THERE is no greater curse for a people than the loss of national independence just as there is no greater curse for the human soul than the loss of personal freedom. I think that at all times I should have loved freedom, but in times in which we live and as I ponder over the fate that has befallen the people of Afghanistan and Iraq, I am disposed to worship it.

The tragic end of Ali, a young Iraqi in “liberated” Baghdad haunts me. “First he stumbled around the corner, dripping blood and collapsed near the front door of his home. An American soldier leaped out and ran up to Ali, firing a shot in the air to scatter the crowd, and then aiming the rifle at the boy.

“The boy’s mother knelt by his side and implored the soldier not to kill him. She kissed the soldier’s boots”... “If they had let us take him to the hospital, my son would be alive. It doesn’t matter if you are a Muslim or a Christian or a Jew. How could anyone treat a human being this way”?

Iraq never threatened US security and had no Al Qaeda links. But Bush wanted an Armageddon with the Islamic world. So he decided to conquer an Arab country. How long is it going to take for America to recognize that the war it so foolishly started is a fiasco, tragic, deeply dehumanizing and ultimately unwinnable? How much more time, how much more money, and how many more lives is it going to take?

The Islamic world has been shaken up like a sleeping person awakened from a tranquillizing dream. “Muslims are filled with feelings of impotence and frustration”, said Abdelouahed Belkeziz, secretary-general of the OIC, “ as some of the countries are occupied, others are under sanctions, a third group accused of sponsoring terrorism”.

Today Bush regards himself as history’s lone knight riding out on another mission, the modern version of the mysterious cowboy arriving in a corrupt frontier town. It is no secret that religious right and Evangelicals who believe that Bible is truth, that its members have an imperative to proselytize and convert, that Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation, have a powerful influence on one of the most religious White houses in US history.

No wonder, Bush, with a messianic zeal, has unleashed the hounds of war in a part of the world where “met not just Asia and Africa, or West and East, but Creation and Creator. God himself had chosen the Middle East in which to confront his people. Here were his words revealed. His commandments received. His miracle performed; here trod His prophets, His lawgivers, and here, like swallows returning to the barn of their hatching, flocked his followers in prayers and pilgrimage”.

Today no religion in the modern world is as feared and misunderstood as Islam. It haunts the popular western imagination as an extreme faith that promotes authoritarian governments, female oppression and terrorism. It is not true that the Muslims are uniformly filled with hatred of Christians and Jews. Anti-Semitism is a Christian vice.

Hatred of the Jews became marked in the Muslim world only after the creation of Israel in 1948 and the subsequent loss of Arab Palestine. Anti-American sentiment in the Islamic world is rooted in the blind American support for Israel’s war of aggression against the Palestinians.

What is one to make of the general responsible for tracking down Osama bin Laden, Lt-Gen William “Jerry” Boykin, who told an audience in Oregon that the Islamists hate the US, “because we are a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian and the enemy is a guy called Satan”.

Recently promoted to deputy under secretary of Defence for intelligence, Boykin went on to say of the war against Mohammad Farrah Aidid in Somalia — in which he participated — that “I knew my God was bigger than his — that I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol”.

Secretary defence Donald Rumsfeld said of these extraordinary remarks that, “it doesn’t look like any rules were broken”. We are now told that an “inquiry” into Boykin’s comments is under way — an “inquiry” about as thorough, no doubt, as those held into the killing of civilians in Baghdad. By making it clear that he sees nothing wrong by giving an important post in the war on terror to someone who believes and says openly, that Allah is false idol, Donald Rumsfeld has gone a long way toward confirming the Muslim world’s worst fears.

Islam is a religion of peace. The Holy Quran condemns all warfare as abhorrent. It permits only war of self-defence and condemns killing and aggression. It is adamantly opposed to the use of force in religious matters.

Its vision is inclusive. It recognizes the validity of all rightly guided religions and praises all the Prophets of the past. The last time, the Holy Prophet preached to the community, he urged the Muslims to use their religion to reach out to others in understanding, since all human beings were brothers. Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) never asked the Jews and Christians to accept Islam because they have received perfectly valid revelations of their own.

Islam is the religion of those who value freedom and independence and know how to protect them. It is the school of those who struggle against imperialism and injustice. It is not the religion of quislings and collaborators who betray their country and describe freedom fighters as extremists and terrorists. It is a liberation movement that calls for social equality and condemns corrupt Muslim elites.

Today, “Islam is the solution”, seems to resonate with an increasing number of people. Whether the West likes it or not, fundamentalism, or “Usuliyyat” as it is called in Islam, is now part of the modern world. It represents a widespread disappointment, alienation, anxiety, and rage that no government can safely ignore.

The success of the Islamic Salvation Front in Algeria in the election held in 1990, sent a clear message to Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, in fact the whole of the Islamic world, that people wanted some form of Islamic government.

In the middle of the 20th century, secularism had been dominant and Islam was irredeemably passe. Now hereditary monarchs, self-appointed presidents and military dictators ruling the Islamic world are uncomfortably aware that if there were truly democratic elections, Islamic governments might well come to power.

Even in secularist Turkey, election in 2002 marked a major turning point. The Justice and Development Party (AKP), a party with religious roots, won a landslide victory that allowed it to form a one-party government with a strong majority in parliament. The victory of a religious party in Turkey and in the two highly sensitive provinces of the NWFP and Balochistan in Pakistan, was like an earthquake.

We may not yet fully measure its impact because of the dust, but for the first time, religious parties came to power in the Islamic world in spite of the state. People are turning to Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan. Palestinians are looking to Mujamah, while the PLO, which in the 1960s carried all before it, is now looking cumbersome, corrupt, and out of date. In the republics of Central Asia, Muslims are rediscovering their religion after decades of Soviet oppression.

Bush and the new conservatives around him hoped they could drain the terrorist swamp. Instead, they have created terrorist breeding swamps all over the Islamic world full of angry Muslims. When a whole people is seething with rage, it becomes a dangerous enemy because rage doesn’t obey orders. When it exists in the hearts of millions of people, it cannot be cut off by pushing a button. We know from a dozen historical examples where a sense of powerlessness leads. It leads to rage which leads to violence. There is no stream into which this anger can flow. It keeps breaking up in search of a destination.

This anger is throbbing now. When this rage overflows, it creates suicide bombers, fuelled by the power of anger, against whom there is no defence. The tragedy of suicide bombers is not excess of aggression but an excess of loyalty, devotion and total commitment to a just cause.

Homicide for unselfish motives, according to Arthur Koestler, is a dominant phenomenon of man’s history. Today the Bush administration is at war with this dominant phenomenon of man’s history. The United States will lose this battle if the Americans don’t make an effort to understand how others think.

Today apathy in the Islamic world is the real enemy. Silence is its accomplice. Today Muslims are lost for a voice. Who in the Islamic world understands the forces of history and has the capacity to move them in a favourable direction? Who has the capacity to look out from a mountaintop, foresee the trend lines of the future, and bend history to serve the interests of the Ummah? Who has the capacity and will to channel and guide this rage and take us on a journey into the future? Who will light a candle in the gloom of our morale? The times cry out for leadership. You don’t create such a man; you don’t discover such a man. You recognize such a man.

AS the number and ferocity of Iraqi attacks on coalition forces, particularly on the US component, have mounted, one sees trends that may compel a review of the Bush doctrine, and affect the political future of President Bush himself. The latest polls in the US show that for the first time since the war was declared on terror, those critical of Mr Bush’s handling of the war in Iraq outnumber those who approve of it.

Though the traumatic effect of the 9/11 attack on America, which President Bush and the neo-cons around him had been exploiting to justify pre-emption, has not been dissipated, the American public is getting seriously concerned over the casualties, and the rising costs of this war.

Iraq had figured prominently in the agenda of hawks in Israel who perceived it as the one country capable of posing a challenge to its security. The neo-conservatives running the Bush foreign policy embraced their aim of emasculating Iraq. Once the war on terrorism had been launched, President Bush’s directives to the Pentagon required that planning for pre-emption against Iraq be taken in hand.

Ground had been prepared progressively for this intervention during 2002. President Bush included Iraq in the “axis of evil” in his State of the Union address in January. He claimed the right to take pre-emptive action against countries suspected of planning terrorist attacks in his speech at West Point in June, and then made that into a doctrine in the National Security Strategy Paper in September.

Preparation of the public opinion in favour of pre-emption against Saddam Hussein proceeded simultaneously, with concerted propaganda over Iraq’s alleged possession and development of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) that were presented as a potential threat to the security of the US. Iraq was also accused of having a secret programme for developing nuclear weapons. Oblique references to Saddam’s backing to terrorist groups were also made, though a link with Al Qaeda could not be established.

While building up its military strength in the region, the US also sought to mobilize UN support for the projected pre-emption. However it ran into strong resistance from France and Germany, which have been major European allies. They urged that peaceful methods be exhausted before resorting to war. The Security Council decided that UN Inspectors, who had been expelled from Iraq in 1998, should resume their inspections to determine whether Iraq had any WMDs or was operating a nuclear programme. Though Saddam Hussein’s government extended unstinted cooperation and the reports of the UN and IAEA Inspectors showed that the US accusations that were backed by Britain had no substance, the US did not agree that the situation could be met by further inspections.

It was becoming clear that public opinion in most parts of the world was against pre-emptive war, with an estimated 80 per cent of the Europeans opposing resort to force. The only country where popular support existed for pre-emption was the US, whose public has not recovered fully from their trauma of the 9/11 attack, owing to constant talk of the ever-present terrorist threat. Claims were made both by Washington and London that their intelligence agencies had incontrovertible evidence not only about Saddam’s possession of WMDs but also his capability to deliver them at short notice. A strong case was also made for “regime change” on account of Saddam’s dictatorial and brutal style of governance.

Despite the lack of a UN mandate, the US resorted to pre-emption on March 20, 2003. Organized resistance was virtually over by April 9, when Baghdad was occupied against only token resistance by Iraqi forces whose heavy equipment had been destroyed under UN supervision after Saddam’s rout in the Gulf War of 1991. There was no formal surrender, as the Iraqi formations simply melted away, a process helped the decision by the victorious coalition to disband Saddam Hussein’s armed forces.

Sporadic resistance continued for another three weeks, by pockets of Saddam loyalists, specially in the Sunni triangle in Central Iraq, lying between the mainly Shia south and the largely Kurdish north. The fact that Saddam had alienated both the Kurds and the Shias by his savage repression after the 1991 war, was expected to facilitate the task of the coalition, whose forces were expected to be welcomed as liberators. On May 1, President Bush claimed victory from the deck of a US aircraft-carrier.

The six months that have elapsed since that claim have exposed the limits of unilateralism. The doctoring of facts and manipulation of intelligence to justify the war are being progressively exposed. The gains that were expected from removing a repressive and brutal regime have not materialized, while costs, in men and material have skyrocketed, and the US image has been tarnished. The US failure to “win the hearts and minds” of the Iraqi people is reflected in resistance to its occupation becoming a national cause. The turn of events has belied all expectations of positive gains from the war on Iraq.

Perhaps the most important element shaping the Iraqi popular attitude has been the total US support to the aggressive and ruthless policy adopted by Ariel Sharon’s government in Israel towards the Palestinians. Though President Bush claimed to be even-handed in his approach to the Palestinian problem, which was the root cause of the rise of terrorism in the Arab and Islamic world, the US kept vetoing resolutions in the Security Council that could have imposed constraints on Israel’s arrogance and brutality. There are growing indications that this has been a major factor in making resistance to the occupation a national cause.

There is lack of credibility about US protestations that it has come to introduce democratic governance and human rights in Iraq. The way it has proceeded in dealing with religious leaders and movements, notably the aspirations of the Shia majority for a leading role, suggests that it is anxious to encourage secular tendencies. There is no genuine meeting of minds with Iraqi leaders and intellectuals. First the high civilian casualties during the brief war, and later the arrest and harsh treatment of thousands of Iraqis accused of being Saddam backers and terrorists have reinforced a nationalist upsurge.

It is significant that even the Iraqi governing council that consists of individuals hand-picked by the US does not toe the American line. Its members who attended the UN General Assembly, supported proposals by France and Germany for a transfer of authority to the Iraqis in nine months, with preparatory steps to be initiated immediately. The council also refused to accept the forces offered by Turkey to the US to help in the maintenance of law and order in Iraq. This has made other countries reluctant to assist the US whose forces are under constant attack, and have suffered more casualties since the war was declared to be over, than during the war. The average number of attacks on the coalition forces has climbed to over thirty per day.

Mr. Bush has sought to re-assure the public opinion at home and abroad that progress has been achieved in reconstruction, and that most Iraqis are better off than they were under Saddam’s rule. However, not only the occupying troops but also Iraqi police recruited to assist in maintaining law and order are being targeted by the Iraqi resistance. On “bloody Sunday” on November 2, when a US helicopter was shot down resulting in 16 fatalities, there were also attacks on three police stations. A columnist in the New York Times compared President Bush to Saddam’s Minister of Information Saeed Al-Sahhaf who was claiming victory even as American forces had occupied most of Baghdad.

Any objective assessment of the pre-emptive war on Iraq gives little comfort to the unilateralist lobby in Washington. Firstly, no weapons of mass destruction have been found despite an intensive search by thousands of troops and experts. Nor has proof of any nuclear programme been unearthed. Dr. Hanns Blix, the Chief UN Inspector, believes that WMDs were destroyed soon after 1991, and the nuclear installations were also eliminated. A controversy has broken out in Britain over “sexed-up reports” on the Iraqi military threat that were not warranted on the basis of hard evidence. The Bush administration has also been criticized for manipulating intelligence reports to justify the attack on Iraq. In fact, Iraq was more sinned at than sinning as the UN sanctions imposed in 1991 were maintained long after any justification, resulting in the death of half a million children from disease and malnutrition.

Is the US any safer or is it worse off so far as terrorism is concerned? The conclusion being drawn is that the threat of terrorism has grown since the US invasion, whereas it was virtually non-existent under Saddam Hussein. Apart from increasing nationalist sentiment against military occupation, militants and terrorists have crossed the long and poorly defended borders of Iraq to join in the struggle against the superpower that is seen as waging war to serve Israeli interests.

President Bush has been able to secure Congressional approval of funds amounting to over $ 87 billion, for the armed forces and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are already reports of cronyism in awarding contracts to companies in which associates of the President have a stake or that have made big campaign contributions. Apart from the difficulty of undertaking major reconstruction projects when insurgency is mounting, other potential donors who met in Madrid in late October are unlikely to disburse funds unless the security situation improves.

President Bush has announced his resolve to stay the course, defeat the terrorists involved in the insurgency, and introduce democracy while building up the Iraqi economy and institutions. However, if the resistance persists, neither peace nor prosperity will be achieved. The US is not having much success in involving the international community, either with peacekeeping or with development.

The long-term solution is to place both these tasks in UN hands, and to recognize the limits of unilateralism. The US aim of maintaining its pre-eminence in the world cannot be achieved through military pre-emption. The lone superpower needs to return to the multilateral path, and to use its influence and enormous economic and technical resources for addressing the real problems of the world.

THE BOAO Economic Forum has called for a new international economic order based on justice as envisaged by the 1974 UN General Assembly resolution. The Chinese prime minister, Wen Jiabao, in his inaugural address at the Asian economic moot held on November 2, in Beijing, set the tone for the South-South cooperation.

Rejecting the age-old exploitative economic and political system, the Chinese leader called for a harmonious partnership among the Asian countries for independent economic development of the region. He stressed the need for a new concept of security that would guarantee peace and its concomitant, development.

However, Jiabao warned of the impediments to regional peace such as intimidation and threat to use force by the strong against the weak and other unconventional pressures, meaning economic sanctions. These, in his opinion, could be countered by increasing the momentum of economic cooperation among the countries of the region.

This vision of a new international political and economic order rejects hegemonism and domination of the debtor nations by their creditors and of the developing South by the industrialized North. The keynote address of General Musharraf was in consonance with his host’s perception as the former made concrete suggestions to his fellow Asians for debt relief of the poor countries, alleviation of poverty and sharing of technology for Asia’s development and a sustainable economic system.

The Pakistan president emphasized the role of private sector in intra-Asian development efforts. His words would have carried more weight if his entourage had some representation of the business sector of his country. Like Davos, Boao Forum, too, relies heavily on the private sector.

However, General Musharraf took full advantage of the opportunity by getting across to his audience that much as the intra-Asian economic cooperation was the need of the hour, the long-running insurgency caused by alien occupation of Kashmir and Palestine and the conflict in Afghanistan have hampered the progress of Saarc, Eco and organization of Central and West Asian countries. The stalled projects of laying of gas pipeline from Iran to Pakistan and from Turkmenistan via Afghanistan to Pakistan and possibly to India lend point to this view. The Chinese premier did not openly say so but he concurred in principle with his Pakistani guest. It is true that over the years China’s foreign policy articulation has ceased to be openly partisan with respect to the Kashmir dispute. Nevertheless it has consistently maintained that the dispute needs to be resolved peacefully and bilaterally, with Beijing acting as a facilitator provided the parties agree to such a role. This is the farthest that China could go in its support for Pakistan.

It must be clear to Pakistani people that under no circumstances would China want India and Pakistan to go to war. It did not encourage Islamabad to fight India during 1965 and 1971. On this, both the Maoists and the post-Mao leaders of China have been firm and consistent. However, if India embarks on a military adventure in Kashmir in a bid to capture Azad Kashmir, China would oppose it tooth and nail but short of war. The reason is very simple.

India wants to recapture the swathe of land that was allegedly ceded by Pakistan to China under the 1963 Sino-Pakistan border treaty. The Chinese would not let India do that. It must be recalled that recently Beijing extended assistance to Islamabad in a project inside Azad Kashmir in the face of vehement protest from the Vajpayee government.

As for the India-Pakistan relations as a whole, Beijing could not advise Islamabad to follow a course different from what it itself has been following vis-a-vis India with whom it has a territorial dispute involving 90,000 square kilometer of land. China has been expanding trade and economic cooperation with India. At the same time, the two adversaries have been engaged in negotiations to resolve the border dispute. In other words, the process of normalization between the two is not hostage to any unusually sensitive issue.

But this does not mean that India and China are not adversaries. The massive arms build-up, the serial flight testing of short- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles and the acquisition of the Phalcon early warning radar system from Israel by New Delhi are aimed not just at Pakistan but also at China as admitted by Atal Behari Vajpayee himself. This makes China and Pakistan long-term allies. At the same time, the looming threat of American unilateralism with its pre-emptive strike doctrine impels other powers, mainly Russia, China and India to close their ranks and resist hagemonism in Asia.

Here is where a new Asian security system is needed to safeguard the political and economic independence of the states of the region. In the past the scheme propounded by Leonid Brezhnev and then Mikhail Gorbachev failed to materialize because of deep rifts among several Asian states. One would find General Musharraf’s prescription of resolution of disputes most efficacious since it would pave the way for regional cooperation.

Pakistan and China have set an example for the rest of the world that despite differing ideological and economic systems, states can still enhance co-operation in social, economic, cultural and technological fields. Musharraf and Wen Jiabao have practised what they professed at Boao Forum. Pakistan and China signed eight agreements including one envisaging the setting up of a defence and security consultative mechanism for promoting military co-operation. This has a considerable bearing on the future of Pak-China ties.

The signing of an extradition treaty and Musharraf’s assurance to his counterpart that Pakistan’s territory would not be allowed to be used for cross-border incursion into China would strengthen confidence between the two countries. Another positive development is the conclusion of a preferential trade agreement, the first that Pakistan ever signed with any country, to reduce tariff on 839 items. This may help reduce the gap in the bilateral trade. At present Pakistan has a sizable adverse balance of trade with China.

Moreover, China has agreed to construct another nuclear power plant of 300 megawatt at Chashma but the deal could not be finalized during Musharraf’s visit. The Metallurgical Company of China would further expand the Saindak gold and copper project with a capital of $30 million and will invest another $70 million on the development of lead and zinc deposits at Doddar in Balochistan. As a result, the Baluchistan government will get two per cent royalty on the above project. The Chinese would modernize the signalling system on the main railway lines of Pakistan.

It may be pointed out that during the prime minister’s visit to China in March, the two sides signed an MoU whereby the latter had agreed to provide 200 passenger coaches in addition to 175 already agreed upon. The Chinese company has also offered to increase the number of locomotives from 75 to 175 and extend technical and financial assistance for making a number of freight coaches. Further, China has been associated with the development of the Gwadar Port project and has already contributed $200 for the phase I of that project.

These are some of the recent and current mega projects in which Chinese financial and technical assistance has been exemplary. China has consistently helped Pakistan build not only its infrastructure but in setting up manufacturing industry such as the Machine Tool Complex at Taxila, Aircraft Rebuild Factory at Kamra and a nuclear power plant at Chashma. And of course, the Karakoram Highway is, doubtless, a monument of all-weather Sino-Pak friendship.

With such massive participation in Pakistan’s economy, the People’s Republic of China has proved to be a dependable strategic, political and economic ally of Pakistan. China, it must be remembered, continued its assistance to Pakistan even when the United States and European powers had stopped all assistance because of its nuclear test explosion. It is good that the two Himalayan neighbours are establishing multiple links in the spheres of defence, economy, technology and culture.

SHORTLY before the sighting of the Ramazan moon, I was invited as chief guest at a college debate devoted to the onerous task of determining which system — the presidential or the parliamentary — was better suited to Pakistan.

I accepted, somewhat reluctantly, because I have always found this subject, and others like it, quite pointless. The arguments of the protagonists on both sides of the divide are invariably theoretical and don’t take into consideration the fact that it is the people, and not the systems, that really matter. Their arguments are usually all pearl and no oyster.

Well, getting back to the college debate, the audience was treated to six well written speeches delivered by six earnest young men. The show was well rehearsed, and one could almost see the paragraphs floating in the air, actuated by trigger words.This was the cue for members of the older generation to get a little shut-eye and wonder what was being served at tea.

One of the lads, who had the well scrubbed looks of a prefect kind, had forgotten the trigger word in the twelfth paragraph, and was rebuked by an intolerant audience that showed its displeasure by breaking into rapturous applause. I don’t quite remember what he said, but he used the word Naxalites three times in a totally incorrect context.

I was pleasantly surprised that a local college student had heard of the Naxalites. I was disappointed, however, when he didn’t really seem to know who they were or what they did. A little background information might be useful.

The Communist Party of India split in 1964 over a number of ideological issues. The breakaway group, which subsequently derived its inspiration from Beijing, came to be known as the Communist Party of India (Marxist) to distinguish it from the parent body, the Communist Party of India, which operated under the guidance of Moscow. This new faction expended its energies in carrying on the class struggle and attempted to free the land from the clutches of feudal lords.

However, in politics there are always wheels within wheels, and soon a militant faction within the breakaway party grew restless and raised slogans which incited the have-nots to wage an armed struggle against the exploiters. This occurred at a time when feudal lords owned vast tracts of arable land in the rich hinterland of east India. In the villages, in spite of the fact that Pandit Nehru had abolished the jagirdari and zamindari system, the erstwhile zamindars managed to retain control over large parts of their holdings.

The village or jotedar had the last word regarding tilling rights. And contrary to the impression generally circulated through the media and films, the tillers of the soil were mercilessly exploited. The large majority of peasants had to work without wages in order to pay back debts. Some had to fulfil the debt obligations of their ancestors and, therefore, were forced to work without pay. What they got was a pittance. This was the order of the day. None dared raise a voice against the ruthless exploitation and the torture that was frequently inflicted.

It was against this backdrop that the peasants’ movement took shape. The votaries of armed struggle did not find support among the moderates. The ideological tug of war continued till 1967 when differences reached a flashpoint. The hardliners accused the moderates of being ‘neo-revisionists’. This understandably led to a fierce ideological battle which culminated in the hardliners completely dissociating themselves from the moderates. The advocates of armed struggle and class war were referred to in 1969 as members of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist).

The year 1969 was a major turning point in the political history of West Bengal. It was in that year that armed peasants forcibly took control of lands at Naxalbari from the local landlords and jotedars. A fierce battle was fought and the peasants were ‘liberated’. This development encouraged the downtrodden masses of Bihar to similarly take up arms.

The Naxalite ideology is, in fact, based on Charu Majumdar’s historic documents and the creative application of the thoughts of Marx, Lenin and Mao Zedong, sown in Indian conditions. The documents are historic, as they initiate a sharp departure from parliamentary cretinism and put forward revolutionary politics as a counter to revisionism in the Communist movement in India.

The movement spread rapidly to the tribal belt of Bihar and certain parts of Orissa and Andhra Pradesh. The insurrection was led by leaders like Charu Mazjumdar, Jangal Santhal, Kanu Sanyal, Kadam Mullik and Sadhan Sarkar. Most of those men who led the movement at Naxalbari became a legend in their own lifetime.

The demand for social justice, a classless society, redistribution of land among those who didn’t have any and talk of a cultural revolution, caught the fancy of the youth. Thousands of young men denounced what they called ‘theoretical education’ and took to the streets. A massive social upheaval started to take place.

Most of these idealists left their home and family for the cause of revolution and the liberation of the proletariat. Almost all of them wanted a new social order, a socialist economy and a society free from any class barrier.

These highly charged and focused individuals came to be known as Naxalites and their movement came to be referred to as the Naxalite Movement. The uprising in Calcutta was spearheaded by Sushital Roy Chowdhury, Ashim Chatterjee, Nishith Bhattacharya and Sourin Bose. They called their movement as ‘a people’s democratic movement.’

However, the activities of the group were crushed with ruthless force. State forces brutally murdered many of the Naxalite revolutionaries. Most of the leaders are either dead or have become inactive. Excesses were, however, committed on both sides. The Naxalite revolutionaries had executed a number of people after branding them ‘class enemies’. One of the victims of the attacks was the veteran minister Hemanta Basu. Eventually, after mutual distrust and ideological differences started to crop up, the movement disintegrated.

As a result, factional executions began. A large part of West Bengal became a lawless zone, much as it had in Mexico during the days of Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa under the presidency of first Madero and later Huerta. After 9 p.m., no place was safe for the common man. Mutual distrust slowly led to the formation of several splinter groups. The situation remains much the same today. The main arena of the uprising, Naxalbari, has once again become the flashpoint of conflict.

The movement is still alive in the tribal belt of Bihar and in some parts of Andhra Pradesh. However, by and large, the movement appears to be dwindling. The wave of consumerism has succeeded in weaning away the revolutionary fervour that had developed.

The Naxalbari uprising of March 2, 1967, saw the implementation of Charu Majumdar’s vision of revolution. The armed peasants struggle began in Naxalbari in West Bengal, when a tribal youth named Wimal Kesan, who had a judicial order, went to plough his land. Local landlords sent their goons to attack him. This sparked wide-scale violence by tribals who started capturing back their lands. In the 72 action-filled days which saw counter-action by the state, a police sub-inspector and nine tribals were killed. The incident sent shock waves throughout the country and Naxalism was born.

The ultra-leftist ideology took concrete shape in the May 1968 meeting of the All India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries (AICCCR) which advocated revolution in the states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, UP, Karnataka, Orissa and West Bengal.

What makes this meeting especially important is that the Soviet Union was dubbed as a ‘neocolonial power’ ruled by ‘modern revisionists.’ US imperialism, Soviet revisionism, the big landlords and the comprador-bureaucratic bourgeoisie, all came under attack and were described as the real enemies of the people.

In 1969, the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) was formed under the leadership of Charu Majumdar. It argued that democracy in India was a sham and decided to base Indian revolution on protracted guerilla warfare on the lines of the Chinese model.