Volume 5, No. 4, April 2004

The history of the Liberation group is a sad testament to the metamorphosis of a Marxist-Leninist organisation in India after nearly a decade of armed resistance struggle. The group formed on 28 July 1974 under the martyred leader Comrade Jauhar heralded a robust resurgence of basically Dalit poor peasant based militant armed struggle against the upper-caste landlords of Bhojpur, Patna and some districts of central Bihar. Vinod Mishra from West Bengal joined Jauhar who by then emerged to the forefront by adopting a pro-Mao stance against the pro-Lin Piao position of the anarchist, left-adventurist careerist Mahadev Mukherjee and his followers. Comrade Jauhar definitely took some positive pro-struggle policies and tried to translate them in those districts of Bihar. Nevertheless, Comrade Jauhar failed to expunge certain mistaken positions of the past through a scientific revolutionary assessment. Vinod, who was a failure to trigger any notable struggles in his areas in Burdwan district of West Bengal, by then seconded each and every decision of comrade Jauhar. Vinod preferred to bask in the sunshine of the glorious Bhojpur struggle. For instance, before joining the Jauhar group he spoke of mass organisations, various fronts like those of womens etc. a women’s organisation also came into being in Howrah district. Vinod, soon after being a part of the comrade Jauhar-led organistion did a topsy turvy and ostensibly posed himself as a flag-bearer of the resurgent Naxalbari politics on the green fields of Bihar, including its then annhiliation line. In came the chance with the martydom of comrade Jauhar. Now Vinod, being at the top of the group, started speaking in two voices, privately in favour of electoral politics and loose open organisations in the name of mass mobilization, and publicly for a renewed resistance struggle. The groundswell of revolutionary enthusiasm generated by the Bihar struggles proved an impediment to peddle his dirty revisionism. By that time in the post-emergency period Satya Narayan Sinha, the expelled leader of the CPI(ML), an advocate of electoral politics and unholy alliance with enemy class forces, grabbed the centerstage of open ‘Naxalbari politics’. Vinod now became restless to outmanouvre Sinha by using the Bhojpur card while surreptitiously absorbing the fundamentals of Sinha’s politics of electrol cretinism and destruction of the kernel of Naxalbari politics. The cunning tactics, however, paid dividends in respect of rightism. Vinod with his intellectual sophistry and sterling success in his own image-building, gradually developed a crop of menions and yes-men in Liberation. All the initial resistance to the policy of soft accommodative politics was gradually overcome. And here lies Vinode’s acumen and alacrity in temporarily derailing a revolutionary armed peasant struggle on the soils of Bihar. He deserves the sullied crown of betrayal in the history of Naxalbari politics.

The Naxalbari upsurge marks the watershed that divides the degenerate parliamentary revisionism and revolutionary resurrection of the politics of the Great Telegana uprising. The betrayers of the Telengana uprising pushed through the CPI’s Amritsar Party Congress the revisionist parliamentary path and the culmination of this process was the formation of the so-called United Front Govt. with the CPI(M) at its head against the peasant upsurge in Naxalbari in 1967. The Liberation group, since its 4th Party Congress in 1988, conveniently sniffed change in a "positive direction" in the thinking process of the CPI and the CPI(M) "on some basic questions like reexamination of the state character and stage of revolution in India". In Liberation’s idealist moorings a Kautsky or a Jyoti Basu or a Dange can turn into a real communist leader even after consistent and deliberate betryals as such renegades are liked by the Liberation group after its revisionist reversal. From such a position, the basis of Maoist thought and pillars of the CPI(ML) policies were abandoned in the name of new thinking, banishing the earlier revolutionary framework. Its 4th Congress accepted: "(1) The Soviet Union is a socialist and not an imperialist country, and (2) the economic and political reforms being undertaken in Soviet Union, China and certain East European countries should be assessed in the specific and complex problems of building socialism and not condemned on the basis of abstract principles." [Liberation, February 1989, p.24]. Even one year after that Congress when Gorbachev’s bourgeois-liberal position was greeted by the U.S.A. and other imperialist countries, the Liberation clung on to that "new thinking" asserting in a ridiculous fashion that "The assessment of the Fourth-Congress is being proved correct. The forces of peace and democracy all over the world have halted with unprecedented enthusiasm and hope the initiatives taken by Gorbachev". And as a part of such Gorbachev initiatives even "… the US imperialism is more isolated than ever before and its war mongering policies have come under increasing pressure from Europe. The Communist Party of Phillippines has retained initiative under new and difficult condition…" [Ibid, p.24]. The unfolding events have cogently belied such fond hopes and metaphysical analysis made by Liberation in order to come hastily closer to the positions of the CPI and the CPI(M). The dormant love of Vinod Mishra and his fellow travellers for parliamentary politics and the prestige of the main-stream parliamentary Left found gradual outlet after Comrade Jauhar’s death in 1975 and through its Third Party Congress in 1982 it openly announced its reversal of policy favouring participation in elections.

Once the Liberation decided to go the CPI(M) way by abandoning the path of armed struggle, the accelerated pace of its degeneration became obvious. In order to bid adieu to the earlier position, its Special Conference in 1990 tried to destroy the dividing line with parliamentary revisionism. It stated with a fair dose of jargon and sophistry:

"The struggle between the revolutionary and opportunist currents and lines within the broad Left movements which had led first to the formation of the CPI(M) and then found a fuller expression with the emergence of the CPI(ML) in 1969 and had subsequently came to be oversimplified as a rather metaphysical battle between some crudely demarcated positions and forms of struggle, has grown into a much more pervasive and deep-going dialectical contention between two tactical lines employing largely similar forms of struggle and addressing largely similar set of issues and yet sharply differing in their practical emphases and political import and outcome." [From Documents of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), adopted at Special All-India Party Conference, 22-24 July, 1990, New Delhi, pp. 29-30].

What an oversimplification! The formation of the CPI(ML) was presented as crude metaphysical battle of tactics or a forms of struggle and identifying Liberation as a force contending with similar forces [read CPI, CPI(M), etc.] executing largely similar forms regarding "largely similar set of issues". Thus, to explain lucidly, the Liberation found itself a party among the parties like CPI, CPI(M), etc. with some differences on points of emphasis, political import and so on.

It began to openly shake off its earlier politics of Naxalbari. In a message of greetings to the CPI’s 15th Party Congress in 1992, its Polit Bureau member Ram Naresh Ram shamelessly wrote "The communist movement in India has come a long way since the splits of 1964 and 1968. Many a difference within our movement has been rendered irrelevant by the forward march of political events. Today we have to draw our lessons from our achievements and failures. Today we ourselves have to chart the curse of revolution in India." [Liberation, April 92, p.50]. Thus the splits, particularly the split after the Naxalbari upsurge and radical reversal of parliamentary politics by the adoption of the Maoist path and new strategies and tactics by the CPI(ML) was conveniently dismissed at one go. Rejecting the CPI(ML) PU, People’s War, etc. now "we" meant the rotton, bourgeosified leaders of the CPI(M), CPI and of course the Liberation people. It is a shame and degradation when arch revisionists like E.M.S. Namboodiripad, Prakash Karat, Anil Biswas and their ilk become ‘comrades’ of Liberation and earlier comrades in the revolutionary camp turn into untouchable ‘anarchists’ or ‘left adventurists’. After some years of ambivalence while peddling a hodge-podge policy of left-confederation with the CPI, CPI(M), etc. Vinod declared with unashamed recklessness the policy "to extend critical support to the Left Front governments". Spelling out his revisionist alliance policy towards building a single communist party, Vinod sermonized his party members in 1990: "our alliance with the CPI(M) in this confederation is definitely possible as we have already recognized a certain relevance of the Left Front government in the national perspective…" [Vinod Mishra, More On Left Confederation, Liberation, January ’90, p.23, stress in original]. Once Liberation joined the parliamentary stream abandoning the politics of protracted people’s war, it was naturally sucked into the vortex of extending support to this reactionary or that reactionary party weighing prospects in the elections. Not only the CPI(M) or the CPI, Liberation showed its unprincipled flexity in garlanding National Front candidates in 1989 [ Liberation, Jan. 90, p.2], the notorious Samata Party candidates with specious argument of forwarding the pace of democracy or some other ‘just’ cause. This unprincipled support or withdrawal of support, firming up alliance on this occasion and destroying it on the other has been the hallmark of so-called left or right parliamentary parties. Liberation is not excluded as a new comer in these comfortable parliamentary love-hate relations.

It sent feelers to the CPI(M) on the so-called Left-confederation but the latter showed its back to it. It had to lament in 1990 in its Special Conference document: "As we have already noted no headway could be made in this direction as the CPI(M), ….. continued to rule out any interaction with the revolutionary Left. The CPI, of course, it too adopted a different posture in this regard, but it too lacked the political will to make any real beginning in terms of joint movement or a minimum agreement in action…" [Documents of the Communist Party of India (ML), adopted at Special Communist Party Conference, 22-24 July, 1990, New Delhi, p.44]. But it was only a question of time to receive the warmth of courtship. Its 5th Party Congress in 1992 expressed relief and declared with good relish "…. The CPI(M)’s 14th Congress talked of a positive approach towards CPI(ML) (Liberation)/IPF as well as some Naxalite organisations…." [Political Organisational Report adopted at The 5th All-India Party Congress (Calcutta, 20-26 December, 1992 CPI(ML), p.40]. It is necessary to take a look at CPI(M)’s Polit Bureau member Prakash Karat’s article on Liberation published in The Marxist, October – December 1990. Karat’s grievances were notable. He rightly insisted that if the Liberation grew so much unsavory with the basic formulation of the CPI(ML), why then was it ambivalent on some earlier ways of presentation. Karat actually expected that Liberation’s ideological disenchantment should have led that group even to erase the remnants of the past. In the words of Karat "….. Most of the splinter naxalite groups continue to be mired in the barren swamp of left-sectarianism and anarchist adventurism. Of the major groups, one has proved to be an exception – the CPI(ML) – Liberation Group, also identified as the Vinod Mishra group, after its general secretary. This formation made some radical departures from the path trod by the other groups… The most significant change is the effort to break out of the mould of naxalism, as it is traditionally identified…."

One can not but agree with Mr. Karat, the big gun of the rotten CPI(M), in discerning the sea-change or, in other words, the abandoning of the kernel of naxalism by the Liberation. Mr. Karat’s one mild criticism is worth quoting here. He commented about Liberation’s about turn that "….. When the Soviet Union ceased to be social-imperialist, when anti- Sovietism was given up, the other extreme trend emerged of uncritically accepting every policy initiative of the socialist countries including the CPSU….". Even in a mood of saluting the Liberation’s topsy - turvey, Karat felt somewhat unease about uncritical praise for every initiative in the "socialist countries". The Liberation reaction was a curious mingling of a renewed spirit in receiving recognition from one of the main parliamentary ‘Marxist’ parties and hurt sentiments for some apparently adverse criticism. Yet it could not but pour out its elation for Mr. Karat’s time and effort spent for the assessment of Liberation politics. It stated that despite patronizing criticisms and many distortions the Karat article "marks a departure from the malicious slanders that characterized CPI(M) writings till the other day. We therefore welcome it alongwith the whole range of debates that it throws up." [Liberation, April ’91, p.26]

With the plunging into electoral politics, Liberation was slipping further and further down to the slippery morass of revisionism. The frequency of elections in the crisis situation and the general sway of rabid parliamentarism expedited this slippage of Liberation for its avowed policy of abjuring Naxalbari politics. The Naxalbari uprising and then the formation of the CPI(ML) was a decisive break with the parliamentary social democratic theory and practice of the CPI and the CPI(M). The Liberation group has to declare openly and unambiguously that the Naxalbari uprising was left adventurism and breaking away from the CPI(M) and the formation of the CPI(ML) were misadventures engineered by anarchists Charu Mazumdar and other leaders. Wayback in 1984-85 Vinod Mishra expressed his nostalgic love for a section of CPM leaders and activists, "a living section" in the CPI(M) coming forward to join the Liberation group in the situation when "some CRs get stuck and degenerate." [Vinod Mishra, Selected works, p. 452].

The Liberation cast aspersion on revolutionary forces, the CPI(ML)PW, PU, MCC, etc. The renegacy goaded the Liberation towards courting one after another revisionist positions that obliterated the founding principles of the CPI(ML) and the glorious peasant upsurge against the state and parliamentary revisionism of the CPI and the CPI(M). As a corollary its 5th Party Congress displayed unsullied love for the revisionist past and the cosy social democratic life by thoroughly dismantling its underground structure and putting forward "the perspective of uniting all communists [read all CPI, CPI(M) brand of communist] in a single communist party". [Liberation December 22, p.17].

Comrade Charu Mazumdar categorically stated before the CPI(ML) formation that the new party shall not be constituted basically by the people coming from the revisionist CPI(M). The unfolding days cogently bore out who could be the leaders of the revolution and why the people with prolonged revisionist practice, a considerable section to be precise, developed crippling symptoms facing the state machinery and practicing the new revolutionary line. Those fellows even in our party raised much noise even at the initial practice stage and deserted the ranks. And now the Liberation with the casting away of the crux of Naxalbari politics and all the accompanying forms of earlier practice, nurtures a fond hope of party building with such rotton elements whose overly reactionary role stands out as a distorted image to the present generation which mistakenly considers them as "Marxists". Such "Marxists" or communist parties are generally living symbols of social democratic degeneration, corruption, and even many proved to be spying agents of the state. As a master eclectic, Vinod Mishra, the guiding spirit of this degeneration, must be credited with derailing a vast possibility of revolutionary struggles, particularly in Bihar. In a cunning way, when the tempo of the Bhojpur struggle was on, Mishra began to absorb, in a surreptitious way, practically the line of Satya Narayan Sinha, the notorious rightist in the CPI(ML), while criticizing Sinha on this or that point and ultimately outsmarted the originator of rightism in the CPI(ML) by extricating the CPI(ML) Liberation of its earlier revolutionary stance on the Indian revolution. The end result is the present Liberation group sans the fundamentals of liberation through Marxism, Leninism and Maoism. The metamorphosis not only receives blessings from the CPI(M) like revisionist parties but also from the state and various state governments.

The announcement of the Government of India Act 1935 and then the revisionist Dutt-Bradley Thesis in February 1936 spurred the CPI to plunge into electoral politics. The CPI rubbished the 1935 Act with its pronouncement, but the Dutt-Bradley Thesis encouraged the programmeless CPI leadership to institute a vote face by readily accepting the united front line, constituent assembly and most of all plunging ito electoral politics. The CPI leadership now sang a new tune "….. We want to utilize the election for furthering the anti-imperialist struggle and raising it to higher level that we want to utilize the occasion for clarifying the issues before the masses to sharpen their consciousness and make election a lever for consolidation of the class forces of anti-imperialist" masses. [On Election, circular No. 5, PB CC, Arindam Sen and Partha Ghosh, Communist Movement in India….., Vol.I (1917-1939), A CPI(ML) Liberation Presentation, 1991, p.613]. With no clear revolutionary programme and intention to learn from our neighbouring CPC leadership’s experiences, the CPI, then the CPI(M) and through the recent love to hate revolutionary legacy of the CPI(ML), the Liberation group, readied themselves to jump into the electoral fray, coming and going with uncanny frequency, with the aforesaid solemn pledge to further the class battles and raise people’s consciousness. The clitched arguments now carry little conviction with the common masses who find only a dim borderline between the election lover so-called Marxists and other bourgeois parties. Revealingly, all such pseudo- Marxists while parroting the lofty propositions as stated above never forget to add that election is only one form of struggle, in reality the entire party machinery is virtually mortgaged to the so-called mainstream of electoral politics. Such political partics sing a mellifluously toothless Marxism sweet to the ears of ruling classes in India. And with parliamentary cretinism increasingly sucking them up through the passage of time, those organisations of careerists and the power-hungry can never walk away from the mire of parliamentarism. Comrade Lenin in a different context used parliament alongside serious preparations for revolution. In contrast, the Liberation like organisations abandoned all such preparations, betrayed the peasant resistance struggle and plunged into the swampy ground of election politics. With this nose-dive, love for the erstwhile dirty revisionist foes like the CPI or the CPI(M) has come up in a deluge. And this mad urge of flirtation grew on this group so tightly and rapidly that Liberation chose to discard earlier revolutionary Naxalite friends like the CPI(ML) PU, MCC, People’s War as arch enemies. Liberation is far too willing to outstretch its hand of love to the wretched reactionary Samata Party for reaping political mileage in the dirty water of Bihar’s electoral politics. But its grouse and crude opprobrious comments brim over in its present attack against the CPI(ML)Peoples War. Liberation’s new friends along with the state machinery pour out similar negative attitudes against them. It is quite in accord with the old adage: Birds of the same feather flock together. Shame to Liberation which has already slipped into the sunset with no significant effort at even economic or general political movements to take the center stage.

The conscious people of Bihar or West Bengal consider them now as government approved Naxalites of the parliamentary stream. The CPI(M) for which they offer their unsullied love will either goggle them up or exploit their remaining followers and keep them waiting for bestowing favour in the seat-sharing exercise under their aegis as junior partner. Even the utterly revisionist parties like the CPI or the CPI(M) in some moments of set-back on this or that occasion let such comments pass that their activities were reduced to basically electioneering campaigns and such related preparations for the frequency of elections. For instance the CPI(M) C.C. lamented in 1996 that in the three main states, West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura, the "Trend of Parliamentarism" had taken its toll on party functioning. [Communist Party of India (Marxist), Review Report On 1996 General Elections and Report on Political Development since the May C.C. Meeting (Adopted in the C.C. Meeting: July 27-29, 1996, pp. 18-20].

When the downslide started it became unchecked and dismissal of all the past positions came flowing in quick succession.

1) It endorsed the position of the CPI, CPI(M) or even of some other political parties in respect of the problems of nationalities in India. Its Sixth Congress held in Oct. 1997 cast aside all pretentions and declared with a fair dose of suspicion about the aspirations of oppressed nationalities in India: "…. We feel it is still not too late to workout a solution within the framework of India and with this view we seek the solutions of the Kashmir problem by ensuring maximum possible autonomy". [Political Resolutions of Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist), Policy Resolutions on Nationality Question… Adopted at the Sixth Party Congress, Varanasi 20-25 October, 1997, p.19]

2) While tossing down all the earlier principles it began to discover anarchism in the announcement of positions that marked out differences with the parliamentary Marxist parties lusting for power and spoils in the existing system. The new found love for electoral politics, rejecting armed resistance struggle, and found unabashed outlet in its 6th Varanasi Congress in 1997. When the common masses had grown suspicious about and distrust for parties and individuals crying for votes, the Liberation joined the vote-begging campaign painting a rosy picture of the Indian democratic system based on parliamentary democracy. The above Congress expressed its roaring faith in such words: "Elections at regular intervals to Parliament, State Assemblies and local bodies represent crucial occasions of political struggle in the parliamentary democratic form of government that exists in India…" [Ibid pp.7-8]. With the eyes set high to the corridors of power this Congress also made no mistake to deliberate on the rewards from such practice by firming up "electoral agreements, ranging from mere seat–sharing arrangement to full-fledged electoral blocks." [Ibid. p.8] This mad haste to glorify "democracy" under the Indian parliamentary system quite naturally spurred the Liberaton on to stitching alliances with other parties in the swindling game. The flirtation with various unprincipled parties in the process led Liberation to tie-up with the dirty upper-caste Samata Party in Bihar, to extend support to National Front candidates under Vinod’s personal leadership. If it were not the nadir of bankruptcy, the Liberation as a decaying force shall unfold itself more and more, sporting its trashy appearances with the pacing forward of history.

Dipankar Bhattacharya in his glorification of Vinod Mishra writes, "… For the best part of the 1970s he in fact made his best efforts to resurrect Naxalbari. Even when he became convinced of the impossibility and futility of such attempts and the focus shifted to what he called the rectification movement, there was no decline in his deep respect for Naxalbari and the first phase of the CPI(ML)’s heroic revolutionary offensive….." [Liberation, December 2000, p.9]

He goes to the extent of making such dubious claim: " In spite of significant influences of Mao, CPC and the Cultural Revolution, Naxalbari and CPI(ML) were not Maoist offshoots by any means. The so-called Maoist Communist Centre never became an integral part of the CPI(ML), nor did the CPI(ML) ever describe itself as a Maoist formation. It remained a Marxist-Leninist communist party which also upheld Mao’s thought in the revolutionary tradition of Marxism-Leninism….." [Ibid, pp.9-10]. It is an old ghost that has been haunting the CPI(M) leadership, it is the ghost of Mao! This is a stubborn and crude effort at exorcising the Liberation group of Mao’s legacy and a crude pronouncement to cut off the umbilical cord between the theoretical foundation of the Naxalbari upsurge and the consequent formation of the CPI(ML). This also reveals the perfidious ploy to tarnish the image of the CPI(ML) which had openly declared the faith in Mao thought and Mao leadership in the international communist movement. Mr. Bhattacharya takes recourse to such distortion in a bid to come closer to the CPI(M) position. Every student of history knows too well that the revolt against the CPI headquarters in the early 1960s was basically against the CPI’s position in the international communist movement and its implication in Indian politics. Although many of the wavering left-leaning leaders ultimately surrendered to manoeuvres of the centrist leaders like E.M.S Namboodiripad, Jyoti Basu & Co.

The Maoists – yes they believed in Mao’s thought (now Maoism) and its solution to rip apart the imbroglio in the Indian communist movement, and got disillusioned with the new party, the CPI(M). It is a sheer travesty of history and pure deception to launch a veiled campaign purposefully to distance Marxism, Leninism from Maoism or Mao thought. The glorious heores of Naxalbari and thereafter had to fight bitter struggle with the CPI(M) and its revisionist leaders in the late 1960s and early 1970s holding focus on this reality that Mao thought was Marxism-Leninism and Mao was the carrier of the revolutionary legacy of Lenin against the massive rise of Soviet revisionism on the international plane. This topsy-turvy position of Liberation perfectly matches with that of the ambivalence of the betrayer CPI(M) leadership who cunningly pushed forward the Kurschevite agenda blending left phraseology with the declaring in 1964 of a convenient policy of equidistance form the Chinese and the Soviet positions. Now Liberation has joined the bandwagon of the CPI and CPI(M), whose leaders stabbed the Telengana uprising, openly dismissed the Maoist path, and plunged into election politics, and with the receeding of the Telengana fear, glorified it with all conceivable adjectives. For the Liberation, with the disowning of Mao in reality while parroting that Marxism-Leninism and Mao Ze dong Thought remaining as its guide to action [The General Programme In Basic Documents, Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) In corporation Amendments up in 7th Party Congress, Patna, 25-30 November 2002] it thrusts its organizational position closer to the CPI(M) and also the present CPC position in respect of capitalising of Mao’s name.

With the inroads into the parliamentary camp, the Liberation group has much too much grown the habit of branding armed attacks against the enemy classes or their gangmen as ‘anarchism’. The preference for such clichés has so much overwhelmed this renegade group that it is at its wit’s end: it has to clearly condemn all the armed peasant movements since the Naxalbari days as they were all embodiments of futile exercises in ‘anarchism’ or ‘left adventurism’. Liberation, like the CPI(M), now preaches that it is miles to go and is resigned to fate for some god-send auspicious moment in future to fall from the skies to automatically bring about a new socialist society. In the name of fighting ‘anarchism’ or ‘adventurist position’ of the fighters of the Telegana struggle, who stubbornly resisted the rightist CPI decision of withdrawal of the movement, the CPI leadership with the prospect of reaping dividends in the imminent electoral arena of great dimension in 1952 issued repeated calls for surrender. The rightist leadership like the present Liberation sniffed electoral success capitalizing on the massive support base created by the Telengana uprising. Even on 10 December, 1951 the CPI leaders, P.Sundaraya, D.V.Rao, Basav Punniah, Bheema Reddy, Narisimha Reddy and C.Rajeswar Rao had to issue an official statement with such fatwa "We are Advising Guerrillas to Surrender Arms" [Cross Roads, Vol. II, No. 37, January 25, 1952, p.1].

History now repeats itself with new twists. Vinod Mishra’s group too smelt anarchism in the armed activities of its own cadres since the early 1980s. And with the plunging into the swampy path of elections rejecting the tortuous course of revolutionary war and its preparations, Liberation was also endowed with some success in the form of a few seats particularly in Bihar, exploiting the dedication and years of painstaking activities of some cadres. It is no wonder that after jumping into the camp of social democracy in India led by the CPI(M) and the CPI, Liberation will only find anarchism or adventurism in the activities of the revolutionary camp. It is sheer dishonesty and politicking to use the name of Naxalbari and CPI(ML) while rejecting the fundamentals associated with those shining concepts.

It is to be reminded that when many of Liberation’s present leaders were obstinately clinging to some mistakes of the early 1970s, the newly organized Andhra Pradesh State Committee sent its two-member delegation to meet Comrade Charu Mazumdar on 10 July 1972 with the proposals of building up mass organisations and rectifying errors. Comrade C.M. approved the proposals. The errors were then summed up in the CPI(ML) People’s War document captioned "Summing up the past let us advance victoriously along the path of armed struggle". Some of the relevant points were as under

a) An incorrect understanding of the era leading to calls for continuous attack without considering the relative strength of the revolutionary forces and that of the enemy,

b) A Wrong understanding in calling the Indian people to start armed struggle everywhere disregarding uneven development in the country,

c) On the line of annihilation it was stated "The problem is not whether the class-enemy will be annihilated or not ….. Rather the problem is, whether the party should adopt the mass line or not….. Every Marxist-Leninist Party must propagate revolutionary violence which may express itself in various forms of struggle; one of which may be annihilation of class enemies."

d) The rejection of mass organisation and other forms of struggle.

e) A wrong approach to the united front

f) Guerrilla struggle in the cities. [30 years of Naxalbari, An Epic Struggle and Sacrifices, A Vanguard Publication, pp. 22-23]

The CPI(ML) People’s War has now been organized enough to unleash one after another blow on the enemy by virtue of its rectification of earlier mistakes. The Liberation with its going deeper to the camp of social democracy must not tolerate the theory and practice of revolutionary violence. The PW started rectification in order to resurrect Naxalbari politics with a new vigour and revolutionary spirit. In perfect contradiction with this politics of bouncing back armed with Marxism-Leninism and Maoism, Liberation, under Vinod Mishra, purged this group of all the revolutionary aspects of the past by joining the parliamentary mainstream rejecting the Maoist Path, squads and secret structure of the party, by abandoning revolutionary violence, by embracing revisionist big wigs of the CPI/CPM. The CPI(ML)People’s War inherits the revolutionary ideology of Naxalbari and sticks to the tortuous path of people’s war to destroy this system and establish people’s democracy in India.

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