CPI(M ) to launch campaign against Naxals

Livid at regular fatal attacks on its cadres in West Bengal, the CPI(M) has decided to launch a nationwide campaign against Maoists from December-end.

The campaign will be aimed at cornering the Maoists on political and ideological platforms at a time when confrontations with them were severely affecting the party in many parts of Bengal, and intellectuals were extending moral support for the Maoists as the messiah of tribals. CPI(M)’s bête noire in Bengal, Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, is also running a sustained campaign that “Maoists and Marxists are two sides of the same coin. They are comrades-in-arm.”

“We want to counter the Maoists’ use of violence and show that they don’t belong to the real Left ideology. They have nothing to do with Mao Zedong. They are distorting the theories and principles of Mao. This is pseudo-Maoism,” CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat told Business Standard. The CPI(M) is not only worried about being at the receiving end of Maoist violence in West Bengal, it is also afraid intellectuals’ support is glorifying them as the real Left force in the country, robbing the CPI(M) of its proletarian tag.

“We are going to launch a nationwide campaign against the Maoists. We will publish booklets and pamphlets. It will be a campaign on political and ideological platform. We expect to launch our pamphlets in another week,” said Karat.

The party is likely to make the violent ways of the Maoists its first issue for campaign. The “mindless violence” of the Maoists would be highlighted to show that they have little regard for the law of the country. The campaign materials would also showcase the differences between Marxists and the Maoists on issues like democracy. “We will talk about how the Left sectarian politics that led to ultra-Left activism in the past have created problems for the society,” said Nilotpal Basu, a prominent member of the CPI(M) central committee. The CPI(M) would also try to show how the Indian Maoists had little regard for their comrades in Nepal. While the Nepalese Maoists shed the path of violence and joined the democratic mainstream, their Indian counterparts preferred to continue their guerrilla war against the state and showed least interest in democratic processes and fulfil legitimate aspirations of the downtrodden, the party said.

The party’s politburo meeting is being convened on December 26-27 at New Delhi, where the final campaign materials would be discussed.