Q: In one of your interviews you referred to the current trope of ‘gun wielding, pen wielding naxals’, ‘urban naxals’ etc. peddled by the State. In this context what do you feel is the relevance of Charu Majumdar and Naxalbari in today’s left movement?
A: When we begin with these tropes like gun-trotting Naxals and pen-wielding Naxals, when it started really, the word Naxal was not there. The word Naxal emerged from Naxalbari, that was not an accident obviously. The frontline leaders, particularly Comrade Charu Majumdar had a great experience being one of the leaders of the Tebhaga movement in one corner of Bengal. When it really began in Naxalbari, then the term naxalites was rather used by the media and also by the state. The social democrats like CPIM and others, started using this term to mark that the Naxalbari movement is not really a culmination of the Indian communist revolutionary struggle. The communist party began in 1925 – the historical trajectory, and the surer culmination of that after Tebhaga and Telangana, basically that is an advance in the revolutionary struggle. So they denied that. So, initially it was a derogatory term, to brand the communist revolutionaries, as a group of gun- trotting vagrants.
Ultimately what happened was that the Naxalbari movement could eke out a very important niche in world history. Recently, a person like Girish Karnad, having an oxygen cylinder connected to his nostrils, held a placard saying ‘I am an Urban Naxal’. Despite all the appeals of the state and mainstream media and the social democratic parties and ruling class parties of India, this coinage gained a greater currency and became a kind of template for the proud legacy of the communist revolutionary movement in India. Coming to the question of the relevance of Naxalbari – even in the 40s and 50s, the preparations were very much there. If you look at the history of Bengal, in 1942 the Quit India movement was followed by a Bengal famine in 1943. At least 3 million people died of starvation. In 1945, there was again in Bengal one malaria epidemic. Now again in 1946, the Tebhaga movement began. In 1946, in Kolkata, Noakhali, communal riots took place. The focus on basic issues of food and crops, played a role in stopping the communal riots.
After the partition there was a refugee movement demanding rehabilitation. In 1953, the Nehru government was really under the compulsion to promulgate this Zamindari abolition act. They strived to somehow partially implement it from 1956. And from 1955 the communist party took a call to basically grab the land that exceeded the land ceiling of 25 acres – from the hands of the jotedars and zamindars.There with the experience of Tebhaga and Telangana, a segment of the communist revolutionaries were prepared to continue with this land and crop struggle…then the provincial communist party and the kisan sabha ultimately called it off, saying that the situation was not ripe. But in Darjeeling district it continued for a long time under the district leadership which included Charu Majumdar, as well as Kanu Sanyal and others.
What was the essence of the Naxalbari movement? The essence of the Naxalbari movement was the assertion of the subaltern class, and the ultimate call to grab the state power. That was our point of departure even from the previous movements, including Tebhaga and Telangana.
The state tried to somehow unleash a horrible kind of repression. In Indian history, in the 1970s, the Indian army was engaged to crush the Naxalites. This happened even with the Maoists. Despite doing that under the Indira regime and also continued in the Left Front regime in Bengal. However, they were not successful in suppressing the movement. Whenever the younger generations try to find an answer, they see a bleak picture everywhere. No government jobs. The private sector is a hegemony of the corporations where you become a slave and not even a worker with rights. That’s why, inequity and the deprivation of basic rights makes Naxalbari and its essence relevant.
Q: Can you recall briefly for us your memories of the various figures of Naxalbari, including Charu Mazumdar, as well as others such as Saroj Dutta?
A: Charu Majumdar left home in June 1969. By November the party was banned. He never came back. When he died, I was only 12 years old. Even then, as father and son, we had a very memorable past together. It is very vibrant in my memory.
When we were kids, we remained within a family. We used to call them [the leaders] as uncles(kaku) and other such titles, rather than comrade. They were seen as family members or extended family members. I used to refer to Kanu Sanyal as Kanu Kaku. Souren Bose used to live in our locality – where my ancestral home was. Later I met other leaders like Saroj Dutta. I stayed with Saroj Dutta for a month in Puri. I was still young. At the time my father was sick. My mother and I went to Puri, taking lots of precautions to stay safe – changing vehicles etc. Every morning I used to have a talk with Saroj Dutta. He used to take me to the seas for a walk and he used to talk to me.
Apart from that, we used to stay at Sushital Roy Choudhuri’s place in Kolkata. Also, Suniti Ghosh among other leaders. We used to live in his place also. Later we met comrades from South Bengal. There was Jangal Santhal, from our district.
Q: In context of the iconoclasm prevalent in the Naxalbari days that was an impact of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in the 70s, do you think today’s youth need to learn from it?
A: Those movements taught us to raise questions against anything and everything. Nothing is stable. Dialectical changes are always happening in society and in the human world as far as their materiality is concerned, nothing is stable. Important contributions like, on the one hand you see the new historiography- the subaltern historiography emerged under the direct impact of Naxalbari. Ranajit Guha, who just died a few months back, started his writing on the Elemental Aspects of Peasants in India, which came out in the 1980s, when the state thought that the movement was crushed.
As far as the global communist movement is concerned, so many philosophers who are branded as postmodern, were part of the communist parties. Today we use this phrase ‘reclaim the republic’, in the context of reclaiming it from the fascists. At that time too, there was a movement to reclaim the republic. The workers and peasants who created the wealth were to reclaim the republic from the elite classes, and run the show on their own.
At the root of this, there were lots of possibilities of change. Change is the template of history, you can’t really deny it.
Q: What was the political mood among the students and youth at the time of Naxalbari and afterwards? Can you outline the attitude among youth regarding Naxalbari and the challenge it posed towards old and conservative values in the society?
A: An important thing we understood later on was that it [the student radicalism] was not specific only to Naxalbari. When you look at the end of the 60s – the swinging sixties in historical terms, when so many new movements began. In 1967 Naxalbari happened and inspired the youth, particularly the college students and university students. All premiere world universities, including Oxford, Cambridge, Berkley, everywhere the student movements were in full swing. Philosophers like Jean Paul Sartre came to the streets in support of the student movements. Large number of hippies, as we used to call them, were playing the guitar and singing. We sometimes looked down upon them, but ultimately they also were an anti-establishment thing. Struggles for the freedom of sexualities also emerged in the 1960s. After Naxalbari, the students could relate it to the basic ideas. Ideas were often coming from the West through literature and films. But now, the students here could find a churning from below. And this class struggle of the economic base, reckons with the superstructure. When Charu Mazumdar came up with his writings, he called upon the students to leave their campuses and go to the villages, stay with the peasantry, understand them and organize them. The revolutionary class needs to become a class for itself, from a class in itself. The peasantry also has petty-bourgeois aspirations. But as per the production relations, they are exploited. When organized politics reaches them, they transform themselves from a class-in-itself to a class-for-itself.
Young intellectuals often acted as carriers of the politics from the urban centres to the rural masses. A section of the peasantry was already involved and ready for the struggle, but not the broad masses.
The objective conditions were ripe for this huge assertion. That made them leave everything behind and go to the villages, ready to sacrifice everything including their lives. This is very rare and you can only match it with the freedom struggle – the sacrifices made over there. That legacy was carried over with a new vigour and a new dream. That was Naxalbari.
Q: Lastly, we are living in an age of growing fascism. All dissenters are being marked as either ‘urban naxals’ or ‘anti-nationals’ with UAPA, NSA etc. being used rampantly. How to fight this situation according to you?
A: Perhaps ours is the only communist party that could foresee this danger, and this coming of fascist forces. If you follow the recent party congress documents, starting from the 9th and 10th Party Congresses, but before that also in the 6th party congress (1997) when our General Secretary was Com. Vinod Mishra. After the Babri Masjid demolition, the BJP was rising like a formidable power. The 90s, altogether saw the rise of corporate onslaught and takeover, privatization, policies being reformulated under the Congress regime that was taken forward by the BJP government. In 1998, for the first time in an Indian government, Atal Bihari Vajpayee formed the disinvestment ministry.
Beginning from the 6th party congress, and ultimately leading to the 9th Party congress in 2013, we identified it as a corporate communal regime. When BJP came to power in 2014, we had a central committee meeting in Delhi. On the 26th May, Narendra Modi was taking his oath, when our CC meeting was going on. We took a resolution against this regime. We sent this resolution to all the left parties, sarkari left parties as well as AAP because it seemed to present some democratic content. AAP never replied. A reply came from CPM. Prakash Karat asked our leaders to go over to Delhi CPM’s office and we had a meeting. CPM was instrumental in roping in the other left front parties like RSP, FB. Later, SUCI too joined this.
Our campaign against the Narendra Modi regime started from 6th December 2014 and it continued for some time all over India. In the 10th Party Congress, we branded it as an Indian form of fascism. CPM says that it has some fascist tendencies, but hasn’t come under the sway of fascism. CPI accepted and borrowed our formulation. In the 11th Party Congress, if you go through the documents, you will find how to resist this fascist onslaught. Our role for the national perspective, we have started asserting our vision, ideas and analyses.
