On 25 May 1967, nine women farmers and two kids were killed in police firing in Naxalbari.
The previous day, 24 May, is however remembered as Naxalbari Day and the 25th as Shaheed Divas or Martyrs’ Day.
The police had fired on the poor peasantry and bargadars. It was with the blood of these peasants, that the Naxalbari uprising was ignited.
In protest against such barbaric firing, the leader of the CPI-M in North Bengal, Charu Majumdar, left the party in 1967.
He was joined by Kanu Sanyal and Jangal Santhal, who were closely associated with the peasant struggle at Naxalbari.
Charu Majumdar’s revolutionary strategy was derived exclusively from Mao Zedong, with a declaration that without annihiliating the class enemies, there is no other way to achieve liberation.
On the basis of Mao’s Red Book, he wrote Historic Eight Documents. In 1969, the Marxist revolutionaries established a political organisation, called MarxistLeninist, modelled after Mao’s teachings. Charu Majumdar became the secretary of the new Marxist entity.
Maoism had earlier been applied in the Telangana region by the Andhra Communists during 1946-51.
It was for the first time in the International Communist movement that the Chinese leader’s strategy was used and debated publicly. At that point in time, the Communist Party of India denounced Maoism and subsequent developments suggested that Moscow “did not mind an attack on Mao Tse Tung”, as Mohan Ram commented.
The retreat from Telangana on the part of the CPI was complete at the 1958 Congress in Amritsar. Between 1958 and 1961, there was a bitter ideological tussle between the right and left factions because of the SinoSoviet ideological dispute and the Sino-Indian border conflict. By September 1963, the dispute became acute and a showdown looked imminent.
Ultimately at the Tenali convention the split was complete. Though the split was over fundamental issues and programmes, both the Communist outfits, the CPI and the CPI-M, settled for peaceful transition making it clear that both parties were accepting parliamentary socialism.
However, this consensus on the method was illusory as after the fourth general elections of 1967, Maoism had resurfaced. The Congress had suffered a serious jolt in all the states, from Punjab to West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. The challenge that confronted the CPIM was both internal and external, from the extreme left group of Naxalbari within and externally from China.
The early Maoism of Telangana in the 1940s challenged the central leadership which was suppressed by the Soviet intervention. It reasserted itself again after 17 years. Ever since that time, the unity of the Communists ended, and a permanent cleavage came to the surface between the advocates of parliamentary struggle and the extra-parliamentary movement.
China hailed the uprising in Naxalbari as heralding a new spring. In the background of the miserable condition of West Bengal’s peasantry, the peasant revolt in the late 1940s in Kakdweep demanded two-third of the crop as its share.
After Independence, the government initiated a series of land reforms. However, the proposed laws were badly drafted with loopholes which neither increased the yield nor altered the fate of the sharecropers.
The state faced a severe food shortage. The influx of a large number of refugees from East Pakistan was a contributory factor, but the prime reason was structural. A semi-final ownership of land as a legacy of the Permanent Settlement, lack of peasant ownership of land and a subsistence level of existence were neither conducive to an agrarian revolution nor commercialisation of agriculture.
In the background of this stagnation and exploitation, the slogan in Naxalbari was “land ownership to the tillers”. This led to the acquisition of land which the farmers distributed among themselves.
The invisible farmers made their presence felt and the question of both productivity and land reform became a matter of prime concern for the left parties. The movement that started in Naxalbari spread to Gopiballabhpur in Midnapre, which is 600 km away from Naxalbari.
The importance of Naxalbari does not lie either in its misplaced heroism, lack of planning or the move to put in place a detailed constructive programme, but rather in the remarkable transformation of agriculture in West Bengal. In the days of zamindar-jotedar ownership, the yield was 5/6 munds which went up to 25/30 munds after the peasantry secured ownership of land.
Earlier the payment was in kind, merely one or one and half kg of paddy. This payment in wages went up by 15 or 16 times. Malnutrition is still a problem but now the “wretched of the earth” get two meals a day. Problems exist in health, education and employment sectors, but there is no bonded labour. Rural income increased though it is still low compared to urban areas.
The mid-day meal scheme helped children to go to school, though the quality of food served was poor. Santosh Rana rightly asserted that these positive development were the indirect effects of the Naxalbari rebellion.
One question remained unanswered, notably the rapid degeneration of the movement when it shifted from the countryside to the cities. It was an indisputable fact that Naxalbari gave birth to an alternative perception of politics which attracted many bright, young and committed persons to the political arena with a desire to change both politics and society selflessly and with dedication.
Even in the village, Naxalites in the name of liberation unleashed terror and killings and when it reached cities, the brutalities and killings of even middle-class people, branded as class enemies, were thoroughly unwarranted. They forgot that political power does not flow from the barrel of the gun. Bernstein reminded us long time ago that any kind of dictatorship denoted a lower civilisation.
They also grossly misunderstood the resilience of nationalism and one major reason for Naxalbari’s quick fall was a ridiculous declaration that “China’s Chairman was our Chairman. In terms of history, the importance of the Naxalbari movement is tremendous.
Samar Sen’s remark that “nothing remained the same after Naxalbari” is absolutely correct. Moreover, as a heroic moment, when the well-off highly educated youth joined the peasants for securing their land rights, their supreme sacrifice will serve as a reminder for a long while yet.
It is true that the Communist parties are being increasingly marginalised and that even the Maoists are divided into many splinter groups and ideologies. Yet the continued presence of the Naxalites in many tribal and fringe areas is a reminder that the benefits of our independence are still restricted to a few while a large mass of rural poor languish in misery and deprivation.
The Prime Minister ought to confer with the chief ministers to devise methods to contain the violent phenomenon.
Arguably, a rational solution is to address the issues that the Naxalites had raised in 1967 and find a solution within our constitutional and democratic framework.
The writer is a former Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Delhi