IN the course of a protracted struggle between its opportunist and revolutionary wings, the Communist Party of India underwent its first split in 1964 and a new party was formed in the shape of the Communist Party of India (Marxist). It did not however take long for the revolutionary wing to realize that the leadership of the new party has been seized by the centrist trend of the movement which is bent upon pursuing the same opportunist course. An Inner-party struggle ensued throughout the entire party. However, in a concentrated form it was carried on by Comrade Charu Mazumdar through his famous Eight Documents written between 1965 and 1966.
Marked by a nationwide outburst of mass movements, this was also the period that saw the first major turn in post-1947 Indian politics. In West Bengal, the CPI(M)-dominated United Front was swept to power and the party leadership completed its transition to the opportunist strategic course. As its anti-thesis, the revolutionary wing went beyond the parameters of inner-party struggle and strove to orientate the mass struggles, the peasant movement in particular, towards the revolutionary strategic course. The peasant uprising in Naxalbari, organised by the Charu Mazumdar-led wing of the party precipitated the first showdown between the two strategic perspectives and tactical lines within the CPI(M).
True to the tradition of social-democratic betrayal, the party at power responded with bullets and the simmering revolt within the party spread like wild fire. With revolutionary communists throughout India detaching themselves from the party and rallying around the emerging centre, the All India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries (AICCCR), the CPI(M) suffered its first major split. The formation of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) on 22 April, 1969, gave an organised and centralised shape to this new centre. The CPI(ML) held its First Congress in Calcutta in May 1970 and Comrade Charu Mazumdar was elected the General Secretary of a 21-member Central Committee.
The history of the next two years is a saga of heroic sacrifices unparalleled in the annals of the Indian communist movement. Following the pattern of the Chinese revolution serious attempts were made to develop guerrilla war. Red Army and base areas in selected areas in the countiyside. Backing it up was a powerful movement of students and youths, particularly in West Bengal and the city of Calcutta, which sought to challenge the entire foundations of the ideology of the Indian ruling classes that had begun to take shape with the advent of the so-called Bengal Renaissance.
However, despite its amazing revolutionary spirit and intensity, this first phase of the CPI(ML) movement could not provide detailed and comprehensive solutions to the complex problems of revolutionising the Indian society. Amidst unprecedented state repression, the movement soon faced a disastrous setback.
