It was in the context of ideological disagreements on violent revolution versus electoral
participation that a prominent leader of the radical pro-Mao faction, Charu Mazumder, fondly
called CM, authored “Eight Documents” to help crystallize the alternate political program of the
violent radicals.29 Condemning CPI(M)’s electoral participation as revisionism and economism,
CM led the Naxalbari uprising in the Darjeeling district of North Bengal in 1967, fortifying
hopes of revolution among the radical leftists all over India.30 These were tumultuous times in
Indian politics. Economic problems, like chronic food shortages, sharp inflationary price spirals,
unemployment, low industrial output, and stagnant rates of public investment, created mounting
popular frustration with ruling parties. For the first time since independence, INC was defeated
in the 1967 elections in 8 states.
Arguably the most momentous incident in the communist history of India was the afore-
mentioned armed uprising of a group of landless peasants and sharecroppers in the Naxalbari
29 These documents borrowed heavily from the experiences of the Communist Party of China under Mao Zedong. In a feeble attempt to bridge the growing ideological divide between the two warring factions within CPI(M), and to distinguish itself from CPI, the CPI(M) conceded during the 1968 Bardhaman Plenum that the bourgeoisie in India had “dual character” that both collaborates and contends with imperialism. By not explicitly stating which of these two characteristics of the bourgeoisie was dominant, the CPI(M) hoped to prevent another ideological split of the party.
30 Among the radicals, a faction known as the “debatists,” focused on the inner party theoretical polemic to expose the ideological inconsistencies of the CPI(M) path of electoral participation and parliamentary struggle. In contrast, the “actionists,” led by Charu Mazumdar and enamored by the Cultural Revolution in China, advocated that the time was ripe for following up the Naxalbari uprising of March and April of 1967 with nationwide revolutionary armed agrarian movement.
block of Darjeeling district of North Bengal. The landless poor seized plots of land that they had
cultivated from landlords and started harvesting the crops they grew, precipitating the first clash
between sharecroppers and police/landlord militia in May 1967. This was followed by violent
clashes and the forcible seizure of land and confiscation of food grains by armed units of the
Kisan Sabha.31 The use of violence in Naxalbari, though lower in intensity, scale, and duration
than the Punnapra-Vayalar or Warli uprising, it was premeditated by the communist leadership
with the long-term goals of structural change in agrarian relations and, ultimately, overthrow of
the state.
The significance of the Naxalbari uprising lies in the unleashing of an avalanche of agrar-
ian uprisings attacking the very democratic foundations of the Indian state and not just localized
systems of exploitation.32 With the news of Naxalbari spreading to other parts of India (duly aid-
ed by Peking radio), CM and his supporters first formed the All India Coordination Committee
of Communist Revolutionaries (AICCCR) within the CPI(M) on November 13, 1967. Eventually
the AICCCR severed ties with the CPI(M) and categorically rejected its parliamentary path in a
“Resolution on Elections” on May 14, 1968. One year later, on April 22, 1969, the leaders of the
AICCCR in Calcutta decided to form a new communist party called the Communist Party of In-
dia (Marxist Leninist) [CPI(ML)] with support from members in the districts of Andhra Pradesh
(Srikakulam District Committee), Bihar, Delhi, Karnataka, Jammu and Kashmir, Orissa, Punjab,
Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh. The Communist Party of China, formally recognized CPI(ML) in
July 1969. Some other radical left factions like Dakshin Desh and a breakaway faction of the
Andhra Communists (APCCR) left CPI(M) too in protest against its non-revolutionary, centrist
31 The CPI(M) leaders, who were then in power, first tried to pacify the leaders of the movement and having failed, Jyoti Basu, the CPI(M) leader and also the home minister of West Bengal, ordered the police to reign in the situa-‐ tion. Finally paramilitary forces were deployed in the region. The movement lasted for less than six months. 32 They formed a Committee in Aid of Naxalbari and Peasant Struggles in Calcutta as early as June 1967.
politics but they did not join CM. These trends later became part of the current Maoists. The dia-
gram below (Figure 1) depicts the fragmentation of the Indian Left and the most important fac-
tions emerging out of it up to the 1970s.
Wave 1: From “Leftist” Splits in CPI to CPI (ML)
Note: The names in bold font indicate political party. The other factions in the figure are discussed in the next section.
Figure 8
Splits in the Indian Left: Wave 1
Quickly, the CPI(ML) jumped into organizing armed uprisings in parts of Bihar (Musha-
hari and Lakhimpur Kheri districts) , West Bengal (Debra-Gopiballavpur and Birbhum districts,
North Bengal region, and in the capital city of Calcutta) and Andhra Pradesh (Srikakulam dis-
tricts). It advocated the boycott of elections, insurrection by armed squads, and annihilation of
class enemies by combat groups. In emphasizing secretive politics and assassination activities,
the organization condemned the use of mass mobilization strategies, including trade union activi-
ties, terming these as economistic and non-revolutionary (Mazumdar 1967; Mazumdar 2001;
Mohan 1971). In a tribal farming community in Srikakulam in South India, communists aligned
with CPI(ML), led by two school teachers, revolted against the formidable CPI(M) leadership in
Andhra Pradesh and organized forcible harvest of crops and land occupations. They formed
guerrilla squads, and on November 25, 1968, in one of the largest uprisings of the time, 250 trib-
APCCR
Dakshin Desh groupCPI (ML)
[1969-‐1972]CPI(M)
[1965-‐ ]AICCCR
CPI
al farm workers raided a landlord’s house, took out a procession of hoarded food grains, and
burned hundreds of documents that fraudulently claimed peasants were indebted to the landlords.
By October 1969, the government sent in 12,000 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and the
movement leaders were arrested, assassinated, or maimed, and the uprising swiftly ended.
A distinctive feature of the armed agrarian uprisings in the 1960s is that, unlike previous
episodes, the leadership in these uprisings was convinced that, despite formal independence from
British rule in 1947 India, was a semi-feudal, semi-colonial country, where comprador bourgeoi-
sie was still serving the interests of imperialists. Under such circumstances, grievances of the ru-
ral poor were neither coincidental nor local. They were systemic and could only be tackled by
systematic violence aimed at complete overthrow of the state and its political-economic infra-
structure. The new Indian communists aligned with the CPI(ML) were on a path of protracted
people’s war, a concept borrowed from Mao Zedong, until a new democratic revolution could be
launched in India. They considered violence not a passive self-defense mechanism against ruling
class violence, but an integral strategy in their path to liberation through guerilla warfare.
Local leaders joined forces to forge a nationwide strategy of arming and mobilizing peas-
ants, creating rural liberated base areas that would eventually encircle and capture the cities. The
radical left leadership of these uprisings rejected parliamentary politics, called for the boycott of
elections, and fought against the economism, legalism, and reformism that characterized the In-
dian mainstream left. Though the Naxalbari uprising and other agrarian uprisings all over India
were swiftly crushed, their leadership killed, maimed, or jailed, their significance cannot be
clearer as the start of radical Indian politics espousing violent overthrow of the Indian democracy
2.2.3 Twenty-‐First Century: Agrarian Discontent and New Mobilization
Due to severe repression of communist radicals in the 1960s and 1970s, there was a pro-
tracted lull in armed agrarian uprisings in India until the massive land grab by the state of West
Bengal to facilitate construction of an automobile factory by the Tata Group occurred in 2006.
This land grab threatened the largely agrarian population in Singur, West Bengal.33 The subse-
quent resistance movement started with the formation of non-violent civic associations like the
Krishijami Raksha Committee (Save the Agricultural Land Committee) in June 2006. Violence
in Singur was set off by draconian laws passed by state government suspending constitutional
rights of free citizens to assemble and protest land acquisition. However, these were only sporad-
ic acts of confrontation with the police or local ruling party operatives, who also belonged to the
mainstream left. As soon as the High court declared government land acquisition legal under the
1894 law, recognizing the Tata automobile project as a ‘public good,’ the resistance fizzled out.
The Singur uprising, despite its high symbolic value for reviving agrarian resistance in post-
liberalization India, was mostly a conservative movement against a specific land grab with no
agenda for capturing state power.
The Singur struggle, however, rekindled agrarian mobilization in the adjacent Nandigram
block in January 2007,34 where protesters in 28 villages in the region clashed with police for sev-
eral days and formed human barricades blocking access to their villages. Within a month of the
33 The town of Singur in West Bengal has very fertile multi-‐crop land. Agriculture was (and still is) a relatively sus-‐ tainable economic endeavor, though the majority of the agrarian population (33% directly involved in cultiva-‐ tion) was marginal farmers or landless laborers. Agricultural land was crucial to the livelihood of villagers in Sin-‐ gur, whether directly as farmers, and agricultural laborers or indirectly as vegetable vendors, animal grazers, workers in cold storage , and so on.
34 The Nandigram block, comprising 28 villages with a population of 175,000 people, was selected to be converted into a Special Economic Zone (SEZ): the Salem group was approved to head the establishment of a chemical hub. Nandigram was very similar to Singur: land was multicrop and fertile; over 60% of the population depended on land, directly or indirectly, for livelihood; life was modest, but comfortable; the average landholding was about 1 acre, classifying most farmers as marginal cultivators or landless agricultural laborers.