I had traveled from Thiruvananthapuram to Kolkata to meet CPI(M-L) leader Charu Majumdar in 1970. Majumdar was then the West Bengal police’s most wanted man and my task was to report the state of the party in Kerala to him. I met him in a shelter in a crowded Kolkata neighbourhood.

I could see in Kolkata the intensity of the turmoil and the unrest among students and the youth. Hundreds of them from the city had gone to the villages to be with the poor and landless peasants following Majumdar’s call. Those were the vibrant days of the Naxalite movement which started in 1967 in the Siliguri sub-division of Darjeeling as a militant mass movement of the poor and the landless. The movement had started to spread. But within two-three years the movement turned into a terrorist movement, annihilating “the class enemies.”

Even though the party got split into many groups — mainly after the death of  Majumdar in police custody in July 1972 — and collapsed, a considerable section of the activists continued different socio-political activities in different parts, in towns and villages, of West Bengal. A good number of them continued their critical approach towards CPM politics.

That became a headache for the CPM. After 1977, when the CPM established its domination through government, it suppressed former Naxalites who were politically active, using undemocratic methods. 

In 1985, when I was the All India Secretary of the Central Reorganisation Committee, CPI(M-L), we had held our All-India plenary in a village in Midnapore. I was really shocked to see the backwardness of Bengal’s villages. When compared with Kerala’s villages, they were extremely backward—economically, socially and politically. Even after eight years of Left rule there was no manifest progress in the lives of the people. 

... contd.