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December 2, 2000 will
stand as the red-letter day in the annuls of the revolutionary movement in
India. For, on this day, in the first year of the of the new century and the new
millennium, is born the new army of the Indian masses — the People’s Guerrilla
Army — fulfilling, at last, the cherished dreams of thousands upon thousands of
martyrs who have laid down their invaluable lives for a precious cause — that of
completing the Democratic revolution in India, as a first step to usher in
socialism and communism.
On this day, the
three armed wings of the PGA — the main, secondary and Base Forces — staged flag
marches in the plains and jungles of AP, North Telangana (NT), Dandakaranya (DK)
and Bihar, re-affirming their firm resolve to advance the ongoing people’s war
in India to the higher stage of establishing Base Areas in the vast Indian
countryside, besides bringing newer and newer regions into the battlefront. The
jungles of DK and NT, East Region and South Telangana, Nallamalla and
Koel-Kaimur, reverberated with the marching steps of the new guerrilla army. The
vast plain tracks are making preparations to add more armed detachments to the
PGA. As news of the formation of the PGA spread from one region to another, more
and more of the toiling masses are enthused to join its ranks. The PGA is bound
to swell in numbers, firepower and fighting capacity and become the real
fighting fist of the Indian people. The formation of the PGA thus heralds a new
dawn in the revolutionary movement in India.
It is the
personification of the hopes and aspirations of a billion people of India, who
are weighed down by the triple burden of imperialism, feudalism and comprador
bureaucrat capitalism. Emerging within one year of the martyrdom of Comrades
Shyam, Mahesh and Murali, the PGA has special significance to the revolutionary
masses of India, particularly to the rank and file of the CPI(ML)[People’s War].
The formation of the PGA on the first death anniversary of these leaders has
confirmed the time-tested truth of history that revolutionaries have no death,
that they live forever, reincarnating themselves into thousands more. The PGA’s
formation is a fitting tribute to these great sons of the Indian revolution and
is a befitting reply to the exploiting ruling classes of India who fondly dreamt
that they had extinguished the fire of revolution by murdering these leaders in
the most cowardly manner. The rise of the PGA have dashed their hopes to the
ground and confirmed the invincibility of the Party and the ongoing PW in the
country.
The PGA marks a
qualitative leap in the fighting capacity of the Indian masses. For, without the
organised fighting force of the people — the people’s army — the oppressed
people cannot realise their dreams of a classless society. That is why com. Mao
had repeatedly stressed that "without a people’s army, the people have
nothing". All hitherto class societies have demonstrated, in crystal-clear
terms, that without taking recourse to arms, the people could never overthrow
the exploiting ruling classes, who always have a huge repressive state machine,
with a vast mercenary army at their disposal. And it is this army that played
the key role in maintaining the tottering regimes in power. At every critical
juncture of history, when the class struggle of the oppressed threatened the
very survival of the propertied classes, it has always been the gun that saved
the ruling power by subduing the masses. And it was through the gun that the
contending class could attain political power.
"The seizure of power
by armed force ……." This dictum of Com. Mao is true for all class societies.
Whereas in the
capitalist West, where feudalism has been done away with and bourgeois democracy
exists, and where the entire economy is urbanised, a relatively longer period of
preparation becomes necessary for organising the masses for a countrywide
insurrection. The working class has to undergo several armed rehearsals for the
final uprising to seize political power. But in feudal and semi-feudal
societies, ruled directly or indirectly by imperialism, the armed struggle to
liberate the countryside should begin soon after the formation of the Communist
Party. The People’s army and the revolutionary United Front are the two chief
instruments in the hands of the Party of the proletariat leading the revolution.
The party gets strengthened in the course of strengthening the Army and the UF.
To advance any revolution to victory a strong Party, a strong Army and a strong
UF are pre-requisites. They are the three chief instruments of the revolution.
It is the Party, which is, the heroic warrior wielding the other two instruments
and skillfully utilising them to victoriously complete the revolution. The Army
and the UF, in turn, make the warrior invincible. This time-tested truth has
been completely abandoned by the Communist Party in India ever since its
inception in 1925.
In the history of the
Indian communist movement, lasting for eight decades, the people’s army had not
been formed and the UF that was formed, during the struggle against British
imperialism until 1947, was class collaborationist in essence, often trailing
behind the comprador big bourgeoisie-led Congress party of Gandhi, Nehru & Co.
The right opportunist line pursued by the leadership of the CPI — Dange,
P.C.Joshi, Ajay Gosh & Co. — deliberately dispensed with the need for a people’s
army. Like the Mensheviks of Russia, it tailed behind the big bourgeoisie,
hoping that the latter would complete the bourgeois democratic revolution in
India. The Party leadership did not even understand that the Indian big
bourgeoisie was always comprador in character, tied as it was to British
imperialism from its very birth. The party leadership made no attempt whatsoever
to found a revolutionary people’s army or a revolutionary UF, although immense
opportunities existed for forming these in colonial India — opportunities which
were as great, and even greater, than in semi-colonial China.
It was only during
the brief period of the glorious Telengana uprising in the late 1940s that armed
squads came into existence. About 2000 regulars and 10,000 irregulars
(militias), fought the mercenary armies of the big-landlords, the Nizam and the
central government. But these guerrilla forces were not brought under
centralised command and hence functioned as dispersed guerilla units. These
guerilla forces, however, waged a valiant struggle and threw out the landlords
from about 3000 villages and the first seeds of people’s political power were
sown. At a time when the conditions had become ripe for forming the Red Army,
which would have paved the way for establishing the first Base Area in Telengana,
the right opportunist leadership of the party back-tracked; it betrayed the
revolution, withdrew armed struggle in 1951, and embarked on the path of
peaceful transition, playing second-fiddle to the comprador bourgeoisie led by
Nehru.
Following this
infamous betrayal by the party leadership, there was a long lull in the Indian
Communist movement, broken only by the Naxalbari Spring Thunder in 1967. This
once again brought armed struggle onto the agenda; guerrilla zones came into
existence, although for a brief period, in several parts of the country —
Srikakulam, Debra-Gopivallabhpur, Mushahari, Birbhum, etc. These great struggles
shook the entire country, awakened the masses, bringing them to the centre-stage
of history and struck panic among the ruling-classes, who mobilised huge armed
forces and succeeded in temporarily suppressing these struggles. Our failure to
bring the hundreds of armed guerilla squads, which had established people’s
power in several parts of the country, under a centralised command and, thereby,
transforming them into a regular people’s army, was an important reason that had
enabled the ruling classes to suppress the movement by 1972.
After a big lull that
followed the martyrdom of com. Charu Majumdar and the disruption of the entire
CC, struggles once again broke out, on a considerable scale, from the late 1970s
in AP and later in Bihar. Armed guerrilla squads were formed in AP, DK and Bihar
during the 1980s, which led the struggles, and fought the reactionary feudal
forces and their armies initially, and the state’s armed forces from the
mid-1980s. For over a decade, the armed guerrilla squads continued to grow in
numbers, enhancing their firepower and fighting skills and capacities. From a
handful of fighters, they grew into a relatively formidable force, threw out the
landlords from thousands of villages and contended for power with the state’s
armed forces. In the ongoing people’s war, led by the CPI(ML)[PW], about 3,000
people have become martyrs since 1980. And it was only in the course of waging
war against the reactionary feudal class, its henchmen, and the state’s forces,
that the Party and the armed guerilla squads became further strengthened. The
advance of the people’s war had matured conditions for forging the PGA under a
centralised command structure. The people in the Guerrilla Zones and other areas
of class struggle, and the Party leading them, have become steeled in
innumerable battles with the state. Lakhs of acres of land were distributed in
the course of the two-decade long struggle waged by the CPI(ML)[PW]. The people
have no other alternative but to arm themselves and wage the war even more
fiercely and determinedly in order to retain their hold over the confiscated
lands and to maintain their political power in the vast countryside. That is the
reason behind the massive support for the Party and the armed guerrilla squads
in the Guerrilla Zones, and other areas of intense class struggle. Hence
thousands of people in the war zones are aroused by the forging of the new
instrument that will serve to realise their dreams. By enrolling thousands upon
thousands from the oppressed masses, groaning under the triple burden of
feudalism, imperialism and comprador bureaucratic capitalism, the PGA is bound
to transform itself into the PLA (People’s Liberation Army) in a short time and
establish Base Areas in several regions in the Indian countryside.
Today, the
overwhelming majority of the Indian masses have become victims of unbearable
oppression. The offensive by the ruling classes has embraced all spheres and
effects all sections of the population.
The oppressed
nationalities are demanding their right to self-determination and their national
aspirations are being suppressed most brutally. Their territories are forcibly
occupied and maintained in the Indian Empire in the most brutal manner. Some of
these nationalities have formed their own armies and are locked in
life-and-death battles with the expansionist Indian State.
Religious minorities
— Muslims, Christians, and Sikhs — are persecuted and have become victims of the
fascist Hindutva offensive. Their Places of worship are desecrated or destroyed,
they are looked down upon as second class citizens and are forced to submit to
the Hindu communal forces.
Adivasis have been
driven off from their traditional homelands in the forests to the hills or
transformed into wage-slaves for capital, under the most inhuman conditions.
Their traditional rights over the forests are snatched away by the comprador big
businesses, imperialist TNCs and other rapacious plunderers.
The working class and
peasantry are bearing the brunt of the neo-liberal policies of globalisation,
liberalisation and privatisation initiated by the Indian ruling classes under
the dictates of imperialism. Huge increases in the price of necessities, drastic
cuts in subsidies, dismantling of welfare and employment generation schemes, a
rise in charges for basic amenities, etc have had an enormous impact on people’s
standard of living. Mass retrenchments, cuts in wages, restrictions of trade
union rights, contractualisation of labour and a de-facto EXIT POLICY, have
further hit the living conditions of the workers. Even worse hit is the
peasantry, who now faces not only regular drought and floods, but also the
vagaries of the market. Heavily indebted, all these factors have pushed
thousands to suicide and lakhs to further destitution.
Social oppression of
dalits and women continue unabated, and are, in fact, further intensified by the
growing wave of Hindu fascism. The Hindu fascists aggressively promote feudal
values, which results in increased castism and greater patriarchalism. As a
result, untouchability, upper caste biases in jobs and education, wife
burning/beating, dowry deaths, etc. are all growing. Imperialist culture is
further commoditifying women resulting in their increasing sexual abuse.
India’s vast petti-bourgeoisie,
except for the upper crust, faces a jobless future, lower standard of living,
increasing alienation in life and a void future. The massive onslaught of
imperialism on the country is also having a telling impact on the national
bourgeoisie of the country. Already lakhs of small-scale industries have been
forced to close down, with the TNCs taking over their markets and the government
removing all their concessions. Lakhs more are on the brink of bankruptcy and it
is only a matter of time before they are wiped out.
The vast masses of
the people thus have to fight a fierce battle to beat back the imperialist
offensive of globalization and the Hindu fascist forces.
The people of India
are not the only victims of the marauders of Delhi led by imperialism. The
people of entire South Asia are victims of Indian expansionism. Thus the unity
of the people of India and entire South Asia to defeat the Indian expansionists
is the need of the hour.
The founding of the
PGA should serve as a fitting reply to the policies of globalization, the Hindu
fascist forces, Indian expansionism, national oppression and the offensive by
the imperialist and the Indian ruling classes in all spheres. The PGA will
hasten the process of forming a broad United Front with all these sections in
India and South Asia and, together with these forces bury Indian expansionism
and imperialism in the soil of South Asia.
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