(In reply to Satya Narain Singh’s document)
Recently Bihar State Committee has taken a resolution to assure us that the struggle in Bihar would be raised to a higher level very shortly. The Bihar State Committee thinks that in order to raise the struggle to higher levels fight against left opportunism in politics and authoritarianism in organization is necessary and it further thinks that the source of these mistakes lies within the central leadership (i.e. me) itself and the central leadership is pursuing “some other’s thought” (here too, meaning me) instead of “Mao’s thoughts”. So naturally, they have called upon the entire party to fight against this leadership to oust it.
I think, this resolution of the Bihar State Committee is wrong. I think, it is revisionism which has remained as the main mistake within our general party members and this very revisionism is creating obstruction to our march forward. I am trying to place my own comments on the issues raised by the Bihar State Committee in this resolution.
(1) While dealing with the national and international situation the resolution has referred to intensive people’s tide all over the world, but the first guidance of Chairman Mao in his 20th May call is, “Danger of a new world war still persists and people of all the countries should be prepared for this.” This guidance has been deleted altogether. The resolution doesn’t even mention it. I think, deleting this guidance is tantamount to belittling the imperialist power from the point of view of tactics. And the alertness of the masses and the party would be slackened due to this and as a result, the secret set up of the party would inevitably become weak and consequently, we would have to go for more and more legal and open activities.
(2) I have always said that, the rich peasants resort mainly to feudal exploitation in our country. So our relationship with the rich peasants would be one of struggle. The main problem before the agrarian revolution is to bring the vacillating middle peasants also firmly to our side along with the poor and landless peasants. The party would definitely have to base itself on the poor and landless peasants and to make the poor and landless peasants realize the necessity of bringing the middle peasants firmly to the side of the revolution. Otherwise, political power can not be consolidated. The vacillation noticed among the middle peasants is due the fact that, they remain mainly under the influence of the small landlords and the rich peasants. The middle peasants can be drawn permanently to our side only when we can fight against the influence of the rich peasants. In these cases, parochialism expresses itself thus–poor and landless peasants often identify the upper-middle peasants as rich peasants and the unity of the poor and landless peasants with the middle peasants gets weakened due to this. And the main question concerning annihilation is the class hatred of the poor and landless peasants. If in any case the poor-landless peasants insist on the annihilation of a rich peasant, then the reason for this should not be searched in the class base of that rich peasant, but in his political attitude and in such a case, his annihilation would be fully justified.
(3) The line of demarcation between revolution and revisionism is that, the revisionists demand guarantee of a victory before launching a struggle and the revolutionaries dare to fight and dare to achieve victory. The revolutionaries are not afraid of defeat. Chairman has taught us, “Fight, fight again if you fail, fight again if your fail again, till you achieve victory. This is the logic of the masses and they will never oppose this logic. This is another Marxist rule.”
The difference between the cities and the villages is that, power can be grabbed in the villages and the political power of the masses can be established. But power can not be grabbed and political power of the masses can not be established in the cities unless the cities are surrounded by the peoples’ army. So I think, dividing the struggles between offensive and defensive is nothing but vestiges of our revisionist past. The great Chinese party has alarmed us saying that, “ If we try to keep the leading comrades in the cities for indefinite periods, then Chinese experience has proved that we have to lose those cadres.” The workers and oppressed people in the cities have the full right to revolt. The more we wage fight against the revisionists, the more the people in the cities will rise in revolt and participate in struggle. The cadres who will come out of these struggles and revolts would feel the urge to go to the villages and integrate with the poor-landless peasants and would be equipped to join the armed peasants’ struggle for seizure of power.
(4) The resolution of the Bihar committee has made long discussion on self defense and has quoted from Chairman’s writings. My opinion is, protecting oneself and annihilating the enemy, both these aspects are there within guerilla struggle. Launching sudden attack, one shelter after another and the underground set up together protect our fighting army. Any attempt to weaken the secrecy of our party should be criticized. It is true that, once guerilla struggle develops to some extent, some tendency to go for open work by abandoning this secrecy develops and political struggle should be carried out against this tendency. Laying stress on protecting oneself without this specific attitude and style of work will only strengthen the revisionist tendency among us and will weaken the attitude of “Dare to fight” and “To hold the fate of our people in our own hands”. Chairman in his 20th May declaration has said, “If the people of a small country dare to fight, seize arms in their hands and firmly hold the fate of their own country in their own hands, they can definitely defeat the aggressive offensive of any big country. This is the rule of history.”
(5) The Bihar committee has found out authoritarianism in our organizational work and has accused us of encouraging slavish attitude among the members. They have demanded more centralized activities within the party. I think, at this juncture, in this era of civil war, centralization is not only impossible, but harmful too. This attitude of centralization weakens the initiative of the party members and due to this, party’s ability to strike also gets weakened. Regular meetings of the central committee or the polit bureau is not possible, the risk involved in that is so much that it can not be taken. But centralization of politics is also indispensable. So in the few state conferences where I was present I have told the comrades to criticize the political and organizational policies obtained from the higher committees and to discuss them with the party members. It is in this way that the party members can be educated about our political and organizational methods and the wrong ideas about politics and organization can be corrected. Since central committee meeting could not be held, we have formed regional bureau with the central committee members of a particular zone and the bureaus have been empowered to invite any central committee member to attend any zonal committee meeting so that every central committee member can express his opinion about the centre. We have also given this guarantee that any resolution adopted against the centre would be circulated throughout the country so that better realization can be arrived at.
I do not understand, if this is not democracy, what else is. Despite all these, vague charges of authoritarianism are being leveled against the centre, and the revolutionary members who are following center’s directives are being charged of slavish loyalty. This is heinous.
October, 1970