[From The Worker, #6 (Oct. 2000), published
by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist).]
Interview with the RIM Committee
The following is a part of an interview conducted with a member of the Committee
of the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement in the early part of 2000.]
AWTW: How does RIM look at the People’s War in Nepal?
CoRIM: One of the most significant developments in the last few years in the life of our Movement and indeed in the development of the world-wide revolutionary struggle more generally has been the outbreak of the People’s War in Nepal in 1996. The tremendous outpouring of revolutionary energy unleashed by the courageous initiation of the People’s War by the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) has been a source of great encouragement for the comrades in all the parties and organisations of our Movement.
Our whole Movement has, from its very foundations, benefitted from its living links with our comrades in Nepal. Just as the comrades there have had to fight to repudiate the rightest line of M. B. Singh, the leader of the Nepal Communist Party (Mashal), so too our whole Movement had to combat Singh, who was the only force in RIM who argued strenuously against the adoption of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism in 1993.
The CPN(M) has played an active role in our Movement, and an increasing one, despite the tremendous pressure and responsibility of leading the People’s War forward. These comrades had closely followed and studied the experience of the People’s War in Peru to assimilate its lessons, while Singh always denigrated this experience. The CPN(M) actively took up the criticism of the Right Opportunist Line that emerged in the PCP and were able to apply the lessons to the struggle to initiate the People’s War. This is an important illustration of the principle that participation in the international communist movement does not hinder but rather greatly helps the struggle to implement an MLM line in one’s own country. The expulsion of the NCP (Mashal) from the Movement in 1998 for its opposition in theory and practice to Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, following a long period of struggle with Mashal, was an important victory. It underscores again the interconnection between the struggle in any one country and the problems posed to the Movement as a whole.
In the course of this process the Committee has learned a great deal and deepened its grasp of the laws of people’s war. The interaction between the Movement and the comrades in Nepal has meant that it has been possible for the whole Movement, through the efforts of CoRIM as well as by other means, to be part of this exciting process and assimilate the experience and the lessons that the Comrades are acquiring. In this process as well as by continuing to strive to assimilate the experience and lessons accumulated by the comrades in Peru in applying Marxism-Leninism-Maoism to waging people’s war there, and also through our study of the positive and negative experience of others in waging revolutionary warfare, our overall understanding of the laws of people’s war has been increasing.