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Naxalite, general designation given to several Maoist-oriented and militant
insurgent and separatist groups that have operated intermittently in India since
the mid-1960s. More broadly, the term—often given as Naxalism or the Naxal
movement—has been applied to the communist insurgency itself.

The name Naxalite is derived from the town of Naxalbari (Naksalbari) in far
northern West Bengal state in northeastern India, which was the centre of a
tribal peasant uprising against local landlords in 1967. Although the rebellion
was suppressed, it became the focus of a number of communist-led separatist
movements that sprung up in remote, often tribal areas in India—at first
primarily in northeastern India but later more widely in other parts of the
country. The rise of Naxalism corresponded to the growth of
militant communism in India, particularly the creation of the Communist Party
of India–Marxist-Leninist (CPI-ML) in 1969, and to the emergence of such rebel
groups as the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) and the Peoples’ War Group
(PWG).

Naxalite groups generally have claimed to represent the poorest and most
socially marginalized members of Indian society (notably tribal peoples and
Dalits formally untouchables.

Marxism, Leninism, Maoism and the Naxalite Movement

The Naxalite movement, both the main party, the Communist Party of India
(MarxistLeninist), and the rest, such as the Unity Centre of Communist
Revolutionaries of India (Marxist-Leninist) led by Tarimala Nagi Reddy, the
Maoist Communist Centre, etc, all emerged out of the Communist Party of India
(Marxist), which itself was a split from the Communist Party of India. Assessing
the Naxalite movement thus calls for a complex historiography. On one hand, it
has to be assessed in terms of the different communist currents in Indian history
and the present. On the other hand, any such assessment has to be framed
within a clear international context. We therefore need to begin with the
Marxist concept of communist politics, party building, and revolution, locate
Lenin, Leninism, the post-Lenin Soviet Union and its foreign policy, the rise of
Maoism, and the Sino-Soviet split and its international impact.

Classical Marxism – The Principle of Self Emancipation

The starting point of classical Marxism is self emancipation of the proletariat

through a struggle whereby the proletariat would take the reins of the
movement in their own hands instead of being led by a select group of
individuals who would act as what the post-Lenin era would call the vanguard.
Marx’s communism did not emerge as a complete theory in itself all of a
sudden. It went through much deliberation which was influenced by the specific
historical experiences and activism. Marx who began his political career as a
young Hegelian soon found the Prussian state which by Hegel ridden with
certain contradictions which did not fit with Hegel’s vision of the state as the
resolution of all contradictions. Nonetheless, Marx did not abandon Hegel’s
philosophy. On the contrary his dialectical method enabled Marx to think about
class struggle as a global event. He was influenced by German idealist
philosophy, French radicalism and English political economy.

Marx began with the Prussian state where the reign of Friedrich Wilhelm IV
launched a reactionary phase during which the freedom of press was curtailed.
Marx criticised the censorship laws by stating that, “the absence of freedom of
press makes all other freedoms illusory. One form of freedom governs another
just as one limb of the body does another. He wrote many other articles on the
Law against theft of wood and also on the plight of the vine-growers in Moselle.
In all his articles he spoke about people’s participation in the movement to
reform the bureaucracy and also questioned the universality of the state. In his
Kreuznach Manuscript he stated that the central plank of all constitutions is the
concurrence of the people who would participate in political process as “active
subjects of history”2 Later in his article entitled On the Jewish Question his
adherence to communism emerged. So far he had been roaming in a realm
where he sought for a universal class which would break the bonds of capital
industry. In the aforementioned text he claimed that a politically developed
state would mean a democratic republic in which private property would be
eliminated as a concept. Nonetheless, private property as reality would be
maintained as an accepted core of a civil society. The abolition of private
property in concept would provide the premises for a struggle between the
haves and have-nots .

By 1844, Marx and Engels presented communism as “fully developed

humanism. They later joined the Communist League, which had been a working
class communist organisation of a conspiratorial type, on condition that the
organization be changed from an elite conspiracy of the old type into an open
propaganda group, that everything conducive to superstitious authoritarianism
be struck out of the rules, that the leading committee be elected by the whole
membership as against the tradition of decisions from above.

Marx emphasised on the need that people make and rally for their demands,
that they acquire knowledge about how to wage a struggle and raise it to new
dimensions that they do not depend on one leader. Their education should
involve throwing off of certain habits like subservience to the capitalist class. It
would also mean establishing the workers’ rule, attaining the ability to exercise
power and structuring class consciousness worldwide for a widespread fight for
socialism. However class- consciousness may also lead to spontaneity which in
turn may jeopardise the people’s movement and here is where the need of a
party emerges. For Marx and Engels, the revolutionary working class party was
to unite politically the most conscious workers and the socialist intellectuals
who would accept the working class struggle as the key concept. It was not
supposed to give orders from above to be blindly followed by the workers.
There had to be a limit to what the party could do. For Marx and Engels, the
party was not a band of conspirators, like the Blanquists, nor was it a pure
enlightened group, bringing salvation form above. Their experience of the
revolutions of 1848 made it a vital instrument of the class struggle, but one that
had to be under working class control.

Classical Marxism – Democracy and Revolution – Strategy, Alliances, Demands

The late 1840s saw Marx and Engels trying to organise the workers’ movement
so that they could become the dominant bloc within a democracy. They were
against immediate seizure of power as they felt that forcible occupation of
power by the proletariat would make them launch petty-bourgeois measures
which would defeat the purpose of a proletarian overthrow of the state. In the
Address of March 1850, Marx and Engels talked about the concept of
permanent revolution. They stated that the alliance between the bourgeois and
absolute power should be deprecated, that the next battle would be between
the absolute state, the feudal elements and the bourgeois on one hand and the
proletariat, the petty bourgeois and peasants and rural labourers on the other
hand. They also prophesised that with the first victory, the petty-bourgeois
would find no more reason to ally with the proletariat and would abandon the
revolution once its aims were achieved. This is where the concept of permanent
revolution had to be applied so that the initial gains of the proletarian would
not be lost to the petty-bourgeois aspirations. The proletariat would have to
conquer state power and unite the proletarians of the other states which would
ensure the conversion to socialism world-wide. It would be a continuous
process whereby the proletariat would have to be careful about not falling prey.

Class and Party and working class rule in classical Marxism

The vanguard party has been a much misunderstood term. Some attack the idea
while others like Richard N. Hunt and Shlomo Avineri held that by party Marx
meant a propaganda organ7 . The Communist Manifesto clearly states that the
Communists would undertake the task of inculcating the mass about the
hostilities between the bourgeois and the proletariat and also make them class
conscious. They were given this important task not for any superiority they may
or may not possess over the proletariat but because they had a clear advantage
in understanding what the path of the revolutionary proletariat may take. This
does not mean again that the proletariat would be following orders from an
enlightened few. It meant that through constant discussion and deliberation the
proletariat would make it known their aspiration for self-determination. The
task of the communist is not party formation for the sake of it rather it is to
unite the workers to make them launch a combined effort. It is stating again and
again not to become an exclusive group of intellectuals within the proletariats
but to become one of them and have no concern other than that of the workers.

According to Marx transition from capitalism to communism could only be

made possible through the rule of the working class. For a socialist construction
of the state proletarian rule was necessary which would slowly change the
society not just the government in power.

Naxalite Movement

The genesis of the Naxalite Movement can be traced to a number of factors

which were at play simultaneously. We find the post independent decades in
India to be a period of hopes and expectations when the newly created Indian
state with the Congress (which encompassed within itself the tradition of
nationalism) at the helm of affairs embark on many projects of development.
The five year plans, the setting up of heavy and small industries and the various
pacts with neighbouring as well as first world countries seemed to have opened
up new vistas for the Indians. Then again, the 1960s proved to be a damper
when one plan after another failed to achieve the expected results and
unemployment reared its head. Economic instability gave rise to a sense of
diffidence among the educated youth who were the first victims of a dwindling
job market. The education system was also reduced to a travesty with emphasis
on back dated syllabus. Politically, with the death of Nehru, the Gandhian epoch
came to an end which had so far hemmed within itself several recalcitrant
forces, which in the presence of a common enemy - the British, had provided
unified resistance. Nevertheless in the sixties these recalcitrant forces assumed
new dimensions and began to fall apart and function independently with
different ideologies and end motives. This gave rise to a political uncertainty
which the Congress found difficult to manage and thus hold on to its position.

On the other hand the scenario in rural India was dismal where the peasants
were being increasingly pauperised owing to the faulty land tenure system
which the Indian state found difficult to remedy and which in turn gave rise to
agrarian dissatisfaction. The irregular nature of land proprietorship led to a vast
difference between the fortunes of the few big landlords and several diminutive
peasants. These small peasants being tied to their land had no avenue of escape
and their penury built up over the years. Politically, the formation of the
Communist Party of India (CPI), the subsequent inner-party debates regarding
right tactics and strategy, the Telengana struggle of 1948-1951, the Sino-Soviet
conflict in the arena of international communism, its influence on the Indian
Communist movement and the splits of 1964 and 1969 in the Indian Communist
movement were also responsible for the outbreak of the movement.

Ideological faultiness of the Naxalite movement

The Naxalite movement in India, right from its inception in late 60s, has not
been able to turn into a People’s movement. This lack of mass mobilisation has
been primarily due to the Naxalite leadership not being able to strike a common
cause for the masses to identify themselves with. The present phase of the
movement is primarily against the Government and the conventional ideology
of ‘class war’ is not in line with the course being taken by the CPI (Maoist),
simply because the situation in the country is non conducive for the same. This
is in contrast to the successful leftist revolutions across the world, like in Russia
and China where Lenin and Mao, respectively laid emphasis on mass
mobilisation to make the respective movements populist, thereby enticing mass
following.

Naxalism in India, like any other leftist movement around the globe draws its
ideological basis from the Bolshevik revolution. After the success of the Lenin-
led revolution in Russia, the intellectual class in many countries started thinking
of ushering in a change in their respective nations. Prominent amongst them
were Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh and Mao Tse Tung. These leaders
became architects of revolution in their countries, inspired by the Bolshevik
revolution.

Vladimir Lenin, who was originally a Marxist, modified Karl Marx’s doctrine to
become founder of Leninism. He tweaked Marxism to suit the conditions that
prevailed in Russia in the early twentieth century. The modifications were made
to suit conditions in a society where imperialism was not very strong, peasantry
was to have a larger role owing to its predominance and the Russian army was
to play a major role in the planned armed insurrection. Marx had propounded a
working class-led revolution, which could never see light of the day in his
lifetime, but for a brief period during ‘Paris Commune’. The Russian backdrop of
war weariness (First World War), poor economy, flexible industrialization and
substantial peasantry were the main drivers for Lenin to modify Marxism so as
to suit Russia. Advocacy of armed nature of the revolution was seen as the only
potent means against the despotic and hegemonic Tsar, who had no stomach
for any democratic process.

The prime intent was to bestow power in the hands of the exploited and
marginalized, irrespective of their configuration. With egalitarianism as its basis,
the idea was to enforce societal control over the aspects of governance and
nation building. As per Leninism, the revolution was to be steered in, over
several phases. These were People’s revolution leading to Socialism, which
eventually was to pave way for Marxism based on commune. The call made by
Lenin had mass appeal in the sense that the commoners could identify with the
ideological underpinning, thus bringing in their optimum participation. Lenin’s
efforts to embrace the burning issues were translated into three slogans (land,
bread and peace)- “land to the tiller”, “bread to the hungry” and “rest to the
army”. The effective tool of ‘mass mobilisation’, made Lenin an international
icon and inspired ‘left revolutions’, across the world.

Prevalent conditions in China that provided background to Mao led People’s

revolution, were marked by predominant and marginalised peasantry, nascent
industrialization, competing colonial powers (USA, Japan, France etc) and a
turmoil-ridden society. In such ripe conditions for a revolution, Mao too, like
Lenin, opted to take up societal cause for developing a mass following.

Success of left revolutions in various parts of the world inspired the political left
in India to strive for a similar feat in order to liberate the exploited class.
However, the planning lacked deliberations and efforts were not made to mould
the foreign experience to Indian conditions. Unlike Lenin’s methodology of
enabling the desired changes in a phased manner, the left political class in India
strived to outdo (the prevailing) capitalism, imperialism and feudalism in one
stroke.

The inception of Naxal ideology could be traced to the advocacies of the

peasant leader Swami Sahajanand Saraswati, who gave a call for United Front
(samyukt morcha) comprising of peasantry and the working class. The
movement was dovetailed into the Indian freedom struggle and aimed at a
three-pronged objective of peasant revolution, national independence and
liberation for downtrodden. An effort towards this was also attempted in the
Telangana movement. Unfortunately, a united front could not manifest in
Telangana due to weak, divided and dissent-ridden leadership.

The Communist Party of India, drawing lessons from the Telangana movement,
wrongly,inferred that a socialist revolution in India could only be initiated at the
behest of capitalists, rather than as people’s revolution. Resultantly, CPI
supported the Nehruvian model of mixed economy that had elements of public
and private sector. This approach did not find appeal amongst the entire party,
leading to a split in CPI and giving rise to CPI (Marxist), followed by falling apart
of the Charu Mazumdar-led faction called Naxalites. Initially, the anti
establishment political tone of various resistance movements was anti-
congress. However, post 1967 several non-Congress government(s) were unable
to make a mark, thereby establishing that liberation for the marginalised and
exploited class had to be anti-ruling class as against merely being anti-Congress.
In other words, pitching the ruling class versus the rest gained ground and
continues to be the tenor of Naxal movement till today.

The Naxalites of late 60s, led by Charu Mazumdar have often been termed as
‘men in hurry. Romanticism was the prime motive for this section, with little
understanding of ideology; they did not gauge the cruciality of ‘mass
mobilisation’ and went on to commit grave blunders while pursuing their
version of revolution. Firstly, in their wisdom, they rechristened India ‘Dakshin
Desh’, China being ‘Uttar Desh’ and Chairman Mao as the Chairman for both
Dakshin and Uttar desh. Secondly, they carried out relentless and unwarranted
class annihilation, thereby segmenting their own support base. These steps did
not go down too well with the masses and an opportunity to develop the crucial
mass following never came their way. Also, in a revolutionary bid to encircle
cities from the country-side, these ill prepared romantics with urban
background, holed themselves up in cities, and were consequently neutralised.
With no emphasis on mass mobilization , this initial phase of Naxalism was
smothered by 70s.early

As in China, had Naxalism gained roots in India in 30s, things would have been
different. By late 60s, when the ideology gained a foothold in India, capitalism
had made substantial inroads. At that time in history, blind replication of Mao’s
model, without a mass mobilisation was attempted by Charu Mazumdar, to no
avail. In fact, the Chinese premier Chou En Lai had pulled up one of the Naxal
leaders of that time during his visit to China, for attempting blind replication of
the Chinese model.

In the 80s and 90s, a number of Naxal groups were active, mainly in Bihar and
Andhra Pradesh. The leaders of those times like Vinod Misra, Nagbhushan
Patnaik, Nagi Reddy drew out correct lessons from failure of the preceding
phase and laid due emphasis on mass mobilisation. The aspects of class
annihilation and armed insurrection were somewhat diluted, resulting in several
sections of the society aligning with the movement, including the people from
intelligentsia as also segments belonging to the JP movement. However, any
semblance of a united front (samyukt morcha) comprising of peasants and
working class was still missing and therefore the movement could not be
transformed into a populist one. For example, in rural Bihar, social churnings led
to caste wars, and class war as a base of Naxalism lost ground. Private armies
and militias (funded by the rich) belonging to various castes sprung up, resulting
into clashes amongst the lower strata of society. A common thread of cause that
could have provided a platform for mobilisation was missing, mainly because of
the prevalent constitutional democracy and equity inspite of being perceived to
be lopsided. Within the ambit of the Naxalite movement, a conflict existed
between short and long term gains of the rural poor. Shorter one being
destruction of resources and infrastructure of the establishment and the landed
class, which hampered the long term benefits of amelioration of the conditions
of poor by dissuading investments and development. Incidentally, the said
conflict exists till date, which has seen shrinking of ideological bandwidth of the
movement.

The present phase of Naxalism has no class war as its basis and is mainly
directed against the Government, with the conspicuously missing ideological
edifice to stand upon. CPI (Maoist) the present vanguard continues to remain in
the shadow of old ideological structure that is not synchronous to the façade of
‘tribal cause’ that they claim to champion. Periodic spate of Naxal violence in
the central-east tribal belt of India can be compared to the flicker of a flame
before it extinguishes. The movement can survive till the time they don’t
become a major threat to the sovereignty of the nation. Also, their policy
documents appear to be ‘Stalinist’ with the predominant tone of centralisation
and secession; aspects that remain unacceptable not only to the Government
but also to the people who form their support base.

Early Development Of Naxalism

The First phase is the Inchoate Experimental Phase (May 1919 – October
1934).[20] In its early phase, leading Chinese Marxist intellectuals like Li
Dazhao and Chen Duxiu focused on the direct application of classical Marxist
theory in China, deriving insights from Karl Marx's work "On the Jewish
Question" and Lenin and Stalin's commentary on the "National Question."
To sum up, Li Dazhao and Chen Duxiu believed that the "National Question" in
China should be subservient to the larger transnational goal of proletarian
liberation, blending Lenin's anti-imperialism theory with a vaguely nationalistic
drive to create a strong Chinese nation with Marx's ultimate ideal of stateless
communism.[21]Less interested in the state's treatment of ethnic minority
relationships or the political implications of ethnic liberation, both Li and Chen
found Lenin's dichotomy of "the oppressed races against the oppressor races" a
powerful tool which could end the national disunity that perpetuated China's
humiliation after the 1919 Versailles treaty and the subsequent Twenty-One
Demands from Japan. They argued for both the Comintern and the Chinese
Communist Party to harness the momentum of nationalism as a binding
social force for proletarian liberation, and urged for the collective self-
determination of the "Chinese people" without considering how such theory
could apply to marginal geographies and populations where class dynamism
was less apparent. This intellectual trajectory would eventually confront great
peril as the Chinese Communist Party was forced to reorganize itself after the
1927 Shanghai Massacre, a notorious event which would later circulate in
the CCP's orthodox historiography as a tragic case of class betrayal and state
violence initiated by the capitalist Guomindang party.

Since the Shanghai coup in 1927 deprived the CCP of its ability to challenge
Guomindang power in urban areas, the need for Chinese communists to
reorganize its political power enabled the Moscow-based Comintern to directly
intervene in CCP politics. According to the CCP's contemporary reconstructive
memories about this period, the CCP since 1927 was plagued by an unfortunate
succession of dogmatic leaders who obediently followed the Comintern's
instructions by uncritically replicating Soviet policies onto the dissonant
socioeconomic reality of China. This orthodoxy maintains that, it was not until
Mao's coming to power in the 1935 Zunyi Conference did the Chinese
Communist Party finally confront with the errors of dogmatism and rectify its
path towards a more systematic strategy of revolution which was
complimentary to Mao's vision of national struggle. Nevertheless, the CCP
leadership during this period espoused the notion that the Chinese approach to
ethnic and national liberation must closely observe and corroborate the
orthodoxy of the "New Philosophy" in the Soviet Union, which were later
canonized in the Constitution of Chinese Soviet Republic in 1931.

Before his ascension to political leadership in the Chinese Communist Party,

Mao Zedong holistically embraced this Soviet ideological orthodoxy as the
"correct" approach to the mobilization of ethnic minorities in China during the
period of Guomindang administration. Corroborating the dominant Soviet
thought in the Chinese Communist Party, Mao aligned himself with the Soviet
strategy of ethnic liberation which saw the Leninist ethnic self-
determination and confederate soviet socialist ethnic-autonomy as possible
institutional models that China might follow if Communists might seize the
power to create a multi-ethnic nation.[24]However, during the period of
ideological dogmatism in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Mao grew increasingly
skeptical of the Comintern leadership over the role of peasantry and rural-based
nationalism in the Chinese Revolution. Especially after the Manchurian
Incident in 1931 when Japan annexed the Chinese Northeast by establishing the
puppet state of Manchukuo, Mao and his followers placed themselves in direct
opposition to the leadership of the Comintern to articulate a vision of socialism
that was grounded on the immediate desire to restore Chinese national
sovereignty from foreign colonial powers, deviating from the internationalist
strategy of the Comintern.

Many of Mao's early writings reflect the growing schism in revolutionary theory.
In February 1925, Mao wrote his first piece of ideological literature that directly
dealt with the problem of ethnicity and national struggle in China. In his article
named "the Analysis of Class Structure in Chinese Society (1925)," Mao
identified two revolutionary groups in Chinese society, the peasants and the
National Bourgeoisie, as potential allies of the Chinese proletariat
revolution. According to Mao, peasants are the most loyal and easily mobilized
subjects of the Chinese revolutionary cause despite their obsession of
commodity-exchange and land due to entrenched semi-feudal, petty-
bourgeois mentality. On the other hand, National bourgeoisies are only
temporary allies of the proletariat because their major interests are capital
accumulation, which makes them dedicated to the preservation of
national sovereignty and ethnic autonomy but not to the ultimate goal of
socialist construction. These embryonic ideas of showed that Mao had already
tried to fuse the notion of national and ethnic struggle with the theory of class
struggle during the time of Soviet theoretical dominance.

The international reception of Mao's theory of "national struggle" ranges from

total rejection to critical appreciation. In the United States, rightist theorists
have criticized Mao's theory of "national struggle" as the classical
demonstration of hypocrisy within the socialist rhetoric of liberation. Other
leftist scholars saw Mao's political theory as a capricious desire to subordinate
Marx's dialectical historicism in the favor of China's particular realities in
justification of Mao's political power. During the Cold War, the Maoist theory of
"national liberation" was heralded by some French Marxists and Pan-Africanists
as genuine political guidelines that could possibly provide a solution for self-
sufficient development in third world economies if properly applied. After the
death of Mao and the conclusion of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, public
perception of Mao's political theory started turn negative globally. However,
the contention over Maoism's contributions still exists today, as some scholars
maintain that Mao's theory was actually rooted in Marx's dynamic notion
of dialectical materialism, rather than the dogmatic application of Soviet
stagiest theories of economic determinism.

One of the greatest theoretical conundrums in Marxism was the contradiction

between internationalism and nationalism, the theory and praxis of proletarian
revolution. In the original Das Kapital, Marx offered neither a systematic
theory of the national question, a precise definition of the construct of the
"nation," nor a general political strategy for the proletariat to seize state power.
Even when Marx did talk about the political implications of the worker's state
that he envisioned, his articles on the subject were, for the most part, strictly
analytical and rooted in the concrete political cases derived from his historical
observations. Due to the ambivalence on statecraft in Marxist theory, Marxist
theorists and revolutionaries from different regions and eras generally
reinterpreted Marx in order to accommodate local demands for national
sovereignty under pressure of global capitalist intervention. In
1920, Lenin theorized that the creation of a national community must start
with the unification of the oppressed races and ethnicities to create a worker's
state, against the oppressive races and ethnicities of imperialism. In this process
of unification, Lenin argued that the proletariat must lead the revolution by
breaking through boundaries of geo-cultural of difference to reach people who
were less enlightened, with the ultimate goal of creating a communist society
under universal proletariat leadership. Lenin's approach to the classical
"National Question" in 1920 also included a specific political strategy of
liberation with regards to minority ethnicities, in which Lenin claimed that the
oppressed races and ethnicities should reserve the right of ethnic-self
determination once a universal worker's state is established. In addition, Lenin
argued that the principle of ethnic self-determination could prevent the
proletariat from being corrupted by capitalist chauvinists, who would harness
cultural difference and nationalism as a tool to divide the oppressed. In the later
years of Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin would co-opt Lenin's approach to the
"National Question" to advance and legitimize his own theory of "socialism in
one state."

References :

www.wikipedia.com

www.dhakatribune.com

www.indiandefencereview.com