon (at that time Sri Lanka was known by this name only) had sent his fraternal criticism through Appu from Tamil Nadu who was a central committee member of CPI (M-L). Shanmugathasan was a well-known name in the world M-L movement. He had close contact with Mao and the top leaders of the Chinese party. His criticism included three points. The first point was concerned with rejecting all forms of struggle. Shanmugathasan was of clear view that the role of mass organizations and mass movements is inevitable in any revolutionary struggle. His second criticism, which was related to the first one, was that the slogan of ‘struggle for capturing political power’ is wrong because it neglects the basic need of the struggle for economic demands. The third point was regarding the title of Charu Majumdar’s article, ‘Will Telangana become the Yenan of India?’. The comrades from Sri Lanka were of the opinion that such unnecessary slogans alert the enemy and help it in identifying the places where it has to focus its attacks. Among these three points, the last one is insignificant and it depends on the concrete conditions of the class struggle in the country in question as to whether or not a party writes in this manner about its areas of struggle and whether or not it presents such an assessment in its party organs. But the essence of the first two points was the same as that of the Chinese suggestions and that of the criticism of the Charu Majumdar’s “left” adventurist line as presented by the DV-Nagi group, Harbhajan Singh Sohi group, Asit Sen, Pramod Sengupta, Parimal Dasgupta, Sushital Roy Chowdhury etc.
An important criticism of the “left” adventurist line was put forward by the ‘West Bengal-Bihar Border Regional Committee’, which is usually known as Birbhum Committee. Apart from West Bengal’s Murshidabad and Birbhum districts, the Santhal Pargana of Bihar at that time (today it is in Jharkhand) also came under the purview of this committee. The Birbhum Committee sent this criticism to the West Bengal Committee and through it to the Central Committee, but it was suppressed first by the state committee (which was under the stranglehold of the Charu acolytes such as Deepak Biswas and Dileep Bose etc.) and then by Charu Majumdar and no member of the central committee apart from Suniti Kumar Ghosh could even get a clue of it. Later, we will briefly mention how it all happened while discussing about the development of the differences of Charu with Suniti Kumar Ghosh. Because of this reason, this document does not find any mention in most of the books written on Naxalbari and the M-L movement. Subsequently when the Central Organising Committee, CPI (M-L) was formed, the other members of its leadership were informed about this by Suniti Kumar Ghosh. Later, when the Communist League of India (M-L) was formed in 1978, this document and the fact of its suppression do find mention in the document pertaining to history presented in its first conference. All this will be discussed at appropriate place. This document and the fact of its suppression do find mention in ‘Naxalbari: Before and After’, the memoir written by Suniti Kumar Ghosh a few years before his death on Naxalbari and the M-L movement.
This report of the Birbhum Committee assumes special significance because after Telangana, Charu’s “left” adventurist line was implemented on the biggest scale in this region itself. The party activities began in Birbhum in the beginning of 1971. The Sriniketan Agricultural College of Bolpur had come under the hegemony of the students who were influenced by the M-L politics. A large number of students and youth from Calcutta also started working there. In this extremely poor region, the landlords and usurers had established their reign of terror over the poor peasants. Hence, even the terrorist activities of the communist revolutionaries received tremendous support of the common poor population initially. In the entire region, the guerilla squads consisting of ten to twenty people were formed in which two or three people used to be from the middle class and the rest were landless peasants. About 255 rifles and pistols were snatched away from the landlords and the police and were distributed among the landless. By the end of June, 175 people had been annihilated in which there were 5 policemen, 17 big, 32 medium and 26 small landlords, 12 usurers, 11 dacoits and 7 police agents. Finding the landlords and the goon gangs of the local leaders of Congress and CPM into helpless situation, the CRPF was called, but despite that, the situation could not be brought under control. The guerilla squads used to march openly not just in the villages but also in the towns of the area. The Santhal peasants under the leadership of guerilla squads used to attack the houses of landlords and their crimes were read out loud and sentences were given in the people’s courts. Some were released while others were given death sentence as well. The usury had come to halt in the entire region. It is to be noted that Magurjan, too, came under the purview of the Birbhum Committee, where a squad of poor peasants had attacked on the camp of Railway emergency force and snatched away six rifles and bullets after which Charu Majumdar hurriedly declared the formation of the People’s Liberation Army without consulting the committee. We have already discussed this declaration earlier. The mid-term election of 1971 was approaching and it was feared that due to the Naxal activities, the election might not take place in West Bengal. Then, on behalf of the central government, the Bengal in-charge Siddharth Shankar Ray decided to use army. The Eastern command regiment of Lieutenant General Jagjit Singh Arora, which had just returned from the Bangladesh war, was asked to stay in Bengal and all the armed forces of police were also attached. Then began the historical phase of repression which is mentioned in detail by Sumanto Bannerji, Suniti Kumar Ghosh, Amit Bhattacharya, etc. in their respective books. Before going into its details, we will first discuss the Birbhum Committee’s report and subsequent developments.
After the beginning of the intensive cycle of repression, the ongoing struggle in the Birbhum region got scattered. The Birbhum Committee had sent its first report to the leadership when the activities of the guerilla squads were in their full swing. In this first report, special mention of the contributions of Charu Majumdar was made while supporting the party policy and the line of annihilation. The committee sent its second report at the time when the struggle was in dispersal and a situation of stagnation had come to exist. In this, the Birbhum Committee had put forward a vocal and clear criticism of Charu Majumdar’s ‘line of annihilation’ based on the sum up of its experiences. As per the report, the thought of mobilizing the peasants by the annihilation of the class enemies had proven to be incorrect. Through this only ten percent of the youth population of poor peasants could be made active in the struggle. Due to this tactics, the guerilla squads got isolated from the peasant community at the time of the attack by enemy. The peasants could be mobilized to some extent only in those areas where the documents of mortgaging the land were burnt after the annihilation and the fixed property of the ‘jotdars’ were confiscated and distributed among the peasants. The committee stated in unequivocal terms that not only the line of annihilation is not the highest form of class struggle, it is not even a class struggle in itself and on its own. The second point of the criticism was that there was no policy of the party as to what should be done in case of the organized attack of the enemy’s armed forces and how to carry forward the struggle along with the encounter. This proved to be a fatal mistake. Along with these focal points, the report also criticized the party’s non-participation in the struggles of the working class.
According to the information gathered from Bharatjyoti Roy Chowdhury, a member of the Birbhum Committee, this report which had sixty printed pages had been handed over to the Bengal State Committee in March or April of 1972. It was printed and published from ‘Bengal Printers’, located in Sheoraphuli in Hooghly district by Bharatjyoti’s father Pradyut Roy Chowdhury who had been the accused of ‘Birbhum conspiracy cases’ during the British raj and had even served the ‘Kala-Pani’ sentence in Andaman’s cellular jail. By the time this report was handed over to the Bengal Committee, the committee had come to be captured by Charu acolytes’ faction including Deepak Biswas, Dileep Bannerji and Mahadev Mukherji who used to consider Charu to be the ‘revolutionary authority’ and ‘India’s Mao’ and who wanted to continue the line of annihilation at all costs.
The death of Sushital Roy Chowdhury and Sauren Basu’s arrest had taken place by March 1971 itself and by August, Saroj Dutt was also murdered. After the martyrdom of Saroj Dutt, Deepak Biswas and Dileep Bannerji were coopted within the Bengal State Committee and the responsibility of the editorship of party’s Bangla organ ‘Deshbrati’ which earlier was with Saroj Dutt was now given to Suniti Kumar Ghosh. Immediately after the martyrdom of Dutt, Deepak sent a brief note along with a letter to be published in the ‘Deshbrati’ and he claimed that it was the summary of Saroj Dutt’s speech given before the Bengal-Bihar Regional Committee. A note which has been given by Suniti Kumar Ghosh in his book after having edited parts of it is as follows:
Every party implements Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought after assessing the concrete conditions of its own country. Our relation with other (communist) parties will always be fraternal. If, while leading the revolution, our ideas would be different from the international leadership, we would have to implement our own assessment. Chairman Mao is our international leader; but the Chinese party can never be international authority. Its relation with other (communist) party would be fraternal. Hence the Chinese communist party and Chairman Mao are not one and the same. Those who are dependent on external hearsay and refuse to see the internal development, can never understand dialectical materialism. Lenin built the Bolshevik party; Mao built the Chinese party. The history of India has vested the responsibility of the historical task of the party building in this country on comrade Charu Majumdar. That’s the reason why in the current circumstances, Comrade Charu Majumdar is the central committee of CPI (M-L). To establish Charu Majumdar’s line is to demolish the counter-revolutionary revisionist line.
Suniti Kumar Ghosh was a bit sceptical about the authenticity of this comment, however, it could be very well possible that Saroj Dutt did make such a comment as he himself was a staunch “left” adventurist and a Charu acolyte. Owing to the petty-bourgeois sentimentalism, he was replete with the tendency of the personality cult. On the basis of some previous incidents, it is very well possible that he would have said such things. We have stated earlier as to how Charu was rattled and shattered after receiving the Chinese suggestions, but when Saroj Dutt and Souren Basu brought him from Puri to Calcutta, how he regained his lost confidence after talking to these staunch supporters of his ultra-leftist line. It may well be possible that Deepak Biswas had exaggerated while summarizing Saroj Dutt’s comments and the entire note could well be forged by him too. Be that as it may, the fact that this note was sent to ‘Deshbrati’ for publishing shows the extent to which the Bolshevik work-culture had got degenerated in the party by that time under the adverse impact of the ultra-leftist line and there was no meaning of the committee system. On the one hand, Charu Majumdar was eager to fulfill his eternal aspiration to declare himself as the authority and on the other hand he wanted to gradually change the line to bring it closer to the Chinese suggestions. This dual purpose was repeatedly creating dilemma in his decisions and behaviour. When Suniti Kumar Ghosh received the note sent by Deepak, he was at Devghar with Charu himself. When he read out the note to Charu Majumdar, he initially said not to publish it. In December 1971, in a meeting with Ghosh in the presence of Dileep Bannerji, Sadhan Sarkar and few others, when Deepak Biswas raised the issue of not publishing the brief note of the Saroj Dutt’s speech, Ghosh said that the reason behind this was that there were some objectionable comments in it about the Chinese party. Deepak was of the view that the note must be published by editing out those portions. Suniti Kumar Ghosh, while later meeting with Charu opined that the note cannot be published only under the condition that Charu himself writes such a letter as most members of the State Committee were in favour of publishing it. Initially Charu was ready to write such a letter; however, he changed his mind only after half an hour and asked to let the note be published. When asked by Ghosh, he even suggested its title as ‘There cannot be a revolution without a revolutionary leadership!’ The note was published with the same title in ‘Deshbrati’. After some time, when Ghosh relinquished all the party responsibilities, the note was republished with the title of ‘Without revolutionary authority there can be no revolution’.
In January 1972, Sadhan Sarkar was also arrested. After this, the meeting of state committee was called in a dubious manner, for instance, the intimation of the meeting was given to all the members quite late and the information about the venue was also not given in time. In that meeting, Deepak got himself elected to the post of the secretary of Bengal State Committee through manipulation with the help of Dileep and Mahadev Mukherji. When, on the request of Deepak and Dileep, Suniti Ghosh met them in February 1972 they raised the question as to why he does not use the words ‘revolutionary authority’? When Suniti Ghosh asked them as to what was the difference between ‘revolutionary leadership’ and ‘revolutionary authority’, Deepak and Dileep said that one has to accept the ‘revolutionary authority’ unquestioningly. On hearing this Ghosh said that the communists must always use their brains and instead of blindly believing anything, they must carefully think whether what has been said corresponds with the reality or not, and they must never promote the slave mentality. When Deepak and Dileep said that Saroj Da used to believe in the ‘revolutionary authority’, Suniti Kumar Ghosh said that even if he believed in it, they would have to prove it with logic and arguments. On this, Deepak and Dileep expressed the desire to meet the ‘respected leader’ (Charu). Suniti Ghosh gave them the address of Charu’s shelter in Cuttack at that time and they immediately proceeded to meet him. Meanwhile, Charu Majumdar was continuously getting the information that Suniti Kumar Ghosh does not consider him as ‘political authority’ and he has differences with the party line as well. In this regard, he got a comment written on March 9, 1972, which was published in the ‘Deshbrati’ of 22 April-1 May 1972. ‘Deshbrati’ was now under the control of Deepak and Dileep. The comment was as follows:
We can work with those with whom differences have arisen, but can never enter into any compromise…we can engage in debate with those who have read too much just on the basis of ‘Red Book’ (selected quotations from Mao Tse-tung).
A bourgeois individual makes a lot of hue and cry by citing ‘why and for what’. Their aim is to create suspicion about proletarian ‘authority’ and to establish their own authority. But when we communists raise the question of ‘why and for what’, we do exactly opposite. We consolidate the proletarian authority, implement the party line in lively manner and question the bourgeois authority….
Bourgeois influence prevails in the party and it has been there for some time. It gets reflected in the form of interpreting the quotations in bourgeois manner. Chairman Mao has said, “nothing should be done with eyes closed’. – – but it does not mean that everything must be suspected. Why should we question the party directives? We must do so as to understand the intensity and importance, so that we could implement them in the best manner…
It is obvious that the comment was targeted at Suniti Kumar Ghosh and he did not fail to understand it. When Suniti Kumar Ghosh met Charu Majumdar next time on April 11, he said that it’s been 5 years since the Naxalbari peasant struggle, hence a sum up of these five years must be done in order to rectify our mistakes and only Charu could do this. Charu bitterly responded by saying that even Suniti Ghosh could do this. Since Charu’s health was not well, Suniti Ghosh did not continue the discussion and said that he would present his thoughts in writing. After a couple of days, when he was about to leave from Charu’s shelter to Chauduar, Deepak reached there with the second report of Birbhum Committee. Suniti Ghosh wanted to stay there to listen to the report, but Charu asked him not to change his plan. Later, neither Suniti Kumar Ghosh saw that report nor did Charu mention about it with any comrade from the leadership who met him in his last days. However, Suniti Kumar Ghosh managed to find the report from his sources. Further, besides doing a sum up from the period between Naxalbari and then, Suniti Kumar Ghosh in a letter to Charu, written with the pen name ‘Saumya’, also put forward the demand that in line with the Chinese suggestions, there should be a rethinking on the party line and in order to study the suggestions deeply, it should be distributed among the responsible people of the party. But, nothing of this sort happened.
On April 23, Suniti Ghosh met Charu with his written sum up of the time period after Naxalbari and he read it out to him on Charu’s request. Even though that document is not available now, after some time he wrote down his conclusions in the form of an essay, which had been published in the 12-13 May, 1973 issue of ‘Frontier’ weekly with the title ‘Naxalbari and After: An Appraisal”, with the pseudonym ‘Prabhat Jana’. The important conclusions of this report were as follows: (i) The political line of the Naxalbari was correct, but as a consequence of the area of the struggle being limited, the inexperience of its leaders and owing to it the inability to expand the area of struggle and in the absence of a correct strategic line, it could not be extended; (ii) After 1968, the “left” opportunist line gradually infiltrated the movement, whose main expression was the fact that in the name of waging a struggle against economism, the party gave up massline itself and it isolated itself from all mass organizations including the peasant associations, trade unions, students-youth organizations and from all mass movements; (iii) Secretly annihilating class enemy through small secret squads formed in conspiratorial manner was made equivalent to class struggle and they were termed as Guerilla war, whereas as per Maoist principles, the Guerilla war is waged only by depending on the masses; (iv) Those groups which used to believe in the armed land revolution and believed Mao Thought, but used to oppose the line of annihilation, were in blatantly unjust manner termed as agents of imperialism and international revisionism which was an expression of ultra-leftist sectarianism; (v) Even the study of Marxist classics was discouraged and Marxism-Leninism-Mao Thought had been reduced into unquestionable allegiance towards the authority of one leader.
Broadly, it can be said that these points of criticism of Charu’s “left” opportunist, “left” sectarian, “left” adventurist line were correct and of the nature of a sum-up. But, the question again arises that when D.V. Rao-Nagi Reddy group was putting forward even more consistent criticism, or when people like Asit Sen, Parimal Das Gupta, Sushital Roy Chaowdhury were raising questions at different points of time from the same perspective, why is it that these questions were not raised in the mind of Suniti Ghosh who had read Marxist classics more than others and why is it that he continued to be among the people closest to Charu! Why is it that this understanding epiphanically dawned upon him in a very short duration when he became aware about the Chinese suggestions and the movement had rapidly started moving towards the slope of disintegration and destruction! Till his last days, Suniti Kumar Ghosh continued to believe that the mistake was not that of Charu Majumdar alone, but rather that of the entire leadership collectively which was quite weak from the perspective of political understanding, which did not lay emphasis on collective leadership and suffered from cult of personality. This is true to a large extent, but still as the proponent and leader of the “left” adventurist line, Charu’s mistakes must be considered the gravest of all, which historically turned out to be catastrophic. History will do positive assessment of those who were critical of Charu Majumdar’s line, partially or comprehensively, and among them those who raised questions by going against the grain and risking isolation will be put at the highest pedestal! At the lowest pedestal placed will be those who started raising questions after becoming aware of the Chinese suggestions, and Suniti Kumar Ghosh, too, is among them. When we proceed in this discussion of history, we will also clearly see Suniti Kumar Ghosh’s methodological errors and it will be clear that his method of sum-up and review was also to a large extent quite empiricist, dogmatic and fragmentary. It would be apt if we do that discussion at the appropriate place. Here let us go back towards the days of March-April 1972!
After reading out the review and sum-up note to Charu, Suniti Kumar Ghosh requested him that he be relieved from the responsibility of editorship of the ‘Liberation’ and that of arrangement and management of Charu’s secret shelter, and that he would be associated with the ‘Liberation’ as an ordinary worker only (although he did not put forward the proposal of resigning from the Central committee or Polit bureau). Charu wanted that he should continue to look after the work of his shelter because he was indisputably considered to be the ablest executioner of the tasks related to the underground structure. However, Suniti Ghosh was of the view that under the atmosphere of so much mistrust it would neither be possible nor appropriate for him to shoulder such a big responsibility! He also told that Deepak and Dileep were ready to take this responsibility! In fact, earlier Suniti Kumar Ghosh had already requested to relieve himself from the responsibility relating to shelter way back in the two meetings with Deepak, Dileep and Mahadev on December 1971 and March 1972. The three remained silent on hearing this, but only a few days later Dileep informed Ghosh that Police is planning to arrest him (that is, Ghosh) first to reach to Charu. In this assertion, this suspicion was implicit that if arrested Suniti Ghosh would reveal Charu’s location. Ghosh retorted that if he were to relinquish this responsibility, police would not be able to reach to Charu even after he gets arrested. Dileep said that they are prepared to take this responsibility. Anyways, they continued the arrangement made by Suniti Kumar Ghosh till the end of April.
Suniti Kumar Ghosh in his last meeting with Charu Majumdar on April 23, had requested the alleged comment of Saroj Dutt and Charu’s comment indirectly criticizing Suniti Kumar Ghosh which was published in ‘Deshbrati’, must be published in the party’s central organ ‘Liberation’, but Charu Majumdar rejected this proposal by terming it as unnecessary. Then when Suniti Kumar Ghosh was about to leave after handing over his sum-up document to Charu, the latter asked him to call a meeting to resolve the problems that have arisen in the party. Suniti Ghosh said that being the General Secretary, such a meeting can only be called by Charu himself. This was their last meeting.
On the morning of 25th April, when Suniti Ghosh had just arrived in Calcutta, he received this horrible news that some party members and well-wishers had killed Kamal Sanyal, the secretary of south Calcutta zone and Agni Roy, the secretary of Baliganj-Tiljala Regional Committee on the pretext of calling them for talks. In the pamphlet distributed after the murder, they were labelled as police agents. The pamphlet also mentioned that more such killings would be carried out in future. Both the slain were trustworthy organizers, who were popular among the cadres and they had shouldered important party responsibilities in the past. Their only crime was that of late they had begun to raise questions on the line of annihilation and the ‘revolutionary authority’. Evidently, the “leftist” adventurist line had by now reached to its dangerous and perverse logical conclusion as the comrades’ hands were stained with the blood of comrades. In response to the above pamphlet, Satish Bannerji, a member of South Calcutta Zonal Committee and a few others released a pamphlet in which the people responsible for the killings were declared as police agents. There was ample evidence to hold Deepak and Dileep responsible for these cold-blooded murders, who had begun to label all those who used to raise questions over Charu’s line as anti-party and state agents and used to utter things such as now an armed struggle would be raised against the lines that are opposed to Charu Babu’s line. As soon as Suniti Kumar Ghosh learnt about this incident, he wrote to Charu Majumdar that the question as to whether or not he is a ‘political authority’ is a political one and it cannot be solved in this manner. Those responsible for these killings are taking the party towards destruction, and under such a situation Charu must immediately intervene to save the party and publicly condemn those involved in this criminal act. Also, he again raised the demand that suggestions of the Chinese party which were received through Sauren Basu must be circulated as soon as possible among the responsible party comrades and the party line must be reviewed.
Yet another incident which happened during the same period must be mentioned here. Amidst the above incidents, two comrades from Bihar met Suniti Ghosh. One of them was Jauhar who later played the leading role in building a struggle on the “left” adventurist line in Bhojpur, was the first secretary of CPI (ML), Liberation and was martyred. More on this later. Jauhar was also part of the leading team which was given responsibility of reorganizing party under the leadership of Narayan Sanyal (who was soon arrested) in Bihar after the split with Satyanarayan Singh. In the Central Committee, Suniti Kumar Ghosh was given the responsibility of guiding and leading this team. Ghosh told these comrades that for now he has relinquished all organizational responsibilities given by the party. Bihar’s comrades were suspicious of the arbitrary and autocratic work style of Deepak and Dileep, and they wanted that this responsibility must be shouldered by Suniti Ghosh himself, but he did not accept to this request.
On May 27th, Suniti Ghosh received a letter from Dileep in which he wrote that Charu wanted to meet him, but it was also written in it that first he should meet Deepak and Dileep. It was also written that Charu has severely criticized both of them. Suniti Ghosh replied that his meeting depends on whether he gets answers to some of his questions or not! His first question was whether they accept the responsibility of the murders of Kamal and Agni and are they ready to undertake self-criticism? At the same time, he wrote a letter to Charu in which he reiterated his demands. In the later half of June, Suniti Ghosh received a self-criticism in the handwriting of Deepak and Dileep, which was very formal. Suniti Ghosh, expressing his disagreement, wrote a letter to them regarding their sidestepping the main issue and indulging in evasive self-criticism. As he was waiting for the response, Suniti Ghosh learnt that on July 16th, 1972, Charu Majumdar was arrested by the police from a shelter in Calcutta. The Deepak-Dileep faction had practically taken the responsibility of shelter in their hands from the first week of May and only after two and half months Charu was arrested. Police got hold of a courier sent by Deepak and after being subjected to intense torture he disclosed the location of the shelter to the police where Deepak and others were present. He had estimated that after so much time they would have left the shelter, but when police raided the location Deepak was found sleeping there. Then this Charu-acolyte quite adept at revolutionary phrase-mongering was terrorized and broken even without any police torture and disclosed the address of Charu’s shelter. Charu Majumdar who suffered from tuberculosis and had serious heart ailment, was continuously questioned by the police in the central lockup situated in Lal Bazaar for twelve days. Meanwhile, he was not even given the regular medicines and Pethidine injection, leave aside providing medical care. After Twelve days, on July 28th, 1972, Charu Majumdar breathed his last. Later, police released an abnormally long statement of Charu. Charu refused to sign on this statement. Most of the responsible old comrades within the revolutionary left movement believe that a large part of the above statement was concocted by the police officials.
Charu Majumdar’s Efforts in his Last Days to Slowly and Gradually Change His “Left” Adventurist Line and to Bring it in Conformity with the Chinese Suggestions
Just a few days before his arrest, Charu had met some leading comrades from Bihar on July 13th, 1972. The meeting was aimed at furthering the efforts of reorganization of the Bihar State Committee which at that time existed only in name. Suraj (Swadhin Roy) was one among those who met Charu. Suraj was among those comrades from middle class background who was sent to Bihar to lead the armed struggle even before Jauhar, later he surrendered before the police. During 1975-76, when he was shifted to Presidency Jail for some time, he had told a few political inmates about his meeting and conversation with Charu. When Suraj gave report about the mass movement of Dalits in Punpun area of Patna district, Charu suggested him to focus on that area and make it as a focal-point of the struggle in future. The notes of this conversation can be found in the collected works of Charu Majumdar. It is noteworthy that in this conversation, Charu did not make any mention of guerilla squads and the annihilation of class enemies. In this, he talked about making revolutionary committees of poor peasants, taking of initiative by the petty-bourgeois comrades in this and strengthening the unity between poor peasants and the middle peasants by terming them as revolutionary class. Also, he asked to think about the possibilities of expanding the work among the workers of huge colliery area which spanned from Asansol to Madhya Pradesh.
Earlier, he had already met Sharmaji (Jagjit Singh Sohal), the Central Committee member from Punjab. By that time, Saroj Dutt who knew about the Chinese suggestions had been murdered and Sauren Basu had been arrested. We have already discussed how Sauren Basu had dropped the hints about the Chinese suggestions at many places. We have also discussed about how the differences with Suniti Kumar Ghosh, who was the third individual in the know of the Chinese suggestions, had begun to surface. Now it was clear to Charu that it would not be possible to suppress the Chinese suggestions for long. Under these circumstances, Charu had also expressed his desire to call the meeting of rest of the members and hold a discussion on the Chinese suggestions, though no concrete decision had been taken in this regard. Third such meeting of Charu took place in June or July just before his arrest with K.G. Satyamurthy from Andhra Pradesh State Committee and another member Rauf. According to Rauf, in this meeting discussion took place regarding the reorganization of the Central Committee too, in future. Charu Majumdar was in the mood of ‘self-criticism’ that day. With both the comrades who came to meet him, he discussed about the criticism and suggestion of the Chinese party about the policies of CPI (M-L) and said that since the Chinese party does not approve of the slogan of ‘China’s chairman is our chairman’, he wants to take back this slogan. Except for the question of annihilation, he expressed his agreement with all the suggestions of the Chinese party. On the question of annihilation, he said that he never meant it to be individual annihilation and there was some confusion with the Chinese party on this point. However, if one goes through Charu’s writings, his clarification looks far from truth. Rauf told these things in 1977 to his fellow political inmates in Presidency jail. It was during this period that Bhawani Roy Chowdhury also met Charu. It was his first and last meeting with Charu. Bhawani Roy Chowdhury was among the founding members of CPI (M-L) Party Unity which was formed later. Roy Chowdhury told the political inmates in the Presidency jail that when he requested Charu to issue a statement regarding the reasons for withdrawing the slogan of ‘China’s chairman is our chairman’, he said that we cannot quote an international release. Even Gautam Bannerji, who too was incarcerated in the Presidency jail, and who used to act as a messenger between Saroj Dutt and Charu had told the fellow political inmates about Charu’s decision to withdraw the above slogan.
These meetings and conversations in his last days clearly indicate that Charu had gradually started to change his “left” adventurist line in the light of the Chinese suggestions and criticisms, which he had tried to suppress for about one and half year, so that when these suggestions were to be circulated among the leadership and some level of cadres, the points of criticism become very few and mild and he could have opportunity to say that there were some mistakes which were rectified in time. The biggest evidence of this is Charu’s writings in his last days in which he is seen gradually changing the line without any sum-up and review and is trying to rid himself of the spectre of the extremely crude version of “left” adventurism. After the Magurjan incident, while leaving from the Puri Shelter that was looked after by Suniti Kumar Ghosh to Calcutta, Charu had given him a note to be published in ‘Liberation’ in which the announcement of People’s Liberation Army in West Bengal was made and all the ‘action squads’ scattered in the state were termed as its ‘contingents’. In this note, no mention of annihilation was made. We have already discussed this incident. Moving further away from this, in ‘Build up the People’s Liberation Army and March Forward’ published in ‘Liberation’ (January-March, 1971) Charu Majumdar wrote:
Hence the attack on the armed forces of enemy must be carried out. Only attacking the class-enemies would now amount to a kind of economism itself. Along with attacking the class-enemies if we do not attack the armed forces of the enemy, we would fall in the morass of a special kind of economism.
Clearly, looking at the condition of class-struggle and the preparation of the party, whatever Charu Majumdar was saying, that too was nothing but pure militarist “left” adventurism itself. Even now he was not talking about mass struggles, mass movements, economic struggles or mass organizations, but his immediate purpose was to get rid of the line of annihilation. After this, in his writings and statements such as ‘One Year Since the Party Congress’, ‘To the Comrades of Punjab’, one hardly finds any mention of the annihilation of class-enemy as a form of struggle. Two days before his arrest, in a letter to his wife he wrote: “We have been waging very few struggles against the imperialists because too much importance has been given to annihilation. This is a deviation and we are recovering from it.”
Extending the process of slowly changing the line, in his comment ‘A note on Party’s Work in Rural Areas’ he wrote:
The movement for crop-seizure is also a mass movement. After launching the armed struggle we are giving leadership to a mass movement for the first time. Without carrying out the mass movement, we would not be able to achieve our goal of making every peasant a warrior.
It needs to be recalled that it was Charu himself who in his article published in December, 1971 issue of ‘Liberation’ had said:
The revolutionary peasants through their struggle have shown that the mass movements or mass organizations are not at all inevitable for waging guerilla struggle. The mass movement and mass organizations promote the open and economistic trend and expose the revolutionary activists before the enemy. Hence the open mass movements and mass organizations act as a hurdle in the development and expansion of guerilla war.
It is obvious that without summing up the past, Charu had silently changed the line and had started talking exactly the opposite. But the most dramatic somersault is seen in an article which Charu wrote five weeks before his arrest. In ‘It is the People’s Interest that is Party’s Interest’, Charu admits that mass movement has received a setback. He said that forget about 1975, the way the party leadership is moving ahead in the struggle, our country will not be free even by 2001. In this article, Charu stressed on the need for party building among the broad cross-section of peasants and workers and wrote that only then the struggle could be taken to an advanced stage. According to him, the US imperialism and Soviet social imperialism are badly crisis-ridden and hence they could wage a third world war. Under this circumstance, the broad public unrest could give rise to country-wide uprising. Hence, if in some areas revolutionary land reforms would be accomplished, they automatically will spread to other regions as well. Not just that, Charu also talked about a broad united front against the repressive rule of Congress, in which apart from the ‘Leftist’ parties, those could also be taken who till yesterday were the enemies of the communist revolutionary movement. Clearly, at this juncture, in the eagerness to get rid of the ghost of “left” adventurism, Charu Majumdar while whitewashing his old devastating mistakes, had got entangled into a web of contradictions. Instead of the secret squads, he is seen talking about party-building among the broad cross-section of the masses, instead of carrying forward the land revolution through annihilation and the so-called guerilla struggle, he is seen reposing his faith in a kind of spontaneity which would give rise to a country-wide mass uprising and saying that the advantage of such a scenario could be secured only when the party would be successful in implementing revolutionary land reforms in some areas. Hence, he is alluding to a mass line in the context of land revolution. Although he does not discuss as to in what form this mass line would be implemented. However, he does not stop at this. Charu talks about a broad united front whose form and policies are not clear and which could be easily interpreted in revisionist manner! No wonder that extending such an interpretation and taking its refuge as well as holding the banner of Charu’s legacy, CPI (M-L) Liberation sank into the quagmire of the most degenerated and most hideous form of parliamentary leftism under the leadership of Vinod Mishra and Dipankar Bhattacharya.
With the death of Charu Majumdar, an important chapter of the communist revolutionary movement came to an end. We have made some comments related to the assessment of Charu in the earlier parts of this essay, and have been discussing at appropriate places about the content, characteristics and the process of evolution of his “leftist” opportunist line and his undemocratic, bureaucratic organizational method of work. Now we shall present here a comprehensive sum-up of his role in the revolutionary movement!
Charu Majumdar: An Assessment in the Form of the Final Conclusion
Charu Majumdar began his political life as a communist organizer in 1930s. Apart from participating in the Adhiyar movement of peasants and Tebhaga peasant struggle, he also worked as an organizer among the railway workers and tea plantation workers of Duar. When the regional leadership of the Tebhaga peasant struggle was thinking about armed counter-defence of peasants to resist the brutal state repression, the state leadership had withdrawn the movement after trusting the empty assurances of the then Muslim League government. Charu was among those who had vehemently criticized this decision. When the Andhra Committee of the party was carrying out two-line struggle against Randive’s “leftist” opportunist line, Charu had chosen the side of the ‘Andhra thesis’ and in the prison, he was known as the supporter of Mao and Chinese party.
While the Communist Party of India had gone ahead on the path of revisionism in 1951 itself, in the Palghat Party Congress of 1956, the faction led by Dange gang had started openly advocating to collaborate with the “progressive government” of Nehru and to be part of the government. At that time, Charu was with those opposing this faction. In the Fifth (special) Congress of the Party in Amritsar in 1956, the party had accepted the line of Khruschevite revisionism, but a division had occurred within the party from top to bottom on the basis of the two opposing lines of ‘United Democratic Front’ (UDF) and ‘National Democratic Front’ (NDF). The first line was talking about carrying forward the anti-imperialist anti-feudal struggle on the basis of worker-peasant unity, while the second line was talking about peaceful transition to socialism by forming a united front with the “progressive” bourgeoisie. Even though despite its radical gesture, the second line was also essentially revisionist, the party cadre with the revolutionary spirit were with it as they considered it to be revolutionary. Charu was one among them. When Nehru dismissed the Nambodiripad government of Kerala in July 1959, a widespread movement had begun against it in the entire Bengal and in different parts of the country. The Siliguri Committee under the leadership of Charu was especially active in it. In the Terai zone of Siliguri, the peasant movement got intensified, but when the state leadership withdrew the movement after the hollow assurance by the state government, a tide of discontent spread among all the organizers of Terai including Charu and Kanu. After this, Charu was in a state of despair and disappointment due to the revisionist regression of the party. When Party’s Sixth Congress was held in Vijaywada in 1961, Charu did not take part in it as he considered it to be futile. We have already discussed that at the time of the Indo-China war in 1962, when the storm of anti-China jingoism was underway, the party cadres of Siliguri under the leadership of Charu were waging struggle against it by going against the current. The division of CPI had in fact taken place in 1962 during the Indo-China war when on the basis of identification by Dange, most of the leaders and activists of the opposing faction were sent to jail. Charu was also arrested at that time. When among the leaders in the prison, people like Jyoti Basu and Namboodripad were adopting soft attitude towards revisionism, Charu and Saroj Dutt used to be in its opposition.
CPM was founded in 1964 and in the same year the documents of “Great Debate” reached the communist cadres of India. These historical documents especially helped the Indian communist cadres in developing a theoretical understanding of not just the Khruschevite revisionism, but also the revisionism of CPI as well as the neo-revisionism of CPM. Among the two drafts of the new party, one was that of Sundarayya, Vasavpunayya, Pramod Dasgupta and Harekrishna Konar, in which the position of Chinese party was supported while criticizing the Soviet revisionism, whereas in the draft presented by Namboodripad, Harkishan Singh Surjit and Jyoti Basu, a middle ground was taken. Charu and Siliguri Committee took the side of the first draft, but right from the beginning Charu had reservations about this new party. Still, he hoped that the party could be revolutionized by carrying out ideological struggle from within. But it did not take long to dash these hopes. There is no doubt that Charu’s eight documents played an important role in making a radical rupture from the neo-revisionism of CPM, but this credit cannot be given to Charu alone. The leaders of Chinta/Dakshindesh group, Kanhai Chatterji, Amulya Sen and Chandrashekhar Das, had also blown the bugle of struggle against the revisionism of CPM exactly at the same time. What is important is that all of them had received inspiration for making a consistent understanding of revisionism from the Chinese party’s document of ‘Great Debate’. In 1965, the two-line struggle against the capitalist roaders within the Chinese party had got intensified and the Great Socialist Education movement had begun as a prelude to the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. In 1966, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution commenced. The documents of these historical revolutions helped all the leaders of the Communist revolutionary movement in India including Charu in a fundamental way in developing an understanding of revisionism to move ahead in the direction of forming and building a new revolutionary party by rebelling against the revisionist leadership. If we talk only about Charu, it is evident that his own ideological understanding was extremely weak and he adopted his decisive position as well as took decisive steps on the basis of the positions of the Chinese party itself.
Undoubtedly, no question can be raised on the revolutionary spirit of Charu and his disdain for revisionism, however, in his revolutionary sentiment, one could find the continuity of the tendency of the petty-bourgeois impatience owing to which he used to oscillate between subjective kind of ultra-enthusiasm and dismay. The ideological weakness which was responsible for this also prevented him from patiently carrying out sustained two line-struggle and instead he used to choose the path of deciding hurriedly. Charu’s eight documents played an important role in making a radical rupture from the neo-revisionist CPM, but as has been mentioned earlier, one can find the indications of Charu’s “left” adventurist line in these very documents. During the Naxalbari peasant uprising, when the massline was being effectively implemented, Charu had withdrawn for some time, but as soon as a period of stagnation and disintegration ensued in Naxalbari, Charu aggressively pushed forward his line. The Naxalbari peasant struggle had progressed by defeating Charu’s line and the first experiment of Charu’s line in Chattarhat Islampura was defeated in no time, but since he was the leader of the Siliguri Committee, he gained popularity throughout the country (and abroad as well) as the builder and the leader of the Naxalbari struggle and he took full advantage of this reputation in pushing forward his line. Undoubtedly, due to the ideological-political bankruptcy of the local organizers of the Naxalbari struggle, especially of Kanu Sanyal, and consequently their surrender before Charu’s line and its exaggerated recognition and appreciation by the Chinese party helped the Charu’s “left” adventurist line a lot in becoming hegemonic. The first important step towards the consolidation of the incorrect line was taken when by doing away with all the democratic norms the DV-Nagi led ‘Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries of Andhra Pradesh’ was unilaterally removed from the ‘All India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries’. Similarly, people like Parimal Dasgupta, Pramod Sengupta, Asit Sen etc. who raised question on Charu’s “left” opportunist line were removed without carrying out any debate by labelling them ‘revisionist’ and ‘renegade’. Thus, Charu’s line had become dominant virtually during the period of AICCR itself. Charu had started using the Coordination Committee as party and had consolidated his position as its supreme leader. After removing all the opponents, he changed his earlier stand and declared in no time the formation of an all-India party. Due to the incorrect and undemocratic ways of AICCR, several organizations and groups like MCC and WBCCR and many individuals did not join it and in February, 1970 some comrades from Punjab (Bathinda-Ferozpur Committee) under the leadership of Harbhajan Singh Sohi separated themselves from the process of formation of CPI (M-L) by criticizing the ultra-leftist line of Charu. The most devastating work done by Charu was to shelve the four tasks decided for the Coordination Committee. By renouncing the task of the development of the militant mass struggles of working class and all the toiling classes, building of mass movement and mass organization itself was labelled as revisionism and carrying out economic struggle itself was termed as economism. According to Charu, the poor and landless peasants had to now carry forward the guerilla struggle by making small action groups, and this “guerilla struggle” was the annihilation of the class enemy! The Coordination Committee was supposed to establish Mao Tse-tung Thought as Marxism-Leninism of current era by carrying out prolonged ideological struggle against revisionism and on this basis all the communist revolutionary cadres were to be united. However, in Charu’s agenda, there was no place for cadre’s ideological-political education, exposure of the incorrect line through carrying out debate on ideological-political issues and the political-ideological upgradation of the cadre. Just reading Mao’s three articles, Charu’s eight documents and Red Book was considered sufficient and even those reading Marxist classics were labelled as “bourgeois intellectuals”. Thus, Charu took the ideological weaknesses that were entrenched in the communist movement since its beginning to the newer heights. An important task of the Coordination Committee was to determine the program, strategy and general tactics of Indian revolution by studying the concrete conditions of India. This was a task of fundamental historical significance. Had the Coordination Committee implemented revolutionary mass line and had it made some beginning in the direction of study, debate and experiments towards determining the character of Indian society, the nature of production relations, stage of revolution and program, the history of the communist movement in India would have been different today. However, Charu did not let this process even begin. By giving the slogan of ‘China’s path is our path’ and by doing a carbon copy of the new democratic revolution of China, Charu “solved” the most basic questions in a trice. Charu not only used the platform of the Coordination Committee as party for implementing his line in unhindered and unopposed manner, he even established himself as an undisputed leader by forming a small clique of his acolytes. Undoubtedly, in achieving his goal, Charu received special help from those organizers like Kanu Sanyal who had once implemented mass line, but later due to their extremely weak ideological-political understanding, had knelt down before the “left” adventurist line. On the basis of these facts, it can be asserted that the party formed in 1970 under the leadership of Charu Majumdar was not an All-India Marxist-Leninist party, but was one amongst many Marxist-Leninist organizations and groups and it was an organization which was most firm and most consistent on the “left” adventurist line. From the time of the Coordination Committee itself, Charu’s line was defeated wherever it was implemented, but instead of review and sum up, what used to happen was that when the line was defeated at one place, it was being implemented at another place with renewed aggression. We have discussed this process in detail earlier. Even before the party was formed, the struggle in Srikakulam was beginning to get disintegrated which reached its culmination a few days after the party formation. The massline of the student-youth movement which was decided under the leadership of Asit Sen during the period of Coordination Committee was given up and Charu’s line was implemented on this front. Its peak point was Calcutta’s student-youth movement (‘Bhanjan-Dahan-Hanan’ program) whose adventurism was utilized by the Indian state to immerse it in the pool of blood. But, instead of summing it up, Charu’s faction sidelined Sushital Roy Chowdhary who had raised questions on it and who had criticized the “left” opportunism. The disintegration of the Debra Gopiballabhpur struggle, and the criticism and sum up presented by its leadership, was not even deliberated upon and we have earlier discussed about the suppression of the critical report of Birbhum Committee in an extremely conspiratorial manner.
Charu suppressed the suggestions and criticisms of the Chinese Communist Party for about one and half year and started talking about it to those meeting him only when it was clear that it could no longer be suppressed. In the same period, he also suppressed the second report of the Birbhum Committee. This was the period when the trio of Deepak, Dileep and Mahadev was creating much hullabaloo of Charu’s ‘revolutionary authority’ and was trying to project him as ‘India’s Mao’ (It needs to be recalled that the proposal to declare Charu as ‘revolutionary authority’ was rejected in the first and last meeting of the Central Committee held immediately after the Congress). This last phase of Charu’s life was that important phase in which his “leftist” opportunism had been transformed from political opportunism into individual opportunism. Initially, like any committed “left” adventurist, Charu suffered from self-righteousness, his organizational line was infected with bureaucracy and commandism, he used to consider himself as the committee; however, during the last one and half year he strived hard towards somehow saving his individual reputation and prestige and was slowly changing his line in a way that it becomes more and more in conformity with the Chinese suggestions and that he has to face least criticism and his leadership is not endangered. It cannot be termed anything else but political dishonesty.
In a nutshell, looking at the entire course of events in retrospect, it can be said that Charu suffered from “left” adventurism since 1965 itself, and this deviation went on acquiring dangerous form after being coupled with the political immaturity and extremely weak ideological understanding of the others in the leadership. The revolutionary impatience of Charu was in fact a petty-bourgeois impatience. This impatience was also a reaction to the long period of revisionism and existed in Charu’s thinking right from the time of the radical rupture with CPM itself. The task of strangulating the new revolutionary beginning had been virtually accomplished when Charu had given up the goals set by the Coordination Committee, the task of development of the experiments of revolutionary mass struggles of workers and peasants was not even taken up and by shelving the goal of research and study for determination of the program of Indian revolution afresh, the carbon copy of the program of Chinese revolution was made as the program of Indian revolution.
Knock nock 
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