Recent developments in the Naxalite movement - communists in India

Monthly Review, Sept, 1993 by Tilak D. Gupta

In spite of its obvious hostility to the Marxist-Leninist groups, the report is unusually near the mark. For one thing, it correctly locates the geographical spread of the agrarian movement under Naxalite leadership and names the most active organizations within it. For another, it recognizes the broad mass character of the movement and errs only in timing its revival. The resurgence, to be precise, began in 1977 when these groups began to take advantage of the somewhat more relaxed political atmosphere following the defeat of Indira Gandhi's government in the aftermath of her nineteen-month "emergency rule." Most of these groups started fielding legal and semi-legal mass organizations around 1977 to lead the rural masses in their struggles on economic and social issues. While efforts were made, sometimes successfully, to build mass platforms on student, youth, working class, women's, and cultural fronts, the emphasis was unmistakably on developing the peasant struggles in the countryside.

Although 1977 was a watershed year for Indian politics, in the sense that the era of the Congress Party's monopoly over the central government came to a close and a new epoch of relative political instability began, this phenomenon can be linked with the revival of the Naxalite movement only in a limited way. Similarly, though the economic condition of the vast rural poor was steadily worsening over the years, there was nothing special about the year 1977 to connect it to the movement's resurgence. But the rethinking within these groups about tactics and the regrouping of forces after the setback had by then reached a stage at which a fresh initiative was really in the cards. Certain favorable objective factors of the moment no doubt lent added impetus to this new wave of struggles.

When the first non-Congress government in Delhi was successfully pressured in 1977 to fulfill its campaign promise to release large numbers of imprisoned activists and leaders, including Naxalites, the Marxist-Leninist camp was strengthened. The banner of democracy unfurled by the parliamentary opposition parties to fight Indira Gandhi's "emergency" regime also made it difficult for them to unleash a reign of terror against the Naxalites immediately after coming to power. And at the level of consciousness, the denial of all legal avenues of protest during the "emergency" rule perhaps helped these groups to appreciate a little better that the Indian form of bourgeois democracy does offer some space, however restricted, for openly mobilizing the people on immediate issues. More importantly, from the movement's point of view, the promises made through the years with monotonous regularity by the parliamentary opposition to implement land and tenancy reforms and to alleviate poverty, while giving nothing very concrete, had tremendously aroused the aspirations of the rural poor. And unfulfilled aspirations, more than poverty as such, had made the downtrodden masses receptive to the Naxalite politics of militant struggle.