Yesterday once more - 50 years after Naxalbari.
NB: This is the second of two pieces that I have written for publication on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Naxalbari. It has appeared today in Outlook. I post it here under the title that I gave it. The first one was entitled Annihilation. And this post has photos from a trip to Naxalbari in 2015 that I made along with two of my old and dear comrades: In Naxalbari, forty-eight years later Also relevant is the text of an open letter which I wrote in December 1971, protesting against the stand taken by China and the CPI (ML) on the Bangladesh crisis - DS
Yesterday once more
Yesterday once more
Speaking for myself -
and this could be true for many others - I joined the Naxalite movement out of
an inflamed sense of deep and prevalent injustice, in India and the world over.
And I left it for the same reason. Between these two markers lies a story which
when recalled by those whom it touched, would unfold like Homeric legend or the
Mahabharata of Vyasa. When I think about it, I can understand why epics grow
with time.
This May marks the
fiftieth anniversary of Naxalbari. 2018 will mark that of 1968. There were four moments of radical utopia in the twentieth century
that gripped the hearts of millions. The first coincided with the end of World
War One and the Bolshevik revolution; the second was the German delusion of
1933 that became history’s black hole; the third was a dream of universal peace
which accompanied the birth of the United Nations. The fourth is known by the
iconic number: 1968, the year of
the Prague Spring, the Tet offensive by the National Liberation Front in
Vietnam; the May uprising in France, the Cultural Revolution in China and the
Black Power salute by US athletes at the Mexico Olympics. That was just the tip
of it. Students the world over were affected by a radicalism that came from struggles
in Latin America, Vietnam, South Africa and Palestine. This coincided with
explosive discontent in India, where anti-Congress state governments were
elected in 1967, and Indian communism reverberated with demands for a more
‘revolutionary’ approach.
College days: The impact these
events had on us was emotional – I recall being deeply moved by Bertrand
Russell’s book War Crimes in Vietnam.
Emotions were central to the magnetism of Naxalism. My experience of college-sponsored
social service in Palamau during the Bihar famine in February 1967 was a
turning point. I was 17 years old, and among my team-mates were my seniors
Arvind Narayan Das and Vikram Chandra, both deceased. The District Magistrate of
Palamau, the late Kumar Suresh Singh deputed us to report on relief operations.
Arvind, Vikram and I went to a village named Narsinghpur Pathra, where we
stayed at the village dispensary.
I had passed senior
school at the Sainik School Kunjpura in the Haryana countryside; but this was my
first glimpse of village life in Bihar (Palamau is part of Jharkhand now). Drought,
scorching heat and scarcity had reduced the villagers to eating leaves and raw mango
seeds; reliant on government support to avoid starvation. A food kitchen
dispensed khichdi every morning to
children, who would stand in line with little hands outstretched. Some peasants
were trying to dig new wells to get at sub-soil water – but to no avail. The dispensary
compounder was in no position to help people with ailments, when the medicine
they most needed was food and water.
The sight of my fellow
Indians in the midst of a famine was heart-rending. It also shook my faith in
God. I remember arguing with some well-meaning Catholic nuns near Daltonganj; asking them how the Almighty could permit little
children to starve, when they had done no wrong. It was not enough to be told that
the ways of God were inscrutable. It took some years for me to learn that God
did not hold a monopoly on inscrutability.
I acquired life-long friends during our
sojourn. Arvind was a Marxist, and over days and nights explained to me why
poverty was a function of class society, why no change of government would end
exploitation; and why a total overthrow of class power was needed. It took
little time for me to channel my sense of shock into a belief in a
revolutionary ideology.
Soon after our return from Palamau the
Naxalbari incident took place. Later in the year newspapers, especially The Statesman began reporting intense
debates within the communist movement about the need for a new path. The
ultra-Left were still members of the CPI (M), which was part of West Bengal’s
United Front government. The party had been formed in 1964, in the aftermath of
the Sino-Indian war of 1962. In 1967, there was an upsurge of working-class
militancy in industrial plants. After Naxalbari, many communist mass
organisations were affected by the Maoist line. In July 1967 the Chinese Communist Party’s
central organ the People’s Daily, hailed the establishment of a “red
area of rural revolutionary armed struggle” in India. This was the period of the
domination of Mao’s ultra-left faction over Chinese politics. The Naxalites
received crucial impetus from this international endorsement. The rift within
communism was complete. It was to have fateful consequences.
In August 1968, Arvind
became the first (and last) Naxalite President of St Stephen's College Students
Union. Intense debates took place within and outside the college, on the
university campus. I edited a cyclostyled journal named Enquirer, full of revolutionary rhetoric, some of which led to
police inquiries. We wrote hyperbolic slogans on the walls of the university supporting
Vietnam, Palestine, the IRA, Chairman Mao and the Indian revolution. We
interacted with communist workers in old Delhi - one of my close comrades in the
underground was a worker in the Birla Cotton Mills, whose ramshackle home in a
working-class bustee was used as a
shelter for Charu Mazumdar on a rare trip to north India in the winter of 1971.
In 1970, our group,
including comrades from Hindu College, Miranda House and Jubilee Hall, staged a
hilarious political lampoon called India ‘69, ridiculing the entire
political spectrum, which was a big hit. An Intelligence Branch policeman asked
me for the author’s name – and refused to believe that we had authored it
collectively. The economist Joan Robinson visited the Delhi School of Economics
after a trip to China and wore a Mao cap as she spoke about the Cultural Revolution. I learned more about it from her book on the
subject, published in a Penguin paperback. Penguin published many left-radical
titles those days, including by Marx, Sartre, Fanon and Regis Debray. Needless
to say, the Communist Manifesto was available for a few annas in People’s Publishing House in Connaught Place. Chinese
literature also flowed in from Calcutta, including texts by Mao and the little
Red Book.
The
CPI (ML): Charu Mazumdar’s group
announced the formation of the CPI (ML) in April 1969. Violent actions against
landlords - some extremely brutal - began to take place in West Bengal and
Andhra Pradesh. There were also disruptive ‘actions’ in schools and colleges. Statues
and portraits of personages such as Rammohun Roy, Iswar
Chandra Vidyasagar, Tagore and Gandhi were vandalised. The walls came alive
with revolutionary slogans and stencilled images of Chairman Mao. The term ‘class enemy’ expanded to refer to
anyone deemed to be inimical to the
revolution, and hence could include suspected informers, police officials and
political critics. The VC of Jadavpur University was murdered in December 1970.
This period marked the
apogee of Charu’s authority within the movement. In May 1970 my friends Arvind
and Rabindra went underground. I followed them in October. The reasons why some
of us became active revolutionaries are complex. Suffice it to say that we
experienced a powerful moral imperative, something like a rediscovery of the
freedom movement. Of course, it was hard to cause our families so much pain and
anxiety. My father, a retired Army officer and prominent educationist, faced criticism
for his failure to ‘control’ his own son.
It is easy to denounce Naxalites as ‘anti-national’ and
‘Chinese-funded’. But Naxalites saw themselves as
freedom-fighters, flag-bearers of Bhagat Singh’s brand of militant nationalism.
Undoubtedly the Chinese CP was
already using Indian Maoism for its geo-political objectives – it was not similarly
enthusiastic for revolution in Pakistan or Sri Lanka. But it could do so
because of the powerful attraction Naxalism held for sections of the working
population and students.
1971: The global crisis: The period that we
were ‘underground’, saw momentous happenings in the sub-continent. The clash
with moderate communists became vicious. CPI (M) and CPI (ML) cadre engaged in
murderous actions against one another. Naxalites began to threaten election
processes with violence. In 1971 the pathways of global politics became hard to
explain, and too much to bear. The revered Chairman Mao shook hands with
Kissinger as Vietnam continued to be bombed. An insurrection in Sri Lanka was
smashed by the Bandaranaike government with the support of India, Pakistan, the
US, China and the USSR. Pakistan refused to honour the results of its general election
and in March 1971 launched a military crackdown in East Pakistan, with the
backing of the Chinese government. In the following months up to ten million
refugees fled to West Bengal - at one point a lac were crossing the border
every day.
As a cadre on the
move, I saw these poor people, bereft of hope, driven from their homes, camping
in the streets of Calcutta or on the highways. Isolated (most of the time) from
my comrades, I struggled to make sense of what was happening to the grand
design of Indian revolution. China blamed the India and the USSR for the crisis
in Pakistan; and initially I persisted in my loyalty to the Chinese version. But
I was soon overwhelmed by the cynicism of the Chinese Communist Party. I was
especially angry that the Chinese media had not informed the Chinese public or
their global followers about the ongoing genocide in East Pakistan. Zhou En
Lai’s letter to Yahya Khan in April 1971, after he had begun the slaughter of
innocents, was an eye-opener. Those who imagine that the degeneration of
Chinese communism happened only after the death of Chairman Mao should read
this deceitful document. (Read the text here). The People’s Republic of China had revealed itself as
a dictatorship, but certainly not a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’.
Unable to cope with
events, the CPI (ML) was thrown into ideological disarray. In December 1971, I was
in Calcutta, the epicenter of a global military confrontation. India, the USSR
and Bangladeshi fighters were ranged against Pakistan, China and the USA. Before
and during the war, the police conducted anti-Naxal combing operations.
Naxalites were knifing traffic constables in the streets, and plain-clothes
‘police guerilla squads’ were entering homes to shoot suspects. Professional
musclemen in the bustees were employed by both sides, and there were massacres of
Naxal cadre such as the one in Baranagar in August 1971. The spiral of death had
assumed a life of its own.
Truth-shower: Those two years for me
were like a truth-shower, an introduction to the life lived by India’s laboring
people. There was little contact with my friends, for we were far apart in our
chosen areas of work. Nor was revolution much in evidence – whatever the
rhetoric, most of India was untouched by Naxalite politics. I worked in fields,
factories and transport vehicles, slept on train platforms and streets, lived
in slums and villages, made friends with the most unlikely persons. On one
occasion I was lucky to escape the clutches of the Punjab police; on another I
received lathi-blows on my shins by a couple of Delhi constables who thought I
looked suspicious (I did). It was like swimming in an ocean of uncertainty;
kept afloat by friendship and the love of my comrades, but most of all, by
faith in the inevitable victory of world revolution.
In December 1971, as a
tidal wave of war, arrests, torture and mass migration rolled over the
sub-continent, the self-generative character of violence and the deceitful
nature of ideological speech dawned on me. Ideology has become the methodology
for the destruction of conscience. Our ‘party line’ was reduced to sophistry
and irrelevance amidst the suffering of Bengal’s millions and the manipulations
of the great powers. If Naxalism has survived for decades, it should serve to remind
the Indian establishment - across the political spectrum - that the humiliation
experienced by marginalized people can and will destabilize the system for an indefinite
period. Violence is engendered by injustice, not poverty. It would benefit all
concerned if our justice system were perceived as fair by the poorest in the
land.
Let our journalists, writers, judges and officials use their consciences
and think about the rioting, lynching and communal propaganda rife these days –
are our rulers in any position to preach respect for law to Naxalites? Why
should one kind of lawlessness enjoy impunity and another be deemed
anti-national? Will those who bombed the Samjhauta Express in 2007 ever be
punished? Does the RSS respect the law? Or does it want to overturn the
Constitution by subterfuge?
Since 1789, revolution
has been the central fixation of politics, inspiring dread in some quarters and
heady anticipation in others. But ideological thinking destroys
individuality - it matters little
which camp you belong to. The mobilisation of private armies
and vigilante groups, so common in our sub-continent, requires a systematic
departure from thought to obedience, from speech to sloganeering, from mindfulness
of ends to mindless hatred and violence. If the attainment of a just society is
so dependent upon the transformation of commitment into bestiality, radicals of
all varieties will succeed only in becoming mirror images of their chosen
enemies. It all comes round in the end. ‘Revolution’ means the completion of a
circle.
One of the favourite slogans of the ’68 generation
was borrowed from Paris: ‘Remember your
humanity and rebel!’ It cuts both ways.
Also see:
In Naxalbari, forty-eight years later
The Broken Middle (on the 30th anniversary of 1984)
