The 42nd Anniversary of the Great Naxalbari Movement

Today is the 42nd anniversary of Great Naxalbari Movement. In 1967 peasants of Naxalbari, a remote village of North Bengal started their struggle with agrarian revolutionary orientation under the slogan "Land to the tillers". It was established by then that the reactionary state machinery would not support it. Therefore, the orientation of the struggle was to form new state machinery—the new democratic state.

Soon the struggle of the peasantry in Naxalbari became the target of state repression. On 25 May 1967, brutal police force of the then West Bengal government resorted to firing in Naxalbari and took the lives of 11 people including 2 children. At that moment CPI(M) was in the government; Joyoti Basu, the CPI(M) leader was the deputy chief minister and state home minister. The CPI(M) state committee supported the state repression.

This incident was a spark in the communist revolutionary movement in India. So many party members soon quit CPI(M)—All Indian Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries was formed.

It was the Great Naxalbari Movement, which following the Great Telengana Movement again raised the flag of Mao thought in India. It was the Naxalbari Movement which established the agrarian revolutionary line of Indian revolution. Naxalbari was not just the name of a remote village in India—it was the outcome of sharp two line struggle in communist movement in India.

After the Great Naxalbari Movement, Indian communist revolutionary movement has passed so many cross roads. Now, the red flame of the Great Movement has engulfed a large part of India. Inspired by Naxalbari, people of India have been waging their struggle to build new India free from all imperialist and feudal exploitation.
Red salute to Naxalbari.

Celebrate 41st Anniversary of the Great Naxalbari Upsurge

Today, 25^th May, 2008 is the 41^st anniversary of great Naxalbari upsurge. Naxalbari was not mere resistance of peasantry against the feudal system—it was the outcome of the two line struggle of the communist movement in India. The great Telengana movement was betrayed by the revisionist leadership of the CPI. But, they cannot destroy the revolutionary inspiration of the people for a fundamental change in the Indian society. Against the Trotskyite-Titoist-Khrushchevite revisionist line, against the parliamentarian line of Indian communist leadership, the revolutionaries inspired by the great debate and great proletarian cultural revolution of China under the leadership of Com. Mao waged a two line inner-party struggle (initially within CPI, then in CPI(M)), which resulted great Naxalbari movement. The single spark in Naxalbari soon took the shape of prairie fire.

Since then Naxalbari is not just a name of a small village of north Bengal—it is the name of the correct revolutionary politics. However, in the last forty years revisionist trends have also been emerged within the revolutionary camp. Most of the revisionist trends emerged in the form of parliamentary line—different groups have appeared in the parliamentary politics calling it as a tactics, then deviation from the line of Naxalbari become clear on the question of the state character, the stage of Indian revolution and other fundamental points.

Since 2000, a different trend under the influence of Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM) has been developed in the revolutionary camp of India. This trend has some definite features; it negates Com. Stalin and puts Com Mao against Com Stalin; cannot see the crisis of imperialism and therefore negates the formulation of Com. Lenin that “Imperialism is the highest and moribund stage of capitalism.” Essentially it denies the possibility of victory of socialism in a particular country in the present context. It therefore puts forward the revisionist line of Trotsky-Tito and Khrushchev in different package. Interestingly and shamelessly, while advocating the line of these well known revisionists, RIM and its followers claim it as the teaching of Com. Mao and as the third and the highest stage in the development of Marxism—in their words, “Maoism”. In Nepal we see the outcome of their revisionist line in the practice.

On the occasion of 41^st anniversary of Naxalbari, we call for a fierce ideological struggle against the revisionist line of RIM and their followers in the revolutionary camp of India.

Editorial Board
Red Barricade

Red Salute to Naxalbari.
Red Salute to the martyrs.
Long live Marxism-Leninism-Mao thought.
Down with imperialism, comprador capitalism and feudalism.
Down with revisionism.