"Top secret" rejoinder exposes ideological differences among naxalite leaders

NK SINGH

In a 'top secret rejoinder, the much-debated inner try communication issued at the year by top Naxalite leaders, Kanu Sanyal, Chowary Tejeshwara Rao, Souren Bose, D. Naghushnam Patnaik, Kolla Venkaiah and D. Bhuman Mohan Patnaik, the Satya Narayan Singh group is understood to have made a hard-hitting attack on the former for their stand during the period of the split in the CPI(M-L).

At the time of the split in group had supported Mr. Charu Mazumdar against the dissident group led by Mr. S. N. Singh. However, some two years later, in "an open letter" presumably drafted in the Visakhapatnam Centrales, they do all the party comrades, blamed Mr Mazumdar for left adventurist deviations and accused the central committee of deviation from "the path of glorious Naxalite peasant uprising".

'Valuable suggestions'

from China!

The controversial letter, whose authenticity, had since been confirmed by Mr Kolla Venkaiah, one of the signatories, had evoked wide attraction at that time because, besides bringing into the open for the first time, the differences among the top echelons of the movement, it had also quoted the Chinese Communist Party's "most valuable fraternal suggestions in respect of our liberation struggle in India".

According to the six signatories, the CPC had criticised the CPI(M-L) policy as far back as November 1970, but Mr Mazumdar and the central committee of the party "refused to take lessons" from the 11-point suggestion,

While accepting their guilt "with utmost devotion and frankness" and indulging in self-criticism "with full honesty", the six leaders called upon the members of the central committee to accept their guilt and make self-criticism "in. the interest of our armed agrarian revolution".

Many members of the United. CPI(M-L)'s central committee are now in the S. N. Singh group; they had formed a splinter party. In a hard-hitting rejoinder, the S.N.S. group denied that it was in any way responsible for concealing the CPC's suggestions and criticism from the party's rank and file. 

It blamed Mr Mazumdar for concealing these "valuable" documents from the party ranks and said that the same was never placed before the central committee. "We came to know the existence of such a document only through your open letter." On the other hand, it charged the six leaders, "who were in the know of this thing", with keeping mum for about two years and exposing the party to danger.

Though the 1,000-word letter has raised many ideological issues, the most important of them is: "Do you still uphold that Charu was right in expelling the C.C. members without a C.C. meeting, violating the party constitution and whether the C.C. was wrong in reviving itself?"

While expressing its satisfaction over the fact that new state units had been organised in Haryana and Rajasthan, it said that the "main trouble" was the pressure of a few units who were persisting with the Charu line. It asked the six leaders to "do everything to win these units over to the Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung line of thought and help the party in further consolidating its ranks so that it can provide an organised and conscious revolutionary orientation that once again is taking place in the struggle of the Indian people."

The Current

December 22, 1973