Midnapore district once again hooks the headlines of national dailies for the meteoric rise of the CPI (ML) People’s War in the poverty stricken and exploited villages, poised for a showdown against the State and its political arms — the CPI (M), BJP, TMC and the like. The fledgling party and mass organizations first sprouted on the unknown soil of Gorbeta in 1999 at a time when the villages in and around this area had enough of brutalities of the marauding BJP hordes and the supine postures of the timid CPI(M) leadership. At that time Advani and Mamata on the one side and Jyoti Basu and Police Buddha on other side intensified their accusations and counter accusations on one another. The so called socialist George Fernandez the stooge of Vajpayee loudly cried, on a number of occasions, to impose President’s rule in Bengal, if the CPM failed to protect the common people. When the dedicated PW activists entered and won the hearts of the peasants steeped in abysmal poverty and deprived of their democratic rights, they courted the PW as a beackon light guiding them out of the morass of darkness to a life free from economic, political and social exploitation. At this time all the oppressors, represented by the ruling class parties jointly, declared that they would supress the People’s War party which was there to safeguard the common man’s (oppressed people’s) interests and had brought peace to Gorbeta. Advani-Buddha then turned their guns against the Peoples War. So, once again people learnt through their experience that the CPM and BJP are nothing but two faces of one coin.

Midnapore is fertile soil, both for its paddy and defiant spirit. British power was afraid of the revolutionary people of Midnapore, who burst into revolts and protests on many an occasion. Now the present Left Front Government in West Bengal and the BJP-led NDA at the Centre are hand in glove to eliminate the revolutionary peasant movement in Midnapore. The revisionist CPI (M) has now occupied centre stage to unleash repression on the peasant masses playing second fiddle to the communalist, war-mongering BJP at the Centre. It is branding the peasant struggle in Midnapore as terrorism. Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, the self-proclaimed connoisseur of art and literature, is nothing but a cop with an artist’s mask.

The CPM’s top echelons of power, have been deeply engrossed in arming the special police force with sophisticated weapons and strengthening them like never-before, putting to shame even the earlier notorious anti-Naxal Congress Chief Minister Mr. Siddhartha Shankar Ray. The Midnapore struggle will spring many an irony and surprise in the unfolding days. The Gorbeta struggle has now spread to Salbani, Goaltore, Lalghar, Belpahari, Saranga, Panchmura and other areas of Midnapore and Bankura districts belying the fond hope of the reactionaries of all hues.

The new peasant resistance struggle against the nouveau riche landlords, contractors, reactionary political parties, etal, has been eminently successful to push forward the revolutionary agenda in an otherwise stagnant, demoralising state. The Left Front rule for about 25 years has profoundly eaten into the self-sacrificing and defiant image of revolutionary Marxism built brick by brick over decades with the precious blood of thousands. The Midnapore struggle, however small in dimension, has appeared as a new spirit in the world of consumerism, self- seeking tendency, indifference to wrongs done by exploiters and their political parties and last, but not least, the reactionary propaganda that Marxism is now dead in West Bengal. The peasant struggle has once again thrust the CPI (M) into the predicament: Kill the fighters holding aloft the red flag. While doing so, it unmasks itself.

The Midnapore struggle is also a rebuff to the so-called Naxalite organizations like the CPI (ML). Liberation, already into mainstream parliamentary politics and steadily eroding. Midapore, being part and parcel of the ongoing armed resistance struggle in AP, MP, Bihar, Orissa, Chethattisgarh, Jharkhand, etc., brings the message to the revolutionaries in West Bengal and other States. The workers, students, left intellectuals and other sections are now stirred to some extent into curiously listening to the call of revolutionary struggle. Here lies the impact of this budding peasant struggle of West Bengal.

The histrionics of Ms. Mamata Banerjee, the Trinamul Congress supremo, over the CPI (M)’s highhandedness in Midnapore has died down with the growing realisation that issues over there are not petty election politics but crucially connected with preservation or destruction of the existing order itself. She backtracked and concentrated more in begging back a berth in the central ministry. The BJP, which was given a piggyback in West Bengal by Ms. Mamata’s TMC and which capitalised on the popular discontent against Left Front rule, collected ruffians and other anti-Communist forces to clamp on Gorbeta a rule of communal fascist terror. The CPI (ML) [People’s War] had to assert itself in Gorbeta by first encountering the savage onslaught of the BJP fascist forces which, in the span of 48 hours (9 and 10 Sept. 1999), murdered 4 members of a family. The heroic armed resistance forced the exit of the TMC-BJP goons. The CPI (M), whose leaders had fled the villages leaving their followers (the common peasants) before the BJP/TMC gun wielding fascist goons, lost no time to return pretending before the people as an ally of the PW to sneak back into the villages. Hardly had a few days passed, then the CPI (M) leaders dropped their camouflage and began targeting the PW forces. Off went all their garb of pretence, the dance of brutality commenced with the CPI (M) bandmasters singing the "Finish PW" song to the orchestra of the armed police force. Things have come to such a pass that, for the common peasants in the struggling villages, the difference between the CPI (M)’s armed gang’s and the anti-Naxal police forces is increasingly getting blurred. The raids on the homes of the PW and other mass organisations’ leaders and supporters have been a regular affair, exposing the hypocrisy of the CPI (M) led Left Front.

The revolutionary struggle is a struggle of the masses, participating in it, in a myriad of ways. In the present stage of struggle against the exploitative system and the reign of terror let loose by the combined forces of the paramilitary, police and CPI (M) gangsters, the PW has been cautious enough not to reduce the resistance struggle to mere armed campaigns of the squads. Simultaneously, the PW fights tooth and nail the ludicrous dilly–dallying effort of postponing the armed struggle till the last man gets prepared to take up arms. Any fond expectation for such a situation is all moonshine. The CPI (M) leadership keeps bamboozling the people with such an illusion, while practicing nefarious acts and stabbing the revolution.

The present armed struggle is the outcome of painstakingly built-up preparedness. It is part and parcel of the well-synchronised plan and programme of the party possessing a countrywide network. The People’s Guerrilla Army has been formed and under the PW party’s command it is increasingly getting strengthened with the passing of each day. This magic weapon of the party is a guarantee against enemy attacks. The West Bengal Government, in cahoots with the central Government, puts in all its subversive efforts to crush the armed resistance movements in West Bengal. The glorious tradition of Bengal against all oppression and exploitation will assert itself to write a new saga of death-defying struggle to end, lock stock and barrel, the armed might of the exploiters and power-hungry politicians.

The struggle in Midnapore and other districts is armed with the precious experiences of the past. The new leadership is aware of the fact that the ‘left’ adventurism of the past had taken a huge toll on the movement. The PW knows it very well that the revolutionary struggle is the struggle of the people. The PW wants mass participation through the blending of various forms of struggles, with the armed resistance movement remaining at the heart of all its efforts. Alongside the building up of armed squads the CPI (ML) [People’s War] concentrates on taking up anti-feudal, anti-imperialist, anti-corruption and all general issues crushing the common people. With the massive participation of the masses the struggle shall sweep through villages like a whirlwind in the coming days. Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, the Chief Minister, promised on the occasion of bifurcating Midnapore district on 1st January 2001 that his first and foremost duty is to eliminate the PW from Midnapore. In the unfolding days, the PW can presumably assert that the struggling peasants shall compose an elegy for the Chief Minister’s abortive endeavors in taming the invincible march of the wretched of the earth to establish genuine red power over rural West Bengal.