The Naxalites and Naxalism-Mohit Sen

(The article was written in January 1971 but its theoretical potential may be useful in understanding the Naxalites today who seem to intent upon the decimation of valuable youth. Mohit Sen was the top creative marxist in India.)

THE Naxalites, or the ultra 'Left' section of the Communist movement in India, have now been operating as a political force in some parts of the country for about three years. As an ideological grouping, of course, the Naxalites are older in years, and their ideology and methodological approach were familiar in the communist movement in India decades ago. It is necessary to examine the achievements of the Naxalites as also their ideology and methodology. Their achievement to date is extremely limited, and bears no comparison to what the united CPI was able to accomplish when it was pursuing a roughly similar line in the immediate post-War and post-Independence periods. Whatever may be said in the official sheet of the Charu Mazumdar section of the Naxalites, there exists in India not a single 'liberated' village, let alone a taluq or district. And, since squad and individual terrorism began in Calcutta, the Naxalites have not been able to claim that they have 'annihilated' a single prominent class enemy

— indeed, the top monopolists and  bureaucrats are the only ones in Calcutta who can feel safe and secure.

Similarly, in the villages, while some landlords and jotedars have been killed, landlord rule has not been shaken but has, in fact, been strengthened. Any tour of the areas in Srikakulam district where the Naxalites operated and any talk with the toiling tribals or peasants of the place would inevitably lead to this conclusion.

PABTY ORGANISATION

And take their party organisation. It is quite difficult to count the number of trends, groups and factions that now exist, each claiming to be the true representatives of the Maoist interpretation of Marxism-Leninism. Not only that. A stage has now been reached when Charu Mazumdar is left with a

rump of a Central Committee and is said to be thinking in terms of setting up a new co-ordinating committee and re-establishing the party. All the other top leaders, Kami Sanyal, Kailasham, Sushital Raychaudhuri, Satyanarayan

Singh, Shiv Misra, to say nothing of Nagi Reddy, D V Rao, Kolla Venkayya, et al, are either killed or in jail or have been purged. Charu Mazumdar, imitating Mao with a vengeance, is left with himself and his young fanatical idolaters. There is more, however, than simple arrest and murder by the police in this process of decimation. It is no secret that the Naxalites, running true to type, have also been quite busy in 'dealing' with one another. Acting on the principle that the most dangerous enemy is the enemy within and the most deserving of punishment are those who had once seen the light but are now expressing doubts, Naxalite squads in many parts of the country are engaging in physical assaults upon

one another. Indeed, often enough they display far more skill in these operations than in dealing with the class enemy.

CULT OF VIOLENCE

It is in this connection that another disturbing fact of the movement comes to light. In most parts of the country

the Naxalites, who consider themselves to be the most revolutionary of revolutionaries, act in such utter disregard of the most elementary rules of underground functioning that one is simply appalled and even a trifle mystified as to how and why these young, inexperienced men were not told how to function illegally when they were exhorted to regard armed civil war here and now as the only possible form of revolutionary activity. Keeping of letters, addresses, diaries, openly visiting places known to be under constant police watch, using people known to be likely to be under police surveillance for cover addresses — from all this it looks as if those now in the leadership of the Naxalite movement are determined to decimate their young trusting cadres. There is also more than a touch of the bizarre in some of the actions of

some Naxalite groups and squads. What Eric Hobsbaron said in his "Primitive Rebels" about the role of ritual in terrorist groups fully applies to them. And the ritual includes training in brutality. The cult of violence, the constant harping on the 'cleansing' role of shedding blood, the emphasis on the need to dehumanise- and desensitivise oneself have produced their evil fruit. Some of the Naxalite young men are exactly the prototypes of the characters portrayed by Conrad in his "Under Western Eyes" or Dostoevsky in his "Devils". There is more than a touch of sadism in the way they are taught to deal with, and the way they do actually deal with, their own doubting comrades. "Do what your most savage instincts instruct, after all you are only a little cog . in Chairman Mao's machine" — this Naxalite dictum reminds one of Ivan Karamazov's cry that all is permitted now that God is dead, as also of the fascist and Nazi training of their cadres that Hitler would take upon himself the responsibility for all that any one of them did. Finally, there is in the training of some of the Naxalite young men in some places such an inculcation of irrationalism that, anyone who has had any experience of genuine communist training can only feel a. deep sense of revulsion. It is taught, for example, that sexual frustration is one of the driving forces in the making of a revolutionary and that this should be acted upon in 'bringing' young men and Women to the 'revolutionary' camp. It is also taught that mind manipulation through the utilisation of psychological techniques is a most effective manner of ideological training. All that the most Vicious enemies of the communists charged them with believing and doing is thus elevated to the level of a 'theory'. These young men are told not to read, not to discuss with those who may know more Marxism-Leninism but are not in the Naxalite camp, not to exercise their minds, but only to engage in 'practice' since it is the Central Committee which decides what is Marxism-Leninism and Mao is there to think and Charu Mazumdar there to interpret that thought.

MAOISM IS ALL

It is all this that makes the Charu Mazumdar-led section of the Naxalites — who are that movement's strongest and most typical representatives — a force which objectively serves the interests of counter-revolution. It enables the police to most brutally and indiscriminately maim and kill fine,, idealistic young men. It enables the murderous violence of Right reaction as well as the organised violence of State power to pass into the background. It enables the most vicious enemies of communism and of progress to pass off this perversion and caricature of communism as the real thing which has to be opposed by all who are decent. It plays the same role in India that Maoism plays all over the world.

The link is too direct and far too much acknowledged to be missed. And the link is what passes off as Mao's generalisation of the experience of the Chinese revolution since 1958. It begins with a most violent onslaught on the Soviet Union and the overwhelming majority of the international communist movement. Far more than the US imperialists or any other imperialists, it is the Soviet Union and the overwhelming majority of the international communist movement who are singled out for the most violent denunciation. This is followed up by propagating certain aspects of the Chinese revolutionary experience as the model for all revolutions everywhere. It is no accident that most of the young Naxalites not only know next to nothing of the writings of Marx and Lenin but are also blissfully unaware of most of the writings of Mao himself. They are quite unaware of the tremendous importance of the United Front and of the Communist Party organisation in the Chinese revolution — only the armed civil war in the rural areas is given out as the acme of Mao's Thought. They are quite unaware of the fact that Mao accepted the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek during the anti-Japanese war or that he stopped, for that  period, the confiscation of the land and other property of all those landlords and moneylenders who had not sold out to the Japanese imperialists. They are quite unaware of the long ideological struggle that Mao waged in Yenan against dogmatism, adventurism and sectarianism, against the views of some Chinese Communists who propagated that 'Russia's path is our path'.

ATTRACTION OF NAXAUSM

On the other hand, they are taught to repeat parrot-like all the most recent phrases of the so-called Cultural Revolution. This includes the denunciation of Liu Shao-chi as having been a capitalist agent since the 1920s — Han Suyin's little book is the most recent compulsory text. It also includes the teaching of the use of methods employed in the Cultural Revolution in China — the insulting of veterans, the sadistic beating, the war of the generations, class war in the classroom, the foul language and the rest. It further includes the teaching of the need to destroy the Party organisation from time to time as an application of the Maoist injunction to 'bombard the Party headquarters'. Mass organisations like trade unions, peasants' associations andyouth leagues are, of course, not even worth mentioning in this connection! In the name of fighting economism, all mass work, agitation and struggle, other than squad armed action, is looked down upon. It, finally, includes the systematisation of the cult of the individual as the principal basis on which to base the system of revolutionary organisation

— it is now openly propagated that the Party in India cannot be right against Cham Mazumdar just as the Party in China could not be right against Chairman Mao. The real dilemma will arise when Charu Mazumdar is denounced or criticised by those who can speak more authoritatively in the name of Chairman Mao, i e, Peking itself. Two points need to be discussed here. Why is it that the Naxalite ideology and movement did attract and, to some extent, continues to attract brilliant, idealistic young men? And why, despite attracting brilliant and idealistic young minds, has it come to this disastrous impasse?

First, many of the young men and women who have been attracted are those whose sensitive minds have been hurt not only by the abounding misery and injustice in Indian society but also by personal tragedies. Rebellion against what is offensive at home has been projected as action against an evil society. Instinct and emotion have played more of a role than intellect and reason or the passion based on reason. The horror of affluent homes is within them, and not only in the contrast that they present to the squalor and .misery all around. And, if one has not attempted to understand and relate this horror to the social misery, one often enough reacts against social squalor with the same childish petulant outbursts occasioned by the horror of affluent homes.

Second, almost all these young men and women come from what is rather loosely called the petty bourgeoisie. It is not an accident that in Andhra for example, many of the Naxalites who went off to the forests were medical and engineering graduates. These were precisely the section of the student community who were the most difficult to bring into any kind of student movement and struggle. They were far too concerned with and far too confident of getting ahead in the rat race. And the more affluent the families they came from, the more difficult it was to move them. They shunned politics, disdained going in for the drudgery of mobilising and organising fellow students. With the onset of the recession, which signalled the coming of the general crisis of the capitalist path of development that India had been placed upon for the past two decades, the problem of employment and of careers loomed large for these sections of the student community for the first time. And desperation replaced the mood of confidence. Shortcuts were sought. The same disdain for the work of mobilisation and organisation continued. So did the shunning of politics. Individual terrorism appealed irresistibly as had careerism (only another version of economism) earlier. Spontaneity was all. The violent fluctuation in the moods of the petty bourgeois was exhibited in a fascination for violence. So many of those who, having been Naxalites and thought better of it, have gone in for jobs returned to affluent homes or went abroad for higher studies. Escape is possible for them just as romanticism was.

QUICK DEBACLE

Third, the attraction of Naxalism had the potency that it did because of the split in the CPI, leading to the temporary reduction in its capacity to influence events. And the CPI(M) prepared the ideological ground by its anti-Sovietism; its picking on the CPI as its main target; its explanation that the split was due to the 'revisionism' of the CPI as manifested in the opposition to Maoism as far back as in 1962; its sectarianism which split the united fronts and paralysed the functioning of the united front ministries in West Bengal and Kerala; its use of murder and terrorism in intra-party conflicts. Many of the young men and women who joined the Naxalites made their passage to it through the CPI(M). United fronts, utilisation of the system of parliamentary democracy, mass mobilisation on the widest possible scale, and the patient raising of the consciousness of the masses through a combination of education and militant struggle, were all anathema to the CPI(M). They are also anathema to the Charu Mazumdar-led section of the Naxalites. These two parties are Siamese twins and hence the violence of their mutual antagonism. One has here the birth of anarchism as a reaction against opportunism. And both are the product of dogmatism, of a refusal to use the method and system of Marxism-Leninism to analyse Indian reality and to generalise Indian revolutionary experience. It is no accident then that the reason for the appearance of the Naxalites coincides with the reason for their debacle so quickly. One of the chief characteristics of the Naxalite young men and women is their stubborn refusal to study India. Mao in Yenan in 1942 had chided his comrades for knowing more about Greece and Rome than about China, knowing more about the Russian revolution than about the Chinese revolution. It can certainly be said of the Naxalite young men and women that they know far more about China than they know about their own country. And the only reading that they do and are encouraged to do is about China. The complete bankruptcy and poverty of the Naxalite movement, ideologically and politically, is to be seen in the total failure of their basic documents to bring out the contradictions of Indian reality, to say nothing of generalising Indian revolutionary experience. India and India's struggles are just written off! The Naxalite thesis is that there was no real freedom struggle at all. It was all a puppet play staged by the imperialists. And the result is that, even before winning freedom from British imperialism, India became a neo-colonial state based upon and protecting feudalism in the countryside. So, to destroy this neo-colonial state, its base has to be destroyed through the annihilation of the feudal landlords. But these are all assertions and are ipso facto correct because Mao is stated to have approved of them. The factual material, the analysis, the debate that always precedes the making of such wide-ranging formulations, are completely absent. Indeed, all statistics are disdained, since they come from the neo-colonial state or neo-colonialist intellectuals, i e, all those who do not accept the authority of Mao. And- any analysis or study on one's own is also condemned since it is tantamount to an arrogant posture of claiming to be qualified enough to know how to analyse. What is needed is not analysis, but application, and what is to be applied is the imitation as literally as possible of what .the Chinese communists did after the break-up of the national united front in 1927 following the betrayal by Chiang Kai-shek. All the youthful energy, ingenuity and brilliance is to be exercised in working out the details of squad attacks. And this is all put in a neat formula — centralised politics and decentralised action. The line comes from on high, you decide how to make the bombs and throw them! This is not how revolutionaries will be prepared, as some commentators claim. This is not only totally opposed to Marxism-Leninism in general but is the exact reverse of how Mao proceeded during the period 1927-57. It is, of course, quite consistent with how Mao is said to be working in the period from 1958 onwards. So long as this methodology is practised, there is no escape from degeneration and disaster for the Naxalites. But if they stop practising this methodology they cease to be Naxalites. Such is the cruel contradiction inherent in the Naxalite phenomenon. The brilliance and idealism of what are, after all, a small section of our petty-bourgeois youth which has pushed itself into the Naxalite movement was certainly worthy of respect. But the persistence in stupidity and the advance to sadism and to self-destruction needs to be combated ideologically and politically without the slightest compromise. Certainly the Naxalites deserve to be saved from police torture and killings. Their lives, their limbs and their minds must be protected, by all from the brutality of the state as well as their erstwhile comrades in the CPI(M) as well as in theirown rival factions. Even more necessary, however, is the saving of the Naxalites from Naxalism.