Friday, March 19, 2010

CARC Italy Interviews Comrade Basanta




Between 11 and 14 March, representatives of the CARC Party [Party of the Committees to Support Resistance - for Communism (CARC)– Italy] were in Anvers for a meeting regarding the Nepali revolution, where they met Comrade Basanta of the Central Committee of the Unified Nepali Communist Party (Maoist). We interviewed him, and below you may find the answers he gave us.

Our Party saluted the victory the democratic revolution led by UNCP(M) got in 2008 as the first victory of the international communist movement of 21st century, and makes knows how it goes on both as a form of solidarity with Nepali people's revolutionary movement and because it is rich of teachings for Italian Communists and people's masses as well.

Question. On December issue of our newspaper Resistenza we wrote that UNCP(M) launched a campaign of mobilizations all over the country against the coup de main the reactionary forces tried refusing to comply with the agreements about the merging of old royal army and People's Liberation Army. The campaign is aimed 1, to establish the supremacy of civilian over military power, 2. to defend national independence, and 3. for agrarian reform. Is this campaign still going on? Which developments and effects is it producing?

Answer. The great People's War that our party initiated on February 13, 1996 was aimed at accomplishing the New Democratic Revolution, the first stage to clear the way forward to socialism and worldwide communism. In order to achieve the minimum strategic goal of New Democratic revolution in Nepal we have been applying various tactics in compliance with the concrete analysis of the concrete conditions.

When the deposed monarch Gyanendra usurped the whole power with the strength of reactionary army, the political contradiction between the entire masses on the one hand, and the king on the other, came at the forefront. Objectively, it created a situation at which the political parties that claimed themselves as democratic ones could be brought together in a fight to establish democratic republic. Based on the 12-point understanding the tactical unity between seven political parties and ours was the correct implementation of firmness in strategy and flexibility in tactic on our part.

The abolition of monarchy and establishment of democratic republic from the first meeting of the Constituent Assembly is an important step forward to our minimum strategic goal of New Democratic Revolution but it is not the New Democratic Revolution itself.

The New Democratic Revolution has two aspects: anti-feudal and anti-imperialist. With the abolition of monarchy, the feudal institution, the feudalism has been weak politically but it has not yet been abolished. And on the other, the agrarian programme based on the principle of land to the tiller is far from being implemented. The bureaucratic comprador bourgeois has come at the fore in the reactionary power. It means that Nepalese people's struggle to establish democracy i.e. the struggle to make the people sovereign and to resolve the land problem and as well to establish national independence is not over.

It should be understood that sometimes the question of democracy comes at the forefront and sometimes that of national independence. But now, the civilian supremacy and national independence have been inseparably interconnected and the struggle for establishing national independence has come at the first place. Therefore, the struggle for democracy i.e. civilian supremacy over the state power and national sovereignty will continue till the oppressed Nepalese people get rid of feudalism and imperialism, mainly the Indian expansionism in our case, from the soil of Nepal.

The struggle for civilian supremacy and national sovereignty that we are waging now is training the masses to stand for it. In other words, this struggle has aroused consciousness further on the need to establish people's sovereignty in the state power and national independence. It has prepared ground for the final offensive in case there is obstruction in establishing civilian supremacy and national independence in Nepal.

Q. Which are the reactions of countries as India, USA and China that tried to deter UNCP (M) and cause troubles and damages to the population and to the country?

Answer. The imperialism never wants to provide oppressed classes the political power in any country. Nepal cannot be an exception to it. Rather, imperialism has been very much afraid of growing people's strength towards the seizure of power by the Nepalese oppressed classes under the leadership of our party, the Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist).

The Indian expansionism knows that the first country that gets most influenced by the Maoist's victory in Nepal is India. With the victory of Nepalese people Indian expansionist ruling class is on the one hand going to lose its political, economical and cultural domination over Nepal and on the other it is also aware of the fact the success of New Democratic Revolution in Nepal is going to arouse more the Indian masses against the reactionary Indian ruling classes. Therefore India has come at the fore against our struggle to establish civilian supremacy and national independence in Nepal. Till now, China has been maintaining its non-interference policy in the internal political affairs of our country.

Q. To establish a political direction firmly and able to transform the social order of Nepal: is it not the core of the struggle for putting an end to feudal system, to economic backwardness, to misery and illiteracy, to caste system, to oppression over women and national minorities in which Nepali populationvhas been put and held by monarchy and imperialists?

A. There is no doubt that the entire problems like economic backwardness, misery, illiteracy, inhuman caste system, gender discrimination and national oppression by which the Nepalese people are till now down weighed are all the inevitable outcomes of the semi-feudal and semi-colonial socio-economic condition of Nepal. It is not the end of one of the feudal lords only but the end of feudal system and its interconnection with inperialism that brings about a revolutionary transformation in the society.

However, the end of monarchy is a step forward in the direction of abolishing feudalism and imperialism from the Nepalese soil. Unless Nepalese people defeat feudalism and imperialism and thereby establish New Democratic power, there will be no revolutionary transformation of the Nepalese society except some cosmetic changes.

Q. Which are the steps UNCP(M) thinks should be done in order to advance the revolutionary movement for winning over internal and foreign enemies?

A. Everyone is aware that we are now in the constituent assembly to draft a new constitution that opens the way forward to resolving the fundamental contradictions of the society. However, the domestic and foreign reactionaries are conspiring to dissolve the constituent assembly, impose presidential rule and push the country into civil war in order to maintain the status quo. Till the last we will be struggling hard to write people's constitution and establish people's republic from the constituent assembly but we will not in any cost let them reverse the process. We are prepared to defeat them by people's insurrection if the reactionaries impose unjust civil war upon the Nepalese people.

Q. Most Italian Communists think that revolution is something that just breaks out. We think that it is something to be built step by step. What do you think about this?

A. Revolution can neither develop in someone's subjective wish nor does a revolutionary crisis make it happen spontaneously. It is the correct handling of the dialectics between the objective situation and subjective planning on the part of the proletarian vanguard that pushes the revolutionary process forward.

Q. In our country many comrades are weighed down by the idea that we are fewand, besides, we are surrounded by a reactionary and backward mass. Even part of the workers and of labourers follow and support openly reactionary and racist forces. Does not UNCP(M) shows the contrary, by its action, that is that Communists can win to the revolution all the classes or anyway most of the classes of the popular masses (because for their class position Socialism is the only or anyway the best prospect of life and future)?

A. In the beginning, there is always a small group of conscious activists that initiate the revolutionary process. The idea that without preparing a strong mass base no revolutionary struggles can be initiated is wrong. Nor is it a process that a tiny committed group of revolutionary activists can accomplish revolution. It is a process that grows from the small to big, from the simple to complex and from the part to whole.

Yes, the experience of our party has clarified it correctly. In the beginning of the people's war, we were only 70 committed fulltime leaders and cadres in our party. People's consciousness was very backward. But our conscious intervention upon the situation started changing the situation in a qualitative manner.

Revolution develops in a spiral way. Truly, had we not made any conscious intervention upon the situation 15 years before, the present situation would not have come.

Q. Do you want to send a message to all those who, in Italy, are involved in the struggle for "not paying the crisis of the masters", and are looking for a way out of the economic, political and environmental disaster in which the bourgeoisie (the masters, the Vatican, the rich people and their authorities) made us sink?

A. Objectively, the situation is getting favourable for the revolutionaries to make revolution. The conscious effort to change this situation is the need of the day. The economic crisis is sure in the coming days to lead to a political crisis in the imperialist world order. And the political and environmental disaster that the bourgeoisie have brought about is growinghatred of the toiling masses against the system. It has definitely created an objective base upon which revolution can step forward

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