PEASANT UPRISING
{The following article is an editorial prepared for the July 1967 issue of Marxist Outlook, monthly journal of the Socialist Workers party, Indian section of the Fourth International. ]
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Bombay According to all accounts published in the capitalist press in India, garbled or otherwise, a miniature peasant movement is building up in the green woodlands of Naxalbari, in the Darjeeling district of West Bengal at the foothills of the Himalayas. It has attracted world attention.
Under the previous Congress rule, a movement of this nature would have been suppressed quietly in a conspiracy of silence by the ruling class. Since West Bengal is administered now by a "United Front" government supposedly dominated by "leftists," Naxalbari has assumed a special significance. Bourgeois rulers are inclined to view it as a challenge to the existing pattern of ownership not only of farm land but also the tea plantation industry in that region.
There is virtual panic among sections of bourgeois politicians who seem to discover a second Telangana in Naxalbari. Others have called it a "Vietnam" made to order, as it were, by Radio Peking. There is also a clamour for a central intervention and imposition of a president's rule in West Bengal. The farsighted among the bourgeois politicians, however, recognise that such a course would only spell disaster, rousing unprecedented wrath of the masses of West Bengal against the bourgeois state as a whole.
For the present at any rate the strategy of the Congress government at the centre is to let the United Front government do the dirty job of suppressing the isolated uprising of semitribal and our militant solidarity. We offer them our aid and solidarity because we support the sacred cause of the oppressed peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America, because we hold high the banner of revolution and because our position is based on principles.
We declare to the Algerian Government and people that we stand by them in defense of their Revolution and of their inalienable right to territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence.
IN WEST BENGAL
Santhal peasants in Naxalbari and prevent it from spreading to other districts. Chief Minister Ajoy Mukherjee is quite willing to undertake the job with the cooperation of his "leftist" coalition partners.
Naxalbari is no doubt considered a challenge to existing property relations. But the bourgeois rulers seem to realise, in the words of a special correspondent of the Times of India that "Potentially such situations exist in other parts of the State; unless attended to now a few more Naxalbaries will come out in rashes in scattered areas of West Bengal. An inevitable development with the ftists in power; the sharecroppers who have not yet been assured of their rights by the 'Bhagchas boards' expect the Communist parties and the fellow travellers to do them justice." (Times of India, June 29.)
That is the secret behind the present hue and cry raised about Naxalbari. Only eighteen months ago there was a popular uprising in West Bengal which almost toppled the then Congress government because of its failure to solve the food problem facing the people.
The electoral defeat of the Congress in the last general elections and installation of a "United Front" government headed by a dissident Congress leader, Ajoy Mukherjee, with all the major left parties includ the Left Communist party of India (left CPI], Right Communist party of India [Right CPI], Revolutionary ocialist party CRSP], Samyukta Socialist party (SSP], Praja Socialist party [PSP], ocialist Unity Centre [SUC], etc., participating in it, have roused popular expectations about a "new deal" under the ‘new setup."
The gherao* movement among the
*Gherao, or siege, is a tactic of Indian workers that is carried out by surrounding employers, demanding an immediate decision
workers and a series of demonstrations of students and the rural poor are only their outward manifestations. But the failure of the United Front to bring any substantial relief to the masses has disillusioned the masses. The mass discontent, kept under check for awhile, is erupting into the open once again.
There is however one essential difference between February-March 1966 and now. Whereas the masses in West Bengal then had to face repressive measures resorted to by a Congress regime, recognised by the masses as a regime of the capitalist-landlord exploiters, today they have to face a bourgeois state apparatus wielded by the so-called progressives and leftists, equally ruthless and repressive, but talking the hypocritical language of "political solutions" to cover their real intentions of defending bourgeois property.
Indeed the masses in West Bengal are learning through bitter experience that the United Front government is as vigorous a defender of capitalist-landlord property relations as was the previous Congress government. This has led to a new process of political differentiation and splits in traditional CPI(Marxist), Right CPI, SSP, RSP, etc., with sections of the rank and file openly revolting against the opportunist policies of their leaderships.
The Naxalbari peasant resistance is, for example, being led by dissidents from the CPI(M) in open defiance of their leadership. The left CPI leadership has taken disciplinary action against several militants who have been leading isolated mass struggles in West Bengal and has expelled at least nineteen of them who have been vocal in their opposition to the leadership.
The Left CPI as the major partner in the United Front has to face an embarrassing situation because of the revolt from the ranks. It is obvious that the Left CPI, like the "revisionist" Right CPI, has entered the United Front coalition in pursuance of its present policy of alliance with the "national bourgeoisie" and the rich peasantry in the so-called "peoples democratic front" as conceived by it.
The class collaborationist policies and the coalition politics of the CPIs have their own logic. They must perforce play the role of executioners of the workers and peasants (whom they claim to represent) struggling against their
on workers' demands. Owners and managers are confined in their offices or are followed by workers when they go to pay business and social calls. -- W.O. exploiters.
The Stalinist leaders of the two CPIs are adept in the art of rationalisation. Now that they are in multiclass coalitions their trick is to persuade their followers not to develop independent struggles of workers and peasants lest their bourgeois coalition partners are disturbed.
Any member who questions the present policy of the bureaucratic leadership is dubbed a traitor, an agent provocateur, an adventurist or even a CIA agent, and therefore needs to be thrown out of the party. Such is the logic behind the expulsions of militant cadres from the West Bengal unit of the CPI(M). The leadership is not prepared to answer the questions raised by the ranks as to why it is not able to implement its own election pronises to the people. It is trying to gag the militant elements who think for thenselves by all organisational means.
One of the reasons why Naxalbari and adjacent areas of about 280 square miles where the present peasant movement has gained momentum, have acquired such a "notoriety" is perhaps their proximity to borders of Nepal and East Pakistan. It is a strategic military area with a strong army base.
The Terai areas, as the foothills . are called -- all dense forests infested with wild animals -- were cleared by the British planters with the help of indentured labour. Violence is a way of life with the tribals-turned-peasants in the area who have to fight wild animals still marauding the area, with their primitive weapons of bows and arrows, in the struggle for sheer survival.
These peasants have been ruthlessly exploited by jotedars [landlords] and tea plantation owners for generations. Records show that thousands of acres of uncharted land reclaimed from the forests by the peasants have been illegally grabbed by jotedars who have successfully evaded the provisions of the land-ceiling laws enacted by the former Congress government.
Jotedars are backed by the local officials in their illegal eviction drive against their sharecroppers. They are organised. Each jotedar is supplied with a gun licence.
The present movement started early in March after the United Front ministry assumed office with some Left CPI militants in the vanguard. It has gathered strength since. The technique adopted by the local Kisan Sabha [peasants union] was to organise marches of evicted peasants through various villages to establish their rights to lands held by jote-
dars. There were instances where jotedars' houses were surrounded by peasants to dehoard cornered rice and paddy stocks. There were some clashes resulting in casualties on both sides. But the United Front government showed indifference toward the movement initially.
The outside world came to know of Naxalbari only after a police inspector was killed in a clash early in June between sharecroppers and a police party which went to evict them from land occupied by them. In retaliation the police opened fire and shot down seven Santhal women and two children the very next day. Only then did the West Bengal government realize the gravity of the situation.
At first the Left CPI ministers (who happened to be leaders of the Kisan Sabha) tried to pacify the leaders of the agitation. A ministerial team was sent to meet the local leaders who had gone underground fearing police reprisals. By this time the peasants in the area had become so suspicious of the intention of the government that they refused to meet the ninisters.
The state government now is supposed to be pursuing a policy of tough police action coupled with a "political solution" of the problem. Warrants for the arrest of the underground leaders have been issued. An attempt is being made to split the movement by offering fallow land to evicted sharecroppers.
The jotedars who wield considerable influence over the United Front government through the Bangla Congress, the SSP and other constituent parties are not going to yield to the persuasion of the Left ministers to forego their ill-gotten possessions. In fact they are on the offensive.
LIFE IN CALCUTTA --— FESTERING
Some idea of the incredible poverty and degradation of life in West Bengal where the current peasant struggles are going on can be gathered from a report by John Hatch in the June 30 New Statesman.
He recounts a visit to Dhappa, a slum on the outskirts of Calcutta, the teeming capital of West Bengal:
"The road into Dhappa crosses the river over an iron-girded bridge....The river is an open sewer. Over its banks hang lath latrines consisting of a single holed board....[Dhappa's] inhabitants are divided into two: the lepers and the beggars. The division usually doesn't last very long....
"Me homes are also divided into where the broken sidewalks are with bloody spittle, human excrement and cow dung," Hatch goes on to say,
Despite tall talks of a "political solution" the government cannot satisfy the land-hungry peasantry of Naxalbari. It cannot find a satisfactory solution to the jotedar-peasant conflict in the present capitalist framework. It might be that the isolated peasant uprising in Naxalbari will be suppressed by the government with the wily tactics pursued by the "Left" ministers. That is not, however, an end of the struggle.
As revolutionary Marxists, we wholeheartedly support the legitimate struggles of the peasants and sharecroppers in Naxalbari and other parts of West Bengal. We would, however, warn the left CPI militants leading the Naxalbari movement that an isolated peasant struggle cannot succeed unless it links with the movements of the working class in the neighbouring plantations and in the urban areas.
The immediate necessity for them is to break decisively with the hypocritical class collaborationist politics of their leaders. Every effort must be made to extend the scope of the struggle to other parts of West Bengal while in the process of trying to forge a united front of workers and peasants in their common struggle against the bourgeois state. Joint committees of peasants and agricultural workers should be set up in every village to support the Naxalbari movement.
We also demand from the West Bengal government the immediate withdrawal of police cases and warrants against peasants and their leaders, adequate compensation for peasants killed in the police firing, confiscation of all land illegally grabbed by the jotedars and its re-distribution through elected councils of poor peasants and agricultural workers.
SORE