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1967
25 May: Historic peasant uprising
begins at Naxalbari in Darjeeling district of West Bengal under
the leadership of revolutionary communists belonging to the CPI(M).
The uprising is brutally suppressed by the CPI(M)-led United Front
government of West Bengal at the behest of the Congress government
at the Centre. In reaction, communist revolutionary ranks rebel
against the reformist-bureaucratic leadership of the party. The
rebellion soon assumes an all India dimension. Entire state units
of CPI(M) in Uttar Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir and considerable
sections in Bihar and Andhra Pradesh join this rebellion.
July-November: Magazines that
would later become CPI(ML)'s organs such as Deshabrati, the Bengali
weekly, Liberation, the English monthly and Lokyudh, the Hindi weekly
started appearing.
11 November: For the first time
after the uprising, Comrade Charu Mazumdar, the architect of Naxalbari,
addresses the Shahid Minar rally organised by Naxalbari Krishak
Sangram Sahayak Samiti.
12-13 November: Comrades from
Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Orissa and West Bengal
meet and form All India Coordination Committee of Revolutionaries
in the CPI(M).
1968
14 May: The Coordination Committee
is renamed as All India Coordination Committee of Communist Revolutionaries
(AICCCR) with Comrade Sushital Roy Chowdhury as its convener. However,
Maoist Communist Centre chooses to stay away from AICCCR. Within
the AICCCR, certain fundamental differences lead to the exclusion
of a section of Andhra comrades led by Comrade T.Nagi Reddy.
1969
February: AICCCR unanimously
decides to launch a new communist party.
22 April: Communist Party of India
(Marxist-Leninist) launched on the birth centenary day of Comrade
Lenin. Comrade Charu Mazumdar elected as the Secretary of the Central
Organising Committee.
1 May: Declaration of Party formation
by Comrade Kanu Sanyal at a massive meeting held on the Shahid Minar
ground in Calcutta. CPI(M) tries to disrupt the meeting and it results
in armed clashes. This marks the beginning of a whole series of
CPI(M)-inspired attacks on CPI(ML) ranks taking an eventual toll
of more than a thousand of our comrades.
By this time primary guerrilla zones had appeared at Debra-Gopiballavpur
in West Bengal, Musahari in Bihar, Lakhimpur Kheri in Uttar Pradesh
and above all at Srikakulam in Andhra Pradesh. Severe state repression
is let loose on Srikakulam struggle. Comrade Panchadri Krishnamurty
and six others are murdered on the night of 26-27 May. The period
between November and early December witnesses the killing of Comrades
Subbarao Panigrahi, Nirmala Krishnamurty and several other frontranking
leaders. An unprecedented student-youth upsurge rocks Calcutta and
almost all other cities and towns of West Bengal.
1970
27 April: Deshabrati office
in Calcutta which virtually functioned as the open Party centre
is raided by the police. All out police repression ensues, forcing
the party to go underground.
11 May:
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The First Party
Congress is held in Calcutta under strict underground conditions.
Comrade Charu Mazumdar is elected the Party General Secretary.
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10-11 July: Comrades Vempatapu
Satyanarayana and Adibatla Kailasam, legendary leaders of the Srikakulam
uprising, are captured and murdered by the police in cold blood.
Srikakulam guerrilla zone begins to suffer reversals.
Comrade Appu, founder of the Party in Tamil Nadu and a member of
the polit bureau dies a martyr some time in September or October.
The news reaches after a lapse of time and the exact date of his
martyrdom is never known.
1971
Exploiting the Bangladesh war, Indian rulers deploy the army to
crush the movement in West Bengal. Uprising in Birbhum marks the
high point of this period. Several guerrilla zones begin to suffer
reversals. Thousands embrace martyrdom. Over 50,000 put behind bars
in various Indian jails. Comrade Saroj Dutta, polit bureau member
and renowned revolutionary cultural leader, is secretly eliminated
by the police in the early hours of August 5. In a calculated demonstration
of fascist violence, more than 150 comrades are massacred at Kashipore-Baranagar
near Calcutta on 12-13 August.
Inner-party struggles had started surfacing immediately after the
First Congress. Amidst severe setbacks such struggles intensify
and the Party begins to split.
1972
28 July:
| After
12 days of torture in Lallbazar police lock-up, Comrade Charu
Mazumdar succumbs to death. With his martyrdom, the last vestige
of the Party's central authority collapses. |
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1973
Amidst sharpening polemics, attempts to rebuild the movement go
on by surviving local Party organisations. New stirrings of guerrilla
struggle backed by mass activism emerge in parts of central Bihar
and Telengana. A red star arises over Bhojpur giving a fresh fillip
to the Party's reorganisation efforts.
1974
28 July: Party Central Committee
reorganised at a meeting at Durgapur, West Bengal. Comrade Jauhar
(Subrata Dutt) is elected the General Secretary. A popular student-youth
movement erupts in Gujarat and Bihar. Railway employees all over
the country go on a prolonged historic strike.
1975
Internal emergency clamped down on the country on June 25. Noted
opposition leaders and thousands of political activists put behind
prison bars. Armed struggle reaches new heights in Bhojpur and rural
areas of Patna district of Bihar, Naxalbari of West Bengal and some
parts of eastern UP.
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Intensified police
repression claims the lives of a good number of comrades
and finally on 29 November Comrade Jauhar himself gets killed
in a police encounter in Bhojpur. |
1976
| The Second Congress of
the Party held on 26-27 February in the countryside of Gaya
Bihar, resolves to continue with armed guerrilla struggles and
work for an anti-Congress united front. Delegates at the Second
Party Congress, seen in the middle is Com.Vinod Mishra, who
took over as General Secretary after Com.Jauhar's martyrdom. |
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1977
Emergency lifted. Major changes take place in national political
scene with the ouster of the Indira Gandhi government. Amidst an
upsurge in armed actions as well as mass activism, Party decides
to launch a rectification campaign. Party organisation spreads to
Andhra, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
1978
Rectification Movement combats the pure military viewpoint and
emphasis is placed on organising mass peasant movements and kisan
sabhas. A good section of youth active in the JP movement begins
joining the Party.
1979
April 26-May 2: A special all-India
Party conference held at Bhojpur formalises the outcome of the rectification
movement.
1980
25 February: Comrades Govinda Teli,
Kshitipati Das and five leading peasant comrades are killed in cold
blood by the police in CPI(M)-ruled Tripura at Hurua near Dharmanagar.
A militant mass peasant upsurge breaks out in rural areas of Patna
and Party's influence begins to spread over broader areas of central
Bihar. After the collapse of the Janata Party government and Indira
Gandhi's return to power, Party puts forward the idea of a broad
democratic front as the national alternative.
1981
30 January-2 February: Unity meet
of 13 ML factions sponsored by the Party in a bid to form a single
formation to act as the leading core of the proposed democratic
front. After a promising start, the move however cannot be sustained.
From this point onwards whereas the PCC group goes on to become
irrelevant and splits up into various factions, the M-L movement
begins to polarise between the Marxist-Leninist line of CPI(ML)(Liberation)
and the anarchist line of CPI(ML)(People's War).
23 February: First state level
rally held in Patna under the banner of Bihar Pradesh Kisan Sabha
declares the beginning of a new phase of mass political activism.
1982
24-26 April: Indian People's Front
launched in Delhi at a national conference. Progressive democratic
forces engaged in the popular anti-liquor movement in Uttarakhand
and various nationality and civil liberty movements unite with communist
revolutionary forces under the revolutionary democratic banner of
IPF. In course of time, IPF begins to act as the Party's open political
platform actively intervening in national politics. At the end of
the year the Third Party Congress takes place at Giridih, Bihar
where the issue of participation in election is clinched.
1983
Assam movement shows signs of revival after the farcical Assembly
election imposed at gunpoint on the people. While firmly demarcating
itself from the CPI(M)'s pro-state anti-movement stance, our Party
successfully champions the democratic national aspirations of the
Assamese people and emphasises the movement's integration with the
tribal communities of Assam. IPF begins to acquire a new and distinct
identity in the ongoing democratic movement. Primary links are established
with a whole spectrum of mass organisations and mass movements.
An all-India dalit conference is held at Amravati, Maharashtra to
facilitate interaction with Ambedkarite groups.
1984
Operation Bluestar in June brutally hurts the sentiments of
Sikhs all over the country. Thousands of Sikhs perish in the anti-Sikh
pogrom perpetrated in the capital in the wake of Indira Gandhi's
assassination. IPF Second Conference held in Calcutta as scheduled
on November 4-6 defying all disturbances.
1985
| Under Party's guidance,
People's Democratic Front launched in Karbi Anglong district
of Assam to provide a revolutionary democratic orientation to
the tribal people's aspirations for autonomy. PDF wins a seat
in the Assembly election in Assam, bringing about the first
entry of a Party cadre in the legislative arena. In two separate
incidents, Party loses three outstanding peasant fighters and
Party activists in Bihar. Comrades Kesho, Sahato and Jiut had
played a great role in rejuvenating and consolidating the fighting
backbone of militant agrarian struggles in the late 70s and
early 80s. Jan Sanskriti Manch takes shape at a conference in
Delhi of cultural activists drawn primarily from the Hindi-speaking
region. |
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1986
IPF President Com. Nagbhushan Patnaik accompanied
by Comrades Akhilendra Pratap Singh and Sangeeta (from right to
left), leading a gherao of Bihar Assembly in protest against Arwal
massacre.
More than a dozen landless labourers gunned down on April 19 by
the police at Arwal in Jehanabad district of Bihar rekindling memories
of the infamous Jalianwallah Bagh massacre. A militant gherao of
the Bihar Assembly is organised in protest by IPF in August. This
marks the beginning of a new phase of assertion and ascendance of
revolutionary democratic forces. A national women's convention is
held in Calcutta on 5-7 April to promote cooperation and critical
interaction between communist women's organisations and upcoming
feminist and autonomous women's groups.
1987
May 7: PDF gets transformed into
the Autonomous State Demand Committee. After a powerful and sustained
mass movement against the Congress-led District Council, ASDC goes
on to sweep the district council elections in 1989. An all-India
workers' convention is held under IPF banner at Ambernath near Bombay
in November. Datta Samant, the leader of the historic Maharashtra
textile strike addresses the convention as the main speaker.
1988
Fourth Party Congress held at Hazaribagh, Bihar from January
1 to 5. While rectifying old errors of judgement in the Party's
assessment of Soviet Union, the Congress also joins issue with Gorbachev's
euphoric discourse on 'peaceful' imperialism. Party reiterates the
basic principles of revolutionary communism - defence of Marxism,
absolute political independence of the Communist Party and primacy
of revolutionary peasant struggles in democratic revolution - in
the face of a global offensive of bourgeois ideological trends.
The whole Party rallies unitedly and whole-heartedly in a vigorous
ideological campaign to thwart the threat of liquidationist renegacy.
1989
The founding conference of All India Central Council of Trade
Unions (AICCTU) held in Madras in May.
In the Lok Sabha election held in November, more than a dozen Party
supporters are shot dead on the polling day evening in Danwar-Bihta
village under the Ara Lok Sabha constituency of Bhojpur district
by the local landlords angered by our campaign against booth-capturing.
The massacre however fails to prevent the Party from recording its
first electoral victory under IPF banner. Ara sends the first Naxalite
member to Indian Parliament.
1990
In the Assembly election held in February, IPF wins seven seats
and finishes second in another fourteen. In Assam too, a four-member
ASDC legislators' group enters the Assembly. Special all-India Conference
held in Delhi on 22-24 July to initiate the process of Party's restructuring
and opening up.
All India Students' Association (AISA) launched at Allahabad on
August 9-11. The VP Singh government had just announced its decision
to implement the decade-old recommendations of the Mandal Commission.
AISA focuses on the demand for students' inalienable right to education
and employment to counter the Mandal-inspired caste polarisation
within the student community.
First all-India IPF rally held in Delhi on 8 October 1990. This
first ever massive mobilisation of rural poor in the national capital
with the basic slogan of "Dam Bandho, Kaam Do" (Check
Prices, Give Us Jobs) in the midst of fast escalating Mandal-Mandir
frenzy demonstrates the growing potential of our movement before
the democratic intelligentsia and political circles.
1991
In the May '91 Lok Sabha election, IPF loses the Ara seat but
the Party continues to retain its presence in Parliament through
the ASDC MP. The launching of the pro-imperialist new economic policy
in July leads to large-scale protests from trade unions all over
the country. AICCTU unites with other Left-led central trade unions
to form the Sponsoring Committee of Trade Unions.
1992
Party reorganises the erstwhile Janwadi Mazdoor Kisan Samiti
in South Bihar as Jharkhand Mazdoor Kisan Samiti (Jhamkis) to play
a more direct and active role in the Jharkhand movement. The Sponsoring
Committee of TUs organises a mammoth rally of workers in Delhi on
25 November. On 6 December, kar sevaks demolish the Babri Masjid
in Ayodhya plunging the nation into the worst ever anti-Muslim riots
since the Partition days. The Fifth Party Congress, the first ever
open Congress of our Party, takes place in Calcutta from 20 to 26
December followed by a massive rally at the Brigade Parade Ground
on December 28. The Congress brings the Party out into the open
and calls for a Left confederation.
1993
Defying the ideological offensive unleashed by the saffron brigade
and other forces of right reaction, AISA notches up a chain of impressive
victories in UP campuses like Allhabad, Varanasi and Nainital culminating
in its series of Presidential victories in the prestigious Jawharlal
Nehru University in the capital.
Fed up with the growing pro-rich tilt of the CPI(M)'s peasant wing
in west Bengal, sections of the party's rural poor base begin to
cross over to our fold right in its stronghold of Bardhaman district.
In a bid to nip this growing dissension in the bud, local CPI(M)
bosses hack five agrarian labourer comrades to death at Karanda
village near Bardhaman town on 31 May right on the day of panchayat
poll.
To provide a new Left orientation to the growing Muslim disillusionment
with the Indian political establishment, Party initiates a new forum
called Inquilabi Muslim Conference in Bihar.
Party organisation spreads to Rajasthan and work expanded in Madhya
Pradesh, Orissa and Punjab. With the coming into being of the broad-based
Platform of Mass Organisations, joint activities expand with Left-led
mass organisations on diverse fronts. All our mass organisations
play a key role in the Bharat bandhs and other protest actions waged
by this mass platform against the new economic policy.
1994
February:All India Progressive Women's Association launched at a
national women's conference in Delhi.
IPF is formally dissolved and fresh attempts begin for forging
a united front with some sections of Leftists, Socialists and grassroots
activists centring around an anti-imperialist agenda.
Interaction also grows with Communist and Left parties in other
parts of the world attempting to revive the movement and draw lessons
from the Soviet collapse.
1995
Six-member CPI(ML) group formed in Bihar Assembly. Two of these
MLAs come from Siwan illustrating the Party's expansion in the northern
region of Bihar.
All India Organisational Plenum held at Diphu in July to streamline
the Party's organisational network and functioning. Revolutionary
Youth Association (RYA) launched as an all-India organisation of
the radical youth.
On 14 December, Party organises a successful Jharkhand bandh to
press for the demand for dissolution of the undemocratic Jharkhand
council and formation of a full-fledged Jharkhand state.
1996
Following a month-long intense political campaign against the
ruling class politics of crime, scams and subservience to imperialist
dictates, Party organises a massive Adhikar Rally (Rally for Rights)
on the historic Red Fort ground in Delhi on 11 March.
Five-member ASDC group formed in Assam Assembly. ASDC MP reelected
to Parliament. Another ASDC member elected to the Rajya Sabha. ASDC
retains its majority in Karbi Anglong District Council and also
unseats the Congress in the neighbouring North Cachhar Hills district.
To harness the growing assertion of various tribal communities of
Assam in the cause of revolutionary democracy, Party takes the initiative
to form, first, a Tribal People's Front and then a broader Assam
People's Front.
With Jharkhandi political forces getting widely defeated and discredited
in the 1996 Lok Sabha elections, Party joins hands with the CPI
and Marxist Coordination Committee led by Comrade AK Roy to strengthen
the Left's united role in the movement.
To facilitate organised interaction among various streams of Marxist
and progressive intellectuals, Party initiates the Indian Institute
of Marxist Studies. The IIMS has since published a popular booklet
on basic communist principles and held a series of DD Kosambi memorial
seminars on caste and class, economic nationalism, panchayati raj,
women's question, land reforms and Jharkhand question in Hyderabad,
Delhi, Calcutta, Bangalore, Patna and Ranchi.
Armed clashes with feudal private armies escalate in Bihar countryside
particularly in the districts of Bhojpur and Siwan. Over 150 common
people including women and children have been killed so far by these
reactionary private armies. The barbaric massacre of more than a
dozen women and children, mostly Muslim, at Bathani Tola of Bhojpur
by the armed goons of Ranvir Sena which enjoys the patronage of
the state as well as parties like BJP and JD, attracts nationwide
democratic protests. Party continues to expand in Bihar, Eastern
UP, Madras industrial region, East Godavari district of Andhra and
the Malda-Dinajpur belt of West Bengal.
1997
March 5: Party organises the historic
Halla Bol rally in Patna with mass representation from 53 of Bihar's
55 districts. A successful Bihar bandh ensues on April 2: Party
plays the leading role in uniting Left and democratic forces in
the state in a powerful "Oust Laloo campaign" in the wake
of the Rs.950 crore fodder scam.
March 31: Comrades Chandra Shekhar
and Shyam Narain assassinated in Siwan while addressing a street
corner meeting. This gives rise to powerful nationwide protests,
marked by an active participation of the intelligentsia.
April 29: AISA-RYA organise a militant
student-youth march to Parliament demanding punishment to Chandrashekhar's
killers. More than 100 students get injured.
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