CHARU MAZUMDAR
(This article is based on a report of a speech by Comrade Charu Majumdar at a meeting of Party cadres held some time ago —Ed. Liberation).
From Liberation, September-December 1970.
The present era is the era of the total collapse of imperialism. Look at India and you will see every corner of it is just like a volcano about to erupt. The exploiting classes are battered in the dog-fight among themselves. Even if we look at the world at large, the same situation prevails everywhere : in Asia, Africa, Latin America, armed revolution is spreading like wild fire. The 700 million people of Chairman’s China, tempered in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, have made Socialist China a great fortress against imperialist war. Today, while trying to create Red areas during the revolutionary war, we must take note of these facts. During the Chingkang years, one could not think of creating extensive red areas except in mountainous and forest regions. That is why it was possible to mobilize an army of three hundred thousand men and carry out the ‘encirclement and suppression’ campaign against the first Red base of China in the Chingkang region. That is why the revolutionaries then took time to crush this ‘encirclement and suppression’ campaign and to spread the struggle to different regions. But today, while every corner of India is like a volcano, the armed struggle of Srikakulam cannot remain confined within that region only. And this struggle is spreading and will spread very fast into different areas of our country. Today, it is therefore impossible for the reactionary Indian government to carry out the ‘encirclement and suppression’ campaign even by mobilizing five hundred thousand soldiers against the armed struggle of Srikakulam. If they mobilize more men in Srikakulam, the guerrilla war will instantly flare up with greater intensity and the enemy will be powerless to quell the struggle in Midnapur or that in Mushahari. If the revolutionaries of West Bengal declare today, “We are ready to sacrifice our blood, we are prepared to lay down our lives: put down, if you dare, our armed struggle”, and if the reactionary government tries to put down this struggle with all its might, who is going to stop, who is going to extinguish, the red fire of Koraput?
Conditions for Establishing Red Areas:
The establishment of a red area means the establishment of the revolutionary authority through a revolutionary committee after the destruction of the feudal regime of the landlords and jotedars. The first condition for the establishment of a red area is to form guerrilla squads under the leadership of the Party, to carry on the battle of annihilation of the jotedars and usurers, to form revolutionary committees with common landless and poor peasants, and to unite the broad masses and mobilize them in the people’s war with the help of this revolutionary authority. That the revolutionary peasant authority has been established after the destruction of the authority of the enemy is proved by the fact that the people mislead the enemy by various means. For example, when a big action is going to take place, the enemy is to be tied up through minor harassing raids far away from the place of action. The enemy should also be supplied with false information about the whereabouts of the guerrillas.
I do not indulge in day-dreaming when I say that by 1970-71, the People’s Liberation Army will march across a vast area of West Bengal. By and by, the vast masses of people will be inspired with Mao Tsetung Thought. Remaining loyal to the revolutionary committees, they will take part in the struggle by supplying wrong information to the enemy, and at a certain stage, they will feel the urge to snatch away rifles from the police and the military. [On October 26, six rifles were snatched away by a squad of landless and poor peasant guerrillas in Kishanganj, Purnea district (contiguous to Naxalbari area), after they had attacked a police camp and annihilated a policeman. This event is a significant pointer — Ed. Liberation.] The formation of the People’s Liberation Army will begin when a landless peasant will snatch away a rifle from the police or the military. The rifle in the hands of a landless peasant will roar like a thousand cannon. Can the EFR[1] and CRP fight that tremendous force ? A revolutionary tempest will rage over such a wide area in India that the reactionary government will not be able to supply more than a few rifles to each of the police stations. And it will be a very easy task for the peasant guerrillas to snatch away those few rifles. Once the landless peasants are armed with rifles, the panic-stricken reactionary police and military will come in batches and surrender their rifles to the guerrillas. There will be extensive defections from the enemy camp. It is only then that thousands of soldiers of the peasant stock will become class-conscious. Chairman Mao has said to us : “Carry on your struggle, you will never suffer from dearth of rifles.” When I find that a landless peasant woman of Gopiballavpur is snatching away a rifle from a CRP man after hacking him to death, I realize how correct are Chairman’s words. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army under the leadership of Chairman plunged into the revolutionary struggle with only 320 rifles. It may be we shall at first build our Liberation Army with 60 rifles and 200 pipe guns.
Day Of Victory Is Near
When I say “Make the 70’s the Decade of Liberation”, I cannot think beyond 1975. The idea of today’s armed struggle was first born in the mind of one man. That idea has now filled the minds of ten million people. If the new revolutionary consciousness, born only in 1967, can permeate the minds of 10 million people in 1970, why is it impossible then for those 10 millions to rouse and mobilize the 500 million people of India in a surging people’s war by 1975? We can realize the correctness of the assumption when we find that the people’s war that started in Gopiballavpur in September 1969 has already spread extensively to the whole of West Bengal barring only two districts. [When Comrade Charu Majumdar said this, the peasants’ armed struggle had not developed in two districts of West Bengal. But by this time it has spread to all the districts — Ed. Liberation].
Today, imperialism, faced with total collapse, is trying to strike its final blow against the revolutionary forces. There is, therefore, a genuine possibility today that Chairman’s China may be attacked. And in this anti-China war the imperialists will try to use the Indian people as cannon-fodder. The armed struggle in India will certainly create such a mighty storm of revolution by 1971 that the imperialists and the social-imperialists will not dare attack China after that year, for they will then find this storm of revolution raging behind them. This is perfectly clear to the bandits, Nixon and the Kosygin clique, and so there is a strong possibility that Chairman’s China may be attacked by 1971. Yet there is no reason for the revolutionary Indian masses to feel despair. Even if this fear comes true, India will surely be liberated by 1975. Indeed, the armed struggle in India will suffer a temporary setback, if Socialist China is attacked, because the imperialist powers will then oppress and persecute the Indian people with extreme savagery and try, at the same time, to divert them from the path of class struggle by creating an atmosphere of bourgeois chauvinism. But this is the era of Mao Tsetung Thought, the era of the rapid collapse of imperialism, the era of the victory of world revolution. So, in this era it is impossible to repeat the performances of Hitler and Mussolini, it is impossible to launch a savage attack on the revolutionaries, which Hitler and Mussolini did against the revolutionaries of Germany and Italy. And this is also not the year of the great famine of 1943. Today, famine-ravished landless peasants will not flock to the city to beg from door to door for the left-overs and to perish. If imperialist war lets loose very severe, frightful, terrible exploitation on the peasants, whose bodies are already lean and shrunken, the exploited landless peasants will need no rifle in their hands; they will tear off the throat of the war-monster with their teeth and nails. The mass upheaval that this fierce exploitation will create, will help overcome the temporary setback, and a new high tide of people’s war will bring about a quicker end of the imperialist monster. This is why I believe that it is by the end of 1975 that the 500 million Indian people will complete writing the great epic of their liberation.
Note :
1. Eastern Frontier Rifles, a paramilitary force like the CRP or Central Reserve Police.
