Revolutionary Worker #1200, May 25, 2003, posted at rwor.org
We received the following article from A World to Win News Service.
On January 15, the Maoist Communist Center and the Revolutionary Communist Center, India (Maoist), issued a communiqué "wholeheartedly declaring before the toiling people of India" that they have united to form a single group. "Our united organization will be based on Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and remain firmly committed to the long-cherished need of the great Indian people to carry forward and complete the New Democratic revolution," the statement said.
The united party, now called Maoist Communist Center (India), is a participant in the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM). The MCC was a participant before; the RCCI (M) was a candidate participant. The two formerly separate groups had been conducting struggles in different Indian states. The MCC had strongholds in Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal in the northeast part of the country, and the RCCI (Maoist) in Punjab in the northwest. The people in all these states have a long history of heroic struggle going back to the armed peasant uprising that began in Naxalbari and spread throughout India in the 1960s and '70s, giving birth to India's Maoist movement. Forged in 1969, the MCC had a long history of struggle on the ideological and political fronts, even before its formation. Its founders had taken Maoist China's side in the debate against the revisionists led by Khrushchev, who restored capitalism in the USSR and tried to impose their betrayal of Marx and Lenin on the international communist movement. It upheld the path of protracted People's War and New Democratic Revolution in India and carried out armed struggle. Having undergone twists and turns in its political life and significant line struggles within the Party, it became a participating organization of RIM in 2002.
The MCC has united vast sections of the poor peasants of Bihar and Jharkhand. Bihar is a state in India where classical feudalism still exists. The feudal landlords have their own armies under the protection of the Indian government, which they used to suppress the peasants in their own interests. Under the reactionary Hindu Branashram system, people are divided into several castes. The brutality of the upper- cast feudals reduces the masses to the level of slavery. Destroying the strongholds of these landlords bit by bit, the MCC has been confiscating land from the feudals and distributing this land to the poor people in the areas where it has sufficient power. On December 19, 2002, in the Singhabhumi district of western Jharkhand, the MCC led a military action against the reactionary armed police who had been carrying out brutal repression of the masses. Eighteen armed police were killed and 38 others wounded. All their weapons and ammunition were seized.
Similarly, the reactionary state of India has left the people of Jharkhand in very backward conditions. The MCC has turned Jharkhand, the hilly area formerly part of Bihar and now a separate state, to Lalkhand (Lal means red) by uniting these tribal (indigenous) people against feudals and Indian occupiers. The revolutionary armed struggle has been transforming the life of the oppressed people, for example, by doing away with child marriage and other backward practices. A large percentage of the indigenous people of Jharkhand are no longer mere downtrodden but are becoming free men and women.
Punjab, too, has been a hotbed of revolutionary struggle, from the time of General Diaras's Jaliawala Bagh massacre of Punjabi peasants fighting against British imperialism before India's so-called independence up to today. Although it has a different character to the most backward areas of India, these have been heroic struggles by the people against the reactionary system. When a misguided movement broke out for an independent Sikh state (Khalistan), the RCCI stood firm on the orientation of New Democratic Revolution in India to overthrow foreign imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism linked to both of the former.
The MCC(I) communiqué highlighted the importance of this goal and of advancing in this direction. It declared, "A pressing need at this time is unity among all the genuine Maoist forces operating in India. Possibilities and strong aspirations for turning this need into an actuality are also coming into view."
In particular, the unity of the Maoist forces in India means uniting forces who come from the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) as well as MCC(I) and others. The CPI(ML) was founded under the leadership of Charu Mazumdar in 1971. Following his death in 1972, the CPI (ML) splintered into many pieces. After the death of Mao Tsetung in 1976 and the coup d'état carried out against his successors by Deng Xiaoping, the world communist movement fell into a great crisis. The Indian movement, too, was divided into many trends. The Maoist parties and organizations had to defend Mao and Maoism (then known as Mao Tsetung Thought), and oppose Deng and also the dogmatic attacks on Mao launched by Enver Hoxha of Albania.
One of the parties descended from the original CPI (ML) which continues to uphold the banners of Mazumdar and Maoism is the CPI(ML) (Naxalbari), like the MCC a participating party of RIM, which is continuing to work for the unity of the Maoist revolutionaries in a single center in India. The CPI(ML) (Naxalbari) has been advancing especially in the states of Kerala, Maharastra and Karnataka. Of particular importance among the other parties in this same category is the CPI(ML) (People's War), which has a long history of leading the masses in waging armed struggle. The CPI(ML)(PW) has strongholds in broad rural areas in the states of Andhra, Maharastra, and Orisa, as well as Bengal, Bihar and elsewhere. The CPI(ML)(PW), along with the above-mentioned RIM participating parties and organizations, are members of CCOMPOSA (the Co-ordinating Committee of Maoist Parties and Organizations of South Asia).
A united revolutionary Maoist party has been a strong desire of a great many Indian masses since the setbacks suffered by the Naxalbari uprising and the splintering of the Maoist forces. Conditions in vast areas of the Indian countryside are ripe for waging a People's War to make a New Democratic Revolution and march ahead toward socialism and world communism. India, reeling under semi-colonial and semi- feudal production relations, has also seen many revolutionary explosions throughout the country that have taken the form of armed national liberation movements, such as in Kashmir and Bodoland, in addition to the Maoist-guided armed revolutionary movements that involve millions of peasants and others, such as those led by MCC(I) and CPI(ML)(PW) in Andrah Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Dandakarnya. Because of the lack of a united Maoist party, a people's army and revolutionary united front, the full revolutionary potential of the situation in India has not been fully realized.
The Maoist movement in India already is having a worldwide impact, and a successful revolution in the world's second-largest country would help change the face of the earth. The oppressed masses the world over are looking forward to greater victories and advances by the Indian Maoists.
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