Lenin’s classic against “Leftwing” deviation (Leftwing Communism An Infantile Disorder) also state: “Certainly, without a revolutionary mood among the masses, and without conditions facilitating the growth of this mood, revolutionary tactics will never develop into action. In Russia,however, lengthy, painful and sanguinary experience has taught us the truth that revolutionary tactics cannot be built on a revolutionary mood alone. Tactics must be based on a sober and strictly objective appraisal of all the class forces in a particular state (and of the states that surround it, and of all states the world over) as well as of the experience of revolutionary movements. It is very easy to show one’s “revolutionary” temper merely by hurling abuse at parliamentary opportunism, or merely by repudiating participation in parliaments; its very ease, however, cannot turn this into a solution of a difficult, a very difficult, problem.”

In the run up to the Lok Sabha elections in a signed statement, the spokesmen of the Central Committee of CPI (Maoist) titled “Parliamentary democracy is an illusion for the Marxists! Revolution is their reality!” appealed to the people to boycott the elections. The message was loud and clear – that a ‘revolution’ was round the corner; as if an immediate choice was available to the people of this country – the poor, the hungry and the vulnerable – either a ‘revolution’ or a sham parliamentary democracy.

On the Communists’ possible approach to elections, the observations of Frederich Engels (introduction to Marx’s Class Struggles in France) lays down the correct orientation: “Thanks to the intelligent use which the German workers made of the universal suffrage introduced in 1866, the astonishing growth of the party is made plain to all the world”. He further added that the votes secured by the Communists “accurately informed us concerning our own strength and that of all hostile parties, and thereby provided us with a measure of proportion for our actions second to none, safeguarding us from untimely timidity as much as from untimely foolhardiness – if this had been the only advantage we gained from the suffrage, it would still have been much more than enough. But it did more than this by far. In election agitation it provided us with a means, second to none, of getting in touch with the mass of the people where they still stand aloof from us; of forcing all parties to defend their views and actions against our attacks before all the people; and, further, it provided our representatives in the Reichstag with a platform from which they could speak to their opponents in parliament, and to the masses without, with quite other authority and freedom than in the press or at meetings.”

Lenin’s classic against “Leftwing” deviation (Leftwing Communism An Infantile Disorder) also state: “Certainly, without a revolutionary mood among the masses, and without conditions facilitating the growth of this mood, revolutionary tactics will never develop into action. In Russia, however, lengthy, painful and sanguinary experience has taught us the truth that revolutionary tactics cannot be built on a revolutionary mood alone. Tactics must be based on a sober and strictly objective appraisal of all the class forces in a particular state (and of the states that surround it, and of all states the world over) as well as of the experience of revolutionary movements. It is very easy to show one’s “revolutionary” temper merely by hurling abuse at parliamentary opportunism, or merely by repudiating participation in parliaments; its very ease, however, cannot turn this into a solution of a difficult, a very difficult, problem.”

But the Indian Maoists would have none of these. Because, they think that revolutionaries are meant to engage in nothing but an armed struggle; therefore, something as mundane as organizing the workers through patient day-to-day trade union work or mobilizing the peasantry especially the landless, the poor and the agricultural workers on issues concerning their every day livelihood, which would raise their consciousness about the class realities in our rural areas, is of no importance to these ‘revolutionaries’! A major aspect of the Maoist activities is predominated by ‘annihilation’ of individuals who are opposed to their activities. While claiming the legacy of the Naxalbari movement of the late 60s and early 70s, the Maoists remember the contribution of Charu Mazumdar with utmost reverence – as the pioneer of Maoism in India. However, the present day Maoists could have done better had they taken note of Mazumdar’s views when the imminent collapse of the naxalite movement became apparent to him. Before his arrest he was preparing a document for circulation among his Party members in which he was reported to have commented that “the system of annihilation has been overworked, and many mistakes have been committed. There has been widespread criticism in the party of these. Revisions will be made”. Mazumdar wrote about these mistakes in a personal letter to his wife from jail. However, rather than correcting their grave sectarian mistakes, the CPI (ML) splinteredinto various directions. Even today, the Maoists refuse to draw proper lessons from the mistakes which Mazumdar eventually admitted. Here lies the Maoists’ bankruptcy in grasping the essence of Marxism-Leninismwhich is the ideology on which any Communist party bases its programme and activities and keep on blindly imitating the form adopted in struggles adopted elsewhere in the world and too, in the remote past. Lenin had pointed out that the Marxist ideology can sustain itself because it is revolutionary and scientific at the same time. Without a scientific comprehension about society and social processes, the revolutionaries cannot take the process of social revolutionforward. But at the same time, unless the scientific comprehension is weddedto a revolutionary spirit, this process would remain simply an academic exercise. Therefore, for Communists all over, it is important to grasp the concrete study of a concrete situation. And, it is here that the Maoists completely fail the test of being revolutionaries. The entire literature that the Indian Maoists have produced on the concrete analysis of the Indian society, the processes that have shaped it, the changes in the world, the stage of development, the precise nature of the Indian ruling classes are substituted by a copy and paste exercise of the Chinese revolution.

‘Maoism’ in India is a crude distortion of the theory and practice of Mao Ze Dong. Maoists hardly realise that by blindly imitating the particular path of Chinese revolution that the Chinese people traversed under the leadership of Comrade Mao – they are in fact undermining the very contribution of the great Chinese revolution and the success of the widespread national liberation struggles in the wake of the great victory over fascism led by the Soviet Union. These two momentous developments had changed the alignment of political forces in the aftermath of the Second World War. Ignoring this, the Indian Maoists continue to believe in what the Naxalbari movement propounded that Indian independence is fake and that India continues to be a semi-colonial state in the new millennium. Revolutionaries, whose essential hallmark is to usher in change, cannot remain oblivious of big changes at the global andnational level and fail to assimilate their implications. The present secretary of the CPI (Maoist) Ganapati, in an interview to their own mouthpiece People’s March admitted that in the CPI(ML) People’s War Group which is a component of the present Maoist party had a debate over the use of the word ‘Maoism’ in their literature and understanding. He had, of course, branded those who opposed this new nomenclature as an ‘opportunist clique’. But the fact remains that the very notion of ‘Maoism’ is misplaced. This was made clear by the Communist Party of China itself that “Mao Zedong Thought is the integration of the universal principles of Marxism-Leninism with the concrete practice of the Chinese revolution”. To try and replicate the path of the Chinese revolution in India, lock, stock and barrel, is nothing but a denial of the Indian realities. The CPI (ML) which emerged during the Naxalbari movement articulated unrealistic slogans like “China’s Chairman is our Chairman” and “Chinese path is our path”. Contrast this to the opposition of Mao himself against the general line of Communist International in so far as China was concerned. It was Mao who asserted, and correctly so, that the Chinese revolution could not follow the same trajectory as in Russia. Similarly, the Communists in India have to chart their own road to the revolution on the basis of a concrete analysis of Indian conditions. Wholesale borrowing of the path followed by the Chinese Communist Party before the revolution in China in the name of ‘Maoism’ is against the very grain of Mao Zedong Thought. The Indian Maoists would do well to learn and assimilate the experience of the Nepalese Maoists. In spite of the fact that Maoists in Nepal commanded a major support through its armed peasant warfare in large parts of the country, they realized that their movement would be unable to go further forward unless they participated in the task of developing a constitutional multi-party democracy replacing the archaic monarchy. In this background the Maoists had entered into a historic agreement with the seven party alliance with other Left and anti-monarchy bourgeois parties. This ensured that they were recognised by the Nepali people as a major force in Nepali politics. Rather than learning from the Nepalese Maoists, the Indian Maoists virulently opposed and criticized them.

The basic problem with the conceptual framework of Maoism as has been elucidated by the Indian Maoists lies in their inability to come to grips with the need for evolving with the changing situation and grasping the concrete situation in the society where they are working.

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