The "Maoists" Versus The "Marxist"
In West Bengal some fights are going on which attracted attention from the revolutionaries all over India: the fight of the yet-to-be-newly-organised jute mill workers without having any formal 'organisations' against the attacks of the management and facing the capitalists-administration-'left' parties/TU combine in the last five years; almost the same in case of Tea Garden Workers in North Bengal when the old TU organisations nakedly betrayed them in the last year's 'agreement'; then, some spontaneous outbursts of the rural poor against the party-panchayat-govt administration nexus in the last couple of years ... etc along with the almost 15 year old sluggish but steady trend of organised revolt of the workers in trade union level.
But far away from these arenas of the struggles of the workers and the village poor, another battle is going on, that between the CPI (Maoist) and the CPI (M) party-govt machinery combine, which attracted much media attention; and this battle has intensified in terms of number of armed encounters and persons killed in the last few years. Also, this clash shows signs, both verbal and actual, of getting more intense, at least in the near future.
The CPI (Marxist) is the ruling party in govt seat of WB for the last 29 years, and so we can start from its side. Though readers know that two constituents of the three that eventually merged to form the CPI (Maoist), i.e., the PU group and the MCC, both started their journey from WB, the MCC being formed just years after the formation of the CPIM. Naturally the parties of the fight know exactly how and why their clashes started and both sides have, of course, different versions of the tale. But, nonetheless, anybody having familiarity with WB affairs knows that the CPI (Marxist) Party [henceforth CPIM] has grown in itself a peculiar feudal attitude about Bengal having ruled the state for so many years: an attitude of their privileges, rights, almost like an ownership right over their domination of WB; they cannot tolerate the idea that anyone else would have some good ground there. They also shrewdly cultivated a virtual two party system in the thought process to the effect that anybody against them is branded as Congress or TMC whichever they are willing to 'grant' the distant second runner's place. The parliamentary opposition in WB also many a times get closer to that 'ant-CPIM' formation; and even if it is not formed it has a place in the mind of those people gone against the CPIM due to the latter's arrogance, betrayal, and all sort of bourgeois vices the CPIM suffers. But what concerns us here is that fight; and we can safely say that before five or six years the battle started, for starting which the CPIM bears the onus more.
The CPIM started a two-pronged attack ? by the armed gangs under its control, and also by the state machinery. As time passed, the latter type increased. Here the CPIM has a clear dubious role: they never banned the Maoist party officially, still the govt police forces haunts them, arrest them, their supporters, even distant sympathisers, to the extent of arresting relatives of supporters, all in 'criminal' cases concocted by their police. There was a time not much in the past when different jails had hundreds of such prisoners in WB. Tortures, harassments both legal and 'illegal' were constant companions of such prisoners who are in jail solely due to the vindictive attitude of the CPIM. All these were brought to light by a "Bandi Mukti Committee" formed in WB to raise voice against such thoroughly undemocratic activities of the CPIM run govt.
After a recent 'assault' of the Maoists, gunning down and then burning alive a CPIM leader and his wife at the start of this year in Bandowan, district ? Purulia, the Maoists allegedly labelled it to be the 'badlaa', revenge of the ChhotoAngaria massacre led by some CPIM leaders and armed goons, when, five years back, they gunned and burnt to death several Maoists who met in a hut for a indoor meeting. The veteran CPIM politburo member and state left front chief Biman Bose visited the spot. According to a Bengali daily AAJKAAL, which no one can blame to be anti-CPIM, he said the party cadres that 'if needed the tactic of the early seventies are to be taken' against the Maoists. What that means? Let us look back to see what happened then, so that we can conjecture what may be the fallout of a similar venture of the CPIM now. The workers' and peasants' struggle that swept through the late in the second half of the 1960s was already waning and receding in the early 1970s. That happened mainly due to the betrayal of the parliamentary lefts, particularly the CPIM; and one cannot neglect the factor of incompetence and wrong-lines of the emerging CPIML that time. An atmosphere of terror and panicky were there all around, as the state machinery and the Congress party unleashed a reign of terror on the struggling workers and peasants. The fight between the CPIM and the CPIML no less contributed to the setback and lull in the workers' and peasants' struggles, and pushed them behind the doors. What else the masses could do facing an armed battle between activists of two parties, when inter party warfare relegated the inter class fights to the backseat!
Now again, after a long spell of retreat of the working class in the wake of the defeat of the first offensive of the international working class movement, the workers and also the rural proletariat?semi-proletariat have of late started slowly coming out of the long passivity and inaction. Baman Basu's statement is to be viewed in this backdrop. [It might be added here that he, now the State Secretary of the CPIM, repeatedly urged his cadres to take up weapons in his election campaign.] Once that notorious and shrewd tactic of the seventies is re-enacted by the CPIM, the recent trend of the workers and peasants taking up their own cause by themselves, building up separate organisations and struggle, etc, are bound to suffer. This design of the CPIM cannot be ruled out as it is becoming increasingly difficult and would be further difficult for that party and the govt to contain the workers' agitations, which they desperately need if their mission of attracting more and more capital investment in this state. What else can serve them better than revolutionary communist organisers getting entangled in a "retaliation ? counter-retaliation trap" with them neglecting the more valuable work of preparing the class for the revolution to come? Class-conscious proletariat must prepare them so as to be able to defeat this CPIM game plan.
But what else an utterly degenerated revisionist party like the CPIM can do facing what they would like to call: the "Maoist menace"? To hope that CPIM can and will start a political muqabla is foolish. Certainly they cannot confront the Maoists politically in spite of all their recent declarations regarding doing so. They have abandoned the class struggle, and whenever they are in that arena, they are there in favour of the capitalists. They can only take up the ruling classes' political line in this regard: few carrots of 'relief' packages with lots of sticks (and bullets...) of the state machinery and their armed lumpen forces. This is the only 'politics' that remain in the hand of the bourgeois in the days of 'peaceful development'. The bourgeois press also is advising as they did in the case of Bihar in the last eighties: they urge the govt to take up more and more development measure to contain and wipe out the disease of NAXALISM.
But there again, what politics the Maoists are [de facto] practising? Let us see only a few glimpses, because this piece of writing is certainly not an exhaustive analysis of the politics of the Maoists.
If one visits the website of the organ of the CPI (Maoist), i.e., the peoplesmarch.com, in the No: 6 issue of the last year she can find an article named: Report From West Bengal || Revolutionaries Retaliate to CPM Terror || by Samya. "However, we would like to reproduce some parts from the editorial of The Statesman dt. 16 July '05. It read as follows: "...Policemen are being made to pay with their lives because the state's Marxist leaders have been unable to deal with the abysmal backwardness and poverty in those two districts. Adding fuel to the fire are Goebbelsian claims about the "fruits of development" having improved the lives of the poor. These fantastic claims in a sense lend credibility to the Maoist cause..." " ...the Hindusthan Times ( 14 July '05) correspondent wrote: "...That the fruits of development have been misappropriated mostly by the CPM leaders and activists and in some cases also by other political parties including the Trinamool and Congress, is a bitter truth. So, an increasing number of people view Maoist activities as a fight for their basic rights. And why won't they? A few landmines have been blasted so far and the government is running with pots of cash and development schemes. It was only after the blasts that the government realized that these areas needed development. It even admitted for the first time that poverty existed in these places".
It is interesting to note the geography of the places where the CPI (Maoist) is operating besides the proximity of forests and difficult terrains of that zone. First, let us take the Bandowan block (MANDAL) of the Purulia district bordering Jharkhand. It is the worst block in Bengal in terms of what the able statistician and ex-chief of the WB Bureau of Applied Economics & Statistics Mr. Sachchidananda Dutta Roy calls the Food Security Index. Here his index stands at a paltry 26 at the beginning couple of years of this century, which is much lower than that of the second worst block. Here the Land Utilisation Index or Cropping Intensity stood at only 1.16! Productivity of rain-fed rice here is at 57% and that of potato it is less than 40% of the yield figures of the Singur Block or 48% and 54% respectively of the yield figures of the Pandua block!! (Both the Pandua and the Singur blocks of the Hooghly district have food security index at 65, which put them at the 'Lower-Middle' stage of food-security measure. But then, these two belongs to the 'highly developed' patches of West Bengal!) The tribal population in Bandowan is almost 57% of the total. 43% of total labour force (including all labour performed in agriculture and labour engaged in non-primary sectors) is made up of landless agro-workers. More than a fifth of those total labour forces are "marginal" workers who get very little de-facto employment even on daily basis. Less than half of the population is literate according to govt statistics, among females literacy rate is only 29%. So here stood a block with nearly a lakh population after a quarter century of 'left' rule!!! Now consider the other places where the Maoist party is acting and attracting media attention. Belpahari, Banshpahari, Binpur, Barikul, Barobazar all have 'very low' level of those Food Security indices within the range 37 to 47; all have high tribal population ratio of nearly 40% except Burobazar where it is 20%. Everywhere poverty, malnutrition, hunger, illiteracy, darkness, backwardness reigns supreme.
And what is happening or may happen there after the Maoist 'activities'? [And why they gave so much importance to those newspaper excerpts in that article?] "...It was only after the blasts that the government realized that these areas needed development. It even admitted for the first time that poverty existed in these places." If that is the case, the Maoists, already nicknamed 'Bon (Forest) Party' can and will portray themselves as benevolent carriers of govt mini-kits, relief baskets and some 'developmental works' like token electrification, a few hand-pumps for drinking water, etc in the eyes of the rural poor. Developments indeed they are, but certainly not much-needed development of the Class Consciousness & Struggle & organisation of the working class. Can any revolutionary, who has taken the oath for the Peoples' (or New) Democratic Revolution under the leadership of the working class, take pride or satisfaction or anything from this? Where is the effort of preparing the working class as the leader of the revolution? Or, can the leadership of a Party calling itself Communist be tantamount to leadership of the working class? They have written in the same article: Imbued with Maoism, the revolutionary masses of Bengal are striking back with a vengeance. But that is not the case. The fact is an armed struggle of some cadres, not of the masses, and that too, without preparing the basic masses, particularly the working class, for the revolution. Aiding the masses from above, solving partially a few of the burning problems from above, etc, can give them some of their necessary 'inputs' like recruits of new cadres, some other kinds of help, proving bits of food and hideouts... but what about the development of struggles and consciousness of the rural proletarian and semi-proletarian masses? They haven't yet cited any concrete example of the latter. Masses imbued by the spirit of democratic revolution certainly do something more than merely 'vengeance'. But then, preparing the rural toilers for the fight for 'land', for eradication of usury, even for wage rise, are not easy. So what kind of 'Political' Debate / Struggle they can perform with the yet de facto militant reformism and the neglect of communist revolutionary work among the proletariat that they have shown? Moreover, they have shown their vulnerability towards falling in Biman's trap of retaliation ? counter-retaliation, and leaving behind the unprepared masses in front of uninvited state-terror.
The actual struggles of the working class and the peasantry are going up admittedly very slowly and painstakingly. Class-conscious proletariat should work hard to lead and develop these struggles. And simultaneously, they should remain conscious of the ominous design of the CPIM as revealed by the statement of Biman Basu and they should foil such evil designs. Class-conscious proletariat should oppose all sorts of state repression against the Maoist group and their sympathisers, while at the same time, holding high the banner of class struggle.
.....please correct/add this article by using he manuscript correction by SR.....
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