Charu Majumdar

Charu Majumdar
Portrait of Charu Majumdar.
Born	15 May 1918 Siliguri, Bengal Presidency, British India
Died	28 July 1972 Calcutta, West Bengal, India
Nationality	Indian (Bengali)
Ideology	Marxism–Leninism Mao Zedong Thought Naxalism Anti-revisionism
Political party	Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)

Charu Majumdar (15 May 1918 - 28 July 1972) was an Indian communist revolutionary who founded the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) and led the Naxalbari uprising in 1967. He is an influential figure in the foundation of the Communist and Maoist movement in India. His theoretical contirbutions to Marxism are often referred to as Naxalism (or "Charu Majumdar Thought").

Biography

Early Life and the Second World War

He was born to a progressive zamindar (feudal landlord) family on May 15 1918 in Siliguri, West Bengal. In his youth, he was already engaged in pro-independence and anti-imperialism activism when he joined the petty-bourgeois All Bengal Students Association, an organization affiliated with the nationalist Anusilan group. He dropped out of college at the age of 20 to join the Indian National Congress, only to shift his ideological viewpoint further left to leave and join the Communist Party of India (CPI).

Early communist activities

In spite of the banning of the CPI during the start of the Second World War, Majumdar continued organizing with the Party's peasant organization Kisan Sabha in Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri. An arrest warrant was issued for him, forcing him underground for the first time. During the Bengal Famine in 1943 as the British looted and pillaged the grain produce in West Bengal, causing millions to starve. Because of this, Majumdar organized successful 'seizure of crops' campaigns in Jalpaiguri during the Famine.

Majumdar joined and helped organize the Tebhaga Movement, a peasant movement attempting to keep more harvest from their landlords. This movement helped improve the cohesion of the peasant movement for the future foundation of the coming communist movement.

The CPI would be later banned again in 1948 after "independence" from the British and Majumdar was arrested for 3 years. He later married CPI member Lila Majumdar Sengupta. Later, the CPI encountered an ideological struggle after the Party had its Palghat Congress in 1956. Majumdar began to represent the revolutionsy left wing of the Party and was arrested for protesting India's war against Mao's China in 1962. In 1964, he broke with the CPI and joined the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM), in spite of his ideological differences with the party's electoral participation and postponing of armed struggle.

Majumdar would later once again form the revolutionary left faction of the CPM and began synthesizing the path of India's revolution in the line of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. From 1965-1967, he wrote the famous Historic Eight Documents, wherein he outlined the conditions of India in the line of Mao Zedong Thought.

The Naxalbari uprising and the CPI-Marxist Leninist

The CPM joined the bourgeois Bangla Congress, a coalition congress in West Bengal, in 1967. With this betrayal of the revolutionary movement, on May 25 of the same year, Charu Majumdar lead the peasants in a rebellion in the village of Naxalbari, in the district of Darjeeling. During the uprising, a police inspector was murdered and became the first action of the armed struggle of the Maoist movement in India, which is still going on and moving forward to this day. The uprising was crushed by the Indian state, with the help of the head of the Home Ministry and CPM member, Jyoti Basu, which lead to the deaths of 2 children and 11 women. Those who aligned with the ideological line of Charu Majumdar were called "Naxals" or "Naxalites", with their ideological synthesization of Mao Zedong Thought being called "Naxalism".

Several former members of CPM, including Majumdar formed what was originally called the All India Coordination Committee of Revolutionaries (AICCR), on November 12-13, 1967, which was later renamed the All India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries (AICCCR). On April 2nd, 1969, the AICCCR was reformed and relaunched as the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)(CPI[ML]). The new party's congress was held underground in 1970, and elected Charu Majumdar as General Secretary, and put forward a policy of Protracted people's war against the Indian state.

Final arrest and death

Majumdar was arrested by the Indian state on July 16, 1972, after being betrayed by a renegade party member. He endured torture in the Kolkota police headquarters and everyone was not to treat or attend to him. He died on 4 a.m. on July 28, 1972, under police custody.

See also

• Naxalism
• Nambala Keshava Rao
• Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)
• Communist Party of India (Maoist)

Bibliography

The following works by Charu Majumdar, including the Historic Eight Documents, are available on the Revolupedia library.

Library works by Charu Majumdar

Historic Eight Documents

Library:Build Armed Partisan Struggle by Fighting against Revisionism

Library:Carry Forward the Peasant Struggle by Fighting Revisionism

Library:Carry on the Struggle Against Modern Revisionism

Library:Hate, Stamp and Smash Centrism

Library:Make the People's Democratic Revolution Successful by Fighting Against Revisionism

Library:Our Tasks in the Present Situation

Library:The Main Task Today is the Struggle to Build Up the True Revolutionary Party Through Uncompromising Struggle Against Revisionism

Library:What is the Source of the Spontaneous Revolutionary Outburst in India?

Library:What Possibility The Year 1965 is Indicating?