tactic of advancing our struggle gradually when the enemy has gained some stability . Judged from this standpoint , the struggle of the peasants of Terai is just timely and beyond reproach .
Why have we failed , though temporarily , to advance the struggle of the heroic peasants of Terai ? The reasons are : lack of a strong party organisation , failure to rely wholeheartedly on the masses and to build a powerful mass base , ignorance of military affairs , thinking on old lines and a formal attitude towards the establishment of political power and the work of revolutionary land reform . We must always bear in mind Chairman Mao ’ s teachings in discussing these matters . He teaches us : “ New things always have to experience difficulties and set-backs as they grow . It is sheer fantasy to imagine that the cause of socialism is all plain sailing and easy success , without difficulties and set-backs or the exertion of tremendous efforts ”.
By the lack of a strong party organisation we mean absence of a party which is armed with the theory of Marxism-Leninism and its highest development in the present era Mao Tse-tung ’ s thought which is closely linked with the masses , which does not fear self-criticism and which has mastered the Marxist-Leninist style of work . It is true that the revolutionary comrades of the Siliguri sub-division led by our respected leader , Comrade Charu Mazumdar , were the first to rise in revolt against the revisionists . But this does not mean that we fully assimilated the teachings of our great teacher Chairman Mao . That is , while we accepted the teachings of Chairman Mao in words , we persisted in revisionist methods in practice . Though it is true that the worker and peasant party members of Terai were in a majority inside the party and that there was party organisation in almost every area , yet in reality the worker and peasant comrades were led by the petty bourgeois comrades and the
June - 2022 party organisation in every area actually remained inactive . The party members were all active at the beginning of the struggle but they were swept away by the vast movement of the people . We did not also realise that the Party had a tremendously significant role to play in advancing firmly the struggle of the heroic peasants . As a result , whatever might be the role the party members played spontaneously at the beginning of the struggle , it was afterwards reduced to nothing in the face of white terror . To belittle the role of the Party in the struggle is nothing but an expression of the old revisionist way of thinking . The Party played no role in matters like deciding what are the needs of the struggle at a given moment , giving political propaganda priority above everything else , advising the people about what they should do when the enemy attacks , preparing the people politically to meet the moves of the enemy , and developing the struggle step by step to a higher stage .
We did not even politically assess , nor did we propagate among the people , the significance of the ten great tasks performed by the heroic peasants . As a result , there developed among us opportunism and escapism ; and even the fighting comrades began to show signs of a lack of firmness .
So , we are of the opinion that we must carry on a sharp struggle against the revisionist way of thinking and fulfil certain definite tasks . These tasks are : to form a party unit in a given locality and elect its leader ; to train these party units , which must be armed ones , to observe secrecy . The tasks of the party unit will be to propagate the thought of Chairman Mao in a given locality and to develop and intensify class struggle in that locality ; to act as a guerrilla unit and attack and eliminate class enemies by relying wholly on the people ; and , whenever possible to take part along with the people in the work of production . We have now started implementing the above programme .
We were unable to raise the struggle firmly to a higher stage because we failed to rely wholly on the people and to build a powerful mass base . We now admit frankly that we had no faith in the heroic peasant masses who , swift as a storm , organised themselves formed revolutionary peasant committees , completed the ten great tasks and advanced the class struggle at a swift pace during the period from April to September 1967 . We did not realise that it is the people who make history , that they are the real heroes , that the people can organise themselves and can amaze all by their own completely new style of work . We failed to realise that comrades like Tribeni Kanu , Sobhan Ali , Barka Majhi , Babulal Biswakarmakar and the ten peasant women of Naxalbari are the real heroes and organisers , and so we failed to move forward .
Though we repeatedly recognised this in words during the period from April to September , 1967 , in reality , however , we , the petty bourgeois leadership , imposed ourselves on the people . Whenever the heroic peasant masses took the initiative and wanted to do something , we of the petty bourgeois origin opposed them . The reason is , we did not understand , nor did we even try to understand , the actions of the masses . On the contrary , under the influence of old revisionist habits we arbitrarily set limits as to how far they should go . This resulted in thwarting the initiative of the masses and blunting the edge of the class struggle . Having worked in a revisionist party , we used the bourgeois laws and conventions and so , tried to convince the masses about what was right and what was wrong . So , when the people wanted to attack the police , we prevented them on the ground that our losses would be heavy . We looked at the people ’ s attitude towards the jotedars and the police from the angle of bourgeois humanism . As a result , we failed to organise the large masses , who numbered more than �
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