Rev Left Radio - Maoism in India: The Naxalites

Episode Date: July 14, 2020

V and Rea join Breht to discuss the Naxalite movement in India, the context in which the Naxalites arose, the reaction to them by the Indian state and Indian fascists, the role imperialism plays in the conflict, and much more!  For sources, links, or further recommendations, please feel free to reach out to Rea on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/a_busy_woman Outro Music: 'Curtain Call' by Ruby Ibarra LEARN MORE ABOUT REV LEFT RADIO: www.revolutionaryleftradio.com

A passage from Arundati Roy's Walking with the Comrades It's easier on the liberal conscience to believe that the war in the forests is a war between the government of India and the Maoists who call elections a sham, parliament of pigsty, and have openly declared their intention to overthrow the Indian state. It's convenient to forget that tribal people in central India have a history of resistance that predates Mao by centuries. That's a truism, of course, if they do.

didn't, they wouldn't exist. The Ho, the O'eran, the Coles, the Santos, the Mundas, and the Gons have all rebelled several times against the British, against Zamadars, and moneylenders. The rebellions were cruelly crushed, many thousands killed, but the people were never conquered. Even after independence, tribal people were at the heart of the first uprising that could be described as Maoist, in Naxalbari village in West Bengal, where the word Naxalite, now used interchangeably with Maoist originates. Since then, Naxilite politics has been inextricably entwined with tribal uprisings, which says as much about the tribals as it does about Naxalites. This legacy of rebellion has left behind a furious people who have been deliberately isolated and

marginalized by the Indian government. The Indian Constitution, the moral underpinning of Indian democracy, was adopted by Parliament in 1950. It was a tragic day for tribal people. The Constitution ratified colonial policy and made the state custodian of tribal homelands. Overnight, it turned the entire tribal population into squatters on their own land. It denied them their traditional rights to forest produce. It criminalized a whole way of life. In exchange for the right to vote, it snatched away their right to livelihood and dignity. Having dispossessed them and pushed them into a downward spiral of indigence,

in a cruel sleight of hand, the government began to use their own. own pinnery against them. Each time it needed to displace a large population for dams, irrigation projects, mines. It talked of bringing tribals into the mainstream, or of giving them the fruits of modern development. Of the tens of millions of internally displaced people, more than 30 million by big dams alone, refugees of India's progress, the great majority are tribal people. When the government begins to talk of tribal welfare, it's time to worry. expression of concern has come from the home minister, P. Chidambaram, who says he doesn't want tribal people living in museum cultures. The well-being of tribal people didn't seem to be such a

priority during his career as a lawyer, representing the interests of several major mining companies. So it might be an idea to inquire into the basis for his new anxiety. Over the past five years or so, the governments of Chadesgar, Jakharn, Arisa, and West Bengal have signed hundreds of MOUs with corporate houses worth several billion rupees, all of them secret for steel plants, sponge iron factories, power plants, aluminum refineries, dams, and mines. In order for the MOUs to translate into real money, tribal people must be moved. Therefore, this war. When a country that calls itself a democracy openly declares war within its own borders, what does that war look like? Does the resistance stand a chance? Should it? Who are the Maoists?

Are they just violent nihilists foisting an outdated ideology on tribal people, goading them into a hopeless insurrection? What lessons have they learned from their past experience? Is armed struggle intrinsically undemocratic? Is the sandwich theory of ordinary tribals being caught in the crossfire between the state and the Maoists an accurate one? Are Maoists and tribals two entirely discrete categories as is being made out? Do their interests converge? have they learned anything from each other have they changed each other the day before i left my mother called sounding sleepy i've been thinking she said with a mother's weird instinct what this country needs is revolution An article on the internet says that Israel's Mossad is training 30 high-ranking Indian police officers

in the techniques of targeted assassinations to render the Maoist organization headless. There's talk in the press about the new hardware that has been bought from Israel, laser rangefinders, thermal imaging equipment, and unmanned drones so popular with the U.S. Army. Perfect weapons to use against the poor. Hello everybody and welcome back to Revolutionary Left Radio. I'm your host, Brett O'Shea, and today we have on Ria and V to talk about the Naxalites, the Maoist movement in India. We've recently done an episode on the Maoist movement in the Philippines, recently done an episode with J. Malfoyd Paul on the critique of Maoist reason, navigating the intra-Maoist disputes, both of which could be helpful if you like this episode and want to learn more about the sort of global Maoist. movement and its iterations.

But yeah, we just cover a lot of history up front and we get into the backlash from the Indian state. We talk about, you know, Israeli and U.S. assistance to the Indian state to crush the Naxalite movements and the Naxalite's deep inexorable connection to the tribal people of India and protecting indigenous land, et cetera. So it's a fascinating, wide-ranging, long discussion on a essential crucial communist movement happening right now in this world. So, yeah, without further ado, let's get into this episode with Ria and V on the next light movement. Enjoy. Hi, everyone. My name's Ria. I did a previous

episode, so I won't do too much again. But as a summary, I basically graduated from my undergraduate degree a year ago from UT Austin. And I was radicalized pretty quickly once arriving at college and have been identified as a Marxist-Leninist since. I've been involved in like reproductive justice, anti-capitalist, anti-fascist organizing, as well as the Palestine Solidarity Organization on campus. That's just kind of where I built community and where I gained experience politically and in terms of organizing. So I grew up in Austin before going to college. So like my perspective on gentrification was also like very personal and that was a big part of the organizing that I did as well. But in terms of like contextualizing for this episode, so I am a member of

the Indian diaspora, more specifically the Telugu diaspora. I was raised in a a very close-knit kind of Indian Thelugu community and was raised pretty ignorant of like my own cast and it was a very apolitical space which I think is like very common and kind of the middle class Indian diaspora of people are pretty like hyper aware of the whatever status that they have built and how that's a little bit precarious so they try pretty hard not to rock the boat or have pretty like maybe fascist political leanings back home things like that so So growing up, once being radicalized, I was kind of alienated from my diaspora a bit just because I didn't really have political connections with people I grew up with.

But researching and learning about the radical history of India, as well as Belongana, which is the state that I'm from, has really kind of invigorated my own spirit, and I've been able to connect with communist and Umbethgarite organizers around the United States, which has been really, really awesome for me. before we get into the details or before V introduces themselves, I'm not an expert. I just want to say that the excellent movement moves completely underground at this point and people that have collected the evidence and done the work and are in the movement I admire really, really deeply.

And my own positionality in contrast is like that of a queer Indian backwards cast person who has grown up in the United States. So I think that it's important to kind of position myself in this conversation. and I'll definitely link the people and the works that I used to research and that have impacted my life in the show notes once again, but a couple of names that I would like to drop are Shyamala, who is a Telugu Dalit feminist, Siviru Suburo, who is a Telugu activist and journalist, Mina Kandiyyasami, who's a Tamilian Dalith poet and author, Anurada Gandhi, who was a Maoist feminist and leader, and Bolga, who is credited with translating a lot

of feminist texts into Thelbu, which I think is a really cool project and very powerful. But yeah, some of the books that I used include Storming the Gates of Heaven and Scripting the Change by Unrathaghani. My name is B. I am a recent college graduate from a liberal arts school in the U.S., but for 10 years of my life, I grew up in Chennai, India, which is a city south of India. So a lot of my organizing and politicization came from my last few years in Chennai, where I joined an environmental justice group whose work was mainly focused on getting reparations for workers that were poisoned by the mercury dumping in Koregonale.

That was done by a huge multinational corporation called Unilever. So a lot of the organizers who I worked under or helped with their campaign worked towards getting reparations. for the workers and also demanding that the multinational corporations clean up the lake. So I think a lot of those intersecting issues of environmental and labor justice shaped the way I thought about things and also the way capital flows globally and oppresses globally. And those really helped me start to identify as a communist. And when I came to studying the U.S., I really began to become immersed in organizing on a variety issues. Similar to Rhea, I did a lot of Palestine solidarity work through my school's

students for justice in Palestine. And I did a lot of student worker organizing that was happening on my campus, specifically with the dining hall workers union. And since I'm from India, I also engaged in a lot of organizing around transnational resistance of Hindu fascism, caste supremacy, and the Indian occupation of Kashmir. So we would hold a lot of teachings, talks, and small protests on campus. And I think one of the most important shifts of my ideology was when I started to identify as an anti-imperialist because I went to Cuba for a while and studied there for a while. And I just began to understand kind of the machinations of the U.S. Empire

and how much more a militant organizing is in countries outside of the U.S. and the global majority. And since then, I've been heavily invested in organizing around anti-imperialism, against neoliberalism and Hindu fascism through a communist and ambitkarate lens. So like Ria said, I think it's important to understand, you know, my positionality when I come to this. I come from a Savarna or dominant caste background. So I owe, you know, all of my learning to Beleth Buhujan organizers, scholars, and activists and feminists. And I'm definitely by no means an expert, but I have organized within communist circles in India, specifically as it

relates to anti-cast struggles and against kind of Hindutva and the Modi regime. So, but I've never directly worked within maxillite struggles or organizing. So a lot of the commentary on this episode is rooted out of my profound respect for the people's struggles and the communist struggles in India. So a lot of other people who would be a better reason, resource to turn to, generally on antithast. Communist or Naxalite struggles in India are Charu Majimdhar, who wrote prolifically on Maoist ideology that ended up shaping the Naxilite movement. Sathnam or Gourmet Singh, he's a communist writer who lived with the Naxilites for a while

and wrote Jungle Nama, George J. Kunak, he wrote Rebels from the Mud Houses, Dalits in the making of the Malist Revolution, Bihar. Gautam Navlika, he's an activist, he's an editorial consultant, and he writes a lot about Kashmiri-Azadi movements and Nax Flight movements. And he's also accused by the state in the Bima Kordagaon case, which I'll get into a little in the episode. Then there's also Gail Omvet. She writes a lot about anti-cast struggle and social struggle in India. And as Ria mentioned, Anurada Gandhi, she was a pioneer in writing about proletarian feminism and one of the founding members of CPIML, the communist part of India, Marxist, Leninist, and she wrote a lot about caste feminism and Marxism within the movement. And more generally, my politics, my Mbethraai politics have been shaped by a lot of Dalit Feminist in their writing, including Savi Thubai Pule, Cynthia Stephen, and Charmila Vega.

along with a lot of Adivasi writers and authors who are fighting the displacement of their people, such as Dayamani Barla and Rose Kerkita. And as Ria said, I'll definitely link a lot of the readings I use for this episode within the description. Wonderful. Well, it's an absolute honor to have both of you on. We'll link to a bunch of stuff as well for people that want to learn more about this. Rev. Left has always been a show that doesn't obsess with academic expertise and credentialed, quote-unquote, experts, but rather getting people that are genuinely interested in this oftentimes self-educated

organizers to come together to self-teach and then to help teach others and to learn along with our listeners. So it's very much in line with our overall ethos to have both of you on and work through this. And I appreciate the humility up front to say, you know, we're not experts. We're just people very sympathetic doing our best to learn and to teach. And I love that. And for those who, you know, want to know more about Maoism, which shapes the ideology of this movement, we'll get into later. If you're listening to this, we'll probably have released by the time this gets released. A sort of deep dive episode on Maoism that talks about the intra-Maoist disputes and the lineages of different Maoist takes and very much mentions Maoism in both the Philippines

and India for the sort of theoretical background to some of the ideology here. And we've also recently released an episode on the Maoists in the Philippines, which I think is a connected movement in a lot of ways. So if anybody wants to do deeper dives on the background, of this stuff, we provide those resources and we'll continue to do that as well. So without further do, let's go ahead and get into this topic. It's a big topic. And I always love to start with some historical context. So can you talk about the relevant history in India, including iterations of Marxism that existed before the rise of the Naxalites in order to sort of help us understand the broader historical context in which the Naxalites eventually manifest? Sure. So I would just say

to kind of set this stage that India is very highly regional, via ethnic group, North-South distinctions, Hindi versus non-Hindi speaking, by state, linguistic group, by city, urban versus rural, etc. There's just a very large variety of different contexts and histories that are distinct to different parts of India. So I think that this kind of sets up for the spread of Marxism and Maoist thought throughout the subcontinent. Like, why? certain regions have heavier levels of activity and impact for the communist movement versus others and like why certain regions have greater influence. But prior to the arrival of Marxism and even once Marxism arrives, we kind of see India as a caste and feudal society, which has

been kind of a cemented relationship that is social and economic over the course of many centuries prior to the British Empire but then also during the British Empire when a lot of this was like codified more legally. And prior to the Naxilites, so Marxist thought kind of arrives in India during the 1920s during the British occupation. And that's when we kind of see this Soviet influence and this tie between the class struggle and the national struggle since India hasn't gained independence yet. And we see kind of Lenin's theory of imperialism and how. And we see kind of Lenin's theory of imperialism and how those two struggles are tied. M.N. Roy at the time argued that he made this case that pointed to the development of

what he called indigenous capitalism and how if there isn't a complete revolution, we would just see kind of the shift from British capitalists and bourgeoisie to an Indian bourgeoisie that is replacing them, but there's functionally no difference for the people. and this was not as popular ultimately we see like Lenin's line is kind of adopted and we see a very peaceful transition or not peaceful necessarily because obviously partition was a very horrible traumatic event but peaceful in that there wasn't a revolution there wasn't a like uprising necessarily for Indian independence and people were not necessarily included in this new government that was created post independence. So during this, we see like a lot of opportunism

and sanitization of like policy and Marxist thought in order to maintain the status quo and put in forth like this peaceful transition to socialism. And in terms of what that looked like, we see the party of the CPI is first formed. Yeah, I was saying the import of Marxism kind of come in conjunction with anti-colonial movements against the British. And I think what's really fascinating is that in 1920, the Communist Party of India was founded by M.N. Roy, who's also a really fascinating figure, and everyone should definitely look into him because we also founded the Mexican Communist Party after having to escape India because he was involved in anti-colonial descent. And he actually met Lenin at

that I think one of the, he met Lenin at some point during one of the communist worldwide meetings. So you should definitely look into his story. But after the CPI was founded, they were suppressed by the British and put in jail. And that kind of radicalized a lot of the communists in India because the movement began to grow. and the industrial working class needed various types of organizing. So shortly before the partition, there were a lot of smaller Maoist rebellions against the landlord rules. So there were a lot of Zamindars in India,

and Zamindar is basically like a landlord who ruled over a certain plot of land. And so as Rear was saying, it was a very feudal society. And so you could see like very small, insurgencies led, you know, by malice thought. So, for example, in Thelengana, there was a Malas rebellion which liberated 15,000 square kilometers. And the state ultimately couldn't really handle this revolutionary upsurge. So they sent in the army. And there was a lot of communist suppression during that. So I think in 1964 is when we see this split within the CPI. which kind of mirrored kind of the Sino-Soviet split and just this idea of whether communist

movement should be adhering to this Soviet model or the Chinese. And CPIMM came out of this insurrection within the party of kind of a opposition to the Soviet model and wanting to adhere to a Maoist model that advocated for a protracted people's war. And I think this is because a lot of, after partition in 1947, Meru, the prime minister, adopted a lot of Soviet policies, and was very influenced by kind of Soviet models of production. And a lot of the Maoist guerrillas were still being oppressed after the transfer of power from the British to kind of Indian capitalists or the Indian state, they saw that the Soviet

models were still an adherence to the existence of the Indian state and wanted to kind of provoke an urban insurrection and protracted guerrilla war against the state. So yeah, I think that that's kind of what created this division in the Communist Party of India. And like there's So there's been so many splits, as is really common within, I think, communist parties everywhere, but especially, you know, like within the global south. And, yeah, that's kind of what the split, how the split happened. So the party split kind of, they created two factions of the Communist Party. One was the Communist Party Marxist, Communist Party of India Marxist, CPI.M, which was more of a pro-Chinese.

Obviously, Chinese revolution, Maoists following the ideology of Mao Zedong, and with a lot of reverence for the cultural revolution. And the other faction is what the CPIM considered more of a bourgeois Democrat, Democrat. party because they were very also entrenched with the Congress, who was the party at the time of Nehru, and they saw that, you know, adhering to this bourgeois model was essentially accepting U.S. imperialism and being in arms with U.S. imperialism. And so it's complicated because I think that, you know, like at the time, the Soviet Union did provide a lot of support, especially for Cuba, you know, a lot of material support for countries that were kind of instigating Marxist revolutions against, you know, like a lot of

the colonial or capitalist or dictatorial regimes. And, you know, even in India, I think it's interesting because while British imports were extremely expensive, the Soviet Union provided books in India for like one repeat which is which is which is which was nothing at the time very cheap and that's kind of why a lot of things flourish in India like chess is very popular India like because the Soviet Union like sold chess books um but the CPIM really thought that you know adherence to Soviet orthodoxy was um adherence to US imperialism so that's kind of how what happened fascinating I just wanted to add like some context. So like once we see like this that CPM was the split happens, we do see like a growth of of the party like throughout the subcontinent. So like once that they were established, the conservative section of the CPI had put support behind the Nauru government as V explained. And then the CPM was able to gain like power.

in the state once they had been established in post-independence. And then did you want to talk through the second split as well? The split that happened within TPIM was also kind of this idea that that ideology should not be subsumed into electoral politics. And I think Charu Majimdar, who I mentioned in my introduction, and who wrote a lot of the Mao's ideology that propelled the Naxite movement, he was very against this idea of having CPIM as a voting party and kind of voting as a whole, because I think people as a whole had started to get very used to the idea of elections, but he formed the CPIML, the Marxist-Lenonist faction, in order to combat all forms of revisionism, which included

kind of electoral politics and engaging in elections, especially because, you know, like, once CPIM would engage in elections, they would be kind of on the same terrain as the Congress Party, which, so basically, Chaudam called for mass tower against all revisionist forms in both CPI and CPIM. And that's what caused the split of CPIMLML. And that's what caused the split of CPIML. And that's eventually what propelled the rebellion in Noxobody, which we'll talk about. But yeah, that's more that internal split. Both internal slits happened. I see. Anything else we want to touch on before we move on to ideology? I just wanted to call out, just kind of similarly to what V said, like there were a lot of

uprisings, like throughout the subcontinent, the Thalangana peasant rebellion is like one really great example because it sets not only like the tone for like the necessity of this kind of organizing and the fact that there's deep unrest and deep dissatisfaction with the current feudal system in in the subcontinent but also because we can see that there are a lot of gains to be made and that the power of the people is a significant threat to to the current state and current imperialism. So I think that specifically, I just wanted to reference that there were at least 77 revolts like during the entire time of the British rule.

So there is like a deep revolutionary history. It was just put down by the state consolidation of power. So I think that that kind of sets the stage for the Nuxelberry uprising that we see later. Perfect. All right. Yeah. So fascinating. lots of splits leading down to these differences and opinions on the revolutionary side of Indian

communists. And we're going to get into, you know, more about the actual activities and the uprisings, the Naxilites partaking. But I want to also laid down beforehand their ideology. And we've talked, obviously, about them being Maoist, and that's well known. But I was hoping you could dive a little bit deeper on that. So what is the ideology of the Naxalites? And what were some of the fundamental questions about Indian society that, you know, they were asking and addressing through this ideological orientation? I think the fundamental premise that the Naxels move from is that they describe India as a semi-feudal, semi-colonial nation.

So they see and observe these increasing wealth inequality and gaps in living conditions, as well as increased repression to maintain class order. And we see that from the time of independence forward, even once independence is gained. So when we say semi-colonial, That means that the ruling class interests are tied to imperial interests of big business, Western business partnerships, even American imperialism. And then by semi-feudal, we mean that because of the formation of India, we saw no address of the feudal relationships and that over 40% of the rural population has no claims to land and almost the complete expropriation of all surplus in the form of rent.

So that is kind of the description that the Maxel Party gives for India. And then to address this, the party program kind of emphasizes overcoming underdevelopment in agriculture. Throughout this, you'll kind of see this emphasis on rural activities in contrast to urban maxels. So anyway, this, they kind of address depression and wages, inadequate employment opportunities, more specifically, like the Maoist model of development, and their land reform approach includes like redistributing land to the tiller of the land, investing in agricultural needs in line with ecological needs and protections. This obviously makes sense with the fact that many naxels are part of the indigenous community or the

Adavasi community in India, guaranteed job security, ensuring women are included in equal ownership of land, and abolishing contract labor, child labor, guaranteeing equal wages, and eliminating unemployment altogether. So that's kind of the basis of the party and some of the priorities of the Naxalites. And then kind of moving beyond that, on like the question of violence, we see one quote is that from Azad, who is one of the members of the CPIML, party. No real communist is for violence per se. Communists are for a peaceful social system built around equality and justice, but when they seek to work for such a system, they are attacked most brutally. This has been the case ever since the birth of the communist movement. They've been massacred and exterminated right from the days of the Paris commune. So they kind of view violence

as a tool, right? The protracted people's war is kind of their identified means as achieving this goal and of overthrowing the current landowning bourgeoisie class. And their party program includes that the revolution would remain directed against imperialism, feudalism, and the Comptor bureaucratic capitalism. And that includes supporting the struggle of nationalities for self-determination, including the right to succession and fight against social oppression, specifically including casteism and organizing women. So there's definitely a connection between the naxel movement and ideology and the formation of state. states within India, they've definitely been part of the formation of Andhra Pradesh and Thelangana specifically, which are Thalgui states that I am more well-versed in the histories of. Yeah, so I also want to talk a little bit about the ideology of Chaudu Majindba, who I talked to before, because he essentially wrote the ideology that cultivated and propelled the Naxi-Lardi uprising. So he wrote eight historical documents from 1965 to 1967.

And by the way, all of these can be found on Marxist.org, if you are interested in reading them. But he was actually a Bengali Marxist Lennonist, and he was actually part of a landlord or Zamanthar family, but became a class traitor because he fought as a freedom fighter against the British and then joined CPI. and he later started organizing peasants in northern Bengal, which led to the uprising. But here he presented the ideological formation of the next lights with his eight historical documents. And what's interesting about these is that he makes very cogent and clear links between U.S. imperialism and the state of India and the way that they worked hand in hand specifically with the Congress Party to oppress people. And so his first document is called Our Task in the Present Situation.

And this document talks all about, like building a revolutionary front, basically establishing the very clear links between the Indian government and American imperialism and talks about how communists have been punished under the Congress's rule. So here it's really interesting because he very clearly lays out the political economic situation of monophobic, industrials, basically like monopolizing land and the necessity to overcome those and fight against those because they repress people. And I think Majindar's writing is really cogent and pertinent to like, and also very relevant to today's situation because you have huge multinational conglomerates that are building factories and mining in forest areas where Adivasi people live. actively displacing them, which I'll talk about a little later. His second document is called Make the People's Democratic Revolution successful by fighting against revisionism. So I think

the whole formation of the CPIML was about weeding out what he considered revisionism. And he had a very hardline approach to this because he considered trade unions, peasant organizations that were a part of kind of electoral parties as revisionists. And basically, also in this document he talks about self-criticism and the necessity for parties to engage in criticism like Mao talks about in combating liberalism and I think yeah it's it's a really important it's I love combating liberalism literally because it's so it's really good it's so relevant like the continually like should be like a model for how we work as like revolutionary parties and groups but so it's really amazing that he mentioned.

mentions that in kind of 1967 or whatever. So then I won't go too much in the content of the other six documents, but I'll just read the titles. The third one is called What is the Source of Spontaneous

Revolutionary Outbursts in India? And this kind of talks about World War II and the revolutionary fervor that was brought out in Asia, Africa, and Latin America kind of during the non-aligned movement and how the spread to socialism in India was inspired by the Chinese Revolution.

Then next was carry on the struggle against modern revisionism. And this kind of talks about Soviet orthodoxy and how a lot of Maoist thought is really applicable to not only how indigenous or adivasi people should revolt, but also on the questions of Kashmir and the Indian occupation of Kashmir. So that's really interesting. Number five is what possibility of the year in 1965 is indicating. So he talks about repression done by police forces and repression done by military officers and bureaucrat. Then the next document is the main time.

Today is the struggle to build up the true revolutionary party through uncompromised struggle against revisionism. The next document is called Build Armed Partisan Struggle by Fighting Against Revision. And the last one is carry forward the peasant struggle by revisionism. So I think it's, you know, he hated revisionism. It's like he had a very hardline approach of what he considered divisionism. But I think it goes to show that like, yeah, a lot of appearance to Malice thought. And he mentions, you know, the quote, political power comes out of the barrel of the gun for kind of the reason that, that we should engage in arms struggle against the state.

Wonderful. And, you know, it is kind of a little trope or sort of a cliche, a stereotype of Maoists that they're, you know, always talking about revisionism. And of course, especially online, sometimes it can be overextended and become sort of a meaningless sort of sloganeering. But, you know, in a situation where you have uprisings or different manifestations of leftists, you know,

fighting against revisionism is incredibly important. And we can even see that right now in our own. uprising here in the U.S. where there is a sort of lack of any real political line of any real political vision. And in that sort of lack of a political vision, there is just revisionism and opportunism and liberalism that things sort of can often default to. So while the struggle against revisionism can sometimes be stereotypical and be the basis of a meme here or there, it actually is a really important part, especially at crucial moments of revolutionary energy and struggle where you need these clear lines and these clear visions so that the movement

doesn't, you know, default back to liberalism, opportunism, et cetera. Yeah, absolutely. I think that since we see so much historic opportunism, that it doesn't just come from nowhere. It's not just a theoretical line, but rather a line that's informed by his experiences with the communist parties that were existent prior to, prior to Nuxelbury. Absolutely. And I think, yeah, like if you, especially see kind of after, even after partition and independence, if you see the transferance of power from the British to the Indian state and see no change of material conditions,

you know, it's, I think, yeah, it makes sense for him to see kind of electoralism as revisionist. Absolutely. All right. So let's go ahead and move on. And I'm really interested in this question. So what role does gender and cast play? in the Naxalite movement. How are the Naxalites sort of orienting themselves to gender and caste in India?

Yeah, so I think that it's really interesting kind of reading about gender analysis, gender analysis and caste analysis of the Naxalites, because as we mentioned before, Anurada Gandhi, she was an incredible figure in kind of creating proletarian feminist thought, and she was the founding member of the Communist Party of India, ML, along with Charyu Majindbad, and she wrote a very important paper called Feminism and Marxism, where she talks about the necessity to shift the patriarchal ideas that were still dominant in leftist or communist parties. And I definitely think a lot of her work is on

Marxist.org as well, so I definitely think everyone should read those. But there are, you know, conflicting statistics on female participation within the Naxi movement, just because, you know, they're very obscure and hidden as a movement for very understandable reasons of being a target of the state. But it is very high. Like, I think the Ministry of Home Affairs says there's like a 60% rate of female participation. Then there's other statistics. The CPI Malice says there's a 40% participation and other authors say there's like a 30% participation. and other authors say there's like a 33%.

But I think it's very clear that there's a large concentration of women in the Knox Light Movement who play various roles such as like combatants, peace builders, activists, and politicians. And I think they kind of take up this idea of like idealize heroic femininity and kind of using the, you know, ideas of feminism, proletarian feminism, and dissent against the state as how they form their heroic femininity. And I think, of course, under patriarchal capitalism, there will always be patriarchal tendencies

within revolutionary movements, but I think there has been a lot of shift in the Nax Light movement from what I read that tends towards more of a feminist embodiment, specifically with all these amazing thinkers, like women, like communists who are women,

who are like writing on these topics. And then I think when it comes to cast, so as I talked about before, a lot of those that make up malice and Naxilites are Adivasi people because the Adivasi community who kind of live in the forests and live in more rural areas are the ones being displaced. And I think Ria said this really well in the last episode that she did.

But these are people who have, you know, very little to lose and everything to gain. So they are very actively participating in this revolutionary struggle. And I think that the Beleth liberation movement, the anti-cast liberation movement, has always considered the Naxites as allies because they are both targets of the state in different ways because of how embedded caste supremacy and capitalism is within the state that oppressors, both of these groups, and there is a lot of, like, solidarity to them, because I think the NAC sites also within their ideology have expressed complete rejection of untouchability and caste supremacy, and really centers the Belich experience of untouchability, really talks

about the sexual abuse of Beleth women and the social oppression, and also, like, issues of land and labor. And so I think when economic liberalization, happened in the 90s, which really propelled a lot of the displacement against adivasi people. There was a lot of Dalit participation in malice movements, which can be traced to resistance of colonial agrarian policies of the Zamantar system that created a lot of landless ballots in Bihar, specifically the state of Bihar, and increased poverty and exploitation of these communities. So I think, especially in Bihar, where there's a lot of, of, there's a large Dalit and Adivasi population. There is a lot of female

Dalit participation within the Naxite movement, specifically through risking communist parties or parts of the party, such as the Nadi Mukti Sansa in 1977, along with the Provisional Coordination Center, the Nadi Mukti Sanghar Samiti, and the Malist Coordination, and the Malice Coordination Center. So, yeah, I think there is an active participation of both caste oppressed and, you know, feminist ideology within the next lights. Yeah, absolutely. And Roy's book, Walking with the Comrades, she talks about how rape and sexual assault against, you know, Adavasi women specifically are, is part and parcel with the reactionary,

either vigilante fascist forces or the actual state forces when they go into these jungles and attack these movements. And, you know, they make no distinction. which is between just regular people and what they consider Maoist, et cetera, and there's a whole other sort of route to go down and discuss there. But, you know, one thing I do want to mention as we're getting through this outline is that it is particularly difficult to find information on these movements, which is why I appreciate all the work you put into this so much. Because in Roy's book, she talks about making contact and wanting to go, you know, on the front lines and

meet with them and basically be a journalist and report on what that side of the story is because, you know they're often poor people they don't have huge media outlets they don't have big platforms they're vilified and targeted um in in mainstream indian society um and she just talks about it's basically like meeting with like a an underground organization where you know she got a little note slipped under her her door saying where to meet and that the person that she would be meeting would have a certain sort of book in their hand and a a banana's on them and that's how she would know and there's a certain password that she had to say that the person had to repeat back etc so just to get uh into the areas where the Maoists were you know really based out of

uh it was a whole process for her to get in there and that just really speaks to the clandestine and necessarily clandestine nature of these movements because they are so vilified targeted and attacked you know yeah absolutely and i think there is a lot to be said about kind of the ways in which armed struggle might embody kind of patriarchal tendencies in the way it's undertaken, especially as we live under these systems. And so, like, I think, you know, there there totally are accounts of, you know, sexual assaults and within, you know, Naxilic communities. But I think that what's happening is that a lot of mainstream media uses Adivasi people as, like, a pawn in kind of exerting their hard-lined, all-out offensive attack against the Naxalids,

because, you know, they regularly use the narrative that naxalites are not only killing people mindlessly, but the people that are killing the most are adivasi's. So they're against each other, like, as communities, even though there is inextricable overlap between the two communities and the ideologies. So I think it's a lot of, you know, the news we get about the Naxalites are coordinated to villainize them and attack them. Definitely. Absolutely.

That plays a huge part in this overall dynamic. But let's go ahead and move on. You know, now that we have some understanding of the underlying Nax Light ideology, the makeup, the orientation towards gender and caste, and the historical context, let's move into a discussion about how the movement arose and why.

So can you talk about that a bit? Yeah. After independence, and specifically in the 90s, India started to liberalize its economy under Indian president, Nara Samharao and Manmoham Singh, who was a finance minister. And so they initiated the process of economic legalization in 1991 to replace the license Raj after a $2.2 billion bailout from the IMF in exchange for 67 tons of Indian gold for collateral security that responded to a financial crisis.

So I think it really speaks to this transference of power that Mujum Darcy. talks about from the British to Indian capitalists. And so when that growth of the economy began to happen, it was seen as kind of like a liberatory success because trade was opened up and it, you know, the number of millionaires and billionaires started to rise. And India basically paraded itself as being like a major player in the global economy. And today I think India is like third largest economy in the world.

but basically it used this form of economic liberalization as claiming the title as the world's largest democracy but we know like how much of a farce democracy is when it's predicated on capitalist expansion because it is predicated on the deprivation of the masses with 800 million people living on less than 20 rupees a day and almost 20 million displaced adivasi people And so I think the growing insurgency of the most armed struggle began to counter the raising, the exploitation, the plundering, and the extraction of land.

And it's because, you know, all these huge mega corporations, the Tata, Jindho, Esard, Reliance, Stirlight, they're all huge multinational corporations, huge conglomerates, which have several industries, like they have, They have cement industries. They have, like, salt industries. They have food industries. Like, Tata especially, like, their brand is so well known in India that because they have their foot in every single industry, that it's almost crazy how much monopoly and power they have. So, as we know, like, state power and, like, police brutality protects capital. And what's happening is that, you know, adivasi people are being displaced in the name of, you know, development to build these factories to you know craft this land to mine this you know these different minerals and obviously like if you're being displaced off your land and you have nothing to lose so what what you do is you pick up arms and you fight against the state

and it's especially exacerbated because India keeps deploying paramilitary forces to suppress forces that demand their constitutionally right to keep land that's rightfully theirs. So I think it's, you know, literally this, the armed struggle began as a resistance to both feudalism and capitalist expansion, neoliberalism, essentially. So, yeah, I think they sign MOUs with like memorandums of understanding with private corporations. So it's like essentially they have no political, other guys have no political power at all. Yeah, I just wanted to add two things. First, just to set up like the initial uprising, we see the Thalongana uprising prior to the Nuxelbury uprising.

So peasants across India are kind of aware of their own power. And so in the village of Nuxlebury, we see that around the late 60s that peasants start seizing land from landlords who own very large plots of land. And they set up peasant communities throughout the region very, very quickly, like in like four months. And there were clashes between like the peasants and landlords and sharecroppers. And so the government then very quickly started mobilizing police officers. And then in that conflict, nine women and one child were killed. And that was what kind of sparked the uprising. And we see the upheaval and the conflicts that are continued between like the paramilitary forces that were sent by the government and the peasants.

So that is kind of the initial uprising. and then it's lauded by China and the communists in Nepal and as well as like communists in southern India like in Andhra Pradesh in Telangana where there's a communist movement already in existence so that's just like some context prior but then I also wanted to just add to like what V said that in the mainstream media like there's really no question like no there are very, very few voices that question this very hegemonic tale about the role of the Indian government, the role of corporations, the role of the Indian economy, the tech industry, mining, all of these things are like lauded by the media and mainstream media. And like any critical media or like not just media, but like even remarks like on social media are met like immediately. immediately shut down very like any kind of remark that's critical of the government is it's considered like anti-nationalist um so like a lot of these uh narratives about the place of

corporations and government are not really questioned by anyone except for um more quote unquote like radical groups such as such as the next lights who are functionally branded as terrorists by the government which is something we'll get into um a little bit later but yeah everything that V said is great context for not only the initial uprising, but also kind of these longevity of the movement, right? Like we see now in 2020, like this movement has existed for approximately 50 years, which is really, really admirable, but also is the product of like continued repression and violence from the state. Yeah. And I think it is just really important to continue to reiterate this idea that the Maoists and the indigenous people in that

area teaming up are really fighting for their land, for their way of life against multinational extractive plundering of resources, you know, trillions of dollars of minerals and natural resources in these areas. And so the Indian state, capitalist as it is, in tandem with, you know, imperialism globally want to get their hands on those minerals and profit off of them and they have to push these people off their land and brutalize them in order to do that. And that's a similar dynamic in the Philippines where the Maoist and the indigenous people in the Philippines teaming up against the Philippine state and fighting the extraction and the displacement of them from their land. So this story is really continuing the world over and it's rooted in the extractive nature

of capitalism itself. Anything else to say before we get into the activities? Yeah, I just wanted to mention that, like, when we talk about the question of caste, Adivasi's, the term Dalit Bihujan is used a lot,

and Bihujan kind of means the majority of people and refers to scheduled tribes like the adivasis. So, you know, the state violence is also very much casteist violence because the Indian government

has kind of replicated a missionary or colonial relationship to the Adilases and believe that they, you know, they can be eradicated and displaced in the name of development, and this development is seen as democracy. So I think, you know, like, you know, this violence that's being imposed on them is both like a state violence, capitalist, neoliberal violence,

but also very much casteist violence. And you mentioned before we move on, I just have a side question. You mentioned paramilitaries, and Roy does in walking with the comrades as well. Is it safe to say that these paramilitary forces are basically fascistic or at least nationalistic in their outlook and are teaming up with the forces of the capitalist state to attack the Maoists and the Atavasi, et cetera? Yeah, 100%. I'll get into it a little bit later, but Operation Greenhunt is what the all-out offensive paramilitary attack on Maoists is called.

And it's killed, you know, hundreds of people, hundreds of Naxites, in thousands of NACs lights. And it's very much in, like, the way they justify it is very much a jingoistic, like, nationalist form of self-defense. That's, like, the propaganda around it because they see, you know, they call Max-Lites as the red terror. They call them as the Red Menace. They call them as internal terrorists to get. rid of. So it's absolutely coded in nationalism and protecting the Indian state. And we also see direct funding, training, and arms supplying by, you know, governments like Israel and the U.S. to bolster the Indian states fight against the Maoists, the Naxalites,

etc. So that's an important thing to include as well. Let's go ahead and move on and talk about the sort of activities and the forms of organization that the Naxalites partaken. So we can get an idea of what they do in their communities when they're not, you know, explicitly fighting back against, you know, attempts by the state to crush them. For sure. So as we've kind of discussed throughout this episode, there's obviously a very large focus on the other Vasi people and the other Vasi

people and the other Vasi struggle and their needs. So a big part of Naxilite activity is setting up alternative social services and complete divestment from the state. So that includes food, forced land distribution. so reclaiming acreages of land in forests specifically, active election boycotts. So there's some boycotts for elections that are kind of passive since a lot of people don't really see voting as particularly representative or meaningful to them, but they also organize

like active election boycotts in districts where they're active. And then, as you mentioned, like active violence against the state, that's very selective and organized. You can read other interviews where they talk about. their stance on violence, but they are very, very strategic in the way that they do utilize violence. They've talked about how they would never lay down arms, and they see that as a betrayal of the people's interests. So it is a very central part of the movement. And to contextualize that, or like the needs that they're trying to serve, we see like thousands of farmer suicides

and abject poverty, which v. mentioned prior about like the average wages in the rural setting. So for a majority of Indian people in these communities, like this level of violence is like very, like completely untenable. There's extreme corruption by the state and the government. So their Maoist response is very organized to not only confront this, but also like provide for the people. So, you know, they conduct conferences and organize underground completely. They create independent communities that are not dependent on the state at all. This means like providing income, liberation from feudal customs, caste customs, enacting a people's government. So the organization of that government usually looks like eight departments, including agriculture, education and culture, health and social welfare, defense, economic affairs, justice, forests, and public relations.

This means that they also set up schools in villages where governments don't bother setting up schools. They've also developed and helped language for al-Avassis, including publishing textbooks in the mother tongue, and they take their disputes without going to the police. And there's also like a very conscious movement, obviously, for the preservation of forests, which is a direct response to the extractive capitalist practices that we see and the conscious push and display. of these people and also just like improved medical conditions education literacy health outcomes quality of life and like equalizing like reproductive labor and things like that domestic labor so that's all kind of part of the activities that they take part in in the corridor that they have the most strengthen in india yeah i just want to add that um anuradha Gandhi the proletarian feminist thinker that wrote a lot about this. She also wrote a lot about kind of the potential of

worker cooperatives in agricultural productions, specifically in Danda Karanya, which is a forest in Chetisgar. So obviously there's not information about kind of the realization for like how those worker cooperatives are practiced, but they have very strong ideology about basically like distributing the means of production and forming agricultural production in worker cooperatives. And I think that's kind of why Malice thought is so applicable, because it really focuses on peasant revolt and also like peasant agricultural. Definitely. I feel like there's still like such a large prevalence of what is functionally feudalism combined with capitalism and corporation control on top of that that makes

Maoism so interesting or like what's the word effective salient yeah definitely effective and salient for for these people now did you want to move on and talk about a little bit more about the response from the Indian state and the far right etc yeah there's so much to say about this doing research for this was like kind of sad because like if you just Google malism or naxalites and the United States or like India a lot of papers from like military organizations in the United States write about the movement specifically obviously they don't write about good good things that the movement does or like focus on party activities but rather they focus on like counterinsurgency tactics what has been effective in putting them

down what are their current activities what has been the response been from the indian government and how effective has it been so sadly there's a lot to report for this part of the movement But basically, the unlawful activities prevention act, which was originally written in 1967, was amended in 2004 and has banned the Communist Party of India ML, so CPIML, and People's War and all associated formations and Maoist Communist Center and all front, quote-unquote, front organizations and has banned them completely, which is why the current party operates completely underground. And from the far right, we see even broader condemnation, ideological opposition, paramilitary groups. And then in contrast, like, quote unquote, more liberal parties have attempted to functionally, like, address some of the underlying causes of the movement. So, like, they'll try to make very superficial appeals to indigenous groups and Adavasi people and try to build certain infrastructure, but still oppose the naxels militarily and, like, put them down as violently as possible. possible. So that's kind of the twofold response that we see. And then in addition from like Western imperialists, we see like a large swath of study of the movement and the Indian response. So that's kind of

been like the theme of it all. I think V is going to talk about some more specifics. But another interesting thing I wanted to mention was that so the SSB is the primary border control organization between India and Nepal and Bhutan. So functionally like all of India's border. at this point are like very highly militarized like the border with china Pakistan and India Bhutan but specifically or with Nepal Bhutan but specifically the border here they recently have been given a massive fund of 444 crores for their modernization and their primary purpose is to functionally ensure that the Naxalites are not given any support by Nepali's Maoists

and to ensure that there's no like form of of arms trade or monetary trade or any kind of form of support between these two parties. So that's a response there as well. And as you can see, like the state is extremely well-funded and extremely strategic about the ways that they've been responding to this ever-growing and adapting movement.

Yeah. And really quick, before we get into Operation Green Hunt, it's just worth like re-highlighting the fact that we see that the Naxalites in their territories are, you know, taking that Maoist idea of serving the people to its fullest logical conclusion, being amongst the people serving them, working with them, and building dual power, not just talking about it, but actually building structures outside of the state to take care of the material needs of the people in that area.

And then on the reactionary side, you know, we see this, I was reading in Roy's book how it's so easy for the right in India to label anybody that is left wing as Maoist or Maoist sympathizers and thus justify to some extent either counterattacks or crackdowns from the state on organizations that, you know, are just left wing or socialist in nature, but not directly necessarily connected to the Maoist movement. So it becomes a battering ram to beat left opposition more broadly. Is that fair to say? Exactly. Exactly. I'm so glad that you emphasize dual power because that's exactly what they're doing. All right, V, are you ready to talk about Operation Greenhunt? Yes. So Operation Greenhound is basically what the media has termed the all-out offensive paramilitary attack by the Indian government, which has killed thousands of Adivasi's and Naxalites, but also like the way it's wielded is that it also kills anyone who is found to have any link to the Naxalates.

So similar to just the way that they're trying to weed out red terror, like anything. Many links is considered a mode of, you know, self-defense in the Indian government's eyes. But it's supposed to be a broader drive against the CPIM, the Mao's Communist Party malice in the state. And the Indian government is extremely strong. You know, they have deployed hundreds of thousands of paramilitary personnel with incredibly sophisticated weaponry. obviously assisted by the state of Israel in kind of that military exchange in that militarist exchange with weaponry and they're trying to fight against you know maybe like thousands of you know like people from the people's liberation guerrilla army the malists who are really working with

mostly like bow and arrows you know and machetes like just complete asymmetry of like the type of weaponry that's being used and so you know it's been an ongoing offensive officially began in 2009 and carried on to this day and it's supposed to be you know attacking all the naxalite states let it's called like the red corridor sir jarkan bihar chattisgar audisha kerala andra pradesh talangana maharashtra utterpadesh west ingal and madiapradesh so they really deployed so many paramilitary officers within these areas. In addition, they've also, you know, a lot of the companies, a lot of the multinational corporations that are building factories in these areas, I think they've, like, created their own kind of militias to fight against the nationalites.

And although it's not, like, specifically proven that they do this, you know, Selva Judum, it's basically known as, like, a militia that fights against the Naxilates. It was started in June 2005, a day after Tata Steel, which is the company, signed a 100,000 core MOU with the Czech-Discar state government for opening its steel plant. So, you know, like these corporations are also aiding in the militarization of the Naxilites and the Adivates, and they're seen as anti-insurgency operations that have been produced kind of organically, but when you look at like the facts and the ways that these multinational corporations function, you can see that there's definitely both Operation Greenhunt not only is

perpetrated by the government, but also by these huge companies. So yeah, I think that Operation Greenhunt has not only affected Naxilites, but it's affected the wider Behujan community, including Dalits, the homeless, workers, peasants, and adiosis. And it's interesting that before we mentioned kind of the linkage between imperial forces, I wrote about this a little bit in my thesis, but in 2013, Israeli-made surveillance ruins were deployed over forests in the Maoist and ex-light regions of Chetisgar and Odisha in order to collect intelligence for Operation Greenhunt. and you know they were they were not successful because the adivasis have strategically been training and working in very dense forests so the drones were not able to you know capture intelligence successfully but a lot of the guns that they use a lot of the very very intense like military equipment that they use is definitely imported from israel so there is that you know those transnational

forms of repression that's happening amongst the U.S., Israel, and India. And it's incredibly ruthless this Operation Greenhunt. And the way it has resulted in so much violence, not just against Nax Lights, but like anyone suspected of being a malist, is attacked. And as you said, anyone who is suspected of dissenting against the state is termed an anti-national or even recently the term urban naxel has come up and i'll talk about that a little later but the the kind of affects the basically pathologizing of the naxelites amongst you know indian middle-class society is such a strong ideology that the state has embedded in everyone that like

it's not only the government launching these attacks but like everyone has you know most people in like middle-class society are also like and obviously like the bourgeoisie Z, they're very committed to these anti-communist and anti-Malist like attacks and completely support the government. Yeah. And so here we see a pattern that we see in pretty much every historical event that we cover here on Rev Left. We see a coming together of fascist paramilitary vigilante, just nationalists organizations,

the bourgeois state of whatever country we're talking about. multinational corporations, imperialists, and settler colonial states like the U.S. and Israel all coming together to throw everything they have at a movement of largely poor people with, you know, not a lot of resources doing everything they can simply to defend their land, their way of life and resist their complete genocide or demolition in the name of profits and global imperial control. So, you know, you can't separate any of these movements. you cannot separate the fight against the U.S. from the fight against the Indian state or against Israel. It's all deeply, utterly, and inexorably connected. And so that's another lesson that we have to continually keep in mind when we talk about these different events. So let's shift into the last part of our conversation. And that is just kind of reflect on it a little bit. So in your opinions, what are some of the greatest achievements of the Naxalites and why? So I think that for

me, like just seeing with such clarity, like the impact of the Naxalite movement and how it's influenced so many of the movements that have come after it and struggles across the nation. So in Delangana and Andra, that includes like the struggle for respect of the people, women's movements, the anti-I liquor movement, which is related to feminist movements. The Adivasi rights, there's been irrigation projects, struggles against state repression, tests against farmer and weaver suicides, which I mentioned a little bit earlier. But there's so much actually to learn about that struggle specifically. It's very much ongoing and really, really heartbreaking as well. But also like movements against World Bank dictated policy. And then most

recently, like the Thelalangana separatist movement, so Thelangana as a state has not existed for very long. And the formation of the state has definitely been impacted by communists and specifically like the Naxilite movement, kind of related, we see, this is something that a lot of people, and I encourage, like, Indian diaspora and everyone to kind of research is, like, just generally, like, the Naxilite iconoclasm. So, like, there's been a very purposeful and strategic removal of the impact of the Naxilite movement on other social movements on Indian history and gains that have been made by the people and the peasantry. So I think. think that that's that's something to uncover and like doing this episode is really really

awesome because we can talk about all the great impacts but in the wake of of the knuxelberry uprising we also saw like uprisings in talangana districts of orissa and the west bengal and korekata etc like i think a really fun example is like in some cities of west bengal we saw like vandalization of statues of like gondi and and and things like that which is you know directly a response and inspired by the uprising in Naxilbury. And I think V mentioned it earlier, but like the formation of the Red Corridor is directly because of the Naxilite formation. But another example that is really near to me is like insurgent poetry.

So there's been a lot of Thelgu poets who helped form like the Revolutionary Writers Association, Cherawanda Raju. He was also like charged literally with conspiracy. with other poets and their poetry which like talked about violence and the importance of violence and they were imprisoned for that and Maoists from AP also helped organize the tribals in Chethysker which we mentioned a couple of times as like currently is a very important stronghold as well over the issue of like land rights and displacement during the 80s and that state has emerged as a stronghold in in the recent decades basically since 2000 when mining was initiated so those are all

kind of like just just a bunch of different examples of how the knackslite movement has impacted other other organizations and movements in india and like kind of some of their greatest achievements in my opinion wonderful so let's just move on then because you just as you offered the perfect segue how have the next lights more broadly influenced other left wing formations and organizations throughout india yeah so um i think what's incredible about the knapsites is that they are the longest surviving revolutionary movement in India, like in recent history, because it's a struggle that's been continuing on for nearly five decades, and it's been able to stand amidst state repression in many ways. And I think it's extremely significant because it has successfully

become threatening to the state, you know, like, and that's a hard thing because it, obviously that results in more repression, state repression. But the fact that they've become, they've kind of materialized in their own way, their goal of kind of taking down the state is pretty incredible to me. Because, you know, Man Mohan Singh, who was the finance minister, he described the Nax Lites is the single greatest threat to the internal security of the country since independence. So obviously, like, the state repression is horrific and just so, like, it's, yeah, fascist militias, know, like the paramilitary offensive, but the fact that they've been able to materialize that

to some extent is pretty incredible to me, because they are literally a community that has nothing that is constantly being raised off their land, and they've been able to politicize themselves and pick up arms against the state. But I think, you know, in many ways that has resulted in so many leftist movements in India and forms of dissent as being branded as Maoists. And, you know, it's become, Maoism has become, you know, even to more parliamentary parties, communist parties in India, it's become very pathologized and very stigmatized as, you know, them being terrorists. So I think that it's hard because, I think that a lot of paramilitary communist parties,

sorry, not parent, sorry, parliamentary communist parties have made great strides in whatever limitations, you know, the institution of the state can give them in terms of, you know, especially in Kerala, like their health and education statistics are incredible, but that is impressive amidst the whole state of India being under fascist rule under the BJP. but I think that the Maoists, you know, like they are, the parliamentary communist parties have also expressed a lot of condescension towards the Maoists because the malists are explicitly in armed struggle and they don't waver on that because a lot of the parliamentary communist parties, they kind of use this rhetoric of like we are, you know, we're peaceful as opposed to the malists. And I think that has stigmatized them as a whole and kind of, made any sort of dissension being branded as malice, even if they're not. So I think, as I was talking about earlier, the term urban Naxil has been used in the past couple of years because there's been a lot more, like, stronger social movements in urban areas against the state, such as the

protests against the CAA that happened in December and January. And even before that, you know, there have been urban struggles of anti-cast struggles against lynchings that happen of Dalzbojjan people and Muslims. So, you know, they're all termed by the government as urban naxels because they're seen as those who are threatening the state in whatever way. So, and it's interesting because the term urban naxel actually came out of naxelite strategy to, like, target more urban centers in their front. but it's been co-opted by, you know, nationalist forces to describe, you know, anyone who dissents against a state. And especially by the BJP, they've been using it a lot to kind of, you know, like this just weeding out the communists, like this McCarthy sort of ideology that, as you talked about, happens within, like, fascist's coalitional regimes. and the term urban maxil has also been another term is like anti-national you know that's also being used and like sedition charges are very heavy for those that they deem Maoists so I think it has had a huge

influence on the way we talk about kind of any revolutionary movement in India whether or not they are identify as naxels and I think that shows how influential they are as a threat to this state. I think it's interesting you say that because they're simultaneously, I feel like their achievements are erased while their quote unquote like violent actions and and things that aren't even necessarily attributed to them are are labeled as an axelite. So it's like this simultaneous like rewriting of their very purpose and intention and action. It's, it's reminiscent in some ways of the reactionaries here in the in the U.S. and how they talk about something like Antifa, right? On one hand, they want to puff out their chest and say Antifa are just

a bunch of, you know, noodle armed college kids who we could easily beat up. But on the other hand, they're the ones knocking at the gates and they're going to take over the suburbs and they're going to implement anarchism and communism all over the country, right? It's sort of a similar dynamic, heightening the fear aspects while downplaying anything good that, you know, something like Antifa does, for example, is just getting information out on Nazis and people's communities to protect people and that's never ever brought up same thing with uh with black lives matter just the hysteria on the white right in this country about what black lives matter is and you know these these white reactionaries absolutely losing their minds in the face of what are overwhelmingly

just peaceful protest for basic human equality and i think that gets at that this uh this mawist idea of reactionaries being paper tigers in india you see the reactionaries whether state reactionaries or paramilitary reactionaries having all the advantages with money, with weapons, with media outlets, every single advantage you could possibly ask for. And yet they're still scared shitless by even the specter of communism or the Maoists, etc. And you see that dynamic in every country reactionaries like here in the U.S. with the police. I mean, they have unlimited backup. They have military surplus vehicles.

I mean, they have a million weapons around their waistband at all. times, surrounded by backup, full riot gear, and yet they're still acting like they're the victims and they're scared shitless of empty water bottles and whatnot. So I don't know. I just think it really gets at this idea of reactionary psychology and how underneath all of their bluster and tough man sort of posturing, they're really trembling cowards and they're scared as hell of these movements that represent real liberty, real freedom, real democracy in a way they can never represent. Yeah, another, like, incredible achievement that I've seen is, like, you know, in the US, we talk a lot about this idea of, like, political education. Like, we need to educate people

on, you know, like, Marxist ideologies and understanding, like, it's important to form political education groups to join this struggle and, you know, constantly critique ourselves. And what's incredible about the next slide is that they've been able to undertake these. forms of political education in the forest, like, autonomously. Like, there are pictures of maxillites reading from the little red book, like Mal's little red book, and, like, successfully implementing those forms of revolutionary ideology within the way they take up arms, within the way they train, within the way they critique themselves as a party. So I think the form of political education that they've been able to achieve is really, really incredible.

Absolutely. And to think of like the college educated blue checkmark liberals here in the U.S. that say making people read marks is elitist. And meanwhile, you know, people all over the world in a million different contexts, oftentimes with no educational system and complete illiteracy have managed to engage with the communist tradition and make their movements all the sharper for it. And so there again we see this absurd contradiction between the privileged aspects of the petty bourgeois here in the U.S. and real people fighting for real liberation the world over. Fascinating. Similar to Palestinian fedains who literally self-educate themselves within rural parts of the country. And it's so incredible the way they're able to do that. Yeah, and they do it because their lives, their liberation, their emancipation is not abstract.

It's real. It's something that's life and death for them. It's not just an identity online. And so there's a lot of just, just, courage and deep things that we can pull from that and be inspired by. Absolutely. Well, I do want to touch on possible criticisms. I think it's always fair to mention that as well when it comes to these movements. Nothing is perfect, of course. So what are some legitimate criticisms of the Naxalites in your opinion? And maybe we can talk a little bit about the contradictions that exist

within the movement overall. So I think we kind of touched on them already. First, like just as a preface, like, I just don't think in terms of my own positionality and, like, lack of experience or on-on-the-ground knowledge that it seems very fair to form any kind of criticism for this movement. And also, like, as V just mentioned, like, they are very thorough and methodical about their own self-criticism and, like, past mistakes and actions. There's a lot of interviews anonymously about about their own criticisms in the news and responding to certain violent acts or strategies that they consider mistakes and how members of their own party have like faced consequences for those actions and things like that. But I think the two

kind of main criticisms would be generally like first their opposition to the Soviet Union, as be mentioned, like this focus on the Soviet Union at Orthodoxy. as revisionist and denouncing them and specifically for the Soviet Union support of the Indian state. So that's kind of one of the main criticisms is like whether that was a legitimate line or position and how that's kind of impacted their position in the larger political landscape. And then the second kind of main criticism being this idea of like the masculinity within the formation of the next light movement and kind of the ways. in which that women may be facing violence within the party

or like their actions, orientation around gender, I would say that those are kind of the two criticisms that are dealt to the next light party generally, whether I don't really have that many personal criticisms myself because I feel like we've talked about this a lot, but at the point in which the work that they're doing is so important and the threat that they, have faced the Indian state and government with is kind of the only legitimate real threat

militarily right now and currently like any any real criticism would be I think empty and hollow personally yeah I think as Ria said you know like I you know living in the U.S. right now and you know I don't know if I have the right like I don't know if I have the right like I don't know if I have the right to like legitimately critique a, you know, a party of indigenous peasants who took up arms against the state. But I do think that there are contradictions that I see generally within like Indian social movements because I think the first one is their belief that like the Soviet Union and the U.S. are both kind of imperialist forces in similar ways. And I think that's, you know, a very contentious amongst, you know, Marxist language.

and because, you know, categorizing the Soviet Union as an imperialist, you know, force is, I don't know if I would accurately, you know, represent, I would accurately describe them as that because of like how embedded they were in, in helping communist movements around the world, especially in providing support for them at certain times. And I think that the second thing is that, you know, the constitution was written by, Dr. Mbedkar, who was a Dalith revolutionary, and a lot of Dalit communities want, you know, as India is becoming more of a fascist state, a lot of Dalaiq communities want to adhere to the constitution, which categorizes India as a socialist secular state. And in the name of Hindu fascism, their constitutional rights are being eroded. in the name of Islamophobia, in the name of casteist violence, in the name of neoliberalism. So I think that, you know, I don't know if the Naxite movement would consider, you know, a reversion back to the Constitution as their ultimate goal, because I think they want kind of the destruction of the Indian state as a whole. So I think there are some contradictions there because I don't think that Mbethkarite and Dalek

movements are necessarily opposed to Naxlai ideology at all. In fact, it's probably the opposite. But I do think there are contradictions there of like just considering the Indian state in a more nuanced way. Interesting. And I think that's a incredibly principled sort of approach to not want to critique movements

that you have so much distance from given the hardship that they're operating under. So I really appreciate that response. and then just speaking more broadly about the Soviet Union and the position of the next lights towards them is really rooted in the Sino-Soviet split, and that is a historical event, event that I very much plan on covering in-depth on an upcoming episode because I think so much of these sorts of debates are centered around that, and I think it's a fascinating historical episode in socialist and communist history and has lots of lessons for us to learn today. So just, you know, that's too much to get into here today, but I will be doing an episode.

in the coming months on that topic specifically to help people think through that. And then just to understand just sort of how that split affected these different movements around the world when they had to kind of pick a side in some weird way. So that's important. So we'll get to that for sure. Did you want to say anything about Kerala or the cast being a central question before we get into the last question? I can stick a little to that.

I think that one way that there are a lot of controversy. predictions embedded within, like, communist movements in India is just the split between parliamentary communist parties and the Naxalites, because as I mentioned, a lot of parliamentary communist parties, such as in Kerala or previously in West Bengal, when it was under a communist state government, is, you know, they, they don't see the Naxilites as allies necessarily, and it obviously depends on what split or, like, which specific party, Because there's so many different, there are student communist groups, there are, you know, more on the cultural and arts side. There are communist groups, which I have a lot of respect for.

And it depends on which communist, you know, party you're talking about. But I think there is a certain condescension that, you know, especially the CPI in Kerala has towards the Naxalites. And generally, I think there's something to be said about parliamentary communist movements. and anti-cast movements in India, because they're not always aligned, even though materially, most people of the Hujan communities are suffering economically under capitalism and casteism. But I think within the parties themselves, there is often dissension in seeing kind of communist parties as those that uphold caste supremacy in certain ways. And I think that's something that's constantly contradicting

within Indian politics but yeah it's it's all very nuanced and there's so many different movements in India because it's just a massive country like 1.2 billion people so I don't want to make like broad claims about any movement but yeah I think that's kind of

what I would say yeah I would add that beyond condescension like there is like physical and military tension as well with with the state of Kerala opposing and and passing legislation specifically to put down the Nax Lain Movement within the state.

But a lot of this is not even necessarily in any kind of, I mean, part of it for sure is ideological opposition, but a large part of it is also just to gain standing with the national and federal level government and to gain standing with the people who a majority like we've mentioned like the middle class like Indian population

who opposed the Nax Slight movement. So a lot of it is to just gain legitimacy. among other political parties and create alliances and to like play this game of politics which functionally is like pretty pretty corrupt like beyond agreements within different political parties agreements between corporations and things like that so a large part of it is is just to play a game and gain legitimacy in a parliamentary manner so I think that the contradiction isn't you know limited to necessarily just like condescension but there is like material antagonisms between the two, not just the two, like, as we mentioned, there's a lot of different

parties and movements, but there are specific relationships that have changed over time and like material harm that's been caused to different movements because of, because of this, despite, you know, like, their ideological similarities, despite, like, their shared history, despite, you know, their shared goals and their shared care and, you know, desire for genuine community and and socialism and communism in the state so i think generally within history we see that a lot of fault of leftist factionalism is kind of the cause of the oppressor which in this case it's you know the fascist state you know like i think they have a material and vested interest in dividing you know oppressed people amongst identity lines amongst you know cast lines amongst

you know obviously like class lines so I think that part of it is definitely part of the state you know like the the BJP you know the Modi regime but also previously just like any state institution specifically national institution because at some point if you know if the communist parties are engaging in state politics there is there are certain you know forms of revision that come about in order to play the game as real politics and electoralism. Yeah, I think that's a great point. And, you know, well-meaning socialist movements that do take the sort of democratic socialist route or the institutional route, you know, a main critique of it is no matter how well-intentioned

you may be, that by operating in these systems conditioned by capitalism and imperialism, you eventually, even subconsciously in some level, begin to have to morph to, fit the system and succeed within the limits set by your oppressor. So if we have a tension between Kerala and the Maoists, for example, there could be a million reasons, but that's certainly one of them. And while, you know, maybe you have to morph your ideas or, you know, fall into revisionism to stay alive in that, in that electoralist system, we do see the Maoist for better or worse, whatever your critiques may be, amongst the most oppressed, amongst the most poor, fighting a real revolution and those tensions exist in communist and socialist movements the world

over. And if you are a democratic socialist movement that tries to use the democratic institutions of your country to come up and you succeed, well, you get the Yende and Chile treatment. You get the coup treatment. You get the imperialist teeming up and squashing you treatment. And so there's something to be learned from that as well. But I appreciate the nuances there. And perhaps in the future we'll do an episode more on just focusing on Kerala. and that whole thing so we can get a better idea of that formation. So last question before we get into recommendations. What can revolutionaries here in North America learn from the Naxalites, in your opinion?

So I think as we talked about, like, it's just such a longstanding movement with such a large impact that very few people necessarily outside of the United States really care to study. but there's just so much for us to learn in how they have organized the colonized population underneath the Indian government, right? Organized them and centered their voices and needs and positioned them in such a way to oppose imperialism, capitalism, feudalism, casteism, et cetera. And I think there's something to be learned from that, especially now, like when we're talking about the uprisings in the United States and how colonized and non-settlers in the United

States like what does a movement what does liberation what what strategically are our options in building structures and and choosing a militant approach like of the protracted people's war in in the United States context where we see like a lot of parallels and similarities in terms of the capabilities what does our fight look like and what is the political landscape look like, et cetera. And so I think there's a lot to learn about that just in terms of strategy and the movement that they've built there and to kind of see and study like what is the state response to their movement. And I think that the question also like on the Naxil approach to like violence, I think is like a really cool thing for us to study and learn from like their

principled approach to violence as a tool, their commitment to self-criticism, self-preservation and how they've been so successful and, like, been able to keep this longevity of their movement, especially in the United States, where we see time and time again that our movements are killed, our leaders are killed. And, like, despite these so sad, like, deaths of their leaders, we see certain valleys and peaks for sure in their movement. But they've been able to keep their movement alive, despite the killings and massacres of their cadre and their leaders. So that's something that I think that we can learn from for sure, just in terms of like commitment, longevity, momentum, political momentum, strategy, et cetera. And I think that that's something just about the Marxist approach in general is like the scientific approach of how we study movements in history and apply them to different contexts and situations and material conditions.

And I think although there's a lot of differences in our material conditions here in the United States and India, there's still a lot to be said and gained. about how we can build a movement here that's more cohesive, similar to an excellent movement. So I think that there's just a lot of principles and strategy that we, in the United States, could absorb and kind of learn and practice ourselves. Yeah, I think everything Ria said is super on point. I think that, you know, in the U.S., I don't think we've ever quite had a movement, like in recent history of like armed peasants rising up and I think that's something in itself that's incredibly laudable because you know as communists who are familiar with the U.S. context like we

we fight for revolution like we want revolution and like I think we lose sight of like the only way to do that sometimes is like through like armed revolt ultimately and I think as Ria said like the question of violence is really interesting because obviously in very similar fashions all over the world when the state has monopoly on violence any sort of forms of self-defense from those who are oppressed is seen as violence but you know like huge companies building factories and mining forests is not seen as violence that's seen as like in the name of development and and it's almost like a visibleized form of violence for so many people because it's just seen as the way of life, the way we do things under capitalism. But for those who are oppressed, they materially live

through this violence and they defend themselves the only way they know how. So I think questions of the monopoly on violence, state monopoly on violence is really applicable to the U.S. because, you know, all this discourse about looting and, you know, burning down buildings is very applicable if we want to understand the ways that, you know, the state enacts violence every single day and second on oppressed communities. And so, like, looting is only, like, our right to, like, redistribute resources and shouldn't be seen in the same definition of violence as, you know, what violence truly is. So I think those lessons just more abstractly about what violence is is something we can definitely learn because the media propaganda tries to

categorize the naxolites as categorically violence and I think we have a duty to like really unpack that and see how if any communist or social socialist movement comes about how the state will do everything in their power to repress it and also you know turn the tables and propaganda is that those who are oppressed are the violent ones. So I think there's a lot to learn there. Absolutely. And just the discourse on violence. I mean, it's so absurd and it's shared in all these countries in the U.S.

If there's a peaceful protest where one window gets broken, the media will report it as protests turn violent today. But, you know, something like just the completely botched, incompetent, and careless non-response to the pandemic where we have 9-11s worth of American deaths every three days in this country never gets framed as violence or, you know, we can go down the line and give a million examples. But that's one reason among so many others, while why the left generally, globally, broadly needs our own media outlets, our own ability to shape our own narrative and get our own ideas out there because the corporate media will never, ever be fair to us

and really has a huge impact on the way so many people around the world, whether in India, the U.S. or anywhere else, understand the world that they live in. And that's one front in a multi-fronted war, of course, but it's an important one. Well, thank you, Ria and V for coming on. I learned so much from both of you. I really appreciate the time and effort you put into educating myself and my listeners on this very complex topic. So thank you so much. Before I let you go, can you maybe offer some recommendations for people who want to learn more about the next slides? Yeah, I would totally recommend just from our intros. I would recommend reading Charu Marjimda's work on Marxist.org, along with other Indian communists, such as like Bagat Singh, Anurada Gandhi,

and I think Ria had more solid book recommendations. Yeah, just also, there's a pretty good documentary Red Ant Dream. It's a little older, but I would still say it's like a good starting point. But in addition, I would also recommend the books and essays, Politics of Massacre and Resistance by Shishmita, Maoists in India by Azad, and edited by the Friends of Azad post his death, storming the gates of heaven by Bhattacharya, remembering revolution, gender, violence, and subjectivity in India's Naxelberry movement by Roy, scripting the change by Anuraba Gandhi, and then understanding Maoists' observations from participant observer in Andhra Pradesh by Vainu Gopal Rao.

Yeah, those are just some sources that were really helpful. for me that I've read over and over again. They have some really, really great essays written by people in the movement themselves as well. And they talk about a lot of things and their strategy and what inspires them. And I think that they're really, really good reading materials personally, like found them very inspiring and rewarding. But yeah, that's where I would start. Yeah, and I think more broadly, just annihilation of caste by Dr. Mbethkar is a reading for anyone who wants to learn more about resisting caste supremacy in India, along with resisting capitalism and neoliberalism, because he was a really brilliant, prolific thinker. And, yeah, I would definitely recommend that. Wonderful. I'll put as much of that in the show notes as possible, and also perhaps link to Ria's.

a Twitter account so anybody that wants to follow up and ask a specific question or get another recommendation can pursue that. Thank you both so much for coming on. I deeply, deeply appreciate it. Stay safe out there and we'll be in touch in the future.

Maybe we can work together again. Thank you so much. I really enjoy it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Check the southeast mouthpiece. Hit him with that loud speech. Funny that they tell me. Motherfucker crown me

I'll be rowdy What you know about me Fuck all of the formulaic image That they tout me Act out, lash out Hit it take the fast route Ground out I spazz out

Then do it till I pass out No cut out or lay out Cause I'm gonna get that face out My face out my fist proud So can you taste my name now The hell that I raise now I break out my place now No faking my face now

I'm taking my name now They grade out They gave out the pics out No bail out. They made graves but gave out a false hope. We pray about this country your dreams. But we've been the seams. Assisting the fiends of people have seen.

Oppression that means. A pyramid scheme would send it from me. We search it for cream. In love with the green American dream. A fantasy theme. They run in supreme. You're back to the wall. Your knees so the cracks can't breathe when you lack the freedom of that.

They stab in the front till you bleed in the back. They point an attack to you crack. And that's that eat up the facts. They feed in you that's a key to the hack. When they need you to act in a way so they keep you believe in you lack. And he says to yourself till you don't get it. back curtain call oh oh oh oh when it's curtains call oh oh when it's curtain call oh oh oh when it's curtain called because when it's curtain call you're so person after all when the truth all start to fall

will you rise or will you fall systems not be standing tall all the power full involved they've been hoping that you fall will you rise or will you fall tell me when it's curtain call curtain call oh oh oh when it's curtain call oh oh when it's curtain call because when it's curtain call will they all give you applause for playing the part they called you to be you lose it all hoping that you don't evolve because they know that's up and fall are you in it for the hall play a role and be involved did you follow protocol like they wanted you to brawl bloody knuckles till you fall curtains draw till you withdraw everything about you not you don't recognize that all person that you brought that's all this is when it's

curtain call this is when it's curtain call who's the person after all when the truth i'll start to fall will you rise or will you fall systems stop be standing tall all the powerful involved they've been hoping that you fall will you rise or will you fall tell me when it's curtain call oh oh oh when it's curtain call Oh, oh, oh, when it's curtain call Oh, oh, oh, when it's curtain call Because when the show ends in sent it's curtain call, you die, you die Because when the show ends in its curtain call, you die, you die

Because when the show and sent it's curtain call you die, you die, because when the show and sent it's curtain call you die, you die. BORNANI, BOR, BOR, BOR, BOR, BOR, BOR.