CHARU MAZUMDAR
From Liberation, January-March 1971.
The peasant and worker guerrillas of Naxalbari captured six rifles and many bullets by attacking a police post at Magurjan. This has raised the peasants’ armed struggle to a higher stage. Despite their best efforts the West Bengal and Bihar police have failed to recover either the rifles or the bullets. This incident is of much significance, for the successful attack was carried out even after all the intellectual and old leaders of that area had been arrested. This incident has given the peasants’ armed struggle the character of a liberation war. So we declare that it is already-time to build up the People’s Liberation Army.
If we do not take up the task of building the people’s army the peasants’ armed struggle will enter a blind alley. The ruling classes also have realized that the day is not far off when Bengal will become another Vietnam. The imperialist powers and social-imperialism have landed troops in East Pakistan in the name of providing aid to the flood-ravaged areas as soon as the peasants’ armed struggle has started there; for, they know quite well that this struggle in West Bengal will spread very quickly to East Pakistan. No power on earth will then be able to stop the onward march of that liberation struggle. The imperialist powers feel alarmed also because a Party has been formed on the basis of Mao Tsetung Thought in East Pakistan too. Not only this, it has also started the peasants’ armed struggle in the countryside by combating revisionism. So they know that these two struggles will merge into one very soon as it happened in the case of the struggles of the three countries of Indo-China. That is why they are not in a mood to waste any more time: they have already entered Pakistan with their armed forces.
In West Bengal, the situation has so developed that no civil administration can cope with it. That is why the enemy has deployed troops all over West Bengal : they are holding elections with the help of the army. This army will stay on even after the elections. The puppet character of the ministry that will be formed under the military will very quickly get exposed before the people; the civil war will enter a stage in which nationalism will be on our side, for imperialist intervention will then appear in quite a naked form. Even today the imperialists are carrying on intervention in India: even today American and Russian ‘experts’ are sitting on the back of the Indian army. This has still been kept a secret from the people. But imperialist intervention will not remain a secret after West Bengal has been handed over to the military. As part of the US-Soviet war plot, the Indian government has provided Japan with opportunities to plunder our country. The agreement it has entered into with Japan regarding supply of iron ore can by no means be described as a business deal. Japan buys iron ore at Rs 9 per tonne while our cost of raising it is Rs 16 per tonne. And in the name of buying iron ore Japan is taking away uranium at the same price. So Japan also is among the countries that are today plundering India. India’s foreign trade cannot expand, for the more it will expand the greater will be the burden of taxation on the Indian people. Almost all of this country’s steel output is exported to foreign countries. As a consequence, the Indian people have to pay one rupee per head as a penalty. So imperialism cannot by any means afford to lose this paradise for plunderers. That is why they are appearing on the scene after making full preparations.
It is the incident at Magurjan that has led today to the formation of the People’s Army in West Bengal. All our squads of poor and landless peasants are today contingents of this People’s Army. There must be commanders when there is an army. So we have to elect commanders from among poor and landless peasants on the area and regional basis. It is thus that the leadership of the poor and landless peasants will be established over the peasants’ armed struggle. What will be the tasks of this People’s Army of ours ? Today, all comrades should study and implement the following quotation from Chairman Mao Tsetung:
“The Chinese Red Army is an armed body for carrying out the political tasks of the revolution. Especially at present, the Red Army should certainly not confine itself to fighting; besides fighting to destroy the enemy’s military strength, it should shoulder such important tasks as doing propaganda among the masses, organizing the masses, arming them, helping them to establish revolutionary political power and setting up Party organizations. The Red Army fights not merely for the sake of fighting but in order to conduct propaganda among the masses, organize them, arm them and help them to establish revolutionary political power. Without these objectives, fighting loses its meaning and the Red Army loses the reason for its existence.”
This quotation puts concretely the tasks of the People’s Army in the present situation. That is why every member of the Party must study over and over again this quotation and must implement it in practice. It is on the fulfilment of these tasks that the future of our struggle depends. In order to carry out these tasks we must rely more and still more on the poor and landless peasants. Petty bourgeois intellectual comrades will serve as political commissars.
Comrades, today, the peasants’ revolutionary struggle is acquiring the character of a liberation war. So attack must be launched on the armed forces of the enemy. To wage attacks now against only class enemies amounts to a certain form of economism. If we fail to wage attacks against the armed forces of the enemy simultaneously with our attacks on the class enemies, we shall land ourselves in the mire of a certain kind of economism. There need be no doubt whether so many tasks can be performed at the same time; for the poor and landless peasants and the broad masses can carry out all these tasks with their many-sided genius. We were busy till now with unleashing the initiative of the poor and landless peasants. Now we have to strengthen the unity of the broad peasant masses and see that their genius has free play. We must undertake our tasks with faith in the revolutionary, genius of the masses. Once this genius has free play we shall advance at an irresistible speed and will surely achieve victory. Inspire the cadres with the spirit of revolutionary internationalism, for we are a contingent and comrades-in-arms of the world-wide anti-imperialist front. Chairman Mao is leading the world revolution: victory will certainly be ours.
February 10, 1971
