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Nepal
The
People's War in Nepal: Taking the Strategic Offensive
By F.O. *
*F.O. is a
supporter of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) who prepared
this article on the basis of Party documents.
As we were going
to press, Nepal's King Gyanendra openly took all power into his
own hands. He dissolved parliament and sent troops to place its
leaders under house arrest. He also declared the suspension of political
rights guaranteed under the 1990 constitution and unleashed "feudal
fascist brutality", as the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) called
it, by outlawing all anti-government protests of any kind, including
criticism in the press. When students in the city of Pokhara held
a rally, the army surrounded their residence. A BBC reporter outside
heard shooting and cries as the troops stormed in. CPN(M) Chairman
Prachanda called the king's coup an attempt to "push Nepalese society
of the 21st century back to the 15th". He
characterised it as "a turning point of decisive battle between
autocracy and republic" and repeated the party's call for a "united
front against the feudal aristocracy", "a storm of united countrywide
rebellion under a minimum common slogan of a people's democratic
republic and constituent assembly against this last lunacy of the
feudal clique" to "overthrow the feudal autocracy to its roots."
The CPN(M) statement also said that the King's proclamation was
an act "of foreign reaction against the country and the people."
Recently the US ambassador and other representatives of the imperialist
world order have warned of the real possibility that the Maoist-led
people's war could seize countrywide political power.- AWTW
Introduction
When the last
issue of A World To Win went to press in December 2004, the People's
War in Nepal had reached the state of strategic equilibrium. Since
then it has continued to develop towards a higher level amid vigorous
struggle and a number of triumphs, both politically and militarily,
over its foes. The enemies of the people at home and abroad were
dealt severe blows that resulted in tremendous changes in the subjective
conditions of the Nepalese proletariat. In light of the realities
of the relatively favourable objective situation and developments
in the subjective conditions, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist)
(CPN(M)) has concluded that the People's War in Nepal has advanced
from a state of strategic equilibrium to a state of the strategic
offensive.
In 2004 the
Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) held a historic plenum, after
which Party Chairman Prachanda issued a statement on 31 August,
making the Plenum's decisions public and proclaiming it a success.
The Party drew important lessons from the experience of nine long
years of fierce battle in the vigorous civil war against the enemy;
it summarised many important political questions related in particular
to the strategic offensive and the growing possibility of Indian
expansionist military intervention; and it spelled out the need
for ideological, political and organisational rectification to meet
these challenges.
Strategic
Equilibrium Matures Through Quantity to Quality
According to
the military theory propounded by Mao Tsetung, the protracted people's
war develops through the stages of strategic defensive, strategic
equilibrium and strategic offensive. After the accomplishment of
the new-democratic revolution in China, revolutionary forces in
many of the world's countries tried to apply this theory in practice.
In the course of this, there have been serious differences in understanding
how to grasp and apply Mao's military theory to the concrete reality
of particular situations. In the classical concept of many Marxist-Leninist-Maoist
parties and organisations, there has been a tendency to understand
the strategic equilibrium in particular as a situation characterised
more or less by a balance of power. The Communist Party of Nepal
(Maoist) tried to develop a viewpoint based on grasping all the
stages of protracted people's war in their inter-relationship and
their motion and process of development, from quantitative development
to qualitative transformation. The strategic defensive is a state
where the people almost with bare hands, under the leadership of
the revolutionary party, begin fighting the formidable enemy. In
the process of leading the people's war, the revolutionary people,
under the leadership of their revolutionary vanguard, who are equipped
politically and ideologically with Marxism-Leninism-Maoism (MLM),
equip themselves militarily by seizing weapons from the enemy, and
lead the guerrilla fighters to build a people's liberation army
and attain political as well as military supremacy over the enemy.
The ideological, political and military strength of the party enables
it to lead the war to create base areas - the marrow of the revolution
and of the people's political power.
The development
of people's power and the decomposition of the enemy's power at
a certain point reaches a position where the enemy is not able to
defeat the revolutionaries and the revolutionaries are not yet able
to overthrow the reactionary state power. This power balance is
defined as the state of strategic equilibrium, a state in which
the people's strength and the enemy's strength are in a certain
sense equal. Yet arguments are made from various quarters in this
situation that the enemy is still a bigger force and in particular
that it has superiority in terms of weaponry, so that declaring
this situation of unequal stores of arms a state of equilibrium
amounts to adventurism. But the balance of power between the new
state and old state never means absolute numerical equality in purely
military terms - gun for gun, tank for tank, or regiment for regiment,
that is to say, in static terms of military force or the possession
of firepower; it refers instead to the qualitative situation between
the revolutionary army and the masses of people on the one side
and the reactionary state on the other. The emergence and existence
of two states, two armies and two ideologies in the process of the
development of the people's war has been the most basic condition
for the emergence of a state of strategic equilibrium. The destruction
and near-collapse of the old state and the fact that it is in the
process of being superseded by the new revolutionary state has been
the main factor in the development of the strategic offensive. Quantitatively,
the enemy may have acquired better hardware and greater manpower,
such as a larger number of military personnel and a larger quantity
of weapons and ammunition, as well as military, logistical and financial
support from foreign and imperialist powers; yet the People's Liberation
Army (PLA) enjoys political and military supremacy that is ultimately
qualitatively more important than that of the enemy. While the feudal
state has support only from reactionary and imperialist states,
the People's Army enjoys all-out support from the broad masses of
the people of Nepal, and the growing sympathy and support of the
oppressed of the whole world.
Against more
than 70,000 mercenary Royal Army personnel, more than 50,000 thousand
(armed) police and several hundred intelligence agents trained by
Mossad (Israel's spy agency) and helped by the CIA, the PLA has
developed brigades in all three regions of the country and thousands
of other military units, including people's militias in the cities
and villages. Against the enemy's huge stores of weapons and ammunition,
the People's Army now has a large number of weapons that have been
seized from the Royal Army. Most of these were supplied from abroad,
which means that the PLA's real quartermaster is the governments
of the United States, India and Belgium. Seizing these weapons from
the reactionaries represents a great victory for the revolutionary
forces. While the reactionary regime has the financial support of
the imperialists, the Party has the self-sacrificing support of
millions of oppressed and has also seized banks and State economic
institutions. Of all these, the most important factor behind the
advance in the People's War is the active support of the broad masses
of Nepalese people.
Stressing the
essence of the quantitative and qualitative difference, the document
of the 2004 Party Plenum said, "In view of the numbers of the Royal
Army, the quantity of weapons, the quality and conditions of supplies,
imperialist and expansionist support, economics, logistics and the
state of other material resources, it can be seen that the enemy's
power greatly exceeds the power of the People's Liberation Army.
Looking only at the existing situation, the question obviously can
arise as to whether declaring the strategic offensive amounts to
a left adventurist mistake. But if our analysis takes into account
the process of development of the People's War over the last eight
years, the military strategy and tactics developed by the Party,
the skills developed by the PLA, and the instability, anarchy and
internal contradictions that are wracking the old state, the picture
of the balance of power looks completely different." While the People's
War has been developing from the level of the strategic defensive
and the people's power has been growing stronger and stronger, the
parliamentary system, the Royal Army and the feudal monarchy have
been disintegrating and growing weaker and weaker.
The reactionaries
at home and abroad, in order to prove that the Maoist revolution
has brought only misfortune to the country, have been making a hullabaloo,
proclaiming that the Maoist revolution has undermined the economic
infrastructure, that the national economy has been down-sliding,
and that the People's War has been destroying long-standing social
norms and values based on traditional harmony. But the fact of the
matter is that the new political power has been steadily advancing
through the dialectical process of destruction and construction.
What the CPN(M) has targeted for destruction is the old state and
the old economic infrastructure that serves the Nepalese feudals
and their imperialist masters, and indeed it has been destroying
social values based on the old norms and values that served this
economic foundation. It has been striving to build a new revolutionary
infrastructure and to establish new norms and values in their place.
But the CPN(M) never destroys things simply for the sake of destruction,
it destroys only those that stand in the way of the emergence of
a new and better society.
On the backdrop
of the development of people's political power across the country
and amid the tumultuous process of destruction and construction,
the revolutionary war has entered the strategic offensive. The Plenum
document further said, "The following picture shows that to delay
entering the strategic offensive is to commit rightist errors, such
as self-preservationism, and would throw the overall People's War
into perplexity and recoil."
In accordance
with dialectical materialism and the Maoist understanding of the
laws of revolutionary war, the state of strategic equilibrium does
not remain static or continue for a long period of time. The People's
War has developed through a process of uneven development, which
is characterised by political offensives in all regions, while the
military situation differs according to the region, meaning that
the revolutionary forces could be on the military defensive, equilibrium
or offensive, depending on the region. This process has developed
over time, so that the PLA has developed its political and military
supremacy over the Royal Army such that the enemy has not been able
to seize both the political and military initiative in any part
of the country at all, including in the district headquarters or
even the capital itself.
The state of
strategic equilibrium saw a rapid change in the power balance of
political and military strength on both sides. For instance, politically,
the CPN(M) achieved unity with different revolutionary forces who
had been waging national liberation struggle in Nepal. The unity
of the Maoists with the Kirat Workers Party in the east as well
as with other forces who had been fighting for national liberation
was a tremendous achievement for the Maoist movement. It is important
to note that every communist party in the world upholds the principle
of the right of self-determination, as propounded by Lenin. To apply
this in the concrete reality of the Nepalese revolution, the CPN(M)
laid the ideological foundations from its very inception, from the
1995 historic first conference of the Party, where it advocated
that without uniting the national revolutionary movement with the
Maoist revolutionary movement the victory of the People's War would
be difficult. The process of uniting the national liberation movement
and the revolutionary People's War had also been defined in the
second historic national conference of the Communist Party of Nepal
(Maoist) as a Maoist military strategy, one of the important military,
political and ideological points to be applied for revolution in
the twenty-first century, as the fusion of the two strategies of
people's war - the strategy of protracted People's War and the strategy
of insurrection.
As every revolution
advances through revolutionary practice, by relying on the masses
to take their destiny into their own hands, the Nepalese revolution
has also liberated millions of Nepalese from national and regional
oppression. In this process the people's power has been further
strengthened through the declaration of national and regional autonomy,
applying the MLM science, granting the right of self-determination
to resolve contradictions caused by the national and regional discrimination
imposed by the reactionary system. In this process, hundreds and
thousands of people across the country forcefully rallied behind
the Party's plan and programme. Even a simple call of the Maoist-led
mass organisations, such as a trade union organisation, peasant
organisation, women's organisation or student organisation, won
great support from the broad masses of people, leading to the success
of even blockades of district headquarters and general strikes called
by the Party. Hundreds of thousands of students in colleges and
schools across the country have been mobilized under the leadership
of the CPN(M)-led student organisation. Most significantly, on the
eve of going over to the strategic offensive, a blockade of the
capital by the revolutionary district governments surrounding it
and the shut-down of major industries by the trade union federation
reflected the achievement of unprecedented power.
Militarily,
the CPN(M) has developed the strength of the People's Liberation
Army to the brigade level in all three regions, and thousands of
people's militias have been readied to throw themselves into battle.
The PLA was able to destroy the reinforced fortifications designed
by the US imperialist military experts in Nepal and seize weapons
and ammunition they supplied. As the military defeats suffered by
the Nepalese feudals and bureaucrat capitalists mounted, so did
the dismay of the US imperialists and Indian expansionists. Imagine
their fury and frustration at the idea that their agents were being
wiped out by their very own weapons.
On the other
side, in the enemy camp, political and military degeneration and
fragmentation continued throughout this period. The reactionary
camp of the semi-feudal semi-colonial state had been undergoing
ever-deepening crisis and political degeneration. The enemy has
not been able to resolve the deep-going political crisis that emerged
with the palace carnage in 2001, when the king, crown prince and
other members of the royal family were killed, and with the dissolution
of parliament and parliamentary government by the autocratic moves
of Gyandendra Shah on 4 October 2002. Nepal has continued to suffer
imperialist and foreign domination and has been a ground for vulgar
infighting between the imperialist and expansionist forces. The
direct political control and intervention of the imperialist and
expansionist powers over the Royal Palace, the Royal Army and the
parliamentary parties and their ranks has been repeatedly exposed,
and as a consequence the demoralised palace, army and parliamentary
parties are losing their remaining links with the Nepalese people.
Facing political defeat and in this demoralised situation, the Royal
Army has suffered defeat after defeat in battle against the PLA,
and desertion by the rank and file is an everyday occurrence. Fragmentation
and degeneration are thus prevalent within the army and police.
The contradictions have sharpened for the soldiers not only because
they have had to fight their brothers and sisters in villages in
the service of imperialist flunkeys and the Nepali feudals and bureaucrats,
but they have also suffered from their own internal contradictions
(including that the military and police personnel were not paid
for six months), despite the carrot and sticks being dangled, such
as additional allowances to any soldier who goes to fight in the
Maoist base areas, and hundreds of thousands of rupees - a small
fortune for Nepalese masses - being offered as compensation to the
families of soldiers killed in action. Similarly, all quarters and
strata of the people country-wide outright reject any promises made
by the royal regime, such as its promise that the owners of automobiles
destroyed while defying the revolutionaries' calls for strikes would
be compensated.
Despite the
efforts of the reactionaries, the call to blockade Kathmandu was
an unprecedented success without the use of major force by the Maoists.
Despite this, imperialist flunkeys in Nepal argued that the blockade
had been successful more because of the Maoists' armed power than
their popular support. These reactionaries fail to understand that
if the people were influenced only by weapons it would be the reactionary
regime with its superior weaponry that would prevail. The government
"secured" the empty highways, but the people refused to heed its
calls. Through corruption and nepotism entire budgets were gobbled
up in the course of weapons purchases. The morale of the police
and military has fallen so low that without help from the imperialists
or Indian expansionists the Nepalese reactionary system would be
on the verge of collapse.
Taking all
this into account, and having analysed the balance of power in the
given situation between the developing revolutionary forces and
the degenerating reactionary forces, the Party has reached a synthesis
that the People's War has entered the stage of the strategic offensive.
Strategic
Offensive: The Larger Situation
The document
adopted by the historic Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist
Party of Nepal (Maoist), entitled "By Raising Revolutionary Transformation
to New Heights, Let Us Enter into the Stage of the Strategic Offensive",
highlighted the basis for the strategic offensive laid by the development
of the People's War. The Plenum discussed some fundamental questions
concerning this matter, both in the political and military field,
and in doing so has further enriched and developed Marxist-Leninist-Maoist
theory and practice, contributing to a new wave of political discussion
in the international communist movement.
The strategic
offensive is the final stage in the overall development of the People's
War, during which the Party prepares to seize political power. This
stage is clearly very important, and also very sensitive. The advance
by the people's power towards the seizure of country-wide political
power inevitably brings with it the heightening danger of expansionist
and imperialist intervention. The strategic offensive starkly confronts
the enemy with the immediate prospect of a life-and-death battle
to protect its hell of injustice, the reactionary system.
As the Party
implements the first phase plan of the strategic offensive, the
signs are already visible that the imperialists and expansionists
are stepping up their efforts to prevent and suppress the people's
victory. In complete violation of the principle against interfering
in the internal conflicts of sovereign countries, US imperialism
has already increased its open military support to the Nepalese
regime to 40 million dollars last year from 32 million dollars in
the previous year. In addition to this regular assistance, the US
has provided the regime with one million dollars to initiate immediate
actions against the Maoists. By the end of September 2004, a cargo
plane filled with American weapons had landed in Kathmandu. The
US has tried to justify its violation of international laws against
internal interference with gangster logic, arguing that the Maoists
are destroying democracy, violating human rights, destroying the
country's economic infrastructure, attacking American interests,
forcing the people to fight the Royal Army, using people as human
shields and turning Nepal into a sanctuary for "terrorists". Some
US officials have even branded the CPN(M) "terrorist". This is outrageous
hypocrisy, coming from a government that has, to take just its most
recent war crime, according to the British medical journal The Lancet,
slaughtered over 100,000 civilians in Iraq in its vicious quest
for oil and global hegemony. Some of their charges are laughable:
they and their Nepalese puppets made a huge cry about how the Maoists
"abducted" 1,000 poor peasants - and then went on to complain that
these peasants were provided land seized from the landlords! The
imperialists and their agents complain that the Maoists are preventing
the students from getting an education - yet it is the Royal Army
that has turned schools throughout the country into military barracks,
evicting the students in the process. Some forces have concocted
arguments that the people are "caught between two fires", between
the armed forces of the monarchy and the armed forces of the Maoists.
These people have eyes, yet fail to see the indisputable sight of
the broad masses of the people throughout the entire countryside
rising up to exercise red political power. (The CPN(M) International
Department has released an eight-hour documentary video showing
many dozens of revolutionary events throughout the country involving
tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of ordinary people.
This provides powerful testimony to how the people themselves are
taking their destiny into their own hands. The video offers a vivid
refutation of the flimsy reactionary propaganda spread by the US
State Department and other reactionaries.)
As it enters
the strategic offensive, the People's War will also confront the
increasing threat of intervention by India. Shortly after the Party
declared the strategic offensive, the Prime Minister appointed by
the monarch Gyanendra Shah visited India, which committed itself
to providing whatever the Nepalese monarchy needed to defeat the
People's War, including military hardware, financial support and
Indian armed forces.
The imperialists
are working hard to co-ordinate efforts against the People's War.
Army officers from different countries, including Sri Lanka, India
and Britain, gathered at the end of September 2004 in Kathmandu.
Nepal's location between India and China also makes it a ground
of contention. None of the main forces want to see another's domination
lead to superseding its own political, economic and military interests,
so even as they co-operate there is also contention amongst them.
This could be seen, for instance, when a Bulgarian airline chartered
by the US to deliver a consignment of weapons to fight the Maoists
was stopped and held in India for five days. This episode was hidden
by the Indian authorities, while the US denied the nature of the
cargo. On the one hand, these are lies and deceptions to hoodwink
the people of Nepal and the world about what they are doing, especially
in the face of the growing solidarity of the revolutionary masses
across the world, the growing popularity of the People's War and
the growing desire for revolution world-wide, while they are also
expressions of mutual mistrust and inter-imperialist-expansionist
contradictions. Nevertheless, despite their differences and contradictions,
they are united on their fascistic agenda to suppress the People's
War and defeat the Nepalese proletariat. This shows the gravity
of the stage on which the People's War is being fought.
The importance
of the stage can be seen from other angles too. The proletariat
has suffered a severe setback in Peru, especially since the People's
War there had reached the stage of strategic equilibrium at that
time. Despite whatever vital questions of ideological as well as
political line existed within the Communist Party of Peru (PCP),
the revolution had tremendous possibilities for success had Party
Chairman Gonzalo and the bulk of the PCP's central leadership not
been captured. This blow resulted from the reactionary efforts of
the CIA and its flunkey the Peruvian secret police Dincote, combined
with low intensity warfare. The CPN(M) has attempted to analyse
and learn from this experience, including how the PCP handled the
issue of the transition to the strategic offensive in theory and
practice. Overall this has been a challenging experience for the
proletariat to learn from and apply to lead the Nepalese revolution
to victory.
Having witnessed
these historical complexities in our international movement in the
past, and synthesising the experience of the tumultuous revolutionary
war in Nepal itself, the historic Central Committee Plenum adopted
the document presented by CPN(M) Chairman Prachanda and concluded
that, "Any right or left' subjectivism or confusion seen in this
context will impact negatively on the overall People's War." The
document emphasised raising the Party's political and ideological
understanding to the heights of the People's War to meet the challenges
posed before the proletariat, and further stated, "the importance
of maintaining uniformity in understanding and spirit about the
theoretical conception of the strategic offensive, the objective
as well as the subjective conditions to enter this stage, and the
general outline of future development, remain several times higher
in comparison with previous years."
Some
Particular Questions on the Strategic Offensive
The document
of the Plenum has laid out a theoretical outline in which it is
stated that the principle of the strategic offensive developed by
Mao Tsetung remains intact in the context of the protracted people's
war. But in order to bring the revolution success the Maoists should
be free to apply this creatively. Comrade Prachanda said in the
document, "Comrade Mao Tsetung developed the basic principle of
the strategic offensive as well as its meaning, importance and definition
within the protracted people's war. In spite of the same theoretical
premises developed by Mao Tsetung, in the context of today's twenty-first
century, it is not possible to use them mechanically."
The CPN(M)'s
vision of strategic offensive has also been developed in conjunction
with its vision of the synthesis of military line, adopted at the
second historic national Party conference, which discussed the "Development
of Democracy in the Twenty-first Century". Having summarised the
experiences of five years of vigorous People's War, the CPN(M) adopted
the theoretical premise that in order to make revolution in the
twenty-first century, the Maoist revolutionary party should combine
the fundamental characteristics of both military strategies of people's
war - the strategy of protracted people's war and the strategy of
insurrection. The CPN(M) drew the conclusion that in every stage
of development - such as from the strategic defensive to strategic
equilibrium and to strategic offensive, while there is certainly
a qualitative change, still, in the present national and international
context of the balance of power, the strategic offensive should
not be understood as a stage immediately aimed at insurrection.
The situation of armed insurrection can be understood as a process
of developing through sub-stages, such as the initiation, continuation
and development of the offensive, and also depends, in particular,
on the development of the war and the national and international
situation.
On the basis
of this summation, the Party has prepared to seize the opportunity
if at any time an armed uprising or insurrection to seize nation-wide
power becomes possible. And the Party, since the historic second
National Conference, has explained that such an insurrection may
happen at any time. The essence of this summation points to the
need to develop the People' War intensively, to further organise
and mobilise the masses of people broadly and effectively, to analyse
the national and international contradictions more dialectically,
and to be prepared to take a forceful initiative at any moment if
possibilities could lead an uprising to accomplish revolution. Without
the degeneration and destruction of the reactionary armed forces,
as the backbone of the enemy's state power, revolution is impossible
in any country. This kind of degeneration combined with a relatively
favourable international situation will certainly give birth to
revolution, provided that the Maoist revolutionaries are prepared.
Hence, the basic element of strategic importance for revolution
in the present world could be summarised as the fragmentation of
the enemy's military force, and the emergence of a relatively favourable
international situation, combined with the powerful leadership of
the proletarian vanguard - a Maoist party in the respective countries
that is inseparably fused with the Revolutionary Internationalist
Movement (RIM). The fragmentation or degeneration of the reactionary
forces largely depends on the subjective strength of the Maoist
revolutionaries.
In the international
communist movement there is also a view that once the people's war
enters strategic equilibrium from the strategic defensive or enters
the strategic offensive from equilibrium, it cannot or should not
in any circumstances revert backwards from the position it has developed.
Obviously, there is a question about how much this view deals with
living facts if, for example, at the global level it keeps setting
out strategy and tactics based on being in the world strategic offensive
even after the world's revolutionary movement has been put back
on the defensive following the reversal of socialism in Stalin's
Russia and Maoist China.
Having made
a breakthrough in its own understanding, the CPN(M) went on to say
in this document, "To continue analysing strategic offensive even
after the revolution in the world and the country itself has faced
a serious defeat can only be termed a mockery. Our Party has already
made its position clear in the course of explaining strategic equilibrium
in the past. Definitely, we must always be cautious about being
swayed by subjective impatience to change the strategic stage based
on the influence of a few events or victories and defeats. But if
a big change takes place in the situation because of particular
national or international reasons or if the People's War suffers
big setbacks one after another, the Party, based on an objective
analysis of the situation, must be prepared to build up plans to
defend and develop the achievements of the revolution by going back
to the strategic defensive from the stage of the offensive." Hence,
it would not be dialectical to keep on repeating the slogan "strategic
offensive of the world revolution" or of the revolution in a particular
country if the revolutionaries suffer a severe setback due to imperialist
and domestic repression. It is true that the severe repression and
ruthless plunder by the imperialists and their puppets compels the
masses of people to resist and rise up to a certain degree, but
in the absence of subjective strength - an organised vanguard party
at the core to lead revolutionary war, tackling ideological, political
and military issues in the context of new challenges, and masses
of people willing to overthrow the system - such resistance and
uprising alone will not enable the stage of strategic offensive
to persist forever. The correct Maoist understanding is to define
the revolutionary situation according to the objective conditions
and to return even to the strategic defensive from the offensive
if necessary and to reunite and reorganise the struggle to attain
the lost position with the aim of achieving victory.
Constituent
Assembly: Revolutionary or Reformist?
The last two
issues of A World To Win discussed the CPN(M) demands concerning
a constituent assembly (see AWTW issues 29 and 30). Debate over
the last three years about whether the election of a constituent
assembly is essential to resolve the crisis of the reactionary system
has now become the central agenda of the whole country. Apart from
the CPN(M), which considers this a tactical agenda, from the feudal
autocrats, such as the RPP (Rastriya Prajatantra Party - National
Democratic Party), to the diehard revisionists, such as the United
Marxist-Leninists (UML) leadership, the parliamentary parties have
begun to advocate the need to elect a constituent assembly. This
change in the minds of the revisionists and reactionaries did not
come about because they are voluntarily showing their willingness
to see the Nepalese people become sovereign, but because the great
People's War has forced them to accept a political demand of the
people for a political solution. It is clear that even if they are
indeed really willing to participate in electing a constituent assembly,
their agendas focus on safeguarding bourgeois interests, not the
interests of the Nepalese people. The feudal reactionaries have
clarified this by making it a condition that a constitutional monarchy
be included in any new constitution and that control of the army
be left in the hands of the feudal monarchy. For their part, the
revisionists stand on the old 1990 constitution and want to make
some cosmetic reforms in the system by asserting the right of the
bourgeois Parliament over the army. Hence, the general points made
by Chairman Prachanda in his article "Constituent Assembly: Revolutionary
or Reformist?" in analysing the demand for a constituent assembly
during the 1990s movement are still of great relevance today.
In reference
to the constituent assembly, this article analysed that three main
trends have been visible in Nepal. One trend, represented by the
feudals - the RPP and pro-US elements - wants to drag the political
situation backward to the medieval feudal autocracy. A second trend
wants to keep the country at the status quo by electing a constituent
assembly. This trend is represented by a pro-Indian Nepali Congress
faction and the ossified royal "communist" UML leadership. Neither
of these reactionary factions wants to see the Nepalese people become
powerful, sovereign, and stand up as a vanguard of the world proletarian
revolution. The third and main force in Nepal, the CPN(M), upholds
elections to a constituent assembly as a tactical policy. What is
indisputable is that, whether or not elections to a constituent
assembly are held, the people desire a revolutionary, not a regressive,
outcome.
During the
struggle over the constituent assembly, the feudal fundamentalists
and imperialist forces have played several tricks to avert any risk
of empowering the people, including by fomenting fractions among
the parliamentarian parties and pressuring the parliamentary parties
to support or at least unite with the moribund feudal King. The
struggle has revealed the inability of the parliamentarians to lead
the country forward, due to their dependence on the imperialists
and their clinging to the monarchy. This has led them even to take
action against any of their own cadres who come out in opposition
to imperialist and expansionist intervention in Nepalese politics.
As for the
monarchy, the feudal "royal assassin" Gyanendra, acting as a pawn
of US imperialism, has now appointed as Prime Minister the same
man, Deuba, that he had previously fired and treated as too "inept"
to hold the post! In these circumstances, the content of the government
is very much like the previous governments that held dialogue with
the Party but failed to make a breakthrough whenever political issues
came onto the table. Negotiations with no perspective of political
resolution then become meaningless. This is why CPN(M) Chairman
Prachanda stated, referring to the historic Plenum document, "Out
of deep concern for the situation and [the regime's] expressed ferocity,
the document has abrogated the meaningless and purposeless hullabaloo
of negotiations with the flunkeys (so-called government) of the
feudal palace&. the document has clarified that negotiations could
be held not with the flunkeys of the old state but with the master
himself&, centring on the issue of making the Nepalese people a
fully sovereign power."
On
Rectification and Working Style
Unless the
contradiction between line and practice is resolved, a revolutionary
party cannot make revolution. In general, line refers to the guiding
principles of a particular Party or organisation based on a particular
theory, ideology and politics. Similarly, practice requires an organisation
that is developed in order to apply the line. Along with the enrichment
and development of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism in the course of analysing
contradictions, synthesizing experience and applying this to the
concrete reality of people's war to make revolution, a party's revolutionary
line always demands a revolutionary organisation capable of meeting
the needs of the revolutionary struggle. The dialectical relations,
the contradictions between line and practice, affect each other.
For instance, if the organisation is not prepared based on the revolutionary
line, then the revolutionary line will tend to be dragged down to
the existing level of organisation - that means practice. Dragging
the revolutionary line down to the existing organisational level
means dragging both the line and organisation further backwards,
towards reformism and revisionism.
As was observed
in a recent issue of the RCPUSA weekly newspaper (RW 1262), "The
problem is that most of the time most communists don't act like
communists." This is related to the problem that arises among many
Party leaders and cadres either to lower their sights away from
crucial issues of line or to grasp only the parts of a thing and
not the whole. At the same time, even during wartime, there is the
possibility of opportunism developing and eventually becoming predominant
within a Party so these weeds need to be combed out politically
and ideologically to preserve the Party's militant revolutionary
line and spirit.
Bearing in
mind the all-encompassing importance of the need to rectify the
Party's working style, Chairman Prachanda has stressed the complete
transformation of the Party's ideological, political, organisational,
cultural and working style and the need to lift all this to a new
height. In an interview with the Janadesh weekly published on 21
September 2004, Chairman Prachanda said, "The principal decisions
of the historic Plenum of the Central Committee of the Party can
be understood in four main points, based on their specificity and
importance. First, in order to meet the imperialist economic, political,
strategic as well as cultural challenges in the twenty-first century,
the decisions have been taken to make an ideological synthesis focused
on developing all three component parts of Marxism - Leninism -
Maoism: philosophy, political economy and scientific socialism.
Second, in the context of the changed new situation, the struggle
that the Party has been waging against imperialism has been decided
to be focused against Indian expansionism from the viewpoint of
strategy and tactics. Third, having defined the old feudal state
as a national-capitulationist state, the decision has been taken
to launch a strategic offensive against it. And fourth is the decision
to carry out a massive rectification campaign with a concrete policy,
plan and programme, aiming at strengthening the Party and the movement
from the viewpoint of ideology, organisation, culture as well as
working style."
The first three
decisions are clearly the most historic the CPN(M) has ever made
in the country's history, and the fourth decision is to make the
organisation an objective material force to accomplish those decisions.
Here it is important to note from the history of the CPN(M) that
the rectification process has never been merely a particular phase
or an activity that is isolated from the Party's political and military
plan and programme, and the Party gives constant attention to the
application and development of the "four preparations".
Once again,
based on the history of the vigorous class war led by the proletariat
in Nepal, it has been powerfully shown that a Party or organisation
developed in a certain period to meet a certain level of contradictions
will not be sufficient to fulfil the task of resolving contradictions
as the situation changes and develops. In order to meet newly developed
contradictions, the ideological, political, organisational, cultural
and functional capability of the Party and movement needs to be
developed to the level of the new challenges.
What are those
challenges the Party must meet in the coming days? The answer lies
in the development of the concrete situation, including not least
of all the threat of external intervention. As the People's War
develops to new heights, the moves of the Indian regime have become
an important factor hindering progress in Nepal. The Indian regime
has beefed up its military assistance to the feudal regime, it has
been openly threatening to launch a military attack against the
Nepalese revolution, and it has arrested more than a dozen CPN(M)
leaders in different parts of India, including leading comrades
Kiran and Gaurav, along with more than 80 other Maoist leaders and
cadres.
The danger
of direct US intervention is also growing. In this context, the
historic Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPN(M) has taken
the decision to fight any imperialist intervention with total war,
including by developing tunnel warfare. The difficulty and hardship
involved in waging such warfare and the need to do this in such
a way as to safeguard the Nepalese revolution and serve the world
proletarian revolution is another factor demanding that the Party
raise its ideological, political and military level to new heights.
[See A World To Win 1986/6 for an article on tunnel warfare in Vietnam.]
Furthermore,
the impact of a mass life-and-death war in any country brings about
fragmentation and degeneration within the reactionary system. The
reactionary state is a conglomeration of competing reactionary interests,
and once a revolutionary war becomes a major force in a country,
it is bound to fragment and decay.
Revolutionary
war is also inevitably accompanied by ideological, political and
organisational struggle within the party, in other words, two-line
struggle. Two-line struggle within the party is the direct reflection
of the class struggle in the society. Hundreds of experiences throughout
the country, both negative and positive, need to be summarised,
hundreds of flowers blooming in the glow of the new political power
need to be nurtured, while hundreds of weeds growing within the
revolutionary superstructure need to be uprooted - in essence, the
Party needs to sweep its rectification broom through every corner,
ideological, political, organisational and cultural. As Mao said,
where the broom does not reach, the dust does not go away by itself.
For instance, as power is seized, big changes are made, meaning
new contradictions emerge and certain mistakes become inevitable
- in this situation charges and counter-charges become possible,
for example between different areas or different fields of work,
or between military and political leaders. As the Party advances
towards state power, some may become more concerned about their
individual rights while declining to take individual responsibility.
There are also tendencies to confuse or conflate strategy and tactics,
taking one for the other, and reducing the long-term to the short-term,
for instance demanding freedom in a certain realm while failing
to take into account the related necessity. These kinds of contradictions
emerge and ferment in any living Party, demanding rectification
time and again.
Without rectification,
without preparing ideologically, politically, organisationally and
culturally to bring each individual and the organisation as a whole
to a higher stage of understanding, it will not be possible to meet
new challenges. Continuing to develop our MLM heritage is the only
way it will be possible to be flexible in tactics while remaining
firm in strategy, rapidly adapting tactics to the moves of the enemy
so as to require it to change its strategy, foiling the strategy
and tactics of the enemy one after another, so that in the course
of the war the people strengthen their ability to sweep away, like
an army of Hercules, the dung of imperialist ideology, politics,
military and cultural domination and in their place establish a
revolutionary economic base and political superstructure.
The Party has
thus emphasised the importance of rectification, and thereby given
the whole Party, Army, mass organisations, and the broad masses
of people a mighty impetus to advance along the great path - which
the CPN(M) calls Prachanda Path - which now demands taking the strategic
offensive against the enemy. Further, the importance of rectification
and transformation of the Party as a whole is a key area where the
Party has been grappling to develop its ideas, to enrich MLM and
to contribute to debate and discussion within the international
communist movement on the burning questions of today. These include
the need to launch the offensive to accomplish new-democratic revolution,
to safeguard the nascent revolution, having learnt from past experiences,
even from counter-revolutions; to erect a sea of people armed ideologically,
politically, militarily and culturally; to safeguard the people's
right to rebel, to ensure that the revolutionary armed forces who,
thus far in the class struggle under socialism internally, have
remained confined to their barracks as professional soldiers, continue
to serve the people even after the establishment of socialism so
as to prevent the revolutionary state from changing once again into
a reactionary state; and to dismiss the old ideas that one should
not criticise leaders and to establish the Maoist principle that
it is right to "bombard the bourgeois headquarters", and to continue
the revolution throughout the socialist period and serve the world
proletarian revolution in order to bring the whole world to communism.
Rectification of the Party concentrated on such issues truly brings
unity not only ideologically, politically and organisationally but
also in feelings, in people's hearts, and ultimately helps lead
society in the direction of the withering away of the Party, the
Army, classes, and thus the state itself.
On
the New Situation and Ideological Synthesis
Having summarised
twenty years of experience, the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement
(RIM) has analysed that, "The twenty years of our Movement has,
as noted above, also been a period of twenty years of turmoil internationally.
The high tide of revolution of the 1960s and early 70s had retreated
on a world scale, but the underlying exploitation and class antagonisms
never ceased to sharpen. At our last Expanded Meeting in the year
2000 our Movement was correctly able to call attention to an emerging
new wave of world proletarian revolution'. Since then, the aftermath
of 11 September 2001 has revealed the dramatic intensification of
a whole range of contradictions on a world scale, and most notably
the contradiction between the oppressed peoples and nations and
imperialism led by the US, in a way not seen for decades& Important
transformations have gone on, even in the short twenty-year life
of our Movement, in both the imperialist citadels and in the oppressed
nations as well. Our Marxist-Leninist-Maoist science provides the
tools and viewpoint to understand such phenomena as the growth of
megacities, globalisation', changes in class structure and the
implications for revolutionary strategy and tactics."
Chairman Prachanda
of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) has summarized the major
tendencies of the world as follows: the re-establishment of the
capitalist system in the previous socialist countries, the disintegration
of the social-imperialist USSR and the emergence of the US as the
world's sole superpower and its unleashing of a war juggernaut against
the oppressed nations and peoples of the world represents the major
trend in the world today. Likewise, the unprecedented development
of communications technology and its world-wide impact, the monopoly
of finance capital and its dominance over industrial capital, and
the control of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and
the World Trade Organisation over finance capital, the ruthless
oppression and exploitation of the people of the Third World countries
through "globalisation", "liberalisation" and "privatisation", are
all general characteristics of the present situation. Furthermore,
the unrestrained and arbitrary character of the fascistic military
attacks on national liberation movements and democratic and communist
movements by imperialism and the setback suffered by the proletariat
in Peru also manifest major tendencies in today's world. A sharp
manifestation of the principal contradiction in the world between
imperialism, mainly US imperialism, and the oppressed nations and
people, has been the wave of global resistance that met the imperialist
attacks in Afghanistan and Iraq following the 11 September incident
in the United States. The large-scale resistance to the imperialist
war in Iraq shook the world and showed the great unity of the masses
of people as they rose under a single unified call - to oppose the
war. This reflected the emerging new tide of world revolution, as
described by RIM.
Today, the
Maoist revolutionaries have shouldered the historic responsibility
of providing correct ideological-political leadership to the masses
to transform such uprisings to create a new wave of world proletarian
revolution. In this context, Chairman Prachanda has stressed the
development of all three component parts of MLM, refuting post-modernist
confusion and the imperialist economic theory of "globalisation",
"liberalisation" and "privatisation", thus bringing MLM to new heights.
Furthermore, history has also demanded a ruthless struggle against
right and "left" opportunism as well as revisionism in the international
communist movement. While fighting against the rightist tendencies
of opportunism and revisionism, Maoist revolutionaries have to be
alert not to fall into dogmatic parochialism; they must be persistent
in applying MLM with creativity and liveliness. Today, the ongoing
People's War in Nepal has contributed to pushing forward ideological
and political debate in the international communist movement concerning
the theoretical premises to guide the revolutionaries today, in
the twenty-first century, breaking with tendencies to just repeat
the strategy and tactics of the revolutions of the twentieth century.
In this context, the CPN(M) has also contributed to the ideological
debate on some vital questions, such as the question of the "development
of democracy in the twenty-first century". Hence, the CPN(M) has
also hailed the debate being called for by RIM, building on the
ideological-political debate coming mainly from the Maoist parties,
including the RCPUSA, PCP and CPN(M).
Chairman Prachanda
said in this document, "Unless the proletariat intervenes ideologically
in the present situation in a lively way, it will not be possible
for a powerful revolution against imperialism to advance. So long
as the proletariat remains unable to assume the historic responsibility
to lead the masses effectively against imperialism by making an
ideological synthesis, the masses will remain in danger of falling
prey to various religious fundamentalisms, national parochialism
and individual terrorism."
The
Dialectics of the Struggle Against External Intervention
Given the intensity
of the political intervention and military threats by the imperialists
and expansionists and the national-capitulationist nature of the
feudal and comprador-bureaucrat capitalist regime, an imperialist
or expansionist war against the revolution seems extremely likely.
As CPN(M) Chairman Prachanda has outlined in the historic Plenum
document, "In the present era of imperialism and proletarian revolution,
it is clear that to conceive of any people's revolution that faces
no foreign imperialist intervention and succeeds without fighting
imperialism is sheer idealism. Without confronting Indian expansionist
intervention and without achieving victory over it, it is impossible
to imagine the success of the Nepalese People's War."
This possibility
of Indian expansionist intervention was foreseen by the Party long
ago and has been highlighted repeatedly since then. In the Unity
Congress of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) held in December
1991, out of four basic contradictions identified in Nepalese society
- the contradiction between feudalism and the masses of Nepalese
people; the contradiction between imperialism, mainly Indian imperialism,
and the Nepalese people; the contradiction between comprador and
bureaucrat capitalism and the masses of Nepalese people; and the
contradiction between the Nepalese bourgeoisie and proletariat -
the principal contradiction was characterised as "the contradiction
between the Nepalese masses of people and the domestic reactionary
state made up of feudals, bureaucrats and the comprador capitalist
class protected by Indian expansionism." The Party's characterisation
was based on a comprehensive analysis of the country's history,
political development and economic characteristics. Focusing on
the struggle against Indian expansionism, the Party's second national
convention put forward the concept of a South Asian Soviet Federation
of the twenty-first century.
In an oppressed
country like Nepal, the Party has focused on leading the struggle
against national oppression and for national liberation and new-democracy
internally and externally, which means against the domestic enemy
internally and against imperialism and expansionism externally.
It links them in an inseparable way throughout the entire phase
of new-democratic revolution, as a point of strategic importance.
Based on this general line, particular policies were adopted to
isolate the main enemy from secondary opponents, so as to centre
the attacks on the imperialist and expansionist puppets and running
dogs of Nepal who control the state apparatus. During the initial
five years this orientation allowed the People's War to sink deep
roots among the oppressed masses across the country. Frightened
by the explosive development of the People's War and by the support
it won from the justice-loving broad masses in Nepal and around
the world, and by the rapid growth in the popularity of the Party,
both at home and abroad, the imperialists, expansionists and feudal
fundamentalists perpetrated the Royal Palace carnage in a bid to
resolve the internal crisis. The Maoists adhered to their general
and particular line and continued to concentrate their attacks on
the Nepali feudal Royal Palace and its imperialist master, US imperialism.
The US imperialists
provided the moribund regime in Nepal certain military hardware,
such as weapons and ammunition, training for the Royal Nepalese
Army, and financial and moral support. This support has increased
to the level of direct involvement in guiding the Royal Nepal Army
(RNA) to fight against the Maoists and in designing fortified military
barracks. Yet the Beni attack by the revolutionary forces in the
central region of Nepal exposed that the strategy and tactics of
US imperialism had failed both politically and militarily. In Beni
the RNA forces had been given more sophisticated weaponry than usually
available, and the army barracks had been reinforced with a system
of layered fortifications. One army unit was engaged in construction
activities, in an effort to win the "hearts and minds" of the local
people and undercut their support for the People's War. The attack
by the PLA breached the multilayered fortifications and involved
the massive participation of the people, thus dealing a sharp setback
to the US plans. US imperialism's reverses in Nepal at the very
time that it has been pushed onto the defensive on the international
political front, having fallen into the quagmire of war in Iraq,
has led it to push forward Indian expansionism and British imperialism
to deal with the Maoist-led revolution.
As for the
European Union, the essence of its policy does not differ from the
US, that is, both of them want to stop the Maoist revolution and
stop the Nepalese people from becoming sovereign. In form, however,
their tactics differ. For instance, US policy holds the Royal Army's
terrorist atrocities to be legitimate, because for the US imperialists
post-arrest killings and disappearances, torture, rape, and burning
and bombing villages are all just "collateral damage". The European
Union argues, on the other hand, that the Royal Army's "human rights
violations" are leading to its further isolation from the masses.
According to both British and EU policy, the king should remain
as the constitutional monarch, there should be a coalition government
formed from among the parliamentarian parties, the government should
hold parliamentary elections, and the elected government should
hold discussions with the Maoist Party in order to bring them into
the "political mainstream". The goal of this illusory programme
is to prevent the Nepalese people from taking power; it represents
a honey-coated attempt to convince the Nepalese people to capitulate
to the feudals and comprador-bureaucrat capitalists.
As for the
Indian expansionists, they will never allow the Nepalese people
to become powerful economically and politically. They would, perhaps,
even allow the Maoists to seize political power if they thought
they could be subjected to Indian control and hegemony. But India's
ruling elites have failed in their diplomatic efforts to coerce
the Maoist revolutionaries on the question of the handover of sovereign
power to the Nepalese people. These reactionaries then began to
arrest Maoist revolutionaries rampantly across India and to hand
them over to the feudals of Nepal. This included the arrest of Comrades
Kiran, Matrika Prasad Yadav, Suresh Ale Magar, as well as 11 other
Maoist revolutionaries, including six Central Committee members,
in the city of Patna in the state of Bihar. The Indian state has
also been holding Comrade Gaurav in prison since 2003, denying him
the basic rights of political prisoners and threatening to hand
him over to the Nepalese authorities.
Under the influence
of the European Union, especially the United Kingdom, the Indian
expansionists have ordered the parliamentary parties not to quarrel
with the feudal king. India has been providing weapons, including
helicopters, to the Nepalese regime. Their philosophy is based on
the Nehru Doctrine of bringing Nepal under India's security umbrella,
through Sikkimisation or Bhutanisation. (Sikkim was annexed to India
outright and Bhutan, while formally independent, is in reality completely
controlled by India.) When the Maoist revolutionary governments
of the three surrounding districts of the Kathmandu valley imposed
a blockade on the capital in August, the Indian regime quickly organised
to drop food supplies by air to Kathmandu.
Will India
really attack Nepal? History has proved time and again that India
has acted with impunity to suppress the Nepalese revolutionary movement.
In the 1950s, India sent its army to suppress a revolutionary peasant
uprising in western Nepal, which had gained great momentum under
the leadership of Bhim Dutta Panta. Similarly, India sent its army
deep into the Gorkha district in the 1980s and into Kathmandu in
the 1990s without consulting or even informing the Nepalese regime.
The national-capitulationist regime, which has been ruling Nepal
with India's blessings, accepted all these national humiliations,
and it has already agreed to allow the Indian army to protect the
Chure range in interior Nepal. This has great importance, because
the Chure range divides off almost 15 percent of Nepal, containing
the fertile plains, and stands on the path of all the gateways of
the east-west highway linking different parts of the country.
Further, in
addition to the economic, political and cultural interests of India's
rulers in Nepal, they have also become extremely worried about the
direct influence of the Nepalese revolution among the harshly oppressed
Indian people. The spectre of a Maoist revolution in this geopolitically
sensitive area weighs heavily in India's strategic thinking about
invading Nepal. Even if the Indian regime takes such a risky move,
it will not be easy for it to sustain such an invasion for long.
Three major factors - internal and external - condition this: first
is the strength of the Maoist and revolutionary forces and the national
liberation movements in Nepal; second, the existence of Maoist revolutionaries
and national liberation movements in India and South Asia as a whole;
and third, the growing support for the People's War and the growing
desire for revolution among the masses the world over.
Externally,
the Indian regime had a bitter lesson when it attempted to intervene
militarily against the Tamil fighters of the LTTE (Liberation Tigers
of Tamil Eelam) in Sri Lanka. While the Indian army had some support
from among Sinhalese people who hoped it would bring peace, the
LTTE gave a big slap to the Indian invaders, who had to flee after
a humiliating defeat. But the situation India would face in Nepal
would in most ways be much more unfavourable than in Sri Lanka,
chiefly because the revolutionary war is led by a Maoist line. Except
for a handful of Nepalese reactionaries, the entire Nepalese population
opposes Indian hegemony. The Maoist revolutionaries have been aware
from the very beginning of the need to prepare for fighting a war
on the scale of Vietnam. If such a war breaks out in Nepal, the
handful of feudal and national-capitulationist reactionaries will
be isolated from the masses of the whole country, and the revolutionary,
democratic and patriotic forces will unite even more broadly under
the leadership of the Party to fight Indian intervention.
Moreover, a
just war led by the Maoists would find support and be embraced by
the broad masses of Indian people too. Maoist revolutionaries have
been leading People's War aimed at overthrowing the semi-feudal
semi-colonial Indian state and to accomplish new-democratic revolution.
The growing unity of the Maoist revolutionaries and the advancing
process of uniting the Maoists in India would pose a serious threat
to any long-term Indian intervention. There are also strong national
liberation movements in Kashmir in the north and Assam and Nagaland
in the north-east of India. An invasion of its much smaller neighbour
by India's army would only sharpen these contradictions. Attacking
Nepal could well quickly lead to an intensification of infighting
and fragmentation within the Indian regime itself. Also of concern
to India's rulers are the more than 60,000 Nepalese soldiers in
the Gurkha Rifle regiments in India's army. They would certainly
think seriously if an Indian army of occupation began to kill their
parents and elders and brothers and sisters in the poverty-stricken
Himalayan kingdom. Nor would the more than 8 million Nepalese people
living in India be so easy for the Indian regime to control as it
attacked their country. Of these various factors, the first one
- the internal factor - is decisive. But despite these potential
weaknesses, the Indian regime may still find that from its reactionary
perspective it has no choice but to invade Nepal.
Nepal, which
used to be considered a "wild-potato" between the two hard rocks
of China and India, is now threatening to turn into a keg of dynamite
that could explode reactionary power relations in the region and
give a big push forward to the world proletarian revolution. For
such a war would inevitably be met with a wave of revolutionary
resistance not only in Nepal, but across the South Asian region
as a whole. Many factors have been fuelling the growth of revolutionary
sentiment across South Asia: the masses already smoulder in fury
at imperialist domination and plunder; the Indian ruling class already
acts as a regional gendarme and wages unjust wars of suppression
against the people of Kashmir in the north and Assam in the north-east
of India, and support an unjust war in Sri Lanka against the Tamil
people; there is their military intervention in the Maldives, their
territorial encroachment and suppression of the Bangladeshi people,
their annexation of Sikkim and domination of Bhutan, and many other
crimes. The revolutionary struggle under the leadership of Maoist
revolutionaries in India from Bihar to Andhra Pradesh, the fight
to strengthen the revolutionary forces in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka,
the growing revolutionary consciousness in Pakistan, the establishment
of the Maoist Communist Party in Bhutan and on top of that the establishment
of red political power in Nepal, which is developing as a base area
for world proletarian revolution - all this is strengthening the
subjective forces in the region. In this situation, it is likely
that either the Maoist revolutionary resistance and the People's
War will thwart an imperialist or interventionist war, or such a
war, if launched, will lead to the outbreak of a more massive revolutionary
war of resistance that will eventually bring about the complete
emancipation of the whole region. In the South Asia region, the
main trend today is already towards revolution. The tremendous challenge
that lies before the Maoist revolutionaries in the region and the
world today is to get prepared ideologically, politically and organisationally
to seize the revolutionary opportunities that the sharpening contradictions
may well bring, to defend the Nepalese revolution and to use this
to advance the cause of revolution throughout the region and the
world to the maximum possible.
Great
Possibilities and Grave Challenges
The great communist
philosopher Karl Marx said that every great revolution engenders
a great counter-revolution - and this revolutionary war is indeed
raising serious new challenges for the revolutionaries. While there
is a very real possibility of seizing country-wide political power
at any time given the relatively very favourable objective conditions
and the development of the subjective strength of the Maoist revolutionaries
in Nepal, there are also clear signs of a rising tide of revolutionary
resistance and even people's war across South Asia and the world
over. The major enemy of the oppressed people of the world, US imperialism,
is falling onto the political defensive bit by bit and has become
thoroughly isolated from the masses world-wide in the course of
its military assaults on Afghanistan and Iraq. The reactionary classes
of Nepal have repeatedly failed to heal their internal rifts because
of their class interests and imperialist domination. In this context,
great possibilities are on the horizon. There are also great challenges
before the revolutionaries, not least of all the looming threat
of an invasion by one of the largest armies in the world, the Indian
army, with the backing of US imperialism and its allies.
Today, with
the prospect of the country-wide seizure of power in Nepal visible
on the horizon, the Maoist revolutionaries the world over have a
duty to support their comrades in Nepal in every way possible, including
by rising to lead the fight against imperialism in their own countries
as part of the world revolution. Such support will not only help
to make Nepal a red base area of world proletarian revolution, but
will help make Maoism the indisputable guide of world revolution
and make a giant contribution to the advance towards a society free
of exploitation and oppression - world communism.
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