In a press release on July 25, the outlawed Communist Party of India (Maoist) informed that it will release a souvenir compiling the journey of their slain Central Committee (CC) members of the party who played a pivotal role in nurturing the extremist organisation to take its current form. The said souvenir will be released in English, Hindi and Telugu informed, the spokesperson of the CC of the proscribed CPI (Maoist), Abhay.
The announcement came hours ahead of the annual Martyr week celebrated by the extremist outfit, responsible for nurturing a decades-long insurgency in a number of Indian states like West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Kerala and Chhattisgarh.
While connecting the banned outfit’s roots to the Naxalbari incident of 1967, the party spokesperson claimed ‘that to preserve the legacy of Charu Majumdar and Kanhai Chatterjee, a total of 14800 including 1169 female cadres have so far perished into the proletarian war. The said souvenir will also have a short description of the lives of as many as 41 leaders of the Maoist movement, added Abhay.
In the press release, the party spokesperson, while offering his salute to around 4567 slain cadres, including their 856 female fellow companions who have been killed so far after the formation of the current structure of the CPI Maoist in 2004, has also made an appeal to the cadres to vow to fight this war till their last.
The press release of the Maoists also thanked their supreme leaders Kanu Sanyal and Kanhai Chatterjee for laying the revolutionary foundation of the Marxism-Leninism-Maoism ideology and claimed that they had represented many generations of revolutionaries. Further it claimed that during the 70s when the extremist ideology suffered a setback and got divided in many revolutionary streams, members of the CC were standing firm and their resolve for the revolution had ultimately paved the way for formation of an inclusive All India Maoist Party.
Further, in a bid to dismiss the differences between the various streams of extremist groups that occured in the late 70s the party spokesperson claimed that the Naxalbari incident inspired the lives of all those who led the different streams of revolution and were closely associated. While concluding, the banned outfit’s spokesperson also appealed to all the party cadres to read the tales of their leaders and claimed that a lot can be learnt by turning the pages of their CC members’ biographies.
It is pertinent to mention here that the proscribed Maoist outfit took its current form as CPI (Maoist) after the merger of People’s War Group (PWG), active mainly in undivided Andhra Pradesh and adjoining regions of Maharashtra and undivided Madhya Pradesh with the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) operating mainly in undivided Bihar. The merger took place after a long bloody conflict between the groups that lasted for almost a decade in the late 90s with a sole aim to end the democratic process and establish an authoritarian Communist regime through the means of armed revolution.
Since its formation, the outlawed party holds a so-called Martyr week in the month of July every year, which usually commences on July 28 on the death anniversary of the party’s ideologue, Charu Mazumdar and lasted till August 3 to mark the alleged sacrifice of their cadres in the war against the Republic of India. In the so-called martyred week, the Maoist usually targets and launches attacks on the government establishments alongside attacks on the security personnel.
The Maoist outfit has an armed wing known as the People’s Liberation Guerrilla Army (PLGA) which came into existence after the merger of armed wings of the PWG and MCC in the year 2000 with an aim to convert itself as the People’s Liberation Army after the success of the proposed revolution. The PLGA draws its inspiration from the Chinese Army (PLA) and is solely responsible for the killing of more than 12000 citizens including personnel of paramilitary forces, policemen and civilians (mostly tribals) of the regions affected by the Left Wing Extremism.
Over the recent years, the banned outfit suffered major setbacks in their erstwhile bastions, which fall under their proposed red corridor in states like Bihar, Odisha and Jharkhand and is on the backfoot in their traditional thresholds in Dandakaranya (Bastar) region of Chhattisgarh. The extremist Left wing outfit is also witnessing a decline in their strength in various other regions of the country where they used to be a dominating force during the pinnacle of the Maoist movement in 2009-10 and is now believed to be confined to a much lesser territory than their zenith, when they used to had a more or less impact on around 180 districts of India.
After being voted to power in 2014, the incumbent NDA Government brought various measures to contain the Left wing insurgency by pushing the development works in the Maoist-affected regions and tightening security by opening up security pickets in the core Maoist zone. The government also took various measures to counter and contain the augmentation of Maoist ideology in the urban areas being promoted by the frontal organisations of the CPI Maoist.
