A CPI(ML) Document
Many Scholars have done pioneering research work on the state of agrarian relations and the history of peasant movement in the State of Bihar. In preparing this report we have relied heavily on their books and articles in matters of historical facts, statistics, quotes etc. In some cases, where our point of view converges with theirs we have borrowed their well-expressed descriptions. In particular, F. Tomasson Jannuzi’s book, Agrarian Crisis in India : The Case of Bihar; Girish Mishra’s Agrarian Problems of Permanent Settlement: A Case Study of Champaran; articles by Nirmal Sengupta, Arvind N. Das, Manoshi Mitra and T. Vijayendra, Kalyan Mukherjee and Rajendra Singh Yadav, and Arun Sinha, compiled in the book, Agrarian Movements in India : Studies on 20th Century Bihar edited by Arvind N. Das ; and several other articles of these and other authors appearing in different issues of Social Scientist and Economic and Political Weekly) have been of considerable help to us. We express our sincere gratitude to all of them.
WITH a total area of 1,74,000 sq. kms. and a population of 6,99,14,734 Bihar accounts for 5.3 per cent of the total geographical area of India and 10.3 per cent of the total Indian population.
To consider population first, the ratio of urban population according to 1981 census is only 12.5 per cent in Bihar as against the all-India figure of 23.3 per cent. The literacy rate in Bihar is 26.20 per cent (38.11 per cent for men and 13.62 per cent for women) while that for the country as a whole is 36.23 per cent (46.89 per cent for men and 24.82 per cent for women). Then, in sharp contrast to the national average of 40 per cent, as much as 59 per cent of the population in Bihar live below the poverty line (defined in terms of a monthly per capita income of Rs. 60 and a daily intake of 2,000 calories).
Coming to the social structure in Bihar, both rural as well as urban, the first thing that strikes an observer is perhaps the age-old, rigid caste system. Among themselves the four upper castes (Brahmins, Bhumihars, Rajputs and Kayasthas) constitute about 15 per cent of Bihar’s population; backward castes, numbering about hundred (the Yadavas, Kurmis and Koiris being the most numerous), account for more than 50 per cent; while the scheduled castes (harijans) and adivasis (93 per cent of the adivasis are concentrated in the Chhotanagpur region with the remaining 3.5 lakh being scattered over the districts of Purnea, Bhagalpur, Munger and West Champaran) make up 14.51 and 8.31 per cents respectively. Nearly 12 per cent of the population are Muslims.
There is a significant correspondence between caste and class hierarchies. The upper-castes are generally to be found among the landlords and rich and upper-middle peasants, while the scheduled castes only swell the ranks of agricultural labourers as well as poor and lower-middle peasants. The backward or middle castes, who are all agriculturists by their caste occupation, are, however, subject to a considerable degree of internal differentiation. Contrary to the popular belief that the middle castes are all middle peasants, they have in their ranks elements from almost all the rural classes—in fact, they account for more than 50 per cent of total agricultural labourers in Bihar.
Geographically speaking, Bihar is half plain and half plateau. The plains are further classified into North Bihar and South Bihar, depending on whether one is on the northern or southern bank of the river Ganges. The land is very fertile in both North and South Bihar and the population density is also quite high, often exceeding 500 persons per sq. km. In fact, the plains of Bihar account for more than 75 per cent of the entire population of the State
The southernmost half of Bihar, known as the Chhotanagpur region, is covered with hills and forests and as such, this region is not quite suitable for agricultural purposes. But it occupies an extremely important position on the mining and industrial map of India.
South Bihar is a semi-arid region where rice cultivation is not possible without irrigation. In the pre-independence days the South Bihar districts of Patna, Gaya, Munger and Bhagalpur were the storm centres of peasant struggles.
North Bihar is full of big rivers and is rather flood-prone. Almost every year new stretches of fertile land-mass (diara) emerge on the river beds and naturally there are constant disputes concerning the ownership of such land. This geographical phenomenon was most common in the eastern parts of Bihar over which flow the river Kosi and its numerous tributaries. However, with the construction of dams on the river this phenomenon has now been considerably checked.
Let us now take a look at the agrarian scene of Bihar-First in enacting land reform acts but last in enforcing them, Bihar still has a good number of giant landlords, each controlling thousands of acres of land. The Katihar-Purnea-Bhagalpur belt is the meeting point of the enormous illegal estates of three of the notoriously largest landowners in today’s India. Similar estates are also to be found under the control of the Mahants in Bihar’s numerous religious maths.
Bihar has the distinction of having the highest proportion of agricultural population among all States of India. According to 1981 Census, cultivators (cultivation, for the purpose of Census, includes “supervision or direction of cultivation” as well) and agricultural labourers account for 79.07 per cent of main workers (including, apart from cultivators and agricultural labourers, workers/employees and, of course, employers engaged in household industries, plantations and all factories and offices) in Bihar as against 66.52 per cent for India as a whole (looked at separately, the figures are 43.57 and 35.50 per cent for Bihar and 41.58 and 24.94 per cent for India). Considered as proportions of total population we have the following pictures for Bihar and India respectively — Main Workers : 29.7 and 33.5 per cent; Cultivators : 12.9 and 13.9 per cent; Agricultural Labourers: 10.6 and 8.4 per cent. But the rate of female participation is much lower in Bihar compared to the national average. Following are the sex ratios (females per 1,000 males) among the above three categories of workers for Bihar and India respectively—Main Workers : 174 and 253; Cultivators : 95 and 192 ; Agricultural Labourers : 360 and 598.
Agriculturally, Bihar still figures among the backward States of India. 34.7 per cent of the net cropped area in Bihar is irrigated as against 78.1 per cent in Punjab, 52.5 per cent in Haryana and 50.9 per cent in Uttar Pradesh. Fertiliser consumption per hectare of cropped area is 18.5 kgs. in Bihar while the corresponding figures for Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and all-India are 127.8 kgs., 60.6 kgs., 58.6 kgs., 53.0 kgs. and 36.6 kgs. respectively. 43.2 per cent of Bihar villages are electrified as against 100 per cent in Punjab, Haryana and Kerala, 99.4 per cent in Tamil Nadu and 55.7 per cent in India as a whole. As far as production of foodgrains is concerend» Bihar accounts for 9.0 per cent of rice and 6.4 per cent of wheat produced in the whole of India
Coming to various political currents in Bihar, mention must be made of the movement that flares up occasionally in North Bihar on the demand of recognition of Maithili language and development of Mithila region and the movement for a separate Jharkhand State that has been going on in the Chhotanagpur region for years together. The official politics of Bihar, however, goes on along caste lines. Caste considerations dominate the minds of intellectuals and peasants alike.
However the caste matrix is not fixed once and for all—certain lower castes have fought their way to higher rungs of the social ladder. Wayback in the 1920s, the Yadavas and the Kurmis, the two castes most numerous and relatively more affluent among the backwards, raised the banner of protest against social oppression by upper-caste landlords. They were soon joined in by the Koiris and what began as a social movement quickly developed into an economic conflict between upper-caste landlords and lower-caste tenants. The Bhumihars, a caste with greater internal differentiation than the Kurmis or the Yadavas, had also to fight their way into the enclave of upper-castes.
However, unlike some other parts of the country, caste organisations in Bihar, whether of backward castes or untouchables, could never gain prominence on the political plane during the entire phase of freedom struggle. Much of this was due to the deeprooted class outlook of the Kisan Sabha.
Caste apart, another major feature of social as well as political life in Bihar is the prevalence of the language of force, arms in particular. Bihar is perhaps the State which can boast of the maximum number of licensed and unlicensed firearms, landlords of every village are armed to the teeth and control some private gang of lumpens or other. In fact, nowhere in India is the nexus between landlords, police and government officials as naked as in Bihar. In the face of extreme oppression, there have also emerged several roving rebel gangs of erstwhile peasants in different parts ot Bihar— particularly where there is suitable terrain, e.g., the diara area of Bhagalpur-Munger, hills and forests of Kaimur Range and the Himalayan terrain of West Champaran—often degenerating into criminals engaging in gang warfare. These apart, there are also numerous smaller gangs of dacoits operating throughout the State.
All these salient features of Bihar’s socio-economic and political life find concentrated expression in the village-level power structure of today’s Bihar, a brilliant demonstration of the Gandhian mode of decentralization of power :
… the big landlord …. is virtually the ‘raja’ of his area. He possesses one-fourth or more of the total land of his village. He lives like an aristocrat in a large brick house. He employs the largest number of both slave and free labourers for domestic and farm work. He maintains a small private army equipped with guns, spears, lathis and other weapons and himself owns a licensed gun ….
The big landlord-raja … (belongs) to the caste of the dominant section of landlords in the village. To the social, economic and military power of the raja, ‘democracy’—added political power. He has captured the instruments of local government. He now commands the panchayat and thus the various executive bodies at the block level. He has the services of an obsequious police force in the local thana.
(Class War, Not ‘Atrocities Against Harijans’, article by Arun Sinha in Agrarian Movements in India : Studies on 20th Century Bihar, hereafter mentioned as Agrarian Movements, p. 151).
THE plains and forests of Bihar are ablaze. From Purnea to Palamau and Bhojpur to Bhagalpur, agricultural labourers and poor peasants are up in arms throughout the State. Armed clashes between the private armies of landlords and the peasants often running for hours together, killings of notorious landlords and murders of peasant leaders, police firings on processions and mass meetings, cold-blooded murders of revolutionaries in police encounters, peasant guerilla squads overrunning police camps to seize rifles, strikes of agrarian labourers, and landlord gangs indulging in pogroms are all regular features in today’s Bihar. The latest massacre of over 60 people at Arwal in Gaya by the Bihar Police has surpassed all previous records of police brutality and has been rightly termed as the resurrection of Jallianwallabagh on the soil of Bihar.
The main arena of the battle is confined to the central districts of Bhojpur, Gaya, Patna, Nalanda and Aurangabad. The immediate impact of the struggle stretches to the neighbouring districts of Nawada, Hazaribagh, Palamau and Rohtas in Bihar and, to a certain extent, also to Varanasi, Ghazipur and Ballia, the bordering districts of Eastern Uttar Pradesh.
The principal organisations siding with the peasants are the CPI(ML) (Liberation), the CPI(ML) (Party Unity) and the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC). In some pockets, actions of the PCC, CPI(ML) and certain pro-Lin Piao groups are also active. The Chhatra-Yuva Sangharsh Vahini, an organisation basing on JP’s ideas, has also developed struggles in a few pockets. While various peasant mass organisations—open, semi-open and secret—built up by different M-L groups stand in the forefront of the struggle; peasant guerilla squads, armed with the guns and rifles seized from the landlords and the police and popularly known as the Red Army or Red Guard, provide the backbone.
On the side of the landlords are ranged almost all the major political parties, the Congress(I) assuming the principal role. The CPI is most vociferous in opposing the revolutionary camp and openly colludes with the Congress(I), the landlords and the state in splitting and suppressing the movement. For the CPI as well as the CPI(M), the latter however is the weaker partner in Bihar, the Naxalites are pitting agrarian labourers against the peasants, providing, in the process, excuses to the state for unleashing severe repression on the masses—and all this at the behest of the CIA.
However, since different opposition parties and dissident Congress factions have contradictions with the ruling Congress as well as among themselves, they try to utilise the peasant struggle and particularly the instances of repression for their narrow political ends. The Lok Dal, the main opposition party in Bihar, alarmed as it is at its slipping hold over the harijans and backward castes, frantically opposes all class-based mobilisations of the peasantry, always striving to isolate and split the forces of revolutionary democracy. However, the same motive of protecting its own social base also makes it show concern over the repression let loose by the upper-caste landlords and the police on the agrarian labourers and poor peasants from among the harijans and backward castes.
These political parties apart, there are the caste-based private armies of the landlords, propped up in collaboration with the state.
Apart from the regular opposition parties there are also many splinter organisations and groups subscribing to the philosophies of Gandhi, Vinoba Bhave and JP as well as various voluntary agencies undertaking so-called developmental activities. Majority of them rely on foreign funding and work with the avowed aim of disrupting the peasant movement. However, some sections among them comprising idealist students and youths do cooperate with the forces of revolutionary democracy.
Various streams of Jharkhand movement do not have any well-defined programme for the adivasi peasants. However, in some cases they do undertake struggles against eviction and exploitation by the merchants and moneylenders and for the right on forest land and forest produce and also for social progress. And at times they, too, cooperate with the forces of revolutionary democracy.
PEASANT struggles are by no means a twentieth century phenomenon in the history of Bihar. In the nineteenth century itself Bihar had witnessed scores of heroic struggles of the peasantry, the Santhal Insurrection of 1855-56, the Munda Uprising of 1899-1901 and the Indigo Revolts in the latter half of the nineteenth century being the most notable among them. However, these were all isolated instances of peasant uprising with the leadership being provided by the local peasant leaders themselves without any national perspective and modern ideas. In contrast, peasant struggles in the present century are marked by outside intervention right from the days of the Champaran Satyagraha of 1917 when Gandhi first began his experiments with the peasantry.
PRIOR to the Bihar Land Reforms Act, 1950, the interests in land used to be governed in accordance with the Permanent Settlement introduced by the East India Company wayback in 1793, which had given rise to the following hierarchy of interests :
1. The Zamindar : legally a “proprietor”, but acting as an intermediary of the state in the collection of rent from tenants. The amount payable to the state was fixed in cash, in perpetuity, and was supposed to represent nine-tenths of what the zamindars received in rent from the tenants. The zamindars were, however, allowed the right to fix their own terms with tenants.
2. The Tenure-holder: “primarily a person who has acquired from a proprietor or from another tenure-holder a right to hold land for the purpose of collecting rents or bringing rents or bringing it under cultivation by establishing tenants on it, and includes also the successors-in-interest of persons who have acquired such a right” (vide Bihar Tenancy Act of 1885).
3. The Occupancy Raiyat : a rent-paying holder of land having the right of occupancy on the land held by him “for the purpose of cultivating it by himself, or by members of his family or by hired servants or with the aid of partners, and includes also the successors-in-interest of persons who have acquired such a right” (ibid.).
4. The Non-occupancy Raiyat: a rent-paying holder of land not having the right of occupancy on land temporarily in his possession.
5. The Under-raiyat: a rent-paying holder of land having temporary possession of a holding under a raiyat.
6. The Mazdur: a wage labourer having no right in land.
It was much later, only in 1936, that the Congress in its election manifesto advocated moderate reforms in the system of land tenure, revenue and rent. The Communists in 1930 and the Socialists in 1934 had already come up with radical reform proposals including the demand for abolition of zamindari. But when in the 1937 elections the Congress was voted to power, it did not pursue any meaningful agrarian reform, instead negotiating an agreement with the zamindars as we have already noted.
In 1947 the government of Bihar passed the Bihar Abolition of Zamindari Bill. It was then amended and published as the Bihar Abolition of Zamindari Act, 1948 only to be repeated and replaced by the Bihar Land Reforms Act, 1950, the validity of which was finally upheld by the Supreme Court only in 1952. The zamindars opposed the Act tooth and nail, while some of them succeeded in acquiring tacit support from important Congress leaders like Rajendra Prasad, the largest and most conservative among them joined the Janata Party launched by the Maharaja of Ramgarh who, however, rejoined the Congress in subsequent years.
IN Bihar the 1980-81 Agricultural Census was conducted on a complete enumeration basis by retabulation of data from land records. For the purpose of this Census, the operational holdings
As the figures in the accompanying table show, during 1980-81, marginal holdings accounted for 75.9 per cent of all holdings and 26.7 per cent of the total area under these holdings, while large holdings, accounting for a meagre 0.6 per cent of all holdings, occupied no less than 10.5 per cent of the total area. The corresponding figures for small, semi-medium and medium holdings are : 10.8 and 26.7; 8.5 and 23.4; and 4.2 and 24.5.
Compared to the 1976-77 figures, the share of marginal holdings has gone up by 3.3 and 3.4 percentage points in terms of number and area respectively, while that for large holdings has fallen by 0.2 and 2.7 percentage points. The number of small and semi-medium holdings fell by 1.2 and 0.9 percentage points while their shares in area went up by 0.5 and 0.9 percentage points respectively. And medium holdings found their share depleting by 1 per cent in terms of number and by 2.1 per cent in terms of area.
As a whole, the distribution is still highly skewed. Whatever slight variations in percentage are discernible are attributed by the government to its measures of land reforms, particularly the enforcement of ceiling laws.
Well, let us leave the Census report for a while and consider some unofficial informations. One need not sift through voluminous research works to gather these informations, even general newspapers frequently carry these reports. Take the case of Purnea district for example. The evolution and unabated predominance of big landlordism in this district is a topic that comes up in almost any discussion of the rural reality in Bihar. Consider the case-study of Purnea by Manoshi Mitra and T Vijayendra (Agrarian Movements, pp 88-118 ). Citing the reference of Francis Buchanan (An Account of the District of Purnea, 1928), the authors tell you how in the late nineteenth and the twentieth century, the one-time under-renters of the zamindars (officials appointed by them to supervise the rents as well as to deal with rent-farmers and disputes with the government) “emerged as considerable landlords themselves” and came to establish their notoriety as being “among the most oppressive”. “Among them are such people as Babu Moulchand, Raghubans Narayan Singh of Kursela and others, under-tenure holders of the Darbhanga Raj, who are reported to be among the largest landholders in India today according to the Government of Bihar”, inform the authors (Ibid, p 92).
Note : Figures in brackets indicate percentages on total of the corresponding column,
Source : Agriculural Situation in India, August, 1984
Now open The Telegraph of 25 January, 1986, and you will find that their successors have not only not lost their control over the enormous landed wealth handed down over generations, but have further entrenched themselves in various positions of power and privilege in the new state structure :
Dinesh Kumar Singh (of the erstwhile Kursela state), a proud thakur, and still as big a landlord as ever, is minister for food and supplies in the Congress government of Bindeswari Dubey currently ruling Bihar. Sarju Mishra, the health minister is confidently said to control nearly a thousand acres in Purnea. Sir Narayan Chand is perhaps the biggest of them all, controlling perhaps as much as 5,000 acres in Purnea. He is also the father of Madhuri Singh, an honourable member of Parliament elected on the Congress ticket. ( M. J. Akbar, Dateline ).
True, not all old zamindars could retain their land and power, but then their place has been occupied by new entrants from among the traders and contractors and even doctors and lawyers, who have purchased zamindari interests to emerge as medium to big landholders.
Sahu Parbatta is such a case in Purnea. He evicted tenants, engaged under-tenants, paid rent to the zamindars and still had a surplus. He used the capital to buy land and today he is supposed to have some 30,000 acres. (Mitra and Vijayendra, Agrarian Movements, p 98).
In all, there are believed to be 41 exceptionally big landlords each owning no less than 1,000 acres of land in Purnea.
West Cbamparan is another district notorious for big landlordism. Here are the foremost landlords in the district— Betia Raj : 20,000 acres, Faiz Alam : 15,000 acres, Baidya Nath Chauhan : 15,000 acres, Kapil Kumar : 10,000 acres, Raja of Ramnagar : 10,000 acres, D. K. Sikarpur : 9,000 acres, Islam Sheikh : 8,000 acres, Joy Narayan Marwari: 6,000 acres, Dumania estate : 6,000 acres. Many from these families are MPs or ministers and MLAs of Bihar. To have an idea of their overall wealth and power, take a close look at the Dumania estate, for instance. The family has a farm of 6,000 acres and rents out dwelling-houses and market-places. These apart, it owns 20 tractors and a tractor agency, a cinema hall, one hotel and a lodge, poultry farms, pig-breeding farms, dairy farms, mango and vegetable trade, and so on and so forth. In addition to daily workers they have 500 salaried employees. For different jobs they have different managements and the entire property is managed under a cooperative banner.
Coming to the district of Gaya, the notorious Mahant of Bodh Gaya controls 18,000 acres of land, of which nearly 5,000 acres are located in Bodh Gaya and the rest in other places of Bihar and Madhya Pradesh. Among the other major landowners in Gaya are Satyendra Narain Singh, an erstwhile leader of the Janata Party and now a Congress(I) MP, who owns 4,300 acres; Anjar Hussain with 3,650 acres; and Dr. Bijoy Singh, MLA and nephew of Satyendra Narain Singh. with 700 acres.
These three districts apart, the districts of Rohtas, Palamau and Bhagalpur are also notorious for big landlordism. But looked through the glasses of government census, this face of rural Bihar stands perpetually concealed.
So, unofficial consensus and official census seem to be at loggerheads. The trick lies essentially in the very mode of the census operation, in the very category of "operational holdings" as separated from the question of ownership and actual control.
Thus, when big holdings are rented out in small parcels to a huge number of tenants, or when large landowning families, splitting formally into several smaller units, resort to holding land in all sorts of fictitious names (cooperatives, farms, orchards and what not) so as to avoid the ceiling laws — all these are counted in census records as so many operational holdings belonging to this or that size-class. No wonder then, that the census data will show a continuing increase in the number of, and area under, small and marginal holdings at the expense of a corresponding decrease in the number of, and area under, medium and large holdings. And it goes without saying that a good majority of those who operate these small and marginal holdings are actually tenants-at-will, cultivating under onerous, semi-feudal conditions. The survivals of feudalism are thus glorified as the outcome of progressive land reforms!
IF in the wake of the lifting of the black curtain of the Emergency the country witnessed a general awakening among various social classes and strata, Bihar saw a veritable upheaval of the peasantry.
The years 1977-80 were marked by various new types of initiatives on the part of our Party forces, culminating in the emergence of a host of local-level mass organisations— Kisan Sanghas (peasant associations), Sangharsha Samitis (action committees), Jan Kalyan Samitis (people’s welfare committees) and so on and so forth — in different parts of rural Bihar. Under the leadership of these organisations, peasants began to voice their long-standing yet immediate demands, holding meetings, taking out processions, and staging demonstrations before all sorts of government officials from the Block Development Officers to the District Magistrates. Though the issues and forms of protest varied from one place to another, on the whole, the following issues emerged as the major focal points—stopping all atrocities on the oppressed classes and castes and meting out punishment to the offenders; enforcement of the minimum wages act; distribution of surplus and vested land among landless and poor peasants; provision of adequate irrigation facilities; regular supply of electricity, seeds and fertilisers at cheaper rates; disbursement of drought relief and agricultural loans among deserving peasants; fair compensation and rehabilitation in case of displacement; weakening and liquidating landlords’ control over all communal properties; opposing various corruptions and malpractices of government officials and the police, and so on. Strikes were conducted to secure increases in wages, attempts were made to capture vested land, some notorious thieves and dacoits were punished at some places, and during the days of drought the rich landed gentry was asked, and at times forced, to contribute foodgrains for the sustenance of the rural poor.
This was the period of the Janata rule both in the Centre and at the State. At the helm of affairs in Bihar was the ‘Socialist’ Karpoori Thakur, the self-styled messiah of the backwards and harijans. Meanwhile, our Party had undergone a thoroughgoing rectification campaign, leading to drastic changes in the Party line in accordance with our appraisal of the post-Emergency situation. Undoubtedly, this played a profound part in ridding our work among the Bihar peasants of all the old rigidities and dogmatic notions, and consequently, in unleashing the unprecedented peasant upsurge that soon shook the plains of Central Bihar, with Patna standing in the forefront. And with the formation of the Bihar Pradesh Kisan Sabha (BPKS, 23 February, 1981), the whole process got a new fillip. The BPKS came up with a comprehensive programme and started coordinating all local-level activities, gradually raising them to district-level and even to State-level. And finally, as an important constituent of the People’s Front, it began to rally the peasantry in general democratic movements as well.
The year 1981-82 witnessed a veritable storm of peasant struggle that brought to the fore miraculous potentialities inherent in the organised strength of the rural poor. Thousands of peasants rose in waves of mass movements, protests and resistance struggles with whatever arms they had in their possession. They assembled in mammoth mass meetings to voice their demands and to proclaim their determination for relentless struggle. Demonstrations and militant gheraos became a normal feature. The crudest among the landlords and their criminal gangs were taken as targets. The upsurge (concentrated in Patna and adjoining areas of Gaya and Nalanda districts) mainly centred on
Demonstrations, mass meetings, gheraos, strikes, masses in their hundreds and thousands encircling thanas (police stations) and forcing the authorities to release their arrested comrades, executions of notorious landlords and their muscle-men, snatching firearms from the landlords' armed gangs and from tyrant landlords themselves as well as from the police—these were the main forms of struggle through which the peasants vented their ire. The landed gentry were very much robbed of their habitual ‘special privileges’. Utmost care was taken not to hurt those who were not among the listed targets of struggle, even in the face of serious provocations on the part of many such persons who, because of caste prejudices or for some reasons or other, indulged in certain hostile acts against the downtrodden.
Village committees sprang up like mushrooms after the first rain, and peasants displayed exemplary solidarity, militancy and tenacity. Often, a single village or a cluster of 5 to 10 villages emerged as the leading centre for an entire area covering 50 to 60 villages. Braving severe repression, the people at these centres put up heroic resistance against constant enemy attacks. The movement went through a number of ups and downs, and in the process, there emerged in each centre (i) a small but strong leading group of Party elements (popularly known as agua, i.e., the vanguard), (ii) local armed squads, and (iii) powerful village committees, generally the village units of the peasant association. As a rule, these centres fall within the interior boundary of the areas of operation of the regular armed units. In such areas, mass participation in meetings and demonstrations has jumped from 100 to 10,000 or more, and armed resistance against landlords and their henchmen by a few has given way to armed mass resistance involving hundreds of peasants. If a village or tola (hamlet) is attacked, hundreds of peasants from neighbouring villages rush with arms and join forces with the resistance. Following are some such major storm centres where the peasant struggle has decidedly entered the phase of large-scale agitations embracing thousands of masses :
While retaining and consolidating its grip over the old areas of struggle, the upheaval has also spread to newer areas, covering 26 of the 38 districts of Bihar. In terms of the emergence of stable centres of struggle, and intensity and expansion of work, these twenty six districts can be divided into three categories.
In the first category fall those districts where work has spread to well over three-fourths of the district, the struggle is most intense and is marked by regular occurrence of armed clashes and guerilla operations. Rural areas of Patna and Gaya, the entire district of Bhojpur along with a few adjoining blocks of Rohtas district, and the districts of Nalanda and Aurangabad constitute this category.
The second category comprises districts where work has spread to several pockets, and where the struggle has reached the level of mass movements with occasional instances of mass resistance and armed clashes. The remaining blocks of Rohtas and the districts of Nawada, Hazaribagh, East Champaran, Madhubani, Vaishali, Begusarai, Muzaffar-pur, Darbhanga, Bhagalpur, Purnea, Giridih and Palamau fall in this category.
Work in the third category districts is confined to certain pockets and is still at the level of propaganda and organisation. In some of these districts mass movements did take place in the past, but the movement as well as the organisation could not be sustained, while in the others work has just begun. The districts of Siwan, Samastipur, West Champaran, Munger, Gopalganj, Khagaria, Madhepura and Ranchi belong to this category.
In all, our work has spread to nearly 140 blocks of these 26 districts (each district has on an average 14 to 16 blocks and each block, in its turn, covers some 100 villages). In the region under the first category, 60 blocks out of 90 are under the grip of peasant movement, and to be more specific, the struggle is highly intense in 26 blocks. The combined rural population of this region is over one crore.
SOME critics of the movement like to interpret it merely in terms of violence and killings. Even some sympathisers, too, see only the fighting spirit of the masses, the heroism and all that, and are quite unaware of the great strides made by this unprecedented movement in transforming the rural society. Let us, therefore, have a look at the major achievements.
WITH all its achievements, the movement also has its share of problems and weaknesses. Let us now take a close look at some of the major lacunae, indicating at the same time the measures being taken to remedy them.
THE ongoing peasant struggle in Bihar represents a new phase in the development of the Naxalbari movement. In what follows we have tried to enumerate the salient features which distinguish this present phase from the earlier ones of our movement.
1. The present phase is marked by solid unity in the principal Party faction spearheading the movement. Since the break with Sharma and Mahadev groups in the first half of the 70s, the reorganised Party leadership did not undergo a single split, either at the central or State levels, in all these years. In the beginning of 1975, the Patna district committee did present an alternative document, and afterwards, too, serious differences have often come to the fore in the State Party organisation on various questions of tactics regarding peasant struggle, but they were all resolved through intensive discussions within the Party forum. Moreover, the two Party Congresses in 1976 and 1982, and the All- India Party Conference in 1979 have greatly facilitated the emergence and development of a collective leadership in the Party, and the spirit of democratic centralism has been further strengthened. And this unity, in its turn, has ensured the continuation of the struggle with a regular and systematic review of the policies.
In the initial years of the movement, if certain other groups were also working in Bihar, their areas of operation were different and faraway from ours, and naturally complications did not crop up. But in the post-Emergency period, either due to expansion of our own work or due to intervention by other groups in our areas, different groups are working in bordering areas or even in the same areas. This has certainly created complications and at times tensions have indeed run high. The provocations are grave and the enemy is bent upon splitting the revolutionary unity from within and destroying the revolutionary groups one by one. However, so far comrades in Bihar have been able to avoid a repetition of the Andhra tragedy and have succeeded in developing joint activities at higher levels.
2. Continuity is another hallmark of the peasant struggle in Bihar. True, there have been setbacks, sometimes quite severe, but they have all proved to be of a temporary and partial nature. The intensity of the struggle has undergone constant variation, so have the areas, but on the whole, the continuity has never been lost. Bhojpur and Patna in particular have been on the map right from the early 70s.
Another revolutionary group, the MCC, has also been working in Bihar for a long period, and despite several splits, it has been able to keep the struggles going in its areas, particularly in the southern part of Gaya.
3. The struggle enjoys a powerful mass base, with 'agrarian labourers and poor and lower-middle peasants of lower castes spontaneously identifying themselves with the Party. Moreover, the fact that the members of the armed units are all drawn from the local stock and that the majority of Party leaders and cadres also hail from the countryside has greatly facilitated the Party’s integration with the masses. The number of urban intellectual cadres and ‘outsiders’, so to say, is relatively much less. A good number of Party leaders and cadres as well as leaders of mass organisations do come from upper castes, but this has never created any adverse impact on the masses, the essential reason being the high prestige which the Party enjoys among the masses.
4. The transition from caste to class struggle is another notable feature of the movement. True, the movement has had to face its share of caste-based complications and has often got trapped in a veritable caste imbroglio, but gradually, step by step, it has succeeded in mobilising the peasantry along class lines, and in some cases, has also been able to penetrate among the upper castes. While not denying the specific features of casteist oppression, the movement has all along fought the numerous caste prejudices among the people, opposed all caste-based electoral manoeuvres, and refuted the so-called ‘Marxist’ theories of ‘dalit revolution’ peddled by A K Roy and more recently by the Nandy-Rana group.
5. Through all its ups and downs, the movement has been able to retain its armed character, which goes to the extent of snatching firearms from the police and paramilitary forces and organising armed guerilla units. In their number, level and tenacity, the armed actions conducted by the pasant guerillas of Bihar definitely surpass the records of all earlier peasant struggles led by the Communist Party in Indian history. With growing maturity, the armed units have also been able to reduce their losses. Particularly since 1977, they have managed to keep the losses at a minimum, thanks to the policy of avoiding direct battles and operating over bigger areas. However, they have been instrumental in organising immediate counter-attacks, paying the enemy back in their own coins. This has been an important feature of the movement and has gone a long way in keeping up and further bolstering the people's morale in face of severe repression by the enemy.
The retention of the armed character, however, has not been at the expense of other forms of struggle, including the parliamentary form. Valuable experiences are being accumulated in Bihar in combining various forms of struggle.
6. The movement has taken care to avoid killing persons belonging to other political parties. This has deprived these parties, to a great extent, of the opportunity to stir up party-to-party clashes. Efforts have always been made to distinguish, and, of course, to utilise the contradictions, among various political parties, to develop ties with the rank and file of these parties and to issue regular propaganda materials to them as well as to the masses who, out of caste sentiment, tend to follow various Senas of the landlords, and also to make open self-criticisms of our mistakes. All this has helped the movement in winning over village after village from the influence of the CPI and the Lok Dal, in disintegrating the numerous gangs and Senas of the landlords, and in preventing the political parties from putting up a united front against the movement.
Just as the labouring people in our society are considered ‘outcastes’ by the upper echelons, the political party representing them is also considered outcaste in our politics. Thus, there are always attempts by the opposition parties, including the revisionists, to isolate us at every turn from all political affairs of importance. On our part, we have always made efforts to break through this isolation in collaboration with other revolutionary and democratic groups and parties as well as the democratic ranks of different parliamentary parties, and we have attained some successes, too.
7. The movement has attracted a large section of the veterans of freedom struggle and communist movement. This has helped it in forging historical links with the past struggles and in learning from their valuable experiences.
It has also attracted a large number of youths who formed the backbone of the 1974 student-and-youth movement. Many of them are today important functionaries of the Party and the mass organisations. Their association with the movement has been of immense help for it in taking the leap to this new phase and also in becoming a veritable launching pad for a nationwide revolutionary-democratic political organisation.
8. In contrast to the old perception of concentrating the struggle against few big landlords, the peasant struggle in Bihar is advancing in areas where the base of landlordism is quite wide. A considerable section of the kulaks has also turned out to be targets of this struggle and, moreover, various complex economic and social factors allow them to mobilise many a segment of the various intermediate strata, particularly under caste banners. Consequently, the rural population gets sharply divided. Such conditions render wage-struggle very difficult and land-seizure seemingly impossible. There is also the constant danger of the interests of the intermediate strata getting hard-hit by the movement. It is precisely in the face of such a complex constellation of forces that the old Communist Parties had lost their bearings. No wonder then that the CPI, CPI(M) as well as the ‘Socialists’ go on accusing us of splitting the broad peasant unity through fanning conflicts between agrarian labourers and poor peasants on the one hand, and middle and rich peasants on the other. The same fear, or prejudice if you will, also propels various communist revolutionary groups to shift to areas of classical feudalism.
Well, if the so-called broad peasant unity at all existed in practice, it was based totally on the leadership of rich peasants. If one wants to reverse this situation, if one wants to build a new peasant unity under the leadership of agrarian labourers and poor peasants, a great upheaval is inevitable. And the tremendous mobilisation of the rural poor in the struggling areas of Bihar is indeed indicative of such a great upheaval, an upheaval that may well serve as a typical case for the greater part of the Indian countryside. Learning from practice, the Party intends to further perfect its policies concerning various intermediate strata as well as to make changes in its agrarian programme. We do also want to extend our work to the old type of areas, areas of classical feudalism, but certainly not at the cost of giving up work in these ‘new’ areas and cutting ourselves off from the agrarian reality of present-day India, despite all attempts of the CPI and the CPI(M) to provoke us into struggle against the so-called big feudal landlords.
9. If the areas of peasant struggle in Bihar do not conform to the ‘standard’ specifications of anti-feudal struggle in terms of class configuration, they do not conform to the ‘standard’ military specifications of people’s war either. But then, giving up these areas, which are topographically plain and well-developed in terms of communication
Concerted efforts are also there on our part to take up hilly, forest and plain areas as a single zone for the purpose of developing base area. And in this connection, another important feature of the present struggle that deserves our special attention is the occurrence of peasant guerilla operations in the vicinity of industrial areas, particularly mining areas.
(Excerpts from the Programme adopted in the first Conference of the BPKS held in Patna, 10-12 March, 1984)
1. To struggle for the seizure of land belonging to big landlords, and to distribute it among landless, poor and lower-middle peasants.
2. To struggle for equal wages for equal work, and for wage parity between male and female labourers.
3. To struggle for equal rights for women, and against rape and other immoral practices.
4. To struggle for the establishment of the traditional rights of forest-dweller and fishermen over forest wealth and rivers respectively.
5. To organise mass resistance against the police, landlords and goondas.
6. To struggle for the establishment of the equal social rights of harijans, adivasis, and various religious minorities, particularly the Muslims.
7. To struggle for the abolition of child labour.
8. To struggle for the scrapping of all anti-people acts, including the NSA, ESMA and the Disturbed Areas Act.
9. To struggle for the establishment of a proper balance between the prices of industrial and agricultural commodities.
10. To struggle for the abolition of all indirect taxes and reduction of direct taxes, and for instituting a tax system based on income.
11. To struggle for the abolition of various old, obscurantist legacies such as untouchability, caste discriminations, illiteracy, superstitions, old systems of marriage and sradh (post-funeral ceremony), and dowry.
12. To struggle against feudal culture and for developing a genuine democratic culture based on the positive traditions of the peasantry.
13. To struggle for free education with free hostel and other facilities for poor students of peasant origin, and also for free and proper treatment in village hospitals based on people’s cooperation.
14. To struggle for the cancellation of all uncleared debts of the peasants (advanced by the landlords, usurers, and the government), including the interests accumulated thereon.
15. To struggle for adequate compensation (not only in terms of cash, but mainly in terms of land and employment) for peasants displaced due to mines, factories, dams, colonies and cantonments, etc.
16. To struggle for changing the pro-big bourgeois industrial policy, for the establishment of agro-based small and medium-sized industries and for bringing industrial development in harmony with the development of agriculture.
1. To struggle for the enforcement of minimum wages, fixation of working hours and provision of other facilities.
2. To struggle for guaranteeing round-the-year employment for all agricultural labourers.
3. To struggle for the declaration of areas affected by drought or flood as famine-stricken areas with the provision of sufficient and corruption-free relief, and also for waiving the rent in such areas.
4. To struggle for the establishment of the right of the homeless to homestead lands.
5. To struggle for the seizure of vested land as well as land above ceiling and to distribute the land so seized among landless, poor and lower-middle peasants.
6. To struggle for the reduction of the ceiling to 5 acres (in irrigated areas) and to 8 acres (in non-irrigated areas) per family.
7. To struggle for the enforcement of the tenancy act.
8. To struggle for the abolition of the landlords' control over all public properties (ponds, ahars, schools, maths, etc.) and for bringing them under the control of peasants' committees.
9. To struggle for the cancellation of all uncleared loans (governmental or non-governmental) of peasants belonging to the lower-income group, including the interests accumulated thereon;
10. To struggle for the provision of crop insurance.
11. To struggle against the landlords’ practice of hoarding and to distribute the grains seized among the peasants.
12. To struggle for the abolition of bonded labour.
13. To struggle against police repression, for withdrawing false cases against peasants, and for scrapping Sections 107 and 109.
14. To organise peasants’ self-defence corps and to train them in wielding traditional weapons so as to defend against attacks of the police and landlord-gangs;
15. To struggle for seizing the guns of tyrannical landlords and to distribute such guns among landless and poor peasants for the purpose of self-defence.
16. To organise strong resistance against casteist oppression.
17. To struggle against medieval oppressoin of the women, harijans, adivasis, various minorities and other weaker sections of the society.
18. To struggle against cultural degeneration, superstition, casteism, untouchability, liquor addiction, gambling, child marriage, dowry, and oppression of widows.
19. To struggle for removing illiteracy.
20. To support the Jharkhand movement.
21. To unite with other democratic organisations and to strengthen the anti-autocratic movement.
22. To oppose imperialist and capitalist exploitation and to unite with all other struggling classes, particularly the working class.
(Policies numbered I, II and III have been formulated by the Bihar State Committee of the Party and the rest by the Central Bihar Regional Party Committee.)
A. Under what circumstances land should be seized
i) We should have a concrete analysis of the area where land is to be seized. We should see to it that the seizure does not retard, rather accelerates and broadens, mass movements and anti-feudal struggles. In fact, our struggle for land seizure is directed towards the seizure of state power. Hence, this economic struggle should serve the cause of political struggles.
ii) Prior to embarking on land seizure or, for that matter, any other economic struggle of this sort, the broad masses should be politically mobilised and it should be ensured that the landlords are not able to bring the middle and poor peasants under their fold. Broader class unity is a must in the struggle for land seizure.
iii) Of late, one notices a rather widespread desire for land seizure. But land seizure can be encouraged and given a consistent shape only where there are conscious Party cadres and developed people’s committees. For it is only in such places that the people’s zeal can be sustained and anarchism avoided. However, in case the broad masses have already spontaneously started confiscating the land, our comrades should not oppose it or remain isolated from it, even if developed people’s committees are not there, rather they should strive hard to systematise this process of seizure.
iv) Before embarking on land seizure, proper care should be taken of all necessary legal formalities, so that the administration can be put in a tight corner. This also help strengthen the fighting spirit of the masses and increase their mobilisation.
B. Ownership and other criteria for land seizure
i) Generally speaking, at present struggles should be conducted for seizing vested land, laud over and above the ceiling, Bhoodan land, government land, hilly and forest land, and diara land.
ii) The part of a landlord's holding, which is valid under the existing ceiling act, should not be seized in the present phase.
iii) Surplus land over and above the ceiling should first be ascertained and identified before struggle is launched for its seizure.
iv) In the present situation, generally, the lands of only big, cruel and resistant landlords should be seized.
v) Barring few exceptional cases (e.g., vested land under the occupation of some arch-reactionary rich peasant), land seizure movement should not be conducted against rich and middle peasants.
vi) Land owned by absentee landlords should be seized.
vii) If, under pressure of mass movements, a landlord wants to sell out his land, the prospective purchaser should first be warned. And if repeated warnings go unheeded, the land should be seized, but of course, only after isolating the purchaser through broad mass mobilisation.
viii) Land, illegally grabbed by landlords, should be seized and restored to the owner.
ix) Cultivable forest land, too, should be seized.
x) Graveyards, grazing fields and land under common use should not be seized.
xi) In case of math lands, to start with, struggle should be waged on the demand of common management; but if the situation permits, such lands can be seized as well.
C. Who should get the land and how
i) Land should be distributed through land distribution committees comprising representatives from middle peasants, too.
ii) Generally, land should be distributed on the basis of participation in struggle. Side by side, the conditions and needs of the participants should also be taken into account.
iii) In terms of quantity, the recipients, in declining order of magnitude, should be : agricultural labourers, poor peasants, lower-middle peasants.
iv) The landless, poor and lower-middle peasants who were neutral to the struggle should also be given a share with a view to activising them in subsequent struggles and establishing a broader peasant unity. The interests of the handicapped, old and widows should also be taken into consideration.
v) Special attention should be paid to the families of martyr comrades and peasant cadres, keeping in mind their actual conditions.
vi) In case of active cooperation by peasants of other nearby villages, a portion, not exceeding one-fourth, of the land seized should be distributed among them.
vii) Trees, orchards, ponds etc. should remain under the management of peasants’ committees.
viii) Peasants should be encouraged to embark on cooperative farming on the distributed land.
ix) Levy on the distributed plots of land should be fixed on the basis of their fertility and if necessary, a portion, not exceeding one-fifth, of the land may be retained for the people’s committee.
i) Only landlords’ crops should be seized, and that too, from such landlords who are taking the main role in suppressing the peasant struggle and accordingly, figure at the top of the hit-list of the peasants.
ii) Crops on such plots of vested land or land over and above the ceiling as are owned by landlords and are due for seizure may also be seized. If such lands happen to have been rented out by the landlords, the share-croppers must be given their due share from the crops seized.
iii) The crop on land held in conformity with the ceiling act and leased out to peasants should not be seized.
iv) If the crop is seized prior to the payment of wages to the labourers the same should be paid out from the crop seized.
v) Crop seizure should be accomplished under the leadership of village committees or people’s committees of the area.
vi) It should be ensured that the seizure has the consent of the broad masses of landless and poor peasants and that it is carried out with their participation.
vii) Middle peasants should also be included in people’s committees or crop distribution committees.
viii) A portion, not exceeding one-fifth, of the crops seized should be set aside for the organisation and the rest should be distributed among the peasants on the basis of their participation in the seizure. During distribution, the families of peasant cadres should not be lost sight of.
ix) Crop seizure should be carried out in such a way that it serves to broaden the resistance struggle.
i) Economic and political struggles comprise the mainstream of class struggle, and the struggle for confiscation should be viewed as being complementary to this mainstream. Hence, political mobilisation of broad peasants is an essential precondition for confiscation.
ii) Where class struggle has reached an advanced stage, all properties of those big and cruel landlords, who happen to be the key targets, can be confiscated. But it should be done through the people’s committees and by mobilising the broad masses. Armed units and squads may only lend a helping hand.
iii) In drought-affected areas, movements may be organised for confiscating grains from the government’s godowns and the landlords’ granaries. But other properties should not be confiscated.
iv) Generally speaking, confiscation struggle should be concentrated against big and cruel landlords only. As a punishment, such struggle may also be waged against arch-reactionary rich peasants, but in such cases, prior approval of the district Party organisation or of a higher Party committee is a must.
v) Confiscation should be effected only at such places where there are conscious Party cadres and developed people's committees, so that the property confiscated can be held under control and distributed systematically.
vi) However, if mass discontent against a class enemy takes the shape of a spontaneous upsurge, and confiscation takes place as an inalienable part of this upsurge, our Party cadres should not remain isolated from the process (even if there happens to be no people's committee), rather they should strive to control and systematise it by forming an ad-hoc distribution committee.
vii) Ornaments and other articles on the persons of female members should not be touched under any circumstances.
viii) All confiscated properties should be surrendered to the people’s committee.
ix) The property confiscated should be distributed by the committee among the people according to their needs. The families of peasant cadres should also be taken into account.
x) If some movable property happens to be mortgaged, it should be returned to the actual owner after proper investigation.
xi) If necessary, a portion of the property confiscated would be retained by the committee. Agricultural apparatus or machinery would remain with the committee and would be used for collective cultivation. The general policy regarding distribution is : “Arms to the squad, cash and ornaments to the higher Party committee, and grains to the people”.
i) While remaining firm on achieving our demands, we should foil the design of the landlords to pit middle peasants against us.
ii) The movement should be launched over a relatively bigger area in a conscious and organised manner, and must not be left to spontaneity.
iii) While fixing the demand, instead of basing on the minimum wage rate as stipulated by the government, we should take into account the productivity of land, the present wage rate and other incidental privileges as are traditionally applicable to the area concerned.
iv) Instead of going to direct action at one stroke, care should be taken to conduct wide propaganda and advance step by step.
v) If it is found really necessary to go on strike, it should first be launched in some selected villages.
vi) Options should always be kept open for arriving at a negotiated settlement with the middle peasants.
i) In no condition, and on no excuse whatsoever, should middle peasants be subjected to any economic loss.
ii) We should recognise and respect the equal right of middle peasants on communal properties.
iii) With regard to social and other crimes, middle peasants should be differentiated from the landlords, and their case should be considered as one among the people themselves.
iv) In case of gohar, if broad majority of middle peasants are mobilised by the landlords on caste basis, we should avoid counter-gohar or offensive actions, limiting ourselves to defensive resistance only.
v) Individual agents or hired criminals in the ranks of middle peasants will, however, be treated as class enemies and not as middle peasants.
vi) Special emphasis should be laid on settling wage disputes with middle peasants through negotiations.
Village committees will develop in future as the lowest units of peasant hegemony. At present, they are the basic organisations around which the peasants mobilise in their struggle and in resistance.
Structure : A village committee should be formed only after at least 40 per cent of the people of that village have rallied around us. It should comprise 5 to 7 persons and agricultural labourers and poor peasants should form the predominant segment. However, care should be taken to ensure proper representation for different classes, castes, communities and, of course, for women. A part of the village committee must remain secret. Every year the committee should be reelected by the people on the basis of full democracy. It should accept the supervision of the masses in all its activities.
Persons from exploiting classes as well as thieves, lumpens, vagabonds etc. should not be given any berth in the committee. Only those who are struggling, honest, dedicated, self-sacrificing and modest can find a place in the committee.
Tasks : Every village committee should perform the following major tasks.
i) It should arrange meetings of the villagers to discuss all important village affairs. Care should be taken to ensure that women as well as those who are outside the organisation are also present in these meetings.
ii) It should develop united people’s struggles against landlords and the administration on various social, economic and political matters of importance.
ii) It should bring all common properties of the village under the people’s control and manage such properties on behalf of the people,
iv) It should take care of the educational, health, cultural and other requirements of the people with a view to improving their standard of life.
v) It should look after the families of the martyrs and of professional cadres.
vi) With regard to various contradictions, disputes and troubles, it should adopt different attitudes towards the landlords and the people. As far as the class enemies are concerned, the attitude should be one of resistance, of hitting and smashing their power and prestige. But in case of the people, the attitude should be basically one of persuasion. If need be, some pressure can also be brought to bear upon them and in case of absolute necessity, even certain nominal punishments can also be awarded, but only with a view to remoulding and unifying them.
vii) If it seems essential to mete out some major punishment to anybody, the village committees of neighbouring villages should also be consulted about it.
viii) It should submit its periodic reports before the masses and inspire them to come up with their opinions and criticisms.
ix) It should conduct its affairs under the political guidance and leadership of higher organisations.
x) It must maintain proper accounts of its collections from the masses as well as of all other incomes derived from various common properties and fines.
i) A difference should be made between every two powerful castes according as the number of landlords is greater or less. This should be done in view of their respective positions in the entire rural society of the State as well as in the specific area concerned.
ii) Our aim is to mobilise the vast masses of peasants belonging to all castes, but considering the prevailing social conditions, our priority list should be : lower castes first, middle castes second, and upper castes last.
iii) If an upper or middle caste happens to be in the majority in an area, work within that upper of middle caste should be given equal importance right from the beginning.
iv) In areas dominated by landlords of a particular caste, we should utilise the contradictions of other castes with that caste in the interest of the broadest possible mobilisation of the peasantry. However, before carrying the struggle to higher levels, enough political work should be done to isolate the landlords from their own caste.
v) To mobilise the lower castes, caste organisations may also be developed or joint activities may be undertaken with such lower-caste organisations as are already there. Such caste organisations, however, should not restrict themselves to questions of social discrimination against lower castes, rather they should raise their voice against all sorts of oppression and exploitation.
i) Next to mobilising landless and poor peasants of lower castes, our first emphasis in the areas of peasant struggle should be on uniting peasants of the Yadava caste. This should be accomplished through developing cadres from among the Yadavas.
ii) Before taking any action against landlords/oppressors/ dacoits/thieves of this caste, we should enlist the participation or at least support of the majority of the Yadava peasants.
iii) Vested land held by small landlords and rich peasants among the Yadavas should not be forcibly occupied. We have to take over such land through persuasion or social pressure.
iv) All help should be extended to the Yadavas for getting themselves organised in struggles for grazing land, and for government help for animal husbandry and milk cooperatives.
Dear Peasants,
THE Kurmi caste is well known as an honest, hard-working and brave caste. It has produced quite a considerable number of progressive individuals and revolutionaries. Many whole-time cadres of our Party hail from your caste. Many leaders and cadres, like Mahendra Singh, Sachchidanand Singh and Shyamnarayan Patel, of democratic organisations, like the IPF or the Kisan Sabha, also belong to your caste. Altogether, your caste is held in high esteem in the whole society.
Our Party is leading the people towards a revolutionary transformation of the entire society, and you are an integral part of the people. But some persons are out to drive a wedge between us by giving you a false impression about our Party. We admit that we had made certain mistakes in the past, but we have already rectified them. Undoubtedly, some shortcomings may still be there and you are absolutely welcome to point them out, but please know us closely and don’t misunderstand us. We are consistently fighting for your all-round development.
Now, some arch-reactionaries and their goons, who also happen to come mainly from the Kurmi caste, have formed a gang like the Bhoomi Sena that is out to perpetuate your deprivation and backwardness and to make life hell for you. And some persons are associating your entire caste with this notorious gang to tarnish your great image. You must be knowing it very well what a tremendous hatred the people have for this Bhoomi Sena. Do you not want to preserve the respect the people have always shown towards your caste? Do you not want to prosper economically, socially, politically and culturally? Do you not want to break out of this bondage of backwardness? Surely you do, and we, therefore, appeal to you to isolate and smash this notorious gang and to march forward to a better tomorrow. And in this forward march towards the fulfilment of your just aspirations, you can always count on our fullest help and cooperation.
Just think how many progressive individuals and revolutionaries have been murdered by this gang and what a great loss it has inflicted on the people. They have snatched away from you such beloved mass leaders as Premchand Sinha, Lalbabu Singh and Sharda Singh. This gang is indeed a disgrace to the entire society and as such it is imperative to wipe it out completely from the face of this earth.
As far as we are concerned, we associate only Girish Singh, Lallu Singh, Beni Singh, Jeevlal Singh and Vijay Singh with the Bhoomi Sena. They are the main enemy in this area and we will not spare them. If anyone else has, by mistake, aligned himself with these elements, he should dissociate himself immediately. We bear no enmity towards anybody else. However, in the interest of the masses, particularly of the Kurmi caste, we are prepared to work out a compromise with these elements and avoid bloodshed if possible. We will not take any action against them till 31 March and wait for their response. But if we do not get any response from them by 30 March, we will assume that they do not want any compromise, they do not have any sympathy for the Kurmi peasants and want to play with their lives. After that we will be free to mobilise the masses in any action against this gang of five.
Peasants of the Kurmi caste, unite with the peasants of all other castes. No caste can prosper in isolation. Landlords of all castes are getting united. You, too, must take immediate steps. You must make your choice between light and darkness. Our Party is also your Party, and it will remain yours for ever.
Patna District Committee of your own party,
Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) (Liberation)
15 February, 1986
Dear Brothers of the Yadava Community,
THANKS to years of relentless, painstaking efforts by the CPI(ML), the Party of us all, a militant unity was developing among the people of all castes, the reflection of which could be seen in the growing tide of people’s struggle in this area against the exploitation and oppression by tyrant landlords, their goons and the Congress government. Smelling immediate danger, the enemies of the people—the Congress government, landlords and casteist leaders,—began to hatch a conspiracy of pitting the Yadava peasants against the harijans, particularly against our Party. To put this design into practice they required the services of a few Yadava individuals, and unfortunately in the adjacent areas of Ekangarsarai-Ghosi, such individuals did not prove hard to come by.
Theft and dacoity had been completely curbed in this area, thanks to our Party’s relentless campaign against these social evils. And consequently, all thieves and dacoits have a score to settle with us. By establishing their control over, the Radil chhilka the masses have deprived certain Bhumihar contractors of the gains that so far accrued to them on account of their control over this chhilka. To regain their control these contractors need the help of some Yadavas. In order that the CPI MP, Ramashray Singh, is able to retain his seat in the parliament, the Yadava peasants must be prevented from joining our Party. In order that the Congres(I) MP, ‘King’ Mahendra, is able to retain his parliamentary seat, it is necessary that the Yadavas are locked in a permanent quarrel with all other castes so that he could mobilise the votes of the latter. And to stem the tide of the anti-government agitation, the Congress government can only bank upon inter-caste conflicts. All these vested interests have mobilised certain thieves and lumpens from the Yadavas, given them money and guns and linked them with a group of Bhumihar goondas to tailor the outfit named Lorik Sena.
Has this Lorik Sena been formed for the good of the Yadavas, or does it have some evil intentions? If it were formed for the development of the Yadavas, it would have surely fought for relief to the Yadavas in times of drought and flood, for the promotion of agriculture and irrigation, it would have striven for the abolition of the dowry system and for the promotion of education, it would have protected the Yadavas from the atrocities of the landlords and the police. And if the Lorik Sena really works for the development of the Yadavas we have nothing against it. But what has been the record of its activities so far? Looting the rural poor in league with the police and certain Bhumihar goons, setting their houses on fire and killing them, molesting and.raping their women, abusing and terrorising the people of all castes and extorting ‘levy’ from them.
These activities have obviously caused a lot of damage to the people of other castes, but the greatest sufferers have been none other than the Yadavas. Already some six to eight Yadavas have lost their lives in clashes and several have suffered serious injuries, many have criminal cases against their names and their houses and properties have been seized by the government, houses after houses have been demolished by the police, a lot of people are behind the bars and a good many are absconding, several villages wear a deserted look, and lakhs of rupees have been lost in the process. Not only that, the entire Yadava community runs the risk of getting branded as dacoits and murderers, and consequently of getting isolated from all other castes. Lorik was the name of the legendary hero who had upheld the banner of dignity for Yadava raiyats through a glorious struggle against the atrocities of the then kings and landlords. And Lorik Sena is the name of those thugs and lumpens who rob and murder poor peasants at the instigation of the government and the landlords, who bring disgrace to the great name of Lorik and to the entire Yadava community. To be sure, the Lorik Sena will ultimately prove to be a Frankenstein for the Yadavas. Just as the Kurmis had to suffer the most on account of the Bhoomi Sena, the Lorik Sena, too, will bring the greatest of losses to none but the Yadavas. We urge upon you, peasants of the Yadava community, to ponder whether this foolish and fruitless battle by the Lorik Sena against the Party and poor peasants of all other castes can bring you any benefit at all ? What progress are you going to achieve through this? You can take it from us that while the thieves and lumpens stand to gain partially, the greatest beneficiary will be those who are conspiring to foment conflict among ourselves, and for you peasants it is going to be losses all the way.
It is quite natural for people of different castes and strata living in the same village or area to have certain differences and quarrels among themselves, but such differences are to be resolved through discussions and panchayats, not through battles. Otherwise we will get into the trap of the ruling classes’ politics of 'divide and rule', of disrupting the united struggle of the people against the landlords and the government by pitting one caste against another. It is through such traps that the tiny minority of rulers and exploiters manage to perpetuate their rule over the great majority of the people and we are condemned to lead a wretched life. Ninety five per cent of you Yadavas are either landless or own some five to twenty bighas of land. And you are faced with a hundred and one losses and difficulties—on account of flood and drought, costly inputs like diesel, manure etc., non-remunerative prices of agricultural produce, corruption among the government officials, lack of provision for health-care and education for your children, lack of employment, various social evils and caste conflicts. All these problems of yours are products of the anti-peasant policies of the Congress government. And to solve them, therefore, you have got to unite with all other castes, including the harijans, in a resolute struggle against the government. There is no other alternative. Presently, our Party is in the process of launching a united peasant movement on all these issues. It is true that to begin with, we had taken up the problems of the agricultural labourers (harijans), for in today’s Indian society they are the poorest and most oppressed of the whole lot. But that does not mean that ours is only a party of the agricultural labourers (harijans), our Party is dedicated to the progress of the broad masses of Indian people—workers, peasants and middle classes alike. In fact, many among the first batch of functionaries to uphold the great red banner of our Party in this area had come from Yadava families— Gyaneswar Yadav (Nagendra), Ram Babu Yadav (Kailash), Ramdas Yadav (Lalan), they all laid down their lives at the altar of the people’s liberation and progress. Today’s Yadava youth should follow the footsteps of these immortal martyrs. Even today the Yadavas figure quite prominently among the cadres of our Party.
Peasants of the Yadava community, please convey this message of ours to all those misguided elements of the Lorik Sena who are still thinking of wiping out our party. Please tell them that no such force has ever been born, nor will ever be, for we are dedicated to the service of the people. On the contrary there is no such power in the earth, nor will ever be, that can save the Lorik Sena from certain disintegration, for it is engaged in plundering and murdering the people. Our victory is as inevitable as its defeat. Under no circumstances are we going to loot any village for looting is against our principle. But tell them that if they dare enter any village to plunder the people, not a single one of them shall return alive. We can begin to consider their case in a different light only if and when they give up looting, terrorising and killing the masses and stop their anti-Party activities.
At this critical juncture when the landlords, the Congress government and certain vested interests among the Yadavas are conspiring to generate caste frenzy and to trap the Yadava peasants in a suicidal internecine war, we appeal to the wisdom and conscience of all wise and conscientious Yadavas to try their level best to stop this suicidal frenzy and to wage a militant people’s movement on all their burning issues together with the peasants of all other castes. Our Party certainly fights against the cruel landlords, goondas, thieves and dacoits of all castes but never do we and never will we fight against the broad masses of any caste, not even if they are instigated to fight against us.
Come, let our slogans be :
Long live the broad unity of peasants of all castes !
Down with the despicable design of pitting us against one anoyher !
With revolutionary greetings,
Central Bihar Regional Committee
Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)
5 December, 1985
Many of our comrades have laid down their lives, so will many others in the days to come. For the revolution in India won’t be accomplished without a price. Out of this sacrifice will emerge those death-defying mortals who will smash imperialism to the ground, who through their selfless labour, will build up a new India, the India that holds aloft great hope and inspiration for the people of the world.
-- Charu Mazumdar
Scores of organisers and activists have so far laid down their lives in the course of the nearly two-decade-long revolutionary peasant struggle in Bihar. This is the first attempt on our part to record the names and other available particulars of these martyr comrades. The names have been arranged, first, districtwise and then in chronological order. Unless otherwise specified all of them belonged either to the undivided CPI(ML) or subsequently to our Party organisation. Note on abbreviations used in the list are given at the end.
Names in brackets are the ones by which the comrades concerned were known in Party circles. Abbreviations used : LLP = Landless Peasant, PP = Poor Peasant, LMP = Lower-middle Peasant, MP = Middle Peasant, RP = Rich Peasant ACM=Member of an Area Committee, RCM = Member of a Regional Committee, SCM—Member of a State Committee, CCM=-Member of the Central Committee, GS—General Secretary of the Party.
If sympathisers and general peasant masses are also taken into account, the martyrs’ list will become more than twice as long. We have been able to collect minimum informations about 168 such martyrs. Districtwise, the figures are—Patna : 78, Bhojpur : 22, Gaya : 33, Nalanda : 5, Aurangabad : 21, Madhubani : 6, Vaishali : 2, Begusarai : 1;
Highly instructive as it is, the story of Hitler obviously does not tell us all that we need to know about fascism. So here are some essential supplementary points.
At the close of World War I, Italy was still a young nation state. The Kingdom of Italy had been formed only in 1861 – and that without Rome and Venice, which were acceded a few years later – in the wake of Camillo Cavour’s work for unification of a fragmented Italy and the military campaigns of Giuseppe Garibaldi. Economic development was extremely uneven, literacy rate was the lowest in Western Europe, and hunger, unemployment and inflation made life miserable. There was widespread national disgruntlement over the perception that, under the Treaty of Versailles, Italy as one of the victorious allied powers had not been given the same favourable settlement as Britain, France and USA. The old political parties came to be considered absolutely worthless and people felt that a major change was needed to save the country. Inspired by the Russian Revolution, peasants in many places seized land while workers went on strike and even took over factories. Left parties were gaining in membership and influence.
Benito Mussolini was born in 1883, the son of a blacksmith, who was an ardent socialist. Benito himself was a socialist with great oratorical skills. From December 1912, he worked as the editor of the Italian Socialist newspaper, Avanti! When World War I broke out, he supported the Italian government’s neutral stance but very soon he reversed his stand, writing in favour of Italy’s entry into the war. In November 1914 he was formally expelled from the socialist party and became a committed nationalist and anti-socialist.
After the war, when a wave of nationalism was sweeping across the war-ravaged country and small nationalist groups were sprouting everywhere, Mussolini assembled these groups into a single national organization in March 1919, calling it Fasci di Combattimento or the Fascist Party. The name Fasci (Fascist) was taken from an ancient Roman symbol that contained a bundle of wooden rods around an axe, with its blade popping out.
The fascists in uniforms held parades and rallies with the slogan “Believe! Obey! Fight!” They claimed that modern Italy is heir to ancient Rome and its legacy and spawned the dream of an Italian Empire that would provide “living space” for colonization by Italian settlers and establish control over the Mediterranean Sea. Slowly but steadily, they gained popular support with an aggressive nationalist platform, winning 35 seats in the 1921 elections. In October 1922, amidst fears of a communist-led revolution, Mussolini gathered his followers and foot soldiers (the 'Blackshirts' composed of marginalized ex-servicemen) and staged a so-called “March on Rome”. King Victor Emanuel III refused to allow the army to stop the marchers and thereby allowed the Fascist seize power without firing a shot.
The Italian cabinet led by Luigi Facta resigned in protest and, asked by the King, Mussolini formed a new cabinet as Prime Minister on 31 October. The latter got the electoral law drastically modified so his party could win a highly controversial election in April 1924. By 1925 he concentrated all power in his own hands and declared himself dictator of Italy under the title Il Duce or 'The Leader', suspending the free press and disbanding individual rights as well as rival political parties.
In October 1935, Italy invaded Ethiopia. In 1938, following in the footsteps of Hitler, Mussolini passed the “Manifesto of Race”, which stripped Jews of their Italian citizenship and imposed all kinds of restriction and ostracisation. In May 1939 Italy entered into the “Pact of Steel” with Germany and on September 1 the Second World War began.
In the aftermath of a series of defeat Italy suffered under his leadership, on 25 July 1943 the Grand Council of Fascism passed a motion of no confidence for Mussolini. The King dismissed him as head of government and had him arrested. On 12 September 1943, he was rescued from captivity by German paratroopers and Hitler put him at the head of a puppet regime in northern Italy – the Italian Social Republic – informally called the Salò Republic. In late April 1945, Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci attempted to flee from Italy but both were captured by Italian communists and summarily executed by a firing squad on 28 April 1945 near Lake Como. Only two days later, Hitler would commit suicide to save himself from the advancing columns of Russian Red Army.
Since the classic models of fascism arose in Italy and Germany in the post-war situation of severe economic crisis, many see that as the single most important source of fascism, both as a movement and a state form. But then, why did not war-ravaged imperialist countries other than Italy and Germany – say France and Britain – witness a comparable development of the fascist current culminating in fascist takeover of the state?
The question arises because both these countries suffered economic devastation thanks to World War I. France bore the brunt of German onslaught: according to official estimates, 712,000 buildings, 20,000 industrial compounds, 2.5 million hectares of agricultural land, 20,000 kilometers of canals, 2000 buildings, 62,000 km of roads and more than 5000 km of railroads were destroyed. The total estimated damage was 34,000,000,000 Francs. Britain lost its position as the number one global economic power to the US in the aftermath of the war. Both countries experienced harsh consequences like double-digit unemployment, falling incomes and the like, slowly maturing into the Great Depression. Despite all this, and despite the fact that anti-Semitism was rampant throughout Europe including France and Britain, the fascist groups in these two countries never came anywhere near taking power. Similar is the case of the US too, which experienced the great crash of 1929 and slipped into the Great Depression. The divergence between Italy and Germany on one hand and France and Britain on the other is explained not so much by the degree of economic crisis as by the very different political conditions.
In the first group of countries, fascists came to power taking advantage of intense socio-economic crisis and political instability. In Italy, five governments were formed under various coalitions between 1919 and 1922. In Germany too, frequent changes in government was the norm from day one of the Weimer Republic: between 1919 and 1932 the country saw as many as fourteen chancellors. In both countries, the overbearing authority of the King/Reich president in appointing and dismissing heads of government as well as in sanctioning/rejecting decrees and legislations only added to the political chaos and thoroughly undermined the authority of the parliament. In fact parliamentary democracy as the best and most stable (because camouflaged) form of bourgeois rule was overthrown and substituted by the fascist state before it could consolidate itself and secure the support of broad sections of the working people and the ruling classes. In Germany for instance, the broad consensus among the ruling elite was to overthrow the 'Weimer nuisance' (as they perceived it) and revert to the monarchial form of their rule. By contrast, the parliamentary system in France and Britain was already firmly established, leaving very limited political space for fascists to grow steadily and attain power.
The overall experience of 19th-century fascism thus refutes the economic deterministic, pseudo-Marxist notion that views fascism simply as a product of severe economic crisis.[1] As our case study on Nazism demonstrates, political factors can very well play an even more important role in the advent of fascism. Kurt Gossweiler puts this cogently at the end of his aforementioned article Economy and Politics in the Destruction of the Weimer Republic:
"In sum, the motives of the ruling class for the destruction of the Weimer Republic and the establishment of the fascist dictatorship were, in the final analysis, economically substantiated but by no means economically determined. The decision to exclude the subjugated classes from a share in state power and concentrate this very state power in the hands of the executive, in effect handing over power to the fascists, was a political decision – indeed, an expression of the primacy of politics."
The primacy of politics also explains why the process and pace of growth as well as the peculiar forms and features of fascism vary so widely across countries and historical periods. Mussolini rose to power much earlier and more rapidly than Hitler not because economic disruption was more severe in Italy than in Germany, nor because the IL Duce was more capable or ruthless than the Fuhrer. He achieved easy and quick success because (a) the political vacuum was more profound in his country: after all, Italy did not even have anything like the Weimer Republic and (b) the King himself handed over power to Mussolini on a platter even when he had no popular mandate, while president Hindenburg refused to oblige Hitler even after the Nazis became the largest political party in Parliament following the Reichstag elections of end July 1932.
The trajectory of fascism in Spain was altogether different. Gramsci in his 1921 article On Fascism gives us the following picture of Spain circa 1916:
"The revolutionary movement surged forward; the unions organised almost the entirety of the industrial masses; strikes, lockouts, states of emergency, the dissolution of Chambers of Labour and peasant associations, massacres, street shootings, became the everyday stuff of political life. Anti-Bolshevik fasces were formed. Initially, as in Italy, they were made up of military personnel, taken from the officers' clubs (juntas), but they swiftly enlarged their base until in Barcelona, for example, they had recruited 40,000 armed men. They followed the same tactics as the fascists in Italy: attacks on trade union leaders, violent opposition to strikes, terrorism against the masses; opposition to all forms of organisation, help for the regular police in repressive activity and arrests, help for blacklegs in agitations involving strikes or lockouts. For the past three years Spain has floundered in this crisis: public freedom is suspended every fortnight, personal freedom has become a myth, the workers' unions to a great extent function clandestinely, the mass of workers is hungry and angry, the great mass of the people has been reduced to indescribable conditions of savagery and barbarism."
Even in such a situation, the fascist groups such as the Falange had very little mass suppport and no presence in the Parliament; in fact there was no question of their coming to power on their own in the face of the brave resistance put up by the Left. In the electoral arena too, the Popular Front -- a socialist-communist coalition which also included some other progressive forces -- defeated the right-wing coalition called National Front (the fascists did not join it but supported its policies) in 1936. When the PF government went ahead with progressive economic and political reforms, there was a military revolt led by General Francisco Franco. Members of the Falange joined the revolt and allowed themselves to be subsumed first into the Falange Española Tradicionalista – a new conglomeration of right wing forces cobbled up by the General -- and, following victory in the civil war, into the military dictatorship of Franco.
In the process the fascists gave up much of their original credo. Franco on his part did share certain fascist attributes such as extreme right-wing nationalism, communist--bashing, assault on all democratic forces, remorseless torture and genocide including in concentration camps and he did join forces with Mussolini and Hitler before and during World War II while feigning neutrality. But he did not build up, or come to power on the strength of, a fascist movement. Fascism’s ability to mobilise one section of society against another, to fan up frenzied mass violence and legitimize state repression – the unique features that set it apart from other forms of authoritarianism – was no part of his political arsenal.
When the dictatorial regime ended with his death in 1975, political parties were legalized (some relaxation had started earlier), elections were held in June 1977 and the country slowly limped back to normal parliamentary democracy. The rise and fall of fascism in Spain was thus a different story altogether, even though socio-economic conditions were largely similar to those in Italy and Germany.
Alongside the unprecedented waves of protest[2] that greeted the election of Donald Trump as the President of America, an animated discussion flooded the print and electronic media: did this obnoxious right-wing politician represent the advent of fascism in the US?
On one side of the argumentative discourse[3], which continues unabated to this day, are those who hold that characterisation of Trump as a fascist is theoretically untenable because some of the essential attributes of fascism or fascist rule are absent here. For them, ‘right-wing populist demagogue’ works fine as a description of the incumbent president. A growing number of commentators and activists, however, don't agree. They argue that it is the nature or function of the government, not the form, that counts. Hence the “concept of functional fascism: under the Trumpite Republicans, a 21st century form of fascism is being developed functionally” (Steven Jonas in 21st Century Fascism: Trump Style – Part I (OpEdNews, 1 April, 2018) without recourse to abolition of parliament and Hitler/Mussolini-type dictatorship.
Commentators who see the Trump Administration as a fascist one seem to base themselves on this approach. Early on, when Trump was campaigning to be nominated as the official candidate of the Republican Party, Andrew J. Wood in The Rise of Fascism in the United States came up with an “abbreviated list of groups or ideas attacked, labeled, and stereotyped by Trumpism”:
“Women, Islam, Immigrants, Black Lives Matter, The Media (except for those few that laud—or employ—Trump himself), Welfare recipients and the poor more broadly, China [and certain other countries], any and all political and ideological opponents, the “establishment,” (except, it seems, the established military, police forces, prison system, institutions of capital, and so on)”.
Other commentators drew attention to several conspicuous symptoms of a fascist regime: the President’s ugly war on the media and the intelligentsia; his demagoguery, threats to imprison Hillary Clinton, scathing personal attacks on judges and courts that make decisions which he does not like; appointment of Federal Court judges known for their right-wing views; plans to repatriate millions of migrants; “the unceasing stream of hate, bigotry, lies and militarism” emanating from the President and his cabal (Henry A. Giroux in The Ghost of Fascism in The Age of Trump, Truthdig, 15 February 2018); and so on.
America today stands witness to the fact that fascist ideas and practices are a poison that inevitably spreads beyond the organised fascist groups or parties and infects large segments of civil society. In our country we have seen how the installation of the Modi government brought in its trail a spike in mob lynching and other hate crimes against Dalits and Muslims all over India and also against African students and even people from India's North East in the national capital. The Trump Presidency has similarly emboldened white supremacist forces and led to a manifold increase in sporadic racist attacks on black people and immigrants, even as fascist groups scale up their organised violence. There is hardly any effort to stem the tide: even after the terror unleashed by neo-Nazis in Charlottesville in August 2017, the President refused to unequivocally denounce the terrorists or take action against responsible officials. At the same time, concerted hate campaigns on the social media are rapidly rising. A recent study by George Washington University shows that over the last five years white nationalist and neo-fascist movements in the US have grown by 600% on Twitter, outperforming Isis, exactly as the Sanghi troll army in our country is wreaking havoc on social media. The mainstream media is also not free from such racist and misogynist attacks. As Youssef El-Gingihy wrote in The Age of Trump And 21st Century Fascism:
“The representation of Muslims and refugees in mainstream discourse as variously stray dogs, swarms and cockroaches is disturbing. This dehumanisation has very dangerous historical precedents[4] in that it legitimises the perpetration of violence against the other. The moment that one denotes others as non-human then it follows that they can be treated as such.” (The Independent Online, 5 March, 2017)
Another core component of fascism, as we have seen in the case of Hitler Germany, is populist demagoguery. Right from day one of his campaign, Trump has been high on it. In some cases he really means it – a good example would be his reactionary, isolationist central slogan "America First" and its derivative "Buy American – Hire American". In many other cases, however, nobody takes his populist soundbites very seriously. To cite just one among many available examples, soon after assuming office – on 3 January 2017 to be precise – he tweeted, specifically mentioning general Motors by name, "Make in US or pay a big border tax!" This was of course not followed up with any appropriate executive order but the tweet certainly made his followers happy.
So we see in the world's most powerful state unmistakable signs of the rise of a fascist regime, having as its foundation the modern surveillance state with more insidious means of control and repression than the gestapo and the jackboots, where the Guantanamo Bay[5] and the expanding network of private prisons filled with immigrants and people of colour take the place of concentration camps even as Islamophobia, xenophobia and white supremacy substitute for anti-Semitism, where and a symbiotic blend of official demagoguery with racist terror unleashed by state and non-state actors increasingly emerge as defining features of Trump’s America.
In The Origins of American Fascism Michael Joseph Roberto (Monthly Review Online, Volume 69, Issue 02, June 2017) reflects upon a unique feature of fascism in the US as distinct from fascism in Italy and Germany. We reproduce here a small part of his observation:
“As the economic crisis worsened in 1931–32, the Nazis were positioned for a surge in the polls from their lower-middle class, Protestant base. Whatever reservations they had about Hitler’s ultra-nationalist rhetoric, Germany’s ruling classes eventually decided that he was their only hope against the threat of political collapse and socialist revolution. When the general crisis became a crisis of class rule in January 1933, capitalists were compelled to line up, step by step, with Hitler.
“In the U.S. capitalist epicenter, the driving force of fascism came from the capitalist class itself, intent on extending and protecting the wealth and power it had gained during the boom years of the 1920s. In Germany, by contrast, fascism found its natural base in a disaffected lower middle class moved by rising nationalist anger over the punitive accords of Versailles. In Germany, terrorist ultra-nationalism brought Hitler and his party to power. In the United States, capitalists with the assistance of the State smashed labor during the Red Scare and shared common ground with reactionary terrorist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan in promoting the doctrine of “100 percent Americanism.”
“It is a peculiarity of the development of American fascism that at the present stage this fascism comes forward principally in the guise of an opposition to fascism, which it accuses of being an ‘un-American’ tendency imported from abroad. In contradistinction to German fascism, which acts under anti-constitutional slogans, American fascism tries to portray itself as the custodian of the Constitution and ‘American Democracy’. It does not yet represent a directly menacing force. But if it succeeds in penetrating to the wide masses who have become disillusioned with the old bourgeois parties it may become a serious menace in the near future.”
Georgi Dimitrov, Political Report to the Seventh Congress of the Comintern (July-August 1935)
El-Gingihy continues,
“Already in the 1930s, the most astute American observers traced fascism’s origins to big business and financial capital. … Perhaps the most intriguing of these forgotten works is Carmen Haider’s Do We Want Fascism? (New York: John Day, 1934). A Columbia-educated historian, Haider traveled to Italy in the 1920s to study the structure of Mussolini’s corporatist state, documenting her findings in one of the earliest academic studies of European fascism. On returning to the United States, she conducted a similarly rigorous investigation of the nascent fascist movement in her own country. In Do We Want Fascism? she argued that the rise of American fascism would not require a distinct party, as in Italy and Germany. Rather, fascism could penetrate the two-party system and lead to a fascist state, which Haider defined as ‘a dictatorial form of government exercised in the interests of capitalists.’”
However, for this to actually happen, certain conditions were necessary. While fascist/semi-fascist and kindred groups existed in the fringes of US society since – or even before – the 1930s, in the period following WW II the socio-economic and political conditions[6] conducive to the growth of fascism on a broader scale have been maturing steadily, especially since the advent of neoliberalism in the 1980s. With the passage of time the ever-growing inequality of wealth and income, the continuing erosion in real income and employment opportunities, decades of costly privatisation in education and health care that pushed ordinary Americans under mountains of debt, the menace of terrorism, and more recently, the home mortgage foreclosures[7] that rendered thousands homeless overnight coupled with the financial crisis that the greedy financial elite brought upon the country – all these added up to create a tremendous overload of frustration, anger, sense of deprivation and insecurity. Particularly since 9/11, this atmosphere was utilized by both the ruling parties to chisel out a surveillance state or national security state and now we have the Trump Presidency as a natural culmination of the process. As Youssef El-Gingihy points out,
“Fascism is generally preceded by the decay of democracy and the rule of law. In other words, it does not happen overnight. Post 9/11, the war on terror brought about the erosion of civil liberties with indefinite detention, torture, the extraordinary rendition programme with a global network of “black-site” prisons into which enemy combatants were disappeared, blanket NSA surveillance and extra-judicial bugsplat[8] drone assassination of targets including US citizens…. Such powers, disproportionate to the threat of terrorism, inevitably begs the question: who are the real enemies of the state? Is this apparatus increasingly going to be deployed against citizens by authoritarian states? A customary mistake has been to focus on the individual figurehead of Trump when it is the national security state that has evolved into a proto-fascist entity. As Edward Snowden presciently warned, all it will now take is for a leader to come in and flick the switch into a totalitarian nightmare. The Trump victory may well herald this transition.” (ibid)
In his election campaign Trump took great pains to deflect the blame for the 2007-08 crash from the guilty financial elite on to those at the bottom – the immigrants and non-whites – and his political opponents; once in office, he adopted the most inhuman measures, as we saw in the case of Mexican immigrants. In justifying his conduct, the US President stooped so low as to say that Mexico was deliberately sending murderers and rapists into the US. As for his other major plank of right-wing populism – Muslim-bashing – the conflation of Muslims and terror has been the most convenient tool for whipping up Islamophobia since long, but Trump carried it to new heights with his travel ban on seven Muslim-majority countries[9]. It is hardly surprising that, as a Pew Research Center analysis points out, by November 2017 anti-Muslim assaults surpassed by far the post-9/11 levels.
But one should take into consideration another dimension of the whole development. In addition to the sense of deprivation and insecurity, there was also a great popular urge for change. This yearning expressed itself in mammoth mobilisations against capitalist globalization in general and WTO/World Economic Forum in particular, and more recently in the powerful occupy movement; but none of these ushered in any perceptible positive change. It was in this backdrop that the Republican Party nominee for the 2015 presidential election, who combined in himself the business acumen of a millionaire real estate developer and the mass communication skills of a reality TV star, won the race "by consolidating a 'whitelash' – white supremacist assertion amongst the prosperous elite – while channeling the anger and insecurity felt by America's unemployed white working class in a racist and xenophobic direction.”[10]
Thus it was that a distinct change – reactionary, regressive, but appealing to many in its aggressive nationalism – took place in the style or method of governance and top administrative personnel, but without any alteration in the state form.
Can the present dispensation carry on without a systemic/constitutional change – without recourse to a formal fascist takeover of the state? Michael Joseph Roberto poses this question in a particular way:
“The question now is whether Trump and his circle of ultra-nationalist fanatics, Wall Street barons, generals, and assorted political hacks can engineer an American-style Gleichschaltung[11], “bringing into line” the rest of the executive, the judiciary, the military, and the media behind Trump’s agenda “To Make America Great Again.”
And his answer is:
“…On the basis of its particular development in the United States, the American Gleichschaltung seems more likely to be a collaboration than a dictatorship—a collective undertaking by those who administer Republican control at all levels of government. Though many of the leading figures of financial capital backed Hillary Clinton, these same members of the 1 percent now stand to benefit from the new administration’s attacks on all forms of economic regulation and intervention …” (ibid).
This, of course, is but one of many possibilities, what with the spurt in various forms of populist authoritarianism – not just in America but in all parts of the world -- as the emerging new normal in this era of decaying capitalism. There are other prospects too, including that of mass disillusionment setting in sooner rather than later, and sounding the death knell of the increasingly draconian rule. It is important to note, as the CPI (ML) Resolution referred above points out, “Trump's ascendance has galvanised progressive forces into anti-fascist unity and resistance. The Black Lives Matter movement, that began during Obama's second term, taking on the killings of Black men and assaults on Black people by police, has emerged as a mainstay of the resistance. Feminists, Latino workers, Black people have joined hands in massive mobilisations right from the first day of Trump's Presidency.” And this trend was reflected in results of the recent midterm elections too, when a good number of women, African-Americans, Native Americans, Muslims and LGBT minority candidates from both the Democratic and the Republican parties – some of them avowed socialists – became elected to the Congress.
The first big wave of fascism appeared nearly 100 years ago when in the wake of the first imperialist World War the old economic model of laissez-faire was facing a deep structural crisis and crying out for a thorough structural solution. Three models of reform or transformation then appeared on the global horizon. The first was the most radical and comprehensive: the socialist revolution accomplished in Russia. The second offered a partial yet substantial reform: the Keynesian breakthrough in bourgeois economic theory, the New Deal in the US, and the welfare state policy in post-war Europe. While the first was envisioned and executed by the revolutionary proletariat and the second by the most farsighted and in that sense historically progressive sections of the bourgeoisie, the third one – fascism – was initially dished out by sections of the petty bourgeoisie and very soon adopted by the most powerful, racist/national chauvinist and expansionist sections of finance capital.
All three models have since been rolled back, and neoliberalism has emerged as the dominant global order. Today that order, once hailed as heralding the end of history, is in a deep crisis that has engulfed everything from the economy to the environment, bringing human civilization to another historic crossroads: forward to socialism, or backward to barbarism, one of the modern forms of which is fascism.
Yes, with the middle path of non-neoliberal, pro-people, progressive regimes in Latin America failing to deliver on a sustainable basis – much like the short-lived New Deal or welfare state models of the past century – these two are the only real options today.
Significantly, in both US and UK the growth of right-wing populism have had its opposite in the shape of left currents – once represented by Bernie Sanders in US and persistently by Jeremy Corbin[12] in UK – which rejected the new liberal credo and thus succeeded in drawing considerable mass support, especially from the youth. This trend has been visible elsewhere too.
The bottom line: the crisis of and popular backlash against the neoliberal order marked by growing inequality have created new historic opportunities for both the radical left and the radical right. This reconfirms a cardinal fact of history. The idea of socialism, and the Left in the broader sense as its protagonist, is the only political force that can – and must – mobilise all left, democratic and progressive people in the struggles to resist and defeat the new breed of fascist and authoritarian populist forces. In the process, the ‘Age of Anger’ will, sooner or later but most certainly, develop into a qualitatively new ‘Age of Revolution’.
Notes:
1. This mechanistic approach even led a section of India Marxists to assert that since there is no acute economic crisis in India today, the Modi dispensation cannot be seen as fascist!
2. In addition to street demonstrations, various other forms of protest and sensitization were also witnessed. Thus the Department of Theatre and Drama at the University of Michigan staged the Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui in October 2017. Notably, Brecht wrote this “parable play” (as he subtitled it) on his way to America and was set in the American context.
3. The present debate is essentially an updated version of the one that emerged in the 1930s. Intervening in the debate, A. B. Magil and Henry Stevens argued that “to search for national resemblances based on what some writers called a “fascist minimum” was a mistake. “The national peculiarities of each country, its specific economic and social position, its historical traditions,” they wrote, “all play a part in shaping the form that fascist movements and fascism take.” (The Peril of Fascism, (International Publishers, New York, 1938)) It will be interesting to note that this view was at one with Dimitrov's detailed exposition, made three years ago, on the multiplicity of forms and features of fascism.
4. The author alludes to the Nazi practice of calling Jews “vermin”, “a dangerous bacillus” etc. for provoking and justifying hate assaults on them.
5. This notorious military detention camp-cum-torture chamber, established by President George W. Bush in 2002 was sought to be closed down by President Obama, but he failed in the face of bipartisan opposition in the Congress. One of the first things Trump did as president was to sign an executive order to keep it open indefinitely.
6. In tracing the still incomplete evolution of the American model of 21st century fascism, one must also factor in the roles played by certain essential elements of post-war US history which got deeply embedded in the ruling American ideology, such as McCarthyism, rabid militarism (cold, hot and proxy wars and the military-industrial complex), the penchant for full- spectrum global domination, both encouraging and fighting terrorism to serve American geo-political goals.
7. As a strategy to counter economic slump, Americans were goaded into “sub-prime” home loans -- loans provided on very easy terms with little mortgage. When crisis struck in 2007-08, many distressed homeowners failed to pay their dues on time and lost their homes as premature settlement of their loans.
8. This term, borrowed from a computer game of the same name, is used by US authorities when humans are murdered by drone missiles. Suspected or alleged terrorists are likened to bugs that must be swatted on sight, without any judicial process. This is an Obama-era legacy carried ahead by the present dispensation, even in sovereign states like Pakistan.
9. In a sharply divided (5-4) judgment the Federal Supreme court rejected the claim of anti-Muslim bias and upheld the ban in late June 2018. Crucial to this outcome was the stance taken by Trump nominee Neil Gorsuch, who got his seat last year after Republican Senators blocked Obama nominee Merrick Garland for ten months.
10. Resolution on International Situation adopted at the Tenth Congress of CPI (ML) Liberation (March 2018).
11. Literally, coordination or consolidation, by which Nazis meant totalitarian control and coordination over all aspects of society.
12. In the face of the Corbyn wave, the fascist UKIP’s vote share dropped sharply from 12.6% in the 2015 general election (which represented a rise of 9.5% compared to 2010) to 1.8% in 2017.
The history of writing communist history in India on behalf of a Communist Party dates back to 1958, when the Amritsar Congress of the CPI appointed a commission for the purpose. The decision remained on a paper, and in June 1963 the Party’s National Council appointed a more competent commission with Dr. G Adhikari as convener. But sharp ideological-political differences had already cropped up inside the party, leading to a vertical split the next year. In the circumstances it was not possible for the commission to work unitedly, though Dr. Adhikari and some others did make some headway. Then in 1971 Dr. Adhikari, entrusted for the task by the National Council of the CPI, edited and brought out volume one of Documents of the History of the CPI covering the period 1917-25. This excellent pioneering work was followed up by subsequent volumes, but the series was left incomplete owing to Dr. Adhikari’s death and other difficulties. Meanwhile, a serialised article entitled “A New Assessment of the History of the CPI” was published during 1968 in Liberation, which would soon become the organ of the undivided CPI(ML); and Subodh Roy of CPI(M) brought out in the 1970s two volumes of Unpublished Documents covering the period 1924-45.
To fulfill the task taken up by our Party some thirty years ago—a task that has become all the more relevant today in the context of closer interaction of the three streams of communist movement in India—the Central Committee of CPI(ML) Liberation decided to publish a five-volume series covering the entire history of the movement from 1917 to the present times. It appointed a seven-member Panel of Editors to collect, edit and supply introductory notes to all important documents. The Panel is composed of comrades Arindam Sen, Shankar Mitra, P V Srinivasan, Ashok Kumar, Brij Behari Pandey, Ram Jatan Sharma and Partha Ghosh, with the first-named as the General Editor. While specific responsibility for each volume is alloted to agroup of two or three comrades, the entire series is to be a collective production of the Panel.
Now for the political approach and method adopted in preparing this series, Volume I in particular. Convinced of the bright future of communism in India despite all the recent setbacks to world socialism, we have sought to visualise the past from the standpoint of the present in the service of the future. This approach has led us to focus the spotlight on the history of concepts — of evolution of political-organisational line and shifts in that line — and to avoid details on personal factors and organisational tit-bits, for with the passage of time these lose much of their relevance while the former remains as instructive as ever. And since this evolution always takes place both in response to and as a part of changes in the national-international situation, we have also provided an outline sketch of that. In other words, we have sought to study the communist movement not within its own narrow frame, but as a part of the broader political process. This historical perspective and our own observations have been given in the Introduction section. As far as possible in the short space available, we have tried to combine history from above with history from below. That is to say, while devoting primary attention to the study of the political behaviour of parties, political groupings and historical personages, we have tried not to neglect the role of raw social impulses from below in shaping political behaviours and party programmes and policies.
The present volume and the subsequent ones are meant to be primarily a collection of documents, and these have been arranged topic-wise in the Documents section under Text I, II, ... X, with each document numbered as Text II1, Text II2 etc. In selecting and excerpting documents we have tried to avoid generalities and repetitions and to include everything that had some importance in the given situation, irrespective of whether they go for or against our own observations and whether they appear correct or incorrect from our present positions. Text I and Text X contain what cannot be called, strictly speaking, documents of the communist movement in India, but have been included as necessary reference materials.
During the whole of the period covered by this volume, the Communist International loomed large on the Indian movement and we have to be careful lest we should digress into the exciting side-story of its internal developments. For the period up to 1936 we have had to cite rather too many documents coming from abroad, for documents originating in India were few and far between. After that year, with the reorganised Party centre functioning consistently and energetically, it has been possible for us to base our discussion almost entirely on documents authored by comrades active on the Indian soil and this will continue into our forthcoming volumes.
In reproducing original documents, we have in a few places added a word or two to clarify the meaning or rectify an obvious printers’ error or replace some illegible/torn-out parts. These we have placed in square brackets, occasionally with a mark of interrogation if we are not sure. As far as possible we have left intact old styles, usages etc. in the documents (e.g., the Punjab, to-day and so on). Every document has been referred at some appropriate place or places in the Introduction.
Finally, a few words on the arrangement of the Introduction section. The “Prelude” or Part I covers the period (1857-1917) which provided the backdrops — international and national, conceptual and movemental — to the initiation of the communist movement in India. Part II (1917-25) discusses this initiation and the foundation of CPI out of scattered communist groups. Then comes the two periods of the nascent CPI which marked the two necessary — that is, historically determined — stages in its ideological maturation. First, the period of rapid spread through WPPs accompanied by political dilution (1926-29, covered by Part III) and then one of marginalisation in politics in quest for ideological-organisational purity (1930-34, covered by Part IV). Only on the basis of these two opposite and one-sided experiences did it become possible, during the period covered by part V (1935-39), to evolve a more or less balanced political line which ensured independent assertion within the mainstream of freedom movement. Perhaps this is broadly the way nascent communist movements everywhere come into their own : going to extremes before striking a balance, learning from experiences the hard way and gradually combining firmness in principles and clarity of purpose with tactical flexibility. Anyway, Part V marks the transition from the formative stage to a brand new stage of growth, which is to be dealt with in our next Volume. And while Parts I to V describe the evolution of general political line and activity, Part VI has been appended to deal specially with policies and activities on working class and peasant fronts throughout the years covered by this volume.
Without the sincere cooperation and advice of many comrades and sympathisers both within the Party and outside, and particularly without the back-breaking workload silently shouldered by the Liberation staff, Calcutta, and comrades and co-workers in Samkalin Prakashan, Patna, publication of this volume would never have been possible. This they did and will continue to do in their devotion to the noblest cause of humankind — the cause of communism — and it is not for us to thank them.
For shortage of space we have had to almost leave out many areas which are important by themselves but received little attention from the communist movement in its early stage, such as — States people’s movement, cultural movement, etc. For errors and omissions, the responsibility lies entirely with the undersigned.
Calcutta
October 1991
Arindam Sen
Partha Ghosh
