Why PM Modi reminded of Urban Naxals and their plans; lessons from Mao’s land reforms that killed millions

As the debate over Congress party ‘survey promise’ has created a storm in the already heated election campaign which led PM Modi to remark that the grand old party is in the grip of ‘Urban Naxals’ (A term commonly used for the Urban handlers of the proscribed Communist Party of India Maoist).

Terming that such a survey is a vivid reflection of Maoist ideology the PM on Sunday hinted that the proposed redistribution plan will even snatch the ‘Mangal Sutra’ (A sacred ornament commonly made of gold) from our womenfolk and distribute it among the infiltrators.

Now as the Prime Minister at a crucial juncture of the elections is hinting about the possible intervention of Urban Naxals within a main opposition party, let us visit the horror of a similar kind of redistribution ordered by the founder of Maoism and source of inspiration for the Naxals (Maoist) Mao Zedong which killed millions.

Although the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Mao Zedong was in favor and advocating for the violence on name of land reforms from as early as 1927, the mass persecution of the victims of the alleged land reform movement commenced in the year 1949.

After securing the power under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the CCP ordered the authorities to arrange public tribunals to punish the landlords or peasants hailing from rich class.

Its been alleged that at least one landlord was mercilessly killed by the mob supported by the Mao’s led CCP in every village of the countryside though it was undoubtedly the least figure that could be quoted as there were reports of mass executions of landlords or rich peasants on the name of redistributing the land.

The actual number of victims who were brutally butchered on the name of the so-called land redistribution varies where while a few termed the numbers of those who were killed to be between 2 to 10 lakhs the other historians claims the numbers to be between 1 to 2 millions.

According to a report, R.J. Rummel, an analyst of government killings, or “democide”, gives a “reasonably conservative figure” of about 4,500,000 landlords and better-off peasants killed.

Another analyst, Philip Short estimates that at least one to three million landlords and members of their families were killed, either beaten to death on the spot by enraged peasants at mass meetings organized by local communist party work teams or reserved for public execution later on

Drive against Counterrevolutionaries

The alleged land redistribution process that killed millions was followed by the drive against the counterrevolutionaries or the nationalist Chinese sympathisers between 1950-53 during which tens of thousands of people were executed in search of potential dedicated party worker for the CCP.

According to the statistics allegedly agreed by the CCP, around 2.6 million people were arrested during the campaign and the number of people executed was somewhere around 7.20 lakhs. However again these figures varies according to the figures claimed by other scholars.

The aforementioned figures of causalities was only a glimpse of what unfolded in the years to come which witnessed several campaigns commenced by CCP under the leadership of Mao, this includes campaigns such as Anti rightist movement, the cultural revolution and the so called great leap forward which led millions perished due to hunger caused by the consequences of the fanatic experiment.