Open Letter to UCPN (Maoist)

Politbureau, Communist Party Of India (Maoist)

May 20, 2009 (Became available 28th June 2009)

Dear Comrades!
We have been keenly following the recent developments taking place in your country, Nepal. With the CPN(M) emerging as the single largest party in the elections to the Constituent Assembly in April 2008 and the formation of the new government consisting of a coalition of several Parties, some of which are known for their anti-people, pro-feudal, pro-imperialist and pro-Indian expansionist past, an ideological-political debate has arisen in the entire revolutionary camp in India and the world regarding the path, strategy, and tactics pursued by your Party, the CPN(M), in advancing the revolution in Nepal. There have also been reports in the media concerning the proposal of your Party leadership to change the name of the Party by removing the term `Maoist’. All these make it all the more urgent to conduct a deeper debate on the ideological-political line pursued by the CPN(M), particularly after it came to power through elections, after a decade-long people’s war and forming the government with some of the arch-reactionaries who had earned the wrath of the Nepalese masses.
Several issues need to be debated by Maoist revolutionaries in the context of the CPN(M) pursuing a line and policies that are not consistent with the fundamental tenets of MLM and teachings of our great Marxist teachers—issues such as proletarian internationalism; stages and sub-stages of revolutions in semi-colonial semi-feudal countries; understanding of the Leninist concept of state and revolution; nature of parliamentary democracy in semi-colonial, semi-feudal countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America; meaning of rigidity of strategy and flexibility in tactics; and such other related questions. There are also some specific issues raised by your Party in the name of creative application of MLM such as the concept of 21st century democracy or multi-Party democracy, Prachanda Path, South Asian Soviet Federation, fusion theory, and so on.
It is true that Marxism is not a dogma but a guide to action. Those Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries who followed it only in letter and discarded its spirit had failed to understand the essence of Marxism, failed to understand what com Lenin had taught, that is, `concrete analysis of concrete conditions is the living soul of Marxism’. Such dogmatists failed to apply MLM to the concrete practice of revolution in their countries and hence failed to make any real advances in the revolutions in their respective countries. Dogmatism, no doubt, has been a bane of the Marxist Leninist movements and hence the struggle against dogmatism should be an inseparable part of the ideological struggle of the Communist Party.
However, in the name of struggle against dogmatism, there have been serious deviations in the International Communist Movement (ICM), often going into an even greater, or at least equally dangerous, abyss of right deviation and revisionism. In the name of creative application of Marxism, communist parties have fallen into the trap of right opportunism, bourgeois pluralist Euro-Communism, rabid anti-Stalinism, anarchist post-modernism and outright revisionism. Right danger or revisionism in the ICM has emerged as the greatest danger in the period following the usurpation of the leadership of the CPSU and state power in the Soviet Union after the demise of comrade Stalin. Com Mao and other genuine revolutionaries had to wage a consistent ideological-political struggle against revisionism and reformism in the ICM and also within the CPC. However, despite the great struggle waged by com Mao and other Marxist Leninist revolutionaries all over the world against revisionism, it has been the revisionists who had temporarily won and dominated the ICM in the contemporary world. The ideological-political debate over the creative application of MLM to the concrete practice of the revolution in Nepal has to be conducted with a correct grasp of this international struggle ever since the time of com Lenin. …..

Lalgarh Update

Lalgarh Update

Amit Bhattacharyya

22-23 June 2009

Let us pick up the threads from the last report (published by Visthapan Virodhi Jan Vikas Andolan as a book entitled Singur to Lalgarh via Nandigram, April 2009) which ended with the meeting between People’s Committee leaders and some members of the civil society with the chief electoral officer on 12 April. Ultimately it was decided by the election commission that polling booths would be shifted from areas that come under police boycott. Lok Sabha elections throughout the country ended on 13 May and results were declared on 16 May. The phase of struggle that started from then on was something that was totally unprecedented in the history of our country—in depth, magnitude and significance. The subsequent history can be divided into Phase III and Phase IV. Phase III is related to people’s movement, while Phase IV with the deployment of para-military forces, brutality perpetrated by them and resistance by the people and the Maoists.

Phase III

• The attitude of the West Bengal ‘left-front’ government became clear when it refused to give permission to hold a demonstration in Kolkata to be organized jointly by CAVOW (Committee Against Violence on Women) and the women’s wing of the People’s Committee with traditional weapons on 5 June, as it would be political in nature. The Kolkata police even threatened the local convenor of CAVOW with arrest if they did not listen. Such a decision is discriminatory. Processions with traditional weapons have always been allowed by the state government to the Muslims at the time of Muharram or to the Sikhs during their religious ceremonies. If the government allows these processions to take place as these were religious in nature, then how would they explain the holding of a procession in November 2007 by the CPI(M) after the recapture of Nandigram with adivasis wielding the same traditional weapons like bows, axes, etc. The organisers were thus forced to shift the venue to West Medinipur. Traditional weapons are a part of tribal culture and the West Bengal government, acting in this way, actually rejected that very right of the tribal people. Superimposed upon it was the fact that when a cultural team went to Chakulia in Jharkhand on the Bengal-Jharkhand border to make propaganda among the adivasis there so that they could join the rally on 5 June, many of them were arrested by the Jharkhand police and a number of women were molested and one raped in Chakulia police station. When the Committee went to enter Jharkhand on their way to the Chakulia police station, a huge force was mobilised on the Jharkhand side and they were greeted with tear-gas shells. Chhatradhar Mahato declared that the road from West Bengal to Jharkhand would be blocked to cut off supply lines if the arrested were not released. That resulted in the spread of the movement to new areas also. The administration retaliated with the promulgation of Section 144 of the Cr.PC within 2 kms of the Lalgarh police station.

Meanwhile, the CPI(M) hit back to recover lost ground with 200 armed goons from Keshpur and Garbeta. On 11 June, they fired at PCAPA members such as Mirza Abdul Mannan, Hafiz Abdul Mannan and Omar Sheikh. On 12 June, the goons shot and injured four members of the PCAPA namely, Syed Afsar Ali, Jainal Abedin, Sheikh Kamruddin and Safiur Rahman at Sijua (TOI, 12-6-09). The people retaliated quickly. One CPI (M) leader of a branch of Dharampur was killed.

Turning things upside down

On June 14, 2009, the People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCAPA) started from Lalgarh, covered 11 kms and took control of 48 villages including CPM party offices in Dharampur—an apparently invincible CPM citadel used by the CPM hermads for launching armed attacks on the people. This was preceded by intense firing between the CPM goons and the Maoist fighters for five days in areas such as Dharampur, Jirapara, Hodhodi and Bhaudi. An unspecified number of CPM goons (around 14) died, many people left their homes from the battlefront and the Maoists, according to press reports, have seized the weapons left behind by the miscreants. Then they attacked Sijua, a CPM stronghold that would allow them easy access to the Jindal’s proposed steel plant site at Salboni. So decisive was the power shift in Dharampur that CPM zonal secretary Anuj Pandey, a resident of the village, had to flee out of sheer panic. ……………

The Walking Paradox

by Eduardo Galeano


Every day,
reading newspapers,
I attend a history class.
Newspapers teach me
by what they say
and by what they don’t say.

History is a walking paradox. Contradiction moves its legs. Perhaps for that reason its silences say more than its words and its words reveal the truth frequently through lying.

Soon a book of mine will be published, titled Espejos [Mirrors]. It’s just like a universal history — pardon my audacity. “I can resist everything except the temptation,” Oscar Wilde said, and I confess that I have succumbed to the temptation to recount some episodes of human adventure in the world, from the point of view of those who have not appeared in the picture.

In other words, it’s about little known facts.

Here I sum up some of them, just a few.

– – –

When they were expelled from Paradise, Adam and Eve moved to Africa, not to Paris.

Some time later, after their children had already embarked upon the ways of the world, writing was invented. In Iraq, not in Texas.

Algebra, too, was invented in Iraq. It was founded by Muhammad Al-Khwarizmi, one thousand two hundred years ago, and the words algorithm and guarismo [numeral] derive from his name.

Names usually do not correspond to what they name. In the British Museum, for example, the sculptures of the Parthenon are called “Elgin marbles,” but they are marbles of Phidias. Elgin was the name of the Englishman who sold them to the museum.

The three novelties that made the European Renaissance possible, the compass, gunpowder, and the printing press, had been invented by the Chinese, who also invented just about everything that Europe reinvented.

The Ancient Indians had known before everybody that the Earth was round and the Mayans had created the most exact calendar of all times.

– – –

In 1493, the Vatican gave America to Spain and granted Africa to Portugal, “so that barbarous nations be reduced to the Catholic faith.” At that time, America had fifteen times more inhabitants than Spain, and Black Africa one hundred times more than Portugal.

Just as the Pope had commanded, barbarous nations were reduced. Very much.

– – –

Water made Tenochtitlán, the center of the Aztec Empire. Hernán Cortés demolished the city, stone by stone, and with its rubble he filled the canals where two hundred thousand canoes sailed. This was the first water war in America. Now Tenochtitlán is called Mexico City. Where water once ran, now run cars.

– – –

The highest monument of Argentina has been erected in tribute to General Roca, who in the nineteenth century exterminated the Indians of Patagonia.

The longest avenue of Uruguay takes the name of General Rivera, who in the nineteenth century exterminated the last Charrúa Indians.

– – –

John Locke, the philosopher of freedom, was a shareholder of the Royal African Company, which bought and sold slaves.

When the eighteenth century was born, the first of the Bourbons, Felipe V, abdicated his throne signing a contract with his cousin, the King of France, that the French Guinea Company would sell Blacks in America. Each monarch took 25 percent of the profits.

Names of some slave ships: Voltaire, Rousseau, Jesus, Hope, Equality, Friendship.

Two of the Founding Fathers of the United States vanished in the fog of official history. Nobody remembers Robert Carter or Gouverneur Morris. Amnesia was the reward of their deeds. Carter was the only independence leader who emancipated his slaves. Morris, drafter of the Constitution, objected to the clause that established that a slave was equal to three fifths of a person. …………

Did Mao Really Kill Millions in the Great Leap Forward?

by Joseph Ball

(This article of Josef Ball exposes imperialist and Deng brand propeganda about Mao.article clearly illustrates that in the Mao period how the socialist economy transformed peoples life.The current rulers of China are demonising Mao to hide their crimes. – Editor)

Over the last 25 years the reputation of Mao Zedong has been seriously undermined by ever more extreme estimates of the numbers of deaths he was supposedly responsible for. In his lifetime, Mao Zedong was hugely respected for the way that his socialist policies improved the welfare of the Chinese people, slashing the level of poverty and hunger in China and providing free health care and education. Mao’s theories also gave great inspiration to those fighting imperialism around the world. It is probably this factor that explains a great deal of the hostility towards him from the Right. This is a tendency that is likely to grow more acute with the apparent growth in strength of Maoist movements in India and Nepal in recent years, as well as the continuing influence of Maoist movements in other parts of the world.

Most of the attempts to undermine Mao’s reputation centre around the Great Leap Forward that began in 1958. It is this period that this article is primarily concerned with. The peasants had already started farming the land co-operatively in the 1950s. During the Great Leap Forward they joined large communes consisting of thousands or tens of thousands of people. Large-scale irrigation schemes were undertaken to improve agricultural productivity. Mao’s plan was to massively increase both agricultural and industrial production. It is argued that these policies led to a famine in the years 1959-61 (although some believe the famine began in 1958). A variety of reasons are cited for the famine. For example, excessive grain procurement by the state or food being wasted due to free distribution in communal kitchens. It has also been claimed that peasants neglected agriculture to work on the irrigation schemes or in the famous “backyard steel furnaces” (small-scale steel furnaces built in rural areas)……..