On Commemorating July 28 as Martyrs Day

Communist Revolutionaries in India are observing July 28, the day when Comrade Charu Majumdar (CM), leader of the Naxalbari Uprising and the first General Secretary of CPI (ML), became martyr in 1972, as All India Martyrs Day. Comrade CM being taken into custody on July 16 1972 by Calcutta Police was murdered in lock-up on July 28 and then cremated at Keoratola Crematorium under the surveillance of armed and paramilitary forces. During the Naxalbari uprising and in the prolonged struggle against the ruling system, many comrades became martyrs and thousands were subjected to state terrorism. Obviously, since Naxalbari, State terror, police repression and imprisonment without trial have become routine methods pursued by the Central and State regimes against all those who continued the resistance against the anti-people policies of Indian State. Since 1972, Communist Revolutionaries in India have been observing July 28 as the Day of Commemoration of all those comrades who sacrificed their lives for revolution and liberation of the working class and all oppressed from the anti-people and  pro-corporate ruling system.

Of course, it was in accordance with CM’s perspective on developing peasant struggles based on consistent ideological fight against ‘modern revisionism’ that the historic Naxalbai Uprising had  begun in 1967 May in which peasants organized in peasant committees started forcible capture of land from jotedars, militantly resisting State repression and sacrificing their lives in the process. The police firing at struggling peasants on 25th May 1967 in the Naxalbari block of Siliguri subdivision in Darjeeling district resulting in the martyrdom of many including 9 women and 1 child was only one of the instances of the horrors unleashed by the regime in which CPI (M) and SUCI were also constituents of the West Bengal coalition government at that time. The Naxalbari struggle, though brutally suppressed, inspired the communist revolutionaries to initiate similar struggles across India. And, within a short span of time, the organisational initiatives on the part of revolutionaries led to the formation of All India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries (AICCCR) followed by declaration by Comrade Kanu Sanyal on the founding of CPI (ML), at a mass meeting in Calcutta on Lenin’s birthday, 22 April 1969.

Today, when we are observing All India Martyrs Day on July 28, though BJP has been apparently weakened at the electoral level on account of a steep fall in the number of seats in parliament following the 18th Lok Sabha election, based on reports coming from various parts of India, no holds barred atrocities on the oppressed, especially lynching of Muslims by Saffron goons are continuing without any let up. In spite of the lack of a majority-mark in parliament by BJP, it’s mentor RSS, world’s biggest and longest-running fascist organization, is still vigorously pursuing it’s aim of transforming India into a Brahmanical Hindurashtra. With this perspective, merging itself with the most corrupt crony capitalists, the Modi regime is engaged in superimposing far-right neo-fascist policies on the one hand, and making the country as a grave-yard of oppressed Muslims and Dalits on the other.

Obviously, the resistance against RSS fascism is inseparably linked up with Indian people’s strategic struggle against imperialism too. For, during the colonial period, when the people had been waging all-out offensive against British imperialism, RSS kept aloof from it claiming Muslims as Enemy No.1. And under postwar US-led neocolonialism, the Yankee orientation of Indian fascists has become all the more self-evident. Therefore, in the context of the historical alliance of RSS with imperialism, both in its colonial  and neocolonial phase, the strategic struggle against neofascism today is inseparable from the Indian people’s anti-imperialist struggle itself.

However, the Revolutionary Left which from the perspective of the working class and all oppressed, is duty-bound to lead the anti-fascist and anti-imperialist resistance, is ideologically, politically and organizationally, weak in shouldering this task, since it has not yet recovered from the setbacks it suffered. This is reflected in the failure on the part of many Communist parties to have a concrete understanding of even the neo-fascist situation both at the global and Indian context. It has enabled the fascists and reactionary ruling classes to postpone their collapse by dividing and disorienting the working class and oppressed through a whole set of reactionary ideologies. Thus while serving a tiny corporate and upper caste Brahmanical elite through all means at its disposal, the RSS-sponsored neofascist regime, in spite of BJP lacking a majority-mark in parliament, is diverting people’s attention from the horrific levels of wealth concentration and inequality, poverty and deprivation, unemployment, price rise and corruption by spreading extreme hatred and polarizing the social fabric and unleashing regular massacres and atrocities on minorities, Dalits, tribals and women.

It is in this horrific fascist situation that Indian Communist Revolutionaries are observing the Martyrdom of Comrade CM along with commemoration other departed revolutionary leaders like Comrade Nagi Reddy whose death anniversary also comes on 28 July. At time when the CPI (M), following the 1964 split, also began toeing the revisionist path, degenerated to ruling class positions and abandoned agrarian revolution including the task of “land to the tiller” according to Indian conditions, it was the Communist Revolutionaries led by CM and Kanu Sanyal and others who took the initiative for the historic Naxalbari struggle and once again brought back the importance of fundamental transformation in agrarian and land relations to the agenda of Indian Revolution. As already noted, this led to the formation of CPI (ML), imparting heavy blows to revisionism/neo-revisionism of both CPI and CPI (M).

However, even as the well-known Eight Documents of CM played a major role in the uncompromising ideological struggle against CPI (M), the conceptualisation on agrarian revolution in them were based on the assumption that India was still a a semi-feudal, semi-colonial country like pre-revolutionary China. Accordingly, the path of “protracted people’s war” pursued in China under the leadership of Mao Tsetung during the 1930s and 1940s was put forward as the strategic line of India’s liberation. Mechanical copying of the Chinese line including Mao’s 1938 statement “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun” without focusing on mobilising people in movements and organising people’s struggles, without concretely analysing the Indian situation, led left adventurism and disintegration of the Party since the seventies. Though CM himself had emphasised the indispensable need of mobilising people, no importance was given to it. Further, though Comrade Nagi Reddy’s pioneering work, ‘India Mortgaged’ that unraveled the postwar penetration of US-led imperialist capital and the consequent transformations in India, little effort was there to develop the revolutionary line of the Communists in conformity with that.

Today, when we revisit and commemorate Charu Majumdar and other Communist revolutionaries who sacrificed their lives for people’s liberation, as already mentioned, in the background of surging far-right neofascism at a global level, India is under the firm grip of RSS fascism. Neoliberal-globalisation and internationalisation of capital being at its farthest limits and consequent integration with imperialist capital, the impact of this on every sphere of economy, polity and culture in India has become multi-dimensional. In this context, the anti-imperialist and anti-fascist tasks being intertwined, the revolutionary task on the part of Communist revolutionaries, both theoretical and practical, becomes all the more arduous and significant. Now, it is up to the Communist Revolutionaries to take up the required ideological, political, and organisational tasks by joining with all like-minded and democratic forces.

On this occasion, the Central Committee of CPI (ML) Red Star while extending it’s revolutionary tributes to all martyr comrades, appeals to all Party Committees at all levels to come forward taking initiative for observing July 28 as all India Martyrs Day.

Red Salute to Martyrs!

Unite, Resist and Defeat Fascism and Imperialism!!

Strive for People’s Democracy and Socialism!!!

P J James

General Secretary

CPI (ML) Red Star

27 July 2024