[From The Worker, #2, June 1996.]
Special Conference of CPI (M-L) (People's War) Successfully Held
The Communist Party of India (Marxist Leninist) (People's War), which has been successfully leading people's war in Andhra Pradesh and Dandakaranya in India since 1980, is reported to have held its All India Special Conference, as successor to the 8th Congress of the united CPI (M-L) held in 1970, in a grand manner and with great success on November 15-30, 1995. Delegates drawn from the state units of AP, North Telengana, Dandakaranya, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka , Maharashtra, West Bengal , Haryana and a few other regions and fraternal delegates from the CPI (M-L) (Party Unity) had attended the Special Conference.
A colourful procession of people's guerrilla fighters - both men and women - in olive-green uniforms and caps, with guns and rifles slinging from their shoulders and red banners and placards in hands, shouting full-throated slogans, had marked the commencement of the Conference. Slogans raised, on the occasion included: "Build Guerrilla Zones", "Advance People's War", "All Powers to Village Committees", "Smash Feudalism", "Down with Imperialism", "Down with all Hues of Revisionism", "Long Live World Socialist Revolution", etc. After the formal inauguration of the Conference, the house adopted two separate resolutions one paying homage to martyrs and the other sending revolutionary greetings to the comrades incarcerated in India and other countries such as Peru, Philippines, Turkey, Bangladesh, Nepal etc.
In different sessions, the Conference discussed thoroughly and adopted with some amendments four documents - "The Party Programme and Constitution", "Strategy and Tactics, "The Political Resolution", and, "The Political and Organisational Review". The delegates discussed and expressed their opinions on another document "The Indian Revolutionary War Guerrilla Zones" and authorized the next CC to finalize it. The Conference is reported to have unanimously elected a new Central Committee.
On the last day the Conference adopted seven special resolutions, viz., (i) On expulsions; (ii) Hailing national liberation struggles and workers struggles throughout the world; (iii) Condemning imperialist propaganda against Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung Thought; (iv) Hailing revolutionary struggles of other countries; (v) Supporting nationality struggles in India; (vi) Demanding Com. Gonzalo's release; and (vii) Calling for united struggle against Indian expansionism. With a vote of thanks by the presidium, the deliberations of the Conference were successfully concluded.
The political line followed by the Party since 1980 is explained in the important document "Strategy and Tactics", the essential features of which are:
* The political strategy to be pursued in the present stage of New Democratic Revolution in India is one of forming a broad united front of all the anti-feudal, anti-imperialist forces - the working class the peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie - under the leadership of the working class to overthrow the common enemies - feudalism, imperialism and comprador bureaucratic capital.
* The military strategy or the path of the Indian Revolution is the path of protracted people's war, i.e. liberating the countryside first through areawise seizure of power, establishing guerrilla zones and base areas, and then encircling the cities and finally capturing power throughout the country.
* The unevenness in the economic, social and political development of Indian society calls for different tactics, I. e. forms of struggle and organization to be pursued in different regions of the country, while the political line throughout the country remains the same. In urban areas the political and mass work should be carried out observing utmost precaution and the organizational work should proceed keeping in view the long range perspective.
* Caste is a peculiar problem in India and appropriate forms of organization and struggle should be evolved vigorously to fight out untouchability, caste-discrimination and to finally root out the caste system.
* The tactics of boycott of elections have to be pursued for a long time in the prevailing conditions in India; and participating in parliamentary and assembly elections under any pretext only weakens the class struggle.
"A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing, there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon - authoritarian means, if such there be at all, and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of terror which its arms inspire in the reactionaries."
- Frederick Engels, "On Authority""The insurrectionary career once entered upon, act with the greatest determination, and on the offensive. The defensive is the death of every armed rising; it is lost before it measures itself with its enemies."
- Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, 1852"It should be pointed out that destruction of the enemy is the primary object of war and self-preservation the secondary, because only by destroying the enemy in large numbers can one effectively preserve oneself. Therefore attack, the chief means of destroying the enemy, is primary, while defence, a supplementary means of destroying the enemy and a means of self-preservation, is secondary. In actual warfare the chief role is played by defence much of the time and by attack for the rest of the time, but if war is taken as a whole, attack remains primary."
- Mao Tse-tung, "On Protracted War"