The audience was sparse. There were no big names on the stage either. But the echo of an agrarian uprising that originated in a remote village in West Bengal 50 years ago seemed to fill the air.
An event organised here on Thursday to mark the 50 years of the Naxalbari movement stood out for its candid admission of past mistakes, clear assessment of the path ahead, and an unwavering commitment to the Marxist ideology.
Still relevant
M.N. Ravunni, chairman, Porattam, who asserted that he “continued to remain a Maoist”, said the spirit behind the Naxalbari movement was still relevant as the social conditions of the 60s remained the same in rural India.
“Also, the ruling establishment is trying to push forward hardline Hindutva to cover up their inability to solve social problems,” he said.
The hard-earned benefits of the working class are being sacrificed at the altar of neoliberal capitalism. Naxalbari is as relevant as it was earlier,” Mr. Ravunni said.
Earlier, the Porattam chairman delineated the historical, political, and social atmosphere in the country which culminated in the peasant uprising on May 25 at Naxalbari in 1967. “Ours was still a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society. The peasants were in deep crisis. There were not many jobs and the so-called Nehruvian socialist model of industrial development did not benefit many.” Mr. Ravunni alleged that the mainstream Communist parties failed to tackle most of these issues as they had diverted their attention from class struggle to the parliamentary path. He said that the revolt was orchestrated by those who still believed in the communist dictum of overthrowing the establishment to capture power.
“It was Malayalam poet Edassery Govindan Nair who wrote Adhikaram koyyanamadyam naam, pinneetavatte ponnaryan . Our comrades in Naxalbari attempted just that. It is meaningless to connect it to a demand for only land. The main issue at stake was political power,” Mr. Ravunni said.
P.C. Unnichekkan, State secretary, Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Red Flag, criticised K. Venu, national secretary of then Central Reorganisation Committee, CPI(ML), who shunned Marxist politics later, for “selling his heroic deeds” to invoke nostalgia. Mr. Unnichekkan said that such former revolutionaries could not bring about any perceptible change in the lives of the oppressed classes. “We have committed many mistakes in the past. Our effort is to learn lessons from them and move forward to organise and uplift the peasantry and the working class.”
Mr. Unnichekkan also denied the claim put forward by a group of intellectuals that the Naxalbari movement had withered away in the 70s. He claimed that the later struggles for land, human rights and environmental protection were spearheaded by those who were either part of or were successors of the movement. “Naxalbari cannot be seen in isolation. It is a continuation of people’s movements in the past and it will continue to guide us in the future,” he added. Journalist K.P. Sethunath was present.
