Neither Marx nor Mao

By: K Venu

It is interesting to observe how CPI-M is responding to reports on the border clashes between India and China at Galwan region where soldiers have been killed on both sides. In a statement issued two days after the incident, they are advising both countries to take steps to de-escalate the situation; they even carefully avoided mentioning China by name. Two years back when similar border clashes occurred at Doklam the approach of the CPI-M was almost same. We will have to look back into the history of the relations between these two countries which emerged as independent countries almost simultaneously.

In the 1950s the countries maintained cordial relations. In that decade, however, the Chinese started occupying Tibet which led to the emigration of the Tibetan religious leader and feudal ruler Dalai Lama along with a big following into Indian territory in 1959. Jawaharlal Nehru received them as immigrants and protected them. The Chinese leadership took it as a serious provocation and thereafter started hostilities on the border which ultimately led to the India-China war in 1962.


In the late 1950s, ideological division in the world communist movement was sharpening and the movement was divided into two, one led by the Soviet party and the other by the Chinese party. All East European ruling communist parties were with the Soviet party while the Albanian and North Korean parties and a majority of the parties in the third world developing countries were with the Chinese party. In the Indian communist party supporters of both Soviet Union and China were there. At the time of the India-China war in 1962 a good number of leaders upholding Chinese line were arrested and jailed. EMS Namboothiripad, who was taking a centrist stand, issued the following statement which became internationally famous: “...the Chinese had entered territory that they thought was theirs and [so] there was no question of war. At the same time the Indians were defending territory that they considered theirs and so they were not committing aggression either.”

After the formal split of the Indian communist party in 1964, the CPI-M was formed. Those who adopted the Chinese path were not supposed to participate in parliamentary elections. They had to start revolutionary activities. But the CPI-M participated in some state assembly elections in 1965 and the general elections in 1967. This provoked many in the CPI-M ranks, who considered the leadership’s stand as treacherous and counter-revolutionary. A section of them in West Bengal, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh organized armed peasant struggles which became the Naxalite movement. As they could not withstand state repression the movement transformed into extremist terror groups which got decimated within a few years. During this period, some of the leaders went to China and met the leaders there who advised them that the terrorist activities could never help them build up a revolutionary movement especially in a country like India where a parliamentary system was functioning effectively. But by the time such reformations could be put into practice, the movement had already been wiped out from many areas where it was somewhat active.

A few years ago, some of the activists who were trying to rejuvenate the movement in Andhra and Bihar declared that they have formed a new party named Maoist Communist Party of India. Again, they could not withstand the organized suppression by the state machinery. In a country like India where parliamentary democracy is well established and accepted by the people, terrorist movements have no future. In short, Chinese communist ideology has no role to play in the present Indian context.

As the present liberalized Chinese economy is a big success it provides hope to the CPI-M that the Chinese economic growth can be emulated by it in India. It is this legacy that continues to haunt the CPI-M and ensures its silence even as China adopts an openly confrontational attitude towards India.

K Venu is a social activist and author and was one of the intellectual leading lights of the Naxalite movement during its heyday.Disclaimer: The writer’s views are his own.