On November 24th, 2012, there was an international conference in Hamburg, Germany, to hail and support the Indian revolution.
Comrades of various Maoist organizations have expressed in a statement that it was not possible to support this conference, because many of those who promote it are “centrists”, i.e. people who have in the past supported Prachanda, without making afterwards their self-criticism .
The comrades ask: how is it possible to support the People’s War in India, when the People’s War in Nepal has not been supported in a proper way? We obviously share this right position of our comrades.
But, in the end, we think that the substance was not seen – first, India, in itself. India is a country of many peoples, various nations live together with many cultural productions for millennia.
From the progressive ideas of Jainism or the Bishnoi concerning nature and animals to the civlizated courtesy of Islam, from the rich cultural events of Hinduism to the historical contributions in philosophy, astronomy, mathematics … India is a country-continent, which has brought, brings and will bring a lot to humanity.
It is not possible to understand the developments in India, without having a complete overview, without understanding exactly culture, nation, ideology, relgion, mode of production. And in fact it’s true for every country, when dialectical materialism is used.
The problem here of course is that the Communist Party of India (Maoist) has a pragmatic line, in the tradition of the 1990s, in addition to the TKP / ML in Turkey and the CP of the Philippines; the People’s War is seen as a method and the necessity of thought is clearly rejected.
Therefore the CPI (M) negates – but also the TKP / ML and the CP of the Philippines – the very important question of international ideological struggle. Because of this also, since the 1970s, there was a trend towards a tilt to militarism.
It does not, of course, change the importance of People’s War in India, the heroism of the masses. But if one looks at the history of Maoism in India, one can only be astonished by the weakness of the international contributions in the field of ideology, politics, culture and art. There is a discrepancy, which comes from the line of “retreat” of the CPI (M).
There is another issue of great importance to dialectical materialism: the relationship between semi-feudal and semi-colonialism. The formation of bureaucratic capitalism rests on feudalism, on the absence of the possibility for the national bourgeoisie to develop itself.
The position of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) is also not clear; one does not understand what is the main contradiction, semi-feudalism or semi-colonialism. In the background there is the ideological opposition, in the 1970s, between the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) of Charu Mazumdar and the “Maoist Communist Centre” of Kanai Chatterjee.
Even if these two revolutionary traditions have united with the Communist Party of India (Maoist), the complexity of this issue was never explained. This is a shortcoming, and it brings to the absence of clarity.
From then on, there are people – not our comrades, of course – which use the People’s War in India in a opportunistic way. These people sometimes speak of millions of people in the People’s War, or of the third of the country under the control of the people’s power, they exaggerate everything, they have a militarist-opportunistic standpoint, many of these people had the day before “support” the People’s War in Peru, yesterday the People’s War in Nepal and today the People’s War in India.
For example, it is unfortunate that the poster of the India Conference uses the Hammer and Sickle symbol in the version of the PCP. It is completely incorrect.
And these people avoid to understand the merits, the contributions that the Communist Party of Peru has done, by presenting the “People’s War » as a pragmatic method, instead of explaining it as a dialectical product of the construction of the revolutionary thought in a particular country.
“People’s War is not a “method” or a style of work, it is the material production of the thought, i.e. the revolutionary confrontation with the old state and the reactionary ruling classes, according a strategy based on the thought, on the revolutionary synthesis made in the practical study of a country.
When the genuine revolutionary thought is produced, it seeks confrontation with the old society, at all levels. People’s War doesn’t mean only armed struggle, but also the cultural-ideological negation of the values of the old society.” (CPMLM France: CPMLM: Gonzalo’s teaching: from thought to People’s War)
Solidarity with the People’s War in India is so necessary, but often mistakenly India is seen as an abstract revolution, there where People’s War must be understood as a universal – therefore also the influence of non-MLM forces in the “support”.
And also often “people’s war” is seen, rather than understanding India’s reality – which brings to cosmopolitism, to the pragmatic understanding of People’s War, to abstract “Maoism”. The support of the People’s War in India is counter-productive, if it doesn’t lead to the construction of the thought in its own country, because there is then avoiding the real work, the dialectical relationships in the international reality not correctly understood.
It is only in the productive debate about the experience of the CPI (M) and the Communist Party of Peru’s that can be understood the importance of People’s War in India, under the banner: People’s War until Communism!