Changes between Initial Version and Version 1 of Naxalite

Timestamp:

Jun 28, 2012, 3:37:55 PM (12 years ago)

Author:

Trupti

Comment:

--

Naxalite

@@ +1 @@
+'''Naxalite'''
+
+
+Term used to refer to members of the extreme
+Left CPI(ML) launched by Charu Majumdar in
+1969. The word refers to the site of the party’s
+first major political action (1967), the village of
+Naxalbari in Bengal. Following the split in the
+CPI (1964), several members of the breakaway
+CPI(M) turned to a Maoist, cadre-based massaction
+programme among the peasantry
+leading to the nationwide crackdown on the
+Party ordered by prime minister Lal Bahadur
+Shastri. The schisms between Left and Right
+within the CPI(M), the latter insisting on the
+parliamentary road, were aggravated by the
+victory of United Fronts in Kerala and West
+Bengal in the 1967 State Assembly elections.
+Although the Naxalbari insurrection itself, in
+which peasant groups seized land, held
+people’s courts and dispensed ‘justice’ to
+landlords and hoarders, was rapidly quelled, it
+had widespread and long-term consequences.
+The CPI(M)’s withdrawal of support in protest
+against Chief Minister Ajoy Mukherjee’s use of
+the police against their members eventually
+brought down the United Front government.
+In August 1967, two months after Naxalbari,
+Girijan tribals led a similar insurrection in
+Srikakulam, evoking the CPI-led Telangana
+uprising (1946-51). The All India Co-ordination
+Committee of Communist Revolutionaries
+(AICCCR) was established as the apex body
+for all extra-parliamentary Left activity.
+Organisations affiliated to it, as well as several
+others, launched armed movements in parts of
+Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Punjab, Kerala and Tamil
+Nadu. In 1969 the AICCCR was replaced by the
+CPI(ML), immediately recognised by the
+Chinese government. In 1970, actions
+sympathetic to the Naxalites were initiated by
+student groups in Calcutta and spawned major
+debates about revolutionary cultural aesthetics,
+often emphasising an anarchist iconoclasm
+(e.g. Saroj Dutta’s essay ‘In Defence of
+Iconoclasm’, 1970: cf. Samar Sen, 1978). In
+November 1970 the West Bengal Prevention of
+Violent Activities Bill gave the central
+government complete control over law and
+order in West Bengal, and the student
+movements in Calcutta as well as the peasant
+actions in e.g. Debra and Gopiballavpur were
+brutally suppressed by the police and the army.
+This suppression, coupled with the splintering
+of the movement itself, effectively ended
+Naxalite activity as an all-India phenomenon
+by 1972. The CPI(ML) survived mainly in
+Andhra Pradesh with the activities of the
+Peoples’ War Group. Culturally, however, its
+critique of the parliamentary system as well as
+the ideological and moral divides it caused
+within the Left movement as a whole, found an
+echo among independent film-makers, as in
+Mrinal Sen’s Calcutta Trilogy (see esp.
+Calcutta ’71, 1972), in Satyajit Ray’s Calcutta
+Trilogy, Tapan Sinha’s Apanjan (1968),
+Ghatak’s Jukti Takko Aar Gappo (1974),
+Benegal’s Nishant (1975), Nihalani’s
+Aakrosh (1980) and Shahani’s Tarang
+(1984). The Naxalite movement’s emphasis on
+agitation around civil liberties opened up a
+major space for independent documentary
+film-making (cf. Anand Patwardhan, Tapan
+Bose) and for Left political and aesthetic
+discourses. Other film-makers influenced by
+these currents include John Abraham, the
+musical, theatre and poetic sources of B.
+Narasinga Rao, and Utpalendu
+Chakraborty’s rhetoric about acceptable and
+unacceptable capital resources for film-making.
+In Andhra Pradesh, where the movement is
+currently the strongest, campaign films
+featuring exaggerated plotlines and emphatic
+performances, an idiom associated in that state
+with Naxalite aesthetics, were financially
+backed by media baron and producer Ramoji
+Rao in the mid-80s, continuing into e.g. R.
+Narayanamurthy’s commercially popular Lal
+Salaam (1992) and Erra Sainyam (1994).
+
+[[Glossary]]