CPI (Maoist)

March 22, 2010

West Bengal's defeated chief minister, the CPI (M)'s Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, addresses a mass rally.

By Dipankar Bhattacharya, general secretary, Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation

[This article is the editorial in the forthcoming June 2011 issue of the CPI (ML) Liberation's journal Liberation. It is posted at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with permission.]

Adivasi women protest in West Bengal.

October 14, 2009 -- Sanhati is a collective of activists/academics who have been working in solidarity with peoples' movements in India by providing information and analysis (see http://www.sanhati.com).

We have been profoundly disturbed by the Indian government's reported plans to launch an unprecedented military offensive in the huge forested regions of central India, populated by millions of Indigenous tribes (adivasis), for stamping out an alleged Maoist insurgency. We feel that this will be a democratic and humanitarian disaster. Hence we have taken the initiative, in consultation with progressive intellectuals, to draft a statement of protest against the Indian government's military offensive and have circulated it among democratic and peace-loving citizens of India and the world for endorsement.

Below is the statement, the list of signatories (which includes many eminent intellectuals/academics) and a background note which puts the current conflict into perspective.

To Dr. Manmohan Singh Prime Minister,

By the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) Liberation

September 27, 2009 -- The following appeared as the editorial in the July 2009 issue of Liberation, the central organ of Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) – CPI (ML). Since then, while the paramilitary campaign in Lalgarh has ended, repression against the adivasi (tribal) people of Lalgarh continues, with incidents of rape and violence reported. It must be remembered that the People’s Committee against Police Atrocities (PCPA) began in Lalgarh after adivasi women were sexually assaulted by police during an anti-Maoist raid; one woman was blinded. The state government of West Bengal [formed by the pro-business Communist Party of India (Marxist)-led Left Front] initiated an enquiry that established the assaults had taken place – but only offered some monetary ``compensation’’ to some of the victims, refusing to meet their demand of punishment for, and a public apology by, the police authorities concerned.