Volume 2, No. 1, January 2001

After nearly four years since the initiation of people’s war in Nepal (February 13, 1996), the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) has spread to all the 75 districts of the country; it has two million people, or one-tenth of the population, under the new people’s power in the rural areas; it has forged a powerful guerrilla army with platoon and even (temporary) company formations and a vast militia under a central command; it has a vastly popular United Front in the form of the United People’s Front — Nepal; and it is advancing with enormous speed towards setting up its first (unstable) Base Area. After the Duni action on the police Headquarters, the police forces have, in the main, been wiped out of the Western region and the districts of Rolpa, Rukum, Jajarkot and Salyan are moving towards becoming a liberated zone.

These gigantic victories in the people’s war in Nepal is the product of enormous struggles. Struggles not only against the rulers which have resulted in 1500 comrades laying down their lives since the "initiation"; but also a lengthy struggle against all forms of revisionism. Nepal was one of the few countries in the world (probably the only one) where, in the 1990s, the revisionists, in the form of the CPN(UML), were able to seize power and become part of the oppressive rulers. Not a step forward in the Nepalese revolution would have been possible without a determined battle against the revisionists.

In this brief introduction to the revolutionary movement in Nepal we shall first give a picture of the socio-economic conditions in Nepal; the history of the Communist Party there; and the growth and development of the people’s war in these last four years after the "initiation".

Nepal is a land-locked country with a population of 20 million (7 million additional Nepalese live in India). To the North lies the inaccessible snow-capped Himalayan peaks; while on the other three sides it is encircled by India. It is the second poorest country in the world in terms of physical and cultural development with 71% of the population below the absolute poverty line and 60% illiterate. In Nepal 46.5% of the national income is in the hands of 10% of the richest people; over 90% of the rural population live in the rural areas with 81% of the labour force involved in backward agricultural production; and 10% unemployed and 60% under-employed.

Nepal’s economy is in the vice-like grip of imperialism and Indian expansionism. The process of its strangulation began with the 1816 Suganli Treaty imposed by British-India onto Nepal. This grip was further tightened by the 1923 Nepal-India trade agreement, and more particularly the 1950 Friendship Treaty. It is estimated that about 80% of Nepal’s industry and commerce is in the hands of Indians or Indian-origin capitalists (mostly Marwaris). Besides, TNCs based in India also control the Nepal market. The foreign trade with India is heavily biased against Nepal — if in the 1950s it was 2 times against Nepal in the 1990s this has increased to 7 times against Nepal. One of Nepal’s major industries, tourism, is also controlled by India. Out of the four 5-star hotels one is Indian owned and another two are run in collaboration with Indian capitalists. Nepal’s chief natural resource, water, has also been mortgaged to the Indian big bourgeoisie through a series of agreements; the latest being the 1996 "Integrated Mahakali Development Project Agreement."

Nepalese agriculture is extremely backward with only 13% of agricultural land irrigated. Out of the total rural population 73% are landless and poor peasants. The top 10% own 65% of the land; while in the Terai region the big landlords own 50% of the land. The stagnant nature of semi-feudal Nepal is reflected in the fact that owner cultivators comprise 65% of the rural population; barely 1% of investment in the rural area goes in developing modern means of production; and 80% of rural credit is through usury (All data taken from an article entitled "Politico-Economic Rationale of People’s War in Nepal" by Com. B. Bhattarai printed in the May ’98 issue of `The Worker’).

Enormous regional disparities exist in Nepal with the Kathmandu valley and Terai region (bordering India) being the focus of most of the development. The hilly regions, which comprise 79% of the land area, and populated mostly by tribals, are kept in a continuous state of backwardness and creates a consciousness of a separate national identity. As ‘The Worker’ (No.4) states "This condition of unequal development generates among oppressed and backward regions a consciousness of regional identity and autonomy or independence, and this usually takes the form of a nationality question. Because those inhabiting the backward and oppressed regions are often the indigenous people, and where there is a confluence of common territory, language, economy, and culture such a regional oppression manifests itself as national oppression, and in this way the regional and nationality questions get inseparably intertwined with each other". Nepal has 20 to 25 oppressed nationalities.

The Maoist guerrillas’ strongest influence is in these backward regions.

The historic victory of the Chinese revolution had a deep impact on neighbouring Nepal. The Communist Party in Nepal was formed in 1949. Initially it pursued a basically correct line. But by 1955 the influence of revisionism started taking a grip over its leadership, manifesting mainly in the form of legalism and parliamentarism. These revisionists betrayed the great peasant struggles of the earlier period and slowly began falling behind the different reactionary groups.

After the 1960 Royal (Rana) Coup, when the whole of the masses came out in revolt, the party came out with clear-cut revisionist slogans calling for a constituent assembly under the king, reinstallation of the dissolved parliament and participation in elections, etc. The Great Debate, led by the CPC and the GPCR had enormous impact on the communist movement in Nepal. As the youth supported the CPC and Mao’s Thought, the old revisionist leadership, pushed their reactionary ideas using the cloak of Mao Thought. While they managed to confuse some cadres, other revolutionary youth of Jhapa, influenced by the Naxalbari movement led by Com. Charu Mazumdar, declared armed struggle based on the line of "annihilation of class enemies". But due to ideological immaturity of the leadership of the Jhapa revolt, it gradually took a right opportunist line and drifted into revisionism after the set back in Naxalbari.

CPN(Maoist) Guerrillas

There was no split in the Communist Party of Nepal till its Third Congress in 1963. But thereafter the communist movement was split into a number of groups. The Mohan Bikram-Lama group, who convened the Fourth Congress in 1972 played the main role in bringing eclecticism in place of Marxism in Nepal. It put the question of armed struggle on the agenda, but it was still not clear on how to reorganise a new kind of party and explain to the masses the need to rebel. He tried to push revisionist ideas disguised with Maoist phraseology. The present Maoist movement grew chiefly in a struggle against this revisionism. There was a big ideological and political debate for 10 years after the GPCR, and the present leadership of the CPN(Maoist) is a product of that ideological struggle.

The 1970s witnessed numerous peasant rebellions and the historic nationwide student movement of 1979. These two streams merged into a mighty upsurge against the monarchical system. Finally this took the form of an uprising in 1990, resulting in the replacement of the monarchical system with the multi-party system..... after a compromise was struck between the king and the Congress and revisionists.

The struggle of the genuine communist revolutionaries within the party, including some Jhapa comrades, continued and intensified. Notable in this, was the contribution of the immortal martyr, Com. Azad. Ultimately, after a long and complex struggle the revolutionary forces within the party managed to defeat the reformists.

The Communist Party of Nepal (Unity Centre) was founded in 1990 by the merger of four parties and groups — the NCP(Mashal-CC), the NCP(Fourth Congress), the Proletarian Labour Organisation, and a faction of the NCP(Mashal-COC). The Mashal-COC group is a minority faction split from the original NCP(Mashal), which had founded the NCP (Unity Centre) by uniting with the other three Maoist groups. It continued with its politics of eclecticism on the major political questions of revolution. For example, though it formally advocated protracted people’s war, it considered ‘mass struggle’ as the principal form of struggle and hence did not go about preparing for people’s war from the beginning. In 1999 a section broke out from this group to support the ongoing people’s war, while the MB Singh faction plunged into the parliamentary cesspool of aligning with the reactionary UML for a few parliamentary seats.

But, within the CPN(Unity Centre) intense two-line struggle continued against a right opportunist line which was defeated at the National Unity Congress convened in 1991. At the same Congress, the party adopted a resolution on Maoism, replacing Mao Tsetung Thought with Maoism. The Party has always been a part of the Revolutionary International Movement (RIM).

Under the conditions of a growing mass upsurge the rightist liquidationist elements within the party increased their disruptive activities as their rightist parliamentary tendencies were getting exposed. They resorted to factionalism, exposed party secrets to the enemy and propagated against the party line. In order to end this disruption the party’s First National Conference was convened in 1994 in which this small group of rightist elements were expelled from the party. This Conference decided to mobilise the whole party and prepare for the historical initiation of people’s war.

After the Conference the class struggle intensified and the historic importance of people’s war was propagated amongst millions of people. This got an added boost with the successful boycott call in the mid-term poll. The wide participation of the people in the election boycott programme, the capturing of hundreds of booths during the elections, and the immense strength shown by the fighters of the party played a historic role in moulding the party in a revolutionary way.

It was at the Third Plenum of the Central Committee of the party, in March 1995, that the document ‘Strategy and Tactics of Armed Struggle in Nepal’ was adopted. Drawing clear lines of demarcation with the revisionists, this document laid the basis for the initiation of people’s war in Nepal. This was a culmination of a long-drawn battle with the traitors within the Nepal working class movement. It was at this Conference that the name of the party was changed to Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist).

The revisionists in Nepal continued their tirade against the people’s war, once it was launched. It is ironic that not only the reactionary Congress, RPP and revisionist UML, but even the leaders of Mashal etc., brand the people’s war as "terrorism". The old revisionists of the UML kind, directly became a part of the state; while the new revisionists, in order to fight for their survival, instigated the reactionaries against the people’s war.

Once the people’s war was launched, amidst fascist repression, the UML approached victims of repression saying "we will save you if you join our party, or else we will force more repression." At different places they played the role of informers of the reactionary state. But while the leadership slandered the movement, the people’s war gained wide sympathy amongst the rank-and-file. Politically, they oppose Mao’s Thought, and support Deng revisionism.

But the extreme opportunism of the revisionists specifically in parliament, and the sharpening of class-contradictions after launching the people’s war, led to their demise. On March 5, ’98 the UML party split right down the middle. Whereas the central leadership and the parliamentary group has divided into the two UML and ML groups, much of the lower level cadres have either organised themselves into a separate group as the ‘Coordination Centre’ or remained aloof from both. The breakaway ‘ML’ group does not differ from the original ‘UML’ in its arch revisionist ideological/political line, though it professes to be slightly more vocal against Indian expansionism and US imperialism. The way these two revisionist groupings have entered into a war of attrition against each other after the break up, often ending in physical attacks on rival leaders, it will not be long before they are thoroughly exposed. The relatively small group, the ‘Coordination Centre’, promises to be more revolutionary with its avowed adherence to Mao Thought and people’s war. Apart from this there are many from the rank and file who have not taken any position, being disillusioned with both, while some have joined the Maoist camp.

It was decided to initiate the people’s war as a big push and a leap. But there were many right tendencies in the party. As Com. Prachanda stated in his interview in ‘Revolutionary Worker’ (February 20, 2000) "So in making the plan for initiation there was a great debate over how to go to the armed struggle because many people were influenced by peaceful struggle, work in parliament, rightist and petty bourgeois feelings, and a long tradition of the reformist movement. Then we said that the only process must be a big push, big leap. No gradual change. There was some thinking from different people in the party that first we should do some actions without declaring people’s war, and then see what happens .... And we said no, this is not revolutionary, this is also reformism. It is a conspiratorial approach. And armed struggle is not a conspiracy."

Other arguments against the "big push" were also there but they were all countered and systematic steps were begun to prepare for the initiation. An overall change in the command system of the party was made and the whole country was divided into four commands. Each command, led by a senior leader of the party, functioned under the principle "centralised plan and decentralised action". The UPF — the popular United Front — made last appeals for people’s war with excellent response from the masses. The last open programme — the mass meeting in the open theatre in the heart of Kathmandu — was attended by over 50,000 people. The success of these programme reflected clearly people’s enthusiasm for people’s war.

While such programmes of propaganda were going on openly, secretly, leading cadres under all regional commands were being given special training with the participation of the headquarters. Around this time the government unleashed barbaric repression under the name "Romeo-Operation" in Rolpa and Rukum districts. This continued for 1½ months. But it was counter-productive, as it increased people’s fury and hatred against the government.

By January 1996 all preparations were ready. All work related to all levels of military training, technical preparation, surveying of targets etc., were completed. Poster and pamphlets related to the initiation of people’s war were sent to all districts.

On February 13, 1996 the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) launched the people’s war with coordinated actions in several regions of the country. Major operations were concentrated in the rural regions of Western and Central Nepal.

An agrarian bank in Gorkha, in Central Nepal, was briefly taken over .... speeches were made, all loan papers were burnt and land registration papers (for collateral) were returned to the peasants. On the same day three police outposts — in Rolpa and Rukum in Western Nepal and one in Sindhuli in Eastern Nepal— were taken over by armed youth. There were planned assaults against the three main targets of revolution — imperialism, feudalism and the compradors — a MNC soft-drink bottling factory; the house of a notorious feudal reactionary in Kavre, Eastern Nepal; and a comprador bourgeois liquor factory. Simultaneously, thousands of leaflets and posters pertaining to the APPEAL of the party to the general masses, to "march along the path of people’s war, to smash the reactionary state and establish a New Democratic State", were distributed in major cities and headquarters of more than 60 districts (out of 75). Posters appeared all over the country overnight. Within one month after the INITIATION and APPEAL about 6000 actions took place in about 65 districts of the country.

The ‘initiation’ resulted in a mass awakening .... a great enthusiasm for people’s war. And with this, the party put forward a series of plans, which step by step raised the people’s war to its present level.

The First Plan, which lasted till May ’96, developed under the main slogan "Advance along the path of people’s war for the establishment of the new democratic state by destroying the reactionary state." Under this Plan three main goals were set and defined; the first was to establish the politics of armed struggle; second, to give practical form to the principal that the main form of organisation and struggle are the army and war respectively; and third, to prepare the basis for the development of guerrilla zones.

According to the First Plan, the forms of struggle were defined in three ways: guerrilla actions, sabotage actions and propaganda actions. Under this Plan no actions of the physical annihilation of enemies was done. As for the number of actions, more were for propaganda, less for sabotage and less still guerrilla actions. As further stated in the booklet ‘The First Glorious Year of People’s War’ (by Com. Prachanda) "From a military point of view, concrete directions were given with regard to attack and defence, centralisation and decentralisation, transference, relationship between different levels of guerrilla units and the people, guerrilla actions, mobilisation of the people and people’s actions and rules of defence .... It was already decided to take the whole party machinery underground and the technique, and the time table for it."

During this First Plan, under the joint initiative of the guerrillas and the masses, thousands of actions, big and small, took place. Thousands of bond papers in the possession of notorious feudal thugs were burnt. Hundreds of quintals of grains confiscated were distributed amongst the people. Lakhs worth of properties was confiscated.

During this First Plan, fascist repression was unleashed and 27 comrades became martyrs. Hundreds more were arrested. And as the class struggle sharpened the parliamentary revisionists got thoroughly exposed, standing on the side of the enemy .... party to the ruthless repression unleashed by the state. And due to the great success of this First Plan of people’s war, the revolutionary ideology of the party as transformed into a physical force and assumed a concrete shape.

The Second Plan, which lasted from June ’96 to July ’97 advanced under the main slogan "Develop guerrilla war in a planned way". The three main goals of the Second Plan were : first, to mobilise the masses extensively in support of guerrilla war; second, to capture, in a planned way, the necessary equipment for the guerrillas; and third, to centralise all activities in order to transform certain strategic areas of the country into guerrilla zones.

The types of actions that characterised the period of the Second Plan were : the capture of arms from the feudals and thugs in various parts of the country; ambush of the enemy forces; attack and capture of banks; destruction of hundreds of thousands of bond papers through which usurers sucked the peasants; the physical annihilation of selected mass murderers; and wide propaganda actions for people’s war.

During this period 5 raids were conducted of which two were successful. Noteworthy was the Bethan raid in the Eastern hills of Nepal. On January 3,’97, 29 guerrillas, led by Com. Tirtha Gautam, with country bombs and guns attacked a police outpost equipped with modern weaponry. After a pitched battle lasting several hours the enemy was overpowered — two were killed, two seriously injured and rifles and ammunition confiscated. But in this heroic battle three comrades, including Com. Gautam were martyred. In addition three ambushes took place. In one, in Rukum district, seven policemen were killed.

Besides the development of guerrilla warfare, during this period, unprecedented mobilisation of the masses took place. The Nepal Bandhs on August 21 and December 12 ’96 by the NMMCC (National Mass Movement Coordination Committee) against the Mahakali Treaty (with India), border encroachment, corruption and the fascist repression were astounding successes. During the Bandh, transport, educational institutions, factories and markets of major cities were closed. Hundreds of vehicles were burnt and thousands of people demonstrated in the streets of the Kathmandu valley. Major cities, including Kathmandu, Bhaktpur, Patan, Hetauda, Pokhara, Biratnagar and Nepalganj, saw torch-light processions of thousands of people. Three lakh leaflets were distributed all over the country.

In February ’97, there was a burst of activity throughout the country in celebration of the first anniversary of the historic initiation of people’s war in Nepal. The anniversary celebrations were combined with bomb actions on the houses of notorious police officers.Also, on this day, souvenirs bearing the names of martyrs were distributed throughout the country .... and gifts were given to the family members of the martyrs.

The strength of the movement was particularly evident by the massive response to the boycott call for elections to the Village Development Committees (VDCs) in the Panchayat elections in May ’97. In response to the call lakhs decided not to vote, and in 75 VDCs (out of 4000) of 15 districts no candidates even filed their nominations.

During this period the repression was stepped up... to the fake encounters, rape of women, brutal tortures, a big round of arrests and tortures took place of well-known writers, artists, professors, teachers, workers etc., in the capital. But inspite of this the party had grown and endeared itself with the people. The party’s activities spread to even the remotest national minorities. Besides, in the 1½ years of people’s war there had been a qualitative growth in the party. As it reports "Today, the leaders and cadres of the party are motivated to be selfless, sacrificing, active, mobile and to have great revolutionary idealism by being liberated from personal selfishness, inactiveness, parliamentary hypocrisy, and from the pollution of motionless, lifeless revisionism."

The Third Plan, which commenced in August ’97 has unfolded along the line of the main slogan "Develop Guerrilla warfare to a new and higher level". The main political aim of the Third Plan was to build local democratic people’s power in the three regions. The main military aim is to develop Guerrilla Zones in the three strategic regions. One of the aims of this Third Plan is also to expand the areas of influence, especially to the Terai region (This is the rice-growing southern plains where Nepal borders India; it is the most populated part of the country, with many inhabitants of Indian origin).

The first six months of the Third Plan were basically devoted to the political and organisational preparations for higher forms of military action. However from the month of February ’98 onwards higher forms of guerrilla actions took place in quick succession. In the process the guerrilla forces acquired a better stock of weapons and ammunition. Apart from the police, successful ambushes and raids were carried out against government functionaries and feudal elements to seize weapons and money. Sabotage actions against both institutions and individuals were fairly widespread : for example, actions on MNCs like Coca Cola, the INGOs, land revenue departments, ruling party MPs and Ministers. Selective annihilations of incorrigible anti-people elements were also carried out by the guerrilla squads.

During this period mass actions were also increased. The most notable was the huge response to the Nepal Bandh of April 6, ’98, called by the UPF (United People’s Front). The UPF is a revolutionary united front of patriotic, democratic and leftist forces under the leadership of the party. The Bandh was organised to protest against state terror, genocide and the repression unleashed by the fascist state throughout the country, and to press for the 40 point charter of demands put forward by the UPF.

The Bandh was so total and all-embracing that even the national and international reactionary media was forced to acknowledge its effectivity. During the Bandh, big clashes took place between the agitating masses and the police forces in different parts of the country. The house of a minister was torched in Kathmandu and cars of ruling party MPs were destroyed by irate masses. Petrol bombs became a mass weapon everywhere. Militant torch light processions were brought out in all parts of the country the preceding night, and black-outs observed in some places. Over 2000 people were arrested in the course of the day.

Along with the success of the military actions and mass mobilisation, the preliminary features of the new people’s power appeared in the proposed guerrilla zones, especially in the hills of Western Nepal. This was the result of the people’s guerrillas overpowering the local enemy agents and police force and the creation of a political vacuum by the mass boycott of the reactionary local elections. People’s cooperatives, collective labour and farming, construction of rural tracks, bridges, memorial for martyrs, the registration of land, people’s courts, running of schools, etc., became the preliminary daily exercise of the new people’s power.

But, in this period, the fascist Girija Koirala clique unleashed a brutal repression. Within the eight months of the third year, 500 party members, fighters and supporters were murdered, hundreds of women became victims of rape, thousands of poor peasant households were plundered, and thousands more were imprisoned and subjected to inhuman torture.

Amidst this severe repression and resistance, the party convened the Fourth Extended meeting of the Central Committee in the middle of the third year. After intense discussion the meeting unanimously passed the resolution "New Plan for New Stage". This set the task for a leap towards creating Base Areas. It linked the three instruments of revolution — Party, army and united front — with the aim of creating Base Areas. In these spheres the party took the following decisions :

It took more seriously the question of the process of transforming continuously the party along the proletarian line and safeguarding it against the enemies and opportunism, at a time where Right revisionism posed the greatest danger. It was decided to reinforce the unified leadership of the party, emphasising the need to link the concept of two-line struggle with the synthesis of the GPCR and Mao. It was decided to establish the party leadership amongst the masses in a more unified and centralised way.

Regarding the army, the Extended Meeting decided to develop local military organisations as the secondary force under the direct leadership of the local party; to create platoons with the aim of developing them into companies under the direct command of regional commanders as the main military force of the people; and to develop people’s militia under each area command as the Base Force. Besides this, important decisions were made regarding centralisation, decentralisation and the development of war skills of the military formations.

On the question of the United Front, the Extended Meeting laid stress on making the United Front still more broader, and as the concrete means of asserting New People’s power at the local level and for propaganda and revolutionary mass struggle at the Central Level. For this purpose, concrete decisions were taken to initiate and develop people’s power at the local level in accordance with the principle of three-in-one committees; while at the central level, a united front consisting of different organisations, nationalities and the left, progressive, patriotic and democratic forces was to be developed.

Thereby, all the three magic weapons were linked to the question of seizure of power and establishment of Base Areas. Analysing the relationship between guerrilla zones and Base Areas, the Extended Meeting laid emphasis against the dangers of guerrillaism and reformism in the military field. It also undertook an evaluation of the contemporary political situation of the country, synthesised a number of questions related to party history, decided to rectify the party and prepared a new detailed framework of the New Plan. It further decided to implement the plan to advance in the direction of creating base areas from a particular date., with a Special Bang.

The historic bang for establishing Base Areas, took place after the Extended Meeting, on October 17, 1998. The military actions that took place after that, proved the failure of the enemy’s repressive operations (so-called Kilo-sera) and qualitatively enhanced the military capability of the people’s war.

The Fourth Plenum set out the Fourth Strategic Plan for building the Base Areas. The Plenum first settled the theoretical questions regarding the question of Base Area. Explaining this point on Base Areas, in his interview with RW (February 20, 2000) Com. Prachanda said : "Mao did not use the term permanent or temporary. What he said is stable base area, unstable base area and base area in a preliminary form. These three types of forms Mao experienced and synthesized. Therefore, to have a stable base area we have to crush the enemy’s armed force. But before this we can make unstable Base Areas." And regarding the criteria for Base Areas he added : "One is a strong party organisation. Strong, consistent leadership should be there. Number two is a good mass base, just like Mao said. A good mass of struggling masses. And having a good mass base means having not only sympathisers, but masses who themselves are trained in war. That is the meaning of a good mass base. And you need a strong people’s army. Upto this point, we have not said "People’s Army", "People’s Liberation Army. This kind of terms we have not used. We have used guerrilla squad, guerrilla platoon." Finally, he added : "we are not going to establish Base Areas in this Fourth Plan, we are concentrating, centralising all our efforts to build Base Areas. Our political, ideological military efforts are all concentrated on forming Base Areas, but now we are not establishing Base Areas. We are in the process of building Base Areas."

Since this interview the military actions of the CPN(Maoist) have increased by leaps and bounds culminating in the Duni action, were 500 people in Company formation over-ran a district headquarters of the police in the Western region. (Details of these actions have been covered in the earlier issues of People’s March.) And each action was accompanied by mass propaganda in order to turn national consensus in favour of the people’s war. The Duni action, together with simultaneous actions in the Eastern and Central region, was accompanied by mass propaganda to isolate the Koirala clique. The deep contradictions within the ruling classes were also utilised. While the government attempted a national consensus against the CPN(Maoist), to isolate and crush it, the opposite occurred. The CPN(Maoist) sees a dialectical relationship between the military actions and political intervention at the central level. They say that, gaining a national consensus in favour of the people’s war, gives opportunity for further military actions, allowing thereby the revolution to advance by leaps and bounds, rather than in a gradual way.

Today, most of the Western region is under the control of the CPN(Maoist). The enemy controls the district headquarters, but the rural areas are with the Maoists. Company size formations have developed in the Western region and enemy outposts have been mostly cleared from the entire area. People’s political power is being openly exercised, and the masses are joining the people’s armed forces in thousands.

The Eastern and Central regions are also with the CPN(Maoist), but it will take longer to build the Base Areas here — specifically in the Central region, which is the heart of the enemy’s political power. Though companies do not yet exist here, temporary Special Task Forces, of company size, carry out actions.

In all the 75 districts actions occur and mass organisations are being vigorously developed. Now, the UML’s mass base is turning towards the Maoists and even their cadres are coming closer to the revolutionaries.

A major rectification campaign has been undertaken in the party, where every leading person have had to trace his/her right, left, centrist tendencies. There have been teachers by both positive and negative example which were used to educate the entire party. The martyred alternate Polit Bureau member, Com. Suresh Wagle, was the epitome of the positive, while the ‘Alok’ tendency which arose in the party, represented a negative Lin Piaoist tendency linked to corruption, bureaucracy, etc.

On the roof of the world, the Himalayas, the People’s War in Nepal is advancing with gigantic strides. The possibility of army intervention is real. The Indian expansionists are already training the Nepalese forces. The possibility of their direct intervention is looming large over the country. But, if the Indian rulers dare to intervene militarily, the entire country will turn against them and they will get an even bloodier nose than what the IPKF received in Sri Lanka. Besides, the Indian armed forces are bogged down in fighting the nationality struggles and the people’s war led by the Maoists of India.

The people’s war in Nepal, together with that of India, as also the revolutionary sparks from Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, has enhanced the significance of South Asia, in the ongoing world revolution.

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