Solidarity with People's War in India 2nd - 9th April 2011 - Can you tell us briefly about Communism in India ?

The Communist Party of India was founded originally in 1919 in Kolkata then re-founded in Soviet Tashkent in 1925 under the impact of the Russian Revolution.

The Communist Party of Great Britain was closely involved in the formation and British Indian comrades like Saklatvala and Rajani Palme Dutt were early influences on the Communist Party of India. N M Roy an Indian Communist also distinguished himself with contributions to the Comintern.

The Communist Party of India concentrated on the urban areas in the 1920’s and 1930’s and faced repression by the British authorities who banned the party. Of the repression the most famous case in the 1930’s was the Meerut trial.

The Second World War brought out some contradictions within the Communist Party of India especially when the party refused to support the quit India Movement.

However some of the finest years of the Communist Party of India manifested themselves in the 1940’s with the famous Telengana struggle from 1946 -1951 when the Communist Party of India supported the struggle of the rural poor in Hyderbad.

With the defeat of the Telengana struggle the Communist party of India embraced Krhuschevite revisionism under the leadership of Dange.However revisionism pre dates Dange in the Indian Communist movement with the rejection of the Maoist model by Indian Communists in the 1930's. However in the great debate the Namboodiripad faction in the Communist Party of India sided with China and broke away to form the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in 1963.

However the anti revisionist promise of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) was soon exposed by the Spring Thunder of 1967 which saw the Naxalbari uprising. When the tribal poor rose against the West Bengal State they were met with serious repression including from the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

It was the Darjeeling District Secretary of The Communist Party of India (Marxist) Charu Muzumbar who created the revolutionary third trend in Indian Communism which led to the creation of the Communist Party of India (Marxist Leninist) by the 1970’s.

However severe repression of the third trend within Indian Communism which championed India’s rural poor led to a splintering of the movement

By the late 1970’s and early 1980’s new groups of the third trend emerged in different parts of India in Andhra Pradesh we saw the rise of the Communist Party of India Marxist Leninist Peoples War) and in Bihar and West Bengal the of the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) which has a long history back to the 1960's. Other groups like Communist Party of India Marxist Leninist (Party Unity) also emerged.

By the 1990’s these forces met up geographically in central India with violent clashes unable to resolve contradictions in a comradely way.

This low in the Indian Maoist movement then gave way to a drive for unity first with the Peoples War Group with Party Unity and then with the Maoist Communist Centre to create an all India Communist Party – The Communist Party of India ( Maoist) in 2004. For the first time Maoists in India could work on an all India revolutionary strategy